Nobody Knew They Were There

Wednesday, October 30

I have been unable to reach Sara.

I keep calling the apartment, but there is no answer, and I assume that she and Gwen are both in class. But at eleven o’clock, Gwen answers the phone and when I ask her when she expects Sara, she answers coldly, “Isn’t she with you, Mr. Sachs?”

“No, she isn’t”

“Well then, I don’t know where she is,” Gwen says. “She hasn’t been spending much time here lately.”

“Wasn't she there last night?”

“No, Mr. Sachs, she was not here last night,” Gwen says.

“Will you leave word that I called?”

“Yes,” she says abruptly, and hangs up.

I put on my overcoat and go down to the lobby. Ralph, the desk clerk, is just about to leave, explaining a stack of notes and messages to his relief, a young redheaded girl wearing eyeglasses with tortoise-shell rims. She glances up as I approach and then goes back to her scrutiny of the pink and yellow slips on the desk. Ralph wraps a muffler around his throat, picks up two law texts and begins to walk past me.

“Just a second,” I say.

He stops. His eyes avoid mine. “Yes, Mr. Sachs?” he says.

“Were you in class yesterday, Ralph?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see Sara?”

“Sara?”

“Sara Horne. Do you have any classes with her?”

“I have two classes with her. Procedure and Torts.”

“Was she in either one of them yesterday?”

“She took the exam in Procedure. I didn’t see her after that,” he says. He glances at his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run.”

We go out of the hotel together. On the sidewalk outside, he seems about to hurry away, suddenly changes his mind and looks up into my face instead. He is perhaps three inches shorter than I, with straight flaxen hair tumbled now by the wind, brown eyes unblinking behind thick spectacles. He takes a deep breath and says, “Why don’t you leave Sara alone?”

I do not answer. I turn and start to walk away.

“No, wait a minute,” he says. He puts his hand on my arm, and then immediately pulls it back. He continues looking into my face. “That was your wife here yesterday, wasn’t it? Does she know you’re fooling around with Sara?” I still do not answer him. “Do you know Sara has a boyfriend in Arizona? She’s a nice girl,” he says. “Leave her alone.”

“I’ll leave her alone when she asks me to.”

“She already has,” Ralph says. “You just weren’t listening.”

He turns abruptly and walks off toward the park near Chatham Hall. I stand watching him for several moments and then turn in the opposite direction, toward Seth Wilson’s apartment on North Harrington.

Seth answers the doorbell on the fourth ring.

He is wearing only a blue flannel robe and buckle ski boots. He sees my puzzled look and says, “I’m breaking them in. Do you ski?”

“i ski.”

“You have to break them in,” he says, and shrugs.

“Is Sara here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don't think you want to see her, Mr. Sachs.”

“I think I do want to see her. Where is she?”

He stands in the doorway silently, blocking my way. He is smaller than I am, but stronger. And younger. Infinitely younger.

“Let’s not hassle,” he says. “Come back later. Or better yet, tomorrow morning. She should be fine by them.”

“What do you mean? What's the matter with her?”

“Nothing serious. She's drunk.”

“You're lying.”

“Mr. Sachs, she has been drunk since approximately eight o'clock last night. She…”

“Sara?”

“I believe that’s the lady we’re discussing,” Seth says. “She got here about four o’clock yesterday afternoon, said she needed to get away from it I figured…”

“Away from what?”

“From it, man. It. I thought at first she wanted to bust a joint, maybe drop some acid. But she…”

“You'd have given her acid?”

“Why not? Wouldn’t have been the first time. I’ve got some pretty good stuff right now, as a matter of fact Some white owsley, are you familiar?”

“No.”

“Best you can get. You drop something like green flats, you’re swallowing strychnine, speed, all kinds of shit mixed together, you never know. But this is good stuff.” He shrugs. “All academic. Sara wasn’t having any. ‘No dope,’ she told me, ‘absolutely no dope.’ So she drank instead.” He smiles. His teeth are very white against his black skin. “And drank And drank. And drank. Slept a little last night, but started in again first thing this morning.”

“Where is she? I want to see her.”

He studies me in silence for a moment. Then he shrugs, and steps back out of the doorway. “The bedroom,” he says.

I move past him and into the living room, W. C. Fields pering at me over his spread cards, the piano on my right, through the door into the kitchen, and then turn sharply left and walk into the room with the paper stars on the ceiling. Sara is on the bed. She is wearing blue jeans and a white cotton blouse. The top button of the jeans is open. The bed under her is drenched with perspiration. Her hair is matted to her forehead. I lean over her. “Late,” she mumbles, “late,” and then rolls away toward the wall and covers her face with her hands. There is a comforter at the foot of the bed. I draw it up over her, and she immediately kicks it off, and says, “Oh God, late, he’s going to die, oh God,” and then sighs heavily, and crosses her arms over her chest and tucks her hands into her armpits, as if she is cold. I draw the comforter over her again. This time, she does not kick it away.

I go into the living room where Seth is standing in his flannel robe and buckle boots.

“She’ll be okay,” he says.

“Why’d you do this to her?”

“She did it to herself,” Seth says. “Man, don’t bug me. Sara’s a big girl now. She does what she wants to do.”

“I’m taking her out of here.”

“Not right now,” Seth says. “Let her sleep it off.”

“I’ll wait”

“Fine. We have things to talk about, anyway.”

“We have nothing to talk about, Seth.”

“How about the bridge?” he says.

He is standing before the poster of W. C. Fields. The effect is one of Fields peering simultaneously over his cards and Seth’s shoulder, waiting for my response. I recognize all at once that this is not a game of chance, not the way they play it. Everyone in town seems to know about the goddamn bridge. If I get away from it alive come Saturday, it’ll be a miracle.

“What bridge?” I say.

He does not answer. Instead, as though remembering he must break in the buckle boots, he begins clomping around the living room, walking in a wide circle that takes him to the picture window and past the easy chair and the hanging mobile and the upright piano and around in front of the couch and back to the window again, the whole house shaking with his heavy tread. In the other room Sara again mutters, “Late, or God, late.”

“What bridge?” I ask again.

He does not stop his circular clomping. As he moves past me and back again like some Frankenstein monster lost on his way to the showers, robe flapping about his muscular black legs, black thick-soled buckle boots thumping on the naked floor boards, he says, “The bridge Sara mentioned.”

“Better ask her about it then.”

“I did.”

He stops walking. The effect is highly dramatic, the silence deep and ominous after the noise of his boots.

In the other room, Sara says, “I always circle it.”

“Of course, drunks don’t often make sense,” Seth says, “but Sara…”

“Sara’s not a drunk!”

“True, true, I stand corrected. She was drunk when we talked, however.” He grins. “Still is, matter of fact.” He pauses. The grin drops from his face. “Would you like to hear what we talked about?”

“No.”

“I’ve got it all on tape, Mr. Sachs.”

“You taped Sara while…?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You taped a girl who…?”

“I’m a writer, he says in explanation.

I do not know whether to hit him or laugh at him. The notion that he imagines himself free to tape the conversation of a girl who’s drunk, merely because he’s a writer, is ludicrous. And the reverse notion, that he imagines himself to be a writer, merely because he can tape a conversation, is equally ludicrous. But he has already brought out the machine, and he rewinds the tape now, locating the portion he wants me to hear.

I sit on the sofa before the poster of W. C. Fields and listen to the voices, one distinctly Sara’s, rambling and thick, the other Seth's, gently probing.

SARA: It’s no use, I blew it.

SETH: What do you mean, honey?

SARA: He’s forty-two…

SETH: Who is?

SARA: I blew it. So damn careful, and I blew it.

SETH: Honey, I don’t follow you.

SARA: What time is it?

SETH: Close to midnight.

SARA: Late.

SETH: It’s early yet, Sara.

SARA: No, no. Late. He’ll die.

SETH: Who’ll die?

SARA: Big jackass.

SETH: Who, honey?

SARA: On a stupid bridge.

SETH: Somebody you know going to jump off a bridge?

SARA: I circled it, you know. So damn careful.

SETH: The bridge?

SARA: Of course not the bridge. How can someone circle a bridge?

SETH: I don’t get you, Sara.

SARA: I don’t even know you.

SETH: You know me. This’s Seth here.

SARA: I mean, to tell you such personal things.

SETH: What’s so personal about a bridge?

SARA: Who’s talking about the bridge? That’s the second, plenty of time to worry about that.

SETH: What’s the first?

SARA: What?

SETH: The first, Sara.

SARA: It’s not a sequence.

SETH: Huh?

SARA: It’s a date, not a sequence. The second.

SETH: Huh?

SARA: Huh, huh? Saturday. The second The second Give me some more of this. Please.

SETH: What about Saturday?

SARA: Nothing.

SETH: You said…

SARA: You boring fucking nigger, what do you want from me?

SETH: I’m trying to help you.

SARA: My ass.

SETH: Sober you up, is all.

SARA: He says as he fills my glass.

SETH: You asked for another one.

SARA: Sober me up when he’s gone, why don’t you?

SETH: Who, Sara?

SARA: Nobody. Dead and gone on his stupid bridge.

SETH: Which bridge?

SARA: How many bridges are there around here?

SETH: Henderson?

SARA: Oh, smart.

SETH: The railroad trestle over Henderson Gap?

SARA: Oh, smart, smart.

SETH: Is somebody going to do something to it? On Saturday?

SARA: No.

SETH: Who’s going to do it, Sara?

SARA: Nobody.

SETH: Your forty-two-year-old friend?

SARA: Nobody.

SETH: Arthur Sachs?

SARA: Nobody.

Seth presses a button and the tape is abruptly silenced. He looks at me. My mouth is dry.

“So?” I ask him

“So, Mr. Sachs?”

“So what?”

“So you are going to blow up the Peace Train, Mr. Sachs.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s why you’re here, Mr. Sachs. Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re doing a fine and noble thing.”

“Your admiration is misplaced. There’s nothing on that tape that would indicate..

“I'm reading between the lines, Mr. Sachs. Sara’s very worried about something happening to somebody on the bridge over Henderson Gap come Saturday, November second. Now it may be sheer coincidence that the Peace Train’s coming over the bridge that day, but I don’t think so. You’re here to destroy that train. I applaud you for it.”

“Save your applause. You’re making a mistake.”

“I want in, Mr. Sachs.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to be there when you do it. I want to help you.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm black.”

“So?”

“And being proud of George Washington Carver isn’t enough any more. Who cares if he invented the peanut?”

“He didn’t invent the peanut.”

“Or discovered it, or whatever he did with it. It’s time a black man made some genuine history in this country.”

“Then go write your novel.”

“This is better than a novel. This is real.”

“You think so? This is fantasy, Seth, Sara’s little pipe dream, the result of too much booze. Forget it. There’s nothing here for you. Write your book. You’re both Immigrant and Wasp, remember? How can you miss?”

“Mr. Sachs, you’re not going to blow that bridge without me.”

“Nor with you, either. There is no bridge, it’s all imagi…”

“Either you do it with me, or I’ll make sure nobody does it!”

“Fine.”

“I’m warning you, Mr. Sachs…”

“You don’t scare me. I have no plans for destroying any damn bridge. Your threats are meaningless.”

“My time has come, Mr. Sachs. Our time has come.”

“Then go find your own bridge, okay? I’m taking Sara home.”

We argue about that for a while, too. In the end, I leave without her, promising to return at six o’clock.

I know I have lost both arguments.

I am becoming frightened.

I have read these reports over and over again, trying to find in them some reassurance that I will come out of this alive. I have grown accustomed to the investigator’s terse style, in some ways superior to my own when writing a brief or a contract. I have begun to admire his sense of current history, his occasional glints of humor. I have even become fascinated by his obstinate refusal to accept bonds that seem obvious to me. But I find in his abbreviated typewritten biographies neither solace nor salvation.

I try to tell myself that the people with whom I am involved are truly dedicated to a cause which, while it may not be identical to my own, is equally valid. But I cannot muster faith in motives that can be understood only in terms of relationships that appear so intensely personal. Are these three really concerned with violent change, or is this concerted act of murder merely an expression of solidarity from a volatile ménage à trois doggedly maintained over the years? There are too many unanswered questions, and I have become weary tracking down the answers.

Is there any certain evidence that Raines knew Hester in London, or that the Rouen resistance group who led him to Spain and safety (Sud aux Pyrénées, the title sticks in my mind) was indeed the same group to which Epstein had been attached? Is there anything to indicate without doubt that Epstein’s “Mademoiselle” was the Germans’ “Fräulein,” or that he even knew Josette Rivière? Or saw her again in Paris after the war? Or fled to the university here after her death, in an attempt to recapture. what? Something he had known in 1944? In the cellar of a French farmhouse? With this woman and a wounded pilot named Cornelius Raines?

Is there anything at all, any shred of proof to support the theory that Raines-Pratt-Epstein are a figurative reincarnation of Raines-Rivière-Epstein, the trio who worked side by side in those good old days fraught with danger and suspense, south to the goddamn Pyrenees! (Is the bridge over Henderson Gap only a replay of those childhood wartime adventures? Oh, Jesus, is violence as exciting to them as it is to most Americans? But where the hell is the evidence for such a dark surmise?)

What about that trip to Denmark in 1948? One week? Was the nature of that trip really as obvious as it would appear? What else could Epstein have been doing but escorting the damsel in distress, performing another small service for his old comrade in arms, Cornelius Raines, whose indiscretion was about to become apparent? I cannot be sure. I’m a lawyer, I’m concerned with evidence, but there’s only supposition between the lines of these reports, and supposition doesn’t inspire blind faith. I’m the instrument of their deliverance, Raines has told me. But deliverance from what? I don’t know, and maybe I don’t have to know. Maybe, as with the details of wiring a bridge, it’s not necessary for me to understand all of it I know only that I will not read these reports again. I have learned all I hope to learn about the pasts of my co-conspirators. Whatever else there is to know must be gathered from the present.

They are here, the three of them. From somewhere out of the strength of their relationship, one to the other, all to the three, they’ve provided me with an opportunity for revenge. In that respect, they are the collective instrument of my deliverance, and for that I’m grateful.

The rest means nothing.

I do not care.

Weglowski calls the hotel at four p.m. He is a careful man, this Pole. He will discuss nothing on the telephone. He asks me to join him downstairs in the lobby, and when I do, we shake hands briefly and walk to where he has parked his pickup truck. Sitting in the cab, the engine running so that we will have some heat, he tells me he has driven sixty miles through the mountains to the next town where he has purchased the hundred and fifty pounds of dynamite we will need for the bridge. I tell him he has bought enough to blow up the entire state, but he assures me it is only sufficient to do the job properly. He then asks if I can meet him tomorrow night at nine, at which time we will drive out to Henderson Gap to wire the bridge.

“Why tomorrow night?” I ask. “Why must we wire it so far in advance?”

“Better,” he says.

“Why?”

“When you like to do?”

“Friday night.”

“Better tomorrow,” he says.

He has not yet explained why, and so I persist. Isn’t there a greater chance of discovery if we leave all that dynamite just hanging on the bridge for two days in plain sight of anyone who cares to go looking for it? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until Friday night when.

“Who go looking?” Weglowski asks.

“Any number of people might go looking,” I tell him. “I’ve heard that official trains are usually preceded by track walkers…”

“Walkers?”

“Yes, who search the rails for signs of sabotage. If they come looking, as they well might…”

“Can look Friday, too, no?”

“Yes, but that’s only the night before. It seems to me the chances are less likely…

“Cannot do Friday,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Daughter’s birthday Friday. Big party.”

For the next few moments, the conversation takes a ridiculous turn, as though the concept of an assassination having to wait upon a birthday party is too absurdly monumental for me to grasp. I hear myself asking him how old his daughter will be, and he replies she will be twenty, and I say, “Oh, that’s nice, I have a twenty-year-old son,” and he says, “Me, five sons — forty-one, thirty-eight, twenty-six, twenty-two, and seventeen,” and finally I say, “Listen, Weglowski, this bridge is more important than your daughter’s damn birthday party.”

“To who?” he asks.

“To me.”

“Then you do wire job, okay?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Okay. Then we do tomorrow night No difference tomorrow night or Friday night.”

His logic is irrefutable. If the dynamite is to be discovered, it can just as easily be discovered tomorrow or Friday or indeed ten minutes before the train is due. And yet I am vaguely uneasy as I agree to meet him tomorrow at nine. Is it because the actual wiring will bring me closer to the final act itself? Postpone it to Friday, and I will be one step further away from the reality of detonating the charges and watching the train plunge into the ravine below. Wiring the bridge will lend credence to something I have thus far only distantly perceived. The reality of it frightens me. I prefer the fantasy that is Sara. And yet, even that frightens me. They are both real, I know, Sara and the bridge — and both inextricably linked I take her back to the hotel at six o’clock.

I undress her, put her to bed, and then go downstairs for something to eat

There are two federal agents in the lobby.

I do not know who they are, but I know immediately what they are; I have entertained visits from their colleagues often enough, first when I was preparing the defense for the Baltimore draft resisters, and later when I was working on the Hoffstadter brief. They are instantly recognizable, both wearing dark overcoats and gray fedoras, enormous men who stand at the desk in quiet conversation with the girl who relieved Ralph. The redhead blinks up at them from behind her eyeglasses. I move silently past them, through the lobby and into the coffee shop.

Two college-girl waitesses are taking about a new lipstick they saw advertised on television. One of them glances at me, finishes what she was saying, and then walks to where I have taken a stool at the end of the counter.

“Yes, sir?” she says.

“I'd like a hamburger and some French fries,” I say.

“How would you like that, sir?”

“Medium rare.”

“And to drink?”

“Have you got any imported beer?”

“Don’t have any beer at all, sir.”

“A glass of milk then.”

“Thank you.” She glances toward the entrance door behind me. My palms are suddenly wet. She goes to the small opening leading to the kitchen, bawls out the order, glances toward the door again, and comes back to the counter in preparation for the newcomers. They seat themselves two stools away from me. They take off their fedoras almost simultaneously and put them on their laps. They are both blond. One of them is wearing a crew cut The other has hair about the length of mine. He glances at me briefly. His eyes are green.

“Help you?” the waitress asks.

“Just coffee,” the one with the crew cut says.

“Two coffees?”

“Mmm,” the green-eyed one says, and nods.

“Regular?”

“Regular.”

The one with the crew cut gets up, walks to the jukebox, turns to his partner and asks, “Anything you’d like to hear, Bob?”

“No, doesn’t matter to me,” Bob answers.

“Well, anything special?”

“Anything by what’s-her-name in there?”

“Who? Streisand?”

“No. What’s-her-name.”

“I don’t see anything. There’s some Streisand, though.”

“Sure, Harold.”

“Streisand?”

“Sure.”

Harold nods his crew-cut head, deposits a quarter in the juke, makes his three selections, and comes back to the counter. Bob’s green eyes flash sidelong at me again. The waitress brings my hamburger and milk. Streisand’s voice soars into the room.

“I’ve got some French fries coming, too,” I remind the waitress.

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she says absently.

She draws the two coffees, deposits them on the counter before Bob and Harold, and then yells through the opening for my potatoes. The man in the kitchen yells back, “Coming!”

“Coming,” she says to me.

“You go to school here, miss?” Bob asks abruptly.

“Me?”

“Mmm.”

“Yes, I do. Why?” She is smiling a trifle coquettishly, as though expecting a pickup. Bob is not looking at her. His green eyes are fastened to the sugar bowl. He has ladled three teaspoonfuls into his cup, and is now working on a fourth. Harold is watching the transfer in fascination, as though his partner is dredging the Mississippi.

“Know anybody named David Hollis?” Bob asks.

“Why?” the waitress answers. The smile has dropped from her face. She has recognized them, too. She has perhaps never confronted one of them before, but she has heard enough about them, and now she recognizes them and is instantly wary.

“What’s your name?” Harold asks. He slides the sugar bowl over in front of him and puts a carefully measured, level teaspoonful into his coffee. He does not look at the girl as he performs the operation. Neither of the pair seems even the slightest interested in her. This is undoubtedly their personal method of interrogation, and they perform it effortlessly, like two softshoe dancers in a vaudeville palace. It is a frightening routine. Sitting two stools away from them, I feel their overpowering menace and am terrified for the girl. And for myself. And for the plot.

“Why do you want to know my name?” the girl asks.

“You have something to hide?” Bob asks. He is stirring his coffee now. He has not once looked into the girl’s face.

“No. No,” she says, and shakes her head.

“Then what’s your name?”

“Mary.”

“Mary what?”

“Mary Brenner.”

The other waitress, who up to now has been following the conversation with only mild interest, suddenly decides it is time she went to the ladies’ room. She takes her bag from under the counter and unobtrusively disappears. Mary Brenner watches her departure, and then wets her lips.

“Do you know David Hollis?”

“No,” Mary Brenner says. “Who is he?”

“We thought everybody here on campus knew David Hollis.”

“Well, I’m just a soph, you see,” Mary Brenner says.

“Have you got any Danish pastry?” Harold asks.

“I think so. Do you want some?”

“If you have some.”

“Yes, I think so. Cheese or prune?”

“Prune,” Harold says.

Mary Brenner goes to the pie rack, slides open one of the glass doors, picks up the pastry with a pair of tongs and puts it on a plate, which she carries back to the counter. My potatoes are waiting in the opening just behind her.

“You weren’t here last year then, huh?” Harold asks, biting into the Danish.

“No. Well, yes. But I got here in the fall. I wasn’t here last spring.”

“Why? What happened last spring?” Bob asks.

“I don’t know. I was just saying.”

“You mean, all that business with David Hollis?” Bob asks.

“Gee, I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says, and shrugs.

“Where he tried to kill that guardsman?” Harold says.

“Gee, I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says.

“Thought everybody here at the school would know about that,” Bob says.

“No, I don’t know about it,” Mary Brenner answers.

“So you wouldn’t know where he lives, huh?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t”

“We went to the address we had over near the railroad tracks, but the man living there says Hollis moved out last month. You wouldn’t know where he moved, huh?”

“No. I don’t even know him.” Mary Brenner tries a smile. “I never heard his name before you came in here.” The smile is faltering. “Never,” she says, and shrugs again.

“He’s not in any trouble, you realize,” Harold says.

“Even if he was…”

“This is just a routine check.”

“I still wouldn’t know him.” She studies them for a moment, and then decides she will try to clinch it The lie she is about to tell is immediately transparent; it is a good thing they are not looking at her. “Is he a student here?” Mary Brenner asks.

Bob raises his green eyes from his coffee cup and stares directly into her face. Mary Brenner blinks.

“How much is that, miss?” he asks.

“I’m not finished here yet, Bob,” Harold says.

“Thirty cents,” Mary Brenner says, anxious to speed them on their way.

“I’m not finished” Harold says again.

Bob puts two quarters on the counter. “Keep the change,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“Think your friend might know Hollis?” Bob asks.

“Which friend?”

“The one in the ladies’ room?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“Well now, we can’t go in the ladies’ room after her, now can we?” Bob says, and smiles icily.

“No, I don’t guess so.”

“So why don’t you just pop in there and tell her we’d like a few words with her, okay?”

“Okay.”

“There’s a good girl,” Bob says.

“Miss?” I say.

Mary Brenner is quite anxious to get her girl friend out of the bathroom so that the attention of Harold and Bob will be diverted to someone else—anyone else. But I am just as anxious to get out of here, and when it seems she will ignore my voice, I raise it a few decibels.

“Miss!”

“Yes, your potatoes,” she says.

“No, never mind the potatoes, just let me have a check.”

“Sir, could you wait just one moment, please? These two gentlemen…”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m in a hurry.”

Bob glances at me. He says nothing. Into the silence, a second Streisand record falls into position on the juke. Mary Brenner fretfully bites her lip. She seems on the edge of tears. Her eyes are bright, almost feverish-looking. She writes my check and then hurries off to the ladies’ room. I leave money on the counter and go out of the coffee shop, certain that Bob’s gaze is following me all the way.

From a booth in the corner drugstore, I try Weglowski’s number. The phone is answered by a woman who can barely speak English. She asks me to wait, and then a young girl's voice comes onto the line.

“Yes?” she says.

“Who’s this, please?”

“This is Emilia. Who did you want?”

“Mr. Weglowski.”

“I’m sorry, my father’s out right now.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you ask him to call me, please? When he gets in?”

“All right, what’s your name?”

“Arthur Sachs.”

“Just a minute.” She puts down the receiver. I hear her clattering around, presumably searching for a pencil. “All right,” she says.

“Arthur Sachs,” I tell her again, “s-a-c-h-s.”

“And the number?”

“He has it”

“I’ll tell him you called.”

“Thank you,” I say, and hang up. I sit in the booth for several moments, wondering where the old man can be. I want to tell him that there are now agents in town, that we must now postpone the wiring of the bridge until the last possible moment. I wonder if Emilia is the girl who will be twenty years old tomorrow. I wonder if Weglowski will recognize the urgency of the situation and agree to forego her party. Tomorrow is Halloween, it is not safe to wire a bridge on a night when goblins and federal agents are abroad. I wonder if Weglowski is superstitious. I am wondering too many things. I take another dime from my pocket and dial Hester’s number. The telephone is answered on the third ring.

“Miss Pratt’s residence.” (Fanny Hollis, mother of Davey, my follower, who incidentally caused a slight commotion on campus last spring, and who has now incidentally brought federal agents to town looking for him in advance of the train’s arrival.)

“May I speak to Miss Pratt, please?”

“Who's calling?”

“Arthur Sachs.”

“One moment”

I wait. When Hester’s voice comes onto the line at last, it contains all of its customary warmth and good humor. “Yes, Mr. Sachs, what is it?” Good old Hester. The one constant in a variable universe.

“There are federal agents in town. They’re asking about David Hollis.”

“Where are you?” Hester asks immediately.

“In a phone booth, don’t worry. Do you know where he is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I think he should get out, don’t you?”

“Possibly.”

“Will you warn him?”

“He’s not that difficult to find, you realize. His family moved last month, but they’re still living in town. Any competent…”

“Hester, if they get to Hollis, they may get to you next. And Epstein. And Raines.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You were all involved with Hollis last spring.”

“Only in arranging for his defense.”

“That’s enough these days.”

“I’ll contact David. It might be best for him to be someplace else when the train arrives.”

“And the rest of you?”

“Connie’s here now. I’ll ask him what he thinks.”

“Connie?”

“Professor Raines. Thank you for calling, Mr. Eisler.”

“Listen, Hester…” I start, but she has already hung up. I debate calling her back, and decide it can wait until I’ve talked to Weglowski. I walk back to the hotel and into the lobby. The agents are nowhere in sight. In the room, Sara is asleep, snoring lightly.