CONRAD NORMAN
tainly he would make a great actor if temperament could do it.
I left him in the car when I got out at the druggist's to telephone. And I had a moment to collect my thoughts while her brother—who answered the 'phone—went to call her. I began guardedly to explain to her that I needed help, mentioning no names; that I had succeeded in persuading him to go home, but he insisted that I must see her; that I had something to propose—
She cut me short with, "Tell him I'll come."
I did not understand. "Where?" I asked. "When?"
She repeated, "Tell him I'll come." And she hung up.
He understood.
"Come on. Come on," he cried. "Hurry up. My room. It's my room."
11
I was glad that Centerbrook went to bed at ten. He hung over me, from the back seat, urging me on, like the heroine of a movie race between a touring-car and sudden death. And when he had hurried me, stumbling through the dark halls and up the creaking staircases of the sleeping Gorman family, and pushed me into his attic room and locked the door behind us and switched on the light, he stood, with his eyes on the faded chintz curtains of a clothes-closet, panting with all the impatient
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