Otto took the hand and managed to shake it limply. He said:
“Thank you for the visiting.” He knew he should say more and covered up his search for words by a pretence at weakness, closing his eyes for a moment. “I will be back at work soon,” he said at last.
“That is good!” said Bjornstrom. He had heaved himself slowly out of his chair and was approaching the bed. Otto was forced to shake his hand too. It felt dry and old and brittle.
Carolyn Van Teller stood up. She looked very tall, seeming to tower over the men. She laid a small, gaily tied package upon the bed near Otto’s hand and then took the hand in both of her own. Bjornstrom moved away a little and Altinger completely: Otto could see neither of them She said to Otto:
“I didn’t know what to bring you. And then I saw a box of the cigarettes you used to like.”
Otto picked up the package as if with effort: he must keep up the pretence of weakness and then perhaps he might be rid of them before he betrayed himself. He said:
“Thank you!” He kept his words and tone natural, but produced a private message with his eyes which he prayed would pass muster.
“That was very . . . nice,” he said, and had an answer from her eyes—and then was horrified beyond reason by the sounds of an opening door and the voice of Clare.
“Forgive me,” she was saying,” but I wanted to know when you would all like lunch. It was rude of me: I forgot to ask you before.”
Otto turned his head a little and saw Clare. She stood between Altinger and Bjornstrom, but she was looking at the other woman, as manners demanded. She was poised and cool and in command of herself. She was smiling and very courteous, but it seemed to Otto that there was a tension in her which he had not felt before.
Carolyn Van Teller was smiling too. She seemed taller even than before. She was very gracious. She was charming. She said:
“That’s very kind of you, Miss Ingolls, but we really must be going on our way. Mr. Altinger has an important engagement in San Francisco. And so have I.”
“Are you sure?” Clare said. She was smiling still. “It would be no trouble—and we could be ready in just a few minutes.”
Altinger put in his word. Otto could see his resentment, invisible except to those who had studied him, of any suggestion that there were other wishes than his. He said:
“It’s too bad, Miss . . . Miss Ingolls! But there it is. I have to be in San Francisco this afternoon.” He waved a cheerful hand towards the bed. “With your patient away, I have double duties.”
Carolyn Van Teller had turned back to Otto. She sat in the chair again, but poised upon its edge as one who is going to rise immediately. She leaned close to him. She said: “Don’t forget to smoke your cigarettes—and smoke all of them yourself.”
He knew then that there was something more to the package than appeared. He said:
“Of course, I will open them now—at once. No one else would like them anyhow,” and managed a laugh. He could not see Clare, but he knew that she had momentarily turned her head towards him and then as quickly looked away.
He could hear voices behind him, and then Bjornstrom saying:
“I have no appointment, my dear young lady. I can only regret that neither have I a car. If I had, you would surely have one guest for lunch.”
And then there was a general bustle of going and goodbyes and a last look from Carolyn Van Teller and no sight of Clare and then Altinger again and yet another handshake and Altinger’s loud laugh as he said, for all the world to hear:
“And don’t go talking in your sleep, young Jorgensen. You might give away all the firm’s plans.”
So they had thought of that. Of course they had thought of that! They had been worried seriously. But now they knew it was all right and this talk of Altinger’s was half-joke, half-warning to continue caution.
He grinned up at Altinger and then, brave in the knowledge that he had come through this ordeal with colours high, risked a final stroke. He winked.
Altinger grinned, patted him on the shoulder and was gone. The door closed softly and Otto was alone again.
He threw back the bedcovers from his body and breathed deeply, trying to rid himself of the dark feeling of nausea. He lay inert and breathed with a slow deep rhythm. He kept raising his hands and looking at them. When they did not tremble any more, he picked up the gaily wrapped package and tore the paper from it and revealed a box of cigarettes. The seal was over the edge of the box intact, but it seemed to break easily, sliding away as if the gum upon it were new.
It was as he expected. Beneath the cigarettes, at the very bottom of the box, was a wafer-thin, once-folded slip of paper. He unfolded it and found writing which read, “Before you return to work, phone me N.Y.”
That was all—and nothing, really, at which the most suspicious official eye could cavil. But it was signed with an initial which had beneath it a dashing little twirl showing this to be an order of the first importance.
He looked at the paper. It was very thin, and no larger than the sheath of a cigarette. He crushed it into a little pellet and put it into his mouth and swallowed it.
And he went to sleep again.
11 LOS ROBLES:
Final Phase
The days passed, and the nights, and he kept to his purpose. He ate and slept and rigidly kept his mind from futile maelstrom-racing and in everything obeyed the doctor’s orders: he even invented exercises for the unhurt muscles of his torso and carried them out with secrecy and grew nearer to health and wholeness at astonishing pace.
But he did not tell Clare that now he could sleep at any time he wished and without fear of dreams. He did not tell her this because, if he did, she would not sit with him every night until either he slept or pretended to sleep. There was a constraint between them now: it had begun after the visitors had left, and it had progressed increasingly as his determination for utter recovery grew with each day more iron-clad. He knew it was there and he knew that it hurt her as it was hurting him. But he steeled himself to disregard it until the answer should come to him. Until he had the answer, he was not living, and until he lived he must not have dealings with any matter so vital to him as Clare. He tried to explain it to her once, without explaining. He said:
“If I seem strange, it is because I am in . . . in a sort of . . . of . . .” The words were difficult to find. “In a sort of shell. That is while I am growing well. Then I can . . . can put the shell away.”
It did not seem to interest her much. She said she understood—and that was as far as it went, except that he had for the first time a vague thought, too nebulous to be termed suspicion, that perhaps the constraint was not entirely of his own causing.
But he dismissed the thought—and sank wholly back within the armoured shell again and inside it went on mending.
Dr. Brandt was delighted, and made no secret of his amazement.
“Wonderful specimen!” he said to Ingolls. “Wonderful physique! And hard! We don’t breed ’em that hard over here, more’s the pity in these days! Ninety-five men out of a hundred would’ve died with what that lad took. And just look at him!”
That was the day before they cut the casts off his legs and found them in far better condition than they had hoped. They gave him metal splints then, and in a few days yet lighter ones in which presently, so the doctor said, he could even walk a little.
He smiled at the doctor and said nothing—but within ten minutes of Brandt’s leaving there came to Lena’s ears, as she worked in the living-room below, a curious shuffling, bumping sound from above her head. She sped up the stairs and arrived, breathless, to find her Mizr Johnson incredibly out of bed and upon his feet and in the middle of the room. He was holding to the back of a chair—and, as she squealed in horrified amazement, he grinned at her, as she told afterwards, “f’m year to year, like a child among a melon-patch!”