"Very well!" said Nesta, rising from the straight-backed chair, and looking very rigid herself as she stood up. "You won't tell me anything! So—I am now going to the police. I don't know what they'll do. I don't know what they can do. But—I can tell them what I think and feel about this, at any rate. For as sure as I am that I see you, there's something wrong! And I'll know what it is."
Pratt recognized that she had passed beyond the stage of mere anger to one of calm determination. And as she marched towards the door he called her back—as the result of a second's swift thought on his part.
"Miss Mallathorpe," he said. "Oblige me by sitting down again. I'm not in the least afraid of your going to the police. But my experience is that if one goes to them on errands of this sort, it sets all sorts of things going—scandal, and suspicion, and I don't know what! You don't want any scandal. Sit down, if you please, and let us think for a moment. And I'll see if I can tell you—what you want to know."
Nesta already had a hand on the door. But after looking at him for a second or two, she turned back, and sat down in her old position. And Pratt, still seated at his desk, plunged his hands in his trousers pockets, tilted back his chair, and for five minutes stared with knitted brows at his blotting pad. A queer silence fell on the room. The windows were double-sashed; no sound came up from the busy street below. But on the mantelpiece a cheap Geneva clock ticked and ticked, and Nesta felt at last that if it went on much longer, without the accompaniment of a human voice, she should suddenly snatch it up, and hurl it—anywhere.
Pratt was in the position of the card-player, who, confronted by a certain turn in the course of a game which he himself feels sure he is bound to win, wonders whether he had better not expedite matters by laying his cards on the table, and asking his opponent if he can possibly beat their values and combination. He had carefully reckoned up his own position more than once during the progress of recent events, and the more carefully he calculated it the more he felt convinced that he had nothing to fear. He had had to alter his ground in consequence of the death of Harper Mallathorpe, and he had known that he would have to fight Nesta. But he had not anticipated that hostilities would come so soon, or begin with such evident determination on her part. How would it be, then, at this first stage to make such a demonstration in force that she would recognize his strength?
He looked up at last and saw Nesta regarding him sternly. But Pratt smiled—the quiet smile which made her uneasy.
"Miss Mallathorpe!" he said. "I was thinking of two things just then—a game at cards—and the science of warfare. In both it's a good thing sometimes to let your adversary see what a strong hand you've got. Now, then, a question, if you please—are you and I adversaries?"
"Yes!" answered Nesta unflinchingly. "You're acting like an enemy—you are an enemy!"
"I've hoped that you and I would be friends—good friends," said Pratt, with something like a sigh. "And if I may say so, I've no feeling of enmity towards you. When I speak of us being adversaries, I mean it in—well, let's say a sort of legal sense. But now I'll show you my hand—that is, as far as I please. Will you listen quietly to me?"
"I've no choice," replied Nesta bluntly. "And I came here to know what you've got to say for yourself. Say it!"