She did not speak. She did not even move. The intent and staring face, white as a half-moon in a misty sky, seemed floating in space. The faint light of the room swallowed up the lines of her black-clad figure, enisling the face in the unbroken gloom of a Rembrandt-like background, making it stand out as though it were luminous.
It was a face well worth studying. What first struck me was its pallor. Across this the arched, faintly interrogative eyebrows gave it a false air of delicacy. The eyes themselves had a spacious clarity which warned me my enemy would not be without a capable enough mind, once she regained possession of her wits. Her mouth, no longer distorted by terror, was the nervous, full-lipped mouth of a once ardent spirit touched with rebellion.
She was, I could see, no every-day thief of the streets, no ordinary offender satisfied with mean and petty offenses. There would, I told myself, always be a largeness about her wrong-doing, a sinister brilliance in her illicit pursuits. And even while I decided this, I was forced to admit that it was not precisely terror I was beholding on her face. It seemed to merge into something more like a sense of shame, the same speechless horror which I might have met with had I intruded on her bodily nakedness. I could see that she was even beginning to resent my stare of curiosity. Then, for the first time, she spoke.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was low; in it was the quaver of the frightened woman resolutely steeling herself to courage.
"That's a question you're first going to answer for me," was my calmly deliberate retort.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, still confronting me from the same spot. I remembered the bundle of loot which I had dropped just outside the door.
"I can answer that more easily than you can," I replied, with a slight head-movement toward the broken desk-top.
Once more her glance went back to the curtained door. Then she studied me from head to foot, each sartorial detail and accessory of clothing, hat, gloves, and shoes, as though each must figure in the resolution of some final judgment.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
I preferred to leave that question unanswered.