I nodded. "For murder."
"Murder." He spat the word. "But not for the murder of a Martian, eh? Martians are not that important any more." His old eyes hated me with an intensity I didn't relish.
"You said that, old man, not I."
A little time went by. The drums began to beat faster. They were rolling out a lively tempo now, a tempo you could put music to.
He said at last: "I do not know where the woman is. Nor the child."
He looked me straight in the eyes when he said it—and almost before the words were out of his mouth, they were whipped in again on a drawn-back, great, sucking breath. For, somewhere outside, somewhere near that dancing circle, in perfect time with the lively beat of the drums, somebody was whistling.
It was a clear, clean sound, a merry, bright, happy sound, as sharp and as precise as the thrust of a razor through a piece of soft yellow cheese.
"In your teeth, Wahanhk! Right in your teeth!"
He only looked at me for another dull instant and then his eyes slowly closed and his hands folded together in his lap. Being caught in a lie only bores a Martian.
I got up and went out of the tent.