How in hell could you account for it?"
Jimmy shrugged.
"Jane and I—we're rather fond of each other."
The understatement was so patent that he smiled faintly.
"Chance separated us.
The feeling we have for each other draws us together.
There's a saying about two people becoming one flesh.
If such a thing could happen, it would be Jane and me.
After all, maybe only a tiny pebble or a single extra drop of water made my car swerve enough to get her killed—where I am, that is.
That's a very little thing.
So with such a trifle separating us, and so much pulling us together—why, sometimes the barrier wears thin.
She leaves a door closed in the house where she is.
I open that same door where I am.
Sometimes I have to open the door she left closed, too.
That's all."
Haynes didn't say a word, but the question he wouldn't ask was so self-evident that Jimmy answered it.
"We're hoping," he said.
"It's pretty bad being separated, but the—phenomena keep up.
So we hope.
Her diary is sometimes in the now where she is, and sometimes in this now of mine.
Cigaret butts, too. Maybe—" That was the only time he showed any sign of emotion.
He spoke as if his mouth were dry.
"If ever I'm in her now or she's in mine, even for an instant, all the devils in hell couldn't separate us again!—We hope."
Which was insanity.
In fact, it was the third week of insanity.
He'd told Haynes quite calmly that Jane's diary was on her desk every night, and there was a letter to him in it, and he wrote one to her.
He said quite calmly that the barrier between them seemed to be growing thinner.
That at least once, when he went to bed, he was sure that there was one more cigaret stub in the ashtray than had been there earlier in the evening.
They were very near indeed.
They were separated only by the difference between what was and what might have been.
In one sense the difference was a pebble or a drop of water.
In another, the difference was that between life and death.
But they hoped.
They convinced themselves that the barrier grew thinner.
Once, it seemed to Jimmy that they touched hands.
But he was not sure.
He was still sane enough not to be sure.
And he told all this to Haynes in a matter-of-fact fashion, and speculated mildly on what had started it all....
Then, one night, Haynes called Jimmy on the telephone.
Jimmy answered.
He sounded impatient.
"Jimmy!" said Haynes.
He was almost hysterical.
"I think I'm insane!
You know you said Tony Shields was in the car that hit me?"
"Yes," said Jimmy politely.
"What's the matter?"
"It's been driving me crazy," wailed Haynes feverishly.
"You said he was killed—there.
But I hadn't told a soul about the incident. So—so just now I broke down and phoned him.