After the meal he and I strolled around outside while the spring night darkened the grounds.
“MacMan will be down in the morning,” I told him. “You and he will have to do the watchdog. Divide it between you anyway you want, but one will have to be on the job all the time.”
“Don’t give yourself any of the worst of it,” he complained. “What’s this supposed to be down here–a trap?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. Uh-huh. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You’re stalling around waiting for the horseshoe in your pocket to work.”
“The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps. Did Dick have any news?”
“No. He tailed Andrews straight here from his house.”
The front door opened, throwing yellow light across the porch. Gabrielle, a dark cape on her shoulders, came into the yellow light, shut the door, and came down the gravel walk.
“Take a nap now if you want,” I told Mickey. “I’ll call you when I turn in. You’ll have to stand guard till morning.”
“You’re a darb.” He laughed in the dark. “By God, you’re a darb.”
“There’s a gallon of gin in the car.”
“Huh? Why didn’t you say so instead of wasting my time just talking?” The lawn grass swished against his shoes as he walked away.
I moved towards the gravel walk, meeting the girl.
“Isn’t it a lovely night?” she said.
“Yeah. But you’re not supposed to go roaming around alone in the dark, even if your troubles are practically over.”
“I didn’t intend to,” she said, taking my arm. “And what does practically over mean?”
“That there are a few details to be taken care of–the morphine, for instance.”
She shivered and said:
“I’ve only enough left for tonight. You promised to–”
“Fifty grains coming in the morning.”
She kept quiet, as if waiting for me to say something else. I didn’t say anything else. Her fingers wriggled on my sleeve.
“You said it wouldn’t be hard to cure me.” She spoke half-questioningly, as if expecting me to deny having said anything of the sort.
“It wouldn’t.”
“You said, perhaps . . .” letting the words fade off.
“We’d do it while we were here?”
“Yes.”
“Want to?” I asked. “It’s no go if you don’t.”
“Do I want to?” She stood still in the road, facing me. “I’d give–” A sob ended that sentence. Her voice came again, high-pitched, thin: “Are you being honest with me? Are you? Is what you’ve told me–all you told me last night and this afternoon–as true as you made it sound? Do I believe in you because you’re sincere? Or because you’ve learned how–as a trick of your business–to make people believe in you?”
She might have been crazy, but she wasn’t so stupid. I gave her the answer that seemed best at the time:
“Your belief in me is built on mine in you. If mine’s unjustified, so is yours. So let me ask you a question first: were you lying when you said, ‘I don’t want to be evil’?”
“Oh, I don’t. I don’t.”
“Well, then,” I said with an air of finality, as if that settled it. “Now if you want to get off the junk, off we’ll get you.”
“How–how long will it take?”
“Say a week, to be safe. Maybe less.”
“Do you mean that? No longer than that?”
“That’s all for the part that counts. You’ll have to take care of yourself for some time after, till your system’s hitting on all eight again, but you’ll be off the junk.”
“Will I suffer–much?”
“A couple of bad days; but they won’t be as bad as you’ll think they are, and your father’s toughness will carry you through them.”
“If,” she said slowly, “I should find out in the middle of it that I can’t go through with it, can I–?”
“There’ll be nothing you can do about it,” I promised cheerfully. “You’ll stay in till you come out the other end.”
She shivered again and asked:
“When shall we start?”
“Day after tomorrow. Take your usual snort tomorrow, but don’t try to stock up. And don’t worry about it. It’ll be tougher on me than on you: I’ll have to put up with you.”