Women! They insist on mixing everything up together. Perhaps they operate better that way, but it is very hard on those of us who find that keeping emotion and logic separate produces sounder thinking. I had to make her understand the seriousness of this situation.
“Well, if that little bit of news doesn’t interest you,” I said as calmly as I could, “Perhaps this does. The rough Radebrechens didn’t send that killer last night—the Count did.”
Success at last. Angelina actually stopped combing her hair and her eyes widened a bit at the import of what I said. She didn’t ask any stupid questions, but waited for me to finish.
“I think you have underestimated the desperation of that rat upstairs. When you dropped him with that bottle yesterday, you pushed him just as far as he could be pushed. He must have had his plans already made and you made his mind up for him. The sergeant of the guard recognized the assassin and connected him with the Count. That also explains how the killer got access to the roof and knew just where to find you. It’s also the best explanation I can imagine for the suddenness of this attack. There’s too much coincidence here with the thing happening right after your battle with Cassitor the Cantankerous.”
Angelina had gone back to combing her hair while I talked, fluffing up the curls. She made no response. Her apparent lack of interest was beginning to try my nerves.
“Well—what are you going to do about it?” I asked, with more than a little note of peevishness in my voice.
“Don’t you think it’s more important to ask what you are going to do about it?” She delivered this line very lightly, but there was a lot behind it. I saw she was watching me in the mirror, so I turned and went over to the window, looking out over the fatal balcony at the snow-summitted mountain peaks beyond. What was I going to do about it? Of course that was the question here—much bigger than she realized.
What was I going to do about the whole thing? Everyone was offering me half-interests in a revolution I hadn’t the slightest interest in. Or did I? What was I doing here? Had I come to arrest Angelina for the Special Corps? That assignment seemed to have been forgotten a while back. A decision had to be reached soon. My body disguise was good—but not that good. It wasn’t intended to stand up to long inspection. Only the fact that Angelina was undoubtedly sure that she had killed me had prevented her from recognizing my real identity so far. I had certainly recognized her easily enough, facial changes and all.
Just at this point the bottom dropped out of everything. There is a little process called selective forgetting whereby we suppress and distort memories we find distasteful. My disguise hadn’t been meant to stand inspection this long. Originally I had been sure she would have penetrated it by now. With this realization came the memory of what I had said the night before. A wickedly revealing statement that I had pushed back and forgotten until now.
You’re none of these things out of the past, I had shouted. None of these things … Angelina. I had bellowed this and there had been no protest from her.
Except that she no longer used the name Angelina, she used the alias Engela here.
When I turned to face her my guilty thoughts must have been scrawled all over my face, but she only gave me that enigmatic smile and said nothing. At least she had stopped combing her hair.
“You know I’m not Grav Bent Diebstall,” I said with an effort. “How long have you known?”
“For quite a while; since soon after you came here, in fact.”
“Do you know who I am—?”
“I have no idea what your real name is, if that’s what you mean. But I do remember how angry I was when you tricked me out of the battleships, after all my work. And I recall the intense satisfaction with which I shot you in Freiburbad. Can you tell me your name now?”
“Jim,” I said through the haze I was rooted in. “James diGriz, known as Slippery Jim to the trade.”
“How nice. My name is really Angela. I think it was done as a horrid joke by my father, which is one of the reasons I enjoyed seeing him die.”
“Why haven’t you killed me?” I asked, having a fairly good idea of how father had passed on.
“Why should I, darling?” she asked, and her light, empty tone was gone. “We’ve both made mistakes in the past and it has taken us a dreadfully long time to find out that we are just alike. I might as well ask you why you haven’t arrested me—that’s what you started out to do isn’t it?”
“It was—but. …”
“But, what? You must have come here with that idea in mind, but you were fighting an awful battle with yourself. That’s why I hid the fact that I knew who you really were. You were growing up, getting over whatever idiotic notions ever involved you with the police in the first place. I had no idea how the whole thing would come out, though I did hope. You see I didn’t want to kill you, not unless I had to. I knew you loved me, that was obvious from the beginning. It was different from the feeble animal passion of all those male brutes who have told me that they love me. They loved a malleable case of flesh. You love me for everything that I am, because we are both the same.”
“We are not the same,” I insisted, but there was no conviction in my voice. She only smiled. “You kill—and enjoy killing—that’s our basic difference. Don’t you see that?”
“Nonsense!” She dismissed the idea with an airy wave. “You killed last night—rather a good job too—and I didn’t notice any
