"Yes—and his wife's cooking and his lovely children."
"Dave mentioned you. He seemed to feel I've been neglecting him."
"Maybe you've been neglecting a lot of people, Terry."
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, an action compounded of agreement, weariness—and despair. "I suppose that's true. People and I seem to have been going off in opposite directions. Take Dave. He's satisfied with what he's doing. I can't talk to him without being reminded of my own dissatisfaction. He can't talk to me without knowing that something's wrong."
Joyce reached across the table and caught his hand. "Terry—don't let it get you!"
He forced a grin. "With me it's work as usual. And this time it's something off the beaten path—something darned queer." He told her of the dead-alive man at the hospital and of the link to the other Grant Park victims. He straightened, animation quickening in his face, his melancholy forgotten.
"Three men," he finished grimly. "There's a kind of continuity to the thing. I'm going to watch the park, Joyce. I have the idea that what happened is going to happen again. I want to know just what was done to those men, just what sort of agency is at the bottom of it."
Her face was troubled. "Terry ... it frightens me! If something strange is really going on, you might get hurt—the way those men were hurt. I wish—" She broke off with a helpless gesture. "Be careful, Terry! Please be careful!"
Bryan sat on a stool in one corner of a small dimly lighted bar, frowning down at an envelope on which he had drawn a diagram of Grant Park. He had spent part of the afternoon checking on the locations where the three men had been found. These, it appeared, were concentrated roughly near the middle of the park, around a large sandstone memorial pavilion which was the center of numerous converging walks. He had visited the spot while daylight remained, familiarizing himself with it in preparation for his night vigil.