'No!' he bellowed. He couldn't get up because her body against his chair kept him from shoving it back to make room.
I knelt down to take a look at her. Her legs had stopped twitching. I couldn't feel any heart. It was close quarters, with her there between Wolfe's chair and the wall, and I squirmed around to get on the other side of her. As I did so I heard a voice from the middle of the room:
'Excuse me for walking right in, Mr Wolfe, but the door was standing open. I was on my way uptown and I dropped in to say that we may expect a ruling from the attorney general on that point in about a week-the matter of registration as the agent of a foreign principal when the…'
I raised myself up enough to see the face of Stahl the G-man looking polite but stern. Then I sat back on my heels and howled with laughter.
Chapter Nineteen
Wolfe said in a tone of exasperation, 'Fritz tells me nothing on your tray was touched. Confound it, you have to eat something!'
Carla shook her head. 'I can't. I'm sorry. I can't.'
I had brought her down to the office. The clock on the wall said 11.20. The chairs were back in place.
Wolfe sighed. 'It's nearly midnight. Mr Goodwin is yawning. You may go now whenever you want to. Or I'll ask one or two questions if you feel like telling the truth.'
'I can tell the truth-now.'
'It would have been just as well…' His massive shoulders went up a sixteenth of an inch and down again. 'I would like to know if you were aware that that woman was a maniac.'
'But she wasn't…' Carla stopped for repairs to her voice. 'I never had any idea…' Her hand fluttered and dropped again to her lap.
'Were you, in fact, her friend?'
'Not-no, not her friend. It wasn't like that. When Mrs Campbell died I was left dependent on the Donevitch family. Then Prince Stefan married her and she came there, and in no time she was the head of things. She treated me as well as I could expect, since I was not a Donevitch. I didn't dislike her. I was a little afraid of her, and so was everybody else, even Prince Stefan. When she decided to come to America she selected me to come with her, and I thought then that the reason she did that was because she knew about you and she thought she might need to use you. One reason I thought that was because she told me to bring that adoption paper along-'
'Yes. Excuse me. Get it, Archie.'
I went to the safe and dug it out and handed it to him. He unfolded it to glance at it, folded it up again, and passed it over to her. She looked at it a second as if she was afraid it might bite, and then reached out and took it.
'I came with her because I had to-and anyway I wanted to,' she went on in a better voice. 'It was an adventure to come to America. I knew all about-what she was coming for. She trusted me. I knew she would do dangerous things; but I never thought of anything like murder as a thing she would do. When Ludlow was killed I suspected she had done it, but I didn't know. I asked her last night, and she told me I was a fool. Then when I went there this morning and saw Faber, of course I knew she had done that and the other one too. I was frightened and I couldn't think. I couldn't answer questions about her-I couldn't betray her-but I couldn't lie for her any more either. I tried to run away-and I couldn't use my head-and in a strange country-and I was stupid-'
She stopped, and her hand fluttered and fell to her lap again.
In a moment Wolfe said gruffly, 'It is faintly encouraging that you are aware that you were stupid.'
She offered no comment. He demanded:
'What are you going to do?'
'I…' She shook her head. 'I don't know.'
'Well, I suppose you are legally my daughter. That puts some responsibilty on me.'
Her chin went up. 'I'm not asking any-'
'Pfui! Don't. I know. Confound it, you've been dependent on someone all your life, haven't you? Are you going back to Yugoslavia?'
'No.'
'Oh, you're not?'
'No.'
'What do you want to do-stay in America?'
'Yes.'
'As a spy for the Donevitch gang?'
