Then he turned away and marched rapidly across the hall.
Ernie went straight back to 72. The room showed every sign of a hasty departure. The floor was littered; the drawers open and still half full of clothes. Under the dressing-table were boots and shoes, on it a pair of hair-brushes, a case of studs, and the lesser paraphernalia of a man's toilet. It was clear that the late occupant had stuffed a few things into his suit-case and bolted.
The dressing-room door was shut.
Ernie went to it and listened.
There was no sound within.
"Ruth," he called gently, and opened. She was lying across the bed in her simple print-gown as though she had been felled.
It was clear that she had entered the room and been faced with—emptiness.
Her eyes were shut, and her face swam pale as the moon and still in the black circle of her hair. One foot had lost its shoe, and dangled black-stockinged and pathetic over the bed. In her hand, listlessly held, was a piece of crumpled paper—as it might have been her death-warrant.
She did not seem to breathe.
At first Ernie thought that she was dead, so wan she was, so quiet, so unaware. He did not mind very much, because he had died too; and they were together still, and closer than they had ever been.