Otto picked up the package as if with effort: he must keep up the pretence of weakness and then perhaps he might be rid of them before he betrayed himself. He said:
“Thank you!” He kept his words and tone natural, but produced a private message with his eyes which he prayed would pass muster.
“That was very . . . nice,” he said, and had an answer from her eyes—and then was horrified beyond reason by the sounds of an opening door and the voice of Clare.
“Forgive me,” she was saying,” but I wanted to know when you would all like lunch. It was rude of me: I forgot to ask you before.”
Otto turned his head a little and saw Clare. She stood between Altinger and Bjornstrom, but she was looking at the other woman, as manners demanded. She was poised and cool and in command of herself. She was smiling and very courteous, but it seemed to Otto that there was a tension in her which he had not felt before.
Carolyn Van Teller was smiling too. She seemed taller even than before. She was very gracious. She was charming. She said:
“That’s very kind of you, Miss Ingolls, but we really must be going on our way. Mr. Altinger has an important engagement in San Francisco. And so have I.”
“Are you sure?” Clare said. She was smiling still. “It would be no trouble—and we could be ready in just a few minutes.”
Altinger put in his word. Otto could see his resentment, invisible except to those who had studied him, of any suggestion that there were other wishes than his. He said:
“It’s too bad, Miss . . . Miss Ingolls! But there it is. I
Carolyn Van Teller had turned back to Otto. She sat in the chair again, but poised upon its edge as one who is going to rise immediately. She leaned close to him. She said: “Don’t forget to smoke your cigarettes—and smoke all of them yourself.”
He knew then that there was something more to the package than appeared. He said:
“Of course, I will open them now—at once. No one else would like them anyhow,” and managed a laugh. He could not see Clare, but he knew that she had momentarily turned her head towards him and then as quickly looked away.
He could hear voices behind him, and then Bjornstrom saying:
“I have no appointment, my dear young lady. I can only regret that neither have I a car. If I had, you would surely have one guest for lunch.”
And then there was a general bustle of going and goodbyes and a last look from Carolyn Van Teller and no sight of Clare and then Altinger again and yet another handshake and Altinger’s loud laugh as he said, for all the world to hear:
“And don’t go talking in your sleep, young Jorgensen. You might give away all the firm’s plans.”
So they had thought of that. Of course they had thought of that! They had been worried seriously. But now they knew it was all right and this talk of Altinger’s was half-joke, half-warning to continue caution.
He grinned up at Altinger and then, brave in the knowledge that he had come through this ordeal with colours high, risked a final stroke. He winked.
Altinger grinned, patted him on the shoulder and was gone. The door closed softly and Otto was alone again.
He threw back the bedcovers from his body and breathed deeply, trying to rid himself of the dark feeling of nausea. He lay inert and breathed with a slow deep rhythm. He kept raising his hands and looking at them. When they did not tremble any more, he picked up the gaily wrapped package and tore the paper from it and revealed a box of cigarettes. The seal was over the edge of the box intact, but it seemed to break easily, sliding away as if the gum upon it were new.
It was as he expected. Beneath the cigarettes, at the very bottom of the box, was a wafer-thin, once-folded slip of paper. He unfolded it and found writing which read,
That was all—and nothing, really, at which the most suspicious official eye could cavil. But it was signed with an initial which had beneath it a dashing little twirl showing this to be an order of the first importance.
He looked at the paper. It was very thin, and no larger than the sheath of a cigarette. He crushed it into a little pellet and put it into his mouth and swallowed it.
And he went to sleep again.
The days passed, and the nights, and he kept to his purpose. He ate and slept and rigidly kept his mind from futile maelstrom-racing and in everything obeyed the doctor’s orders: he even invented exercises for the unhurt muscles of his torso and carried them out with secrecy and grew nearer to health and wholeness at astonishing pace.