She knew she couldn't morally justify what she was planning to do. It would have been useless to try. But if she had hated Lathrup herself enough to want to kill her, she couldn't see herself in the role of a hypocritical betrayer, sending to his death a man who had lost control completely and gone all the way. If the police had stumbled on the gun themselves, without her help, it would have been quite different. But having opened a Pandora's box, the horror that had come out had to be destroyed. It was her responsibility—hers alone. That the box had been a big flat stone that she had overturned impulsively, with no knowledge of what lay concealed underneath, changed nothing. The same woman's curiosity which had betrayed Pandora had been at work in her. It was the most destructive kind of curiosity in the world, but she had succumbed to it and must pay the price, even if it would mean that she would have to wear a gray prison uniform for four or five years.
Probably the killer should be caught and compelled to defend himself before the law, bolstering his defense with whatever justification he could offer. But she couldn't—she refused pointblank—to become the instrument of his destruction. It was a twisted way of thinking, perhaps, but it was her way and she would have to act upon it.
She had gone into the kitchen and was percolating some coffee when the doorbell rang. It didn't alarm her particularly or even bring the image of a policeman with one finger firmly pressed to the bell into her mind.
The doorbell usually rang eight or ten times a day when she was at home. Tradesmen mostly, with groceries she'd ordered by telephone the day before or a special delivery letter from the office with proofs that required a quick checking-over, or just a neighborly visit from the over-talkative girl who lived in the apartment across the hall. Sally Draper could be an awful pest at times—
Then she remembered that no one would expect her to be home on a week-day morning and did become a trifle uneasy. But salesmen and peddlers were always calling, weren't they, defiantly ignoring the big warning sign posted in the hall?
She turned off the gas under the percolator, removed the slightly soiled apron she'd put on to protect the severe, freshly-laundered office dress she'd been too emotionally upset to take off on arriving home and went to answer the bell, crossing the living room with a slight quickening of her pulse.
She paused for the barest instant with her hand on the knob of the front door, trying quickly to decide just what she had better say if it actually was a policeman.
Then she opened the door wide.
Her first impulse, prompted by sheer terror, was to close it again instantly, slam it in his face with all her strength. But he just stood there, staring at her so quietly, with not the slightest trace of hostility in his eyes, that she forced herself to remain calm. And when his expression changed, and his eyes narrowed to gleaming slits and his jaw hardened, he was too quick for her.
He brushed past her into the apartment and swung about to face her, nodding toward the door.