nothing. Then he prowled uneasily through the Bluebirds' reports from previous evenings.
Nothing there again. Nothing from Siegfried. Deciphering drew a similar blank and so did Cryptology. As Cochrane worked, spreading out his tasks before him on Mr. Hay's table, he raised his eyes and stared at the dwarf every few minutes.
'The name. The town. The state,' he repeated. 'The name. The town. The state.' Toward three in the afternoon, Cochrane got to his feet, winked one eye at his nemesis, and strode from the room.
Adam Hay's spirits soared. Alone at last! Then his spirits were quickly crushed with the arrival of Lanny Slotkin, resident cur of the Bluebirds. Mr. Hay had never in his life encountered Lanny Slotkin or anything like him.
'The name. The town. The state,' Lanny said, not even certain of what he had been dispatched to inquire. 'Cochrane sent me. I'm supposed to stay here until eight o'clock tonight or until I get answers.'
Mr. Hay made himself scarce behind a file, working on the lower shelf. But Slotkin was a bulldog, as well as a high priest of rudeness.
'Come on, you little twerp,' Slotkin screamed after only ten minutes. 'I don't want to stay up here all day! What is it he wants to know?' Slotkin entertained the urge to pick up Mr. Hay and shake him. But he resisted.
Mr. Hay was married to an Indian woman from Bombay. They lived together in a rear apartment on a grim side street in Georgetown. When he returned hone that night, he found Cochrane sitting on the front steps.
'Name. Town. State.' The words shot into Mr. Hay's mind faster than Cochrane could mouth them. Mr. Hay bolted up the shabby staircase and scampered in the direction of an apartment door, from behind which emanated pungent smells of Manipur curry and incense.
Adam Hay jammed his key in the lock, turned it, and slammed the door behind him, thinking himself safe within the sanctuary of his own home. His wife appeared in a saffron and purple robe, kissed him, and spoke.
'We have a guest,' she said. 'A lovely gentlewoman.'
The dwarf shuddered. Mr. Hay crept warily into his own living room where he encountered Mary Ryan, the Virgin Mary herself, all eight point two decades of her. She offered him a lined hand.
'This is Mrs. Ryan. From your Bureau,' said Mrs. Hay. 'I do think,' said Mary Ryan, who would go along with any intrigue if it was either work or fun, 'that you really ought to tell us the name, the town, and the state.'
The dwarf turned crimson. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hay had already invited Mary to stay for dinner. Mary Ryan loved curry.
Friday was no better. Every time Mr. Hay looked up, there was Cochrane or one of his deputies. Among those Bluebirds whom Cochrane could trust, it became a passing parlor game. Go talk to the archivist. Pick the dwarf for information. It could save us months of work, and don't tell Wheeler.
'I'll take the responsibility,' Cochrane had told them all. The name, they demanded. The name. The town. The state. Three quick answers would liberate Mr. Hay from all of this, Cochrane reminded him by telephone a few minutes before Friday midnight.
Totally unnerved, Mr. Hay went to the window and stared downward. And there were the Bureau's two Germans, Roddy Schwarzkopf and Elizabeth Pfeiffer from Section Seven. They stared upward from an alleyway, then waved.
Mr. Hay jerked the curtains shut and moaned.
Cochrane spent Saturday morning in Cartography and Central Alien Registry. With the help of Bobby Charles Martin, late of the Ohio State Police, he marshaled a list of every township within the fifty-mile map radius that the Bluebirds had charted in northern New Jersey. Then CAR Division went through their own files and came up with a list of 256 names of German emigres living within that area. The towns ran from Passaic and Hoboken to little map dots like Bernardsville and Liberty Circle.
'Monday,' promised Cochrane, 'we get some staff in here from another division. We check out every name.' Then a second list was drawn, one comprising immigrants from the other unfriendly nations: Italy and Japan, just in case.
'That's three hundred wops and seventeen Japs,' Bobby Charles Martin surmised with his usual egalitarian candor. 'Guess those get checked out, too.'
'You guess right,' said Cochrane, reaching for a jacket and hat. 'Let's go watch some horse races.'
Mr. Hay was at Arlington Park for all nine races that afternoon. He seemed to wear his own saddle, with Bobby Martin and Bill Cochrane in it. Ditto, Sunday. And late afternoon, the archivist began to crack. But as the ninth race was finished, Adam Hay looked up and they were all gone. Every one of them. No one was breathing down his eleven- inch collar. It was Mr. Hay's custom on Sunday afternoons to relax in the grandstand after the final race. He would peruse the next week's racing card, enjoy the solitude of six thousand empty seats, then amble to his car-an old Ford that rattled in every gear including neutral-which he always parked in the far end of the parking lot.
He thought of many things as he handicapped his ponies that afternoon. Name, town, and state were among them. He studied furlongs, sires, and first quarters, late brushes, jockey changes, and trainers. Name. Town. And state. It was a litany.
He folded the racing form into his pocket a few minutes before six. He walked to his car and, his eyes barely to the height of the window, he unlocked it in the vast, deserted parking lot.
The car door flew open. A human body, strong and powerful, burst upward from low behind the front seat, pushed the seats apart, and rushed from concealment to confront the archivist. The tiny archivist yelped and his eyes went wide as demitasse saucers with two brown marbles at their center.
It was Cochrane! Glaring, menacing, scowling, looking downward with his twenty-four inches of superior height. Cochrane's eyes gleamed. He said nothing. By now the week's catechism spoke for him.
'Name… town… state…' Mr. Hay's heart fluttered somewhere ten feet above his head.
'Otto Mauer is now Henry Naismith,' Mr. Hay confessed sullenly. 'The town is Ringtown. The state is Pennsylvania. Now leave me alone.'
TWENTY-THREE
It was raining in Manhattan the day Charlotte next saw her mysterious clock manufacturer. Her face still smarted when she thought of the way he had struck her last time. But that was in the past. Perhaps she had been too forward with him. He did seem like a very proper man. If only she knew more about him…
She saw him as she stepped out of a taxi on West Thirty-second Street, near Macy's. The man who so fascinated her was disappearing into a sporting-goods store. Charlotte was wearing a wide-brimmed rain hat and a heavy trench coat, so she arranged the hat slightly more over her eyes. Then she moved to the window of the store and peered in. What type of sports did her man like? she wondered. She watched him carefully. He was examining some diving equipment. Diving suits. Snorkels. Charlotte was surprised. Equally, she was surprised when he kept looking up and surveying the people around him. It was as if he thought someone might be spying on him.
Perhaps he was embarrassed, she concluded. Perhaps he was just learning about deep-sea diving. But no. He bought an elaborate combination of equipment. A complete wet suit. A diver's knife. A mask. Then he paid with cash and turned toward the door.
Charlotte crossed the street. The intrigue now excited her. She would follow him and find out what she could. But she would have to behave cleverly, she told herself. Otherwise he would see her.
He was an easy mark, a man wearing a tan trench coat and carrying a large shopping bag. He crossed Seventh Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street, then oddly reversed himself and walked south. If he was going to Pennsylvania Station, she wondered, why hadn't he walkedthere directly?
She followed from a distance of half a block. Sure enough, he went into the train station. She lost him. She darted through. the gates and looked in every direction. 'Really, girl,' she giggled to herself, 'there's a war beginning and you make such a lousy spy!' But her spirits were high now. The game was on. For a change, Charlotte could stalk a man, rather than lie passively beneath one.
But her Mr. Bolton was gone. She scanned the huge lobby. Then she spotted him walking toward the Lackawanna Railroad Line. She pursued and saw him glance at his watch. The gate for his train was already open. He hurried through it, then stopped short. He turned and Charlotte stopped also. Much too obviously, she thought.
