"I don't," said Storm. "For one thing, the voice I heard was too deep for the best woman mimic on earth to have produced. For another, you hadn't a key--you had to ring for us to let you in. Why did you come back if you knew Jimmy was away? Who was going to let you in?" "I forgot I hadn't a key. Jimmy lost his the other day, and as I was going away I left him mine. He was going to have another key cut." "Uh-huh. Rather absent-minded of you! What'd you have done--slept on the doorstep?" She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. Walking over to a side table, she helped herself to a cigarette from a silver box. She turned round with the lighted match in her hand. "My God--are you _still_ here?" she exclaimed. "That's real Mattock," Teal said, addressing Storm. "He tried that on me the other day." "I'm sorry--we are," said Storm. "Now hear me, Joan! Who else had keys besides you and Jimmy?" "No one that I know of." Storm took a promenade up and down the room. She had rested against the table, and he stopped in front of her, eyeing her steadily and forcing her to meet his gaze. He said nothing, simply riveted her with that thoughtful stare. And he saw that tense silence rasp her nerves--saw her go a little paler under the paint and powder, and saw the quick straining heave of her bosom. Saw her mouth twitch ever so slightly, and saw the reflex, spasmodic jerk of her hand. He smashed through her barricade of haughtiness by the sheer relentless battering of his will, and at last she turned her head away with a short shaky laugh and put a little distance between them, placing herself on the opposite side of the table as though to break away from that intangible attack. "I hate talking like a detective story," Kit Arden said slowly, "but--if you've told me the truth--it looks ... bad ... for Jimmy, doesn't it?" The blow that her intuition had sensed, namelessly and without logic, had fallen. He saw her wince and grip the edge of the table for support. "I don't ... understand..." "I'm sorry." Storm relaxed. The bombardment was lifted. His smile was as light and care-free as if there had never been an Alpha Triangle mentioned in that room. "That's all there is to be said, then. Except that I'll ask you to pass on to Jimmy the advice I gave Blaythwayt just before you came in. And that advice is, let up! Play with fire if you must get a kick out of life, but never do acrobatics on the chute of a blast furnace!... We'll move along now--I expect you're tired." Blaythwayt, squirming and panting for relief from those taut surroundings into which he had stumbled, was in the van of that withdrawal. He made for the door as a scared rabbit scuttles to its burrow. Inspector Teal, more phlegmatically constituted, followed him with less speed and more self-possession.