At the Window

It chanced on Sunday, when Corbin was on his usual walk with Malloy, that their way lay once again through the lane; and that when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

"Well," said Malloy, "that story's at an end at least. We shall never see more of Mr. Rook."

"I hope not," said Corbin. "Did I ever tell you that I once saw him, and shared your feeling of repulsion?"

"It was impossible to do the one without the other," returned Malloy. "And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was a back way to Dr. Vane's! It was partly your own fault that I found it out, even when I did."

"So you found it out, did you?" said Corbin. "But if that be so, we may step into the yard and take a look at the windows. To tell you the truth, I am uneasy about poor Vane; and even outside, I feel as if the presence of a friend might do him good."

The yard was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with sunset. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Corbin saw Dr. Vane.

"What! Roly! Roly!" he cried. "I trust you are better."

"I am very low, Elias," replied the doctor, drearily. "Very low. It will not last long, thank God."

"You stay too much indoors," said the lawyer. "You should be out, whipping up the circulation like Malloy and me. This is my cousin, Mr. Malloy, Dr. Vane. Come now; get your coat and take a quick turn with us."

"You are very good," sighed the other. "I should like to very much; but no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Elias, I am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask you and Mr. Malloy up, but the place is really not fit."

"Why, then," said the lawyer, good-naturedly, "the best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are."

"That is just what I was about to venture to propose," returned the doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the yard without a word. In silence, too, they traversed the lane; and it was not until they had come into a neighboring street, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that Corbin at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

"God forgive us, God forgive us," said Corbin.

But Malloy only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence.

They parted at the corner of the lake. Corbin walked home alone through the darkening streets, and the face of his friend hung before him, the smile struck out of it, the eyes wide with a terror that had nothing human in it. He had seen frightened men before. He had seen men at the moment they learned they were ruined, and men at the moment they learned they were dying. He had never seen a man look as Roland Vane had looked, because there was something already in the room with him, and Vane was afraid to look away from it.

That night Corbin sat in his study with the fire unlit and the phone in his hand, and twice he dialed Vane's number and twice he hung up before it rang. He did not know what he would have said. "I saw your face" was not a thing you said to a man at midnight. He went to bed at last, and slept badly, and dreamed again of the figure with no face, walking through the sleeping house to the bedside of his friend.

In the morning he called Dodd.

"Is he better?" he asked.

"He did not sleep," said Dodd. "I heard him moving all night."

"Dodd," said Corbin, "if anything is wrong, you will tell me. You promised."

There was a pause at the other end of the line. "Mr. Corbin," said Dodd, and his voice had changed, "I have known Dr. Vane for twenty years. I have seen him at three in the morning with a ruined experiment and a week's work to redo, and he laughed. He has not laughed in a month. Something is wrong. I don't know what it is, and I don't know that I want to know, but something is wrong."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"Because he is my employer," said Dodd. "And because, Mr. Corbin, I am afraid of what you would find."

Corbin stood at his office window with the phone in his hand, looking down at the river, and he felt the year turning under him. He had spent thirty years learning the difference between what a man says and what a man signs. Roland Vane had signed his name to a trust that put everything he owned into the hands of a murderer, and had asked his lawyer to promise to see that murderer righted. The letter from the dead man's room, the handwriting that leaned the other way, the sealed envelope in his safe, the face at the window. He stood there a long time after the call ended.