Sure enough, the window wasn’t latched, and he let himself into the room. It was spacious and decorated with various archeological and big game items. These included a stuffed and mounted lion head, a Nuxalk totem pole he identified, to an Egyptian New Kingdom sarcophagus. Various amulets, masks, statuettes and a variety of Japanese swords also adorned the office. Off to his right, an inner door was ajar. Soft light and low voices came from in there. Henson stiffened as the shadows got larger. He got unstuck and hid, not in the sarcophagus as no doubt the lid was nailed shut, but behind a 19th century rectangular standing Chinese hat chest. Engraved on its doors were four five-clawed dragons chasing a flaming pearl. It was set near a far corner, and he moved it out an inch or so from where it stood.
A cord was pulled on a green-shaded lamp. Illuminated in its warm light was Davis and a woman who had Asiatic features. But she was copper-skinned and her hair was frizzy. Davis was leaning into her, and her hip hitched onto the front of the desk. He had a hand around her waist and she held a martini glass. She sipped from it and gave him a quick kiss.
“Now, you behave,” she said, taking him in over the rim of her glass.
“How do you expect me to with one so beauteous as you?”
Henson had to stop himself from chuckling.
“I am not so easily flattered,” the woman said.
“Miss Petersen, you wound me.”
“Not so’s you’d notice. Not like our lion friend there.” She pointed to the mounted head with her martini glass.
“Ha, he never saw it coming.”
“That’s what they all say.”
They kissed again and left the room by the main door, holding hands. Henson stepped out from behind the piece of furniture. He re-considered the racial makeup of the woman and concluded she was part Eskimo. The other part was white, and he’d guessed it must be Danish given her name, but not necessarily. He’d encountered bi-racial Inuit before, but he couldn’t recall meeting one in New York. Her accent suggested she’d been raised among English speakers. She had to be the one Ellsmere had mentioned.
He went to the desk and was glad to find that wasn’t locked either. Henson scanned through the papers in the middle drawer and found a stack of photographs with him as the subject. These he removed and looked at more closely, holding them under the light of the lamp. The photos had been taken recently, given the models of cars in the shots. More than one was taken from above, showing him leaving or entering his apartment building. He had seen these sorts of shots before, where the photographer used a telescopic lens. There had been a few with them at various intervals of their expeditions, and he remembered one of the photographers showing him that sort of lens. It looked something like a telescope. That fellow, assigned by National Geographic Magazine, used the lens to take pictures of polar bears from yards away. It was National Geographic who’d sponsored their last expedition, the one to finally reach the North Pole.
Davis was having him followed. But did he believe the Daughter was in the city? He looked through the rest of the photos and gritted his teeth. There was one of him on the grounds of Columbia University. He didn’t think it was the day he’d been out there with Ellsmere’s notes. He’d been on alert then, checking his surroundings and was certain no one had been watching him when he’d gone there to hide the papers in the basement. This shot was taken before then. Henson realized he’d have to be much more careful. Henson returned to photographs to the middle drawer, in the order he found them. Finding nothing else of interest, he closed the drawer and looked through the papers on the desktop.
On top of a sheaf of typewritten pages—minutes from a recent board meeting—he found a torn piece of newspaper with an address and name written on it in Brooklyn. He could tell from what he could read of the newsprint, this was a recent notation. A horn sounded twice outside, and he looked toward the window then back at the sheet in his hand. Leaving the papers in the desk, he committed the address to memory and had to pull his hand back from instinctively tugging the cord on the desk lamp. His senses heightened like in the wild, he was aware of footfalls approaching from the hallway. This time Henson didn’t rush to his hiding place. He stood still at the door and listened, having determined it wasn’t Davis and the woman returning.
“I’ll start at the library,” one voice said. Henson could tell it belonged to a woman of a certain age. And that she was black.
“Okay, I’ll start on them offices on the third and work my way down.” The two voices were heavy with years of thankless labor.
Off the cleaning women trundled, Henson heard a bucket knocking against a leg. He eased the door open and went along the hall and downstairs swiftly. Back through the kitchen and out the delivery door. At this time of night there was little traffic, and he walked across the street and got into the car with Stevenson.
“Thanks for the warning,” he said.
“I saw them walking up, and figured if they were downstairs cleaning they’d see you.”
“Good for me they were starting from the top down.”
She got the engine going. “Are you always
