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.
He was not satisfied. He wanted Hoag to speak so that he could interrupt him and continue the tirade. “Are you there, Hoag?”
“Uh, yes.”
“I wanted to add this: Maybe you think that it is a joke to catch a woman alone in a hallway and scare the daylights out of her. I don’t! But I’m not going to turn you over to the police-no, indeed! Just as soon as Mrs. Randall gets well, I’m going to look you up myself and then-God help you, Hoag. You’ll need it.”
There followed such a long silence that Randall was sure that his victim had hung up. But it seemed that Hoag was merely collecting his wits. “Mr. Randall, this is terrible-”
“You bet it is!”
“Do you mean to tell me that I accosted Mrs. Randall and frightened her?”
“You should know!”
“But I don’t know, truly I don’t.” He paused, and then continued in an unsteady voice. “This is the sort of thing I have been afraid of, Mr. Randall, afraid that I might discover that during my lapses of memory I might have been doing terrible things. But to have harmed Mrs. Randall-she was so good to me, so kind to me. This is horrible.”
“You’re telling me!”
Hoag sighed as if he were tired beyond endurance.
“Mr. Randall?” Randall did not answer. “Mr. Randall-there is no use in my deluding myself; there is only one thing to be done. You’ve got to turn me over to the police.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve known it ever since our last conversation; I thought about it all day yesterday, but I did not have the courage. I had hoped that I was through with my . . . my other personality, but today it happened again. The whole day is a blank and I just came to myself this evening, on getting home. Then I knew that I had to do something about it, so I called you to ask you to resume your investigations. But I never suspected that I could possibly have done anything to Mrs. Randall.” He seemed most convincingly overcome by shock at the idea. “When did . . . did this happen, Mr. Randall?”
Randall found himself in a most bewildered state of mind. He was torn between the desire to climb through the phone and wring the neck of the man he held responsible for his wife’s desperate condition and the necessity for remaining where he was to care for her. In addition to that he was bothered by the fact that Hoag refused to talk like a villain. While speaking with him, listening to his mild answers and his worried tones, it was difficult to maintain the conception of him as a horrid monster of the Jack-the-Ripper type-although he knew consciously that villains were often mild in manner.
Therefore his answer was merely factual. “Nine thirty in the morning, about.”
“Where was I at nine thirty this morning?”