Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/27

 "Newcomb?" again meditated the woman.

"The Blanchard who shot down the bank detective in Newcomb's room when the rest of the bank was listening to a German band playing in the side street, a band hired for the occasion."

"When was that?" demanded the woman.

"That was last October," he answered with a sing-song weariness suggestive of impatience at such supererogative explanations.

"I was at Monte Carlo all last autumn," was the woman's quick retort.

Blake moved his heavy body, as though to shoulder away any claim as to her complicity. "I know that," he acknowledged. "And you went north to Paris on the twenty-ninth of November. And on the third of December you went to Cherbourg; and on the ninth you landed in New York. I know all that. That 's not what I 'm after. I want to know where Connie Binhart is, now, to-day."

Their glances at last came together. No move was made; no word was spoken. But a contest took place.