II—SANCTUARY
THE light in the porch went out. From within, as though with slow, dubious hesitation, a key turned in the lock. The door opened slightly, and from a dark interior the girl's voice reached Dave Henderson again.
“Tony Lomazzi sent you, you say!” she exclaimed in a puzzled way; and then, a sudden apprehension in her voice: “You are all covered with blood—what is the matter? What do you want?”
From the lane, the sound of pounding, racing feet seemed almost opposite the Italian's porch now. Dave Henderson, without ceremony, pushed at the door. It yielded, as the girl evidently retreated backward abruptly, and he stepped inside, closed the door softly behind him, and, feeling for the key, turned it swiftly in the lock. He could see nothing, but out of the darkness near him came a sharp, quick-drawn intake of breath.
“I'm sorry!” said Dave Henderson quietly. “But it was a bit of a close call. I'm not quite sure whether they are running after me, or running from the police, but, either way, it would have been a little awkward if I had been seen.”
She seemed to have regained her composure, for her voice, as she spoke again, was as quiet and as evenly modulated as his own.
“What do you want?” she asked once more. “Why did Tony Lomazzi send you here?”
He did not answer at once. From somewhere in the front of the house, muffled, but still quite audible, there came the voices of two men—one high-pitched, querulous, curiously short-breathed, the other with a sort of monotonous, sullen whine in it. He listened automatically for an instant, as his eyes searched around him. It was almost black inside here as he stood with his back to the door, but, grown more accustomed to the darkness now, he could make out a faint, blurred form, obviously that of the girl, a few feet away from him.
“I want to see Nicolo Capriano,” he said.
It was her turn now to pause before she answered.