It was a beautiful mirror; the silvering was well-nigh perfect and the glass was air-clear. She felt as if she could push her hand through it.
He went to sleep, when they turned in, a little more readily than she did — the nap, no doubt. She rested on one elbow and looked at him for a long time after his breathing had become regular. Sweet Teddy! He was a good boy — good to her certainly. Tomorrow she would tell him not to bother about the other mirror — she didn’t need it. All she really wanted was to be with him, for nothing ever to separate them. Things did not matter; just being together was the only thing that really mattered.
She glanced at the mirror. It certainly was handsome. So beautifully clear — like an open window. She felt as if she could climb through it, like Alice Through the Looking Glass.
He awoke when his name was called. “Up out of there, Randall! You’re late!”
It wasn’t Cynthia; that was sure. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and managed to focus them. “Wha’s up?”
“You,” said Phipps, leaning out through the beveled glass. “Get a move on! Don’t keep us waiting.”
Instinctively he looked toward the other pillow. Cynthia was gone.
Gone! Then he was up out of bed at once, wide awake, and trying frantically to search everywhere at once. Not in the bathroom. “Cyn!” Not in the living room, not in the kitchen-breakfast room. “Cyn! Cynthia! Where are you?” He pawed frantically in each of the closets. “Cyn!”
He returned to the bedroom and stood there, not knowing where to look next — a tragic, barefooted figure in rumpled pajamas and tousled hair.
Phipps put one hand on the lower edge of the mirror and vaulted easily into the room. “This room should have had a place to install a full-length mirror,” he remarked curtly as he settled his coat and straightened his tie. “Every room should have a full-length mirror. Presently we will require it — I shall see to it.”
Randall focused his eyes on him as if seeing him for the first time. “Where is she?” he demanded. “What have you done with her?” He stepped toward Phipps menacingly.
“None of your business,” retorted Phipps. He inclined his head toward the mirror. “Climb through it.”
“Where is she?” he screamed and attempted to grab Phipps by the throat.
Randall was never clear as to just what happened next. Phipps raised one hand — and he found himself tumbled against the side of the bed. He tried to struggle up again — fruitlessly. His efforts had a helpless, nightmare quality. “Mr. Crewes!” Phipps called out. “Mr. Reifsnider — I need your help.”
Two more faces, vaguely familiar, appeared in the mirror. “On this side, Mr. Crewes, if you please,” Phipps directed. Mr. Crewes climbed through. “Fine! We’ll put him through feet first, I think.”
Randall had nothing to say about it; he tried to resist, but his muscles were water. Vague twitchings were all he could accomplish. He tried to bite a wrist that came his way and was rewarded with a faceful of hard knuckles — a stinging rap rather than a blow.
“I’ll add to that later,” Phipps promised him.
They poked him through and dumped him on a table — the table. It was the same room he had been in once before, the board room of Detheridge & Co. There were the same pleasant, icy faces around the table, the same jovial, pig-eyed fat man at the head. There was one minor difference; on the long wall was a large mirror which did not reflect the room, but showed their bedroom, his and Cynthia’s, as if seen in a mirror, with everything in it swapped left for right.
But he was not interested in such minor phenomena. He tried to sit up, found that he could not, and was forced to make do with simply raising his head. “Where did you put her?” he demanded of the huge chairman.
Stoles smiled at him sympathetically. “Ah, Mr. Randall! So you’ve come to see us again. You do get around, don’t you? Entirely too much, in fact.”