“Ah!” he made a gesture of angry contempt. “It would make a person sick—examining her letters! I was looking through the mail bag to see if there was anything for me. If I took up one of hers by mistake does that prove I was examining it?”
“How about the other thing?”
“Being in her room? Yes, I was there. I went in to get a stamp. I had an important letter to go when Gabriel took over the mail and it was time for him. All the rest of you were out. Her room was next to mine and I went in. I never thought anything about it, no more than I would have thought about going into Anne’s or yours or anybody else’s. She’s nutty, I tell you. You can’t trust her word. And if she says I’m hired to spy on her she’s a damned——”
He stopped. Basset’s eye was steady on him in a cold command he knew. There was the same cold quality in the director’s voice:
“If the position Sybil’s in has made her suspicious, that’s all right. I’d like to believe it was the case. But if any of us—supposedly her friends—had inserted themselves in here to carry on police surveillance, using me to get them in—well, I’d not think that all right.”
Joe leaned over the banister. His control was shaken, his voice hoarsely urgent:
“You got to be fair, Bassett, and because you’re sorry for her is no reason to set her word over mine. It’s not true. Don’t you believe me?”
Bassett did not answer for a moment. He wanted to believe and he doubted; he thought of Joe’s desire to come, of the reward:
“I guess you know, Joe, you can trust me to be fair, but I’m not going to commit myself till I know. It won’t be hard to do that. I can find out when I get back to New York. And take this from me—if what Sybil says is true I’m done with you. No more help from me, no more work in any company I manage. And I fancy the whole theatrical profession will feel the same way.” He drew back from the stair-foot. The disagreeable interview was over. “There’s no good talking any more about it. Accusations and denials don’t get us anywhere. We’ll let it rest till I’ve made my inquiries. I’ll say good-by now and hope you’ll have a good time in the woods.”
He turned and walked up the hall to his room on the garden front next the Stokes’. Joe gathered his luggage and went the opposite way, down the hall and into the big central apartment. He stepped with gingerly softness as if he were creeping away from something he feared might follow him. At the entrance door he set down his luggage and as he bent over it a whispered stream of curses flowed from his lips. He cursed Bassett and his luck, but Sybil with a savage variety of epithet and choice of misfortune, for she had undone him. Straightening up he looked blankly about—his inner turmoil was such he hardly knew where he was—and he retraced his steps, seeking the seclusion of his room, went up the stairs in noiseless vaulting strides like a frightened spider climbing to its web.