“Your play on words, sir, is one of the most delightful things about you. I see it doesn’t fail you under trying circumstances.” Nadia’s color was up. She was positively enjoying this linguistic sword play. Belknap hated himself for having let himself be snared into it. She was playing for time. Exactly what good it would do her he failed to see. But the furtive half-eye she gave to the door, the furtive half-ear she gave to what might be happening outside, meant she was biding an opportunity. And something was at last happening outside. Suddenly the door of the lower hall was opened and closed repeatedly and vehemently. There were loud voices, and someone in a querulous rage was insistently keeping the upper hand. There was a scuffle on the stairs. Belknap went to the door, and paused with the key in his hand. He looked quickly at Sydney’s quiescent figure lying curled up at Crawford’s feet—she had fallen into a deep sleep, or perhaps a faint, at some moment of the conversation; how little attention had been paid her!—and then back at Nadia.
“Quick, dearest,” he whispered, “go by the window! Forgive me, it’s the best I can do.” He was surprised at his own words. But her shuddering tremor at the approach of the others had been the last straw. He couldn’t go with her but he could let her off.
“Thank you,” she answered gently. “I am not running away. I have never run even when guilty. Is it likely I should try it now?”
Without replying, and with an angry twist of his arm, he turned the key in the lock and flung the door wide.
“Come in, Stebbins. You too, Berry. I want one of you. And Miss Mdevani, I understand, wants the other.”
“I do, Mr. Berry.” Nadia stepped forward and stood near him. “I hereby place myself wholly in your charge. Whether I am guilty or innocent of all of which I am accused has yet to be determined. Until it is determined I am confident you will extend me fair play. Mr. Belknap, I regret to say, is now as assured of my guilt as he recently claimed to be of my innocence. Such variable winds cannot fail but be ill winds for one in my delicate position.”
“Cool and tricky!” thought Berry, putting the room to a quizzical scrutiny. “What a perfectly worded appeal. No male could resist it.” Aloud he said, “I promise you will receive every consideration justified by the circumstances.” And, to Belknap, “I see we did leave them too long alone. The tally mounts! But I take it we have reached the end of the trail. My congratulations. I thought you would come across, and I’m sincerely glad—”
The disturbance on the stairs had moved up and now suddenly intruded itself. Julian Prentice proved to be at its center—pale, disheveled, his tie twisted, his hair up-ended, Julian struggled feverishly with a veritable regiment of cops. His captors were so intent on their prize and on his retention that it would have taken a dozen murders to have shaken their concentration; such is the Force’s strength of character! In spite of everything, even his own nature, Belknap had to smile.
“Who’s this you’ve got? I figured the least you could be doing was bringing in Milton Dorn. What’s Prentice been at to so rouse your righteous wrath?”
“Tryin’ to escape, sir. Ran his car right off’n the premises. We did have a chase, sir! He was doin’ seventy in the fog. It was as good as suicide, sir.”