The latch clicked back under her hand, and she was standing in the entry, confronting the policeman and his backing of citizens.
"Yes?" he heard her say, with a note of surprise at the sight of them. "Yes? What is it?"
The policeman's voice, with the official rasp in it, answered, spitting facts as brief as curses. "Man evading arrest aggravated assault believed to be a certain American apparently escaped this direction." It was like a telegram talking. Then, from his escort, a corroborating gabble.
He could imagine her look of rather puzzled eagerness. "An American?" she exclaimed. Then, as she realized it and its possibilities possibly also the fact that already when an American was sought for it was to her door that they came "oh!"
"Require you to produce him," injected the policeman, "if here! He is here yes?"
"No," she answered; "nobody has come here yet."
There seemed to be a check at that; the effect of her, standing in the doorway, made insistence difficult. The loud clock ticked on, and, at the background of the whole affair, the citizens on the landing maintained a subdued and unremarked murmur among themselves.
"He came this way," observed the policeman tenaciously. "He was seen to pass the next house." And a voice chimed in, melancholy, plaintive, evidently the voice of the dvornik who had been discovered absent from his post: "Yes, I saw him."
"Well," Miss Pilgrim seemed a little at a loss. "He's not here." She paused. "I have two rooms here," she added; "this" she must be pointing to the dark open door beside her "and my bedroom. You can look in this room, if that is what you want."
Waters heard the answering yap of the policeman and the shuffle of feet. He turned in panic; there was no time to reason with events. A step, and his groping hands were against that inner door, which yielded to their touch. Even in the chaos of his wits, he was aware of that subtle odor he had perceived before, that elusive fragrance which seemed a very emanation of chaste girlhood and virgin delicacy. He was inside, leaving the door an inch ajar, as the switch clicked in the outer room and a narrow jet of light stabbed through the opening.