Gilfoyle mopped his face again and looked at his handkerchief. One's own blood is very interesting. The sight of his wounds did not touch Kedzie's heart. She could never feel sorry for anybody she was mad at.
Gilfoyle's wits were scattered. He mumbled, futilely, “Well, if that's the way you feel about it!”
“That's the way I feel about it!” Kedzie raged on. “I suppose you've had so many affairs of your own out there that you can't imagine anybody else being respectable, can you?”
Gilfoyle had not come East to publish his autobiography. He thought that a gesture of misunderstood despair would be the most effective evasion. So he made it, and turned away. He put his handkerchief to his nose and looked at it. He turned back.
“Would you mind if I went into your bathroom to wash my face?”
“I certainly would. Where do you think you are? You get on out before my maid comes back. I don't want her to think I receive men alone!”
Her heart was cold as a toad in her breast, and she loathed his presence. He repeated his excellent gesture of despair, sighed, “All right,” and left the room. The two pieces of Jim Dyckman's photograph were still on the floor of the hall. He stooped quickly and silently and picked them up as he went out. He closed the door with all the elegy one can put in a door with a snap-lock.
He was about to press the elevator button, but he did not like to present himself gory to the elevator-boy. He walked down the marble and iron steps zigzagging around the elevator shaft.
He paused on various landings to think and mop. He looked at the photograph of Dyckman, and his heart spoiled in him. He recalled his wife's anxiety lest her maid should find a man there. He recalled the hall-boy's statement that Mr. Dyckman was often there. His wife was lying to him, plainly.
He had known detectives and newspaper men and had heard them speak of what a friend they had in the usual hall-boy. He thought that he had here the makings of a very pretty little bit of detectivity.