“Ye-es.”
The answer came faintly. But as it did so the Wolf suddenly relaxed.
It was an amazing reaction, like the passing of a fierce summer storm. The man’s hands, those hands that looked so tremendous in their power to crush, released their hold upon the chair. Then he leaned back comfortably, and his eyes, which only a moment before had looked murder, had returned again to the calm of their pleasant smile.
The officer strove hard for the meaning of it all. Certain things were clear enough. But they were not all. No. It was obvious to him that Annette’s admission that marriage was the price of her betrayal had restored calmness to the Wolf’s murderous mood. But why? What difference did it make to the other? The thing that had maddened him. Why should so sordid a transaction have made so much difference? The girl’s baby, that was yet to be born, still remained the child of another man.
Fyles felt himself to be as far from real comprehension as ever. He felt there was something in the Wolf’s mind which the man had no intention of letting him read. If only——
But he was given no time for speculation. The Wolf started up from his chair. He stood up tall and straight, and his smile had become real laughter as he gazed down into the policeman’s cold eyes. It was a laugh of derision, yet lacking in offence. He thrust out his arms, and his fists were clenched. They were pressed together with knuckles upwards, and the gesture bared the massive wrists from his coat sleeves.
“You heard?” he cried, in a tone that matched his laugh. “Your Sinclair! He’s dead! Murdered! Well?”
Fyles never hesitated for a second. He acted on the instant. Those great wrists. He reached out, and the shackles snapped on those outheld wrists almost with the last sound of the Wolf’s taunting challenge.
But, later, as he took up the telephone to speak with his superiors at Calford, that haunting phrase of his came back to him again. “It’s too darned easy!”