I'd tried to return to my chair without making a sound, yet he glanced sharply at me, and then I realised that his gaze had been drawn by a movement outside in the hall. I turned in time to see a very fair, slender woman come into the frame of the doorway; she must have been climbing the stairs just behind me. Without pausing she through a look at Brodeur that seemed to land on him like a grenade. Then she passed out of sight. His voice, which I'd never heard falter before, died off as if by the flip of a switch. In a beat he resumed, but a little past where he had been.