She expected him to
vanish, indifferent, like a phantom of the dead carrying off the
appropriately dead watch in his hand for some unearthly purpose.
Jorgenson didn't move. His was an insensible, almost a senseless
presence! Nothing could be extorted from it. But a wave of anguish as
confused as all her other sensations swept Mrs. Travers off her feet.
"Can't you tell me something?" she cried.
For half a minute perhaps Jorgenson made no sound; then: "For years
I have been telling anybody who cared to ask," he mumbled in his
moustache. "Telling Tom, too. And Tom knew what he wanted to do. How's
one to know what _you_ are after?"
She had never expected to hear so many words from that rigid shadow. Its
monotonous mumble was fascinating, its sudden loquacity was shocking.
And in the profound stillness that reigned outside it was as if there
had been no one left in the world with her but the phantom of that old
adventurer. He was heard again: "What I could tell you would be worse
than poison."
Mrs. Travers was not familiar with Jorgenson's consecrated phrases. The
mechanical voice, the words themselves, his air of abstraction appalled
her. And he hadn't done yet; she caught some more of his unconcerned
mumbling: "There is nothing I don't know," and the absurdity of the
statement was also appalling.
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