“Where are you and the lady going, sir?”
Casually, he reached across the seat and depressed the lock button. “To the railway station,” he said, rolling up the window. “But she’s not coming.”
“Like that, huh?” The driver grinned as he put the cab in gear.
“Yes,” he said. “Like that.” He turned to look at Fanny, left standing in the street. He felt that she should have drawn her gun or at least shaken her fist at them. She did neither, and there was something achingly forlorn about her small, dark figure.
“We’re out of that hospital, aren’t we?” It was Tina, thrusting her head past the lapel of his jacket.
“Yes,” he told her.
“Where are we going?”
“To Manea.” He spoke softly, so that the driver would not overhear him; the driver might be questioned by the police.
“Lovely country, they tell me,” the driver remarked. “Close to Overwood.”
“I didn’t think that you heard me,” he said. “Yes, I know it must be.”
They passed a fountain, and its splashing recalled Klamm—the tears in Klamm’s eyes. Klamm had followed the letter of the law; but suddenly he knew that no one would question the driver or pursue them. Fanny might be reprimanded; but there would be no investigation, no all-points bulletin.
Not far away the whistle of a steam locomotive blew, echoing and re-echoing among the surrounding buildings. He smiled. It blew again, singing of lovers’ meetings in distant places.
Tina looked out from her vantage point beside his necktie. “
NOTE
Indoor moopsball, as played by the patients and staff of United General Psychiatric Hospital, is taken from “Rules of Moopsball,” by Gary Cohn, and used with his permission. “Rules of Moopsball” originally appeared in
