"At last," Dr. Brende exclaimed. "Now we can talk freely."
But I was not satisfied. "That girl, Ahla—can you trust her?"
They all looked at me in surprise. When one is close to danger, sometimes one recognizes it least; with Ahla in this household for over a year now, they could not imagine her an enemy.
"I saw her looking up at the insulator," I added swiftly. "Out there in the corridor. Am I talking wild? Perhaps I am. But she seemed startled; and she was standing just under the insulator, wasn't she?"
"But—" began Elza.
"Wait," I exclaimed. "When I first saw the President fall, at Park Sixty, I felt that a Venus man had done it. These other murders—they're all the same. Done by Venus men of the Cold Country."
"Ahla's country," Elza murmured.
"Yes. Exactly. And the Venus Central State has been attacked and has fallen. An assassination on Mars, and three here on Earth—all simultaneously. It's one gigantic plot, I tell you—and the Cold Country of Venus is at the bottom of it."
Georg jumped to his feet. "I'll see if the room has been tampered with."
He was back presently. "The insulator is intact. I set the alarm bell. If she touches it—"