CHAPTER SIXColleague
Gamadge, walking along the Clayborns’ street on the following afternoon, reflected that it would probably be no quieter twelve hours hence, at 3 a.m. on Monday morning, than it was now. By five o’clock exhausted people would be pushing baby carriages through from the Park, children of the East Side would be straggling home; now the sun warmed empty pavements, not a car stood at either kerb.
He paused to look up at the bricked window. He now knew that Nonie sat beyond it in the dark, at her piano. He wondered how close to madness old Mrs. Clayborn had been when she called that image into being, while she sat alone beside it through the years. Could she have survived those vigils without at last coming to believe that there was more to her companion than sawdust and wa
