Roberts hadn’t looked toward the bed—yet—but then he hadn’t really expected that she would. Perhaps she wouldn’t look for some time, but eventually she would lose some portion of that really splendid self-control that she was exerting and then, instead of the expanse of white sheet she had been expecting, there would be Endicott’s face. …
“I wonder if you could tell me, Miss Roberts, the number of shots that were fired during the shooting.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t.”
She was pointedly on guard, her eyes held at a level that included his cravat but went no higher.
“The question isn’t as silly a one as it seems,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “I don’t suggest for a minute that you counted the shots as they were being fired, actually, but it’s quite within possibility that your subconscious mind really did that very thing, and that on consciously thinking about it the number might come to you. It’s something along the principle of visualizing sound.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure that no amount of thinking about it would clear the rather terrible confusion of that moment.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“I prefer to stand, thank you.”
“Just as you wish. You were with Mrs. Endicott, weren’t you, when it happened?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Valcour admired the accomplished ease with which the word had so unhesitatingly been brought out; but then most women, in his estimation, were natural-born liars. The art formed for him one of their greatest charms.
“You were sitting down beside the bed?” he went on.
“Yes. Reading.”
Splendid—splendid—she was a Bernhardt—a Duse.
“And Miss Vickers?”
“She was down in the kitchen making some coffee.”
“Did the shooting upset you, Miss Roberts?”
“I’m naturally nervous. The sound of firing has always disturbed me terribly.” Then she flung at him abruptly, “My brother was killed in the war.”
Lieutenant Valcour both looked and felt genuinely consoling. He also felt a selfish measure of irritation. The statement was such a perfect period mark. When a young woman, no matter how great a criminal, potentially, announces flatly that her brother has been killed during the war, one can’t ride over the fact roughshod.
“Was there anyone whom you loved killed in the war, Lieutenant?”
She was determined to hammer at the point, it seemed. He wished that she would stop.
“There wasn’t, Miss Roberts.”
“Then you don’t know much about soldiers.”
“No, not much, really.”
“I don’t mean soldiers—or the war itself, either. It’s a state of being—a sort of lucid abnormality. It’s hard to tell you just what I do mean. But it’s the thing,” she ended fiercely, “that made me understand Mr. Endicott. He never quite recovered, you see, from being a soldier.”
“And perhaps it also made you understand why Mrs. Endicott misunderstood him?”
Things were going better now; the channel was broadening into useful seas.
“Of course it was,” Roberts said. “She, too, lost no one in the war.”
The fog rolled in again.
“I’m afraid I’m not following you very clearly.”
“It’s quite useless, Lieutenant—simply that in Mr. Endicott I kept seeing my brother. I suffered for him to the extent I would have suffered for my brother had my brother been in similar circumstances.”
“Suffered?”
“Yes, suffered. From her damned superiority.”
“You think that Mrs. Endicott overdid the mental?”
He noted that Roberts was slowly losing control. There was a blazing quality of anger creeping into her eyes.
“Lieutenant, she regarded that man as her tame tiger. You realize how strong he must have been physically.”
“Very strong.”
“It used to please her to control him—you know the way it’s commonly expressed—with a ‘word.’ ”
“I shouldn’t exactly say that she had succeeded.”
“The other women?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t care about that. If anything, it satisfied her sense of power. She looked on them as a pack of shoddy substitutes that he could fool with, kick around, and treat terribly, if he liked. But she still remained the original—the unapproachable—the happy possessor of a tame tiger. He was always hers, you see, no matter what it was he had done. She’s had him crying.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“It’s the truth. He took her in his hands one night and twisted her—just like that! She didn’t say a thing to him. For a month afterward he went around the house like a whipped cat. Then she said something kind to him, and he cried. I wish she was in hell.”
“Perhaps she is, Miss Roberts—just that.”
“She won’t stay in it long. Her kind doesn’t.”
Lieutenant Valcour held his eyes thoughtfully directed toward the bed.
“Tell me, Miss Roberts, do you think that Mr. Endicott is happier dead? Let me put it in this fashion: if Mr. Endicott had really been your brother, would you rather have seen him dead than living in the emotional hell you picture Mr. Endicott as having lived in?”
His gaze retained its determined fixity.
“No,” she said. “There is always a way out.” It was irresistible. She found herself having to look, too. Against every advice of instinct her eyes were drawn toward the bed in company with Lieutenant Valcour’s … peace—there was peace—greater than she had ever seen when he had been living—peace to a tired heart—a plain, normal, happy human heart that had been broken on the wheel of too much complexity. … “Oh, I’m lying, Lieutenant! I would—I would—a million times rather.”
He worked very fast now, having captured the mood. “Were you thinking of all that when you stood outside on the balcony and watched him through the window?”
Her eyes clung immovably to the cold closed lids, the mouth, carved in gentle shadows; her very being seemed withdrawn on private heights. “I wasn’t on the balcony.”
“And I’d like to know what you did with the gun.”
… Perhaps he was laughing at it all now, if people laugh in heaven. He and her brother. They would have met and be laughing at it all together. But they wouldn’t be laughing at her. … “There wasn’t any need to use the gun, Lieutenant.”
“Then what did you
