He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.
No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.
Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madhouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.
His star of destiny.
Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?
And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.
The red and the black.
Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it.
After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.