Her face was pale and frighteningly deathlike, but beautiful. It wrung his heart to look at her. So fragile — she had trusted him so completely — and now there was nothing he could do for her. If he had listened to her, if he had only listened to what she had said, this would not have happened to her. She had been afraid, but she had done what he asked her to do.
Even the Sons of the Bird had not been able to frighten her —
What was he saying? Get a grip on yourself, Ed — that didn’t happen; that was part of your nightmare. Still, if anything like that had happened, that was just what she would do — stick in there and back up his play, no matter how badly things were going.
He got a certain melancholy satisfaction out of the idea that, even in his dreams, he was sure of her, sure of her courage and her devotion to him. Guts — more than most men. There was the time she knocked the acid bottle out of the hands of that crazy old biddy he had caught out in the Midwell case. If she hadn’t been quick and courageous then, he would probably be wearing smoked glasses now, with a dog to lead him around.
He displaced the covers a little and looked at the scar on her arm she had picked up that day. None of the acid had touched him, but some had touched her — it still showed, it always would show. But she didn’t seem to care.
“Cynthia! Oh, Cyn, my darling!”
There came a time when even he could not remain in one position any longer. Painfully — the cold he had caught in his muscles after the accident last night made his cramped legs ache like fury — he got himself up and prepared to cope with necessities. The thought of food was repugnant but he knew that he had to feed himself if he were to be strong enough to accomplish the watching and waiting that was going to be necessary.
Rummaging through the kitchen shelves and the icebox turned up some oddments of food, breakfast things, a few canned goods, staples, some tired lettuce. He had no stomach for involved cooking; a can of soup seemed as good a bet as anything. He opened a can of Scotch broth, dumped it into a saucepan and added water. When it had simmered for a few minutes he took it off the fire and ate it from the pan, standing up. It tasted like stewed cardboard.
He went back to the bedroom and sat down again to resume the endless watching. But it soon developed that his feelings with respect to food were sounder than his logic; he bolted hastily for the bathroom and was very sick for a few minutes. Then he washed his face, rinsed out his mouth, and came back to his chair, weak and pale, but feeling sound enough physically.
It began to grow dusky outside; he switched on the dressing-table lamp, shaded it so that it would not shine directly in her eyes, and again sat down. She was unchanged.
The telephone rang.
It startled him almost out of rational response. He and his sorrow had been sitting there watching for so long that he was hardly aware that there could be anything else in the world. But he pulled himself together and answered it.
“Hello? Yes, this is Randall, speaking.”
“Mr. Randall, I’ve had time to think it over and I feel that I owe you an apology — and an explanation.”
“Owe me what? Who is this speaking?”
“Why, this is Jonathan Hoag, Mr. Randall. When you — ”
“Hoag! Did you say ‘Hoag’?”
“Yes, Mr. Randall. I want to apologize for my peremptory manner yesterday morning and to beg your indulgence. I trust that Mrs. Randall was not upset by my — By this time Randall was sufficiently recovered from his first surprise to express himself. He did so, juicily, using words and figures of speech picked up during years of association with the sort of characters that a private detective inevitably runs into. When he had finished there was a gasp from the other end of the line and then a dead silence.