“And it’s certainly all over if I do nothing. No, this is going to be Whittaker’s life or mine.”
“Ordway Belknap may be here for a purpose.”
“They have foiled better men than Belknap.”
“You have been with them ever since?”
“You didn’t for a minute imagine I could have been anywhere else did you? Once with them always with them as far as the underworld is concerned. They never release us.”
“And you never told me how it has been with you!”
“You couldn’t have helped in the least. I’ve saved Giordano from the chair twice over. And Disuno hasn’t hide nor hair that he doesn’t owe to me. Now I need them, that’s all. And you, my dear. And always you.”
He took her in his arms now, but she was strangely unresponsive. For her the living spark of whatever it was that had existed between them, whether love is the word to call it or not she had never known anyway, was as snuffed out as though it had never been.
X
Belknap entered his room just before dawn and turned up the light. Nadia stood against the wall inside the door, both hands at her throat, her breath coming in gasps. Her face in the sudden light was as pale as the under side of willow leaves before a storm, or after. Here it seemed that the storm must have passed a moment since.