“Then they’re still just guessing?”
“Just guessing.”
It seemed to satisfy Hollander, and he managed to convey the impression that the conversation, so far as he was concerned, had come to an end. Miss Murrow went over to her chair in a corner of the room and sat down. He was deep, she decided. Yes, a deep creature, with deep impulses. …
Cassidy and Hansen tilted back their chairs a bit and, with loosened collars, settled for the last tiring watches of the night. They had nodded briefly to Hollander, and he had nodded just as briefly in return. He looked to them like a good scout. Like one of the boys. Regular. Cassidy tried to remember what that last line of hooey was that the lieutenant had shot at them about Hollander. Something about cats. About two cats, that was it, watching a promenading and nearsighted mouse. Nuts.
Hollander took an armchair and pushed it close to the head of the bed. It was an upholstered armchair, heavy, and with a tall solid back. He placed it so that its back was to the bathroom door. The back also obliquely obscured him from a full view on the part of Nurse Murrow. He vanished into its overstuffed depths and settled down. His eyes travelled slowly along the spread until they came to rest with a curious fixity on the smooth, masklike face of his friend Endicott.
Then the pupils of Hollander’s eyes contracted until they glittered like the heads of two bright pins.