"Saddled with her?" Horner mumbled. "Saddled? I—I love my wife. How dare you call her a—a—" Horner went livid with rage, grabbed Overman's arm.
The small dumpy man lurched toward him. "Hey, leggo—" Overman struck out awkwardly, unathletically, in the Hugh Horner body. Horner warded off the weak blows easily, and hit Overman once, expertly, on the point of the jaw just as Jane Horner called from within the apartment:
"Who is it, dear? What's taking so long?"
Horner let the unconscious Overman fall. He was about to flee back to the elevator because he couldn't face his wife now, not—apparently—as the man who had just knocked Hugh Horner unconscious. But an apartment door between theirs and the elevator opened and Horner had no choice but to duck into his own apartment.
Jane appeared from the direction of the kitchen. She was wearing an apron and she was dumpier than Horner remembered. Probably, Horner told himself, my own dumpiness prevented me from seeing her that way. She wore her hair in a bun and was forty-five and looked it. She was holding a heavy green-glass pitcher in her hand and looked down at what was apparently her unconscious husband on the floor and let out a scream—or began to, for Horner ran to her and clasped a hand over her mouth.
"I can explain everything," he said, wondering if, indeed, he could. "If you promise not to shout or scream, I'll let go of you."
The trapped face nodded. Horner let go and his wife said, "I know you. I know you now. I recognize you from the television. You're that Lionel Overstreet—"
"Overman—but I'm not."
"Who escaped from the prison up state. What—what did you do to my husband?"