“That’s quite possible. Safety is not a term you and I have conjured with.”
“Hardly. We have never pretended to be anything but dangerous to each other. And this was scarcely the moment to have drawn in our horns. But that shouldn’t destroy our relationship, should it? For I believe it was you who first made a claim to courage. You put it rather neatly, I remember, calling it the coin of our realm.”
“I was flattered, my dear, when you challenged me to catch you at one murder.” (God, he thought to himself, what kind of a grip has this woman got on me that I should stand here arguing, with a corpse on the bed between us!) “I have ceased to be flattered. Four is far too simple a problem; particularly when you let yourself be tripped up in the fourth act.” Belknap was opening her bag. He held up the little red bottle for reflections. “Your stop-light,” he said with his cruel, side-wise smile.
“Your play on words, sir, is one of the most delightful things about you. I see it doesn’t fail you under trying circumstances.” Nadia’s color was up. She was positively enjoying this linguistic sword play. Belknap hated himself for having let himself be snared into it. She was playing for time. Exactly what good it would do her he failed to see. But the furtive half-eye she gave to the door, the furtive half-ear she gave to what might be happening outside, meant she was biding an opportunity. And something was at last happening outside. Suddenly the door of the lower hall was opened and closed repeatedly and vehemently. There were loud voices, and someone in a querulous rage was insistently keeping the upper hand. There was a scuffle on the stairs. Belknap went to the door, and paused with the key in his hand. He looked quickly at Sydney’s quiescent figure lying curled up at Crawford’s feet—she had fallen into a deep sleep, or perhaps a faint, at some moment of the conversation; how little attention had been paid her!—and then back at Nadia.
“Quick, dearest,” he whispered, “go by the window! Forgive me, it’s the best I can do.” He was surprised at his own words. But her shuddering tremor at the approach of the others had been the last straw. He couldn’t go with her but he could let her off.