“I didn’t hear the son-of-a-gun,” said Cunningham.
Gray yawned again on his way to the door.
“I knew it when you fought to keep that girl from being arrested. Didn’t you notice I told you about the knife at my back right away? So that the Strangers would hear me? I wanted them to know you’d kept her free on your own hook, not to save my life. That ought to make them believe in you somewhat.”
“But why did you want to make me solid with them?” demanded Cunningham.
“Oh, you might help me later,” said Gray dryly, “in studying their dialect.”
He disappeared, and Cunningham frowned out at the darkness for a long time. It was a puzzling mix-up, and it might prove a dangerous one. Gray had been close to death that afternoon and one man had been killed. But Cunningham could not find it in his heart to dwell upon anything, now, but Maria. She was—different. Cunningham dwelt upon her image in his memory with increasing contentment. Sometimes a man sees a woman and without even any feeling of surprize realizes that it is she whom he has been waiting for all his life. It is more of a recognition than a meeting. Cunningham felt that way about Maria.
But he forced his brain to a last effort to understand the mystery into which he had dropped. Vladimir offering bribes to keep other people from the Strangers he hated, and the Strangers with their incredible lack of knowledge of American commonplaces.
“Vladimir’s crazy, or I’m crazy, and maybe all of us are crazy,” he muttered as he tossed his cigarette over the porch railing. “I’m going to bed.”
He went up the stairs by the light of the turned-down lamp in the hall and fumbled with his key in the lock. He opened his door and struck a match. Then he uttered an angry exclamation.
A moment later he had lighted his lamp and was searching among his tumbled-about possessions for a sign of theft.