wn I
was investigating them."

"That's obvious, isn't it?" She reached for a cigarette on the vanity
and used a lighter with her free hand. The big mirror gave me another
view of her lovely body, but that was beginning to interest me less
than the gun. I thought of making a grab for it. There was too much
distance between us, though, and she knew better than to take her eyes
off me while she was lighting up. "I'm not afraid of professional
detectives, Mr. Weldon. They deal only with facts and every one of
them will draw the same conclusions from a given set of circumstances.
I don't like amateurs. They guess too much. They don't stick to
reality. The result--" her pale eyes chilled and her shapely mouth
went hard--"is that they are likely to get too close to the truth."

I wanted a smoke myself, but I wasn't willing to make a move toward
the pipe in my jacket. "I may be close to the truth, Miss Roberts, but
I don't know what the devil it is. I still don't know how you're tied
in with the senile psychotics or why they starve with all that money.
You could let me go and I wouldn't have a thing on you."

She glanced down at herself and laughed for real for the first time.
"You wouldn't, would you? On the other hand, you know where I'm
working from and could nag Sergeant Pape into getting a search
warrant. It wouldn't incriminate me, but it would be inconvenient. I
don't care to be inconvenienced."

"Which means what?"

"You want to find out my connection with senile psychotics. I intend
to show you."

"How?"

She gestured dangerously with the gun. "Turn your face to the wall and
stay that way while I get dressed. Make one attempt to turn around
before I tell you to and I'll shoot you. You're guilty of
housebreaking, you know. It would be a little inconvenient for me to
have an investigation ... but not as inconvenient as for you."

* * * * *

I faced the wall, feeling my stomach braid itself into a tight,
painful knot of fear. Of what, I didn't know yet, only that old people
who had something to do with her died of starvation. I wasn't old, but
that didn't seem very comforting. She was the most frigid,
calculating, _deadly_ woman I'd ever met. That alone was enough to
scare hell out of me. And there was the problem of what she was
capable of.

Hearing the sounds of her dressing behind me, I wanted to lunge around
and rush her, taking a chance that she might be too busy pulling o