held it to the two cigarettes. But then at once the photographer seemed to watch him sink back into that state of peaceful physical anæsthesia as though the reporter actually were sinking slowly away from him into clear and limpid water out of which the calm, slightly distorted face looked and the eyes blinked at the photographer with that myopic earnestness while the voice repeated patiently:
“But you don’t understand. Let me explain it to — —”
“Yair; sure,” the other said. “You can explain it to Hagood while we are getting a drink.” The reporter moved obediently. But before they had gone very far the photographer realized that they had reassumed their customary mutual physical complementing when working together: the reporter striding on in front and the photographer trotting to keep up. “That’s the good thing about being him,” the photographer thought. “He don’t have to move very far to go nuts in the first place and so he don’t have so far to come back.”
“Yair,” the reporter said. “Let’s move. We got to eat, and the rest of them have got to read. And if they ever abolish fornication and blood, where in hell will we all be? — Yair.
You go on in with what you got; if they get it up right away it will be too dark to take anything. I’ll stay out here and cover it. You can tell Hagood.”
“Yair; sure,” the photographer said, trotting, the camera bouncing against his flank. “We’ll have a shot and we’ll feel better. For Christ’s sake, we never made him go up in it.” Before they reached the rotunda the sunset had faded; even while they walked up the apron the boundary lights came on, and now the flat sword-like sweep of the beacon swung in across the lake and vanished for an instant in a long flick! as the turning eye faded them full, and then reappeared again as it swung now over the land to complete its arc. The field, the apron, was empty, but the rotunda was full of people, and with a cavernous murmuring sound which seemed to linger not about the mouths which uttered it but to float somewhere about the high serene shadowy dome overhead. As they entered a newsboy screamed at them, flapping the paper, the headline: PILOT KILLED. Shumann Crashes Into Lake. SECOND FATALITY OF AIR-MEET as it too flicked away. The bar was crowded too, warm with lights and with human bodies. The photographer led the way now, shouldering into the rail, making room for the reporter beside him. “Rye, huh?” he said, then to the bar-tender, loudly: “Two ryes.”
“Yair; rye,” the reporter said. Then he thought quietly, “I can’t. I cannot.” He felt no revulsion from his insides; it was as though his throat and the organs of swallowing had experienced some irrevocable alteration of purpose from which he would suffer no inconvenience whatever, but which would for ever more mark the exchange of an old psychic as well as physical state for a new one, like the surrendering of a maidenhead. He felt profoundly and peacefully empty inside, as though he had vomited and very emptiness had supplied into his mouth or somewhere about his palate like a lubricant a faint thin taste of salt which was really pleasant: the taste not of despair but of Nothing. “I’ll go and call in now,” he said.
“Wait,” the photographer said. “Here comes your drink.”
“Hold it for me,” the reporter said. “It won’t take but a minute.” There was a booth in the corner, the same from which he had called Hagood yesterday. As he dropped the coin in he closed the door behind him. The automatic dome light came on; he opened the door until the light went off again. He spoke, not loudly, his voice murmuring back from the close walls as he recapitulated at need with succinct and patient care as though reading into the telephone in a foreign tongue: “… yes, f-u-s-e-l-a-g-e. The body of the aeroplane, broke off at the tail…. No, he couldn’t have landed it. The pilots here said he used up what control he had left getting out of the way of the others and to head towards the lake instead of the grandst —
No, they say not. He wasn’t high enough for the chute to have opened even if he had got out of the ship… yair, dredge-boat was just getting into position when I… they say probably right against the mole; it may have struck the rocks and slid down…. Yair, if he should be close enough to all that muck the dredge-boat can’t… yair, probably a diver to-morrow, unless sometime during the night. And by that time the crabs and gars will have… yair, I’ll stay out here and flash you at midnight.”
When he came out of the booth, back into the light, he began to blink again as if he had a little sand in his eyes, trying to recall exactly what eye-moisture tasted like, wondering if perhaps the thin moist salt in his mouth might not somehow have got misplaced from where it belonged. The photographer still held his place at the bar and the drink was waiting, though this time he only looked down at the photographer, blinking, almost smiling. “You go on and drink it,” he said. “I forgot I went on the wagon yesterday.” When they went out to the cab, it was dark; the photographer, ducking, the camera jouncing on its strap, scuttled into the cab, turning a face likewise amazed and spent.
“It’s cold out here,” he said. “Jesus, I’m going to lock the damn door and turn on both them red lamps and fill me a good big tray to smell and I’m going to just sit there and get warm. I’ll tell Hagood you are on the job.” The face vanished, the cab went on, curving away towards the boulevard where beyond and apparently just behind the ranked palms which lined it the glare of the city was visible even from here upon the overcast. People were still moiling back and forth across the plaza and in and out of the rotunda, and the nightly overcast had already moved in from the lake; against it the measured and regular sword-sweep of the beacon was quite distinct, and there was some wind in it too; a long breath of it at the moment came down over the building and across the plaza and the palms along the boulevard began to clash and hiss with a dry wild sound. The reporter began to inhale the dark chill wind; it seemed to him that he could taste the lake, water, and he began to pant, drawing the air in by lungsful and expelling it and snatching another lungful of it as if he were locked inside a burning room and were hunting handful by handful through a mass of cotton batting for the door key. Ducking his head he hurried past the lighted entrance and the myriad eyes; his face for the time had frozen, like a piece of uncoiled machinery freezes, into a twisted grimace which filled his sore jaw with what felt like icy needles, so that Ord had to call him twice before he turned and saw the other getting out of his roadster, still in the suède jacket and the hind-part-before cap in which he flew.
“I was looking for you,” Ord said, taking something from his pocket — the narrow strip of paper folded again as it had lain in the reporter’s fob pocket this morning before he gave it to Marchand. “Wait; don’t tear it,” Ord said. “Hold it a minute.” The reporter held it while Ord struck the match. “Go on,” Ord said. “Look at it.” With his other hand he opened the note out, holding the match so that the reporter could see it, identify it, waiting while the reporter stood with the note in his hand long enough to have examined it anyway. “That’s it, ain’t it?” Ord said.
“Yes,” the reporter said.
“All right. Stick it to the match. I want you to do it yourself…. Damn it, drop it! Do you want to—” As it floated down the flame seemed to turn back and upward, to climb up the falling scrap and on into space, vanishing; the charred carbon leaf drifted on without weight or sound and Ord ground his foot on it. “You bastard,” he said. “You bastard.”
“God, yes,” the reporter said, as quietly. “I’ll make out another one to-morrow. You will just have to take me alone—”
“Like hell. What are they going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” the reporter said. Then at once he began to speak in that tone of peaceful and bemused incomprehensibility. “You see, she didn’t understand. She told me to go away. I mean, away. Let me ex—” But he stopped, thinking quietly, “Wait. I mustn’t start that. I might not be able to stop it next time.” He said: “They don’t know yet, of course, until after the dredge… I’ll be there. I’ll see to them.”
“Bring her on over home if you want to. But you better go yourself and take a couple of drinks. You don’t look so good either.”
“Yair,” the reporter said. “Only I quit yesterday. I got mixed up and went on the wagon.”
“Yes?” Ord said. “Well, I’m going home. You better get in touch with her right away. Get her away from here. Just put her in a car and come on over home. If it’s where they say it is, it will take a diver to get