Mr. X

scanned the shelves with mute, secondhand pride. 'Years back, I started reading a couple stories when I finished my job. Mr. Lovecraft put a lot in them, but not everything he knew. I've had a lot of time to think about this subject.'

    This was the source of his pride—his theories about Lovecraft.

    'You know what a parable is, I hope.'

    “I went to Sunday school,' I said.

    His smile vanished before the significance of what he had to say. 'A parable is a story with a concealed meaning. You might not see it, but it's there.'

    'Some parables seem to have lots of meanings,' I said. 'The more you think about them, the less you can be sure what they say.'

    'No, you're reading them all wrong, they wouldn't beany good that way. A parable has only one meaning, but the trick is, you have to look for it. Mr. Lovecraft's stories are the same. They can teach you a lot, if you're strong enough to accept the truth.'

    I had seen the same kind of pleasure in the faces of men devoted to theoretical, Hydra-headed conspiracies that connected the Kennedy assassinations, the FBI, organized crime, the military-industrial complex, and Satanic cabals. The stink of craziness always enveloped these people.

    'Look there.' Sawyer pointed at a shelf filled with copies ofFrom Beyond. 'A friend of his wrote that book. Mr. Ward said it ought to be famous, and he's right. It's a great book. Maybe my favorite.'

    His eyes met mine. 'So were you telling me that Mr. Ward and Edward Rinehart are the same? Rinehart is what they call a pseudonym?'

    He wanted to display his knowledge of the word.

    'So is Charles Ward.'

    Sawyer's unhealthy face turned sullen.

    I moved down rows of books and saw lodged at the end of a shelf what looked like a first edition ofThe Dunwich Horror. I pulled it out and saw penciled on the flyleafW. Wilson Fletcher, Fortress Military Academy, Owlsburg, Pennsylvania, 1941.

    Earl Sawyer materialized at my side like an angry djinn and snatched the book from my hands. “I'm sorry, I should have said.' He nudged the book back into place. 'Mr. Ward told me not to touch that particular book. It's sacred, you could say.'

    Sawyer cut off my apology. 'You have to leave. I made a mistake.'

 •104

 •A tingling like the piercing by needles too small to be seen came over my hands when I drove through the southern fringe of College Park. I looked down and saw the steering wheel waver beneath two hand-shaped blurs.

    A voice from the back seat said, 'How do you do that?'

    'You do it!' I yelled.

    'Don't be paranoid,' Robert said. “It's over. Look.'

    My utterly visible hands gripped the wheel.

    “I could explain it, but you wouldn't understand.' He patted my shoulder. 'What were you up to in College Park? And what's the latest on the Joe Staggers front?'

    'You don't know?'

    “I can't keep up witheverything.' Robert folded his arms on top of the passenger seat. 'Talk to me.'

    'You can forget about Joe Staggers,' I said, and described going through the Buxton Place cottages with Earl Sawyer.

    'That gives me an idea. In the meantime, point us toward Ellendale.  I think Stewart Hatch is hiding something we want.'

    The mystery of Robert's limitations faded before the suggestion that Hatch himself had walked off with his family photographs.

    'He isn't at home,' Robert said. 'Stewart had troubling news today. He and Grenville Milton are deep in conference with their lawyer.'

    “I'm not going to break into his house.'

    'You won't have to. I'll go in and open the door.'

    'You don't need me to ransack Hatch's house,' I said.

    'Who knows? You might learn something about Laurie. In the meantime, explain why I should forget about Joe Staggers.'

    I told him that he wouldn't understand.

 •105

 •One leg planted on the driveway, a knee bent into the Mountaineer, Posy Fairbrother was leaning through the rear door to strap Cobbie into his seat. She looked like an idealized figure ona frieze.

    Robert sighed. 'Pity that Posy's too straitlaced to mess around with her employer's lover. Turn left, here's Bayberry.'

    Stewart's angular, contemporary house stood on two treeless acres at the end of the first street off Blueberry. I drove past it and parked around the corner on Loganberry.

    In a hot, green emptiness, Robert and I cut across the lawn and climbed the steps to the gray wooden deck.'Momentito,' Robert said. He glided through the back door and, after a pause longer than I had expected, opened it. 'Stewart didn't install an alarm system. I guess there's nothing worth stealing.'

    I looked around at the kitchen. 'Not unless you have a forklift.' A gas range faced a twelve-foot marble counter that extended past a double-doored refrigerator and a glass-fronted wine vault. On the shelves beside the wine vault were ranked a half dozen bottles of single-malt Scotch and a couple bottles of Belvedere vodka, undoubtedly awaiting their turn in the freezer.

    A partition separated the dining room from what people like Stewart Hatch called a 'great room.' The furniture marooned in the vast space had been picked up at a Scandinavian furniture outlet in the local mall.

    Upstairs in the master bedroom, a monumental television set faced the bottom of an unmade king-sized bed. Polo shirts and khaki trousers were strewn across a sofa. Robert opened the closet doors. I went through a rolltop desk and found boxes of canceled checks, flyers from Caribbean resorts, and two videotapes, labeledKinky Bondage, USA andLove in Chains.

    A book titledManagement Secrets of the Ancient Chinese Warlords lay on the bedside table; in the drawer underneath was a box of steel-tipped cartridges and a nine-millimeter pistol. The next drawer down contained a jumble of handcuffs, leather thongs and straps, lengths of rope, metal-studded wristbands, and a couple of things I neither recognized nor wanted to think about.

    I looked under the bed, saw only the carpet, and joined Robert in a space about the size of Star's old room at Nettie's house. Something like fifty suits and jackets, at least a hundred neckties, and dozens of belts and suspenders hung beneath yards of open shelves with sweaters and shirts sorted by color and shade. Robert reached up to a stack of Brooks Brothers boxes, chose one, and opened it to reveal a striped, button-down shirt in a plastic wrapper. I thought of Gatsby.

    'Let's look at the office downstairs,' I said.

    Robert roamed througha file cabinet. The closet was empty, except for an unopened case of Belvedere. Just above eye level, a carton from Bear, Stearns tilted at an almost unnoticeable angle on the narrow shelf. I pushed back the carton and uncovered a legal-sized manila envelope. I pulled it off the shelf. 'The green light at the end of the dock.'

    Robert came up beside me. “I don't even want to know what that means. Open it.'