“I’ll bet this is the first time she’s been sick in years,” said Kincaid. He sounded gloomy. “Well, that seems to take care of tonight. Is there anything I can do? Errands to run?”
“I don’t think so, thanks. If the doctor gives her something he’ll have it delivered.”
“Maybe tomorrow, then. How’s Cornelia, by the way?”
“Fine, I suppose.”
“They didn’t call last night?”
“No. Of course,” said Margaret, mostly for her own benefit, “there’s no real reason why they should.”
“There is now,” returned Kincaid mildly. “They ought to know you’re in charge of a sick-bed, if only to make them a little more grateful. No news of your wandering landlady?”
“Mrs. Foale?” Margaret was somehow astonished. “No.”
What did he expect, she wondered presently, after she had left the phone—postcards? Little bulletins from abroad? He had been much too light with his question; he had only underlined the depth of his interest in Mrs. Foale. And also, for some reason that could hardly stem from all those years ago in the sixth grade, Cornelia.
Well, he was an attractive man, both in looks and in manner, and possibly he kept track of all the women who entered his life even casually; possibly he established with all of them that wordless, effortless intercommunication. There were, thought Margaret angrily, men like that, but they ought to be labelled.
She found Hilary awake, listlessly pinking the edge of her sheet with her scissors, forestalling any kind of severity with a complaining, “I can’t swallow.”
“Yes, you can,” said Margaret after an alarmed second. “You’ve been asleep, and your throat is dry. Wouldn’t you like some soup?”
Hilary recoiled from the mention of soup, tea, milk, eggnog, or ginger ale. She finally unbent to sherbet, which she swallowed, Margaret noticed, as though she were eating jagged stones. Tonsillitis? Quinsy? Damn the Revertons for dropping her off so blithely, and would the doctor never come?
Like an answer to prayer, the doorbell rang. Margaret had left the porch light on with the coming of darkness; she put a hand to the lock, thankfully, and snatched it back as though she had been scorched.
There he was, the man who called himself Julio, only a thin width of curtained glass away: big hat, shabby serpentine body, smiling at her with foolish determination, brim-shadowed eyes taking in the empty room behind her. While she stood there, frozen, he put out a finger without moving his gaze from hers and pressed the doorbell again. It made a mad nightmarish sound in Margaret’s ears, face to face as they were.
She lifted her voice to penetrate the glass. “Go away, please. There’s someone sick here.”
He said something she didn’t hear, Spanish or indistinct English, and turned the doorknob. Although the lock was on, Margaret’s heart gave an enormous pound of panic: he could probably smash the door open, if he tried hard enough, and he could very easily break a pane just above the lock. She gathered her voice and repeated clearly, “Go away. At once.”
His hand went out, the doorbell shrilled again. He was very drunk indeed, and very determined; he had found a source of money in this house and knew she was here alone with a child.
The doorknob turned again, the wood pressed slightly in. Margaret’s throat was tight with not bursting into gasps of panic; he would, in that case, smash the glass instantly. She could not turn off the porch light and walk away, because then, for all she knew, he might be trying the back door, or the cellar entrance, or the windows. He might get in, in this strange black New Mexico night, and then two dollars, or ten, would not calm him. She would simply have to stand here, holding him off with a stare as immobile as his, until he gave up, or the doctor came, or something, something happened to get her out of this.
Hilary called her, querulously. Margaret didn’t turn her head. She was too terrified to move, to turn her back on him for the necessary time it would take to get to the telephone, call the police, identify herself and her address and her complaint.
The man outside made a sudden movement of fury, mouthed something she didn’t hear, and tinned and wove out of the light. On the very edge of it, face now buried in darkness, he turned back and lifted a fist and shook it at her.
It ought to have been laughably melodramatic, behind the safety of the lock, but it was not. It seemed to Margaret, shaken as she was, as primitive and menacing as a gorilla’s beating on his chest: an expression of rage, a warning of violence to come.
He was really gone; she could feel the night grow impersonal again. A car hummed by, a bird called sleepily’ somewhere; any immediate threat had withdrawn.
. . . But this did it, she thought, going into Hilary’s room and taking deep deliberate breaths to quiet herself. When Philip and Cornelia called, she would tell them frankly that the house and Hilary were too much for her. She might even fabricate an urgent message from New York. She would, she must, get out of here as fast as possible.
“Very unusual,” said Dr. Wimple, looking at her closely and doubtingly. “These people are gentle as a rule—courteous to an extreme. I suppose now and then one of them gets a wine-drinking streak on, but it certainly seems peculiar. You’re sure you didn’t—say anything to him?”
“I gave him some money,” said Margaret wearily, “because he demanded it. I did ask him to leave, because it looked as though he wouldn’t. Should I have had him to lunch?”
She had already regretted telling Dr. Wimple anything at all, and would not have if his solicitous inquiry about her pallor and her shaking hands had not released her into a burst of pointless tears. He had offered her a sedative, which she refused; he seemed now,
