Four Past Midnight

His clearest sense, however, was one of almost wistful pleasure. On one wall was a photograph of a puppy with large, thoughtful eyes. Written beneath the puppy's anxious-hopeful face was one of the world's great truths: IT IS HARD TO BE GOOD. On another wall was a drawing of mallards making their way down a riverbank to the reedy verge of the water. MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS! the poster trumpeted.

Sam looked to his left, and the faint smile on his lips first faltered and then died. Here was a poster which showed a large, dark car speeding away from what he supposed was a school building. A little boy was looking out of the passenger window. His hands were plastered against the glass and his mouth was open in a scream. In the background, a man - only a vague, ominous shape - was hunched over the wheel, driving hell for leather. The words beneath this picture read:

NEVER TAKE RIDES FROM STRANGERS!

Sam recognized that this poster and the Little Red Riding Hood picture on the door of the Children's Library both appealed to the same primitive emotions of dread, but he found this one much more disturbing. Of course children shouldn't accept rides from strangers, and of course they had to be taught not to do so, but was this the right way to make the point?

How many kids, he wondered, have had a week's worth of nightmares thanks to that little public service announcement?

And there was another one, posted right on the front of the checkout desk, that struck a chill as deep as January down Sam's back. It showed a dismayed boy and girl, surely no older than eight, cringing back from a man in a trenchcoat and gray hat. The man looked at least eleven feet tall; his shadow fell on the upturned faces of the children. The brim of his 1940s-style fedora threw its own shadow, and the eyes of the man in the trenchcoat gleamed relentlessly from its black depths. They looked like chips of ice as they studied the children, marking them with the grim gaze of Authority. He was holding out an ID folder with a star pinned to it - an odd sort of star, with at least nine points on it. Maybe as many as a dozen. The message beneath read:

AVOID THE LIBRARY POLICE!

GOOD BOYS AND GIRLS RETURN THEIR BOOKS ON TIME!

That taste was in his mouth again. That sweet, unpleasant taste. And a queer. frightening thought occurred to him: I have seen this man before. But that was ridiculous, of course. Wasn't it?

Sam thought of how such a poster would have intimidated him as a child - of how much simple, unalloyed pleasure it would have stolen from the safe haven of the library - and felt indignation rise in his chest. He took a step toward the poster to examine the odd star more closely, taking his roll of Tums out of his pocket at the same time.

He was putting one of them into his mouth when a voice spoke up from behind him. 'Well, hello there!'

He jumped and turned around, ready to do battle with the library dragon, now that it had finally disclosed itself.

2

No dragon presented itself. There was only a plump, white-haired woman of about fifty-five, pushing a trolley of books on silent rubber tires. Her white hair fell around her pleasant, unlined face in neat beautyshop curls.

'I suppose you were looking for me,' she said. 'Did Mr Peckham direct you in here?'

'I didn't see anybody at all.'

'No? Then he's gone along home,' she said. 'I'm not really surprised, since it's Friday. Mr Peckham comes in to dust and read the paper every morning around eleven. He's the janitor - only part-time, of course. Sometimes he stays until one -one-thirty on most Mondays, because that's the day when both the dust and the paper are thickest - but you know how thin Friday's paper is.'

Sam smiled. 'I take it you're the librarian?'

'I am she,' Mrs Lortz said, and smiled at him. But Sam didn't think her eyes were smiling; her eyes seemed to be watching him carefully, almost coldly. 'And you are ... ?'

'Sam Peebles.'

'Oh yes! Real estate and insurance! That's your game!'

'Guilty as charged.'

'I'm sorry you found the main section of the library deserted - you must have thought we were closed and someone left the door open by mistake.'

'Actually,' he said, 'the idea did cross my mind.'

'From two until seven there are three of us on duty,' said Mrs Lortz. 'Two is when the schools begin to let out, you know - the grammar school at two, the middle school at two-thirty, the high school at two-fortyfive. The children are our most faithful clients, and the most welcome, as far as I am concerned. I love the little ones. I used to have an all-day assistant, but last year the Town Council cut our budget by eight hundred dollars and . . .' Mrs Lortz put her hands together and mimed a bird flying away. It was an amusing, charming gesture.

So why, Sam wondered, aren't I charmed or amused?

The posters, he supposed. He was still trying to make Red Riding Hood, the screaming child in the car, and the grim-eyed Library Policeman jibe with this smiling small-town librarian.

She put her left hand out - a small hand, as plump and round as the rest of her -with perfect unstudied confidence. He looked at the third finger and saw it was ringless; she wasn't Mrs Lortz after all. The fact of her spinsterhood struck him as utterly typical, utterly small-town. Almost a caricature, really. Sam shook it.

'You haven't been to our library before, have you, Mr Peebles?'

'No, I'm afraid not. And please make it Sam.' He did not know if he really wanted to be Sam to this woman or not, but he was a businessman in a small town - a salesman, when you got right down to it - and the offer of his first name was automatic.

'Why, thank you, Sam.'

He waited for her to respond by offering her own first name, but she only looked at him expectantly.

'I've gotten myself into a bit of a bind,' he said. 'Our scheduled speaker tonight at Rotary Club had an accident, and -'

'Oh, that's too bad!'

'For me as well as him. I got drafted to take his place.'

'Oh-oh!' Ms Lortz said. Her tone was alarmed, but her eyes crinkled with amusement. And still Sam did not find himself warming to her, although he was a person who warmed up to other people quickly (if superficially) as a rule; the kind of man who had few close friends but felt compelled nonetheless to start conversations with strangers in elevators.

'I wrote a speech last night and this morning I read it to the young woman who takes dictation and types up my correspondence -'

'Naomi Higgins, I'll bet.'

'Yes - how did you know that?'

'Naomi is a regular. She borrows a great many romance novels - Jennifer Blake, Rosemary Rogers, Paul Sheldon, people like that.' She lowered her voice and said, 'She says they're for her mother, but actually I think she reads them herself.'

Sam laughed. Naomi did have the dreamy eyes of a closet romance reader.

'Anyway, I know she's what would be called an office temporary in a big city. I imagine that here in Junction City she's the whole secretarial pool. It seemed reasonable that she was the young woman of whom you spoke.'

'Yes. She liked my speech - or so she said - but she thought it was a bit dry. She suggested - '