“I’m pleased with your report card,” his father said one night after dinner. “Your teacher says that your reading is definitely superior now. Congratulations.” He had known Charley would grow out of his troublesome stage. It’s best, he told himself, not to make a fuss before it’s called for. Besides, it was undoubtedly the loss of his mother that had slowed the boy’s academic progress. Mr. Burton was quite satisfied with his analysis, but he didn’t discuss Charley’s mother with the boy. Cut your losses, he would have said if he’d said anything.
Charley wasn’t quite certain when he decided that his father was a spy. Not Charley’s kind of spy, of course, but a spy nevertheless. “I deal in commodities,” Robert Burton told his son in answer to a question one night. “You’re too young to understand that, of course, but when you are older you will realize just what is involved.”
Commodities didn’t sound too exciting, but that was probably just some grownup word for secret weapons, Charlie decided. In his imagination he now sought to discover where the commodities were hidden, and they sounded much more exciting than guns or bombs. When Mrs. Lansdale asked him one day what he wanted to be when he grew up, he impressed her no end by saying that he wanted to deal with commodities just as his father did. Mrs. Lansdale even made a mental note to ask Mr. Burton for some market advice at their next conference. She began treating Charley with a great deal more respect than she had in the past. After all, a good commodity analyst doesn’t grow on trees. For all she knew, Mr. Burton might someday say something to Charley about pork bellies or cocoa that could be passed on. There is no law, Mrs. Lansdale decided, that says a teacher has to retire to genteel poverty.
Because his father was a spy, Charley decided, he would have to be given very special affection. Spies evidently didn’t last too long once their cover was broken. His mother was the prime example of that. Of course, Mr. Burton couldn’t be a very good spy, not if a fourth grader could find him out. The only thing that Charlie wasn’t quite clear about was for whom his father was spying. It would have to be the good guys, he knew, but when it came to commodities he wasn’t At all sure as to just exactly what was involved. The dictionary was no help. The entry was too long and complicated for a small boy, so Charley was going to have to go undercover again to find out what he had to know.
The first step, Charley decided, was to get into that locked room, the study where his father spent most of his time.
“I keep the room locked to avoid having my papers disturbed,” his father said one night at dinner. He was always very courteous about answering his son’s questions. “Every housekeeper we’ve ever had has insisted on straightening out the papers on my desk. But then I can’t find anything. I am a creature of routine.” He let a smile play around the corners of his mouth, wondering if Charley as yet had developed a sense of humor. “I am quite capable of dusting my own desk if it ever needs dusting. Someday you too may discover that you prefer to have your work left alone by people whose goals are different from your own.”
His father did tend to speak in rather formal sentences, Charley thought, but as he mulled over this conversation in his room later that night, he realized that he had stumbled on the key to the whole spy situation. “I am a creature of routine,” his father had said, and that of course was the problem. No wonder Charley had recognized his father as a spy. Spies were not supposed to be creatures of routine! They were supposed to vary their activities, and never, never, never were they to become creatures of habit. Of course a fourth grader, with a full knowledge of espionage techniques, could recognize a faulty spy when he saw one. Obviously the thing to do was to get his father to vary his routines, avoid his habits, present an image unlike his usual self. Charley was quite sure he couldn’t discuss such actions with his father. It was too personal a subject, and he had already learned that personal matters were best kept to oneself. Not that his father was ever cruel, Charley hastened to reassure himself, but he was not a truly friendly person, not at all like his mother had been when she was in the middle of one of the stories he loved.
Getting into the locked study shouldn’t present any great difficulty to someone versed in the techniques of spying. All one had to do was to pick out the correct key from the key board in the housekeeper’s pantry off the kitchen. A quick check showed all the keys were labeled with little tags. The study key had a note pinned directly above it: Do not use. Charley felt no compunctions about taking the key. The note was for the housekeeper, after all. It was not that Charley was going against his father’s dictates. The subject had simply never come up. “I do not want the servants in the study,” his father had said. Well, even Charley knew that he wasn’t a servant, so he could go in the study any old time. This was undoubtedly sophism, but Charley wouldn’t know that word until he got into college. In the meantime, he took advantage of his chance while he could, and that afternoon when Mrs. Hilton, the housekeeper, was doing her thing in the kitchen, Charley lifted the key, let himself into the study, and closed the door behind him. Quietly. Very quietly. The way spies were supposed to do it.
Getting in proved to be the easy part. Now that he was here, what was he supposed to do? Well, a good spy would check out the material on the desk right away. Charley knew that, and he headed for the desk, which occupied the area in front of large windows that let the light stream into the room. If the whole point of this exercise was to prevent his father from being a creature of habit, then something would have to be changed. As he was looking over the neat papers on the desk, two folders caught his eye. The first one was labeled copper, a word Charley was familiar with from studying the raw materials of Chile. He removed two sheets of paper, one headed Zambia and the other headed Zaire. That ought to make some difference in routine, he thought. He folded the papers and put them in his pocket and then reached for the second folder that had caught his attention. It was labeled PALLADIUM, a word Charley sounded out carefully. He didn’t know the word, but he liked the look of it. He rolled the word on his tongue and tasted it — “palladium.” It sounded like something a spy would be concerned with. He felt comfortable with the familiar “copper,” but this new word was exciting. From the folder he took two charts that seemed to be full of numbers and added them to the store in his pocket. He took a quick look at the rest of the materials on the desk, but the headings on various sections and folders that read SWISS FRANCS and DEUTSCHEMARKS meant less than nothing to him. He thought carefully for a few minutes and then turned two of the folders upside down. There, that should do it. Whatever his father’s habit pattern was, it was broken. His father could not be caught now the way his mother had been. Being undercover is a tremendous responsibility, Charley realized as he locked the study door and returned the key to its appropriate place. Now he was going to have to figure out how to get the papers back to his father’s files but in a way that the bad guys could not anticipate. He thought carefully, and then remembered his current homework assignment involving a report on the postal system. Of course, he thought triumphantly. He could mail the papers back to his father. That way the chain of habit was broken, his father’s work was restored to its original location, and anybody who was expecting his father to be caught spying was doomed to disappointment. Charley nodded his head enthusiastically. It had been a long time since he had felt this good, in fact, not since his mother had gone away. He, Charley Burton, had done an important thing to save the good guys. Being undercover was not only challenging, it was fun!