Blake moved his heavy body, as though to shoulder away any claim as to her complicity.
“I know that,” he acknowledged. “And you went north to Paris on the twenty-ninth of November. And on the third of December you went to Cherbourg; and on the ninth you landed in New York. I know all that. That’s not what I’m after. I want to know where Connie Binhart is, now, to-day.”
Their glances at last came together. No move was made; no word was spoken. But a contest took place.
“Why ask me?” repeated the woman for the second time. It was only too plain that she was fencing.
“Because you know,” was Blake’s curt retort. He let the gray-irised eyes drink in the full cup of his determination. Some slowly accumulating consciousness of his power seemed to intimidate her. He could detect a change in her bearing, in her speech itself.
“Jim, I can’t tell you,” she slowly asserted. “I can’t do it!”
“But I’ve got ’o know,” he stubbornly maintained. “And I’m going to.”
She sat studying him for a minute or two. Her face had lost its earlier arrogance. It seemed troubled; almost touched with fear. She was not altogether ignorant, he reminded himself, of the resources which he could command.
“I can’t tell you,” she repeated. “I’d rather you let me go.”
The Second Deputy’s smile, scoffing and melancholy, showed how utterly he ignored her answer. He looked at his watch. Then he looked back at the woman. A nervous tug-of-war was taking place between her right and left hand, with a twisted-up pair of ecru gloves for the cable.