HE WAS AWAKENED BY the ringing of the telephone. He had lain down to nap with his clothes on just after his talk with Mrs. Schiller. As he got off the bed and stiffly started in toward the living room, he saw that it was already dark. He had slept away the afternoon, his dreams confused and menacing. He fumbled in the darkness for the telephone. It was Leslie. “How are you, darling?” she said. “How is everything?” She sounded calm, normal.
“As good as can be expected,” he said. “How are you? I tried to call this morning.”
“We had some last-minute shopping to do for the trip. We were out all day. We’re leaving from Kennedy tomorrow.” She paused. He heard her take a deep breath. “That is, unless you need me back at the school.”
“No, darling,” he said. “You come back when everything has blown over here.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s well…complicated.”
“Is Romero there? In the house, I mean.”
“He’s in jail.”
“That’s good. At least for the time being. I don’t want to sound vindictive, but I wouldn’t like him to be roaming around the house in his state.”
“The judge set bail at ten thousand dollars.”
“Is that a lot?”
“It is if you don’t have it. I’ll write you all about it. Where will you be staying in Paris?”
“At the Plaza Athenée. The gallery made the reservations. Linda’s decided we’re going to travel in style.” She laughed a little nervously. Then she became serious again. “Have you spoken to Russell?”
“I couldn’t reach him.”
“Do you think he’ll put up the money?”
“I imagine so. He’s bound to feel responsible.”
“I hope you’re not feeling responsible.”
“I’m feeling numb,” he said. “By the way, what time is it? I fell asleep right after noon. Last night was exhausting. I probably would have slept through until morning if you hadn’t called.”
“It’s after six. I’m sorry I woke you up. Darling, are you sure you don’t want me to get in the car and drive back?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “I doubt that I’ll be such good company for the next few weeks. You stay as long as you like.”
“I wish I could do something to help.”
“Knowing that you’re out of this business and having a good time will help me more than anything else.”
“If you talk like that, I’m afraid I’ll break down and cry,” Leslie said. “You’re the kindest man in the world, Allen, and everybody takes advantage of it. Including me. Most of all, me.”
“Nonsense,” Strand said brusquely. “How’s Linda?”
“Twittering. You know how she is about France. Maybe she has a lover hidden away on a side street.”
“Give her my regards. And have a great time. The two of you.”
“What do you want me to bring you back from Paris?”
“You.”
Leslie laughed, a low, warm sound a hundred miles away. “I knew you’d say that. That’s why I asked. Je t’embrasse. I’m working on my French.”
“I love you. Just don’t forget that in any language.”
“I won’t,” Leslie whispered. “Good night.”
“Good night, my dearest.” Strand put down the phone, reassured that all was well, at least with Leslie. He put on the lights, then went back to the telephone and considered it. Should he call Hazen now? He leaned over to pick up the instrument, then let his hand drop. He felt too tired to answer the questions he knew Hazen would put to him. He knew he should go into the common room and see what the boys were up to and answer their questions, too, but decided to let it wait until the morning. If he had to face Hitz again that day, he had the feeling that he would finally hit him.
He heard the peals of the chapel bell for dinner and suddenly realized he had eaten nothing all day.
He went into the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. There was nothing much in there, just some eggs and bacon and a half container of milk. But it would have to do. Dinner at a table full of boys in the crowded dining hall was an ordeal to be avoided, even if it meant going to bed hungry. And he was not up to the long walk into town, where he might be recognized by someone who had been in the courtroom that morning. He was frying the bacon when the telephone rang again. He took the pan off the fire and trudged back into the living room and picked up the phone.
“Allen?” It was Hazen.
“Yes, Russell. How are you?”
“I just got in from Washington and I was told you called this morning.”
“Are you standing, Russell?”
“Yes, I happen to be standing. Why do you ask?”
“Because it’s a long, complicated story and you’d better be comfortable when you hear it.”
“What’s wrong?” Now he sounded alarmed. “Is Leslie all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s at Linda’s. She decided she wanted to go to Paris after all,” Strand said. “It’s Romero. Have you sat down yet?”
“I’m down.”
“We had just gotten back from New York—were just in front of the house—when two boys came running out the door,” Strand said. “One was chasing the other. The one who was doing the chasing was Romero and he had a knife in his hand…”
“Goddamn fool,” Hazen said. “They’ll kick him out of school for that.”
“And the boy who was being chased was young Hitz…”
“Christ,” Hazen said, “I hope I never hear that name again for the rest of my life…”
“You will, Russell, you will…”
“The old man has given some added lurid details to the Justice Department and that’s why I had to go down to Washington. But tell me the whole story. Don’t leave out any of the details.”
When Strand told him that three hundred and seventy-five dollars had been stolen from the box in Romero’s room, Hazen exploded. “Three hundred and seventy-five dollars! Where in hell did he get three hundred and seventy-five dollars?”
“Hitz says he ran a crap game in his room several nights a week after lights-out.”
“And you knew nothing about it?” Hazen said incredulously.
“Not a thing.”
“What in blazes goes on in that school?”
“I imagine the usual.”
“Go on,” Hazen said icily. He broke in again as Strand was telling him that Romero said that he had reason to believe that it was Hitz who took the money. “What reason?” Hazen asked.
“He wouldn’t say. He said it was confidential.”
“Confidential,” Hazen snorted. “If I’d been there, it wouldn’t have been all that confidential, I assure you! Not for five minutes. Do you have any clues?”
Strand thought of Mrs. Schiller’s pleading, tear-choked voice. “None,” he said. He didn’t mention her story about finding the letters. If Hazen wanted to come down to the school and try to break Mrs. Schiller or Romero down, he would get no help from him. “You want me to go on with the rest of the story?”
“I’m sorry,” Hazen said. “I’ll try not to interrupt again.”
It took fifteen more minutes before Strand came to the last scene in the courtroom and he was telling Hazen about Romero’s refusing to testify in his own defense.
“The school lawyer, a Mr. Hollingsbee, pleaded with him,” Strand went on. “But he just stood there and refused to change his mind. He told the judge he didn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the court.”
“Mr. Hollingsbee must be one hot lawyer,” Hazen said ironically, “if he can’t even argue an eighteen-year-old kid out of making a horse’s ass of himself like that. No wonder he can’t get out of that little hick town. Where’s Romero now?”
“In jail,” Strand said. “The bail is ten thousand dollars.” He heard the sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line.
“That’s damn steep,” Hazen said. “But in the judge’s place I’d have made it twenty. That kid deserves to have the book thrown at him, if only for ingratitude. I hate to say this, Allen, but I’m afraid you’ve been a little remiss in disciplining that boy and at least making sure he couldn’t get his hands on any weapons.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Strand said, not showing that he was offended by the rebuke and the tone in which it was uttered. “I’ve been remiss about many things and undoubtedly will be remiss about many more. But it’s stretching the point a bit to call a pocketknife a weapon. But that’s past history. Right now, a boy whom we plucked out of his own environment and put here…”
“With the best of intentions,” Hazen said loudly.
“With the best of intentions,” Strand agreed. “But he’s behind bars now, with no family to look to for help, and unless someone with a charitable turn of mind”—he knew Hazen wouldn’t like this, but continued—“and the ability to raise ten thousand dollars comes up with the money, he’ll stay there till the trial, which may be months from now, and…”
“Are you suggesting, Allen, that I put up the money?” Now Hazen was frankly angry.
“I’m in no position to suggest anything.”
“That’s wise,” Hazen said. “Because you’d be suggesting that I act like a damned idiot. If you had the money would you do it?”
“Yes.” He was surprised that he had said it. The sleep had erased his anger and all he remembered was Romero, small and defenseless, being led down the courthouse aisle by the policeman.
“Then it’s a good thing you’re poor, because you’d be plucked naked in less time than it would take the ink to dry on your I.O.U. I’ve been in the business world since I was twenty-three and one thing I’ve found out is that anyone who throws good money after bad is a fool.”
“Russell,” Strand said, “I don’t like to do this, but I’m asking you to lend me the money. I understand why you feel it’s not up to you. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d never have known Romero was alive. If the burden is on anybody, it’s on me. I’m just as mad as you are, but I still feel responsible. I’ll repay the money one way or another. We can save more than we’ve been doing and Leslie’s parents would probably be good for some part of it and Jimmy’s got a good job…”
“As a friend, Allen,” Hazen said, “I’m going to refuse. You know what that miserable little gutter rat would do if he was turned loose—he’d vanish. You’d never see him or your money again. Nor would the police. He’d disappear into the ghetto like a ghost, with a million of his countrymen ready to swear that they never even knew him.”
“I’d take that chance,” Strand said quietly.
“Not on my money. And I hope not on yours. I think this conversation has gone on long enough.”
“So do I, Russell. Good night.”
It sounded as though Hazen had smashed down the telephone on the other end of the line.
One thing is certain, Strand thought as he went into the kitchen, there’ll be no Hamptons this Christmas. He put the bacon back on the fire and broke two eggs into another pan. Tomorrow he would ask Mrs. Schiller to do some shopping for him. He didn’t know when Babcock would insist that he go back to his regular duties, which included dining in the hall with the boys assigned to his table, but he knew he was in no hurry to take up the routine again and he knew he would not volunteer. And no matter what else might happen, he had to eat.
After he had finished his meal he was still hungry and for a moment he thought of going up to Rollins’s and Romero’s room and raiding Rollins’s cache of cookies, but, he thought, grimly, there had been enough crime recently to last the school through the year.
He was reading in the living room when there was a tentative knock at the door. He opened it and saw Rollins standing there, bullnecked and wearing the tie and jacket that was compulsory apparel for the evening meal at the school, a condition of which Strand, who had been annoyed for years with his son’s haphazard style of dress, approved. Rollins’s brown, dark, fine-down athlete’s face, which always seemed too small for the massive shoulders and the thick neck, was grave. “I don’t like to disturb you, Mr. Strand,” he said, his voice low, “but if I could talk to you for a moment…”
“Come in, come in,” Strand said.
In the living room Rollins folded his long thick legs under him as he sat in a chair facing Strand. “It’s about Romero.” It seemed to pain the huge boy to get the words out. “He acted foolish and if he’d have woke me up I’d have taken care of it and there wouldn’t’ve been any cutting. I know Hitz and a little threat from me would have settled matters satisfactorily to all concerned without any knives. There might have been a slap or two, but folks don’t go to jail for fighting or get expelled or anything like that. But I know Romero and he’s a good man, Mr. Strand, whatever he’s done he don’t deserve jail. I went down there to see him but the man said only family. Well, I’m the only real family that boy has, according to some of the stories he’s told me about his mother and father and sisters and brother, they ain’t even worth a telephone call and they’d gladly leave him to rot until he’s old and gray. You’re a smart man, Mr. Strand, you know what jail’ll do to a boy like Romero. When he came out he’d be on the streets for the rest of his life and he won’t be satisfied with any knife, either, not where he’d been hanging out, he’d have a gun in his belt and God knows what sort of dust in his pocket and he’d be better known to the cops than their own mothers…. You know as well as I do, jails don’t turn out citizens, they manufacture outlaws. There’s too much to that boy to make him into an outlaw, Mr. Strand…” He was pleading earnestly, speaking slowly and solemnly, an underlying tone of desperation in his voice.
“I agree with you, Rollins,” Strand said. “When it first happened I was angry with him, very angry…”
“He knows how much you’ve done for him, Mr. Strand,” Rollins said. “He’s told me time and time again, even though I know he hasn’t told you. He’s not a thank-you kind of boy. It goes against his character, I imagine you guessed that.”
“I guessed it,” Strand said dryly.
“But he was grateful just the same. Deeply grateful.”
“He has a queer way of showing it.”
“Hitz beat up on him. Over two hundred pounds. I’m not saying I go along with knives, but Romero—well—the way he was brought up, the places he was brought up, the things he had to do keeping from being thrown off a roof or being found dead in the river, he was—well—he has a different code from the gentlemen here. I’m sure you could find it in your heart to forgive him.”
“It’s not up to me to forgive him, Rollins,” Strand said gently. “It’s the headmaster and the faculty and Mr. Hitz’s father and Hitz himself and finally the Board of Trustees.”
“Man,” Rollins said, “they sure bring in the heavy guns when somebody like him gets into trouble, don’t they?”
“I’m afraid we have to expect that,” Strand said. “There’s nothing much I can do.”
“I hear they put the bail at ten thousand dollars.”
Strand nodded.
“They sure laid it on him, didn’t they?” Rollins shook his head.
“The judge was an old man.” Strand didn’t know why he said that.
“One thing he should have learned—stay out of the white man’s court.” For the first time, Rollins let his bitterness show.
“I don’t think it would make any difference in this case.”
“That’s what you think.” There was a derisive twist on Rollins’s lips. “Him and me, we don’t read the same books as you folks.” Strand noticed that he had become increasingly ungrammatical, as though the stress of the moment had erased his education and uncovered a more primitive level of speech.
“As I said, I would like to help, but…” Strand shrugged.
“I understand,” Rollins said quickly. “There’s no way you’d have ten thousand dollars laying around loose.”
Strand refrained from smiling at Rollins’s assumption that all school teachers were impoverished.
“No, it happens that I don’t.”
“What I was thinking…Mr. Hazen…” Rollins said, glancing sideways at Strand as he brought out the name, testing. “He’s a nice man from what I’ve seen of him and what Romero has told me. And with that big Mercedes and the chauffeurs and all…”
“Rollins,” Strand said, thinking that at the moment, no matter how else he would describe Russell Hazen, he would hardly use the word “nice,” “if Romero tells you of any hopes he has in that direction, tell him to forget them.”
Rollins frowned, the lines creasing in his forehead. “You mean you talked to Mr. Hazen and he turned you down.”
“You could say that.”
“Well, then—” Rollins stood up. “No use talking here. We got to look somewhere else.” He paced up and down, the old boards creaking under his weight. “Would it be okay if I took the day off tomorrow? My schedule’s light on Tuesday and I’m up in all my courses. It’d be different if the football season was still on. The coach wouldn’t let you off of practice if you had raging pneumonia and a temperature of a hundred and five. Classes’re different.” He grinned and looked five years younger than when he had come into the room. “I’m not what you might call an absolute necessity in the classroom.”
“May I ask what you expect to accomplish in one day?”
Rollins’s expression changed. His face closed down. “I thought I’d take a little trip to my hometown, Waterbury, and look around a little. There’s folks I know have some experience in this kind of thing.”
“I don’t want you to get into any more trouble,” Strand said. “You’re in plenty of trouble as it is—after all it’s known the crap games took place in your room, too.”
“Mr. Strand, that ain’t even a pimple on my nose,” Rollins said. “There been crap games in this here school since the day it opened. Maybe they’ll put me in the kitchen doing the dishes for a week, maybe they won’t do nuthin’. Is it okay for the day?”
“I’ll tell the headmaster I gave you permission.”
Rollins put out his hand, and Strand shook it. “Mr. Strand, this place needs more people like you, that’s for sure. I never told this to any teacher before, but I enjoy your classes and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t learning something I think is important for me in them. A lot more important than blocking and tackling and you can tell the coach I said so.”
“I’ll tell that to the Board of Trustees the next time I come up for a promotion.”
“You tell them that,” Rollins said. “You tell them Rollins said so. And if you see Romero, you tell him he’s got friends. Now I better leave you alone. I took up enough of your time as it is. And don’t worry, there won’t be any more crap games in this house while you’re here.”
Strand walked him to the door, wished he could say something more to the boy, something to encourage him, a word to let him know that he admired his forthrightness and loyalty, but he felt it would embarrass Rollins, so he kept silent and closed the door behind him.
After a late breakfast the next morning, prepared for him by Mrs. Schiller, who was looking even more mournful than she had the day before, Strand heard the telephone ring.
It was Babcock. “Have you read the newspaper yet?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t.”
“That bad?”
“The news story was bad enough. The editorial was worse. The editor of the paper has always been on our back.” Babcock’s voice took on a nasal, back-country ring. “The idle scions of the rich in an anachronistic enclave of valuable town land, pampered by a low tax rate, encouraging the vices of a selected group of spoiled children, scouting the law, hostile to the tax-paying, hard-working citizens who make up the population of our town, a dangerous example to our high school students, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.” He returned to his own soft diction. “He has Romero’s picture on the front page, accompanied by his lawyer, on the school’s payroll, as the caption helpfully points out, being taken into a squad car by a policeman after the arraignment. The picture makes him look like a hit man for the Mafia, or at least the way they look in the movies. And next to it there’s one of us coming out of the courtroom. Somehow it seems as though we are smiling. Do you remember smiling?”
“No.”
“Did you see any cameramen outside the courthouse?”
“No.”
“They must have used a telephoto lens. The wonders of modern photography.” Babcock laughed shortly. “I called the paper and told the editor Romero had already been expelled from the school, but it was just throwing a bone to the lions. The article promises that they will follow the case closely. Every boy at breakfast and every teacher had a copy of the paper. They had all the facts on Romero. The reporter interviewed Hitz. At length, obviously. That Romero was here on a scholarship. Free ride for criminals, they call it. The misguided sentimentality of New York bleeding hearts, exporting their problems to the innocent, old-fashioned countryside. They didn’t mention Hazen, but they spelled your name correctly. As a final blow to your reputation, they mentioned that you spent your summers in East Hampton, a haunt of wealth and dissipation. The editor must have gotten his degree in journalism from a correspondence school in Hollywood. It was on the Hartford morning TV news, too. A somewhat more sympathetic treatment, but still nothing to make parents rush to enroll their boys at Dunberry. Sometimes, I must admit, I regret the advances in our communications systems.”
Strand could imagine him sitting at his desk, struggling with his pipe and forgetting to keep it lit and pushing his glasses up and down distractedly.
“By the way,” Babcock said, “did you speak to Hazen?”
“Last night.”
“What did he say?”
“Romero is on his own.”
“No bail?”
“Not a penny.”
Babcock sighed. “That poor deluded boy. Another thing. The FBI in New Haven called my office. They want to interview you, they say. It can’t be about Romero. Whatever he did, it wasn’t a federal offense. Have you any idea why they want to talk to you?”
“Not until I hear what they have to say.”
There was a peculiar silence at the other end of the phone. Then Babcock said, “Well, we have to live through it. If you can stand it, Allen, I think you had better go back to your classes and make an appearance at meals. If you remain incommunicado it makes it seem as though you have something to hide.”
“I see what you mean.”
“If I may make a suggestion, try to avoid answering too many questions. The line that might be wise to take is that you consider it lucky that you arrived when you did, that it kept things from becoming more than a minor incident. The less you say about guilt and innocence, if I may presume to coach you, the better it will be for all concerned. In your place I would refrain from speculating about whether Hitz took the money or not.”
“Of course. I have no way of knowing, anyway. I’ll be at lunch today and will take my classes this afternoon.”
“That’s very good of you,” Babcock said, relieved. “I knew I could depend upon you. And if any newspaper people call you, I’d appreciate it if you just told them, No comment.”
“I hadn’t intended to make any speeches.”
“Forgive me for seeming anxious,” Babcock said. “My head is in such a muddle. You’ll be happy to know that Hitz won’t be at lunch or in any of the classes. His father called last night and said he wanted his son on the first plane to Washington. To see a real doctor, is the way he put it. We shipped him out before breakfast.”
“Thank God for small mercies,” Strand said.
“So I’ll see you at lunch?”
“At lunch,” Strand said. He hung up the phone.
The note was delivered in the middle of his last class by Babcock’s secretary. There were two gentlemen waiting in the headmaster’s office to see Mr. Strand. Would he please come to the office as soon as the class was over? Strand pocketed the note and went on lecturing about the expansionist policies of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Neither the lunch nor the afternoon classes had been as bad as he had feared. The boys had looked at him curiously and the teachers he had happened to meet murmured that they were sorry about what had happened. They had been warned, Strand was sure, not to discuss the case and not to bother Mr. Strand. If anything, Strand felt an undercurrent of sympathy. Although Romero undoubtedly had been the object of scorn by a certain clique in the school, Hitz he knew was universally disliked. The football coach, Johnson, even whispered as he passed Strand on the campus, “I wish Romero had gone just a little bit deeper.”
When the class was over, at four o’clock, Strand walked slowly over the bare, yellowed campus, the last dead leaves blowing in the cold November wind. Two gentlemen, he thought. The FBI must be wealthy in manpower if they sent two armed representatives of the bureau to question a fifty-year-old teacher of history who had never ever been issued a parking ticket in his life.
“They’re in with Mr. Babcock,” the secretary said when he entered the office. “You’re to go right in, Mr. Strand.”
All three men rose to greet him as he came through the door. The FBI men were youngish, one blond, one dark, neatly barbered and dressed in dark suits, unexceptional looking. He guessed they were young lawyers who had despaired of succeeding in private practice and who also liked to carry guns. Babcock mumbled their names, which Strand didn’t catch, and the two men shook hands gravely with him.
“These gentlemen,” Babcock said as they sat down, the two men facing Strand, “have been discussing the rise of juvenile delinquency with me.” He talked nervously. “It seems that in recent years the FBI has found that increasingly juveniles, or at least young men under eighteen, have been involved in crimes of great magnitude and violence that cross many state boundaries and therefore come under their jurisdiction.”
“We’ve read the papers this morning,” the blond young man said, with a smile that Strand took as meant to be reassuring, “and we know about the Romero case. Of course”—again the frosty tolerant smile—“that hardly rates as a crime of great magnitude or national concern. We were just answering some of the headmaster’s questions, waiting for you to be free. We’re here on a different matter.” Both men looked at Babcock, as though they were identical puppets on identical strings.
Babcock rose from his desk. “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” he said, looking at his watch, “I have a conference in the science department and I’m late already. I’ll tell my secretary you’re not to be disturbed.”
“Thank you, sir,” the blond man said.
Babcock went out and the dark agent produced a package of cigarettes and offered them to Strand. Strand said, “No, thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.”
The dark man lit up.
“Please put your mind at rest from the beginning,” the blond agent said. “We’re just looking for a little information that you may or may not be able to provide. We understand you know Mr. Russell Hazen.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“You occasionally spend time at his house in East Hampton and you occasionally see each other in New York?”
“That is correct.”
“He came to visit you on the third Saturday in September with your wife and your daughter and one of his secretaries?”
“He came to see a football game.”
“You had lunch with him in the school dining hall?”
“I sat at the table with my boys. He was at the visitors’ table.”
“With Mrs. Strand and your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Were they sitting on either side of him?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You then sat next to him at the football game and were accompanied at the game by your daughter?”
“Yes.” The FBI must teach their agents the art of asking useless questions, Strand thought. He hid his irritation with the two men.
Now it was the dark man who took up the line of questions. If Strand had closed his eyes he couldn’t have distinguished one voice from the other.
“You saw him in conversation with a Mr. Hitz, from Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“At the visitors’ table.”
“Did you recognize Mr. Hitz?”
“Only later. His son, as you know, is in my house, and the father came over to me briefly after the game and introduced himself and asked me how his boy was doing.”
“Did you overhear any of the conversation between Mr. Hazen and Mr. Hitz at lunch?”
“They were twenty yards away and there was a great deal of noise in the hall.” Now he showed that he was annoyed. “What could I have heard?”
“But Mrs. Strand conceivably could have heard what the conversation was about?”
“Conceivably.”
“Is Mrs. Strand with you?” The blond man took the relief.
“She’s in Europe.”
“May we ask what she’s doing in Europe?”
“Smuggling dope.” Strand was sorry he had made the joke as soon as he saw the expression on the faces of the two men. “I’m sorry. I was being frivolous. I’m not used to police interrogations. She’s on a holiday.”
“When will she be back?” The blond man’s tone did not change.
“Two weeks, three weeks. I’m not sure.”
“Is she in the habit of taking two or three weeks vacation in the middle of the school term, leaving her classes?”
“This is the first time.” Strand resolved to hold his temper.
“Isn’t it expensive—holidays like that?”
“Terribly.”
“Have you any outside income?”
“A small pension from the New York City school system. Do I have to answer questions like that?”
“Not today,” the blond man said. “Perhaps later. Under oath. Does your wife have any other income aside from what she earns here at Dunberry?”
“She teaches piano one day a week in the city. And occasionally her parents send small gifts of money.”
“Small? How small?”
“Small.” Suddenly he decided to be stubborn. “Very small.”
“Would you venture a figure?”
“No.”
“Does she also receive gifts from Mr. Hazen?”
“He loaned her a car. A 1972 Volkswagen station wagon to go in and out of the city and do her shopping in town.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“Mr. Hazen is not financing this particular holiday in Europe?”
“No.”
“Are you paying for it?” The other man jumped in as though he had discovered a sudden light in the darkness.
“No.”
“Who is?”
“When she gets back you can ask her yourself.”
“Would you be kind enough to let us know where she’s staying in Europe? We have agents there who would save her the trouble of hurrying home to talk to us.”
“I’m not going to spoil her holiday over something that has nothing to do with her. I told you she was in Europe. I’ll say no more.”
The two men looked at each other as though they had scored a point and were congratulating themselves. “Let us go back a little, Mr. Strand,” the blond man said calmly. “Mrs. Strand was at the table at lunch, presumably next to Mr. Hazen. You all ate dinner together in the Red Top Inn. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“Was Mr. Hitz present?”
“No.”
“Could you say with certainty that you did not overhear Mr. Hazen and Mr. Hitz discussing a business deal while you were with him that day?”
“Yes.”
“Would you hazard a guess about whether Mrs. Strand or your daughter overheard anything of that nature or heard from Mr. Hazen directly about such a conversation?”
“There again, you will have to ask Mrs. Strand, and my daughter. Now, if you’ll tell me what this is all about, perhaps I can be more useful to you.”
“If you buy The New York Times tomorrow morning”—the blond man smiled in advance of what he was about to say—“I presume it reaches this outlying center of culture—”
“We get three copies every day in the library.”
“Read it and it will enlighten you somewhat.” He started to get up and then sat down again. “One more question. In your opinion, is there any possibility that the Hitz boy’s stabbing by a protégé of Mr. Hazen’s might have had anything to do with presumed conversations of a criminal nature between Mr. Hazen and Mr. Hitz senior?”
“That’s the most asinine thing I’ve heard in years,” Strand said angrily.
“We are instructed to ask asinine questions, Mr. Strand,” the blond man said smoothly. “That’s what we’re paid for.” He and then the dark man stood up. “Thank you for your time. And read the Times tomorrow morning,” he said as they went out.
Although it wasn’t warm in the headmaster’s office, Strand was drenched with sweat.
The door opened and Babcock came in. He looked like an aged worried monkey. Academics, Strand thought irrelevantly, were not by and large a handsome race.
“What was that all about?” Babcock asked.
“I’ll tell you just about as much as they said,” Strand said, for Hazen’s sake not quite telling the truth. “They said to read The New York Times tomorrow and you’ll know.”
“The FBI was up here once before,” Babcock said worriedly. “Way back, during the Vietnam War. They were checking to see if a young instructor we had on the staff who’d signed some sort of petition was a Communist. They were very unpleasant.”
“These gentlemen were most pleasant,” Strand said. “The next time they come they may not be. Thanks for the use of the office.”
As he hurried across the campus he pulled up the collar of his coat against the cold. A harsh wind was sweeping in from the northeast, with flakes of snow mixed with sleet, and the bare limbs of the campus trees were shivering in the polar blasts. The six o’clock bells pealed from the chapel tower. At that moment Leslie was in the car approaching the airport to board the plane for France. He stopped and whispered a small prayer for the safety of all planes aloft that night in the winter storm.
Then he walked quickly toward the Malson house to shower away the dust of the school day and dress and get ready for dinner.