O’Brien knew it was a straightforward, simple situation; he had to make a decision on his son’s life or Weiner’s.
“Yes,” he said in a voice that had suddenly hardened. “You can rely on me.”
III
Conrad had not been entirely correct when he had told Forest that Frances and Pete had fallen in love with each other.
Pete had certainly fallen in love with Frances. Love was something he had never before experienced, and it reacted on him with a tremendous impact.
But he realized the experience could be but short-lived, and could never come to fruition. He had no illusions about Maurer’s power. He had been safe now for eight days, and this he considered to be a major miracle. He knew there could not be many days left for him to live: the margin, as the hours passed, was whittling away. Before very long Maurer would strike, and the combined vigilance of the police guards, Conrad’s careful planning and the supposed inaccessibility of the hunting lodge would then be proved to be as flimsy a protection as a thin veil held up to ward off the scorching flame of a blow lamp.
Pete’s discovery of love came to him with an added poignancy because he knew it would be so short-lived, and he realized the experience would only be a kind of waking dream in which his imagination would play the major role.
Whenever he caught sight of Frances when she sat in the walled-in garden and he stood at the window of his room, he conjured up vivid scenes in his mind of what they could have done together, how they might have lived, the house they might have owned, the children they might have shared if there had been no such man as Maurer to make such mind images impossible.
He was quite stunned then when Conrad told him that he could talk to Frances if he wished.
“She seems to think you saved her life,” Conrad said, moving about the big room where Pete slept. “She wants to talk to you. Well, I have no objection — have you?”