"Of course I'm emotionally involved!" Kessler burst out. "I'm sorry, George." He passed his hand over his face and went on in a lower voice. "It's just that I've been eating, breathing, sleeping, dreaming this thing for the last six months. I feel as though I knew everyone of those seventy-three people personally. The Patterson girl, who looked as though she might be going to have a little good luck for a change. I even know that the pilot nicked himself shaving that morning. His friends called him Mike even though his name was Edward. He had a fight with his wife the night before. She wanted to eat out and he wanted to stay home. He was working with this crew for the first time though they all knew each other very well."
"Really?" Brogan perked up. "I suppose I knew that. Is it possibly significant?"
"Possibly, possibly. Everything is possibly significant but nothing really adds up. The routines were all standard, the four men were all vets. Aside from the pilot they had all worked together for years, off and on."
"Still, couldn't wires have gotten crossed as a result of some misunderstanding with a new pilot aboard?"
"Sure they could. What with the flight engineer being a souse and the pilot new to the crew and the co-pilot just back after a two-month layoff because of a ski accident. 'Human error,' that's what I said."
"Ski accident? I thought it was the stewardess that had the ski accident? I'm not going to trip you up in your own bailiwick now, am I?"
"Stewardess?" Kessler frowned. "You must be mistaken, senator."
"I felt quite sure," Brogan said musingly.
"I know your reputation for a fact, senator," Kessler said uncomfortably, "but a stewardess with a ski accident. Oh! Oh, yes. But not recent. That was Miss Sosnak, but it was almost a year before. The newspaper accounts got garbled. Both she and the other stewardess, Miss Prentiss, were ski enthusiasts. They were thinking about spending the weekend at Stowe after they got to New York, even though they had both broken ankles previously. Their friends in San Francisco were joking with them about it before they left. They gave Miss Sosnak a doll with a cast on its leg as a gag. The doll was found in the wreckage. Apparently Miss Sosnak had given it to the little girl who was killed on the flight, Barbara Patterson, who actually had a cast on her leg at the time. She had fallen and hurt herself a few days before."
A buzzer on Senator Brogan's desk hummed two short discreet hums. Brogan made no attempt to answer it. He stood and came around the desk, putting his hand on Kessler's shoulder. "Don't get up just yet," he said. "My secretary buzzes me every fifteen minutes in case I want to show my constituents how busy I am. If there's anyone waiting, let them wait. There's just a little bit more I'd like to say." He sat in the wide embrasure of the window and leaned forward on a crossed knee. He looked the picture of negligence but he was obviously pausing to choose his words with care. Kessler shifted his chair to face him.
"I won't mince words," Brogan said, "because I think we understand each other. We always have. Thanks to your splendid investigation, and my only little efforts perhaps, we know more about the circumstances of this crash than any other in aviation history. I had exactly your feeling that the answer ought to be there. But I don't see it and you don't see it. We know absolutely everything but one thing. We don't know what caused it. And we're never going to know that. I really think you are doing the aviation industry, yes and the country itself, a real injury by going on. I won't say what I think you're doing to yourself because it will sound like a sentimental appeal and you've known me too long not to know I'm pretty hard-headed."
"The investigation is over," Kessler said sullenly.
"Yes, I know, officially, but you've just told me you're going on with it personally."
"It's one last remote chance."
"Well, tell me this, Bob, if this last remote chance doesn't work out, will you call it quits and not start in on another last remote chance? Will you and Margaret get on up to that place of yours in Maine and take a good long vacation?"
Kessler smiled wryly. "Margaret has ideas of her own along that line. She's followed through on this with me all the way but she came down to Washington to meet me today and she says she's going to drag me off when I'm through here."
Brogan smiled his famous smile. "Good girl, Margaret. If she's here and has a leash on you, I know I don't have anything to worry about. There's nothing I admire more than a woman who has a mind and uses it. I'll tell you something else," he said, standing and permitting Kessler to rise this time. "I was truly sorry about Eileen Bennett's death on this plane, but Eileen was getting along like me. Sarah Pollitt's was the really tragic case, to have accomplished so much so young and with that fearful handicap! From childhood, too, wasn't it?"
"Actually, she was about seventeen. Someone threw a firecracker in a car in which she was riding, but she could see partially with one eye."
Brogan nodded. "But a beautiful woman, for all that. And then to have achieved so much. I understand nothing about chemistry but I know her international repute. She had just become head of the chemistry department at Wellesley, hadn't she?"
"Radcliffe."
Brogan laughed loudly. "I might have known I couldn't trip you up. But tell me this," he added slyly, "did you know that Dr. Pollitt had once been a good friend of Bergmann?"
"Our former Commie on the plane? Yes, as a matter of fact, we came across that quite accidentally. You did a good job, senator."
"Well, you know we have some sources not generally accessible."
"Then you undoubtedly found out that though Sarah Pollitt and friend Bergmann knew each other well at one time she dropped him like a hot cake when he suggested she do a little undercover work for the Commies. Their being on the same plane was the sheerest coincidence."
Brogan stood with his hand on the door with led to the corridor. He nodded. "That was a little hard to take, wasn't it? We really thought we had something there for a while." He sighed. "It's like the whole thing, Bob, irrational and unexplainable. And believe me, I hope I haven't sounded critical of the job you did. I hope we can call on you whenever we need really expert advice?"
"Of course, senator, though I don't feel much like an expert on anything right now."
"You did your best, Bob." He patted him on the shoulder in farewell.
Kessler walked down a long marble corridor to a rotunda. His wife waved to him from across a staircase. She looked pert and cool and girlish in her ice-blue suit and perky hat. "Here, darling! Oh, you look so discouraged! Did George give you a hard time? He can be a brute when he wants to."
"Not really. He thinks I ought to call it quits."
"And don't you think so, dear?" she asked, taking his arm as they started down the stairs.
"Who me?" He grinned with sudden boyishness. "You know me. Never say die! If I thought we ought to give it up would I be trying to find this old bag Valeria Schmitt or whatever her name is? Brogan was right, that's just about as farfetched a notion as has come down the pike in a long time."
"Well, it may be farfetched, but she's not an old bag. I called her to make sure she'd be at home. I didn't know how long you'd take in there. She was very excited that you were coming to see her."
"Did she know who I was?"