Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

The Artificial Liar by William Brittain

Many a case has hinged upon a “singing canary” but rarely upon one deceased.

Marley was dead, to begin with.

Major Orin Watkins, chief of security for the government’s Biological Research Center No. 27, was familiar with most of Charles Dickens’ works; however, he never expected to have Marley’s demise reported to him in his official capacity. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, he believed, should be left to 19th Century London. There was no place for the defunct partner of old Scrooge in The Center, a thoroughly modern complex of buildings occupying almost a hundred acres, where chemists and biologists with astronomical IQ’s spent their working hours developing vaccines and antitoxins against diseases that in some cases hadn’t been developed yet.

Life had been simpler for Scrooge; he had never heard of germ warfare, but it’s unlikely that the old miser, had he put in an appearance, could have come within fifty feet of the gates. It would have been the job of Orin Watkins’ men to keep him away from The Center. Those who did enter were constantly screened to within an inch of their lives. Orin himself was required to present the proper passes to the guard at the gate each day. No, Scrooge, Bob Cratchet, et al. were far better off nestled between the covers of a book.

Still, old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Orin looked across the desk at the small man seated opposite. Augustine Lanier, his wrinkled old face reflecting anxiety and puzzlement, might have been himself a Dickens character. Not Scrooge, of course, not even Micawber. Augustine was too kindly for the one and too slender for the other. Barkis, that was it. Augustine was the very image of Barkis as Orin pictured the old wagoner after reading David Copperfield. Even though he was little more than a file clerk at The Center, Augustine was the most conscientious of workers. Like Barkis, Augustine, too, was willin’.

“Marley was my pet canary,” explained Augustine softly. “It was probably my imagination, but it seemed to me when I bought him that he resembled a picture I’d seen of Marley’s ghost. And now he’s dead, sir.”

Orin would never get used to having men twenty years his senior call him ‘sir.’ “Augustine, I’m sorry your pet died,” he said. “But is that the only reason you came to see me? I watched you outside the office. You must have paced up and down for twenty minutes before you decided to come in. I thought you wanted to talk about something serious.”

“It is serious, Mr. Watkins.” Augustine Lanier slid still farther down into his chair and peered dolefully at Orin over the tops of his steel-rimmed spectacles. “You see, I believe I should be relieved of my duties here at The Center. I might be something of a security risk in the program.”

Orin looked at the older man in surprise. Augustine was one of the first employees taken on when The Center was constructed. He’d passed his security check with flying colors, according to the records. Past history, intelligence and psychological tests, polygraph results — all indicated a spotless reputation. Granted that The Center, dealing with the most deadly of pathogenic organisms, needed to be ultraselective in its choice of employees. Still, Augustine Lanier a security risk? Never.

“Look, Augustine, your pet died,” said Orin finally, “but that’s no reason to go into a blue funk and quit on us. Take the rest of the day off. Visit the pet stores in town. Buy another bird. You’ll soon forget Marley.”

“Oh, it’s not just that Marley died that has me worried, sir.” Augustine shook his head emphatically. “You see, he was strangled.”

“Strangled? How in blazes did he manage to strangle himself?”

“Oh, Marley didn’t do it himself, sir. It was no accident.”

“You mean you—”

“I... I don’t know.” Augustine removed a handkerchief from his hip pocket and began pressing it into a ball between his palms. “That’s part of the problem. And Marley’s death was just the first incident. These last few days have been so strange. I think perhaps I’m losing touch with reality, Mr. Watkins.”

Augustine made this last statement in an almost apologetic tone, as if somehow he were letting down not only Orin but the whole research center. One hand, containing the ball of handkerchief, rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry about disturbing you, sir,” he continued, “but I thought you’d need to know.”

That the old man had come in at all was a tribute to his faithfulness to The Center, Orin decided. How many people could admit the possibility of a mental breakdown, even to themselves? “Look, Augustine,” he said gently, “suppose you begin at the beginning. Now, tell me what’s been so strange about these last few days?” Surreptitiously he pressed a stud at the edge of his desk. A concealed microphone in the onyx pen set on the desk began ingesting Lanier’s words and feeding them to the electronic tape moving between its reels in the bottom drawer.

“It began last Friday, sir.” Augustine’s voice reminded Orin of one of his own sons, telling how a window had been broken with a slingshot. “It was in the morning, and I was afraid I’d be late for work. Generally, Mrs. Carrigan — she owns the house in town where I rent my room — would wake me if I was in danger of oversleeping, but she’s gone to visit relatives and won’t be back until the end of the month. And Sergeant Pomeroy — he’s the other roomer — he’s off on a fishing trip until later this week. So you see, I was alone in the house, and I guess I just forgot to set the alarm.”

Orin wondered if he would ever come to the point. “Pomeroy,” he said conversationally, “that’s Jerry Pomeroy, one of the guards at the west gate, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” nodded Augustine. “At any rate, when I left the house and went to my car, I found I’d forgotten my keys. That happens rather often, sir. Sorry I’m so absentminded.”

“Just so nobody else gets hold of them,” said Orin. “With your keys, anybody who managed to get inside could go almost anywhere, except the culture rooms, of course.”

“Oh, Mr. Watkins!” Augustine looked shocked. “They’ve never been out of my possession for more than a few seconds. Honestly, sir.”

“Okay, Augustine. Okay. Get on with your story.”

“I went back into the house and up to my room. That’s when I found him.”

“Him? You mean Marley?”

“Yes, sir. Lying right in the middle of the carpet, he was. And he’d been strangled — with my keys.”

Orin shook his head in confusion. “Strangled with keys,” he said slowly. “I don’t get that, Augustine.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. It wasn’t with the keys exactly. I keep my key ring attached to a chain, and it was the chain that was wrapped around Marley’s neck. It was so tight it almost beheaded the poor thing.”

As he began to speak, Orin became the soul of sweet reasonableness. “It could happen,” he said. “When you went out, the bird got loose. It fluttered around the room, and somehow it got tangled in your key chain.”

“I suppose it could have happened that way, except—”

“Except what?”

“The chain hadn’t just been wrapped around Marley’s neck. It was knotted.”

Orin sat back, expelling his breath loudly. “No chance that the bird could have—”

“None, Mr. Watkins. It was a square knot.”

Odd, but nothing to do with the security of The Center, of course. That is, unless Augustine was going dotty and had at some time blacked out and strangled the bird himself.

“You mentioned a while back that the death of the bird was just the ‘first incident’,” said Orin suddenly. “What did you mean by that, Augustine?”

“Well, the next thing was the tools in my medicine cabinet, files, to be exact.”

“Files?”

“Yes. You see, I had a headache all day Friday, thinking about Marley and wondering how it could have happened. So when I got home that afternoon, I decided to take a couple of aspirin. Mrs. Carrigan lets me keep a bottle in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I’m often subject to headaches.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I went to the second floor bathroom and drew a glass of water. Then I opened the medicine cabinet. Oh, the crashing and banging was terrible.”

“What crashing and banging?”

“When the files fell out. Long round ones they were, of blued steel. I believe they’re the type called ‘rattail’.”

“Well?” Orin nodded expectantly.

“That’s about all. But isn’t a medicine cabinet an odd place to keep files? Especially so many. There must have been at least two dozen. I’m afraid a couple of them chipped the sink rather badly. Mrs. Carrigan will be quite upset when she returns and finds the damage.”

“And how did these files get into the medicine cabinet?” asked Orin, a touch of sarcasm filtering into his voice.

“I... I don’t know, sir. They certainly weren’t there the previous evening, and yet I was the only person in the house. That’s what worries me, Mr. Watkins. Is it possible that, without realizing it, I put them there myself?”

“Umm. Possible, I suppose. It’s strange, though, that you’d have no recollection at all.”

“It almost sounds as if I might be... well... going out of my mind. Doesn’t it?”

“That’d be up to the medics to decide, Augustine,” said Orin. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. There has to be some logical explanation. Besides, I’d expect a man on the verge of insanity to experience hallucinations; visions, loss of reality, that sort of thing.”

Augustine took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder.

Orin, seeing the old man’s reactions, cocked an eyebrow. “Have you experienced any hallucinations, Augustine?”

“I... I really don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Explain yourself.” Orin’s voice was sharper than he intended it to be.

“It was Saturday evening, Mr. Watkins. I went out for a walk, nowhere in particular. I was having trouble sleeping, what with Marley, and then the files tumbling out of the medicine cabinet. I’d left the house about eleven-thirty, so it must have been after midnight when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“I had stopped under a street lamp to light my pipe. As I struck the match, I suddenly realized there was a man standing beside me. I hadn’t heard him approach. He must have been wearing rubber-soled shoes.”

“Did the man try to attack you? Did he demand money or anything like that?”

“Oh, no! In fact, he tipped his hat in the most polite manner. It’s just that when he removed the hat, and the light hit his face, I saw that he was wearing a mask.”

“A mask?”

“Yes, sir. It was one of those rubber things that fit over the entire head. Fairly scared the life out of me, it did. You see, the mask was of a... a werewolf. Not only that, but the man suddenly went down on his hands and knees and began howling at the moon. Then, just as quickly, he got to his feet, replaced his hat, shook my hand and vanished into the darkness.”

Orin chuckled. “That one’s easily explained, at least,” he said with a smile. “Either someone coming home from a costume party or a practical joker. Drunk, probably.”

“Perhaps. But after the first two incidents, meeting that man didn’t do my nerves any good, I can tell you that. And I’ve been unable to locate anybody else in the area who either saw the man or even heard of such a thing happening.”

“It is kind of screwy, but not impossible. Is there anything else, Augustine?”

“Yes, Mr. Watkins. One thing more. It happened just last night — or perhaps this morning. It’s hard to say.”

Orin could see that Augustine was visibly shaken by the events that had happened. His thin arms twitched alarmingly, and he seemed on the verge of tears.

“Yesterday evening, I cleaned my room, sir; vacuuming, dusting, the whole thing. At the time I went to bed, everything was in its proper place. You’ve got to believe that, Mr. Watkins. You’ve got to!”

“Okay, Augustine, okay. Nobody’s doubting your word. Go on with your story.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry to lose control of myself. At any rate, I locked the door and went to bed. But this morning when I got up, I found... I found...” Augustine suddenly covered his face with the handkerchief and burst into horrible and uncontrolled sobbing.

For several minutes, the silence of Orin’s office was broken only by the pitiful moans of the old man. Finally, with a tremendous effort of will, he became quiet. Bending over, he picked up a roll of paper from the floor beside the chair and tossed it onto Orin’s desk.

“That, Mr. Watkins. I found that on the floor of my room. Held flat with books from my shelves, it was. But I didn’t put it there. I’ve never even seen it before this morning. I swear it, sir! I don’t know where it came from!”

Orin unrolled the stiff paper. It was a poster of some kind. The picture was of a military man in his late fifties or early sixties, wearing the uniform of a World War I soldier. The handsomeness of the rugged face with its neat moustache and coolly competent expression was set off by the brilliant display of campaign ribbons and the general’s four stars on his uniform. Orin read the few words below the picture: GENERAL JOHN J. “BLACK JACK” PERSHING, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.

“Nothing frightening about the picture, at least,” said Orin finally.

“That’s not the point, Mr. Watkins. I never owned such a picture. How did it get into my room? First, my canary was killed. After that, the files in the medicine cabinet and the man with that hideous mask. And now this. At first, I... I thought about not saying anything to anybody, but—”

“Yeah, that’s what ninety-nine people out of a hundred would do. But you did the right thing, Augustine. Only... Oh, dammit!” Orin balled up a sheet of paper from his desk and hurled it into a corner of the small office.

“Are you all right, Mr. Watkins?”

“Yeah, Augustine. It’s just that you’re too nice a guy for what I’ve got to do to you.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Look, you’ve told me some pretty wild things. They just don’t make any sense. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re going screwball. On the other hand, I’m not a doctor. I’m a security officer, and regardless of my personal feelings, my first duty’s to the safety and security of The Center. Right?”

“I suppose so, but—”

“Don’t interrupt me while I’m griping. Now, if these things had happened to one of the scientists here, I might think somebody was trying to drive him insane. But frankly, Augustine, your job as a clerk just doesn’t have that high a priority. Let’s face it, if you disappeared tomorrow, you could be replaced without too much trouble. Furthermore, you don’t know enough about the operations here for you to give anybody really vital material. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but that’s the way things are.”

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Watkins.”

“All right, then, if we eliminate the idea that some unknown party’s trying to get you out of The Center, what’s left?”

Augustine stared bleakly at the floor. “What you’re trying to say is that I either imagined these things or I did them myself. Isn’t that it?”

“Yeah, but... Oh, hell!” Orin picked up the telephone on his desk and poised an index finger over the dial. “I’m going to have to keep you here at The Center, Augustine,” he said. “You’ll be under guard, and the doctors will be dropping in fairly often. I’ll make you as comfortable as I can, but no word will be allowed out as to your whereabouts. And if you’re thinking about exercising your constitutional rights to habeas corpus, forget it. This is a top-secret government project, not a courtroom.”

“Please don’t worry yourself about my welfare,” said Augustine. “I understood the consequences when I walked in here.”

Orin opened his mouth to speak and then abruptly closed it. What more was there to say? He spun the telephone dial around angrily.

After turning Augustine Lanier over to two guards who were given strict orders not to let the old man out of their sight until he was given clearance, Orin went to the cafeteria and ate a lunch that could have been boiled cardboard for all the enjoyment he got from it. Returning to his office, he flopped into his swivel chair, spun it away from the desk and considered a ground plan of The Center that was mounted on the wall.

There was the sound of drumming feet outside the building, and he turned to watch through the window as the perimeter guards changed. After a formal exchange of salutes, the new men took their places at the small booths by the gates, while those who had been on duty the previous four hours returned to the barracks just below the office. There, the men who lived on the base could read, talk or catch up on their sleep while the noncommissioned officers who had rooms in town dashed out through the gates to catch a bus. Until eight o’clock that evening, their time was their own.

Orin frowned suddenly, glancing from the window back to the floor plan. There was something he hadn’t noticed before. Easy enough to remedy, of course, but a possible breach of security, just the same.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Orin shouted impatiently.

The man who waddled through the door had his military shirt fully unbuttoned and was scratching at his hairy chest with one massive hand. Between his teeth was clenched a pipe with a bowl roughly the size of a coffee cup. If Colonel Timothy Doherty, The Center’s chief medical officer, hadn’t been such a superb physician, he’d have long since been drummed out of the service simply for being a slob. Orin, however, liked Doherty immensely. The fat doctor added a dash of Irish joie de vivre to The Center’s severely formal military routines.

“Thought you’d like to hear how I’m getting on with your Mr. Lanier,” said Doherty, settling into a chair and at the same time dribbling burning embers from his pipe onto the carpet.

“Yeah, Tim. In a minute.”

“What do you mean, in a minute? I thought you asked me to let you know as soon as I’d finished looking at him.”

“Just take a look at this chart first, will you?” Orin jabbed a finger toward the ground plan. “We’re right here, and the guards who just came off duty are downstairs.”

“A fair assessment,” nodded Doherty, “especially as they’re making enough racket down there to wake the dead.”

“But Tim, they’re still inside The Center.”

Doherty spread his hands wide. “A marvelous bit of deduction, Orin,” he said. “What do you do for an encore? Locate Judge Crater?”

“C’mon, be serious,” replied Orin. “I want to see if I’ve got this figured right. Now, we allow the guards who live in town to go out of The Center when they come off duty, without checking them any too closely. If one of them wanted to take something from The Center, he wouldn’t have much trouble smuggling it out.”

“Take something? And what would one of your own men be wanting to take?”

“There are people who’d be willing to pay quite a bit for information about The Center’s activities.”

“You mean you don’t even trust the guards?”

“In this job, I don’t trust anybody. It would be a big temptation. Look, the record-storage area is in the other end of this building. What would prevent one of the guards from walking out of the barracks and into the record area when he came off duty, instead of going right out through the gate?”

“Well, for one thing, somebody’d see him. It’s broad daylight. And for the second thing, the record department’s always kept firmly locked.”

“But if it were night? And the guard had a key?”

“Oh, I suppose he could get inside under those circumstances. If he wanted to, that is.”

“Then he could look into the filing cabinets at every experiment we’ve ever done here. Even photograph them, if he had a camera.”

“Now, wait a minute, Orin. There’s a special watchman right outside the room where the records themselves are kept, and even he doesn’t have a key to the rooms or the filing cabinets.”

“Okay, but let’s say our man comes along this passage. He’d be out of sight of the watchman until the last minute. He could hit the watchman with something and—”

“And even assuming he got all those locks open, the moment the watchman woke up and identified him, he’d be hunted by every policeman in the country. And treason’s still a capital offense, I believe.”

“What if he wore a mask?”

“What if! What if!” Doherty relit his pipe and peered through the smoke at Orin. “If the thing is really bothering you, just keep the perimeter guards under observation until they actually leave The Center.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll suggest that to the commanding officer.” Orin spun about and faced the plump doctor. “Now, what about Lanier?”

“I’ve no official diagnosis yet, but just between us tin soldiers, he’s as sane as you or me. Except after hearing you talk, I’m not so sure about you.” With a sly grin, Doherty peered from under bushy brows at Orin. “By the way, Lanier’s canary really is dead, you know,” he said offhandedly.

“Oh? How did you find that out?”

“Lanier mentioned he’d buried it in the back yard. I sent a couple of men out to his rooming house, and they dug up the corpse. Its neck had been broken.”

“Sounds like you’re doing my job for me,” said Orin, grinning.

“All in the line of duty. We’ve got the bird’s body and the picture of Pershing. At least we know those two things aren’t imaginary. I strongly suspect, Orin-me-boy, that I’ll be forced to give that man a clean bill of health.”

“He’ll still have to be let go unless we can explain those incidents logically.”

“Have you thought of trying the polygraph?”

“The lie detector? What good would that do? If Augustine’s lying, he’s an automatic security risk. And if not, the things that happened are so suspicious that he’d still be thrown out. What’s the difference?” Orin asked diffidently.

“We might get some insight as to what’s on his mind. Orin, you learned to operate the polygraph during security training. You know it isn’t perfect. That’s why it’s not acceptable as evidence.”

“Except here at The Center,” answered Orin. “If anybody’s polygraph chart doesn’t stay within reasonable limits, he’s out. It may not be fair, but security is maintained.”

“All right, but we both know the lie detector can’t peer into anybody’s brain to see if he’s lying. All the machine does is measure bodily responses. A pressure cuff measures blood pressure and pulse. A tube around the chest gets the dope on respiration depth and frequency, and electrodes on the fingers tell how much the subject is perspiring. All these are automatically graphed on a chart.”

“Right out of the textbook, Tim. Then the subject is given neutral questions or words — ‘cat’ or ‘dog’ or something like that to test his usual reactions. Only when Augustine heard the word ‘canary’, his graph would go right off the paper because of what happened to — Holy Saint Jude Thaddeus!”

“Orin, you’re as white as a sheet. Are you all right? Do you want me to get you something?”

“Just the phone.” Orin grabbed at the instrument, index finger stabbing at the dial. “Sergeant Jennings, I want Mr. Lanier brought to my office right away,” he barked into the mouthpiece. “On the double!” He slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

“I take it you’re onto something,” said Doherty calmly. “Or are you just trying for a coronary right here in your office?”

“Oh,” muttered Orin, his lips pulled back tight against his teeth. “That clever son-of-a... This is one for the books, all right, and it might have worked if Augustine had just kept quiet like any ordinary person. But instead, he came to me. Bless his conscientious heart, he came to me!”

“I think I’ll stay,” said Doherty. “I’ve nothing but two cases of blistered feet this morning, anyway. And you’d better be making some sense out of this mishmash, or I’ve got another room waiting for you, right next to Lanier’s.”

Three minutes later, Augustine Lanier slowly shuffled into Orin’s office and nodded nervously to the two men. Orin offered him a chair.

“Augustine,” Orin said when the old man was seated, “I think I’ve got some good news for you. I think I know the meaning of the things that happened to you.”

“All of them, sir?” asked Augustine softly.

“Every blasted one. Listen. A few moments ago, I described to Colonel Doherty here, how one of the perimeter guards might possibly enter the records area and take material out.”

“Really, Mr. Watkins? That’s where I work — or where I used to work. I thought it was quite closely guarded.”

“No, not only would it be possible for someone to get in, but I think somebody’s actually planning to do it. And there are places in the world where the information in those records would be worth a bundle.”

“Oh, I hope you’ll be able to catch him, sir. Many of the envelopes I’ve put in the cabinets have been labeled Top Secret.”

“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble on that score. You see, I think the thief plans on staying on right here at The Center. He’s going to try and make it seem as if someone else is the guilty person. You, Augustine.”

“Me? I don’t understand. How?”

“Over to you, Tim.” Orin turned his chair to face Doherty. “If a theft like the one I’ve described actually took place, what would be the first thing I’d do?”

“Oh, seal off the area. Ascertain what was actually broken into. Make up excuses to the commanding officer for your blunders.”

“Yes, but when I started questioning suspects, what then? I’d use the polygraph, Tim. The lie detector. And I’d start with the people who had access to the room. Augustine, here, would be one of the first people tested.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Doherty.

“Think, Tim.” Orin turned to the old man. “Augustine, you were set up for a theft of records that may take place tonight, or certainly within the next couple of days. You were going to be the patsy for this job. You’d have been turned into perhaps the world’s first artificial liar.”

“It’s all very confusing, sir.”

“Tim,” Orin gestured toward the doctor, “imagine Augustine strapped into the lie detector. The machine is attached to his body. His blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity are all being monitored. I begin by asking his name or how he feels. Anything to put him at ease so we can get a proper reading.

“But now, we agree that the real thief would have access to keys to the record area. So, after a few innocent words, I say ‘keys’.”

In his chair, Augustine Lanier jerked involuntarily. The color drained from his face. “Oh, poor Marley,” he whispered. “And with my own key chain.”

“Saint Patrick, protect us!” murmured Doherty. “With a reaction like that, he’d send the lie detector needles right through the wall.” He scratched his head doubtfully. “But what about the other things, Orin? The files in the medicine cabinet, for instance?”

“Try the words ‘file cabinet’, Tim.”

“And the werewolf getup would provide a reaction to ‘mask’. But what about General Pershing?”

“ ‘Black Jack’. The watchman would have to be slugged with something, remember? We’d be given a perfect suspect. Not because Augustine had done anything wrong, but because he’d been psychologically conditioned to respond to the very words we were bound to use in our investigation. Meanwhile, as we concentrated on Augustine, the guilty party would be laughing up his sleeve at us. However, in one way, Augustine didn’t act the way he was expected to. Instead of keeping those odd events to himself, he told me about them.”

“And the real thief, the one who’s been doing all these things to Mr. Lanier? Have you got him pegged, too?” asked Doherty.

Orin leaned back, grinning. “Sure,” he said. “Augustine, you’ve been telling me all along that for the past few days you’d been alone in the rooming house. You weren’t, you know.”

“You mean my landlady—”

Orin shook his head. “She’d hardly qualify as a guard here,” he said. “But—”

“Sergeant Pomeroy,” breathed Augustine, his eyes wide with amazement. “His room’s right across the hall from mine.”

“Now you’re catching on, Augustine. You see, I don’t believe Pomeroy ever went on his fishing trip. He may have left the house while you watched, but it’s my guess he stashed his luggage somewhere and sneaked back. He’s been lying concealed in his room ever since. You said you’d forgotten your keys several times. He could have slipped over to your room and made clay casts of them in seconds, before you returned to pick them up. Since you’re a file clerk, those keys would have let him into any part of the record area. The same thing with Marley; how long does it take to kill a tiny bird? He just waited until you’d forgotten your keys once more, came into your room, opened the cage, and that was that. The other occurrences would have been even easier to set up. All Pomeroy had to do was wait until you were out of the house and he could set up your room any way he liked.”

“An interesting theory, Orin-me-boy,” said Doherty. “Going to be a bit difficult to prove, though, isn’t it?”

“No trouble at all,” said Orin.

Two nights later, a figure dressed in a dark shirt and pants unlocked the side door of The Center’s record area, opened the door, and quickly slipped inside. He pushed the door shut behind him. As he turned, someone in the darkness whipped away the black bandana handkerchief which had been wrapped around his face. Startled, he dropped a large ring of keys to the floor just as somebody turned on the overhead lights. In front of the man, four soldiers held their bayoneted rifles at the ready.

“Welcome, Sergeant Pomeroy,” said Orin Watkins, placing the black handkerchief carefully in his pocket. “We’ve been waiting for you.”