“Well?” he demanded.
“I don’t trust you,” she said.
Naturally he would have liked to tell me to bounce her, and I must say I couldn’t have blamed him, but she wasn’t just a prospective client with a checkbook. She had or might have something he needed for paying a personal debt. So he merely barked at her. “Then why the devil did you come here?”
They glared at each other. It was not a sight to impel me to hurry up and get married and have a daughter, especially not an adopted one.
She broke the tableau. “I came because I had to do something. I knew if I went to the police they would want me to tell everything about us, and I couldn’t do that because some of the things some of us do — well, you asked about sending weapons.” She fluttered a hand. “But Marko was your good friend, and he thought you were his, and you have a famous reputation for catching murderers, and after all I still have that paper that says I am your daughter, so I came without really thinking. Now I don’t know. You refused to give money to the cause. When I speak of freedom and the oppressor you make a face. It is true you have Montenegrin blood, you are of the race that fought back the savage Turks for five hundred years, but so are others, still in those mountains, who are licking the bloody feet of the tyrant. Have I looked into your heart? How do I know who you serve? How do I know if you too get your orders from Belgrade or Moscow?”
“You don’t,” Wolfe said bluntly.
She stared at him.
“You are not a fool,” he assured her. “On the contrary, you would be a fool if you took my probity for granted, as little as you know of me. As far as you know it’s quite possible that I’m a blackguard. But you haven’t thought it through. To test your surmise about the death of Marko I need some facts from you, but what are they? Names and addresses and dates — things that are already known to the enemy. I have no means of convincing you that I am not verminous, so I offer a suggestion. I will ask you questions. You will assume that I am a Communist, owing allegiance either to Belgrade or Moscow, no matter which. You will also assume — my vanity insists on it — that I am not far from the top in the councils of depravity. So. Each question I put, ask yourself if it isn’t extremely likely either that I already know the answer or that it is readily available to me. If yes, tell me. If no, don’t. The way I act on the information will show you whether you should trust me, but that’s unimportant.”
She was concentrating on it. “It’s a trick.”
He nodded. “And rather ingenious. For the record, I say that your misgiving about me is groundless; but assuming that I am of the enemy, I’ll certainly try to pry something out of you that I don’t already have, so you must keep your wit sharp. Shall we start and see how it goes?”