Page 164 - tender-is-the-night

be faint blood on the blanket beneath.
Dick closed the door and stood thinking; he heard cau-
tious steps in the corridor and then Nicole calling him by
name. Opening the door he whispered: ‘Bring the couver-
ture and top blanket from one of our beds—don’t let any
one see you.’ Then, noticing the strained look on her face, he
added quickly, ‘Look here, you mustn’t get upset over this—
it’s only some nigger scrap.’
‘I want it to be over.’
The body, as Dick lifted it, was light and ill-nourished.
He held it so that further hemorrhages from the wound
would flow into the man’s clothes. Laying it beside the bed
he stripped off the coverlet and top blanket and then open-
ing the door an inch, listened—there was a clank of dishes
down the hall followed by a loud patronizing ‘Mer-CI, Ma-
dame,’ but the waiter went in the other direction, toward
the service stairway. Quickly Dick and Nicole exchanged
bundles across the corridor; after spreading this covering
on Rosemary’s bed, Dick stood sweating in the warm twi-
light, considering. Certain points had become apparent to
him in the moment following his examination of the body;
first, that Abe’s first hostile Indian had tracked the friendly
Indian and discovered him in the corridor, and when the
latter had taken desperate refuge in Rosemary’s room, had
hunted down and slain him; second, that if the situation
were allowed to develop naturally, no power on earth could
keep the smear off Rosemary—the paint was scarcely dry
on the Arbuckle case. Her contract was contingent upon an
obligation to continue rigidly and unexceptionally as ‘Dad-

164 Tender is the Night