There was no answer.
Somehow, the dark interior of the room indicated that it was empty. She clicked on a light switch. Junior wasn’t in his room. The unwrinkled, smooth, white counterpane seemed to Mrs. Gentrie a fresh cause for alarm. But the plodding steps of her husband, climbing wearily back up the staircase, seemed, somehow, reassuring in a matter-of-fact sort of way. And suddenly, she wanted to shield Junior — didn’t want her husband to know he wasn’t in.
“Was anyone down there?” she asked, moving away from the door of Junior’s room.
“Of course not,” he said. “You heard the cellar door bang shut. The wind blew it shut, and Mephisto jumped...”
“The cellar door!”
“Yes, going down from the kitchen.”
“Why, it’s always kept closed. It...”
“No. I left it open tonight. I did some painting down there, and wanted to let the air circulate. The wind blew it shut, that’s all.”
Mrs. Gentrie felt sheepish. The very weariness in her husband’s voice, the dejected slump of his shoulders as he walked down the corridor, carried conviction to her mind. She had become nervous, permitted herself to magnify and distort noises of the night. Arthur, plodding down the corridor, had the attitude of a man who has learned from twenty-one years of married life that women will get those ideas and send men prowling around on nocturnal investigations. Nothing can be done about it, so there’s no need to remonstrate after it’s all over; just get back into bed, try to get warm again, and back to sleep.
Mrs. Gentrie, feeling apologetic, followed her husband to bed. She snuggled close to him, heard once more the gentle rhythm of his breathing, felt the delicious warmth of drowsiness stealing over her like some powerful drug dragging her into the welcome oblivion of sleep.