“Do. But cast your mind’s eye over this before you go.”
Belknap took the coded message, scarcely glancing at it.
“Oh yes. I wondered when I’d see this again. Where did you find it?”
“I must have dropped it there. I really hadn’t wanted to enter it as evidence unless it was necessary. Particularly since I am convinced it has no bearing. I received it from Miss Mdevani. She was in a trap, as you can see. She brought me this to show me in how desperate a trap. It was to her advantage under the circumstances, to prevent murder here last night. Though if it had been just between the two of them with the world well lost I’m sure she would have blown Whittaker’s brains out and considered he escaped lightly for his damned treachery. Mind, I’m holding no brief for her character. This would rise up to deny me.” He smiled ironically, lifting the paper at them. “She is no angel. But I shall have to be shown about the present case. If you think, on this account, I shall be less help than hindrance to you and Stebbins I shall gladly withdraw, with no hard feeling, I promise you.”
“Not for a minute, old man. Don’t dream of deserting me and the ship. In fact I wouldn’t, I _couldn’t_, get on without you. I’m not as cold-blooded as you; and I don’t in the least relish being left alone by night, in a fog, with the rats either dead or deserted. No, I guess I could bear up as far as that’s concerned. But I _do_ look to you to provide the missing link to what seems to me a pretty bad tangle. Which reminds me I have an important question to put to you. Run along, Prentice, will you, like a good fellow? The powers that be want to confer.”
Julian, having just congratulated himself on the fact that they seemed to have completely forgotten him, was sadly disappointed. He left them with their heads together.
Yes, Belknap and Berry at last had their heads together in peace and quiet—if being cheek by jowl with a tongue in each could be said to be having their heads together. Greek was meeting Greek, and, with reservations (decidedly with reservations!), they put their cards on the table.
It was a _kind_ of peace and quiet in which the two men conversed. Nothing, thought Berry, had ever seemed to him more hollow-still than Thorngate that Saturday evening: fog outside, and illness, depression, and possibly guilt inside. Like the central vacuum of a cyclone it seemed to augur as much trouble ahead as behind. He wished for a moment that he and Belknap had let Sergeant Stebbins carry out his obstinate desire, which had been to run the whole lot down to the Blue Acres lockup for the night. It had really been because he relished the thought of catching somebody red-handed that he had joined in Belknap’s quiet but determined resistance to the idea. Belknap’s claim was that the scandal in society was bad enough as it was without herding several prominent and supposedly honorable ladies and gentlemen into prison as if they were one and all guilty of murder. It was hardly likely they _were_ all guilty, and the danger of injured innocence was not fair to risk.