Mystery

had never called me back about Nancy Vetiver—” He looked at the face of the officer in the splendid uniform, and was disconcerted both by the coldness of the man’s eyes and the sense that he had seen him somewhere before.

“I shouldn’t wonder!” said Miss Dragonette.

“Is there some trouble?” the officer said, and this time Tom took in his bald head and the smooth knuckle of his face and recognized Captain Fulton Bishop. His stomach froze—for a moment all he wanted to do was turn and run. The Captain was shorter than he had appeared on television. There was no humor in the man at all. He looked like a torturer in a medieval drawing.

Dr. Milton looked quickly from Tom to Captain Bishop, then, questioningly, back again. “Oh, I don’t think there is any trouble—do you? The boy was looking for Nurse Vetiver, an old favorite of his. By the way, Tom, this is Captain Bishop, who did all that excellent work bringing Miss Hasselgard’s murderer to justice.”

Neither Tom nor Captain Bishop offered to shake hands.

“An unhappy day for us all,” the doctor went on. “One of the Captain’s men, a patrolman named Mendenhall, died this morning. We did what we could, but the man had been quite severely wounded—died a hero’s death, one of the first men into the killer’s house, thought we could pull him through, did the best we could despite some interference”—here a meaningful glance at Tom—“but poor Mendenhall slipped away from us about half an hour ago. Tragic, of course.”

“But why are there so many policemen here?” Tom asked. He was not quite aware of speaking, because he had just dropped through the earth’s surface again.

“We came for the body,” Bishop said flatly.

“Well, it didn’t make any sense to me,” said Miss Dragonette. “He did say something about a murder.”

“An old man over there said something—he’s senile, it didn’t really make sense.…”Now both the doctor and Captain Bishop were staring at him.

“Which man over there?” the Captain said.

Tom looked again to the side of the room. Von Heilitz was gone. “The old man in the yellow bathrobe.” He turned back to the doctor. “I really came in to see Nancy Vetiver.”

“Mr. Williams doesn’t know what day it is,” said Miss Dragonette. “Sits there all day long, waiting for his daughter, but he wouldn’t recognize her if she walked right in that door. Which isn’t likely, since she lives in Bangor, Maine.”

“Doctor, I’ll speak to you later,” the Captain said, and walked across the lobby and disappeared through the revolving door after the men wheeling the dead policeman’s body.

Dr. Milton sighed and watched him go. “What are you trying to do? Do you have any notion …?” He shook his head. “I’ll take care of this, Miss Dragonette. Come with me, Tom.”

The doctor led Tom into the corridor on the desk’s right side. He slipped his arm through the boy’s and said, “Let me make sure I understand all this. You came in here looking for Nurse Vetiver—because of the conversation you overheard at your grandfather’s house. You wanted to be assured of her well-being, am I right? You saw the policemen in the lobby. You sat down next to that old fellow, who began babbling about a murder.”

“That’s right,” Tom said.

“You understand—things get very sensitive when a police officer dies. Feelings run high.”

Was that what he had seen? Tom wondered. A display of intense feeling? He remembered the two groups of policemen, the sense of hostility and some queer victory. His sense of guilt made him feel as though he were walking through thick fog, unable to see or think properly.

The doctor self-consciously looked into Tom’s eyes. “You want to be careful, Tom. You don’t want to upset people. Everyone is a little sensitive these days. The Hasselgard business, all of that—you know. You’re an intelligent young man. You come from a good family, and you have a long life before you.”

“That cop, Mendenhall, died because of ‘the Hasselgard business.’ ”

“Indirectly, yes,” the doctor said. He had begun to look annoyed.

“Because of the letter Captain Bishop got.”

“What do you know about that letter? Who told you—”

“It was on the news. But nobody but Captain Bishop ever saw the letter, did they?”

“I don’t quite see your point, if you have one.”

“My point is—” Tom hesitated, then went on. “What if the letter actually said something else. What if it didn’t say anything about a poor half-native ex-con named Foxhall Edwardes? What if it proved that someone else actually killed Marita Hasselgard, and that her death was directly related to what was going on at the Treasury?”

“This is ridiculous,” the doctor said. “A man just died here.”

“And a lot of other men in here didn’t seem exactly unhappy about that,” Tom said.

“Remember that there are both loyal and disloyal officers,” Dr. Milton said. “What are you trying to do, Tom? Real letters and unreal letters, questions about murder …?”

“How could that man Mendenhall be disloyal if he was killed in the line of duty? Disloyal to what?”

Dr. Milton visibly controlled himself. “Listen to me—loyal means sticking to your own people. You know who they are. Your neighbors, your friends, your family. They are you. Don’t run away with yourself.”

The doctor straightened his back and tugged at his vest. “You have to live in this world with the rest of us,” the doctor said. He looked at his watch. “I want us both to forget this conversation. I still have a lot to do today. Please give my regards to your mother and your grandfather.” He looked sharply up at Tom, still agitated, stepped around him, and began to walk back to the lobby. After a few steps, he stopped and faced Tom again. “By the way, Nurse Vetiver has been suspended. Let the whole matter drop, Tom.”

“What about Hattie Bascombe?” Tom asked.

This time, the doctor laughed. “Hattie Bascombe! I imagine she’s in the old slave quarter, if she’s still alive. Retired years ago. Mumbling over a chicken bone and casting spells, I suppose. Quite a character, wasn’t she?”

“Quite a character,” Tom said to the doctor’s retreating back.

“I wonder if you’d like to go on an excursion with me,” Tom said. He was talking on the telephone to Sarah Spence, and it was just past four o’clock. His father was still at his office on Calle Hoffmann—or doing whatever he did when he was not at home—and Gloria Pasmore was upstairs in her room. When Tom returned from the hospital, he had opened her bedroom door on a wave of soft music and whiskey fumes and looked in to see her sprawled out asleep on her bed. It was her “afternoon nap.”

“That sounds interesting, but I’m kind of busy,” Sarah said. “Mom and I are getting ready to go up north. Dad suddenly announced that we’re going early this year, so now we only have two days to pack. Well, what he said was that we’re going up in the Redwings’ private plane. And I can’t find Bingo anywhere, but of course it’s ridiculous to worry about Bingo.” After a pause, she said, “What kind of excursion?”

“I thought we might walk somewhere.”

“You won’t suddenly gasp and turn pale and run away if I say something absolutely doltish?”

Tom laughed. “No, and I won’t suddenly remember that I have to go somewhere else.”

“So you want to begin all over again where we left off? I like that idea.”

“I was thinking of going somewhere new,” Tom said. “The old slave quarter.”

“I’ve never even been there.”

“Me neither. No one from the far east end has ever even thought of going there.”

“Isn’t it a long way away?”

“Not that far. We wouldn’t spend more than half an hour there.”

“Doing what? Investigating opium dens, or organizing a white slavery ring, or tracking down stolen Treasury money, or—”

“What kind of books do you read?”

“Mainly the trash I see you carrying through the halls. I just finished Red Harvest. What do you want to do?”