Nothing else sounded after that. After a long while, the extra little swirl of air was cut off again. Outside, an owl hooted in a tree and the stars began to pale.
The Cameron girl was unusually vivacious at breakfast, perhaps because she had had the making of it. She was whistling blithely when Holmes came down, a derelict with a shadowy jawline and soot under his eyes. Miss Kitchener was there ahead of him, shining with soap and water, her nocturnal timidity a thing of the past — at least until the coming night.
“You ladies’ll have to excuse me,” he said, tracing a hand down his sandpapery face as he sat down.
“It’s your house, after all,” Freddy Cameron pointed out.
Miss Kitchener contented herself with a thin-lipped smile, as though there were no excuse for personal untidiness under any circumstances.
The German shepherd came muzzling up to him, evidently remembering yesterday. He ignored it. Freddy Cameron breathed, so low he barely caught it, “No poison test today?”
He shoved his chair back. “Sam’ll be back about noon, to take up where he left off. I’m going in there now and expect to be left undisturbed.”
“I’ll go upstairs and begin my typing,” Miss Kitchener said. “I don’t believe you’ll hear me from where you are.”
“I’ll paint Easter eggs,” Freddy Cameron said disgruntledly.
He closed the living-room door after him, thrust cords of wood into the fireplace, kindled a wedge of newspaper under them. He stripped the oilcloth hood off the dictating machine that stood on the table, adjusted it to the best of his ability but with an air of somewhat baffled uncertainty, as though Sam had usually been delegated to attend to this detail along with all the others. The “inspiration chair,” he noticed, was slightly out of true with the diagonal pattern of the carpet. He shifted it slightly, smiling a little to himself, as if at his own idiosyncrasies. Then he picked up the speaking tube appended to the machine, sat back, everything in readiness for a long day’s creative work. Everything but one thing—
The apparatus made a muted whirr, waiting. The necessary flow of thought wouldn’t seem to come. Inspiration appeared to be log-jammed. He glanced helplessly up at the row of his own books on a shelf, as if wondering how he’d done it before.
A floor board creaked unexpectedly somewhere near at hand. He whirled around in the chair, frowning menacingly at the supposed interruption.
There was no one in the room with him at all; the door was still securely closed. The flames leaped higher behind him, filling the cavern of the fireplace with heat and a crimson rose glow.
The Cameron girl snapped her head around, found his eyes boring into her from the doorway some five minutes later. “Wh-what happened?” she faltered uneasily. “No quarantine this morning?”
“I seem to have hit an air pocket. Come in here, will you? I want to talk to you. Maybe that’ll help to get me started.”
“You sure you want me in there in the holy of holies?” she wanted to know almost frightenedly.
“I’m sure,” he said in a flinty voice.
She made her way in ahead of him, looking back across her shoulder at him the whole way. He closed the door on the two of them. “Sit down.”
“That chair? I thought no one else was allowed—”
“That’s Sam’s line of talk.” His eyes fixed themselves on her piercingly. “What’s the difference between one chair and another?” The question almost seemed to have a special meaning.
She sank into it without further protest. He squatted down, adding an extra log or two to the fire, which was only now beginning to draw, as though he’d had to start it a second time. Then he sat back diagonally opposite her, in a chair she had occupied whenever she had been in here before. He seemed to be watching her closely, as though he’d never seen her before.
“What’ll I talk about?” she suggested presently.
He didn’t answer, just kept watching her. A minute or two ticked by; the only sound in the room with them was the steadily increasing hum from the fireplace.
“Deep thought,” she said mockingly.
“Let me feel your hand a minute,” he said unexpectedly. She extended it to him indolently. The palm was perfectly dry. The wrist was steady.
He flung it back at her with such unexpected force that it struck her across the chest. He was on his feet. “Come on, get out of that chair fast,” he said hoarsely. “You sure had me fooled. What’s your racket, kid?”
But before she had a chance to answer, he was already over at the door, had thrown it open, was thumbing her out past him with an urgency that had something tingling about it.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway?” she drawled reproachfully as she regained her own doorway opposite.
“Keep out of the way for a while; don’t come in here, no matter what you hear. Got that straight?” Some of the rough edge left his voice as he called up the stairs with suddenly regained urbanity, “Miss Kitchener, could I speak to you down here a minute?”
The diligent pitter-patter of her typing, which had been like soft rain on a roof, broke off short and she came down unhesitatingly, at her usual precise, fussy little gait.
He motioned her in. “How far have you gotten?” he asked, closing the door.
“I’m midway through the opening chapter,” she announced, beaming with complacency.
“Sit down. The reason I called you is I’m changing this lead character’s name to— No, sit down there, right where you are,”
“That’s your chair, isn’t it?”
“Oh, any chair. Sit down while I discuss this with you.” He forced her to take it by preempting the other one.
She lowered a spine stiff as a ramrod to the outermost edge of it, contacting it by no more than half an inch.
“Will changing his name give you any extra work? Has he appeared by name yet in the part you’ve already transcribed?”
She was up again with alacrity. “Just a moment, I’ll go up and make sure—”
He motioned her down again. “No, don’t bother.” And then with mild wonderment, “You were just going over that part, how is it you can’t recall offhand? Well, anyway, it occurred to me that in Northern stories readers are used to identifying French-Canadian characters with the villain, and therefore it might be advisable to— Miss Kitchener, are you listening to me? What’s the matter, are you ill?”
“It’s too warm in this chair, the heat of the fire. I can’t stand it.”
Without warning he reached forward, seized one of her hands before she could draw it back. “You must be mistaken. How can you say the chair’s too warm for you? Your hand’s ice-cold — trembling with cold!” He frowned. “At least let me finish what I have to say to you.”
Her breathing had become harshly audible, as though she had asthma. “No, no!”
They both gained their feet simultaneously. He pressed her down by the shoulder, firmly but not roughly, so that she sank into the chair again. She attempted to writhe out of it sideways this time. Again he gripped her, pinned her down. Her spectacles fell off.
“Why is your face so white? Why are you so deathly afraid?”
She seemed to be in the throes of hysteria, beyond reasoning. A knife unexpectedly flashed out from somewhere about her — her sleeve, perhaps — and was upraised against him across the back of the chair. Her hand was quick; his hand was quicker. He throttled it by the wrist, pinning it down over the chair top; it turned a little, and the knife fell out, glanced off the low fire screen behind her and into the flames.