upward into darkness in a stare of patient, puzzled, and abstracted thought.
XXIV
For a long time now, McGuire had sat there without moving, sprawled out upon the desk in a kind of drunken stupor. About half-past three the telephone upon the desk began to ring, jangling the hospital silence with its ominous and insistent clangour, but the big burly figure of the man did not stir, he made no move to answer. Presently he heard the brisk heel-taps of Creasman, the night superintendent, coming along the heavy oiled linoleum of the corridor. She entered, glanced quickly at him, and saying, “Shall I take it?” picked up the phone, took the receiver from its hook, said “hello” and listened for a moment. He did not move.
In a moment, the night superintendent said quietly:
“Yes, I’ll ask him.”
When she spoke to him, however, her tone had changed completely from the cool professional courtesy of her speech into the telephone: putting the instrument down upon the top of the desk, and covering the mouth-piece with her hand, she spoke quietly to him, but with a note of cynical humour in her voice, bold, coarse, a trifle mocking.
“It’s your wife,” she said. “What shall I tell her?”
He regarded her stupidly for a moment before he answered.
“What does she want?” he grunted.
She looked at him with hard eyes touched with pity and regret.
“What do you think a woman wants?” she said. “She wants to know if you are coming home tonight.”
He stared at her and then grunted:
“Won’t go home.”
She took her hand away from the mouth-piece instantly, and taking up the phone again, spoke smoothly, quietly, with cool crisp courtesy:
“The doctor will not be able to go home tonight, Mrs. McGuire. He has to operate at seven-thirty…. Yes…. Yes…. At seven-thirty…. He has decided it is best to stay here until the operation is over…. Yes…. I’ll tell him…. Thank you…. Good-bye.”
She hung up quietly and then turning to him, her hands arched cleanly on starched hips, she looked at him for a moment with a bold sardonic humour.
“What did she say?” he mumbled thickly.
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “Nothing
