“All you have to do,” he said stonily, “is to say ‘yes’ to Scotty Smythe. I’m sure he’d manage things fine for everybody. You wouldn’t need boarders, so I’d be delighted to hunt up some other place—” It was childish.
He had never heard her shout in anger. She did now. She raised her fork and stabbed it in his direction and yelled, “Get out of this kitchen!”
As he went through the living room, Mrs. Yates called nervously, “What’s wrong, Duff?”
He answered, “Nothing,” and began to set the table. She didn’t offer to make up, so he didn’t.
The day after that, Harry Ellings announced he was going to take a week of his annual two weeks’ vacation to go up to Baltimore to see some doctors about his condition.
When Duff learned that, he wanted, once again, to let the FBI know. But Higgins, the G-man, had been very final in his last talk at the hospital. The FBI wouldn’t be interested in Harry’s trip, and though Duff ached with anxiety over the potential danger of it, he felt he could do nothing.
When Harry returned, he didn’t seem improved. His color had become a grayish yellow. His appetite was bad. His hands shook constantly. His neatly parted gray hair seemed to be getting thinner almost day by day. He talked little and spent most of his time, when he wasn’t at work, lying on his bed.
Nobody gave him much attention — the Yates family was demoralized. Dinners were hurriedly prepared. Every night, afterward, Eleanor either drove to Miami to her job or went to a meeting or had a date, leaving the dishes and most of the housework to Marian, Charles and Duff. With Eleanor absent, and while he worked with the youngsters, Duff could revive the old feeling of cheerfulness, but when Eleanor was at home a jittery gloom prevailed.
In early December there was a cold spell. It was the sort that Florida chambers of commerce would like to keep hushed up. Frost crept over the Everglades. The power company put every generator in service to meet the load of electric heaters glowing in tens of thousands of homes. People with fireplaces stoked them, so that all Dade County was spiced with pine-wood smoke.
During the night, millions of dollars’ worth of winter vegetables stiffened, took on frosty carapaces and perished ignominiously. Duff chopped wood and the younger Yateses did their homework around a fire while a kerosene heater burned odoriferiously in their mother’s room. In the morning, which was sunny, but, to natives, shockingly cold, public schools stayed closed and many business firms failed to open, owing to the absence of employees who had no overcoats to wear to their jobs. Duff went to his classes, however.