2

The face was smiling down at him from an upstairs window in Eva Galli's old house. Get along, now. Moving a little oddly, as if drunk, he went down the walk, his feet in carpet slippers not registering the cold, and turned in the direction of town. Until he reached the corner, he could feel that house across the street as a presence behind him; when he managed to get as far as the corner, his open coat flapping about the trousers to the gray suit and the dinner jacket, he suddenly saw in his mind that the house was blazing, all of it blanketed in a transparent flame that was even now warming his back. But when he turned around to look it was not burning, there were no transparent flames, nothing had happened.

Thus, when Ricky Hawthorne and Sears James were seated with Walt Hardesty in a farm kitchen drinking coffee, Dr. Jaffrey, a thin figure in a fishing hat, an unbuttoned coat, the trousers to one suit, the jacket to another and carpet slippers, was moving past the front of the Archer Hotel. He was as little aware of it as he was of the wind which whipped his coat back and snapped it behind him. Eleanor Hardie, vacuuming the carpet in the hotel's lobby, saw him go by, holding down his fishing hat, and thought: poor Dr. Jaffrey, he has to go out to see a patient in this weather. The bottom of the window excluded the carpet slippers from her view of the doctor. She would have been confused to see him hesitate at the corner and turn down the left side of the square-in effect going back the way he had come.

When he passed the big windows of the Village Pump restaurant, William Webb, the young waiter Stella Hawthorne had intimidated, was setting out napkins and silverware, working his way toward the back of the restaurant where he could take a break and have a cup of coffee. Because he was nearer to Dr. Jaffrey than Eleanor Hardie had been, he took in the details of the doctor's pale, confused face beneath the fishing hat, the coat unbuttoned to reveal the doctor's bare neck, the tuxedo jacket over the pajama top. What went through his mind was: the old fool's got amnesia. On the half-dozen occasions Bill Webb had seen Dr. Jaffrey in the restaurant, the doctor had read a book straight through his meal and left a minute tip. Because Jaffrey had begun to hurry, though the expression on his face suggested that he had no proper idea of where he was going, Webb dropped a handful of silverware on the table and rushed out of the restaurant.

Dr. Jaffrey had begun to flap down the sidewalk. Webb ran after him and caught up with him at the traffic lights a block away: the doctor, running, was an angular bird. Webb touched the sleeve of the black coat. "Dr. Jaffrey, can I help you?"

Dr. Jaffrey.

In front of Webb, about to run across the street without bothering to check the traffic-which, in any case, was nonexistent-Jaffrey turned around, having heard a toneless command. Bill Webb then was given one of the most unsettling experiences of his life. A man with whom he was acquainted, a man who had never looked at him with even polite curiosity, now regarded him with utter terror stamped into his features. Webb, who dropped his hand, had no idea that the doctor saw, instead of his ordinary, slightly froggy face, that of a dead girl grinning redly at him.

"I'm going," the doctor said, his face still registering horror. "I'm going now."

"Uh, sure," said Webb.

The doctor turned and fled, and reached the other side of the street without mishap. He continued his birdlike run down the left side of Main Street, elbows hitching, coat twisting out behind him, and Webb was sufficiently unsettled by the look the doctor had given him to stand staring at him open-mouthed until he realized that he was coatless and a block from the restaurant.