She looked at him narrowly. ‘Hip—you have. You mentioned him not ten minutes ago.’
‘Did I?’ He thought. He thought hard. Then he opened his eyes wide. ‘By God, I did!’
‘All right. Who is he? What was he to you?’
‘Who?’
‘Hip!’ she said sharply.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m a little mixed up.’ He thought again, hard, trying to recall the entire sequence, every word. At last, ‘ B-bromfield,’ he said with difficulty.
‘It will hardly stay with you. Well, it’s a flash from a long way back. It won’t mean anything to you until you go back that far and get it.’
‘Go back? Go back how?’
‘Haven’t you been going back and back—from being sick here to being in jail to getting arrested, and just before that, to your visit to that house? Think about that, Hip. Think about why you went to the house.’
He made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t need to. Can’t you see? I went to that house because I was searching for something—what was it? Oh, children; some children who could tell me where the half-wit was.’ He leapt up, laughed. ‘You see? The half-wit—I remembered. I’ll remember it all, you’ll see. The half-wit… I’d been looking for him for years, forever. I… forget why, but,’ he said, his voice strengthening, ‘that doesn’t matter any more now. What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t have to go all the way back; I’ve done all I need to do. I’m back on the path. Tomorrow I’m going to that house and get that address and then I’ll go to wherever that is and finish what I started out to do in the first place when I lost the—’