"Oh-h!" Jan had fallen backward on the bed and now was rolling from side to side. His stomach was griping him like a burning hand.
"Hold in for a minute if you can!" she whispered
Nausea uncontrollable, as it seemed to Jan, was taking hold of him when a knock came on the door. "Sh-h!" she warned, and Jan controlled himself. He wanted more than ever to vomit, but there came another knock on the door—and another. And then the knob was turned.
[pg 233]
A silence then; and then a voice—a man's voice: "I told you you were crazy. He felt dizzy and went out into the street for some fresh air. You shouldn't 've left him once he got the stuff into him. Take a look round the block. He's probably laying in the gutter somewhere with that load into him."
The voice stopped, footsteps followed, the stairs creaked. And Jan's tortured stomach was allowed its relief. And while he retched in the dark Mrs. Goles held his head and, soaking a towel in the water jar, bathed his forehead and face and neck, and kept wetting the towel and bathing his head with the cold water until at last, with a grateful sigh, Jan stood up and said:
"I think it's all gone now."
"That's good. So I'll be leaving you. And you—" They had been talking in whispers, but at this point her voice broke into a cough. When she spoke again her voice was husky and pitched in a higher key. "But you—listen! You must leave this house!"
"Why must I leave?"