"Where's the girl—Anne?" McBain asked MacMurray.
He replied by looking at McCartney and then at Rickard. McCartney turned and looked at McBain and then allowed his eyes to rest on Rickard.
"Rick," he said, "get her and bring her here. You can tell her I want her."
Rickard was gone less than ten minutes when he returned, preceded by Anne, who came quickly through the door and stopped suddenly before what she saw.
She looked at the men standing about and then paused before Keith McBain. She did not ask the question, but McBain knew what was in her mind. His reply was brief.
"Howden," he said, and Anne's slow smile proved that she understood.
Then she went over to McCartney's side and looked down at him.
"You always were a damn fool," she said very deliberately, and very slowly—and her voice had a strangely deep note of pity in it.
Scattering the men before her, she hurried to the kitchen and came back with water in a basin and set about bathing McCartney's swollen face and washing the blood from his lips and chin. She was very silent and very gentle, and McCartney spoke no word to her as she worked over him.
The men looked on only for a moment and then went out one by one, until the two were left alone.