I drove up to San Francisco, had dinner at the St. Germain, stopped at my rooms to collect another suit and a bagful of clean shirts and the like, and got back to the house in the cove a little after midnight. MacMan came out of the darkness while I was tucking the car–we were still using Fitzstephan’s–under the shed. He said nothing had happened in my absence. We went into the house together. Mickey was in the kitchen, yawning and mixing himself a drink before relieving MacMan on sentry duty.
“Mrs. Collinson gone to bed?” I asked.
“Her light’s still on. She’s been in her room all day.”
MacMan and I had a drink with Mickey and then went upstairs. I knocked at the girl’s door.
“Who is it?” she asked. I told her. She said: “Yes?”
“No breakfast in the morning.”
“Really?” Then, as if it were something she had almost forgotten: “Oh, I’ve decided not to put you to all the trouble of curing me.” She opened the door and stood in the opening, smiling too pleasantly at me, a finger holding her place in a book. “Did you have a nice ride?”
“All right,” I said, taking the rest of the morphine from my pocket and holding it out to her. “There’s no use of my carrying this around.”
She didn’t take it. She laughed in my face and said:
“You are a brute, aren’t you?”
“Well, it’s your cure, not mine.” I put the stuff back in my pocket. “If you–” I broke off to listen. A board had creaked down the hall. Now there was a soft sound, as of a bare foot dragging across the floor.
“That’s Mary watching over me,” Gabrielle whispered gaily. “She made a bed in the attic and refused to go home. She doesn’t think I’m safe with you and your friends. She warned me against you, said you were–what was it?–oh, yes–wolves. Are you?”
“Practically. Don’t forget–no breakfast in the morning.”
The following afternoon I gave her the first dose of Vic Dallas’s mixture, and three more at two-hour intervals. She spent that day in her room. That was Saturday.
On Sunday she had ten grains of morphine and was in high spirits all day, considering herself as good as cured already.
On Monday she had the remainder of Vic’s concoction, and the day was pretty much like Saturday. Mickey Linehan returned from the county seat with the news that Fitzstephan was conscious, but too weak and too bandaged to have talked if the doctors had let him; that Andrews had been to San Mateo to see Aaronia Haldorn again; and that she had been to the hospital to see Fink, but had been refused permission by the sheriff’s office.
Tuesday was a more exciting day.
Gabrielle was up and dressed when I carried her orange-juice breakfast in. She was bright-eyed, restless, talkative, and laughed easily and often until I mentioned–off-hand–that she was to have no more morphine.
“Ever, you mean?” Her face and voice were panicky. “No, you don’t mean that?”
“Yeah.”
“But I’ll die.” Tears filled her eyes, ran down her small white face, and she wrung her hands. It was childishly pathetic. I had to remind myself that tears were one of the symptoms of morphine withdrawal. “You know that’s not the way. I don’t expect as much as usual. I know I’ll get less and less each day. But you can’t stop it like this. You’re joking. That would kill me.” She cried some more at the thought of being killed.
I made myself laugh as if I were sympathetic but amused.
“Nonsense,” I said cheerfully. “The chief trouble you’re going to have is in being too alive. A couple of days of that, and you’ll be all set.”
She bit her lips, finally managed a smile, holding out both hands to me.
“I’m going to believe you,” she said. “I do believe you. I’m going to believe you no matter what you say.”
Her hands were clammy. I squeezed them and said:
“That’ll be swell. Now back to bed. I’ll look in every now and then, and if you want anything in between, sing out.”