Down in the lobby he used the house telephone and called up the Endicotts’.
“Lieutenant Valcour talking,” he said.
“O’Brian, sir.”
“Everything quiet?”
“Indeed and it is, sir.”
“Mr. Hollander get there yet?”
“He’s just this minute after arriving, sir. He’s upstairs with Dr. Worth now.”
“Did he identify himself all right?”
“He did that, Lieutenant, with cards and a driver’s licence.”
“Good. I’ll be along in about an hour now. Goodbye.”
He was helped by the bitter wind as he walked east to Broadway. He found a taxi and gave the driver Hollander’s address on East Fifty-second Street. He settled back and closed his eyes. He went to sleep.
XIII
2:01 a.m.—Glittering Eyes
Nurse Murrow didn’t slumber, exactly; it was much too slender a lapse from consciousness for that. But it was not until the second gentle rapping that she stood up.
Someone was rapping on the hall door.
She glanced at her wrist watch as she crossed the room, and was glad to note that it was just after two o’clock. Three or four hours, now, and it would be dawn. She’d get some coffee, then, and her work for the night would be almost over.
As she turned the key in the lock she noticed with a sharp thrill of interest that the two policemen, very quiet, very alert, but still sitting on their chairs in the bathroom doorway, had each drawn a gun from its holster and was holding it by his side. She opened the door.
Dr. Worth, his dignity considerably muffled in camel’s hair, stood in the corridor with a stranger.
“Miss Murrow,” he said, “this is Mr. Thomas Hollander, the friend who is going to sit up with Mr. Endicott. He understands everything about the situation, and I have advised him just what to do.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Dr. Worth failed futilely in suppressing a yawn. “Are there any reports?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Then I’ll return to my room. Call me at the slightest indication.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Hollander came inside. Miss Murrow closed the door and locked it again. She stood watching Hollander as he went an uncertain step or two toward the bed, with that natural hesitation with which one approaches the very ill. He was a personable young man in his thirties. He was more than personable, she decided. Not handsome, exactly—heavens, no—she corrected herself rapidly. The features weren’t moulded in the tiresome regularity of handsomeness. Engaging? Perhaps. A body perfectly proportioned, with the broad shoulders and slim hips of a fighter—of, yes, a prize fighter—an amateur sportsman.
Hollander had finished with staring down at Endicott. His walk, as he came over to where she was standing, caused Miss Murrow to change her opinion as to his vocation. She put him down as a sailor, a yachtsman. There was a buoyancy, a certain fluidity, in his movements, as if his feet were accustomed to maintaining him with poise across the surfaces of moving things. His eyes, except for one flashing glance, did not meet her own directly.
“Is it all right to smoke?” he said.
Miss Murrow smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Hollander. Mr. Endicott’s lungs require as clear air as possible. I’ve even opened that window a little to keep the atmosphere in the room quite fresh.” She nodded toward the window above the large mahogany chest. The sash was up about six or seven inches from the bottom.
“Oh.” Hollander continued to stand before her, giving her still that peculiar effect of movement. There was nothing perceptible about it. His body was like a stolid field, motionless, beneath drifting shadows of the clouds. “Will Dr. Worth be here when Herb comes to?”
Nurse Murrow felt a professional stiffening. “I will inform Dr. Worth at the first sign of returning consciousness.”
“How?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“How’ll you inform him?”
“By going up to his room, of course.”
“Oh.” Hollander’s gaze wavered about at the line of her chin. “Then I’ll just baby Herb along until you get back down here with the doctor.”
“The doctor and I will undoubtedly be back before Mr. Endicott actually does come to.”
“Uh-huh. Good kid, Herb.”
She threw out a tentative feeler.
“You and he are great friends, Mr. Hollander?”
“Buddies. War buddies.”
Miss Murrow’s thoughts fled back along old trails. “How splendid! So few war friendships have really lasted, Mr. Hollander. I know it’s been so in my case, and with so many, many others.” A faint flush crept over her palish cheeks and made her look rather young again. “There was a girl with me in hospital at Chaumont, and we just knew we were going to be friends for life, but she lives out in Akron, Ohio.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We wrote quite regularly for a while after we got back from France—we both sailed from Brest on the Amerika—but then it sort of dwindled. Postal cards—picture postal cards at Christmas. Last year we didn’t even send any. I wonder what she’d be like if I saw her again. Have you ever wondered about people whom you’ve once been very fond of, that way—about whether they change in time, I mean?”
“Everything changes.”
“Doesn’t it, though? Just like the seasons. Oh, I do think you can draw so many happy comparisons between life and nature. They’re interlinked, if you get what I mean. That’s why the weather is so affecting. I just can’t help feeling gloomy on a gloomy day, and when it’s bright and cheerful and all sunshiny outside, why then I’m that way, too.”
“Cripes!” muttered Hollander softly.
“What did you say, Mr. Hollander?”
“I said that was nice.”
“Now I suppose with you and Mr. Endicott you see each other quite regularly.”
“Now and then.”
“I suppose whenever your business permits?”
His look flicked her like a whip.
“Where’ll I sit?” he said.
Nurse Murrow vanished within her professional sphere.
“Near the patient, please.”
She wondered whether he had meant to snub her. It wasn’t a snub exactly. Yes, it was, too. Well, what of it? He was attractive enough to get away with it, and it probably was nothing but brusqueness, after all. Many strong men were brusque—purposely so to hide a tender interior. There was a man,
