He thought: Something else.

Not just Walter’s laughter. Something—a plan?

No, Gods, no—nothing as complex or hopeful as that.

But an idea, at least. A tickle.

How long have I been out? he thought with sudden alarm. It was maybe nine o’ the clock when I came through the door, maybe a little earlier. How long—?

He came forward.

Jack Mort—who was now only a human doll controlled by the gunslinger—looked up a little and saw the hands of the expensive quartz clock on his desk stood at quarter past one.

Gods, as late as that? As late as that? But Eddie . . . he was so tired, he can never have stayed awake for so l—

The gunslinger turned Jack’s head. The door was still there, but what he saw through it was far worse than he would have imagined.

Standing to one side of the door were two shadows, one that of the wheelchair, the other that of a human being . . . but the human being was incomplete, supporting itself on its arms because its lower legs had been snatched away with the same quick brutality as Roland’s fingers and toe.

The shadow moved.

Roland whipped Jack Mort’s head away at once, moving with the whiplash speed of a striking snake.

She mustn’t look in. Not until I am ready. Until then, she sees nothing but the back of this man’s head.

Detta Walker would not see Jack Mort in any case, because the person who looked through the open door saw only what the host saw. She could only see Mort’s face if he looked into a mirror (although that might lead to its own awful consequences of paradox and repetition), but even then it would mean nothing to either Lady; for that matter, the Lady’s face would not mean anything to Jack Mort. Although they had twice been on terms of deadly intimacy, they had never seen each other.

What the gunslinger didn’t want was for the Lady to see the Lady.

Not yet, at least.

The spark of intuition grew closer to a plan.

But it was late over there—the light had suggested to him that it must be three in the afternoon, perhaps even four.

How long until sunset brought the lobstrosities, and the end of Eddie’s life?

Three hours?

Two?

He could go back and try to save Eddie . . . but that was exactly what Detta wanted. She had laid a trap, just as villagers who fear a deadly wolf may stake out a sacrificial lamb to draw it into bowshot. He would go back into his diseased body . . . but not for long. The reason he had seen only her shadow was because she was lying beside the door with one of his revolvers curled in her fist. The moment his Roland-body moved, she would shoot it and end his life.

His ending, because she feared him, would at least be merciful.

Eddie’s would be a screaming horror.