“Yes—yes—you are a smart man, too.”
“And you entered the house with a duplicate key which you had had made from one of Endicott’s?”
“Dear heaven, yes—how else?”
It did not please her that her climax should come at a commonplace moment, when inconsequential questions were being asked and equally inconsequential answers being given. It was not bravura: the man was genuinely unafraid. And she wanted him to be afraid. One shouldn’t just dribble from the world: there should be a blaze, a scene.
Then Hansen rapped, quite gently, upon the panes.
Inspiration? Genius? Perhaps. Lieutenant Valcour’s Gallic blood swept back to the nation of its source and he could have kissed that dear, that brilliant Hansen upon both of his ruddy, his intelligent, his Nordic cheeks.
She whirled as if something had flicked her. Blue serge—brass buttons—a glinting shield. She pulled the trigger.
But the muzzle of the gun was in her mouth.