"That might be a great beginning."
He was as pitiless and implacable as he could be. There was nothing in this that he could afford to be sentimental about. He was deliberately using his voice and personality like a whip.
She turned her face up to him with the mascara making dark smudges under her eyes, and the same pleading held in her voice.
"I'm so mixed up. This is somebody who's been very good to me… But everything I've told you is the truth. I swear it is. You must believe me. You must."
He knew that at that time he was as unemotional as a lie detector; and yet unsureness tightened the muscles of his jaw. He took a long inhalation from his cigarette while he assessed the feeling.
He had his own extra sense of truth that was like the ear of a musician with perfect pitch. He knew also that even that intuition could be deceived, because he himself had more than once deceived some of the most uncooperative critics. But if Barbara Sinclair was doing that, she had to be the most sensational actress that ever walked, on or off a stage. It simply became easier and more rational to believe that he had met at least some of the truth than that he had met the supreme acting of all time.
His main objectives were unchanged. He had to convict a murderer, track down the stolen iridium that had been diverted into the black market, and uncover, erase, liquidate, or otherwise dispose of the upper case brain that controlled the whole traitorous racket. He had to do that no matter who got hurt, including himself.
But there was the slightest change in his tone of voice as he said: "All right. What about these two creeps?"
"I don't know who they are. Honestly. I can't even think how they got in here."
"Let's find out."