“That’s it, you said it,” Roy assured him.
“He tried to kill me,” Blythe said.
“Why did he try to do that–Blythey?” Roy asked. “We’re your friends; tell us all about it. You remember better than you used to?”
“I thought I told you,” the invalid said simply. “They’re going to take me to Canada next week. I’ve got to be tried for something. They think I only dreamed that my brother tried to kill me. I would rather stay here with you. Can’t you tell them, so I can stay here? I want to stay. We were all like a kind of a family–telling yarns. You know me. They have a conspiracy here. You know all about me, you tell them. If you ask them to give me back the–the–locket, they will. It has her picture?”
“Whose picture–Blythey?”
“My mother’s, you know. You know how I went up and got it. You’re my friends and I’m yours–”
“Yes, you are,” Roy said, his eyes glistening.
The invalid closed his eyes and lay as if asleep. The two scouts waited, but the eyes did not reopen. So they arose quietly and left the ward. They had been told they could not stay long. They were deeply affected and bewildered. Blythe was different, but how different they could not say. He just seemed different. He had spoken with simple frankness of things he had never mentioned before. He was changed.
This fact and what he had said, and the stillness of the place, and the queer odor in the ward and corridor, and the noiselessness of their own footfalls on the rubber covered hall, awed the two scouts to such a degree that they longed for the free open air where they could talk.
It was with some trepidation that they encountered at the head of the stairway the police guard talking with Detective Ferrett.