Nisfit and his dealings. The listings were numerous and ended with 'Miscellaneous Papers and Documents’.
A box at the bottom of the listing labeled 'Comments’ contained the remark: 'I have notified Ector van Broude, fellow of the Society in regard to these transactions, which seem notably unwise E. Faldeker'
Wayness brought to the screen the category 'Parcels, Disposition’. The information she sought was contained in a single sentence: ‘This entire lot has been consigned to Gohoon Galleries’.
Wayness stared at the words. So there she had it! 'Gohoon Galleries’!
She jerked her head around: what was that? A tremor, a near-inaudible thud? Wayness sat stiff, head tilted to listen.
Silence.
A sound from outside, thought Wayness. She turned back to the screen and brought up the contents of the 'Subsequences' file.
She discovered two entries. The first was dated twelve years previously: ‘Request to view made on this date by off-world woman identifying herself as Violja Fanfarides. No conflict of interest perceived; request granted’.
The second entry bore the current date and read: ‘Request to view made on this date by off-world young woman, identifying herself as Wayness Tamm, Assistant Secretary of the Naturalist Society. Circumstances suspicious; request denied’.
Wayness stared at the remark, infuriated anew. Again she jerked her head around to listen. This time there was no mistake. Someone was at the door. In a single movement Wayness switched off the screen and dropped to her knees behind the desk.
The door slid open; Mr. Buffums entered the chamber, carrying a large parcel in his arms. Wayness shrank down, making herself as inconspicuous as possible. If he approached, she would surely be discovered.
Incommoded by the parcel, Mr. Buffums had left the door open; Wayness tensed herself, ready to dash for the outer office. But Mr. Buffums had turned in the opposite direction. Peering around the desk Wayness saw that he had carried his parcel to a table in the left part of the chamber and had started to remove the wrappings.
Wayness watched covertly. His back was turned. She rose from behind the desk; on stealthy feet she tiptoed to the door and with vast relief passed through. Noticing Mr. Buffums' key ring dangling from the lock, Wayness gently closed the door and locked it with a double turn so that it could not be opened from within. It seemed a fine prank to pay on Mr. Buffums. She hoped that he would be extremely inconvenienced and very much puzzled.
Wayness went to Giljin Leepe’s desk, where she replaced the key with the black tip. Again she glanced at the telephone switch-panel and studied it for a moment. She pushed two toggles, and turned a switch; Mr. Buffums would now be denied the use of his telephone and would be unable to call anyone for assistance. Wayness laughed aloud. It was, all in all, a good day's work.
Wayness returned to the Marsac Hotel. She immediately telephoned Giljin Leepe, using a blank screen.
“Giljin here”, said a cheerful voice.
“This is an anonymous call. You may be interested to know that by some peculiar accident Mr. Buffums has locked himself into his office, with his keys on the outside of the door. Hence he cannot get out.''
“Yes,” said Giljin Leepe. 'I consider that interesting news. I will stop answering my telephone, and I will suggest to Nelda that she do the same; otherwise he will insist that one or another of us come to liberate him!”
“There is more interesting news. By accident his telephone has been connected to the instrument on Nelda‘s desk, and he will be unable to make his wishes known until someone arrives in the morning.”
“What a strange situation!” said Giljin Leepe. “Mr. Buffums will surely be perplexed and probably annoyed, for he is not a stoic person. He suspects no intruder?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Good. In the morning I will carefully put everything to rights, and Mr. Buffums will be more bewildered than ever.'
After her call to Giljin Leepe, Wayness consulted the hotel's directories and learned that 'Gohoon Galleries' was still a viable concern, that its business was auctioneering, and that its offices were located in Sancelade, readily accessible to her inquiries, which she would continue tomorrow.
The time was late afternoon. Wayness sat in a corner of the hotel lobby, flipping through the pages of a fashionable journal. She became restless and, slipping into her long gray cloak, went out to walk along the promenade which bordered the River Pang. A breeze from the west, where the sun was setting, flapped the fabric of her cloak, rustled leaves in the plane trees, and sent a million little waves scurrying across the water.
Wayness walked slowly and watched the sun drop behind the far hills. With the coming of twilight, the breeze dried to a whisper and then was gone; the wavelets on the river disappeared. A few other folk were abroad: elderly couples, lovers who had made rendezvous along the riverbank, occasionally a person as solitary as herself.
Wayness paused to look out across the river, where the pale lavender-gray sky was reflected along the moving surface. She tossed a stone into the water and watched the black whorls dissipate. Her mood was unsettled. 'I have had some success, true. I am not altogether ineffectual, which I suppose is good news. But after that — ' The name ‘Violja Fanfarides' suddenly intruded. 'I wonder…”. Wayness grimaced. “Odd. I feel queasy inside, as if I were coming down sick.' She brooded for a few moments, then put the name aside. “I suspect that Mr. Buffums and his curiosa have affected me more than I might have liked. I hope there will be no lasting effect upon my personality.'
Wayness went to sit on a bench and watched the afterglow fade from the sky. She remembered her conversation with Pirie Tamm on the subject of sunsets. Surely on Cadwal she had known sunsets as mild and serene as this! Perhaps. That particular shade of twilight gray, after all, was not absolutely unique. Still, one would be a thing of Earth and the other of Cadwal, and so they would be distinct.
The stars began to appear. Wayness looked around the sky, hoping to find the racked 'W' of Cassiopeia, which would guide her toward Perseus, but the foliage of a nearby plane tree blocked her view.
Wayness rose to her feet and started back toward the hotel. She found herself a more practical frame of mind. “I will bathe and change into something frivolous, and then it will be time for dinner, and I am already beginning to feel hungry.'
In the morning Wayness dressed once again in her dark brown suit and after breakfast rode the slideway to Gohoon Galleries. In Clarmond, at the western edge of Sancelade. Here a few of Tybalt Pimm's most rigorous tenets had been relaxed. The buildings surrounding Beiderbecke Circus rose to heights of ten or twelve stories. In one of these structures Gohoon Galleries occupied the first three floors.
At the entrance a pair of uniformed guards, one male, the other female, photographed Wayness from three sides, and took note of her name, age, home and local address as stated on her identification papers. Wayness inquired the reason for such precautions.
“It is not arbitrary nuisance-mongering”, she was told. 'We display much valuable merchandise for viewing prior to the auctions. Some of these articles are small and easily purloined. Cameras record such acts, and we can instantly identify the offenders and regain our property. The system, while strict, is efficient.”
“Interesting”, said Wayness. “I had not planned to steal anything; now the thought is farther from my mind than ever.'
“That is the effect we are trying to achieve!”
'As it happens, I have come only for information. Where must I apply?”
“Information regarding what?”
'A sale conducted here some years ago.”
“Try the Office of Records, on the third floor.”
“Thank you.”
“Wayness ascended to the third floor” crossed a foyer and passed through a wide archway into the Office of Records: a room of considerable extent, divided down the middle by a counter. A dozen persons stood by the counter studying large black-bound tomes or waiting to be served by the single attendant a small crooked man of
