As she sat up, Jeff stirred and opened his eyes. When he saw Tracy looking at him, a slow, happy grin lit his face.
“Welcome back.” There was a note of such intense relief in his voice that Tracy was confused.
“I’m sorry,” Tracy said. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I gave you the wrong box.”
“What?”
“I mixed up the boxes.”
He walked over to her and said gently, “No, Tracy. You gave me the real diamonds. They’re on their way to Gunther.”
She looked at him in bewilderment. “Then—why—why are you here?”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “When you handed me the diamonds, you looked like death. I decided I’d better wait at the airport to make sure you caught your flight. You didn’t show up, and I knew you were in trouble. I went to the safe house and found you. I couldn’t just let you die there,” he said lightly. “It would have been a clue for the police.”
She was watching him, puzzled. “Tell me the real reason you came back for me.”
“Time to take your temperature,” he said briskly.
“Not bad,” he told her a few minutes later. “Little over a hundred. You’re a wonderful patient.”
“Jeff—”
“Trust me,” he said. “Hungry?”
Tracy was suddenly ravenous. “Starved.”
“Good. I’ll bring something in.”
He returned from shopping with a bag full of orange juice, milk, and fresh fruit, and large Dutch broodjes, rolls filled with different kinds of cheese, meat, and fish.
“This seems to be the Dutch version of chicken soup, but it should do the trick. Now, eat slowly.”
He helped her sit up, and fed her. He was careful and tender, and Tracy thought, warily, He’s after something.
As they were eating, Jeff said, “While I was out, I telephoned Gunther. He received the diamonds. He deposited your share of the money in your Swiss bank account.”
She could not keep herself from asking, “Why didn’t you keep it all?”
When Jeff answered, his tone was serious. “Because it’s time we stopped playing games with each other, Tracy. Okay?”
It was another one of his tricks, of course, but she was too tired to worry about it. “Okay.”
“If you’ll tell me your sizes,” Jeff said, “I’ll go out and buy some clothes for you. The Dutch are liberal, but I think if you walked around like that they might be shocked.”
Tracy pulled the covers up closer around her, suddenly aware of her nakedness. She had a vague impression of Jeff’s undressing her and bathing her. He had risked his own safety to nurse her. Why? She had believed she understood him. I don’t understand him at all, Tracy thought. Not at all.
She slept.
In the afternoon Jeff brought back two suitcases filled with robes and nightgowns, underwear, dresses, and shoes, and a makeup kit and a comb and brush and hair dryer, toothbrushes and toothpaste. He also had purchased several changes of clothes for himself and brought back the International Herald Tribune. On the front page was a story about the diamond hijacking; the police had figured out how it had been committed, but according to the newspaper, the thieves had left no clues.
Jeff said cheerfully, “We’re home free! Now all we have to do is get you well.”
It was Daniel Cooper who had suggested that the scarf with the initials TW be kept from the press. “We know,” he had told Inspector Trignant, “who it belongs to, but it’s not enough evidence for an indictment. Her lawyers would produce every woman in Europe with the same initials and make fools of you.”
In Cooper’s opinion, the police had already made fools of themselves. God will give her to me.
He sat in the darkness of the small church, on a hard wooden bench, and he prayed: Oh, make her mine, Father. Give her to me to punish so that I may wash myself of my sins. The evil in her spirit shall be exorcised, and her naked body shall be flagellated…And he thought about Tracy’s naked body in his power and felt himself getting an erection. He hurried from the church in terror that God would see and inflict further punishment on him.