He had opened the door and taken one step inside before he realized that the room was dark. Without thinking, he reached out to flip the light switch.
Beryl Austin leaped to her feet with a flash of thigh that hardly registered on Westervelt in the split-second of his astonishment. Then he saw that she had not been alone on the settee that stood beside the door. Parrish rose beside her.
The suddenness of their movements and the ferocity of their combined stares had the impact of a stunning blow upon Westervelt. The implications of the blonde's slightly disheveled appearance, however, were obvious.
He could not, for a moment, think at all. Then he began to have a feeling that he ought to say something to cover his escape. Beneath that, somewhere, surged the conviction that he had nothing to apologize for. In the face of such hostility and tension, it called for a lot of courage.
"You little sneak!" spat Beryl.
Westervelt noted with a certain detachment that her voice had turned shrill. Not knowing of anything else to do, he stared as she tugged her dress into place. This seemed to outrage her more than anything he could have said. He also saw the gleam of Parrish's teeth, and the grimace was not even remotely a smile. The man took a step to place himself before Beryl.
"What do you think you're doing?" demanded Parrish, with a good deal more feeling than originality.
Westervelt had been wondering what to say to that when it came, as was inevitable. A dozen half-expressed answers flitted through his mind.
How do you get out of a thing like this? he asked himself desperately. You'd think it was me that did it!
Before he could explore the implications of his choosing the words "did it," Beryl found her voice again.