“Neither do I. Not to anybody, after these last four days. Come in.”
It was a vaguely bookish room, in the middle of which a heavy, hotlooking champagne-shaded piano lamp cast an oasis of light upon a dull blue brocaded divan. Mark Frost went immediately to the divan and lay at full length upon it. Then he moved again and. extracted a package of cigarettes from his jacket. Miss Jameson accepted one and he relaxed again and groaned with hollow relief.
“I’m too comfortable,” he said. “I’m really ashamed to be so comfortable.”
Miss Jameson drew up a chair, just without the oasis of light. “Help yourself,” she replied. “There’s nobody here but us. The family won’t be back until Sunday night.”
“Elegant,” Mark Frost murmured. He laid his arm across his face, shading his eyes. “Whole house to yourself. You’re lucky. Lord, I’m glad to be off that boat. Never again for me.”
“Don’t mention that boat,” Miss Jameson shuddered. “I think it’ll be never again for any of that party. From the way Mrs. Maurier talked this morning. Not for Dawson and Julius, anyway.”
“Did she send a car back for them?”
“No. After yesterday, they could have fallen overboard and she wouldn’t even have notified the police. . But let’s don’t talk about that trip any more,” she said wearily. She sat just beyond the radius of light: a vague humorless fragility. Mark Frost lay on his back, smoking his cigarette. She said, “While I think of it: Will you be sure to lock the door after you? I’ll be here alone tonight.”
“All right,” he promised from beneath his arm. His pale, prehensile mouth released the cigarette and his arm swung it outward to where he hoped there was an ash tray. The ash tray wasn’t there and his hand made a series of futile dabbing motions until Miss Jameson leaned forward and moved the ash tray into the automatic ellipsis of.his hand. After a while she leaned forward again and crushed out her cigarette.
A clock somewhere behind him tapped monotonously at silence and she moved restlessly in her chair, and presently she leaned and took another cigarette from his pack. Mark. Frost removed his arm long enough to raise the pack to his vision and count the remaining cigarettes. Then he replaced his arm.
“You’re quiet tonight,” she remarked. He grunted and once more she, leaned forward and ground out her halfsmoked cigarette with decision. She rose. “I’m going to take off some clothes and get into something cooler. Nobody here to object. Excuse me a moment.”
He grunted again beneath his arm, and she went away from the oasis of light. She opened the door of her room and stood in the darkness just within the door a moment. Then she closed the door audibly, stood for a moment, then opened it again slightly and pressed the light switch.
She went to her dressing table and switched on two small, shaded electric candles there, and returned and switched off the ceiling light. She considered for a while; then she returned to the door and stood with the knob in her hand, then without closing it she went back to the dressing table and turned off one of the lights there. This left the room filled with a soft, pinkish glow in which a hushed gleaming of crystal on the dressing table was the only distinguishable feature. She removed her dress hastily and stood in her underthings with a kind of cringing, passive courage, but there was still no sound of movement beyond the door, and she switched on the other light again and examined herself in the mirror.
She mused again, examining her frail body in its intimate garment. Then she ran swiftly and silently to a chest of drawers and in a locked drawer she sought feverishly among a delicate neat mass of sheer fabric, coming at last upon an embroidered night dress, neatly folded and unworn and scented faintly. Then, standing where the door, should it be opened, would conceal her for a moment, she slipped the gown over her head and from beneath it she removed the undergarment. Then she took her reckless troubled heart and the fragile and humorless calmness in which it beat, back to the dressing table; and sitting before the mirror she assumed a studied pose, combing and combing out her long, uninteresting hair.
* * *
Mark Frost lay at length on the divan, as was his habit, shading his eyes with his arm. At intervals he roused himself to light a fresh cigarette, at each time counting the diminishing few that remained, with static alarm. A clock ticked regularly somewhere in the room. The soft light from the lamp bathed him in a champagne-colored and motionless sea. . He raised a fresh cigarette: his pale, prehensile mouth wrapped about it as though his mouth were a separate organism.
But after a while there were no more cigarettes. And roused temporarily, he remarked his hostess’s prolonged absence. But he lay back again, luxuriating in quiet and the suave surface on which he rested. But before long he raised the empty cigarette package and groaned dismally and rose and prowled quietly about the room, hoping perhaps to find one cigarette someone had forgotten. But there was none.
The couch drew him and he returned to the oasis of light, where he discovered and captured the practically whole cigarette which Miss Jameson had discarded, “Snipe,” he murmured with sepulchral humorlessness and he fired it, averting his head lest he lose his eyelashes in doing so, and he lay once more, shading his eyes with his arm. The clock ticked on in the silence. It seemed to be directly behind him: if he could just roll his eyes a bit farther back into his skull. . He’d better look, anyhow, after a while. After midnight only one trolley to the hour. If he missed the twelve o’clock car—
So, after a while he did look, having to move to do so, and he immediately rose from the divan in a mad, jointless haste. Fortunately he remembered where he had left his hat and he caught it up and plunged down the stairs and on through the dark hall. He blundered into a thing or so, but the pale rectangle of the glass door guided him and after a violent struggle he opened it, and leaping forth he crashed it behind him. It failed to catch and in midflight down the steps he glanced wildly back at the growing darkness of its gap that revealed at the top edge a vague gleam from the light at the head of the stairs.
The corner was not farvand as he ran loosely and frantically toward it there came among the grave gesturing of tall palms a worn and bloodless rumor of the dying moon, and the rising hum of the streetcar crashed among the trees. He saw its lighted windows halt, heard it hum cease, saw the windows move again and heard its hum rise swelling, drowning his hoarse reiterated cries. But the conductor saw him at last and pulled the cord again and the car halted once more, humming impatiently; and Mark Frost plunged his long ungovernable legs across the soft slumbrous glare of polished asphalt and clawed his panting, ghostly body through the opened doors out of which the conductor leaned, calling to him:
“Come on, come on: this ain’t a taxi.”
9
Three gray, softfooted priests had passed on, but in an interval hushed by windowless old walls there lingers yet a thin celibate despair. Beneath a high stone gate with a crest and a device in caroen stone, a beggar lies, nursing in his hand a crust of bread.
(Gordon, Fairchild, and the Semitic man walked in the dark city. Above them, the sky: a heavy, voluptuous night and huge, hot stars like wilting gardenias. About them, streets: narrow, shallow canyons of shadow rich with decay and laced with delicate ironwork, scarcely seen.)
Spring is in the world somewhere, like a blown keen reed, high and fiery cold — he does not yet see it; a shape which he will know — he does not yet see it. The three priests pass on: the walls have hushed their gray and unshod feet.