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, and a millionaire at that . . . Hollander
was back again beside her. She wondered whether it was so—whether
people who didn’t look into your eyes were people whom it was unsafe
to trust.
“Just what do you know about all this?” he said softly.
“About all what, Mr. Hollander?”
“About the police being in the house.”
“Isn’t it just too thrilling?”
“Uh-huh. Whom do they suspect?”
Miss Murrow began to feel friendly again. He _was_ so good-looking.
She wished she had a whole lot of exciting and important information
to give him that would keep him standing there listening, so that she
could just stare at him and try to put her finger on the source of
that amazing effect of fluidity.
“They haven’t said whom they suspect, really.” She lowered her voice
to an appropriate pitch. “But I know they think it’s somebody who is
in the house.”
Hollander’s voice was a whisper. “You wouldn’t say it was Mrs.
Endicott whom they suspect, would you?”
Miss Murrow appeared a trifle shocked. “Oh, it would be too dreadful
to think a wife would harm a husband. But it does happen.” Her mind
tabulated the news offered daily by the papers. “Why, it happens
almost every day. Oh, you don’t _think_——”
“Certainly I don’t think she did it,” Hollander said fiercely. “It’s
what the police think that I’m trying to get at. What makes you so
sure they’re going to hang it onto somebody who’s in the house?”
Miss Murrow nodded toward the bathroom door. “From the way they’re
guarding Mr. Endicott from being attacked again. From being attacked,”
she added, “before he can make a statement.”
“Then they’re still just guessing?”
“Just guessing.”
It seemed to satisfy Hollander, and he managed to convey the
impression that the conversation, so far as he was concerned, had come
to an end. Miss Murrow went over to her chair in a corner of the room
and sat down. He was deep, she decided. Yes, a deep creature, with
deep impulses. . . .
Cassidy and Hansen tilted back their chairs a bit and, with loosened
collars, settled for the last tiring watches of the night. They had
nodded briefly to Hollander, and he had nodded just as briefly in
return. He looked to them like a good scout. Like one of the boys.
Regular. Cassidy tried to remember what that last line of hooey was
that the lieutenant had shot at them about Hollander. Something about
cats. About two cats, that was it, watching a promenading and
near-sighted mouse. Nuts.
Hollander took an armchair and pushed it close to the head of the bed.
It was an upholstered armchair, heavy, and with a tall solid back. He
placed it so that its back was to the bathroom door. The back also
obliquely obscured him from a full view on the part of Nurse Murrow.
He vanished into its overstuffed depths and settled down. His eyes
travelled slowly along the spread until they came to rest with a
curious fixity on the smooth, masklike face of his friend Endicott.
Then the pupils of Hollander’s eyes contracted until they glittered
like the heads of two bright pins.