“You know too much,” she murmured with serpent softness. “Did Bertrand _tell_ you more than he knew? Or did he write it?”
“Exactly what you care to have it mean.” She paused. “Are you asking for it—my arrest?” There was no slightest trace of apprehension in her manner.
“No; not exactly. I’m asking for something far more necessary to my peace of mind.” He took her wrists suddenly and drew her towards him. “Kiss me.”
She twisted her hands free and turned away. But her lips were drawn a little, and her face very white.
“I think not,” she said. “The Devil’s in it I know, and Bertrand Whittaker. Possibly Cain, Orestes, Brutus, Hamlet’s mother and a few besides. But let’s keep Judas out of it if we can.”
Stebbins had departed. Headquarters needed him. And he had gone, warding off with both arms a hornet’s nest of reporters all down the drive to his parked car. He said he’d be back if he was wanted, or something turned up in the way of evidence. For all the help he was he might as well stay away, Julian said, but perhaps he was good camouflage. The house did somehow feel a little more exposed without him; although he left a substantial guard.
There was a tense, uncomfortable, haphazard meal in the nature of a buffet supper. The kitchen was so disorganized it was a miracle anything like food came out of it. No one was on the best of speaking terms with anyone else—unless perhaps Julian with Joel, and she was too distressed with weariness and fear to know what he was saying. So he had resigned himself to sitting near her where she lay on the library divan, her tear-darkened lids closed over her tired eyes. He tried to figure rhyme or reason into the events of the twenty-four hours. He traced patterns and followed clues to where they disappeared in storm and mist. He tried flying below the clouds, tried to get above them, and failed to make it either way. For all he knew he was flying upside down. And yet his mind seemed lucid, even brilliant. It was extraordinary how nearness to Joel had the power to heighten and stimulate whatever he was doing, talking, thinking, feeling, dreaming. If she now and then failed to catch his innuendoes, the stupid darling, yet it was her very presence that made him even half-way witty. And, if she didn’t quite understand music as he understood it, it was her closeness to his shoulder at a concert that lifted him beyond the appreciative to the creative listener. He leaned over now and kissed her cheek gently, not to disturb her.