In no more than ten minutes the woman come again.
"Sir!" This time she rapped sharply. "Are you back in bed?" Her voice too was sharp.
"The door isn't locked." he said. The woman came in. Sluggishly, he pulled himself up. She helped him into his clothes. She even put on his socks, but her touch was unpleasant. In the next room the tea was, as always, good. As he sipped at it, she turned a cold, suspicious eye on him.
"And how was she? Did you like her?"
"Well enough, I suppose."
"That's good. And did you have pleasant dreams?"
"Dreams? None at all. I just slept. It's been a long time since I slept so well." He yawned openly. "I'm still not wide awake."
"I imagine you were tired last night."
"It was her fault. Does she come here often?"
The woman looked down, her expression severe.
"I have a special request." he said. His manner was serious. "When I've finished breakfast, will you let me have some more sleeping medicine? I'll pay extra. Not that I know when the girl will awake up."
"Completely out of question." The woman's face had taken on a muddy pallor, and her shoulders were rigid. "You're really going too far."
"Too far?" He tried to laugh, but the laugh refused to come.
Perhaps suspecting that Eguchi had done something to the girl, she went hastily into the room.
5
The new year came, the wild sea was of dead winter. On land there was little wind.
"It was good of you to come on such a cold night." At the house of the sleeping beauties, the woman opened the door.
"That's why I've come…" said Old Eguchi. "To die on a night like this, with a young girl's skin to warm him, that would be paradise for an old man."
"You say such unpleasant things."
"An old man lives next door to death."
A stove was burning in the usual upstairs room. And as usual the tea was good.
"I feel a draft."
"Oh!" She looked around. "There shouldn't be any."
"Do you have a ghost with us?"
She started and looked at him. Her face was white.
"Give me another cup. A full one. Don't cool it. Let me have it off the fire."
She did as ordered. "Have you heard something?" she asked in a cold voice.
"Maybe."
"Oh! You heard and still you've come?" Sensing that Eguchi had heard, she had evidently decided not to hide the secret. But her expression was forbidding. "I shouldn't, I know, after having brought you all this distance… But may I ask you to leave?"
"I came with my eyes open."
She laughed. One could hear something diabolical in the laugh.
"It was bound to happen. Winter is a dangerous time for old men. Maybe you should close down in winter."
She did not answer.
"I don't know what sort of old men come here, but another dies and then another, you'll be in trouble."
"Tell it to the man who owns the place. What have I done wrong?" Her face was ashen.
"Oh, but you did do something wrong. It was still dark, and they took the body to an inn. O imagine you helped."
She clutched at her knees. "It was for his sake. For his good name."
"Good name? The dead have good names? But you're right. It's stupid, but I imagine things do have to be patched over. More for the sake of the family. Does the owner of this place have the inn too?"
The woman did not answer.
"I doubt if the newspapers would have had much to say, even if he did die beside a naked girl. If I'd been that old man, I think I'd have been happier left as I was."
"There would have been investigations, and the room itself is a little strange, you know, and the other gentlemen who are good enough to come here might have had questions asked. And then there are the girls."
"I imagine the girl would sleep on without knowing the old man had died. He might toss about a little, but I doubt if that would be enough to wake her up."
But if we had left him here, then we'd have had to carry the girl out and hide her. And even then they'd have known that a woman had been with him.
"You'd take her away?"
"And that would be to clear a crime."
"I suppose not."
"So she didn't even know he was dead." How long after the old man died had the girl, put to sleep, lain warming the corpse? She had not know when the body was carried away.
"My blood pressure is good and my heart is strong and you have nothing to worry about. But if it should happen to me, I must ask you not to carry me away. Leave me here beside her."
"Quite out of the question." said the woman hastily. "I must ask you to leave if you insist upon saying such things."
"I'm joking." He could not think that sudden death might be near.
The newspaper notice of the funeral had but mentioned 'sudden death'. The details had been whispered to Eguchi at the funeral by old Kiga. The cause of death had been heart failure.
"it wasn't the sort of inn for a company director to be found in… " said Kiga "… and there was another he often stayed at. And so people said that old Fukura must have died a happy death. Not of course that they know what really happened."
"Oh!"
"A kind of euthanasia, you might say. But not the real thing. More painful. We were very close, and I guessed immediately, and went to investigate. But I haven't told anyone. Not even the family knows. Do those notices in the newspapers amuse you."
There was two notices side by side, the first over the names of his wife and son, the other over that of his company.
"Fukura was like this, you know." Kiga's gesture indicated a thick neck, a thick chest, and especially a large paunch. "You'd better be careful yourself."
"You needn't worry about me."
"And they carried that huge body away in the night."
Who had carried him away? Someone in an automobile, no doubt. The picture was not a pleasant one.
"They seem to have gotten away with it." Whispered old Kiga at the funeral. "But with this sort of thing going on, I doubt if that house will last long."
"Probably not."
Tonight, sensing that Eguchi knew of old Fukura's death, the woman of the house made no attempt to hide the secret. But she was being careful.
"And the girl really knew nothing about it?" Eguchi was unnecessarily persistent.
"There would be no way for her to know. But he seems to have been in pain. There was a scratch from her neck over her breasts. She of course did not know what had happened. 'What a nasty old man', she said when she woke up the next morning."
"A nasty old man. Even in his last struggles."
"It was nothing you could call a wound, really. Just a welt with blood oozing out in places."
She now seemed prepared to tell him everything. He no longer wanted to hear. The victim was but an old man who had been meant to drop dead somewhere some day. Perhaps it had been a happy death. Eguchi's imagination played with the picture of that huge body being carried to the hot spring inn.
"The death of an old man is an ugly thing. I suppose you might think of it as rebirth in heaven… but I'm sure he went the other way."
She didn't comment.
"Do I know the girl who was with him?"
"That I cannot tell you."
"I see."
"She will be on holiday till the welt goes away."
"Another cup of tea, please. I'm thirsty."
"Certainly. I'll change the leaves."
"You managed to keep it quiet. But don't you suppose you'll be closing down before long?"