There were no carpets, a few straightbacked wooden chairs, the ubiquitous military hardware, two writing desks nose to nose, the bigger one presumably for the General and the other for whoever actually wrote. The place was almost a mausoleum. The heat came off a bonfire raging in a fireplace designed for roasting oxen. Another gink without joints in his spine was tossing in logs from a nearby mountain. He looked at me, looked at the old man behind the big desk. The old man nodded. The fireman marched out, maybe to kill time practicing close order drill with Dellwood.
Having surveyed the setting I zeroed in on its centerpiece.
I could see why Black Pete was suspicious. There wasn't much left of General Stantnor. He didn't look anything like the guy in the picture downstairs. He looked like he might weigh about as much as a mummy, though most of him was buried under comforters. Ten years ago he'd been my height and thirty pounds heavier.
His skin had a yellowish cast and was mildly translucent. His pupils were milky with cataracts. His hair had fallen out in clumps. Only a few patches remained, not just gray or white but with a bluish hue of death. He had liver spots but those had faded, too. His lips had no color left but a poisonous gray-blue.
I don't know how well he could see through those cataracts, but his gaze was strong and steady. He didn't shake.
"Mike Sexton, sir. Sergeant Peters asked me to see you."
"Grab a chair. Pull it up there facing me. I don't like to look up when I talk to someone." There was power in his voice, though I don't know where he found the energy. I'd figured him for a graverobber's whisper. I settled opposite him. He said, "For the moment I'm confident we're not being overheard, Mr. Garrett. Yes. I know who you are. Peters provided me with a full report before I approved bringing you in." He kept staring as though he could overcome those cataracts through sheer will. "But we'll pursue the Mike Sexton fiction in future. Assuming we come to terms now."
I was close enough to smell him, and it wasn't a good smell. I was surprised the whole room didn't reek. They must have brought him in from somewhere else. "Peters didn't say what you needed, sir. He just called in an old marker to get me out here." I glanced at the fireplace. They would be baking bread in here soon.
"It takes a great deal of heat to keep me going, Mr. Garrett. My apologies for your discomfort. I'll try to keep this brief. I'm a little like a thunder-lizard. I generate no heat of my own."
I waited for him to continue. And sweated a lot.
"I have Peters's word that you were a good Marine." No doubt that counted for a lot around here. "He vouches for your character then. But men change. What have you become?"
"A free-lance thug instead of a drafted one, General. Which you need or I wouldn't be here."
He made a noise that might have been laughter. "Ah. I'd heard you have a sharp tongue, Mr. Garrett. I should be the impatient one, not you. I have so little time left. Yes. Peters vouches for you today, as well. And you do get mentioned in some circles as being reliable, though headstrong and inclined to carry out your assignments according to your own lights. They say you have a sentimental streak. That shouldn't trouble us here. They say you have a weakness for women. I think you'll find my daughter more trouble than she's worth. They say you tend to be judgmental of the vices and peccadillos of my class."
I wondered if he knew how often I change my underwear. Why did he need an investigator? Let him use whoever had investigated me.
Again that sorry laugh. "I can guess what you're thinking. Everything I know is public knowledge. Your reputation runs before you." Something that might have been a smile in better times. "You've managed to do a fair amount of good over the years, Mr. Garrett. But you stepped on a lot of toes doing it."
"I'm just a clumsy kid, General. I'll grow out of it."
"I doubt it. You don't seem intimidated by me."
"I'm not." I wasn't. I'd met too many guys who really were intimidating. I had calluses on that organ.
"You would have been ten years ago."
"Different circumstances."
"Indeed. Good. I need a man who won't be intimidated. Especially by me. Because I fear that if you do your job right, you may uncover truths I won't want to face. Truths so brutal I may tell you to back off. You won't do that?"
He had me baffled. "I'm confused."
"The normal state of the world, Mr. Garrett. I mean, when I hire you, if I hire you, if you agree to take this job, your commitment will be to follow it through to the end. Disregarding anything I tell you later. I'll see that you're paid up front so you aren't tempted to bend in order to collect your fee."
"I still don't get it."
"I pride myself on my ability to meet the truth head-on. In this case I want to arrange it so I have no choice, however much I squirm and ache. Can you understand that?"
"Yes." Only in the most literal sense. I didn't understand why. We all spend a lot of time fooling ourselves, and his class were masters at that—though he'd always had a reputation for having both feet firmly planted in reality. He'd disobeyed or refused orders more than once because they had originated in wishful thinking by superiors who hadn't come within five hundred miles of the fighting. Each time events had saved him embarrassment by proving him right.
He didn't have a lot of friends.
"Before I make any commitment, I have to know what I'm supposed to do."
"There is a thief in my house, Mr. Garrett."
He stopped because of some kind of spasm. I thought he was having a heart attack. I jumped up and headed for the door.
"Wait," he croaked. "It will pass."
I paused midway between my chair and the door, saw the spasm fade. In a moment he was back to normal. I perched myself on my chair again.
"A thief in my house. Yet there is no one here I haven't known for thirty years, no one I haven't trusted with my life many times."
That had to be a weird feeling, knowing you could trust guys with your life but not with your things.
I got a glimmer of why he needed an outsider. A bad apple amongst old comrades. They might cover up, refuse to see the truth, or... Who knows? Marines don't think like people.
"I follow. Go ahead."
"My infirmity came upon me soon after I returned home. It's a progressive consumption, apparently. But slow. I seldom get out of my quarters now. But I've noticed, this past year, that some things, some of which have been in the family for centuries, have disappeared. Never large, flashy things that would be obvious to any eye. Just trinkets, sometimes more valuable as mementoes than intrinsically. Yet the sum should add to a fair amount by now."
"I see." I glanced at the fire. It was time to turn me over so I wouldn't be underdone on one side.
"Bear with me a few minutes more, Mr. Garrett."
"Yes sir. Any strangers in the house recently? Any regular visitors?"
"A handful. People off the Hill. Not the sort who would pilfer."
I didn't say so but in my thinking the worst of all criminals come off the Hill. Our nobility would steal the coppers off dead men's eyes. But the General had a point. They wouldn't steal with their own hands. They'd have somebody do it for them.
"You have an inventory of what's missing?"
"Would that be useful?"
"Maybe. Somebody steals something, they want to sell it to get money. Right? I know some of the retailers whose wholesalers are people with sticky fingers. Do you want the stuff back or do you just want to know who's kyping it?"
"The latter step first, Mr. Garrett. Then we'll consider recovery." Sudden as a lightning bolt he suffered another spasm. I felt helpless, unable to do anything for him. That was not a good sensation.