"And you?" she asked. I noticed an almost imperceptible shrug of her softly rounded shoulder. Rice powder, I imagined, somewhat increased its general effect of dead-whiteness.
"I'll be here until that safe is opened," was my retort.
"That long?" she mocked.
"That long!" I repeated, exasperated at her slow smile.
"Ah, then I shall sit down," she murmured as she caught up the lace cape and adjusted it about her shoulders. "For, believe me, that will be a very, very long time, monsieur!"
I watched her carefully as she crossed the room and sank into a chair. She drew her cream-colored train across her knees with frugal and studious deliberateness.
It suddenly flashed over me, as I watched her, that her ruse might have been a double-barreled one. Obliquity such as hers would have unseen convolutions. It was not the key to the safe she had flung through the window! She would never have been so foolish. It was a trick, a subterfuge. She still had that key somewhere about her.
"And now what must I do?" she asked as she drew the cloak closer about her shoulders.
"You can hand me over the key to that safe," was my answer.
She could actually afford to laugh a little.