Having donned a nightshirt of coarse cotton, he knelt for several minutes
in a devout attitude by the side of his bed, then rising opened the window,
took the turnip from the bureau, and snuggled it beneath his pillow,
inserted his bare shanks between the sheets, and opened at a marked place a
Bible bound in black cloth.
On the table by his shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed
cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell
out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, and
switched out the lamp.
Profound darkness now possessed the room, immaterially modified by the
light-struck sky beyond the windows. And in this grateful obscurity Nogam
permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly
flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence
transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered
Nogam's probable duration of life an interesting speculation.
Under cover of the darkness, furthermore, he did a number of things which
Nogam, qua Nogam, would never have dreamed of doing.
His first act was to withdraw from under his pillow the turnip, his next to
re-open the back of its silver case and then the inner lid--something which
a deft thumbnail accomplished without a sound.
From the roomy interior of the case--whose bulky ancient works had been
replaced by a wafer-thin modern movement, leaving much useful space back
of the dial--sensitive fingers extracted a metal disk about the size and
thickness of a silver dollar.
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