Treachery at Lancaster Gate

Chapter 4

It was an icy morning and Pitt was later arriving at Lisson Grove than he had intended. A dray had slid on the ice in Marylebone Road and everything was held up. It had given him the chance to read his morning newspaper in the hansom, not an enjoyable experience, but necessary.

Stoker was waiting for him, his face pink from the bite of the wind, and his expression dark.

“That missing dynamite from Bessemer’s,” he said as soon as Pitt came in the door. “It was the foreman who took it, but he’s not much help. Either he’s scared witless of whoever he sold it to or he really doesn’t know. Either way, it’s bound to be anarchists raising funds by selling it on.”

“Any idea from other sources who bought it?” Pitt asked without much hope. He pulled out his chair and sat down, looking at the pile of notes already on his desk.

“An Italian called Pollini, who sold it to someone whose name he doesn’t know and whose description could fit half the anarchists in Europe. Most of them are in London anyway. The reports are on your desk. I’ve looked at them, and I can’t see anything useful…at least not in regard to the Lancaster Gate business. Got a good line in one or two other cases. It’s stirred up the pot a bit, and all kinds of things are coming to the surface. We should be able to tie up the Lansdowne affair.”

“Good.” Pitt gave a brief smile, took the newspaper out of his pocket where he had slipped it, and dropped it into the bin.

“Did you read the leaders?” Stoker asked unhappily.

“Yes. Most of the demands are worded as looking for justice, but what it really means is revenge on those who attacked the police,” Pitt replied. “I saw a piece by the lawyer Josiah Abercorn. He’s riding a wave of popularity by defending the police, the ordinary man, people’s defense against the rise of crime, and so on. I can understand it. The police are our symbol of safety. We resent their interference at times. They can be pompous, authoritarian, full of self-importance, but in the end they are the barrier against violence, loss of property, general chaos. They separate the order we rely on from the barbarism that lies beyond: danger and unreason. To attack them is to attack all of us.”

“That’s pretty well what all the papers are saying,” Stoker agreed. “Least the better ones. Suppose you read that too?”

“I didn’t, actually,” Pitt replied. “I was looking mainly at the foreign news. I don’t think this has much to do with anarchists, but I wanted to see if there was anything political of importance, anything happened we should know about.”

“I’ve looked at the main reports, sir. I’m pretty sure it’s just hot air, the usual people ranting on. In fact, from what our blokes are saying, the serious anarchists are upset about the bombing. Stirs everybody up, and some people who used to tolerate them are getting resentful. Got a few of them turned out of their lodgings, even refused in some of the places where they like to eat…coffee shops, and the like. Makes people nervous.”

“Interesting,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Sounds as if there’s no agreement among them, anyway. But we still have to be as certain as we can that there are no new groups that we’ve missed. I need reports from all the men we have embedded in those we know of. Let’s get it on paper, and see if everything is accounted for.”

Stoker looked at him, alarm in his eyes.

Pitt stiffened. “Do you know of any other certain way to connect everything up so we can see the pattern of it? We need to be as sure as we can that there isn’t something we’re missing, because we’re so used to seeing what we know.”

“We’ll need some help.” Stoker gave in reluctantly. “Who do you trust enough, sir? Whoever it is will end up learning all the embedded men’s names.” He shook his head. “Are you sure you want that? Only takes one word let slip, to someone you think you can trust. We’re none of us perfect, sir.” He came as close as he could to telling Pitt he was wrong.

Pitt bit back the retort in his mind. Stoker was right: he was not suggesting someone would let information slip out through betrayal, but through stress, exhaustion, and the loneliness of not being able to tell even those closest to you what you were doing, what you knew that was frightening, pitiful, or even funny. The pressure of silence could put strain on all kinds of emotions.

And of course there was also the unfairness of telling people more than they needed to know. Secrets slipped could cost another man’s life. Each man’s own secrets were enough to carry.

“You’re right,” he conceded. “We’ll work with what we have, and then ask questions to fill in the blanks, if there are any. Send Blake for a pot of tea.”

It took the whole of the day before they were satisfied that as close as it was possible to tell, they hadn’t found any incidents that deviated from familiar patterns. They saw no new or unexplained behaviors among the groups already known to exist in London. No one had suddenly made contact with lots of people; there were no unusual meetings, no more travel than normal.

It was not a profitless exercise, however, because several things emerged. There was some old information that could be discarded and a few new ideas noted to follow up on.

“Next job is to look more thoroughly at the victims,” Pitt said wearily, when they finally locked all the papers and notes away.

“Don’t think Ednam’s going to make it,” Stoker said quietly. “If you need to see him again I think it’s too late. He’s slipped into a coma. The nurse said they’d do everything they could for him, but he’s not responding. Maybe there’s worse inside him than they know. Bossiney’s holding his own, but those burns aren’t going to heal much. The scars’ll be there forever-poor devil. Yarcombe’s very quiet, but his fever’s down, and the stump of his arm is healing.”

Pitt said nothing. He had thought Ednam would make it, and maybe Yarcombe would not. But Ednam was older, and he had been more seriously burned. The shock to his body must have been worse than Pitt had appreciated. He had not particularly liked the man, but he knew nothing to his discredit. If he died there was going to be a whole new outcry against the bomber. No doubt Abercorn, and men like him, would climb on the bandwagon to call for more and swifter action.

Could one man have planned this bombing and carried it out? Yes, if he was careful and clever.

Pitt tidied up, read the last reports, then an hour later he locked up the office and walked out into the wind and the rain. The ice was gone from the pavements and they were awash from the downpour. If the wind blew the clouds away it would freeze hard by morning, lethal as oiled glass.

The lamps had been lit long ago and shone like fitful moons in a long loop around the curve of the street. It was wet and bitter, yet it had its own kind of beauty, man’s beacon masts into an unknown distance. As he passed each one and left it behind him the next one loomed into sight.

He wished he could see further ahead in the case. Perhaps he was not investigating the victims carefully enough? Were they just faceless police as far as the bomber was concerned? Did he regard all police as tokens of a government, an order he hated? Could the whole abomination be something to divert Special Branch’s attention from a different attack? Something more long-lasting, more deeply injurious to the country?

Was it a practice run for a larger attack on an iconic building such as the Houses of Parliament, or even Buckingham Palace? Whitehall? Or in another country altogether? Tomorrow he would have Stoker contact all the foreign officials they knew and see if anything tied in with French or Spanish plots.

He turned the corner but kept on walking. He was stiff after sitting all day bent over papers. The cold air cleared his head and the rain was easing off.

He splashed through another puddle at the edge of the road as he crossed it, his mind whirling with unanswered questions.

Was this a matter of terrorism at all, or just a particularly horrible murder? Was one of the men an intended victim and the others were killed collaterally, just to mask the motive for the one? What kind of a lunatic bombs five men to be sure of injuring one?

Maybe he lacked the perception and the overall vision and experience to figure this out, the type of experience that Narraway had had. That had been his fear all day-that he was in a job too big for him. He was a policeman, a detective who had solved complex and fearful murders. But he was not a politician, a spymaster, a man who instinctively understood treason and betrayal, as Narraway had.

Had someone slowly and carefully infiltrated Special Branch so Pitt could be misled, blinded by what he thought was his own understanding? He wished he could believe that was impossible.

When he finally stopped a hansom and requested it to take him to Keppel Street, he was so tired he was afraid he might go to sleep in the cab and have to be roused. He climbed in and sat back gratefully, but his mind would not leave the subject alone.

He arrived home, took off his wet coat, hat, and boots and was very soon sitting beside the fire with a slice of bacon-and-egg pie and a second cup of tea. Still he could not let go of the knots in his shoulders, or the need to keep on trying to unravel tangles in his mind.

This was one case he could discuss with Charlotte because it was totally public anyway. It was talked of on every street corner by everyone from messenger boys to washerwomen, and probably over every garden fence, and over glasses of whisky at every gentlemen’s club.

It was she who broached the subject.

“Gracie came to see me,” she remarked. “She’s going to have another child.”

He smiled. It was the first good news he had heard since the bombing. “Excellent! Can I congratulate Tellman, or am I not supposed to know?”

“I would prefer that you didn’t, at least not just yet,” she said gravely. “That wasn’t what she came about.”

“Oh…what was it?” The warmth inside him drained away.

“She’s afraid for Samuel. He’s such an idealist she thinks it’s going to hurt him very much if he discovers real corruption in the police,” she answered. The gas lamps shed a warmth over her face, a softness, but it did not hide the anxiety in her eyes. She did not need to put into words her need for a reply, or that comfort would be a denial, not a help.

“I know,” he admitted. “But there’s nothing we can do but look more thoroughly. We’ve exhausted every avenue regarding known anarchists. If there’s an unknown group then that’s what they are: unknown to us, invisible. We’ve pieced together every fragment of information we have.” He would not tell her about the sources, the informers, domestic and foreign, or his own men long embedded in anarchist cells. “Which is a great deal. There are no incidents unconnected, nothing that suggests a movement we don’t know about.” He said that with a degree of confidence.

But she knew him too well. “So if it is anarchists, then there is a movement that has managed to remain invisible.” She spoke the fear aloud: “And you think Victor would have seen it?” Charlotte had learned a little more tact over the years, but she could still cut with surgical precision when she wanted to. She met his eyes without a flicker. “Have you got rid of all the men in Special Branch that he had? Isn’t there someone left that you can be absolutely sure of?”

Did she really think that of him? “No! Of course not!” he said a little sharply. “I haven’t got rid of any of them. Two left: one for injury, the other because he retired. He was nearly seventy! A very wise man, and I was sorry to lose him.”

She smiled quickly. “Then why would they suddenly miss something as important as a new movement in anarchy, or nihilism, or general desire for social change?”

“They wouldn’t,” he agreed, moving in the chair to ease his locked muscles. “Of course they wouldn’t.” He didn’t want her to realize how irrational he had been, how far he had allowed the anxiety to eat into him, so he did not admit how much he had needed that sharp restoration of sanity.

Her tact reasserted itself. She smiled ruefully. “Then you have to consider that the bombing really was directed at the police. Tellman is going to be very unhappy, but you can’t defend someone effectively if you refuse to acknowledge where they are vulnerable.”

“You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?” he observed, sitting up a little straighter. “What did Gracie say?”

“Only that he doesn’t like what he’s finding.”

Pitt wondered if that were the full truth, or if she was protecting a confidence. He could easily guess what it was. He had worked with Tellman long enough to know his belief in the law, and the police as the front line against those who broke it. Corruption in the police was a dark thought in the warmth of this room where he had known so much happiness, but it would not be dismissed.

“Thomas?” Charlotte prompted.

He turned his attention back to her. “It’s possible. I hope it’s just one man who feels a personal grudge for some wrong, real or imagined.”

“Bombing police, injuring three and killing two?” she said with doubt. “It must have been a very great wrong.”

“It could become three,” he corrected. “Ednam isn’t doing well. They don’t think he’ll live.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But you’re right: it is a very violent way to protest. It could easily have killed all five.”

“Is it part of something larger?” she asked. “If you discover whatever the corruption is, the newspapers will make a big issue of it. Politicians will argue about it, lay blame wherever they want to.” She leaned forward. “Could that be the purpose of it, do you think? Could it be real Special Branch business? I mean a foreign power trying to weaken us, distract us from some other attack? Make us look at this so hard that we miss something else? Thomas, I think you’ll need to be very careful how you handle this.”

She was right, and he had no argument against it.

“I wish I knew what the truth was!” he said. “And, please God, it is one I can expose, not something that has to be covered up because it would betray government secrets we can’t afford to reveal.”

She caught something in his voice. “Thomas…”

“The man leading the negotiation of this contract with the Chinese-Alexander Duncannon is his son. He had a bad fall from a horse and injured his back.” He answered the unasked questions. “He took opium for the pain. Still does. Like many young men, he has a desire for social change, and some of it centers on the police. I hope he keeps his opium on a low key, at least until this contract is signed. Jack asked me not to involve Alexander in an investigation, at least until then.”

“And did you agree?”

“I can’t. But I think I have to look a great deal more closely at the five men who were at Lancaster Gate. I would much rather not, but I can’t protect what I don’t know.”

“Will you make it public?”

“I don’t know if I’ll find anything. If it’s just error, no, I won’t. We need to believe in our police. And most of them are good, brave, honest men doing a difficult job, quite often in danger, and for little enough money. We owe them our loyalty. It’s the very least we can give, if we continue to expect them to help us when we’re in trouble, keep order so we can sleep at peace in our beds and go safely about our business the next day. We all depend on it. Respect for the law, and those who guard it, is the bedrock of a civilized society.”

Charlotte leaned forward in her chair and put her warm hand over his where it rested on his knee.

“I know that, and I’ve been proud of what you do since the day I married you…”

“Not before?” he said wryly, in part to conceal a wave of emotion he would have governed rather better had she not been so kind. He remembered the arguments they had had before that, when she was still a young woman of the gentry who resented police, thought them interfering, and socially about as welcome as the bailiff or the rat catcher.

“Before I was married to you, my dear, I had no right to share credit in anything you did,” she responded.

“Or to meddle,” he added. “But it didn’t stop you.”

She gave a little shrug. “I know. And I’m going to meddle now. Maybe you can think of everything, but just in case you don’t, have you wondered if it is a new, different group of people who want the police to be disgraced publicly? If I were to plan a revolution of any sort that required getting rid of the order that exists, I would start by destroying people’s belief in the law. If the police don’t protect you, then you have to protect yourself. You must enact your own justice, and for that you need weapons, cooperation, a new force to replace the old one that you have shown does not work.”

“Charlotte…” he protested, but the argument died before he could find words for it. What she was suggesting was extreme, but the breaking of trust in government was the beginning of anarchy. And it would not be the first time.

“Frighten people, make them angry,” she went on, “and they can be persuaded to do all kinds of things. If I were in danger and the police would not protect me, wouldn’t you do so yourself?”

“You don’t need to labor the point. I understand,” he said a little sharply. It was the thought he had been trying to reason away. “But all we have so far is one appalling act of violence. It is quite specific. Panic is the last thing we want…”

“I want you to be right,” she insisted. “Always right! I want you to have thought of everything. You have to. It takes only one lunatic with a vision and enough brains to put it into action, and we have twice the battle to fight than if we had seen it coming and acted in time.”

He knew that she meant it. She was fiercely protective in that reckless, wholehearted way only women can be. He put his hand over hers and closed it gently.

“I shall consider that very dangerous possibility,” he promised. “It is one of the many things we need to watch for. As you say, if you want to ruin a nation, begin by ruining their trust in the law. Then each man will take it into his own hands, and you have anarchy. Now I’m going to bed.” He rose to his feet and pulled her up gently also. “And so are you,” he added.

The next day, Pitt mentioned to Stoker the possibility of a diversion created by a foreign group of some sort, but with English help.

“If they exist, they’re damn clever,” Stoker said unhappily, staring at the latest reports on Pitt’s desk.

“Could it be someone we would be very unlikely to suspect?” Pitt suggested. “That’s how we missed him?”

“Like who?” Stoker asked. “A member of Parliament? Or someone in the law, the judiciary?”

“Yes. Or one of us?” Pitt answered more quietly, as if even in here they could be overheard.

Stoker’s bony face went pale. “Yes, I suppose it could. That would mean we couldn’t trust our own reports. And if it’s one of them, then until we know who, it’s all of them. I’ve known these men for years, sir. I don’t believe that.”

“I know,” Pitt agreed. “And Tellman doesn’t believe it of the police. I can’t blame him. Perhaps the real damage would be suspicion itself?”

Stoker shivered. “Once we start turning on each other, that’s really the beginning of the end.”

“We’re not going to entertain that one,” Pitt said bluntly. “But I was thinking, on the way in this morning, if someone really intended to create chaos, and then take over, he would have to have a force of some size behind him. You can’t do that with half a dozen here and there.”

“The police?” Stoker’s eyebrows rose. “No. The odd one might be rotten, but they’re good men and they’d never take to anything like that. They’re part of the people. You’re wrong. Hell! You used to be one of them.” He was angry now.

“I wasn’t suspecting the police,” Pitt corrected him. “Anyway, the police generally have no weapons except truncheons. I’ve been thinking a bit more along the lines of a disaffected group from the army. Ednam used to be army, fifteen years ago.” He saw Stoker’s face tighten. “Thinking back on one or two incidents we got reports of-how about that bit of unpleasantness with General Breward? He’s junior, as generals go, only about forty-five, but pigheaded, much admired by his more bloody-minded juniors. Got a few inflated ideas of his own importance.”

Stoker had been a merchant seaman before joining Special Branch. He was used to authority, but he despised a leader who put his own men in jeopardy unnecessarily. Like most sailors, he had intense respect for the sea. He had the same respect for the terrain over which a battle might be fought, and for the men who fought it beside him.

“I’ll look into it, sir. He’s certainly arrogant enough-and stupid, in his own way. Plenty of cleverness, and damn all wisdom.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said. “I’m going to go back over the victims again. See what they might have done together. Just in case…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good men, all of them,” Chief Superintendent Cotton said an hour later as Pitt sat in his office. He was superior to Whicker, whose responsibility was only at local level.

Cotton tipped his chair back a little and stared at Pitt. He was about Pitt’s own age, and sunken-cheeked with black, hooded eyes. “Why the devil are you asking?”

“To clear their names,” Pitt said with slight surprise, as if the answer should have been obvious. “You’ve no doubt heard what the newspapers are suggesting, even if you haven’t read them.”

Cotton’s smile did not reach the steady eyes, which were unreadable because they were so shadowed by his brows. “You think they were targeted deliberately?”

“It’s possible. I have to explore it. Disprove it, if I can.”

“Why? Because you were once in the police yourself?”

“Because I want to find the man who did this,” Pitt told him. “And for that I need to know why. It’s not any of the anarchists and general troublemakers we know.”

“Sure of that, are you?”

“Yes.”

Cotton let out his breath. “Bad business.” For the first time he regarded Pitt with some respect. “Those five men had worked together on and off for several years. No better or worse than most. Ednam, poor devil, was a bit self-important, bossy, wouldn’t be told what to do if he thought different. Army background, I suppose. But he wasn’t often wrong. His men looked up to him. He was loyal to them, good or bad. It was appreciated.”

“Good or bad?”

“He turned a blind eye to a few mistakes, or even a few things done on purpose.”

“What sort of things?” Pitt pressed.

“For God’s sake, man!” Cotton said violently, slamming his chair back on all four feet. “The usual sort of things! A bit too much to drink…the odd brawl…laying into a suspect to persuade him to stop lying…one or two arrests a bit rougher than necessary. Find me the policeman that hasn’t crossed the line some time or other, and I’ll show you a boss that doesn’t know his men.”

“Were they disciplined?” Pitt tried to keep his tone neutral, but with difficulty.

Cotton raised his black brows. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask, and neither will you, if you’ve any sense.”

“What about losing evidence? Accepting the odd gift from someone to turn the other way?” Pitt could not let it go yet.

Cotton stared at him.

“Or helping themselves to a little evidence, like a bottle of whisky or a box of cigars?” Pitt went on. “Petty theft a member of the public wouldn’t know? Or care about? Being beaten into giving false testimony or disabled during a violent arrest is a different matter. And being framed for a crime they didn’t commit is another matter altogether. Is that what we’re talking about?”

“No!” Cotton said angrily. “Not in my command, and not that I know about. Do you?”

Pitt was startled. “No I don’t!”

“Swear for all your men, would you? Tellman, for example?” Cotton said, meeting Pitt’s eyes with a totally unreadable expression.

“I would swear for his honesty, yes,” Pitt said without hesitation. “Or any of my men in Special Branch.”

“For his honesty? Interesting,” Cotton observed. “Then what would you not swear for?”

Pitt had to think for a moment. Cotton would remember every word he said, and trip him on them if he could. He would repeat them where he thought it served his purpose. If Pitt denied any possible fault it would mark him as absurd, incompetent, or a deliberate liar.

“He’s an idealist,” he chose his words. “And loyal. He might see what he hoped to see, and be blind to something uglier. I don’t know if he would necessarily report a man’s error, if he believed it to be genuine. Trust goes both ways. If you take advantage of a man’s error, he’ll take advantage of yours, and we can none of us afford that.”

“Naive? Is that what you’d call him?” Cotton smiled, showing his teeth. “A loyalty that inclines him to look the other way? An idealist who doesn’t see his men’s weaknesses? Dangerous, don’t you think? Do you operate like that, Pitt? Special Branch Commander Pitt? Is that who has our country’s safety in his hands? A man who puts protecting his men from their faults before catching the bombers who would sink our country under a tide of violence and chaos?”

Cotton had taken a step too far, and he knew it the instant he saw the change in Pitt’s face.

“My junior officers make mistakes,” Pitt answered. “If they don’t learn not to, they stay junior. What about yours? You say Ednam was a loyal bully. What about Yarcombe, Bossiney? The others?”

“I don’t tell tales on dead men.” Cotton shuffled his chair forward again and looked at Pitt directly across the desk. He was not used to being questioned, even though Pitt outranked him.

“Never investigated a murder then, have you?” Pitt responded.

“Is that what this is? Two murders?” Cotton asked.

“Isn’t it? And three attempted?”

“Looks like it. All right, I’ll give you all I know on those five men. And you’d better bloody well bring me back someone to answer for them!”

Pitt stood up. “Thank you.” He knew that in a sense he had accepted a challenge.

He met Tellman again the day after to hear what more he had learned. He summarized the reports that Cotton had given him, the good and the bad.

Tellman’s face grew tighter and a flush mounted up his thin cheeks.

“He said that about his own men?” he asked when Pitt had finished. The disgust in his voice was palpable.

Pitt understood at least in part. He knew the weaknesses of his own men. He was of little use to them if he did not. He knew their skills and their inabilities. He also had a strong feeling for the directions in which their fears lay, and what most stretched their courage, where their blind spots were, and who worked well with whom. He knew some of their temptations. But he would never have spoken of these faults to anyone else.

“I pressed him,” he said as some excuse for Cotton. “We have to know exactly who was crooked, and to what extent.”

“I do know!” Tellman said instantly. He was speaking out of bravado, and Pitt was quite aware of it. In fact, this was predictable from Tellman.

“No you don’t,” he contradicted. “At least I hope to God you don’t! If you knew that of them and did nothing, then you’re part of it.” Even as he said it, he knew that Tellman’s reaction would be instant defense.

Tellman’s body was rigid, his face white but for the spots of color burning in his cheeks. “I’m damn well not part of it!” he shouted. “I’ve never taken a thing that wasn’t mine. I’ve never arrested anyone with more violence than was necessary, and I’ve certainly never hit a man that was down, or cuffed. And if you don’t know that, then you’re a fool! And you shouldn’t be in charge of a newspaper stand, never mind a body of men that risk their lives to carry out your orders. You’re a fool…and a bitter, damaged man!” The words came out rasping, as if their passage through his throat hurt him.

Pitt swallowed hard. He was taken aback by Tellman’s rage, although perhaps he should have expected it.

“I know my men, and I trust them,” he replied as levelly as he could, but he heard his own emotion roughen his tone. “They know that. They know I also know their weaknesses, as I daresay they know mine. The difference is that it’s my responsibility not to put them in the path of the things they can’t handle. I understand fear, confusion, pity, clumsiness now and then. But I don’t accept lies, stealing, the loss of temper to the point of beating someone. I don’t accept taking bribes or giving them. It’s a betrayal of everyone else, and any man caught in those things goes…if it’s possible, he serves time.”

He drew in his breath and met Tellman’s eyes without flinching. “Turning a blind eye because you don’t want to know is not compassion, it’s cowardice, and it’s a betrayal of the good men. It’s not them you’re guarding, it’s your own feelings, because you don’t want to deal with them.”

“And is that what you think I’m doing?” Tellman’s voice was high and tight, his eyes blazing.

“I hope not. But you’d better tell me…”

“So what? So you can have me put in prison?” Now it was just raw anger.

That stung Pitt into temper as well. “Maybe so I can save you from being blown up by a bloody bomb!” he shouted back. “Or didn’t you think of that?”

Tellman was silent. Pitt could see in his face the pain of a reality he had long refused to look at, refused to believe was anything but the lies of those who resented the police, or were afraid of them, for just cause.

“You’re branding them all because of a few, one in a hundred, that’s rotten,” he said bitterly. “Damning the good with the bad!”

Pitt tried to grasp control of the situation. He did not want this quarrel.

“We’ve got to find the bad, before they sink us all,” he told Tellman, but he lowered his voice as well. “None of us wants to think the people we work beside are corrupt, but looking the other way condemns us all. For heaven’s sake, Tellman, choosing not to see something because it’s ugly, or it damages your peace of mind, is deliberately allowing it. It’s collusion. And you know that as well as I do. We can’t prosecute it in people who witness and then refuse to testify, who walk by on the other side, carefully not looking. But we despise it, and we require better of each other!”

“You pompous bastard!” Tellman said furiously. “You think you know every damn thing…and you know nothing! Nothing of what a man thinks or believes…nothing that really matters!” And choking on his own grief, he turned and walked out of the room.

Pitt did not call him back. This was not going to heal easily. It had nothing to do with him, he knew, although Tellman would not forget that Pitt had seen the wound of disillusion in him, nor would he be able to forgive him easily for that.