“Mad?” He smiled. “No, I think
that’s one of the best lies you ever told me,
Jack.”
Their eyes met, hers very wide, and his keen and steady.
Then she gripped at the butt of her gun, an habitual
trick when she was very angry, and cried: “Do
I have to sit here and let you call me—that?
Pierre, pull a few more tricks like that and I’ll
call for a new deal. Get me?”
She rose, whirled, and threw herself sullenly on her
bunk. “Come back,” said Pierre.
“You’re more scared than angry. Why
are you afraid, Jack?”
“It’s a lie—I’m not afraid!”
“Let me see that glove again.”
“You’ve seen it once—that’s
enough.”
He whistled carelessly, rolling a cigarette.
After he lighted it he said: “Ready to
talk yet, partner?”
She maintained an obstinate silence, but that sharp
eye saw that she was trembling. He set his teeth
and then drew several long puffs on his cigarette.
“I’m going to count to ten, pal, and when
I finish you’re going to tell me everything
straight. In the meantime don’t stay there
thinking up a new lie. I know you too well, and
if you try the same thing on me again—”
“Well?” she snarled, all the tiger coming
back in her voice.
“You’ll talk, all right. Here goes
the count: One—two—three—four—”
As he counted, leaving a long drag of two or three
seconds between numbers, there was not a change in
the figure of the girl. She still lay with her
back turned on him, and the only expressive part that
showed was her hand. First it lay limp against
her hip, but as the monotonous count proceeded it
gathered to a fist.
“Five—six—seven—”
It seemed that he had been counting for hours, his
will against her will, the man in him against the
woman in her, and during the pauses between the sound
of his voice the very air grew charged with waiting.
To the girl the wait for every count was like the wait
of the doomed traitor when he stands facing the firing-squad,
watching the glimmer of light go down the aimed rifles.
For she knew the face of the man who sat there counting;
she knew how the firelight flared in the dark red
of his hair and made it seem like another fire beneath
which the blue of the eyes was strangely cold.
Her hand had gathered to a hard-balled fist.
“Eight—nine—”
She sprang up, screaming: “No, no, Pierre!”
And threw out her arms to him.
“Ten.”
She whispered: “It was the girl with yellow
hair—Mary Brown.”
It was as if she had said: “Good morning!”
in the calmest of voices. There was no answer
in him, neither word nor expression, and out of ten
sharp-eyed men, nine would have passed him by without
noting the difference; but the girl knew him as the
monk knows his prayers or the Arab his horse, and
a solemn, deep despair came over her. She felt
like the drowning, when the water closes over their
heads for the last time.
