"Oh yes, January," Dr. Moriss' voice broke in. "This is my daughter, Paula. Her mother died many years ago. There's just the two of us, besides the handyman."
I took the cigarette from her fingers without taking my eyes away from her face. She snapped a lighter and lit it the same way. I inhaled deeply, letting the smoke out slowly.
"Glad to know you, Paula," I murmured.
"I think you'd better leave us now, Paula," Dr. Moriss broke in in his school teacher voice. "January Stevens and I have a lot to discuss."
"We can talk later, if at all," I turned on him angrily. "Two or three days from now, after my stomach will hold food down."
"We'll talk now," he said with maddening calmness. "Three days from now you'll have had time to think. You'll refuse to talk. Just like you let yourself be branded a thief rather than talk before."
I reached out and picked up a cup of coffee from the tray. With slow deliberation I poured the black liquid into the empty glass that had held my tomato and grapefruit juice. There was a large plate glass mirror on the wall across the room. I threw the empty cup at it without rising from my chair. The mirror shattered.
Dr. Moriss looked back and forth from me to the broken mirror, like a spectator at a tennis match, the same kind of interest portrayed on his face.
"Why did you do that?" Paula asked, her eyes flashing fire.
"He did it because he likes you, Paula," the doctor's maddeningly unperturbed voice said. "If he didn't like you he would have thrown it at me." He puffed mockingly at his cigar, his eyes squinting through the smoke.