“Where is Mr. Berry?” Nadia asked.
“Doing research work.”
“I should like to see him, if I may.”
“You should? Why? My opinion is that I make a better father confessor.”
“I’m sure of it. I prefer a layman that’s all—as safer in the long run.”
How he admired her Custer stand. He knew, if she didn’t, that she was literally at the end of her rope. He hadn’t a doubt in his mind that her bag contained the poison. This poisoning business was always such a risky affair. He felt convinced that in the excitement she had neglected to exchange the contents of the bottle. Yet she was boldly facing it out to the last ditch. It was proving a gallant fight, if a criminal’s fight can be called gallant. And, admiring her, he wanted her more than ever. His eyes absorbed her as she stood there slim and taut, outlined in the light that, being shielded from Crawford, fell directly upon her. She wore a clinging dress of bitter-sweet red. It shaped her narrow hips, her lovely forward drooping shoulders. There were slippers to match the dress; coral in her ears; a half dozen barbaric coral bracelets high on her arm; a large bloodstone ring on her index finger. She seemed not so much savage as heathen, a descendant of Attila. It was a thousand pities, Belknap thought, to have her broken in this sordid fashion: law courts, disgrace, and, short of death, a prison. How much more fun to break her himself, in a man’s way. But it was too late now. The cards were stacked against her, and he didn’t need her enough to follow her lead to Hell. He drew a breath and relinquished her.
“That’s quite possible. Safety is not a term you and I have conjured with.”
“Hardly. We have never pretended to be anything but dangerous to each other. And this was scarcely the moment to have drawn in our horns. But that shouldn’t destroy our relationship, should it? For I believe it was you who first made a claim to courage. You put it rather neatly, I remember, calling it the coin of our realm.”
Again her irony, and he flushed.
“I was flattered, my dear, when you challenged me to catch you at one murder.” (God, he thought to himself, what kind of a grip has this woman got on me that I should stand here arguing, with a corpse on the bed between us!) “I have ceased to be flattered. Four is far too simple a problem; particularly when you let yourself be tripped up in the fourth act.” Belknap was opening her bag. He held up the little red bottle for reflections. “Your stop-light,” he said with his cruel, side-wise smile.