I'm telling you to come down to the dining
room.... We've tended you and--"
"Well," he demanded impatiently, "what do you want; whom shall I
shoot?"
"You'll see, quick enough. And I can't stand here talking either; I've
got to go back. You get yourself right along down!"
With painful slowness Elim made his preparations to descend; his
fingers could hardly buckle the stiff strap of his revolver sling, but
finally he made his way downstairs through a deep narrow hall. He
turned from a blank wall to a darkened reception room, with polished
mahogany, somber books and engravings on the walls, and a rosy blur of
fire in the hearth. A more formal chamber lay at his right, empty, but
through an opposite door he caught the faint clatter of a spoon.
Rosemary Roselle was seated, rigid and white, at the end of a table
that bore a scattered array of dishes. There were shadows beneath her
eyes, and her hands, on the table, were clenched. On her left a man in
an unmarked blue uniform sat, sagging heavily forward in his chair,
breathing stertorously, with a dark flush over a pouched and flaccid
countenance. Opposite him, sitting formally upright, was a negro in a
carefully brushed gray suit, with a crimson satin necktie surcharged by
vivid green lightning. His bony face, the deep pits of his temples,
were the dry spongy black of charcoal, and behind steel-rimmed glasses
his eyes rolled like yellow agates. He glanced about, furtive and
startled, when Elim Meikeljohn entered, but he was immediately
reassured by Elim's disordered uniform.
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