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Matthew's chamber.
John whispered: "I wonder if there's some way that she can tell he's home?"
Angie hissed back: "Search me. But you answered her, now she knows there's
someone here."
Again there was a faint sound, this time as of an intelligible voice, from the
old man's bedroom. His two guardians looked at each other wide-eyed. A moment
later, they were bursting in on him again.
He was sitting bolt upright in his bed, glaring at them, and to their great
joy they heard him utter a few coherent words: "& admit& no one& "
"We won't!" Angie hastened to be reassuring. "We haven't let anyone in. No one
but Joe. You know, Joe Keogh? He was here, but he's gone now to try to get
help."
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The old man nodded firmly. He was definitely coming around.
Now he pointed toward the living room. "Mrs. Hassler."
"Yes, what about her?"
Maule enunciated carefully. "Genuinely& my neighbor. Try& keep her quiet.
No police. Not yet."
"Yes, we understand about the police. No police yet Angie, go back and talk to
her. No, wait, you stay here. I'll go, just in case." And John went bounding
out of the room again.
"Can I get you anything?" Angie asked the patient, joyfully.
"Tell me& what has happened?"
Angie did her best, pouring out the story in a jumble of words. She concluded:
"If we could only phone Joe now and tell him you're coming out of it& "
The man sitting in the bed looked grimly worried "Yes& wait. If this phone is
tapped& try to use Mrs. Hassler's. Safer than trying to reach public phone.
We do not want the enemy to know I am recovering."
Angie ran into the front room to communicate this idea to John. He had the
front door open on its security holders, and was conversing warily with Mrs.
Hassler through the narrow gap.
Angie joined him, hanging on his shoulder and smiling brightly, while thinking
she must look a ghastly mess.
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Introductions were quickly, if somewhat awkwardly, performed. Then Angie said,
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as sweetly as possible: "The phone's out of order here, on top of everything
else Mrs. Hassler, do you suppose we could use yours?"
"Of course, dear." If the smiling woman in the corridor was bothered by not
being asked to step in, she didn't show it.
. John stared at Angie, then caught the idea. With a muttered excuse he ran
back to confer briefly with the old man. Moments later he was back at the
front door, and a moment after that he was gone. Angie stuck her head out and
watched him safely into Mrs. Hassler's apartment just down the hall.
Then she locked and bolted up the door again, turned off the viewer, and
walked slowly back to talk to Uncle Matthew.
She found him out of bed, standing erect though he looked a bit unsteady, and
wrapping himself in a white robe. As soon as Angie entered the room he asked
her. "Where is Joseph now?"
"I don't know. He didn't want to tell us where he'd be. But we can call his
regular number and leave messages on his answering machine; he can call in
from somewhere else and have them played back. Shouldn't you sit down and
rest?"
The old man muttered something Angie felt sure it was profanity in some
unknown tongue, which had a Latinesque sound to it. But he nodded weakly and
sat down.
He and Angie were still in the master bedroom, talking, a couple of minutes
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later, when a loud splintering crash resounded through the apartment, followed
in an instant by a mutter of voices, unfamiliar and triumphant Angle sprang
up.
The image conveyed to her mind by that sound was that either the front or back
door had just been violently broken in.
It seemed to Angie that she was on her feet at once, but Uncle Matthew, who
had shaken off his unsteadiness to move with startling speed, was already
closing and locking the bedroom door. Then he turned and stood in front of it
with his finger to his lips, gesturing her to silence.
The unfamiliar male voices, somewhere out there in the apartment, sounded
again, low but victorious. Someone was being invited to come in.
John, invited to make himself at home in Mrs. Hassler's pleasant but somewhat
overdecorated apartment, did the best he could to fend off the lady's kind
attentions and bottomless curiosity, while using her generously offered
telephone. He realized at once that he was going to have to give up all hope
of speaking privately with Joe Keogh.
He had only one number to call, that of Joe's regular home phone.
The machine answered, as John had expected. After the recorded message had had
its say, he cleared his throat and spoke: "Joe, this is John. I'm calling from
the apartment next door. The phone here seems to be working without that
trouble we had with Uncle Matthew's. Uh, I wanted you to know Uncle
Matthew's up and about now, though he's still very weak."
Looking over his shoulder, John saw Mrs. Hassler beaming at him from across
the kitchen. He smiled at her and continued talking into the phone. "His, uh,
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laryngitis is much better. One of those twenty-four-hour viruses, I guess."
Mrs. Hassler made no pretense of absenting herself or her attention, but
continued to look on with approval.
John thanked her and prepared to hurry back to Angie. As he stood on the point
of opening the front door, he paused. "Mind if I take a look out there first?"
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"No, of course not." His hostess seemed intrigued.
John flicked on the viewer beside Mrs. Hassler's front door.
Someone, an ominous male shape, was standing guard in the hallway, obviously
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