Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar Page B

transferred there eventually.”
    â€œThe County Hospital.” Loftus laughed, holding his hands over his belly. It hurt him to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. “That’s funny, isn’t it? The final irony. After all that’s happened, I’ll end up where I started—in a ward at the County Hospital.”
    The sound of his laughter faded, though his mouth kept grinning. He saw Cordwink and Meecham exchange un­easy glances. “You’re uncomfortable, aren’t you?—dis­turbed?—you wish you’d never seen me? Yes, it’s the same everywhere I go, I make people uncomfortable. I don’t have any friends. No one wants to be near me, people are afraid to be near a man who’s walking a step ahead of death. I make them too conscious of their own fate, and they hate me for it. I’m not blaming them, no, I understand how they feel. I loathe myself more than anyone could loathe me. I loathe this decaying body that I’m trapped inside, hope­lessly trapped inside. This isn’t me, this grotesque body, it is my prison. What prison have you to offer that could be half so terrible?”
    He didn’t realize that he was crying until he felt the sting of salt on his lips. He sometimes cried when he was alone at night and the hours seemed so ironically endless; but never in front of anyone, not even his wife on the day she left him. He wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve, ashamed that he had broken down in front of these three men.
    Cordwink stared out of the window, motionless, his face like granite. Inside, he felt something begin to move, like a steel claw, reaching out and clutching his stomach, squeezing. It could be me. Or Alma and the kids. Don’t let it happen. Me or Alma and the kids.
    A pair of headlights swerved up the driveway. He glanced across the room at Loftus. Loftus had slumped for­ward in his chair, his hands covering his eyes. The back of his neck looked very young, a boy’s neck, thin and vulner­able and white as wax.
    â€œLoftus.”
    There was no reply, no stirring in response to his name.
    â€œLoftus,” Cordwink said again. “The car is here.”
    Loftus raised his head slowly. He seemed dazed, as if he’d flown his prison, had gone miles and years away, and was now returning, like a soul to hell.
    â€œI’m ready,” Loftus said.

6
    611 Division Street was a three-story red-brick house on the outskirts of the college district. Light and noise poured from nearly every window. On the second floor two young men were bending over a microscope. In the adjoining room a boy sat at a table by the window, absorbed in the blare of the radio beside him, his head resting on an open book. Meecham couldn’t see into any of the rooms on the top floor, but it sounded as if a party was going on up there. There was a continuous babble of voices punctuated by sudden peals of laughter.
    The left part of the lower floor was dark and the shades were drawn.
    Following Cordwink up the sidewalk Meecham thought, it’s a funny place for Loftus to live—a dying man in the midst of all this noise and youth.
    The sidewalk forked to the left. A little path no more than a foot wide had been shoveled through the snow and sprinkled with cinders. This was Loftus’ private entrance.
    Cordwink took out the ring of keys that Loftus had given him. “Still want to tag along, Meecham?”
    â€œCertainly.”
    â€œWhat do you expect me to find?”
    â€œThe bloodstained clothes he was wearing Saturday night.”
    â€œYou seem to have a lot of confidence in that confession. Wishful thinking, Meecham?”
    â€œCould be.”
    â€œYou and Loftus are kind of palsy for a couple of guys who never met before.”
    â€œI’m palsy with everyone.”
    â€œYeah. You got a heart of gold, haven’t you? Cold and yellow.”
    â€œYou’re getting to be a sour old character if I ever