"Probably not. But you've been bending over a typewriter till the back ribs are sticking into your lungs."
"What in blazes are you talking about?" said Wardwell bluffly. "If you want to stall me off, why don't you give me the usual thing—'office all full just now, leave your name and address, we'll call you up if we need, and so forth?' Was I so useless as that when I was here?"
"Jimmie," said Ray quietly, "there's plenty of work here for a man as good as you. But you're not able just now to do it, and it would kill you to try. Go home and go to bed, and let your wife take care of you."
Wardwell stared at his friend, trying to outface him, to bluff the thing down by sheer stubbornness. But there was a sickening, cold weakness at the bottom of his stomach. He knew that Ray was seeing through him and finding him out as he had not been able to see himself.
With an odd feeling of curiosity and detachment he walked over to a little square of mirror that hung on a pillar at just the right height for Ray to comb his bald head by. Wardwell took it off the nail and shoved it up the post about a foot and a half.
He was curious to know what it was in him that Ray had seen. But there was nothing to be seen, except, perhaps, a sort of hunted look about the eyes and a kind of pinched drawing of the nostrils. He did not look at all like a sick man.
"You're all wrong," he repeated stubbornly. "And besides, my wife's got something else to do."
Ray only answered quietly:
"How much are you coughing, Jimmie?"
Wardwell looked around sharply, in a turn of sudden worry. But in a moment he laughed out: