The Right Jack

22

THE tournament may have been over, but questioning the cardplayers dragged on into midafternoon. It could have been worse. Of the three hundred or so players, less than twenty were positive that they had seen Pernell Johnson after the break began.

Jill Gill was the player to pinpoint his last movements. Others had seen the young busboy policing the ash stands out on the landing-"I felt so guilty/' confessed one woman. "He'd just picked three butts out of the sand and here I came with another!"-but only Dr. Hill could tell Elaine Albee, "It was exactly 10:41. I looked at my watch because our break was supposed to last fifteen minutes. Almost nobody'd started back inside though, so I thought I'd still have time to duck into the ladies'.

"You know how you'll look around for the nearest inconspicous door? Well, I saw the busboy pass through a doorn ext to the elevators and I started to follow and then I saw 'No admittance,' so I went elsewhere."

If anyone else had seen young Johnson after 10:41, they weren't saying.

The service landing beyond that door was not visible from the service door at the rear of the Bontemps Room; but LeMays, the busboy who'd used the corridor and freight elevator to fetch more cups from the kitchen, swore the area was deserted when he went down at eleven o'clock.

He and two others agreed that Ted Flythe had left by the rear hall shortly after the break began. They didn't think he had returned that way. Nor could any of the Graphic Games people alibi Flythe. It was generally agreed that he did not return to the Bontemps Room and call for order until 10:55.

Fourteen minutes between the last glimpse of Pernell Johnson and the next view of Ted Flythe.

"You could go anywhere in this building and back again in fourteen minutes." Alan Knight frowned. "Aren't you going to question him?"

"Not yet," said Sigrid, touching her hair in absent-minded uneasiness. Roman had used a gentler hand than hers when helping to pin up her hair earlier that morning and she didn't trust the dark mass not to come sliding down. "If he's Fred Hamilton, it's taken more than good luck to stay out of prison all these years."

"ESP?"

"Or the science of body language or whatever else you want to call it," she said patiently. "No, he can't read minds, but he's probably good at picking up unconscious signals like voice tones or eye tension. We'll know for sure when the prints come in tomorrow, and then we'll arrest him and do our questioning where there's no chance of his disappearing for another fifteen years, okay?"

"You're the expert."

"And you're not?"

Knight shrugged. "Look, they gave me a sailor suit, a cram course at Newport, and told me to go read a couple of books. I'm pretty intelligent but whether that qualifies me for Intelligence, I couldn't say. I probably shouldn't tell you this, buty ou're my first real field operation."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," she said.

By then, it was nearly four, most of the players had gone, and the Graphic Games crew were packing up the last of their boards and dismantling the display cases out in the hall.

Feeling somewhat guilty because she'd avoided his Sunday dinner, Sigrid phoned Roman Tramegra to ask if he'd like something from the deli for supper.

"Don't bother, my dear. I've held the veal."

Her heart sank,

"Is the tournament over?" he asked. "Why don't you ask Dr. Gill to join us? There's enough."

Fortunately, Jill Gill had not yet departed. "He probably wants me to vet his cockroach article," she said cheerfully when Sigrid relayed the invitation. "I told him I would."

"Cockroaches?" asked Alan Knight curiously.

"Five hundred spine-chilling words on an insect that can and does live anywhere man can. I believe he hopes to sell it to The National Enquirer. Can't you see the headline now? 'Biological Time Bomb Already in Place.'" She smiled at Sigrid through her rhinestone-and-turquoise glasses. "I'll be happy to come."

"It's anised veal," Sigrid warned.

"I can eat anything the roaches eat."

"Me, too," said Alan Knight, with a hopeful expression on his handsome face.

Sigrid was taken off guard.

"Oh let him come," laughed Jill, pulling on a bright red sweater. "He'll balance the table and anyhow, Roman will love him. He's never done an article about the Navy, has he?"

It was true that Roman would like having fresh brains to pick. But more importantly, thought Sigrid, four people sharing a meal originally planned for two should certainly ensure no leftovers.

In the end, five sat down to dine on Roman's creation. Nauman turned up unexpectedly with a bottle of wine and some tapes and chapter notes which he thought might interest Sigrid from John Sutton's office at Vanderlyn College. To help Val, he had volunteered to clean out her husband's desk and pack up his books and personal effects. Nauman had also brought along some snapshots he found of the Suttons' McClellan days, including one fuzzy group pose.

"There's John," he said, "and I think that's Fred Hamilton."

"He doesn't look much like Ted Flythe," said Knight, peering over Sigrid's shoulder at the faded photograph.

"Ted Flythe?" asked Dr. Gill from the kitchen sink where she was peeling avocados for Roman. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and leaned across the breakfast counter where they were clustered in order to see, too. "Why would Professor Sutton have a picture of Ted Flythe?"

"There's a possibility that he was once part of a terrorist underground organization that began out at McClellan

State." Sigrid explained the Red Snow connection as he turned the picture so that Jill Gill could get a good look and tapped the figure in the foreground. "What do you think?"

The entomologist adjusted her harlequin-shaped glasses and examined it closely. "The eyes are similar," she agreed.

"Cut the hair, add a beard and fifteen years," Sigrid said.

"Insufficient data," Jill replied and went back to peeling avocados. "Don't you have fingerprints or something?"

"They should be coming tomorrow. "r

"Then tomorrow you'll know for sure, won't you?" Jill observed sensibly.

Unperturbed by three extra mouths to feed, Roman was doing a loaves-and-fishes act with salad greens, avocados, and mushrooms. He flourished two large Vidalia onions and in his deep bass voice queried, "Who's unalterably opposed to onions?"

Alan Knight flashed an insouciant grin in Sigrid's direction. "Anybody planning to do some kissing later?" he drawled.

"Where did you find Huck Finn?" asked Nauman, draping his long body onto the couch.

"Does he strike you as Huck Finn?" Sigrid asked absently. "I've been thinking he's more barefoot boy with cheek."

They had repaired to the living room alone after dinner with John Sutton's tapes and notes, and Sigrid was distracted with extension cords for her portable tape cassette player.

From the direction of the kitchen came the rumble of Roman's voice interspersed with Jill and Alan's lighter tones. Roman was reading aloud from his cockroach article while the two guests cleaned the kitchen and made ribald observations on the mating habits of Blatella germanica.

Dinner had been a cheerful and slightly rowdy meal, not unusual when people are meeting for the first time and talking over and around each other in layered degrees of familiarity. Oscar and Jill had known each other for years, Sigrid first met all three last spring, and she and Roman had become accidental roommates back

in the summer; yet this was the first time the four had dined together. And, of course, this was Nauman and Tramegra's first meeting with Alan Knight.

Conversation had ranged from insects to Lucienne Ronay, from nouvelle cuisine to art nouveau, from naval maneuvers to marine zoology-whereupon Alan Knight suggested to Roman that he might get a good article out of crawdads.

Nauman's salad fork paused in midair. "What the hell's a crawdad?"

"You don't know what a crawdad is?" grinned Knight, who'd been a bit awed earlier to realize who Nauman was.

"No, I don't know what a crawdad is."

Somehow this clash of cultures so delighted Sigrid that she burst into infectious laughter.

Roman chose that moment to bring on his entrée. "Here we are: veau d'anise avec étables verts," he announced in his mangled French.

"What?" asked Nauman. "No chitlins or harmony grits?"

During dinner they had finished Oscar's bottle of wine, opened a second, and

Sigrid had now brought the remains of a third to.the living room with them.

"Should you be drinking this much with your medication?" Oscar asked when she spread John Sutton's notes next to the tape player on the low table before them and held out her glass.

"Nope," she said happily. "But I haven't taken a pill since morning, so more wine, garçon."

"I've never seen you tipsy before."

"I'm not tipsy." She took a slow sip of the amber wine and reconsidered. "Relaxed, perhaps, but definitely not tipsy."

She turned on the tape player, slipped off her shoes, and leaned back lightly against his shoulder with her feet tucked under her.

Pleasantly surprised by her unaccustomed initiative, Oscar shifted slightly so that she fit more comfortably into the curve of his arm while John Sutton's voice filled the room.