Belknap tried matching casualness with casualness. He leaned over and lit a table lamp.
“May I enquire how many of them are in the house? And how soon we may expect action? There may easily be a brace of us, Whittaker, before we’re through. A more or less famous detective left floating around on the scene of the crime might be considered rather a serious handicap.”
And at that moment John, entering with a tray, was responsible for the startled movement of both men. Whittaker remarked on it as he poured them each a highball.
“Apparently certain death hasn’t yet quenched my instinct of self-preservation. Naturally one can’t destroy in a week fifty years of vital energy and will to live.”
“Listen, old timer, are you sure even now that this is the best way out for you? What about repentance and the Church? Go in for it thoroughly, I mean, and try for the Heavenly Choir. You’re too good a tenor to waste.”
Whittaker laughed.
“Too good a devil to waste, Belknap. Better devil than tenor I think. No, I’m going out in a sputter of fire and brimstone—no candles for me.... Aha! I hear someone arriving. Possibly Blake. He was motoring in from Southampton.”
III
Standing at the windows, Belknap looking over Whittaker’s shoulder, they saw Blake spring lightly from the seat of his Ford convertible, throw out his bags from the rumble, spring back, and “zoom” around the corner to the garage.
Putting a hand on Whittaker’s arm, Belknap brought him roughly about.