The face of Matthew Hall had changed, too, with his walk. There were the obvious changes: the deep channel of a scar on his broad forehead, the smaller one on his right jaw. The nose had changed twice, the first time in 1938 when it was broken in San Sebastian. It had swelled enormously and then knit badly and nearly two years later a New York surgeon had done an expensive job of rebreaking and resetting the nose. Some bones had been taken out and the once classic lines were now slightly flattened. The scars and the dented nose blended strangely well with the jaws that had always been a bit too long and the soft brown poet's eyes which had so often betrayed Hall. With his eyes, Hall spoke his contempt, his anger, his amusement, his joy. The eyes unerringly spoke his inner feelings; they were always beyond his control.
Changes more subtle than the scars and the flattened nose had come over Hall's face within the past few years. It now had a queer, angry cast. His lips seemed to be set in a new and almost permanent grimace of bitterness. Also the right side of his face, the cheek and the mouth, had a way of twitching painfully when Hall was bothered and upset. And yet, as Governor Dickenson had already noted, Hall was not a completely embittered man. More often than not, his eyes would light up with a look of amused irony, the look of a man much moved by an immense private joke he would be glad to share with his friends if he but knew how to tell it properly.
When Hall had risen to leave the terrace, the Governor noticed that his cheek was twitching, but once he was alone in the reception room, away from the sight of the tracers and the target plane, Hall's face grew calm again. He sat down in the green armchair near the phone, picked up the receiver. "Yes, Tom," he said, "any luck?"
"Sure. I busted open a seat for you on the San Hermano plane for tomorrow at six."
"Was it much trouble, Tom?"
"Not much." Tom Harris laughed. "We had to throw Giselle Prescott off to make room for you. Know her?"
"God, no! But thanks a lot."
"I'll pick you up in the morning then. Good night, Matt."
Hall put the receiver back on the cradle. He sat back in the soft chair, oblivious of the crashing guns, the hum of the plane's engines, the others on the terrace. Only one thing was in his mind now—San Hermano.
It was some time before the young Puerto Rican lieutenant slipped gingerly into the room. "Mr. Hall," he said, softly, "everything O.K.?"