I can’t tell you now, Paul, but it’s dynamite and you’ve got to keep it from going on sale. Get Phelps out of bed and go down and look at it yourselves. You’ve got maybe three hours before it’s out on the streets.
That’s right. . . . What? . . . Opal? Oh, she’s all right. She’s with me. . . . Yes, I’ll bring her home. . . . And will you phone the county people about Mathews? I’m going back there now. Right.”
He laid the receiver on the table and stood up, staggered to the door, got it open after the second attempt, and fell out into the hallway, where the wall kept him from tumbling down on the floor.
The red-faced man came hurrying to him. “Just lean on me, brother, and I’ll make you comfortable. I got a blanket spread over the davenport so we won’t have to worry about the mud and–”
Ned Beaumont said: “I want to borrow a car. I’ve got to go back to Mathews’s.”
“Is it him that’s dead?”
“Yes.”
The red-faced man raised his eyebrows and made a squeaky whistling sound.
“Will you lend me the car?” Ned Beaumont demanded.
“My God, brother, be reasonable! How could you drive a car?”
Ned Beaumont backed away from the other, unsteadily. “I’ll walk,” he said.
The red-faced man glared at him. “You won’t neither. If you’ll keep your hair on till I get my pants I’ll drive you back, though likely enough you’ll die on me on the way.”
Opal Madvig and Eloise Mathews were together in the large ground-floor room when Ned Beaumont was carried rather than led into it by the red-faced man. The men had come in without knocking. The two girls were standing close together, wide-eyed, startled.
Ned Beaumont pulled himself out of his companion’s arms and looked dully around the room. “Where’s Shad?” he mumbled.
Opal answered him: “He’s gone. All of them have gone.”
“All right,” he said, speaking difficultly. “I want to talk to you alone.”
Eloise Mathews ran over to him. “You killed him!” she cried.
He giggled idiotically and tried to put his arms around her.
She screamed, struck him in the face with an open hand.
He fell straight back without bending. The red-faced man tried to catch him, but could not. He did not move at all after he struck the floor.
VII.
The Henchmen
1
Senator Henry put his napkin on the table and stood up. Rising, he seemed taller than he was and younger. His somewhat small head, under its thin covering of grey hair, was remarkably symmetrical. Aging muscles sagged in his patrician face, accentuating its vertical lines, but slackness had not vet reached his lips, nor was it apparent that the years had in any way touched his eyes: they were a greenish grey, deepset, not large but brilliant, and their lids were firm. He spoke with studied grave courtesy: “You’ll forgive me if I carry Paul off upstairs for a little while?”
His daughter replied: “Yes, if you’ll leave me Mr. Beaumont and if you’ll promise not to stay up there all evening.”
Ned Beaumont smiled politely, inclining his head.
He and Janet Henry went into a white-walled room where coal burned sluggishly in a grate under a white mantelpiece and put somber red gleams on the mahogany furniture.
She turned on a lamp beside the piano and sat down there with her back to the keyboard, her head between Ned Beaumont and the lamp. Her blond hair caught lamplight and held it in a nimbus around her head. Her black gown was of some suèdelike material that reflected no light and she wore no jewelry.
Ned Beaumont leaned over to knock ash from his cigar down on the burning coal. A dark pearl in his shirt-bosom, twinkling in the fire’s glow as he moved, was like a red eye winking. When he straightened, he asked: “You’ll play something?”
“Yes, if you wish–though I don’t play exceptionally well–but later. I’d like to talk to you now while I’ve an opportunity.” Her hands were together in her lap. Her arms, held straight, forced her shoulders up and in towards her neck.