“You are convinced of the finality of death?”
“It is a dread, not a conviction.”
Roberts nodded her head swiftly. “And with me—with me—if I could only know .”
“So that you would be quite certain that your sacrifice is not being made in vain.” Lieutenant Valcour spoke very softly. He was approaching, he felt, no matter how grandiloquently, that goal toward which he had been aiming: the answer to the amazing look she had given him in Mrs. Endicott’s room.
The mood broke. She stood up abruptly.
“You wished that address book?” she said.
It was of no great matter. Moods, at least, did not die. They were always there—somewhere—waiting to be recaptured.
“If you will be so kind,” he said.
She went to the door of Mrs. Endicott’s room, opened it, was swallowed up. Lieutenant Valcour waited outside. The case was becoming mired in evasions. That was the trouble with cases whose milieu rose beyond a certain social and mental level. They invariably grew kaleidoscopic with overtones. Crime in the lower strata was noteworthy for its crudenesses rather than its subtleties: an intrigue among animals, with the general patentness of some jackal filching its prey. But breeding and intellect generally presupposed masks: the inbred defensiveness of manner and social combativeness with the world which offered barriers most difficult to pierce. Roberts opened the door and handed him the small leather reference book Mrs. Endicott had used when verifying the telephone number of Dr. Worth.