Out on the verandah, Harry saw Gilbert still asleep and Reisden coming around the side of the hotel. “Wake up,” Harry said, shaking Gilbert’s shoulder.
“What? Oh, hello, my boy.”
“I’m not your boy and neither is he. Come here, Reisden.” Harry knocked on the window. “Come out here, Perdita.” Reisden came as far as the verandah stairs. Perdita stood at the door, and Gilbert, still blinking, went to stand by her.
“He’s not Richard,” Harry said to Gilbert and Perdita. “Tell them, Reisden.”
Gilbert drew a little closer to Perdita and took her hand. Reisden and he exchanged a complex look.
“Harry,” Reisden said, “would you walk around the comer with me a moment?”
“Tell them.”
“There are things you don’t know. Excuse us.” Reisden gauged Harry, standing at the bottom of the stairs, and didn’t try to make him follow, just stepped down from the edge of the verandah onto the grass below and walked down the gravel carriageway toward the lake. After a moment he heard Harry follow. Just as he calculated Harry was about to grab his shoulder, he turned around and said, quietly enough for only the two of them to hear, “We’ve found Jay French.”
Harry’s hand closed in midair and fell.
“Where?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” Reisden led the way down the carriageway and across Island Hill Road. They stood underneath the pine trees. Across the flinty shore and the water they could see the Knights’ barn. “There.”
Harry laughed like a man who didn’t understand.
“Harry, he’s dead. He didn’t disappear and he didn’t kidnap Richard Knight; he died. The scheme has backfired and we don’t have Richard’s murderer.”
Harry stood with his jaw open, then licked his lips. “You’re lying.”
Reisden thought of the blackened mass under the hay.
“We don’t have him.”
“I see you caring a lot about whether Richard’s dead! As long as I can’t prove he is, you can hang around here, can’t you, playing around with my girl—”
“Very soon,” Reisden said gently, “you’ll say something you’ll regret.”
“Don’t you threaten me!”
“Not a threat, Harry. A presumption on your decency.”
“You bastard!”
“Harry!” Gilbert said.
He had come along behind them. He looked from one man to the other, eyes almost tearing behind his glasses.
“This is an impostor,” Harry said. “Roy Daugherty found him. Ask him anything about Richard! He doesn’t know.”
“Harry, this is very wrong of you,” Gilbert said. “I’m disappointed. This isn’t polite.”
Harry laughed.
“You are Richard,” Gilbert said to Reisden a little breathlessly, as though the effort of making a positive statement was like climbing up a long hill. “It does you credit to say you aren’t. But after all this time, Richard, there will never be certain proof, will there? And what if we should wait and wait, and I were to die? Then everything would be in turmoil. Bucky Pelham has told me so for years. Richard, I’m not entirely certain that I can do this, but—I should like to declare you dead.”
Reisden’s throat closed up, absurdly. He swallowed. “Do, by all means.”
Harry grinned. “That’s the right thing. Finally.”
Gilbert nodded solemnly. “Harry, I’m glad you approve. You’re a decent boy. ” He patted Harry’s arm.
Harry snatched his arm away. “What are you talking about?”
“Perhaps I’m not being clear. Richard is Richard,” Gilbert explained patiently, “and everything is his. Bucky Pelham has told me we can’t give him what is his without positive proof he is Richard, which we won’t have because it was so very long ago. So what I believe I must do is to declare Richard dead. Then I will have the money, and I can give it where it belongs, to you, Richard, under your own legal name, whatever name will satisfy the courts and Bucky, as if you were not Richard at all.”
“You can’t do that!” Harry said.
“No, you can’t. Gilbert, you have gone utterly amok,” Reisden said.
“Don’t you tell him what he can do!” Harry said, and hit Reisden.
He plowed into Reisden with his shoulder, football-style, and sent him crashing back into the bole of one of the old pines. Gilbert shouted out. Reisden lost his footing on the gravel and was caught between the trunk and Harry, who moved in with both fists pummeling. Reisden dodged and Harry barked his knuckles on the tree. Harry twisted around and Reisden chopped at him with a right uppercut that made the breath wheeze out of Harry, but Harry came back in, shorter than Reisden but a good fifty pounds heavier, and slammed his fists into Reisden’s chest and stomach again and again. Reisden fell onto the gravel. Harry drew back his foot as if to kick him; Reisden rolled and tripped Harry, bringing him down. The gravel was edged with granite paving stones, blocks the size of bricks, and under Reisden’s hand one was loose. Reisden staggered to his feet still holding it, hefted the weight of it over his head. Gilbert saw Reisden standing over Harry, lips drawn back from his teeth and his eyes completely crazy, like a horse, raising the big stone over his head. Gilbert ran between them, shouting “Richard! Richard!” and shaking him. Reisden stood dead still, with the stone still in his hand; and then slowly brought it down, stared at it, and threw it away forcefully into the grass, away from any of them.
“That’s not fair!” Harry shouted, jumping up.
“Fair, boy?” Reisden gasped. “I would have killed you. You’ve won. Go. Get away. Go.”