MEETING-CALLINGS

Part 3 - The Flashlight.

The voices are silent now.  The figures make slight movements under the blankets for a time and then are still.  A motionless, silent period follows.

A darkly dressed figure in jacket and tie, bald head and thickly rimmed glasses appears in the doorway.  He stands silhouetted by the passage lights.  The figure holds a flashlight in his hand.

He switches it on with a single loud click of the button.  He plays the light slowly and evenly once over each of the bodies, beginning with the figure nearest him against the wall.

He pauses slightly each time he reaches an exposed section of a figure.

He switches the beam off each time he reaches the most extended foot of each figure.

He pauses silently between each action of switching the flashlight on and off.

When he switches on the beam for the fifth time, the beam hits directly on the face of the first figure, a young boy sitting upright in the bed.

The boy stares at the light.  The beam plays from his face onto his body, which is naked and white.

The beam, on reaching his toes, returns to the boy's face and then switches off.

The figure in the doorway moves off silently.

The boy remains motionless.

The telephone rings four times and stops midway through the fifth ring.

An indistinct male voice is heard at a distance.