“You’re crazy!” Golding said.
She didn’t even look at him, but went on steadily, “All right, Mr. Mason. We were out there. We were the ones who were parked in that blue sedan at the curb. We went out about twenty minutes after Cullens left, and...”
“Eva! For God’s sake, shut up!” Golding said, getting up from his chair and starting toward her.
She turned to face him then. “Get back to your chair,” she said, as one might order a dog into a corner. “Sit down. Shut up! You’re a hell of a gambler. You don’t even know when you hold the losing hand.” She turned back to Mason. Her voice had remained low, steady and conversational, and she resumed her story without changing her tone or even glancing at Golding as he hesitated, then slowly stepped back to his chair and sat down. “We couldn’t figure what Cullens was making all the squawk about,” she said. “It looked like some sort of a frame-up. I didn’t like it. We talked it over and decided we weren’t going to be pushed around. We went up to Trent’s office building. Trent wasn’t there. We telephoned his sister. She wasn’t home. Then we decided we’d go out to Cullens’ place and put the cards on the table.
“We drove out and parked the car. The house was dark. Bill said, ‘There’s no one home.’ I said, ‘We’ll go up and ring the bell anyway.’ ”
“Who was driving?” Mason interrupted to ask.
“I was,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Mason told her.
“All of a sudden, Bill said, ‘Look! There’s someone in there with a flashlight.’ I took a look. Sure enough, you could see the beam of a flashlight. It wasn’t very powerful, or else it was shielded in some Way, but you could see the beam moving around across the Windows.”
“Lower floor or upper floor?” Mason asked.