But no one else turned even an attentive eye to the gift which Belknap was arranging with exaggerated care on the tray of crystal-bright decanters and dark-bright bottles. Curiosity, dread, and sheer hypnotism, combined to magnetize them into a rigid ensemble about Whittaker’s reading lamp. But it was a brittle, surface rigidity—like the first thin ice formed over moving water. Beneath it the twisting, roiling currents of agonized apprehension wore through and disturbed the dangerous stillness of the room. Nadia Mdevani’s puffs at her cigarette were too brief, and she flicked unformed ash too often. Blake in the corner ferociously over-shuffled a pack of cards. At the piano Romany’s fingers lacked control, and the snatches of song she attempted lost themselves in broken pitch. But she had at least recovered from her faintness, which she had apologetically laid to a week’s indulgence in late hours, and to cocktails for tea at Sands Point. Crawford was turning the leaves of _The Sportsman_, but with such erratic rapidity that he must have been unaware of what he saw. Only Julian and Joel, looking worlds at each other, plus suns and moons and stars, still seemed a little stupidly blind to what was happening.
As Whittaker arranged his stage setting—chair and lamp just so, and a pillow at his back—the ritual of after-dinner coffee proceeded with its usual calm and efficiency. A robot maid, pretty and slim-figured in black and white, brought the service, and John passed the cups. He then quietly opened the windows of the terrace to the warm May night, asked his master was there anything further, and retired.
Whittaker cleared his throat; and the sound startled the room as thoroughly as though it had been a shot. It drew the line at conversation and movement. Across the stillness Whittaker’s first words assumed an enlarged importance.
“As I’ve told you, this is a day to day record of my life for the past twelve or fifteen years.” By a motion of his hand he indicated to them a thick, flexible, thin-paper notebook, bound in tooled suède. “Tonight I am taking a leaf from a day two years ago, June 19, 1929. I recall the day vividly; and I can quite imagine that Markham does. (We’ll say Markham—the real name needn’t figure until we go into print.)