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“What is it, a burglar-alarm?” she breathed. “Have we touched something we shouldn’t—?”

“It’s from over here — the bedroom. There must be an alarm-clock in there—”

They shot for the entrance, mice coursing on the tide of fright. There was a small folding-clock on the dresser. He picked it up, pummelled the top of it, held it to his ear.

T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting— It was no nearer than before, it was everywhere at once, a ghost-trilling.

He put it down, ran back again the other way. She after him.

“The doorbell, maybe. Oh God, what’ll we do?” She shuddered.

He ran down a few steps, stopped on the stairs, listening.

“No. It’s coming from two places at once. It’s coming from down there, but it’s also coming from up here behind us—”

She stopped him. “It’s no good, it’s dark down there, you’d never find it. Come back, we’ll try up here again—”

They ran back into the bedroom again, the drowning mice.

“Let’s try closing the door,” she said. “That may tell us which room—”

She swung the door to. They listened. It went on undiminished, unaltered, unaffected by the closing-off.

“It’s right here in this bedroom with us, we know that much now— Oh, if it would only stop a minute, give us a chance to collect our faculties—”

He’d dropped to the floor on hands and knees, was padding lumberingly this way and that, animal-like.

“Wait a minute, there’s a box under there! Against the wall, under the bed, painted white— I can see it. Telephone-extension. But where’s the arm itself—?”

He jumped up, ran over to the head of the bed, shunted it slightly out away from the wall. Then his arm reached around and behind it, at about mattress-level, and brought out the instrument.

“It was hooked on behind there, so he could reach it from his pillow without getting up.”

It was still unrecognizable.

“One of these muted bells, so it wouldn’t ring too hard in his ears. Must be another one downstairs, and this is an extension here, that’s what sent the sound all over the place, got us so rattled.”

It was still keeping up, right in his hands while he spoke.

Plaintively, untiringly. T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting—

He looked at her helplessly. “What’ll I do?”

T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-tling— It was like a goad, it would never stop.

“Somebody that doesn’t know, trying to get him. Trying hard, too. I’m going to take a chance and answer.”

Her hand flashed out to his wrist, tightened around it, ice-cold. “Look out! You’re liable to bring the police down on us! They’ll know it’s not his voice.”

“Maybe I can get away with it. Maybe if I talk low, indistinct, they won’t know the difference; I can pretend I’m he. It’s our only chance. We may find out something — even if it’s only a stray word or two more than we know already, we’ll be that much to the good. Stand close by me. Pray for all you’re worth. Here I go.”

He lifted the finger which had been holding the denuded hook down, and the thing was open.

He brought it up to his ear as gingerly as if it were charged with high-voltage electricity.

“Hello,” he said with purring indistinctness. She could barely hear it herself, he swallowed so much of it.

Her heart was pounding. Their heads were close together, blended ear to ear, listening, listening to this call in the night.

“Darling,” a voice said, “this is Barbara.”

She glanced over at the photograph on the dresser. Barbara, the girl in the silver frame. My God, she thought strickenly. You can fool anyone but a man’s best girl. She knows him too well. We’ll never—

His face was white with strain, and she could almost feel a pulse in his temple throbbing against hers.

“Steve, darling, did I leave my gold compact with you? I couldn’t find it when I got back, and I’m worried about it. Look and see if you’ve got it. You may have slipped it in your pocket for me.”

“Your compact?” he said blurredly. “Wait a minute.”

He covered up the receiver momentarily.

“What’ll I do? What’ll I say?”

Bricky wrenched herself away from him suddenly. She ran into the other room. Then she came back again. She was holding something up in her hand to show him, something that caught the light burnishedly and flashed.

“Tell her yes, and go ahead. Keep your voice low. Keep it low. It’s going good so far. She didn’t really want that, that isn’t why she called him up. If you watch your step, you may be able to find out something.”

She crouched against him again, ear to the receiver. He took his muffling hand off the mouthpiece.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I have it here.”

“I couldn’t sleep. That was why I really called you. It wasn’t the compact.”

He shot Bricky a look, meaning “You were right.”

That voice was waiting; it was his turn to say something. Bricky’s elbow kicked into his side urgently.

“I couldn’t either.”

“If we were married, that would make it so much simpler, wouldn’t it? Then you would have just dumped it out of your pocket onto our own dressing-table in our own bedroom.”

Bricky dropped her eyes for a moment and winced. Proposing to a corpse, she thought.

“We’ve never parted angry like this before.”

“I’m sorry,” he said half under his breath.

“Maybe if we hadn’t gone there, to that Perroquet place, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“No,” he agreed submissively.

“Who was she?”

This time he didn’t say anything.

The voice was forbearing with what it took to be his stubbornness. “Who was she, Steve? The tall redhead in the light-green dress.”

“I don’t know.” He gave it because it was the only answer he could give; it turned out to be the appropriate one.

“You told me that before. That was what started it the first time. If you don’t know who she was, then why did she force herself in between us like that on the conga-line?”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t.

“Then why did she slip a note into your hand?”

The voice took his silence for continued denial.

“I saw her do it. I saw her with my own eyes.”

They were both listening intently.

“And after we went back to our table, why did you nod to her, all the way across the room? Yes, I saw that too. I saw it in my compact-mirror, when I didn’t seem to be looking. As if to say, ‘I’ve read your message; I’ll do what you say.’ ”

There was a pause to give him a chance to say something; he couldn’t use it.

“Steve, I’ve dropped my pride to call you up like this; won’t you meet me halfway?”

She waited for him to say something. He didn’t.

“Why, your whole mood changed from that point on. It was as though you couldn’t wait to see me to my door and get me off your hands. I cried, Steve. I cried when you left. I’ve been crying from then until now, through half the night, Steve. Steve, are you listening to me? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“You sound so far-away, so— Is it the telephone or is it you?”

“Poor connection, I guess,” he said, close-mouthed.

“But Steve, you sound so — so cagey, as though you were afraid to talk to me. I know it’s silly, but I have the most curious impression that you’re not alone. There’s the oddest wait before everything you say, almost as though someone were there right beside you giving you stage-directions.”