Case again reminded himself that he must behave naturally—not plan anything, but not interfere.
“Oh, you must have a drink,” he said, “though I’m afraid there is no ice. I’ll get you a glass and soda.”
He came out into the veranda again with these requisites. Oldham was stifling a prodigious yawn.
“I’m half dead with sleep. Probably I shall chuck myself on my bed just as I am, to save the trouble of undressing.”
Case felt his hand tremble as he put the glass down on the table.
“I know that feeling,” he said. “Sometimes, when one is very sleepy, the sight of a bed is altogether too much for one. I dare say I shall do the same. Help yourself to whisky while I open the soda for you.”
Oldham drank his peg and again rose.
“Well, I’m for bed,” he said. “And I can’t tell you what a relief it is to me to find you like this. By the way, about that bit of money. Pay me exactly when it’s convenient to you—next year or the year after, if you like. I should be wretched if I thought you were putting yourself about over it. So good night, Reggie.”
He turned to go, and it seemed to Case that hours passed and a thousand impressions were registered on his brain as he walked down the twenty-five feet of veranda that separated the two doors of entrance that led into their quarters. Outside, another change had come over the hot, tumultuous night, and, as if the very moon and stars were concerned in this pigmy drama, where but a single life out of the innumerable and infinitesimal little denizens of the world was involved, a queer triangular rent had opened in the rain-swollen sky, and a dim moon and a company of watery stars stared silently down, and to Case’s excited senses they appeared hostilely witnessing. Ten minutes ago the rain had ceased as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, and, except for the tom-tom that still beat monotonously in the town, a silence of death prevailed. The steam rose thick as sea-mist from the ground; above it a blurred etching of trees appeared and the roof of the mess-room. The grey unreal light shone full into the veranda, and he could see that Boxer was sitting bolt upright on his blanket-bed, looking at Oldham’s retreating figure. Daisy was industriously scratching her neck with a hind-leg, and from the table a little pool of spilt soda-water was dripping on to the ground.
All this Case noticed accurately and intently, and, as yet, Oldham was not half-way down the veranda. Once he hung on his step and sniffed the hot, stale air. That was a characteristic trick; he wrinkled his nose up like a dog, showing his white teeth. Once he shifted his dripping mackintosh from right hand to left, holding it at arm’s length. Then, as he turned to pass into the door, he made a little staccato sign of salutation to Case with his disengaged hand. Boxer appropriated that, and wagged a cordial tail in response.