Free In Spite of Thunder by John Dickson Carr Page A

shout.
    “Anywhere will do, Audrey, provided you stop telling a pack of lies and explain why your great friend Desmond Ferrier was going to visit you at the Metropole tonight. Is he still expected there, by the way?”
    “Mr. Ferrier is not my great friend. And I haven’t been telling you any real lies at all,” cried Audrey, “even if I didn’t give away everything because I promised I wouldn’t.” A singular luminous fixity glazed over her eyes. “Brian, I do believe …”
    “You believe what?”
    She darted back past him. He thought she was going under the archway and back up the stairs; instead she sat down in a corner under a half-partition shielding the archway at one side, with a black-topped table in front of her and a sign advertising Cinzano above her head.
    “You believe what?” Brian repeated. “And what, exactly, is your notion of telling the truth?”
    “Mr. Ferrier wanted to talk to me about Eve! That’s all there was to it.”
    “All?”
    “All that’s important. I told you at the hotel: my father keeps me under such ridiculous surveillance that sometimes I could scream. So I wanted to have twenty-four hours here on my own. Just to be free, if you can understand that! Or can you?”
    “Never mind. What happened?”
    “I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see Phil. I did tell Phil in one letter I might be here a day early. I didn’t say I would , I just said I might, and where I was going to stay if I did. And then, when my plane got to the airport in the middle of the afternoon, Mr. Ferrier was there waiting for me.”
    “Desmond Ferrier?”
    “Yes.” Audrey spoke every word with intense care. “I hadn’t told him I should be there; neither had Phil. But there he was. He said he had something terribly important to discuss with me about Eve. He said he would be occupied, unfortunately, until late in the evening; but people didn’t keep early hours here as they did in London. Couldn’t he, couldn’t he pretty please, drop in and take me out for a drink about midnight?”
    “Midnight?”
    “Brian, this is the truth!”
    “I’m not denying it, am I?”
    “Well!” Audrey spread out her hands. “He’s terribly distinguished-looking, and he’s got a way with him, and he rather sweeps you off your feet. I didn’t know what to say, so I said yes.”
    “One day, my girl, that may be your epitaph.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Brian, will you ever take me seriously? There was no harm in it, was there? Anyway, I had hardly been at the hotel for half an hour when Phil rang up to see if I was there, and asked me out to dinner. I couldn’t refuse Phil, could I?”
    “No, you could not,” Brian told her with some restraint. “But you mentioned to him, of course, you were seeing his father later?”
    “I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. There wasn’t anything wrong. Mr. Ferrier didn’t do anything he shouldn’t. That is … well, he didn’t. But what if Phil got the wrong impression? So I asked Phil, on the ’phone, if he’d take me to a night-club or something after dinner. If he kept me out late, than I could change my mind and I needn’t see Mr. Ferrier at all.”
    Brian drew out a chair and sat down opposite her at the table. The noise from upstairs, only a little diminished, sounded as though the house itself were stamping its feet.
    “Now what did Mr. Desmond Ferrier do or say, Audrey, that might be misinterpreted?”
    “Do you care? Do you really care?”
    On the table there was an ashtray also advertising Cinzano. He resisted the impulse to pick it up and smash it on the floor.
    “You’re like Mr. Desmond Ferrier,” said Audrey, “in more ways than one. Only you don’t know it. You’ll never learn it. Naturally I was frightened when I thought I saw him get out of the taxi!”
    “But it wasn’t the actor-hero; it was I. Weren’t you disappointed as well as relieved?”
    Audrey drew in her breath with a gasp.
    “Disappointed? Desmond Ferrier positively