'For God's sake let's get her out of here--out of this house--now, while there's time!'
I said she'd look swell running through the streets barefooted and with nothing on but a bloodstained nightie.
I turned on the light again when I heard him making noises. He was jerking his arms out of his overcoat. He said: 'I've got the car at the corner, and I can carry her to it,' and started towards her with the coat held out.
She ran around to the other side of me, moaning: 'Oh, don't let him touch me.'
I put out an arm to stop him. It wasn't strong enough. The girl got behind me. Collinson pursued her and she came around in front. I felt like the center of a merry-go-round, and didn't like the feel of it. When Collinson came in front of me, I drove my shoulder into his side, sending him staggering over against the side of the altar. Following him, I planted myself in front of the big sap and blew off steam: 'Stop it. If you want to play with us you've got to stop cutting up, and do what you're told, and let her alone. Yes or no?'
He straightened his legs under him and began: 'But, man, you can't--'
'Let her alone,' I said. 'Let me alone. The next break you make I'm going to sock your jaw with the flat of a gun. If you want it now, say so. Will you behave?'
He muttered: 'All right.'
I turned around to see the girl, a gray shadow, running towards the open door, her bare feet making little noise on the tiles. My shoes made an ungodly racket as I went after her. Just inside the door I caught her with an arm around her waist. The next moment my arm was jerked away, and I was flung aside, smacking into the wall, slipping down on one knee. Collinson, looking eight feet tall in the darkness, stood close to me, storming down at me, but all I could pick out of his many words was a 'damn you.'
I was in a swell mood when I got up from my knee. Playing nursemaid to a crazy girl wasn't enough: I had to be chucked around by her boy friend. I put all the hypocrisy I had into my voice when I said casually, 'You oughtn't to do that,' to him and went over to where the girl was standing by the door.
'We'll go up to your room now,' I told her.
'Not Eric,' she protested.
'He won't bother you,' I promised again, hoping there'd be more truth to it this time. 'Go ahead.'
She hesitated, then went through the doorway. Collinson, looking partly sheepish, partly savage, and altogether discontented, followed me through. I closed the door, asking the girl if she had the key. 'No,' she said, as if she hadn't known there was a key.
We rode up in the elevator, the girl keeping me always between her and her fiance, if that's what he still was. He stared fixedly at nothing. I studied her face, still trying to dope her out, to decide whether she had been shocked back into sanity or farther away from it. Looking at her, the first guess seemed likely, but I had a hunch it wasn't. We saw nobody between the altar and her room. I switched on her lights and we went in. I closed the door and put my back against it. Collinson put his overcoat and hat on a chair and stood beside them, folding his arms, looking at Gabrielle. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my feet.
'Tell us the whole thing, quick,' I commanded.
She looked up at my face and said: 'I should like to go to sleep now.'
That settled the question of her sanity, so far as I was concerned: she hadn't any. But now I had another thing to worry me. This room was not exactly as it had been before. Something had been changed in it since I had been there not many minutes ago. I shut my eyes, trying to shake up my memory for a picture of it then; I opened my eyes, looking at it now.
'Can't I?' she asked.
I let her question wait while I put my gaze around the room, checking it up item by item, as well as I could. The only change I could put my finger on was Collinson's coat and hat on the chair. There was no mystery to their presence; and the chair, I decided, was what had bothered me. It still did. I went to it and picked up his coat. There was nothing under it. That's what was wrong: a green dressing-gown, or something of the sort, had been there before, and was not there now. I didn't see it elsewhere in the room, and didn't have enough confidence in its being there to search for it. The green mules were under the bed.
I said to the girl:
'Not now. Go in the bathroom and wash the blood off, and then get dressed. Take your clothes in there with you. When you're dressed, give your nightgown to Collinson.' I turned to him. 'Put it in your pocket and keep it there. Don't go out of the room until I come back, and don't let anybody in. I won't be gone long. Got a gun?'
'No,' he said, 'but I--'
The girl got up from the bed, came over to stand close in front of me, and interrupted him.
'You can't leave me here with him,' she said earnestly. 'I won't have it. Isn't it enough that I've killed one man tonight? Don't make me kill another.' She was earnest, but not excited, speaking as if her words were quite reasonable.
'I've got to go out for a while,' I said. 'And you can't stay alone. Do what I tell you.'
'Do you know what you're doing?' she asked in a thin, tired voice. 'You can't know, or you wouldn't do it.' Her back was to Collinson. She lifted her face so that I saw rather than heard the nearly soundless words her lips formed: 'Not Eric. Let him go.'
She had me woozy: a little more of it and I would have been ready for the cell next to hers: I was actually tempted to let her have her way. I jerked a thumb at the bathroom and said: 'You can stay in there till I come back, if you want, but he'll have to stay here.'
She nodded hopelessly and went into the dressing-alcove. When she crossed from there to the bathroom, carrying clothes in her arms, a tear was shiny beneath each eye.
I gave my gun to Collinson. The hand in which he took it was tight and shaky. He was making a lot of noise with his breath. I said: 'Now don't be a sap. Give me some help instead of trouble for once. Nobody in or out: if you have to shoot, shoot.'
