it was gone before she could capture it, and it was all too late now anyway. The chess game was finally over.
Larry had listened to the President’ s last words in shocked disbelief, and when a bailiff stepped forward and took him by the arm, Larry shook loose and turned back to the bench.
“ Wait a minute!” he yelled.“ I didn’ t kill her! They framed me!”
Another bailiff hurried forward and the two men held Larry. One of them pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“ No!” Larry was screaming.“ Listen to me! I didn’ t kill her!”
He tried to jerk away from the bailiffs, but the handcuffs snapped on his wrists and he was yanked away, out of the room.
Noelle felt a pressure on her arm. A matron was waiting there to escort her out of the courtroom.
“ They’ re waiting for you, Miss Page.”
It was like a theater call. They’ re waiting for you, Miss Page. Only this time when the curtain went down, it would never rise again. The realization hit Noelle that this was the last time in her life that she would ever be in public, the last time that she would be around other people, uncaged. This was her farewell appearance, this dirty, dreary Greek courtroom, her final theater. Well, she thought defiantly, at least I have a good house. She looked around the packed courtroom for the last time. She saw Armand Gautier staring at her in stunned silence, shaken for once out of his cynicism.
There was Philippe Sorel, his rugged face trying hard for an encouraging smile and not quite managing it.
Across the room was Israel Katz, his eyes closed and his lips moving as though in silent prayer. Noelle remembered the night she had smuggled him into the trunk of the General’ s car, under the nose of the albino Gestapo officer, and the fear that had been in her then. But it was nothing to the terror that was possessing her now.
Noelle’ s eyes moved across the room and rested on the face of Auguste Lanchon, the shopkeeper. She could not recall his name, but she remembered his porcine face and his gross squat body and the dreary hotel room in Vienne. When he saw her looking at him, he blinked and lowered his eyes.
A tall, attractive, gray-haired American-looking man was standing up staring at her as though wanting to tell her something. Noelle had no idea who he was.
The matron was tugging at her arm now, saying,“ Come along, Miss Page …”
Frederick Stavros was in a state of shock. He had not only been a witness to a cold-