The padding was recognizable now—quiet footsteps, coming nearer. They passed not far from my clothespress door.
I waited.
An almost inaudible rustling. A pause. The softest and faintest of tearing sounds.
I came out of the closet—my gun in my hand.
Standing beside the girl’s bed, leaning over her unconscious form, was old Talbert Exon, his face flushed with fever, his night shirt hanging limply around his wasted legs. One of his hands still rested upon the bedclothes he had turned down from her body. The other hand held a narrow strip of adhesive tape, with which her bandages had been fixed in place, and which he had just torn off.
He snarled at me, and both his hands went toward the girl’s bandages.
The crazy, feverish glare of his eyes told me that the threat of the gun in my hand meant nothing to him. I jumped to his side, plucked his hands aside, picked him up in my arms, and carried him—kicking, clawing and swearing—back to his bed.
Then I called the others.