looking in at her where she sat on one of the backless stools at the counter between a policeman and one of the mechanics whom the reporter had seen about the hangar. The trench-coat was open and there was a long smear either of oil or mud across the upper part of her white dress; she was eating a sandwich, wolfing it and talking to the two men; he watched her drop the fragments back into the plate, wipe her hand across her mouth and lift the thick mug of coffee and drink, wolfing the coffee too, the coffee, like the food, running down her chin from too fast swallowing. At last Jiggs finally found him, still standing there though now the counter was vacant and the faces had gone away too, followed back to the beach.
“Even the proprietor wanted to wash out the cheque, but I got there in time,” Jiggs said. “She was glad to get it, too; you were right, she never had any money with her. Yair. She’s like a man about not bumming from just any guy. Always was. So it’s O.K.” But he was still looking at the reporter with an expression which a more observing person than the reporter could not have read now in the tough face to which the blue and swollen eye and lip lent no quality evoking compassion or warmth but on the contrary merely increased a little the face’s brutality. When he spoke again it was not in a rambling way exactly but with a certain curious alertness as of imminent and irrevocable dispersion; the reporter thought of a man trying to herd a half-dozen blind sheep through a passage a little wider than he could span with his extended arms. Jiggs now had one hand in his pocket but the reporter did not notice it. “So she’s going to have to be out here all night, in case they begin to… And the kid’s already asleep; yair, no need to wake him up, and maybe to-morrow we will all know better where we… Yair, a night or two to sleep on it makes a lot of difference about anything, no matter how bad you think you h — I mean…”
He stopped. (“He ain’t only not held the sheep, he ain’t even holding out his arms any more,” the reporter thought.) The hand came out of his pocket, opening; the door key glinted faintly on the grained palm. “She told me to give it back to you when I saw you,” Jiggs said. “You come on and eat something yourself, now.”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “It will be a good chance to, won’t it. Besides, we will be in out of the cold for a little while.”
“Sure,” Jiggs said. “Come on.” It was warm inside the lunch-wagon; the reporter stopped shaking even before the food came. He ate a good deal of it, then he realized that he was going to eat all of it, without taste or enjoyment especially but with a growing conviction of imminent satisfaction like when a tooth cavity that has not been either pleasant or unpleasant is about to be filled without pain. The faces were gone from the window now, following her doubtless back to the beach, or as near to it as the police and soldiers would let them, where they now gazed no doubt at the police-boat or whatever other boat she had re-embarked in; nevertheless he and Jiggs still sat in it, breathed and chewed it along with the stale hot air and the hot rancid food — the breathing, the exhalation, the variations of the remark which the photographer had made; the ten thousand different smug and gratulant behind-sighted forms of I might be a burn and a bastard but I am not out there in that lake. But he did not see her again.
During the next three hours until midnight he did not leave the beach, while the ranked cars glared steadily downward and the searchlights hummed and the police-launch cruised in slow circles while the little boats moved outward before its bows and inward again behind its stem like so many minnows in the presence of a kind of harmless and vegetarian whale. Steadily, with clock-like and deliberate precision, the long sickle-bar of the beacon swept inward from the lake, to vanish at the instant when the yellow eye came broadside on and apparently halted there with only a slow and terrific centrifugal movement within the eye itself until with that gigantic and soundless flick! the beam shot incredibly outward across the dark sky. But he did not see her, though presently one of the little skiffs came in and beached to take on another bootleg cargo of twenty-five-cent passengers and Jiggs got out.
“They are still fast to it,” he said. “They thought they had it started once but something happened down there and when they hauled up all they had was the cable; they were even short the hook. They say now it must have hit on one of those big blocks of concrete and broke it loose and they both went down together only the ship got there first. They’re going to send the diver down at daylight to see what to do. Only they don’t want to use dynamite because even if it starts him back up it will bust the mole all to pieces. But they’ll know to-morrow. — Didn’t you want to call the paper at midnight or something?”
There was a pay-station in the lunch-wagon, on the wall. Since there was no booth the reporter had to talk into the telephone with his other ear plugged with his hand against the noise and again spending most of the time answering questions; when he turned away he saw that Jiggs was asleep on the backless stool, his arms folded on the counter and his forehead resting on them. It was quite warm inside, what with the constant frying of meat and with the human bodies with which the room was filled now long after its usual closing hour. The window facing the lake was fogged over so that the lighted scene beyond was one diffused glow such as might be shining behind falling snow; looking at it the reporter began to shake again, slowly and steadily inside the suit to which there was apparently no waistcoat, while there grew within him the first active sensation or impulse which he could remember since he watched Shumann begin to bank into the field pylon for the last time — a profound reluctance to go out which acted not on his will but on his very muscles. He went to the counter; presently the proprietor saw him and took up one of the thick cups.
“Coffee?”
“No,” the reporter said. “I want a coat. Overcoat. Have you got one you could lend me or rent me? I’m a reporter,” he added. “I got to stick around down there at the beach until they get through.”
“I ain’t got a coat,” the proprietor said. “But I got a piece of tarpaulin I keep my car under. You can use that if you will bring it back.”
“All right,” the reporter said. He did not disturb Jiggs; when he emerged into the cold and the dark this time he resembled a soiled and carelessly set-up tent. The tarpaulin was stiff and heavy to hold and presently heavy to carry too, but inside it he ceased to shake. It was well after midnight now and he had expected to find that the cars drawn up along the boulevard to face the lake would have thinned somewhat, but they had not. Individually they might have changed, but the ranked line was still intact — a silhouetted row of oval rear windows framing the motionless heads whose eyes, along with the headlights, stared with immobile and unmurmuring patience down upon the scene in which they were not even aware that nothing was happening — that the dredge squatted inactive now, attached as though by one steel umbilical cord not to one disaster but to the prime oblivious mother of all living and derelict too.
Steady and unflagging the long single spoke of the beacon swept its arc across the lake and vanished into the full broadside of the yellow eye and, already outshooting, swept on again, leaving that slow terrific vacuum in mind or sense which should have been filled with the flick and the swish which never came. The sight-seeing skiff had ceased to ply, perhaps having milked the business or perhaps having been stopped by authority; the next boat to land came direct from the dredge, one of the passengers the mechanic who had sat beside the woman in the lunch-wagon. This time the reporter did his own asking.
“No,” the other said. “She went back to the field about an hour ago, when they found out they would have to wait for the diver. I’m going to turn in, myself. I guess you can knock off now yourself, can’t you?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “I can knock off-now too.” At first he thought that perhaps he was going in, walking in the dry light treacherous shell-powder, holding the harsh stiff tarpaulin with both hands to ease the dead weight of it on his neck and shoulders; it was the weight he felt, the cold rasp of it on his fingers and palms. “I’ll have to take it back first, like I promised,” he thought. “If I don’t now, I won’t do it at all.” The ramp of the boulevard rose here, so that the car-lights