‘Damn it,’ yelled Crane suddenly. ‘Answer me! Say something!’
He typed, ‘You needn’t have let me know you were aware of me. You needn’t have talked to me in the first place. I never would have guessed if you had kept quiet. Why did you do it?’
There was no answer.
* * *
Crane went to the refrigerator and got a bottle of beer. He walked around the kitchen as he drank it. He stopped by the sink and looked sourly at the disassembled plumbing. A length of pipe, about two feet long, lay on the draining board and he picked it up. He eyed the typewriter viciously, half lifting the length of pipe, hefting it in his hand.
‘I ought to let you have it,’ he declared.
The typewriter typed a line: Please don’t.
Crane laid the pipe back on the sink again.
The telephone rang and Crane went into the dining-room to answer it. It was McKay.
‘I waited,’ he told Crane, ‘until I was coherent before I called you. What the hell is wrong?’