The Sword and the Net

10 LOS ROBLES: Second Phase

Without wanting or struggle the time-sense returned to him. At one instant it was not there, at the next the grid-lines of the chart—the lines which ruled life from seconds to centuries—were firmly superimposed upon his being again.

Propped against his pillows, he was finishing his first meal of the day, and at the far end of the big room Lena was busy with broom and dustcloths, every now and then a little snatch of tuneful humming would break from her lips, only to be instantly suppressed as a possible source of annoyance to the invalid.

Otto stared before him, a frown creasing deeply into his forehead. He said, turning his head a little:

“Please, how long have I been here?”

He had spoken to Lena many times upon many days before this, and she had answered. But there must have been a new quality in his voice, for she stared at him and ceased her work and came across the room to stand by the bed and look down at him with her hands on her hips and a wondering smile upon her face.

“Landsakes, Mizr Johnson!” she said happily “You sure’s a powerful lot mended!”

Otto did not understand a word of this. So he smiled up at her and tried again. He said:

“How long have I been here? Is it . . . many days?”

Lena concentrated upon this problem: she cast down her eyes and moved her lips, and with a small rustling sound the fingers of both hands beat out rapid scales upon the sides of her starched apron.

“It’s full twenty days, Mizr Johnson. . . .” She retired within herself for further calculation. “No! no, sir! It sure’s three weeks to the jot.” There was triumphant certainty now in the rich voice. “That’s what, Mizr Johnson, sir—three weeks to the jot this evenin’ since Mizr Ingolls an’ Miz Clare they brung you in.”

“Three weeks!” said Otto—and frowned again with amazement and dismay and the effort of relegating all the fillings-in upon the map to their relative places within the grid-hnes of the time-chart.

“Please,” he said. “What is the date of the month? To-day?”

She told him—and continued to stand looking down at him with a widening smile which managed to combine without effort the pleasant emotions of maternal pride, clinical satisfaction, response to male attraction, and broad human sympathy.

“H’mn!” He grunted, and repeated the date and wrestled with his stiffly working mind to discover why the existence of a figure upon the calendar should fill him with sick foreboding.

And then there came the sound of the door opening and footsteps and the quick, decisive, pleasantly harsh voice of Waldemar Ingolls.

“Morning,” it said. “How d’you feel?”

The man himself came into the field of Otto’s vision and stood by the foot of the bed. He wore blue jeans and a vividly checkered shirt and the heels of his riding-boots lifted him to an almost giant height. He was lean and erect and sure-moving, and the iron-grey hair above the sharp, tanned face seemed handsomely incongruous until one looked more closely at the face itself and saw that here was a man who, although he had wasted no minute of any, had yet lived through many years.

Otto smiled at him, but Lena spoke. She said:

“Ah was ajest on’y sayin’ to Mizr Johnson, Mizr Ingolls, that he sure was amendin’ right fast!”

Otto said:

“It is a strange thing, Mr. Ingolls, but I this moment realized that I have not been . . . been . . .” He fumbled for the right phrase, being very careful. “. . . been aware of Time.”

He would have gone on, but was not permitted. The quick voice said:

“I know what you mean. Exactly. Been that way myself. You’re all right up to a point—but healing. So they take Time away from you. It’s an intricate device which sick men mustn’t fool with.” He moved away from the foot of the bed and dropped his length into the chair by the bed and sat forward and scanned Otto’s face with the hard grey eyes. They suddenly lifted at the corners and radiated a myriad wrinkles, and the firm lips parted and there was a white flash of teeth between them. He said:

“Yes. You’re a whole lot better. New stage now—definitely convalescent. Lena, you go on with your work before Miss Clare catches you gossiping.”

Lena beamed. “Yezzr,” she said happily, and went back to the far end of the room and the broom and dusters.

Otto said: “Mr. Ingolls, I have to say . . . to express . . .” He hoped that this difficulty with the English tongue—a difficulty which had almost vanished before he was hurt—was only temporary. He tried again, while the grey eyes watched him with a gleam of amusement somewhere in their depths. He said:

“I must tell you that I am so grateful for your . . .”

Ingolls’ smile came again, and an interruption.

“That’ll be enough,” he said. “In the first place it was common humanity—in the second . . .”

He was interrupted in his turn—by the opening of the door, and the voice for which Otto had longed but which now, surprisingly, made him feel fear. It said:

“Oh, hello, Boss! Didn’t know you were up here.”

“Any rule against it?” Ingolls said—and then, as she came into Otto’s sight: “He’s a lot better this morning. Convalescent now. You might stop him from trying to pull expressions of gratitude out of his hat, will you?” He smiled at Otto as he spoke and there was no sting in the words.

She stood behind her father’s chair, with one hand resting upon its back. She was slim and poised and real with a sort of divine reality which put fantasy to shame. She was dressed in something which was slight and simple and cool and blue and above it the coiled dark hair seemed to gleam with a light of its own.

“Look at him!” said Ingolls. “See what I mean?”

She looked at him—but somehow, though Otto strove to make them, her eyes did not meet his. She spoke to her father.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. He’s . . . all the way back.” She looked towards the other end of the room—and suddenly she smiled and her eyes crinkled at the corners like her father’s and the beauty of her mouth stabbed through Otto with a hot, searing pain which was part fear and part delight. She said:

“Lena! Remember it’s porch-wash day! It’s porch-wash day, Lena!”

There was a clattering of brooms and dustpan, and then Lena’s voice, in a cry of alarm, half-genuine, half-seriocomic.

“Landsakes alive, Miz Clare—if ah don’t done forgot!”

Ingolls grinned suddenly. He said:

“Don’t forget that spiders’ nest, Lena. In the corner by the dining-room windows. Roust ’em out!”

“Mizr Ingolls!” It was a muted shriek, and was immediately followed by a clattering rush and the closing of the door and a chuckling from the passageway.

“Now,” said Clare to her father, “she won’t go near the porch, and John’ll have to do it!”

Otto said: “Mr. Ingolls; Miss Ingolls, please you must allow me to express . . .”

“There he goes again!” said Ingolls.

Clare sat upon the arm of his chair. She looked at Otto and smiled and he thought her eyes might stay upon his but they did not. She said:

“He means it. Don’t you, Boss? He doesn’t—we don’t—want to be thanked. There’s nothing to thank us for. There isn’t really. First of all . . .”

Ingolls put back his head and laughed with an infectious barking. He said:

“I was giving him that already. Wasn’t I, Jorgensen? You remember? First of all, it was common humanity—and so on.” The laughter died out of his face, but there remained a taut, wry smile. He said:

“But there’s another reason, Jorgensen. You may as well have it now; then perhaps you’ll realize you don’t have to thank us. That train-wreck was called ‘sabotage’—but to me, and to very many others in America, it was more than that—it was an act of war; from a treacherous, underhand enemy who hasn’t had the courage to declare himself openly. That makes you, wounded by the enemy, in the same relation to us as an injured R.A.F. pilot would be to any Britisher whose field the boy landed in. Only it’s a bit more, even, in our case. It’s more than just a plain duty, it’s a pleasure as well, because it gives us a feeling that, by patching you up, we’re striking a more direct blow against the enemy than we’d be allowed to otherwise in the present situation, which is what a Senator would probably call ‘unclarified’ if he had to find a word for it.”

He paused. The break was rhetorical, and would have been prelude to more had it not been for his daughter’s interpolation.

“I think,” she said, “there are some soap-boxes in the tool shed. Shall I get one?”

Otto stared, and Ingolls laughed again. He said:

“All right. All right. But you see what I mean, Jorgensen?”

Otto was slow and careful. “Yes. Yes, I am sure I understand.”

He had been too slow. He became aware that Ingolls’ grey eyes, hard and intent and unsmiling now, had fixed upon him suddenly.

“Unless, of course,” said Ingolls slowly, “you don’t sympathize with the viewpoint I’ve just expressed.”

The girl got to her feet. Otto saw her cross to the bookshelves at the other side of the room, but Ingolls appeared not to notice any movement. He kept his eyes on Otto’s face, waiting for an answer.

Otto smiled. “I assure you,” he said, “that I am anti-Nazi almost to the point of insanity. At least, that is what my friends have told me.” He was on the old familiar ground and, although it seemed strangely distasteful now to gambol upon it, it was firm and solid beneath his feet. He let the smile die and the well-rehearsed gleam of earnest fanaticism replace it. He turned his body towards Ingolls and rested on an elbow. He said:

“I am sorry that you should doubt me, Mr. Ingolls. If you knew me better, you would not.” The stiffness of his English was mercifully fading. “I am a Swede, but my father and mother, some years ago, went to Norway. They lived in the region of Narvik.” He heard Clare’s light footstep as she came back across the room but he would not let himself so much as glance at her. His eyes must be fixed upon Ingolls’ and his voice dry and harsh with suppressed emotions. He said:

“Their house was de . . . demolished by Nazi bombs—and they were in it!”

There was silence, broken first by a thin, slight rustling of paper, then by Ingolls’ voice.

“I’m sorry,” said Ingolls. “I wasn’t doubting you, as you call it. I just like to be sure.”

But Otto went on, making his voice harsher yet, and slightly, ever so slightly, broken. He said:

“They were both killed. There was not anything left of them. And there were no soldiers near their house, nor anything which could be in any way mistaken for a military objective. They were both killed.” He leaned further towards the man in the chair, half his body out of the bed.

“But perhaps that was better for them,” he said. “I am sure that it was better for them. They died—but they are free now. My father would not like to live under a rule which forbids a man even to think his own thoughts.”

He laughed suddenly—and it was a wilder sound than he had intended. His head was hurting him now, and his eyes. But he must finish the work. He thought that Ingolls was about to speak and hurried on before he could. He tried to raise his voice a little more, but somehow miscalculated and heard that he was shouting and went on, not caring.

“It was better, maybe. They were old—they could not fight. But people who are not old must fight—and that is what they must fight for, to keep the right to think as they think, not as others tell them they must think!”

He might have gone on too long, but his head helped him. It suddenly hurt him so much that he was forced to put it back upon the pillow and lie still, his lungs labouring, until the pain died down.

Clare’s voice dropped cool and quiet into the rough-edged silence.

“Waldemar Ingolls,” it said, “you are sometimes awfully dumb!”

Then Otto felt her hand upon his forehead. The pain was fading rapidly now. He held his eyes tight shut for a moment; then suddenly opened them. He was rewarded: the strategy worked, and he caught her eyes with his and hers were not guarded. The clouded veil was not over them, and they could not find any pretext upon which to avert themselves from his and again came the strange and fearful and ecstatic shock of recognition.

She took the hand from his forehead and turned away. She spoke without looking at either man, as she was moving towards the low table which stood behind the bedside chair. Her voice was unhurried, and yet to Otto’s ear there was somewhere in it a little vibrant tightness. She said:

“Perhaps I’d better fetch two soap boxes!”

Ingolls took the cue. He laughed, and the tension eased. He saw Otto’s look of puzzlement and explained the boxes. He said, after that:

“But I owe you an apology, Jorgensen. . . .”

His daughter interrupted him again. She stood beside him with an opened magazine in her hands, and Otto recognized the red and black cover of Kosmo. He knew what was coming—and instead of relief felt an undefined but far from pleasant mixture of emotions.

“Look!” said Clare to her father. “Look—and then blush!” Under his nose she had thrust the full-page portrait of the profile of Nils Jorgensen, hero of the Vulcania.

Ingolls muttered something. He sounded startled. He darted glances from the photograph to Otto. He said:

“Well, I’ll be damned!” and wheeled upon his daughter. “Vixen!” he said. “Female jackal! Viper-cub! You couldn’t, I suppose, have shown me this before? Or told me about it? Or even hinted? No, of course you couldn’t—or you wouldn’t have had the exquisite pleasure of watching me make a fool of myself! I shall wait for the next full moon and weave a withering spell about you!”

Clare sat herself once more upon the arm of his chair. “Oh, not a withering one,” she said. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure myself until Dr. Brandt took the last dressing off his head.” She looked at Otto. She was smiling, but the eyes were guarded again. She said:

“But why did they take you in profile like that? Why in the world?”

“I had a black eye,” said Otto—and, for no reason that he could lay name to, felt momentarily less oppressed.

It was afternoon and he had just eaten and the sun was bright in the trees outside his window. He was alone and he was tired, very tired. He supposed the fatigue must be from the effort he had made this morning; the same effort which had used to amuse him sometimes and sometimes cause him a sort of savage exultation but which this time had filled him with a grey and futile and slimy aching.

He was alone—and he felt sleep wrapping about him. And she wasn’t here with him and it was dangerous to sleep like this because of the dreams. But perhaps they wouldn’t come this time. . . .

Sleep took him; heavy and merciless sleep from which he could not break. . . .

His shoulder was being shaken, very gently, by a small strong hand. It helped him—and he tore himself out of the clinging darkness.

Clare was standing over him. Her face was troubled as he first opened his eyes, but she smiled at once. In his ears an echo of his own voice was ringing.

“Hey!” she was saying. “You’d better wake up. Wake right up!”

He could still hear the echo of his own voice and wondered desperately what it had been saying—and in which language. He said:

“I am awake now,” and tried to smile.

“Bad dreams?” she said, and bent over him so that he could not see her eyes and gently readjusted the tape-fixed dressing which was all now that covered the scar upon his head.

“Yes,” he said. “Was I speaking?”

She smiled again. “Shouting’s a better word. I couldn’t catch more than one phrase, though—one you kept repeating.”

His lips felt dry and he tried to moisten them with his tongue. He forced himself to smile again and strove vainly to remember what the dream had been about and could only recapture a sort of fear which was different from the other fears.

“Perhaps the other words were in Swedish?” He fought to make this seem natural. “It is a language that sounds . . . strange.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no—it was all English. But I could only catch the words of that one phrase. I think you must have been back in childhood. You sounded as if you were trying to explain something you’d done. You kept saying: ‘It’s true! It’s true!’ Or perhaps the word was ‘truth’—I’m not sure. And then you’d say, ‘I thought I was saying lies’—I remember that because ‘saying lies’ is odd—‘I thought I was saying lies but they were truths!’” She straightened the bed-covers and sat in the chair.

“Remember now?” she said.

It was night and the light on the trees outside was silver instead of gold. It was time, nearly, for him to sleep. He did not want to sleep after the experience of the afternoon. But neither did he want to lie wakeful and thinking. He had been thinking for every lone moment he had had since she had told him the words he had been saying in his dream.

He still could not remember the dream but only the fear and doubt and black anxiety of it. But that did not matter. It was the thought behind those words which mattered and the inescapable truth of the thought. He must face it now.

He faced it—and was none the better. His mind raced, and doubled upon its tracks and raced again. And there seemed no goal reached or reachable. But the thought was still there—and the fact and truth of the thought: he had been trumpeting truth while so blinded that he had thought himself vomiting falsehood. And the last of his lies had pierced through his own mind and impaled him like a collector’s moth—“. . . to keep the right to think as they think, not as other people tell them they must think!”

That was true. There was no escape: it was true. Men, to be higher than the animals, must think their own thoughts, and out of their collective thought must inevitably come, in the last analysis, the only form of rule which was right. Two and two make four. Ice freezes and fire burns. The only ruler of any grouping of men must be the Highest Common Factor of all the minds in that grouping, not an arbitrary algebraic symbol which poses itself as the master of other minds. Black is black and white unalterably white—and Truth, even when disguised as falsity, must always be Truth. . . .

His mind raced—and he groaned and twisted his body about until his legs hurt in the clumsy casts and he was drenched with sweat. His mind raced—and brought no solution of the appalling problem which was facing him. . . .

Clare came into the room.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you think I was never coming?”

And then she saw his face, and the lightness went from her voice and she stood looking down at him with shocked and anxious eyes.

He was going to speak—but she moved, going away from him towards the wall-cupboard where were kept all the paraphernalia of nursing. He turned his head to watch her and the grace of her body and movement brought a swift constriction to his throat. She wore a long dress of some filmy, glittering stuff which was blue and silver and floated about her.

She came back to the bedside and moved the chair closer and sat in it and leaned towards him. Against the gleaming stuff of the dress her neck and shoulders glowed softly. There was a little shining metal case between her fingers and she was unscrewing its cap. She said:

“If you have any fever, we must call the doctor. At once. I’m worried about you.”

He would not let her finish. He caught at her hand and she stared at him suddenly with wide eyes which were afraid.

She set the thermometer down upon the low table and looked carefully at what she was doing.

He said: “Please, we should talk about us . . .” and was interrupted.

“No,” she said. “No!” She did not struggle to free the hand but let it lie still in his. She said:

“It’s . . . it’s too soon?”

He suddenly knew that his grip was too tight upon her fingers and relaxed it. He stared at her in silence. She raised her head and looked at him but not into his eyes. She said, very low:

“Don’t you understand? It’s too soon to talk. I . . . I’m not lying—or being evasive—or being . . . being . . .” Her voice broke a little. She said:

“I’m not evading! But it’s too soon!”

He felt a sudden but more peaceful weakness. He said at last:

“I understand,” and laid his head back upon the pillow and closed his eyes.

After a while she moved her hand, gently and experimentally, and he let his open, lax and inert. He breathed deeply and turned his head away from her so that his face was m shadow. There was no sound or movement for a long time, but he went on feigning sleep. . . .

She was gone—and he did not have to pretend any longer.

He found passivity unendurable and reached out to the bedside table for matches and a cigarette.

The tobacco tasted bitter and unpleasing, but he smoked determinedly. He must not sleep—and he dared not yet let his mind go racing again around the mad whirligig of his dilemma.

He thought of Clare—and had reached a sort of desperately excited peace when he stumbled, unaware, over a memory. The sweat burst out cold upon his forehead and he sat suddenly and violently upright.

He had discovered why the date—the newly found and realizable date of the month—had filled him this morning with formless foreboding.

It was the date of the fifth ‘attack’ in Altinger’s chain! And, by this time, it was already fact—and the giant unbelievable fires were leaping up to the sky unquenchable, and in the hell around their feet were the charred and twisted and crumbling remains of men’s work and minds and bodies, of men’s women and children and little homes. . . .

Outside the windows, the velvet, silver-shot blackness began to thin: it grew grey and the silver paled to blend with the greyness and lose its beauty. There were faint stirrings in the trees and a sudden pre-dawn chill was in the air.

He shivered. He lay flat and motionless and stared upwards with wide-open eyes which saw nothing. All his body was trembling, but he was not conscious of his body. All his mind was a pulsating, flaming question—what shall I do? . . .

The chill went from the air and the stirrings in the trees changed into lusty, full-throated singing and the greyness became transmuted into gold—and Otto Falken, with a sudden access of strength, fought with his rebellious mind and once more was in command of it.

He knew that he must find an answer—the answer. He had known that all the time, but now he knew more; he knew that without sleep and the healing of his body no answer which was right would come.

He had to fight for the mastery—but at last he slept.

When he waked the sun was high. Lena stood by his bed and looked down at him with a smile which seemed hampered by some inner anxiety. He stretched himself and answered the smile. He felt better than he had expected to feel. Lena said:

“We were sure awonderin’ when you’d be wakin’, Mizr Johnson. We was right worried, Miz Clare an’ me!”

He kept the smile on his face—and carefully did not look at the folded morning paper which lay upon the bedside table. He said:

“Did you think I was dead in my sleep?” and was relieved by the throaty chuckling which told him the laboured jest had at least seemed natural.

“Why, Mizr Johnson!” The chuckling went on through this; then was turned off at an unseen faucet. “No, Mizr Johnson, what’s been atroublin’ me an’ Miz Clare’s your frien’ that’s comin’. An’ before your breakfast an’ washin’ up too if we ain’t mighty careful!”

It was Altinger. He had telephoned from Fresno. He was breakfasting there and would like to detour on his way to San Francisco and see Mr. Jorgensen if that were convenient to Mr. Jorgensen’s hosts.

He gathered this much from Lena—and let himself be quickly washed and fed and waited for Clare and any more news he could gather from her. But she had not come before Lena left him, and, alone, he reached out an apprehensive hand for the newspaper and unfolded it and braced himself to meet what was there.

It covered the front page. The headlines screamed at him, huge and black.

He heard a quick light footstep outside his room and hurriedly folded the paper and was going to thrust it out of sight, but was too late.

She said: “I was going to tell Lena not to bring that to you.” She was looking at the crumpled paper. “It’s . . . unthinkable!” She was speaking faster than usual, and her voice was taut. Beneath its golden tan her face showed pallor, and there were faint, dark lines beneath her eyes. She said:

“I suppose Lena told you—your Mr. Altinger called from Fresno. He wanted to drive by and see you. You weren’t awake, so I said to come. I hope that was all right?”

He could see that she had not slept, and a compassion he had never known moved in him He said:

“Yes. Yes, of course. That was quite right. I . . . I am sorry that I give you this trouble. I . . .”

She smiled at him. “Don’t be meek,” she said. She busied herself about the room and spoke as she moved. “I thought you were going to have a relapse last night. But you look better.” Her voice was elaborately matter-of-fact. “Would you like us to give your friends lunch?”

His aching mind seized upon the plural word. “Friends? He has others with him?” His voice was sharper than he knew, and she turned momentarily to look at him.

“I gathered he had.” She spoke with her back to him again “He said ‘we’ all the time, so he can’t be alone.”

He was not. There were two others with him. In her father’s absence Clare received them. Above, Otto could hear voices and knew that Altinger was not alone, but could not tell who were his companions until they were shepherded upstairs by Lena and shown in to him. He had braced himself for the meeting, but was taken shockingly aback by the utterly unexpected presence of Carolyn Van Teller. He hardly noticed that the third of his visitors was the ancient, improbable Gunnar Bjornstrom, to whom, in the room of the Mark Hopkins, he had made his first report on Altinger.

Altinger was all spasmodic, breezy kindness, Bjornstrom was placidly benign—and the woman was gracious and sympathetic and more strikingly beautiful than he had remembered her. She was also—and it increased somehow his fear and distress and confusion—faintly and personally proprietorial.

“Nice place!” said Altinger. “Nice place!” He was not still a moment, walking up and down and around the room, looking at books, glancing out of the windows, inspecting furnishing and ornament with quick and knowledgeable glances. “You had a lucky landing young Jorgensen!”

“They say you are mending rapidly?” asked Bjornstrom, and took a delicate pinch of snuff.

“Nils, my poor boy!” said Carolyn Van Teller from the chair by the bed. “You must have had a simply dreadful time!”

Otto felt a dull, sick aching in his stomach: the newspaper, neatly folded now, lay upon the table near his hand. He could not see the headlines, nor the pictures which he knew would be upon the inner pages—but he could feel them. He said:

“Yes, I was very lucky. . . . I think that is right, Mr. Bjornstrom. . . . It was bad, yes. But it might have been worse.”

Altinger was standing in the bay window now, staring out through the trees. He drew a deep breath of the soft air and exhaled it noisily. He said:

“Great country! Wonderful country!”

“God’s country,” said old Bjornstrom—and suddenly, dreadfully, giggled.

“These people have been good to you, Nils?” Carolyn Van Teller took a cigarette from her case and lit it and watched him through the smoke.

“Yes,” Otto said. “Yes. Very good.” He had himself well in hand now, and his tone was correct—neither flat nor enthusiastic.

Altinger crossed the room with his lunging walk and stood by the foot of the bed.

“How long before you’re fit for work?” he said. “We miss you. You’ve done a good job. Too bad you got yourself involved in that smash-up.”

Old Bjornstrom giggled again, and Carolyn Van Teller said: “Gunnar! You’re like a child!”

The old man took out his snuff-box and was silent.

Otto was increasingly conscious of the sick aching in his stomach. He had to do something, anything to break the spell of growing horror which, if he lay inert and let it, would betray him. He reached out an arm, with a gesture whose violence he tried desperately to conceal, towards the table beside the bed. His hand, groping for cigarettes, struck against the folded newspaper and sent it toppling to the floor, carrying with it the little vase of flowers which just now Clare had set there.

“Clumsy!” said Carolyn Van Teller, and smiled at him.

“Oops there!” said Altinger, and came quickly to retrieve.

“Tsk-tsk!” From his chair, old Bjornstrom made distressful clucking noises. “Too bad, too bad!”

Otto closed his eyes. He was suddenly afraid that one of them—that the woman—would see the hatred which was bubbling inside him. And he must not let it show. He had not known how violent it would be. He must not let it show. He felt the woman lean nearer to him, and her hand gentle upon his arm. She said:

“Headache?” Her voice was very low. “Poor Nils!”

“There!” said Altinger, and set the vase back upon the table and rubbed the spilt water from it into the thickness of the carpet with his shoe.

Otto opened his eyes: he was ready. He looked at Carolyn Van Teller and smiled. He said, as if he had forgotten there were others in the room:

“Your hair is beautiful. I had forgotten.”

She looked at him and her eyes were soft. Altinger stooped to pick up the newspaper and as he did so it came open in his hand and the black headlines stared out. He said:

“Amazing thing, that Texas oil fire! Can’t understand it!” His tone, natural enough to pass muster with any outsider, rang in Otto’s ears with a deep and self-laudatory undertone of triumph.

“A dreadful thing!” said Bjornstrom. His squeaky voice was hushed but the faded eyes were bright.

“Why talk about it, then?” The woman’s voice was imperious, and all three men looked at her and were silent. She picked her handbag from the table and opened it. She said:

“We must be moving on—mustn’t we, Rudolph?”

Altinger looked at his watch and uttered a sound of surprise which was very slightly overdone. He was resenting an order, however much disguised. He said:

“I’d no idea it was so late!” He moved nearer to the bed and leaned over it, holding out his hand to Otto. “Well—so long, young Jorgensen, hurry and come back to the office: business is booming!”

Otto took the hand and managed to shake it limply. He said:

“Thank you for the visiting.” He knew he should say more and covered up his search for words by a pretence at weakness, closing his eyes for a moment. “I will be back at work soon,” he said at last.

“That is good!” said Bjornstrom. He had heaved himself slowly out of his chair and was approaching the bed. Otto was forced to shake his hand too. It felt dry and old and brittle.

Carolyn Van Teller stood up. She looked very tall, seeming to tower over the men. She laid a small, gaily tied package upon the bed near Otto’s hand and then took the hand in both of her own. Bjornstrom moved away a little and Altinger completely: Otto could see neither of them She said to Otto:

“I didn’t know what to bring you. And then I saw a box of the cigarettes you used to like.”

Otto picked up the package as if with effort: he must keep up the pretence of weakness and then perhaps he might be rid of them before he betrayed himself. He said:

“Thank you!” He kept his words and tone natural, but produced a private message with his eyes which he prayed would pass muster.

“That was very . . . nice,” he said, and had an answer from her eyes—and then was horrified beyond reason by the sounds of an opening door and the voice of Clare.

“Forgive me,” she was saying,” but I wanted to know when you would all like lunch. It was rude of me: I forgot to ask you before.”

Otto turned his head a little and saw Clare. She stood between Altinger and Bjornstrom, but she was looking at the other woman, as manners demanded. She was poised and cool and in command of herself. She was smiling and very courteous, but it seemed to Otto that there was a tension in her which he had not felt before.

Carolyn Van Teller was smiling too. She seemed taller even than before. She was very gracious. She was charming. She said:

“That’s very kind of you, Miss Ingolls, but we really must be going on our way. Mr. Altinger has an important engagement in San Francisco. And so have I.”

“Are you sure?” Clare said. She was smiling still. “It would be no trouble—and we could be ready in just a few minutes.”

Altinger put in his word. Otto could see his resentment, invisible except to those who had studied him, of any suggestion that there were other wishes than his. He said:

“It’s too bad, Miss . . . Miss Ingolls! But there it is. I have to be in San Francisco this afternoon.” He waved a cheerful hand towards the bed. “With your patient away, I have double duties.”

Carolyn Van Teller had turned back to Otto. She sat in the chair again, but poised upon its edge as one who is going to rise immediately. She leaned close to him. She said: “Don’t forget to smoke your cigarettes—and smoke all of them yourself.”

He knew then that there was something more to the package than appeared. He said:

“Of course, I will open them now—at once. No one else would like them anyhow,” and managed a laugh. He could not see Clare, but he knew that she had momentarily turned her head towards him and then as quickly looked away.

He could hear voices behind him, and then Bjornstrom saying:

“I have no appointment, my dear young lady. I can only regret that neither have I a car. If I had, you would surely have one guest for lunch.”

And then there was a general bustle of going and goodbyes and a last look from Carolyn Van Teller and no sight of Clare and then Altinger again and yet another handshake and Altinger’s loud laugh as he said, for all the world to hear:

“And don’t go talking in your sleep, young Jorgensen. You might give away all the firm’s plans.”

So they had thought of that. Of course they had thought of that! They had been worried seriously. But now they knew it was all right and this talk of Altinger’s was half-joke, half-warning to continue caution.

He grinned up at Altinger and then, brave in the knowledge that he had come through this ordeal with colours high, risked a final stroke. He winked.

Altinger grinned, patted him on the shoulder and was gone. The door closed softly and Otto was alone again.

He threw back the bedcovers from his body and breathed deeply, trying to rid himself of the dark feeling of nausea. He lay inert and breathed with a slow deep rhythm. He kept raising his hands and looking at them. When they did not tremble any more, he picked up the gaily wrapped package and tore the paper from it and revealed a box of cigarettes. The seal was over the edge of the box intact, but it seemed to break easily, sliding away as if the gum upon it were new.

It was as he expected. Beneath the cigarettes, at the very bottom of the box, was a wafer-thin, once-folded slip of paper. He unfolded it and found writing which read, “Before you return to work, phone me N.Y.”

That was all—and nothing, really, at which the most suspicious official eye could cavil. But it was signed with an initial which had beneath it a dashing little twirl showing this to be an order of the first importance.

He looked at the paper. It was very thin, and no larger than the sheath of a cigarette. He crushed it into a little pellet and put it into his mouth and swallowed it.

And he went to sleep again.