A thread of acrid warning drifted into Janet’s bedroom, dissolved unnoticeably after a single stab at her nostrils. Vera had gone into their bedroom to begin undressing herself. He came in to Janet, in bathrobe and slippers, and he looked so young, so vigorous — to die this soon! He said: “I’ll say good night to you now, hon. You must be tired and want to go to sleep.”
Then as he bent toward her to kiss her forehead, he saw something, stopped short. He changed his mind, sat down on the edge of the bed instead, kept looking at her steadily. “Vera,” he called over his shoulder, “come in here a minute.”
She came, the murderess, in pink satin and foamy lace, like an angel of destruction, stroking her loosened hair with a silver-backed brush.
“What is it now?” She said it a little jumpily.
“Something’s troubling her, Vera. We’ve got to find out what it is. Look, there are tears in her eyes. Look, see that big one, rolling down her cheek?”
Vera’s face was a little tense with fear. She forced it into an expression of sympathetic concern, but she had an explanation ready to throw at him, to forestall further inquiry. “Well after all, Vern,” she said in an undertone, close to his ear, as though not wanting Janet to overhear her, “it’s only natural she should feel that way every once in a while. She has every reason to. Don’t forget, we’ve gotten used to — what happened to her, but it must come back to her every so often.” She gave his shoulder a soothing little pat. “That’s all it is,” she whispered.
He was partly convinced, but not entirely. “But she doesn’t take it so hard other nights. Why should she tonight? Ever since I came home tonight she’s been watching me so. I’ve had the strangest feeling at times that she’s trying to tell me something...”
There was no mistaking the pallor on Vera’s face now, but it could so easily have been ascribed to concern about the invalid’s welfare, to a wifely sharing of her husband’s anxiety.
“I think I’ll sit with her awhile,” he said.
Yes, stay in here with me, pleaded the woman on the bed, stay in here, stay awake, and nothing can happen to you.
Vera put her arms considerately about his shoulders, gently raised him to his feet. “No, you go in and take your bath. The water must be hot now. I’ll sit with her. She’ll be all right in the morning, you’ll see.”
But he won’t, my son won’t.
Vera threw her a grimace meant to express kindly understanding, as he turned and padded out of the room. “She’s just a little downhearted, that’s all.”
She moved over to the window, stood looking out with her back to the room. She couldn’t bear to face those accusing eyes on the bed. There was a muffled sound of splashing coming through the bathroom door, and then after a while he came out.
“Sure you turned that thing off now?” Vera called in to him warningly. A warning not meant to save, and that couldn’t save.
“Yeah,” he said through the folds of a towel, “but you can notice the gas odor distinctly. We’ve got to get that thing fixed the first thing tomorrow. I’m not going to shut myself up in there with it any more. How’s Mom?”
“Shh! I’ve got her to sleep already. No, don’t go in, you’ll only wake her.” She reached up, treacherously snapped the light out.
No! Let me say good-bye to him at least! If I can’t save him, at least let me see him once more before you—
The door ebbed silently, remorselessly closed, cutting her off. Help! Help! ran the demented whirlpool of her thoughts.
There was the murmured sound of their two voices coming thinly through the partition wall for a while. Then a window sash going up. Then the muted snap of the light switch on their side. It seemed she could hear everything through the paper-thin wall. Not even that was to be spared her. Sweat poured down her face, though a cool fresh night wind was blowing in through her own open window.
Silence. Silence that crouched waiting, like an animal ready to pounce. Silence, that pounded, throbbed like a drum. Silence that went on and on, and almost gave birth to hope, it was so protracted.
Then a very slight sound from in there, barely distinguishable at all — the slither of a window sash coming down to the bottom, sealing the room up.
Her own door opened softly, and a ghostly white-gowned form slithered silently past along the wall, lowered the window in here, stuffed rags around its frame. She must have had the water heater turned on for quite some time already — without being lit this time, of course. The sharp, pungent, acrid odor of illuminating gas drifted in after her, thickened momentarily. She slipped out again, on her errand of death.
One of the lower steps of the staircase, far below, creaked slightly at her passage. Even the slight grinding of the oven door, as it came open, reached Janet Miller’s straining ears in the stillness. She must have put them back in there again, while she was washing the dishes.
The odor thickened. Janet Miller began to hear a humming in her ears, at first far away, then drawing nearer, nearer, like a train rushing onward through a long echoing tunnel. He coughed, moaned a little in his sleep, on the other side of the wall. Sleep that was turning into death. He must be getting the effects worse in there. He was nearer the bath, nearer the source of annihilation.
The form glided into Janet’s room again. It looked faintly bluish now, not white any more, from the gas refraction. Janet Miller wanted to be sick at her stomach. There was a roaring in her ears. A train was rushing through her skull, in one side out the other now — and the room was lurching around her.
She was pulled up from the pillow she rested on, a voice seemed to say from miles away, “I guess you’ve had enough to fool them,” and something came down over her head. Suddenly she could breathe pure sweet air again. The roaring held steady for a while, then began receding, as if the train were going in reverse now. It died away at last. The blue dimness went out too.
My son! My son!
Through two round goggles she saw the light of dawn come filtering strangely into the room about her. A wavering figure appeared before them presently, one arm out to support herself against the wall as she advanced. Vera, wavering not because Janet Miller’s vision was defective any longer, but because the quantity of gas accumulated in the airtight rooms was beginning to affect her, even in the short time since she’d taken off her own mask. She held a wet handkerchief pressed to her mouth in its place, and was evidently striving to hold her breath.
She had sense enough to go over to the window first, remove the rags, open it a little from the bottom before she came back to the bed, reared Janet up to a sitting position and fumblingly pulled the mask off her.
The humming started up again in Janet’s ears, the train was coming back toward her.
Vera was gagging into the handkerchief. “Hold your breath all you can, until I get back here,” she sobbed. “I’m telling you this for your own sake.” She trailed the mask after her by its nozzle, went tottering in a zigzag course out of the room.
Janet Miller could hear her floundering, rather than walking, down the stairs. A door far at the back of the house opened, stayed that way.
The humming kept on increasing for a little while, but then drifts of uncontaminated air from the open window began knifing their way in, neutralized it. Gas must still be pouring out of the heater in the bath down the hall, however.
Hold your breath as much as you can, she had said just now. That was to live, though. He’s gone, Janet Miller thought. He must be by now, or she wouldn’t have come in here to take the mask off me. Maybe I can go with him, that’s the best thing for me to do now. She began to take great deep breaths, greedily draw in all the poisoned air she could, hold it in her lungs. Like going under it purposely, in a dentist chair, when they gave you a breath count.