And so on.
At the conclusion of each interview we were told either that the matter was completely out of the hands of the person to whom we had just spent half an hour or an hour talking, that it was necessary to obtain a clearance from someone else, or that an additional deposition had to be made. About two o’clock we were sent to the other side of the river—into what my guidebooks insist is an entirely different jurisdiction—to visit a penal facility. There we were forced to look for Kreton among five hundred or so miserable prisoners, all of whom stank and had lice. Not finding him, we returned to the F.I.D. Building past the half-overturned and yet still-brooding figure called the Seated Man, and the ruins and beggars of the Silent City, for another round of interrogations. By five, when we were told to leave, we were both exhausted, though Ardis seemed surprisingly hopeful. When I left her at the door of her building a few minutes ago, I asked her what they would do tonight without Kreton.
“Without Harry, you mean.” She smiled. “The best we can, I suppose, if we must. At least Paul will have someone ready to stand in for him tonight.”
We shall see how well it goes.
I
have picked up this pen and replaced it on the table ten times at least. It seems very likely that I should destroy this journal instead of continuing with it, were I wise, but I have discovered a hiding place for it which I think will be secure.
When I came back from Ardis’s apartment tonight there were only two candy eggs remaining. I am certain— absolutely certain—that three were left when I went to meet Ardis. I am almost equally sure that after I had finished making the entry in this book, I put it, as I always do, at the left side of the drawer. It was on the right side.
It is possible that all this is merely the doing of the maid who cleans the room. She might easily have supposed that a single candy egg would not be missed, and have shifted this book while cleaning the drawer, or peeped inside out of curiosity.
I will assume the worst, however. An agent sent to investigate my room might be equipped to photograph these pages—but he might not, and it is not likely that he himself would have a reading knowledge of Farsi. Now I have gone through the book and eliminated all the passages relating to my reason for visiting this leprous country. Before I leave this room tomorrow I will arrange indicators—hairs and other objects whose positions I shall carefully record—that will tell me if the room has been searched again.
Now I may as well set down the events of the evening, which were truly extraordinary enough.
I met Ardis as we had planned, and she directed me to a small restaurant not far from her apartment. We had no sooner seated ourselves than two heavylooking men entered. At no time could I see plainly the face of either, but it appeared to me that one was the American I had met aboard the
I followed her, and found her laughing not three doors away from the entrance to the restaurant. The change in her could not have been more startling if she had been released from an enchantment. “It is so funny,” she said. “Though it wasn’t then. Come on, we’d better go; you can feed me after the show.”
I asked her what those men were to her.
“Friends,” she said, still laughing.
“If they are friends, why were you so anxious that they not see you? Were you afraid they would make us late?” I knew that such a trivial explanation could not be true, but I wanted to leave her a means of evading the question if she did not want to confide in me.
She shook her head. “No, no. I didn’t want either to think I did not trust him. I’ll tell you more later, if you want to involve yourself in our little charade.”
“With all my heart.”
She smiled at that—that sun-drenched smile for which I would gladly have entered a lion pit. In a few more steps we were at the rear entrance to the theater, and there was no time to say more. She opened the door, and I heard Kreton arguing with a woman I later learned was the wardrobe mistress. “You are free,” I said, and he turned to look at me.
“Yes. Thanks to you, I think. And I do thank you.”
Ardis gazed on him as though he were a child saved from drowning. “Poor Bobby. Was it very bad?”
“It was frightening, that’s all. I was afraid I’d never get out. Do you know Terry is gone?”
She shook her head, and said, “What do you mean?” but I was certain—and here I am not exaggerating or coloring the facts though I confess I have occasionally done so elsewhere in this chronicle—that she had known it before he spoke.
“He simply isn’t here. Paul is running around like a lunatic. I hear you missed me last night.”
“God, yes,” Ardis said, and darted off too swiftly for me to follow.
Kreton took my arm. I expected him to apologize for having tried to rob me, but he said, “You’ve met her, I see.”
“She persuaded me to drop the charges against you.”
“Whatever it was you offered me—twenty rials? I’m morally entitled to it, but I won’t claim it. Come and see me when you’re ready for something more wholesome—and meanwhile, how do you like her?”
“That is something for me to tell her,” I said, “not you.”
Ardis returned as I spoke, bringing with her a balding black man with a mustache. “Paul, this is Nadan. His English is very good—not so British as most of them. He’ll do, don’t you think?”
