Grace watched the perspiring face of the man on the bed and dug her
fingers into her palms, suffering in unison with him as he twitched and
contorted the muscles of his face. Their Goon escort had departed, many
minutes before, and Bodger had not awakened. Grace had looked in vain
for something resembling medicine. None was to be seen in his bathroom,
in his bureau drawers, in his closet--she'd checked the contents
of the leather case there hopefully, then had dropped the puzzling
device she'd found inside it back with disappointment and dismay--nor
was there anything but the usual apportionment of foodstuffs in the
kitchen. "Wake up, Mr. Bodger...." she said, more as a frantic prayer
than actual address. "_Please_ wake up!"
Bodger just lay there, however, moaning softly in his inexplicable
coma, the salt sweat pouring from his face and neck and staining the
coverlet beneath him. Grace bent forward and loosened his collar, then
went back into the bathroom for a towel to wipe some of the moisture
from his skin. On her way out again, towel in hand, she saw a glitter
of something in the sink, and went closer. The broken remains of a
water tumbler lay there, glinting sharply. Something gummy had dried
and clung to the jagged shards there, something that certainly wasn't
water. Grace frowned, and looked about her at the tiled walls of the
room.
If that was Bodger's medicine on the broken glass--then he had taken
it here, in the bathroom, she reasoned. If this were his accustomed
spot to take it--The medicine should be near at hand, shouldn't it? She
could see no point in his carrying it all the way in here from some
other part of the Unit. She looked more closely at the surfaces of the
individual tiles, noting with discouragement that the binding compound
between the squares was solidly unbroken; no hope for a secret panel
there.... But the mirror--!
Inset in a polished metal rectangle, its edges were out of sight.
It might not be as securely in place as it seemed. Grace placed her
fingers firmly against its surface and tried to slide it up or down
or sidewards. It shifted a minute fraction of an inch, and held. But
that merely meant a lock of some kind; even a slight shifting showed
that it was not inset into the binding compound as the tiles were. The
secret of unlocking the mirror lay with Bodger, however, and--she mused
ruefully--if he were awake, she wouldn't need to _know_ the secret.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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