“Keep your opinions until they are called for, man,” Belknap said curtly. “Or until you know something of the lay of the land.” Swinging on his heel he made an imperious, inclusive gesture that swept the room clean of momentarily irrelevant persons.
“Clear out of here,” he ordered.
As the door closed on the retreating group, that tried to make its exit with dignity, but somehow failed to convey better than the appearance of a disorganized partridge brood scuttling into a thicket, Belknap returned to Berry and the Sergeant.
“Now,” he said, “let’s you and I start from scratch. I’ll concede you that much. I’ll throw down what I’ve seen and heard to date. After that I make no promises.” He smiled with a bleak mockery. “There are conclusions and conclusions—and conclusions. And what I may make of a given detail may differ widely from what you make of it. Then again, it may not: ‘great minds,’ they say.— However that may be, don’t let’s make a girls’ dormitory of it and hang confidences around each other’s necks. I’ve always played, and always will play, a lone wolf game. I’m an Akela or nothing. So you’ll have to—”
“We will, Belknap, we will. Don’t worry about us.” Berry interrupted gently, trying to conceal a faint embarrassment. “What’s to do now is to get going, isn’t it? Before your friend’s body here has gone cold. Quick, Belknap, snap into it. Every second may count.”
Belknap regarded Whittaker with a swift, half-averted glance, and a spasm of pain twitched the taut little muscles drawn slantwise across his square jaws.
“God be merciful to him,” he said in a lowered key. “Though he doesn’t deserve it, I fear,” he added, hardening instantly, as a man does who dislikes being caught out with an emotion. “First of all, you must know he is largely to blame for the argument I expect he’s having with St. Peter. I won’t waste precious time going into the story now. It’s rather complicated. The point you need to know for a starter is that he did a sneaking, low-down thing last night that set the house completely by its ears, where it still is. Under cover of reading us a bit of original manuscript to amuse us, he made it a passage from his Diary that disclosed—names withheld, but entirely obvious—one of his present guests as an erstwhile murderer. (Neil Crawford, the man in evening dress.) What made matters more acute was that he had claimed, at dinner, that the Diary was on the eve of being published, real names given, his own included. I doubt the truth of the claim somehow. But we can check it. Be that as it may, there has been no congeniality or conviviality in our midst for the past eight hours, as you can well imagine. I had had an inkling there was trouble in the wind. In fact the Judge had given me to understand he was out for blood.”
“Wanted you to keep an eye on Crawford in case of—of reprisals, is that it?” Berry, as he threw out the question, was rapidly taking notes. He was a methodical man, Berry, and, though he had an excellent memory, refused to depend upon it.
“Something of the sort.”
“And when did the first storm warnings occur?”