Nadia was in the East Room, smoking furiously, picking up and laying down bric-a-brac, books, pictures, a glass of water, with indiscriminate and hasty distraction. Seeing the ghost of Sydney pass through for the sixth time her nerves were stung to remonstrance.
“For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter, Mrs. Crawford? One would think you were the only one in trouble around here. Is it as bad as all that with your husband? Can’t he buck up?”
Sydney halted in her tracks and stood gazing straight through Nadia, through the walls, through the outer fog, for several seconds.
“He’s worse,” she said in a dragging voice. “I don’t understand it.”
“I’ll come up with you.” Nadia’s bomb of angry impatience burst in air and came softly down. “There may be something I can do.”
Again there was an appreciable interval before Sydney answered, her eyes distantly intent, as though, a creature of another world, she listened for echoes of this.
They went up together to the Crawfords’ room, passing in the lower hall a policeman sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed chair against the wall near the door. A high-low light was turned low above the mirror-table beside him. It was all the light for the hall and stairway. At the head of the stairs another policeman, equally immobile and disinterested, sat in a straight-backed chair against the wall.
“It feels like a hotel after 2 A.M., or a funeral parlor at midday,” Nadia cried at Sydney. “Let’s turn up the lights and dance on the graves—throw a celebration with horns and cymbals.”
But Sydney was deaf to her. And even Nadia’s bitter laughter died away when she had taken one look at Crawford, felt his pulse, and listened to his breathing. There was a horrid whitish edge of something, like dried foam at a tide-mark, along his upper lip. The lids of his eyes were neither up nor down, but remained fixed half across the pupils. His Adam’s apple shifted a little, spasmodically. Nadia swung on Sydney.
“You little damn fool,” she hissed. “What do you think you’re doing—playing with death? As if we hadn’t had enough of it about. Did that frightful idiot of a Dr. Giles go off duty?”
“What’s the matter?” Sydney asked stonily.
“Did you give him the sedative I gave you?”