“Petra! You are terrible!” Lewis groaned. “You’re impossible!”
But Petra seemed not to mind his consternation. She was looking past Lewis’ head, a question in her eyes. Lewis swung around and there was Neil McCloud himself, standing midway in the room—his expression murderous.
McCloud was early for his appointment and had expected to be kept waiting until four at least. But when he found the reception room deserted and the doctor’s door wide open, he naturally came to it. It had taken him some seconds to take it in—what was going on here—that the man he had entrusted with his confidences as implicitly as if he had been a priest in the confessional was using those confidences as a peg on which to hang a flirtation with a beautiful new secretary. They sat here in the place where he had written it all, hashing it over together. Telling his secrets.... As Edyth had hashed over things with her father, old man Dayton, telling his secrets.... Terrible secrets....
For in this moment he remembered what Pryne had so long wanted him to remember! Pryne had questioned and questioned. Coaxed at his strangely blank memory. And nothing doing. But now it was here. Clear, bright as a lightning flash. Now, when remembering was no good to anybody! What the old man had said, over the telephone, when McCloud had called him up that night to ask him what he had done with Edyth and their son, was this:
“Edyth has told me everything. You killed your brother. You broke your mother’s heart. But you shan’t break my daughter’s heart and ruin my grandson’s life. I have the power to protect my own. There isn’t anything you can say. Don’t say a word.”
And you had been obedient. You had gone dumb from that minute. In obedience to Edyth’s father, who knew that you had killed your brother and broken your mother’s heart. Edyth had told him all that. Told the old man. All the things you had told her before you would marry her, in sacred confidence. And now the old man was shouting at you through the telephone. It was as if no time had passed since. As if you were hearing it this minute, while you stood frozenly staring at Pryne and his stenographer: “There isn’t anything you can say. Don’t say a word.”
Let the old brute shout! Keep on shouting through your brain! You don’t mind it now. At least this one thing about you, Pryne shouldn’t ever possess. One little bit he wouldn’t tell his beautiful stenographer—simply because he wouldn’t ever know it. And now you’d get out,—right out into the darkness which had been compassing you ever since the moment the kid went out in your arms.
Pryne was getting up. The girl was up too. Why didn’t your hate and scorn blast them where they stood? It was strong enough to do that. But hate failing, there was the revolver. No! Shut up. Don’t think of that. The kid—Mother—those were lives enough for you to have destroyed. Two—three steps, and you would follow those beloveds into the dark void. You should have followed before. But instead you had come whining for help to this—fashionable psychiatrist. Hell! Your teeth were clenched with the will it took not to put your hand to the pocket holding the revolver. It was essential that you should be outside the door, that it should be between you and them, or Pryne might somehow manage to spoil it. The doctor had a look in his eyes—as if he suspected or even knew your intention. But you weren’t even touching your pocket. Your hands were at your sides. Straight down. How could Pryne know what you were going to do?
Well, Pryne wouldn’t move, wouldn’t interfere, you were sure of it, as long as you kept your eyes steady and your hands at your sides. You started backing toward the door, holding the skunk where he was with your scorn of him, and his girl beside him there, wide-eyed and scared. She was a damned beauty. You had been right when you told her so. You would back through the door. They should not stir. Then you would close it with one lightning motion. But you must remember to use the left hand. The right must be kept for the business of shooting your brains out before either of them could stir. It would be a neat job. That was one thing they should never hash over together,—your attempted suicide. Attempted! Like hell, attempted! You’d have one clean mark for that, so help you Christ.
At that moment McCloud’s seeking heel felt the rise of the doorsill, the rim of the dark void.