“All right. What is it?”
“Did they take your watch, too?”
“Yes!” Blake shouted suddenly in an angry and excited tone. “And that was an eighteen carat, thirty-two jewel platinum-case watch that Uncle George bought for me in Switzerland. That watch is worth $225 and I’d better get it back when I get out of here!” he shouted rattling the door. “Do you hear? If those sons of bitches try to steal my watch, my Uncle George will put’em all in jail! I want it back!” he shouted.
No one answered.
Then they were silent for another spell of time, and finally Robert said in a hoarse, brooding, and mournful tone:
“Eugene?”
“Well.”
“Are you there?”
“Where the hell do you think I am?” Eugene said bitterly. “You don’t see any holes in this place you can crawl out of, do you?”
Robert laughed his hoarse falsetto laugh, and then said with a kind of brooding wonder:
“Lord! Lord! Who’d have thought it? Who’d ever have thought Eugene and I would get put in jail together here in Blackstone, South Carolina. Here I am just out of Yale and admitted to the bar six weeks ago and you—boy!” he laughed suddenly his annoying falsetto laugh, and concluded—“Just got back from three years at Harvard and here you are in jail already! Lord! Lord! What are you going to tell your mother when she sees you? What’s she going to say when you tell her you’ve been in jail?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” the other said angrily. “Shut up!”
Robert laughed his annoying falsetto laugh again, and said:
“Boy! I’d hate to have to face her! I’m glad I’m not in your shoes!”
“Not in my shoes!” the other shouted in an exasperated tone. “You damned fool, you are in my shoes!”
Then they were silent for a spell, and grey time ticked wearily around them the slow remorseless sound of interminable minutes.
Presently Blake spoke, out of a drunken silence, saying:
“Gant?”
“What is it?”
“What time is it now?”
“I don’t know. They have my watch,” he said.
And grey time ticked around them.
