And then, quite unexpectedly, she turned and looked directly at me. After a minute’s uncertainty, she bowed, letting her eyes rest on mine with a calmly insolent stare. She glanced at McKnight for a moment, then back to me. When she looked away again I breathed easier.
“Who is it?” asked McKnight under his breath.
“Ontario.” I formed it with my lips rather than said it. McKnight’s eyebrows went up and he looked with increased interest at the black-gowned figure.
I ate little after that. The situation was rather bad for me, I began to see. Here was a woman who could, if she wished, and had any motive for so doing, put me in jail under a capital charge. A word from her to the police, and polite surveillance would become active interference.
Then, too, she could say that she had seen me, just after the wreck, with a young woman from the murdered man’s car, and thus probably bring Alison West into the case.
It is not surprising, then, that I ate little. The woman across seemed in no hurry to go. She loitered over a demi-tasse, and that finished, sat with her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, looking darkly at the changing groups in the room.
The fun at the table where the college boys sat began to grow a little noisy; the fat man, now a purplish shade, ambled away behind his slim companion; the newspaper woman pinned on her business-like hat and stalked out. Still the woman at the next table waited.
It was a relief when the meal was over. We got our hats and were about to leave the room, when a waiter touched me on the arm.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but the lady at the table near the window, the lady in black, sir, would like to speak to you.”
I looked down between the rows of tables to where the woman sat alone, her chin still resting on her hand, her black eyes still insolently staring, this time at me.