The blind man smiles his ghostly smile. In his eternal vigil the worm stirs, but many men are rotting in their graves to-night, and sixty-four have bullet fractures in their skulls. Ten thousand more are lying in their beds to-night, living as shells live. They, too, are dead, though yet unburied. They have been dead so long they can’t remember how it was to live. And many weary nights must pass before they can join the buried dead, down where the worm keeps vigil.
Meanwhile, the everlasting worm keeps vigil, and the blind man strokes his sunken jaws, and slowly now he shifts his sightless gaze and turns his back upon the ruined town.
26. The Wounded Faun
Ten days after the failure of the bank in Libya Hill, Randy Shepperton arrived in New York. He had made up his mind suddenly, without letting George know, and the motives that brought him were mixed. For one thing, he wanted to talk to George and see if he couldn’t help to get him straightened out. His letters had been so desperate that Randy was beginning to be worried about him. Then, too, Randy felt he just had to get away from Libya Hill for a few days and out of that atmosphere of doom and ruin and death. And he was free now, there was nothing to keep him from coming, so he came.
He arrived early in the morning, a little after eight o’clock, and took a taxi from the station to the address on Twelfth Street and rang the bell. After a long interval and another ringing of the bell, the door lock clicked and he entered the dim-lit hall. The stairs were dark and the whole house seemed sunk in sleep. His footfalls rang out upon the silence. The air had a close, dead smell compounded of many elements, among which he could distinguish the dusty emanations of old wood and worn plankings and the ghostly reminders of many meals long since eaten. The light was out on the second-floor landing and the gloom was Stygian, so he groped along the wall until he found the door and rapped loudly with his knuckles.
In a moment the door was almost jerked off its hinges, and George, his hair dishevelled, his eyes red with sleep, an old bathrobe flung hastily over his pyjamas, stood framed in the opening, blinking out into the darkness. Randy was a little taken back by the change in his appearance in the six months since he had last seen him. His face, which had always had a youthful and even childish quality, had grown older and sterner. The lines had deepened. And now his heavy lip stuck out at his caller with a menacing challenge, and his whole pug-nosed countenance had a bulldog look of grim truculence.
When Randy recovered from his first surprise he cried out heartily:
“Now wait a minute! Wait a minute! Don’t shoot! I’m not that fellow at all!”
At the unexpected sound of the familiar voice George looked startled, then his face broke into a broad smile of incredulity and delight. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he cried, and with that he seized hold of Randy, wrung him vigorously by the hand, almost dragged him into the room, and then held him off at arm’s length while he grinned his pleasure and amazement.
“That’s better,” said Randy in a tone of mock relief. “I was afraid it might be permanent.”
They now clapped each other on the back and exchanged those boisterous and half-insulting epithets with which two men who have been old friends like to greet each other when they meet. Then, almost at once, George asked Randy eagerly about the bank. Randy told him. George listened intently to the shocking details of the catastrophe. It was even worse than he had supposed, and he kept firing questions at Randy. At last Randy said:
“Well, that’s just about the whole story. I’ve told you all I know. But come, we can talk about that later. What I want to know is—how the hell are you? You’re not cracking up, too, are you? Your last letters made me a little uneasy about you.”
In their joy at seeing one another again and their eagerness to talk, they had both remained standing by the door. But now, as Randy put his casual finger on George’s sore spot, George winced and began to pace back and forth in an agitated way without answering.
Randy saw that he looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he had not slept well, and his unshaved face made him look haggard. The old bathrobe he was wearing had all the buttons missing, and the corded rope that belonged to it was also gone and George had lashed a frayed necktie round the middle to hold the thing together. This remarkable garment added to his general appearance of weariness and exhaustion. His features as he strode about the room had the contracted intensity of nervous strain, and as he looked up quickly Randy saw the worry and apprehension in his eyes.
Suddenly he paused and faced Randy squarely, and with a grim set to his jaws said:
“All right, let me have it! What are they saying now?”
“Who? What is who saying?”
“The people back home. That’s what you meant, isn’t it? From what they’ve written me and said to my face, I can imagine what they’re saying behind my back. Let’s have it and get it over with. What are they saying now?”