The old man seemed ashamed. He mumbled evasively: “He didn’t have much to say. He—uh, said it was a terrible thing, just terrible.”

Neither Ralph nor Clinton could look at each other. Ralph made a thorough study of his entire left arm. Clinton looked at the bedside stand, the telephone, the medicine bottles, Annabel’s ship’s-wheel lamp, the ash tray.

“Where is he?” Clinton said.

“I don’t know.”

“I guess he’ll go out and maybe get drunk, huh?”

Ralph shrugged. “I suppose. I suppose that’s what anybody’d do. Thing like this, you know, it’s a shock, it’s a terrible thing. If Echo O’Brien was an ordinary girl, it’d been bad enough. But she was a queen, for godsake.”

Clinton nodded. “Does he figure to go up with us? Tuesday?”

“I don’t know about that. Doesn’t look like he’ll be able to make it. He wants some money.”

“From you?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“To go away?”

Ralph made no direct answer to this question. He looked straight ahead for a moment. His face bore the blank and senseless expression of a person who imagines himself alone. When finally he spoke, there seemed to be no wind supporting his voice: “He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make the funeral.”

Now it happened that at this moment Clinton’s eye went to the bottom shelf of the bedside stand and came to rest on a copy of the Cleveland Telephone Directory. This thick book held his full attention for a long time; even as he spoke brief, mechanical phrases to Ralph, his mind was caught and held by it.

Ralph said, “He was talking something about he wanted money. I told him we’d look into that—at another time. But I let him have twenty. You think I did right?”

“I guess.” Clinton studied the image of Mercury on the cover of the directory, the glistening body, the winged helmet, the feathered feet, the hand held high, pointing, beckoning. “Ralph, I want to ask you a favor. Can I borrow the car? For another while?”

“I wonder,” Ralph said. Then he lay back on his pillow, folded his hands across his stomach, and looked at the ceiling: “You know, I’ve made it a point never to—never to clamp down on you bozos.”

“Can I use it?” Clinton said.

Ralph nodded; but he had not even heard Clinton’s request. Clinton started out of the room. Ralph said, “Where you going?”

“Just out for a while. You want anything?”

“No, I don’t need anything.”

“G’bye.”