“You’re crazy.”
“I know it. That’s what I’ve been telling you. I’m going blood-simple.”
“Well, I don’t like it. Put that thing back in the kitchen and sit down and be sensible.”
I obeyed two-thirds of the order.
“The trouble with you is,” she scolded me, “your nerves are shot. You’ve been through too much excitement in the last few days. Keep it up and you’re going to have the heebie-jeebies for fair, a nervous breakdown.”
I held up a hand with spread fingers. It was steady enough.
She looked at it and said:
“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s inside you. Why don’t you sneak off for a couple of days’ rest? You’ve got things here so they’ll run themselves. Let’s go down to Salt Lake. It’ll do you good.”
“Can’t, sister. Somebody’s got to stay here to count the dead. Besides, the whole program is based on the present combination of people and events. Our going out of town would change that, and the chances are the whole thing would have to be gone over again.”
“Nobody would have to know you were gone, and I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“Since when?”
She leaned forward, made her eyes small, and asked:
“Now what are you getting at?”
“Nothing. Just wondering how you got to be a disinterested bystander all of a sudden. Forgotten that Donald Willsson was killed because of you, starting the whole thing? Forgotten that it was the dope you gave me on Whisper that kept the job from petering out in the middle?”
“You know just as well as I do that none of that was my fault,” she said indignantly. “And it’s all past, anyway. You’re just bringing it up because you’re in a rotten humor and want to argue.”
“It wasn’t past last night, when you were scared stiff Whisper was going to kill you.”
“Will you stop talking about killing!”
“Young Albury once told me Bill Quint had threatened to kill you,” I said.
“Stop it.”
“You seem to have a gift for stirring up murderous notions in your boy friends. There’s Albury waiting trial for killing Willsson. There’s Whisper who’s got you shivering in corners. Even I haven’t escaped your influence. Look at the way I’ve turned. And I’ve always had a private notion that Dan Rolff’s going to have a try at you some day.”
“Dan! You’re crazy. Why, I–”
“Yeah. He was a lunger and down and out, and you took him in. You gave him a home and all the laudanum he wants. You use him for errand boy, you slap his face in front of me, and slap him around in front of others. He’s in love with you. One of these mornings you’re going to wake up and find he’s whittled your neck away.”
She shivered, got up and laughed.
“I’m glad one of us knows what you’re talking about, if you do,” she said as she carried our empty glasses through the kitchen door.
I lit a cigarette and wondered why I felt the way I did, wondered If I were getting psychic, wondered whether there was anything in this presentiment business or whether my nerves were just ragged.
“The next best thing for you to do if you won’t go away,” the girl advised me when she returned with full glasses, “is to get plastered and forget everything for a few hours. I put a double slug of gin in yours. You need it.”
“It’s not me,” I said, wondering why I was saying it, but somehow enjoying it. “It’s you. Every time I mention killing, you jump on me. You’re a woman. You think if nothing’s said about it, maybe none of the God only knows how many people in town who might want to will kill you. That’s silly. Nothing we say or don’t say is going to make Whisper, for instance–”
“Please, please stop! I am silly. I am afraid of the words. I’m afraid of him. I– Oh, why didn’t you put him out of the way when I asked you?”
“Sorry,” I said, meaning it.
“Do you think he–?”
“I don’t know,” I told her, “and I reckon you’re right. There’s no use talking about it. The thing to do is drink, though there doesn’t seem to be much body to this gin.”