Not knowing quite what he was doing, but too viciously furious to think or care, Gillis snatched up the whisky bottle and smashed it down on top of her head.
II
Baird sat at the wheel of the Packard, driving with one hand. His left arm hung uselessly at his side. It was swollen now to twice its normal size, and the forearm was black and green.
Sweat ran off him as if he had had a sponge of water squeezed over him. His body shook with extreme rigor, and every muscle ached. He drove the car automatically along the broad highway. Only his will-power kept him upright at the wheel.
At that hour — it was three o’clock in the morning — there was no traffic on the road, and he could keep the car moving without having to slow down or manipulate the gears.
He had long lost all sense of time. He knew he was dangerously ill. He knew, too, his arm was so badly infected that he would probably lose it. He had decided to die rather than stop and seek help.
Somehow he had managed to carry Hater from the police launch to where he and Rico had hidden the car. He had dumped Hater on the floor of the car, behind the driving seat, and had covered him with a blanket. Then he had changed his wet camouflage suit, taking a change of dry clothes from the suitcase.
He now wore his jacket slung cape-wise over his shoulders, as he had found it impossible to get his coat sleeve over his swollen arm.
He had set out for the long drive to the shooting-lodge. It was during the drive the fever that had taken hold of him became worse. He felt hot and cold in turns, and he began to shiver violently. When it came to the time to turn off the highway to the back roads that would take him to the shooting-lodge, his mind couldn’t cope with the change of direction. The broad highway out of Louisiana seemed now so uncomplicated and easy to drive on that he gave up the idea of going to the shooting-lodge.
It suddenly occurred to him that he was dying, and he was seized by an obsession to see Anita Jackson before he died. The attraction he had felt for the girl now dominated his mind, and it was this obsession to see her again that gave him the strength to stay at the wheel.