“Yes, Doctor.”
“So you are going to Russia on another bridge project, Jim?” Dr. Letheny was again master of himself.
“What—oh, yes! Yes.” Jim Gainsay started a little as if Dr. Letheny had recalled him to a forgotten fact.
“Will it be a long stay?”
“Why, yes, probably. It should take about two or three years. It will be an interesting job. The preliminaries are rather sketchy, but it looks as though there might be some problems involved.”
He spoke in an oddly detached way, as if he were not much interested in the subject, and it was not surprising that the conversation flattened out again. Presently Corole suggested bridge and even made up a table, but Dr. Balman definitely refused to play and Jim Gainsay, being engaged in watching Maida’s eyelashes, did not appear to hear Corole’s suggestion that he make a fourth, so Dr. Letheny made a reluctant partner for me against Corole and Dr. Hajek. However, we played only a few desultory hands until Maida and Gainsay drifted over to the window and fell into a low-voiced conversation, when Dr. Letheny, who had been darting quick glances in that direction, trumped my ace, flung down his cards, said it was too rotten hot to play and, paying no attention to Corole’s protests, went to the piano.
Dr. Letheny was a discriminative musician of far more than amateur skill, and the great, jarring, Moscow bells of the C Sharp Minor Prelude presently surged over the room. I am a practical, matter-of-fact woman and I have never been able to account for the strange disquietude that crept over me as I listened. It was the strangest thing in a strange and unreal evening. The couple at the window turned and moved closer together. Corole’s flat eyes caught the light like a cat’s. Dr. Balman stared at nothing from the shadows and worried his beard. Only Dr. Hajek was unmoved by that passionate sweep of sound.
All at once the room was intolerable to me. I twisted about in my chair and fought down a childish desire to run from its heat and breathlessness. And then the keys under Dr. Letheny’s white fingers slipped into the higher notes of the second movement and a hot, fetid breath of air from the hushed night billowed the curtain a little and touched my hot face and heightened the nightmare that had taken possession of me.
By the time the climax had carried us all along with it in its torrent, and the Doctor had sat, in the hush that followed the last note, for a long moment before he turned to us again,—by that time little beads of perspiration shone all along the backs of my hands and my heart was pumping as if I had been running a race.
I rose.