But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him Babbitt said, “Why, you got a scar on your cheek.”
“Yes. That’s where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow. And they wouldn’t let me help carry Zilla down to the ambulance.”
“Paul! Quit it! Listen: she won’t die, and when it’s all over you and I’ll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get that May Arnold to go along. I’ll go up to Chicago and ask her. Good woman, by golly. And afterwards I’ll see that you get started in business out West somewhere, maybe Seattle—they say that’s a lovely city.”
Paul was half smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled now. He could not tell whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Paul’s lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who nodded at Babbitt and hinted, “If Riesling and I could be alone for a moment—”
Babbitt wrung Paul’s hands, and waited in the office till Maxwell came pattering out. “Look, old man, what can I do?” he begged.
“Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now,” said Maxwell. “Sorry. Got to hurry. And don’t try to see him. I’ve had the doctor give him a shot of morphine, so he’ll sleep.”
It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Babbitt felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the City Hospital to inquire about Zilla. She was not likely to die, he learned. The bullet from Paul’s huge old .44 army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out.
He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horrified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. “Of course Paul isn’t altogether to blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after other women instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way,” she exulted.
He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. “Damn soft hands—like a woman’s. Aah!”
At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, “I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul! I’ll ’tend to all the talking about this that’s necessary, hear me? There’s going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that isn’t going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the house!”