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“Thank God!” Mark said in a low voice.
And like a hammer-beat in my brain the thought kept repeating itself. What have I done? What have I let myself in for?
I found myself walking, like a woman in a dream, towards the hotel.
“Someone has to tell Flo. Are you sure you feel up to it?”
Mark’s voice had sounded distracted. “I’m going with him, of course, and I’ll have to talk to the marshal. But will you promise to stay in your room until I can come to you? You may be in danger too! Be careful,” he said in a quiet, suppressed voice.
It meant nothing to me at the time, for I was still reacting to the shock I had had. But now, as I walked into the hotel lobby, my mind began to function again.
I let my legs carry me past the staring desk clerk and the small knot of men who leaned over the counter, talking excitedly.
My fingers clung to the rail as I walked up the staircase. Mark had sent me away, but the look in his eyes had held hidden meaning. I wondered if he too had seen the flash of orange light and the smoke, and if he too thought as I thought.
Thought? No, I knew it! I was certain that Lucas Cord had shot at his enemy through one of the windows of this very hotel, meaning to kill him, just as he had shot Elmer Bragg. And Ramon? Had he suspected, and tried to warn me?
It’s my fault—oh God, if I had only listened to Mark—if I had warned Todd! Was it my own feeling of guilt that had made me tell Todd Shannon that I would marry him after all?
I had my hand on the door to our room when Flo came running down the passage in her robe, hair flying loose. She was panting; her eyes were large with shock and fear, shining with an unnatural brilliance.
“Is he dead? Tell me! Is Pa dead?”
I looked at her, and the terrible suspicion that had suddenly flashed into my mind became so intense that I was speechless. I pushed open the door and walked into the room, leaving her to follow me.
“He is dead then! I know it!”
I found myself staring at her, and I know that my eyes must have looked like stones in my cold, dead face.
“Where is he?”
She had stared towards me, but now she stopped as if struck.
“Have you gone crazy?” she whispered at last. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I tell you I asked you about Pa.”
“Your stepfather is very badly wounded, but he’s still alive.” I could hardly bear to look at her with her tangled blonde hair hanging loosely about her shoulders, full red lips half-open; lush curves of her body showing whitely through the thin silk of her wrapper.
“Do you make a habit of running down hotel corridors half-naked?”
She made an instinctive gesture of clutching the folds of silk together under her breasts, still staring at me.
“I had been sleeping!” she cried defensively. “And then I heard the shot and I ran! It was so close, so loud. I was afraid! I tell you, I knew something terrible had happened!”
“But you didn’t run outside,”
I said with cold, pitiless logic. “You ran in the other direction, didn’t you? If you had run towards the front of the building I would have seen you earlier. And it’s been a good twenty minutes between the time of the shooting and now.”
“What are you trying to say? Why are you questioning me this way? Do you think I did it? Oh God! That’s almost funny! That’s…”
“Be quiet!”
Something in my voice must have warned her, for her mouth dropped open.
“How did you know your stepfather had been shot at? You said you were sleeping, and then you ran. How far did you run?”
“I’m not on trial!” Angry spots of color flared in her cheeks.
“You might well be, if you don’t come up with a more likely story. If you persist in protecting a criminal that makes you just as guilty as he is!”
