I liked MacVeagh—good guy. Says he didn’t serve in the war because a punctured eardrum kept him out, but says he tried his best to see Grover through it on the home front. We settled down to quite a confab, and I deliberately let it slip that I was from the FBI. I hoped that’d cue him into, “Oh, so you’re here on the Hungadunga case, huh?” But no go. No reaction at all, but a mild wonder as to what a G-man was doing in Grover.
I didn’t tell him.
I tried the same stunt on the chief of police, who kept quoting Bible texts at me and telling me about a murder they had a while back and how he solved it. (Would you believe it? The butler did it! Honest.) Nothing doing on the reaction business. Grover, ever since the famous murder, has had the most crime-free record in the State. Nothing in my line.
Nothing to do but sleep on it and hope tomorrow turns up either my diary or my memory.
Grover, June 27.
I like Grover. Now that the war’s over, the department’ll be cutting down on its staff. I might do worse than resign and settle down here. I’ve always wanted to try some pulp writing to show up the guys that write about us. And in a few years Chief Hanby’ll be retiring, and if I’m established in the community by then—
And I’m going to have to get out of the department if things go on like this. Had a swell day today—visited the Hitchcock plant and saw their fabulous new work with plastics in consumer goods, had dinner at MacVeagh’s and went out to a picture and a bar on a double date with him and his wife—who is the loveliest thing I ever saw, if you like icicles—and a girl from the paper, who’s a nice kid.
But I still don’t know from nothing.
I sent a wire back to the chief:
WIRE FULL INSTRUCTIONS AT ONCE MY MISSION LOCAL POLICE CHIEF WANTS FORMAL OK.
I know, I know. It’s a thin story, and it probably won’t work. But I’ve got to try something.
Grover, June 28.
I got an answer:
YOUR QUOTE MISSION UNQUOTE ALL A MISTAKE. RETURN WASHINGTON.
I don’t get it. Maybe when I see the chief again—
So now, regretfully, we bid farewell to the sunny, happy town of Grover, nestling at the foot—
Proutyville, June 29.
As you—whoever you are and whatever you think you’re doing reading other people’s diaries—can see, my diary’s turned up again. And that I am, as they say in the classics, stark, raving mad seems about the only possible answer.
Maybe I thought the chief was crazy. What’s he going to call me?
I read over again what the old guy with—or without—the beard said. Where he said I’d find the answer. I didn’t.
So I went over to see him again, but he wasn’t there. There was a fat man drinking beer out of a quart bottle, and as soon as he saw me he poured a glassful and handed it over unasked.
It tasted good, and I said, “Thanks,” and meant it. Then I described the old boy and asked where was he.
The fat man poured himself another glass and said, “Damfino. He come in here one day and says, ‘See you’re setting up to shoe horses. Need an old hand at the business?’ So I says, ‘Sure, what’s your name?’ and he says, ‘Wieland,’ leastways that’s what I think he says, like that beer out in California. ‘Wieland,’ he says. ‘I’m a smith,’ so he goes to work. Then just this morning he up and says, ‘I’m needed more elsewhere,’ he says, ‘I gotta be going,’ he says, ‘now you been a swell employer,’ he says, ‘so if you—’ ” The fat man stopped. “So he up and quit me.”
“Because you were a swell employer?”
“That? That was just something he says. Some foolishness. Hey, your glass is empty.” The fat man filled my glass and his own.
The beer was good. It kept me from quite going nuts. I sat there the most of the evening. It wasn’t till late that a kind of crawly feeling began to hit me. “Look,” I said. “I’ve drunk beer most places you can name, but I never saw a quart bottle hold that many glasses.”
The fat man poured out some more. “This?” he said, offhand-like. “Oh, this is just something Wieland give me.”
And I suppose I’m writing all this out to keep from thinking about what I’m going to say to the chief. But what can I say? Nothing but this:
Grover isn’t at war. And when you’re there, it’s true.
Washington, June 30.
I’m not going to try to write the scene with the chief. It still stings, kind of. But he softened up a little toward the end. I’m not to be fired; just suspended. Farnsworth’s taking the Grover assignment. And I get a rest—
Bide-a-wee Nursing Home, July 1.
VII
It was hot in the office that June night. John MacVeagh should have been deep in his studies, but other thoughts kept distracting him.
These studies had come to occupy more and more of his time. His responsibilities were such that he could not tolerate anything less than perfection in his concepts of what was the desirable truth.
Ending the war had been simple. But now the Sentinel had to print the truth of the postwar adjustments. Domestically these seemed to be working fine, at the moment. Demobilization was being carried out smoothly and gradually, and the startling technological improvements matured in secrecy during wartime were now bursting forth to take up the slack in peacetime production.
The international scene was more difficult. The willful nationalism of a few misguided senators threatened to ruin any possible adjustment. MacVeagh had to keep those men in check, and even more difficult, he had to learn
