"Beg pardon, Guv'nor, but me own orders is't' go out, on that other little job at Barley's. I'll very likely be hangin' around there all night."
"Yes, to be sure." Well-bred vexation in the voice. "Of course there must be no question of deviating from your orders. But it will leave us short-handed."
"There's the girl, Guv'nor."
A little hum of disapproval. Then: "Have you any suggestions?" The question was in a new tone, obviously addressed to someone other than the churlish workman.
It was answered by the woman with the military walk. "I't'ink we must use the girl." Number One could now discern a stratum of German underneath her cultivated English.
The doctor pondered for a few seconds. "Can we be sure of her?"
"More than uff anyone else we could recruit on such short notice."
"True enough." Another hesitation; then decision. "Yes, we must use her, I suppose. Her reputation is for reliability." Again a switch in his words' aim. "Bring Sally up to keep an eye on Number One tonight. Be sure she stays away from Two and Three; they're too far along to need watching. Impress upon her that she's to stay in the one room, and see that she understands what'll happen to her if she does not hold her tongue about this place."
"Ar."
A door closed, and the voices, already remote and so low that their owners must feel securely private, became too faint for even that old man's ears. He tried to follow them and failed, and then was swamped again by the murderous weariness that only got worse the longer he lay here motionless upon his back. Not cramped or stiff, not even sleepy, but deathly tired. He closed his eyes, and opened them again. This was, he knew, an impossibly wrong place for him to get the rest he craved. But just where would the right place be?
The day wore on. He was not hungry or thirsty. At least—turning his head to glance at the garbage he had knocked to the floor—not for anything like that.
Night crept at last upon the city, and its approach brought to the aged captive at least a partial return of health and strength. The sounds of casual activity that had gone on through the day had faded, and some time had passed in silence, when the old man heard two pairs of feet approaching from a long way off. Shortly Rough-voice walked into the room, a supple, poorly-clad young woman after him. Both of them were masked in gauze.
" 'Ow is it 'e's all bound up like that?" The voice of the girl bore traces of gentleness, if not concern.
"Told yer, didn't I? 'E's a violent one when 'e gets the chance." The man was about to turn and hurry out of the room when he paused in afterthought. " 'Asn't said a bloody word since we got 'im, but that don't mean 'e can't. Might be a real sweet-talker when 'e wants't' be."
"Won't matter a bit't' me," the girl said lightly. And like the visiting nurse she parked a cloth bag that she was carrying atop the tall chest of drawers, and looked about her for a place to settle. There was only the one hard chair.
"See that it don't. Well, then, I'm off."
"Ah." It was almost the man's ar.
Rough-voice shut the door behind him. His tread receded, went jauntily bouncing down some distant stairs.
Left alone with the old man, the young girl turned to size him up more thoroughly. Her eyes were brown and hard, fragments of London cobblestone above the border of her white mask, whose strings where they went back to her ears were hidden by brown curls. The sun was setting now, and the room had grown much darker in the last few minutes, but in keeping with all the other seeming perversities of his situation, the old man only saw her all the better for the failing of daylight. Her dress was coarse and plain and patched, and he thought that the scarf she draped on the chair's back would have been better suited to a man.
"Well," she said, and came over to stand beside his bed, looking at the floor. "A pretty mess you've made. And none o' them'd ever think of cleaning up, of course."
Sally. But the name could be a weapon, the only weapon he had, and he must wait for the proper time to strike with it.
"Release me," the old man told her suddenly, his voice so deep and firm that it surprised himself. "And I will clean up what I have spilled." To have begun with something that sounded like cleverness would surely have put a clever girl on guard.
"Well, well, 'e talks! And like a bloody toff. Dressed like 'un, too." But still Sally hardly looked at the old man, as she bent to pick up the spilled refuse. The stain from the tea was large, yet scarcely conspicuous on worn floorboards long since abandoned to their fate. Bread, mug, glass and tray the girl carried to some outer room, whence sounded a dull clatter of utensils. She came back in a minute, chewing on something, and stood before him with folded arms as if to ask him silently: How am I to stand your company for hours and hours?
On his part hoping for long hours of isolate companionship, the old man spoke again, letting his voice take on a certain sound of stagy tragedy. "No, girl, I was quite wrong to ask you to release me. If there be more chains you can add, I bid you bring them here and lock them on." He was not one for thinking through his plans with any complete logic; perhaps he tried this zig-zag tactic on the chance that the girl would feel she ought to do the opposite of anything he urged her. Well, he was still half-addled.
Whatever Sally might have felt, she did not sound surprised. "Don't 'ave no more chains. Do 'ave some scrag I might bring in, if you'll promise not't' fling it all about this time."
He let his voice sag down to being weakly friendly. "I promise that."
"I'll myke some tea." Coolly practical, she left the door ajar and went off to what must have been the kitchen. In the middle distance he could hear her, now pouring water, now cutting bread. Now came the subtle sound of a knifeblade spreading out a heap of jam. His imagination's picture of the rich red stuff brought on a wave of hunger, mixed with a little nausea.
The irrelevant smell of tea soon took form on the night air. The old man strained his limbs again and then lay back, unable to budge his iron bonds, hissing his exhaustion. Good God but they were strong. Had this bed-cart been constructed to confine a mad gorilla?
Here Sally came back to him, replenished tea-tray in her hands. It was now so dark that she must grope her way, and she had removed her mask, which must have been an annoyance to keep on for hours and hours. The old man could now plainly see her face, which would have been pretty were it not for a great birthmark, covering her whole right cheek and jaw, more strawberry than the stuff which she had spread upon the bread—and were it not, of course, for the corollary of this disfigurement, a set of resignation in all her facial muscles, the look of bitter, sullen surrender to all the world's foul ugliness.
She felt secure, of course, that in this lightless room he'd never see her face. Meanwhile he watched the innate and unconscious grace with which, even unable to see the way, she moved across the room.
" 'Ere. Can you see it?" She put the tray down where it had been before, upon the stand that branched out from the bed.
"My hand could find it in the dark. Alas, I cannot move a finger."
Sally went away and groped for the stiff chair and brought it back, sat down in it an arm's length distant. Perhaps I have exaggerated the room's darkness; there must have existed a little ghost of light, oozing from the shaded window at her back, to fall across his bed. No doubt she could see him at least faintly, while believing that her own face was fully hidden from his eyes.
She tore off a morsel of the bread and held it toward his lips. " 'Ere. It's crusty, but you 'as a good mouthful o' teeth for an old 'un. I could see that when you first spoke't' me."
His neck muscles reflexively turned his head away. It was not red jam that he hungered for. "I thank you deeply, but I find I cannot eat."