"The job can't last forever. After a while they'll have all the data they need." He nodded. "I know. I'll hate to have it end. It's the best work I ever found. How about it, Brad? Will you go back with me?"
"I'll have to think about it," I told him. "Can't you stay a little longer than that day or two?"
"I suppose I could," said All. "I've got two weeks" vacation."
"Like to do some fishing?"
"Nothing I'd like better."
"What do you say we leave tomorrow morning? Go up north for a week or so? It should be cool up there. I have a tent and a camping outfit. We'll try to find a place where we can get some wall-eyes."
"That sounds fine to me."
"We can use my car," I said.
"I'll buy the gas," said All.
"The shape I'm in," I said, "I'll let you."
3
If it had not been for its pillared front and the gleaming white rail of the widow walk atop its roof, the house would have been plain and stark.
There had been a time, I recalled, when I had thought of it as the most beautiful house in the entire world. But it had been six or seven years since I had been at the Sherwood house.
I parked the car and got out and stood for a moment, looking at the house. It was not fully dark as yet and the four great pillars gleamed softly in the fading light of day. There were no lights in the front part of the house, but I could see that they had been turned on somewhere in the back.
I went up the shallow steps and across the porch. I found the bell and rang.
Footsteps came down the hall, a hurrying woman's footsteps. More than likely, I thought, it was Mrs Flaherty. She had been housekeeper for the family since that time Mrs Sherwood had left the house, never to return.
But it wasn't Mrs Flaherty.
The door came open and she stood there, more mature than I remembered her, more poised, more beautiful than ever.
"Nancy!" I exclaimed. "Why, you must be Nancy!" It was not what I would have said if I'd had time to think about it.
"Yes," she said, "I'm Nancy. Why be so surprised?"
"Because I thought you weren't here. When did you get home?"
"Just yesterday," she said.
And, I thought, she doesn't know me. She knows that she should know me. She's trying to remember.
"Brad," she said, proving I was wrong, "it's silly just to stand there. Why don't you come in." I stepped inside and she dosed the door and we were facing one another in the dimness of the hail.
She reached out and laid her fingers on the lapel of my coat.
"It's been a long time, Brad," she said. "How is everything with you?
"Fine," I said. "Just fine."
"There are not many left, I hear. Not many of the gang."
I shook my head. "You sound as if you're glad to be back home." She laughed, just a flutter of a laugh. "Why, of course I am," she said. And the laugh was the same as ever, that little burst of spontaneous merriment that bad been a part of her.
Someone stepped out into the hall.
"Nancy," a voice called, "is that the Carter boy?
"Why," Nancy said to me, "I didn't know that you wanted to see Father."
"It won't take long," I told her. "Will I see you later?"
"Yes, of course," she said. "We have a lot to talk about."
"Nancy!"
"Yes, Father."
"I'm coming," I said.
I strode down the hall toward the figure there. He opened a door and turned on the lights in the room beyond.
I stepped in and he closed the door.
He was a big man with great broad shoulders and an aristocratic head, with a smart trim moustache.
"Mr Sherwood," I told him, angrily, "I am not the Carter boy. I am Bradshaw Carter. To my friends, I'm Brad." It was an unreasonable anger, and probably uncalled for. But he had burned me up, out there in the hall.
"I'm sorry, Brad," he said. "It's so hard to remember that you all are grown up — the kids that Nancy used to run around with." He stepped from the door and went across the room to a desk that stood against one wall. He opened a drawer and took out a bulky envelope and laid it on the desk top.
"That's for you," he said.
"For me?"
"Yes, I thought you knew." I shook my head and there was something in the room that was very close to fear. It was a sombre room, two walls filled with books, and on the third heavily draped windows flanking a marble fireplace.
"Well," he said, "it's yours. Why don't you take it?" I walked to the desk and picked up the envelope. It was unsealed and I flipped up the flap. Inside was a thick sheaf of currency.
"Fifteen hundred dollars," said Gerald Sherwood. "I presume that is the right amount."
"I don't know anything," I told him, "about fifteen hundred dollars. I was simply told by phone that I should talk with you." He puckered up his face, and looked at me intently, almost as if he might not believe me.
"On a phone like that," I told him, pointing to the second phone that stood on the desk.
He nodded tiredly. "Yes," he said, "and how long have you had the phone?"
"Just this afternoon. Ed Adler came and took out my other phone, the regular phone, because I couldn't pay for it. I went for a walk, to sort of think things over, and when I came back this other phone was ringing."
He waved a hand. "Take the envelope," he said. "Put it in your pocket.
"It is not my money. It belongs to you." I laid the envelope back on top the desk. I needed fifteen hundred dollars. I needed any kind of money, no matter where it came from. But I couldn't take that envelope. I don't know why I couldn't.
"All right," he said, "sit down." A chair stood angled in front of the desk and I sat down in it.
He lifted the lid of a box on the desk. "A cigar?" he asked.
"I don't smoke," I told him.
"A drink, perhaps?"
"Yes. I would like a drink."
"Bourbon?"
"Bourbon would be fine." He went to a cellaret that stood in a corner and put ice into two glasses.
"How do you drink it, Brad?"
"Just ice, if you don't mind."
He chuckled. "It's the only civilized way to drink the stuff" he said.
I sat, looking at the rows of books that ran from floor to ceiling.
Many of them were in sets and, from the looks of them, in expensive bindings.
It must be wonderful, I thought, to be, not exactly rich, but to have enough so you didn't have to worry when there was some little thing you wanted, not to have to wonder if it would be all right if you spent the money for it. To be able to live in a house like this, to line the walls with books and have rich draperies and to have more than just one bottle of booze and a place to keep it other than a kitchen shelf.
He handed me the glass of whisky and walked around the desk. He sat down in the chair behind it. Raising his glass, he took a couple of thirsty gulps, then set the glass down on the desk top.
"Brad," he asked, "how much do you know?"
"Not a thing," I said. "Only what I told you. I talked with someone on the phone. They offered me a job."
"And you took the job?"
"No," I said, "I didn't, but I may. I could use a job. But what they whoever it was had to say didn't make much sense."
"They?"
"Well, either there were three of them — or one who used three different voices. Strange as it may sound to you, it seemed to me as if it were one person who used different voices." He picked up the glass and gulped at it again. He held it up to the light and saw in what seemed to be astonishment that it was nearly empty. He hoisted himself out of the chair and went to get the bottle. He slopped liquor in his glass and held the bottle out to me.