If the reader noticed, he made no move to correct its course. It was perhaps better for reading here, away from all the others. It was also better for dying.
And now a new branch springs erect among the other branches, a branch that wasn’t there before. A branch without leaf, without sap, without bend. Black, and foundry-hard, and with a little round malignant mouth at the end; and its flowering will be death.
The little boat floated nearer and nearer, resting bottom-to-bottom on another little boat etched in glass. The reader read. The black branch hung steady on the air.
Death cleared his throat a little, down low behind the gun sight, to be more comfortable. A very little sound it was, almost a cozy, disarming sound.
The little boat floated nearer, nearer still. The black branch traced it down the surface of the lake, like a surveyors instrument, but shifting so very slowly it could not be seen to move at all.
Detonation.
Death’s eyes shuttered and opened, and his head jerked back a little, making a blurred double outline for an instant instead of a single clear one.
The screening branches danced a little. And paled in smoke, and darkened again. The report seemed to come from the opposite slope. It was as though only the echo had sounded from here, the original had been over there.
In the boat no commotion, no violent jar, no dramatic alteration. Scarcely a sign of anything having happened. The occupant made a lazy half-turn over to the gunwale. Instead of reading a book, he was now peering down into the water alongside, as though trying to make out something at myopic range. One arm hung over beside his head and trailed in the water. The book had fallen in and slowly thinned into submersion, as though it were having the color gradually washed out of it. His hat had also fallen in, but that remained afloat, like a ribbon-banded lily pad. The boat continued placidly to drift.
Death got up and ran, bent low, head down, gun parallel to ground, but agile and swift, as death always is, cleverly lacing in and out among the shadowy tree trunks to quick-gained enshrouding disappearance.
17
The opening sweep of the office door, next morning, seemed to sweep all the blood from his face with it as though it were linked by some drainage tube to his own veins.
He was left with a paper face. Paper-white. Paper- stiff.
A dark-blue suit just like Wise wore. Stiff straw boater just like Wise wore. Wise wearing them.
“Hello, Marshall,” Wise saluted him carelessly, striding by.
Marshall didn’t answer. Paper doesn’t. Paper can’t.
“You don’t look good,” Marshall heard him say, from somewhere behind him now. “Why don’t you get out more on Sundays? I told you to come with me yesterday Didn’t go rowing after all, though. Fellow talked me into trying my hand at golf with him, instead.”
18
He was still in the act of hoisting hat to hook when her arms closed about him from behind, across shoulders.
She was overjoyed about something, that was obvious.
“What’s the excitement?” he said amiably. He could sense that it was a benign one, nothing to cause him alarm, so he was untroubled by it.
“I have a surprise for you.”
“What?”
But instead of telling him, she tested his face, stroking two fingers along it. “I want you to shave before you do another thing.”
“Shave?” he said. “Now?”
She gave him a little forward push between the shoulders. “Right now.”
On the bed, in the bedroom, he made a discovery. “Hey,” he said. “That’s my other suit.”
“I know that, mister,” she called in to him pertly. “You just climb right into it.”
He came back to the doorway to ask her: “What’s it all about?”
She clasped her hands together, almost in a form of benediction. “We’ve got an invitation!”
Mrs. Bennett, on the top floor, he thought patronizingly.
“Mrs. Bennett, on the top floor,” he said patronizingly.
“That’s no invitation,” she said, tilting her nose, “living right in the same house with us. I mean a real invitation. From outside. To go out. You finish up in there. You’ll hear all about it when you come out.”
When he had, and had sat down to the table with her, he suggested patiently, “Now would you mind telling me?”
“Can’t you guess?” she said happily.
“No,” he said forebearingly. “If I could then I wouldn’t be asking you.”
“Your friend, Wise, at the office. We’re invited over to his house. For the evening. For an evening of bridge.”
A crust of bread was suddenly arrested midway down his throat. He finally dislodged it with a cough and a swallow of water.
“Well, it’s all right to look surprised,” she remonstrated. “But you don’t have to look so stunned about it.”
“He invited us over?” he said faintly.
“He didn’t. She did.”
“She?”
“His wife. Mrs. Wise. You act as though you didn’t know he had a wife at all.”
I didn’t until now, he thought. And I’m still not sure he has.
Some policewoman, maybe, that’s been assigned to work with him on it. On me.
She’d already jumped up from the table, meanwhile, after having touched scarcely a thing. “It’s much more fun to eat at somebody else’s house. And it’s so long since I’ve done that. I’m going to start getting ready. I want to look my very best. Stay where you are... No, no dishes tonight.” She’d gone on into the bedroom.
He took out a cigarette, forgot to light it. Kept it thrust under his over lip, like a thermometer taking the temperature of his thoughts.
I’ve got to get out of this. I’m not going there. I can’t go there. It’s like going to a — it’s like walking into a police precinct house of your own accord and giving yourself up. It’s like standing in the line-up for three solid hours. Only, with a bridge lamp pouring its light on me instead of a row of footlights.
She was twittering like a bird on the first day of spring in there, behind him. She was talking out of sheer happiness.
“It’s so long since I’ve played. Press, when was the last time you played bridge?”
He tried to remember. “Before our marriage, I guess. At your house, wasn’t it?”
“You sound so doleful about it. It’s supposed to be fun. Oh well, the game is just the excuse, anyway.”
You bet it is, he interjected bitterly. You bet!
“It’s the chatting around the table, the little sandwiches afterwards, the ‘Now you must come over and see us’ as you’re leaving, the waving from the door.” She ended with a deep sigh, the sound of which carried even to where he was.
Starved for sociability. Tired of loneliness, of exile. When there’s no fear, you love the company of your fellow men and women. When there’s no guilt, you seek them out.
When there is...
She came bustling in, ready now, hands out before her, adjusting something at her pulse. “I should have had a new pair of gloves. Do I look all right? How’s my hair?”
He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked down at the table.
“I’m not going. I... call them up and tell them we can’t make it. Give them some excuse. Say I’m not well. Or wait — I’ll call them for you.” He got out of his chair.
Her face was pitiful. All the animation had died. She had turned white with disappointment. With a stronger emotion than that, even; utter disheartenment, futility, surrender before some mysterious inevitable, that she couldn’t fathom but that she couldn’t escape either.