Mystery

Tom swallowed. He looked at the letter protruding from the book in his hand, then across the street to Mr. von Heilitz’s heavily curtained windows. All evening he had seen the image of Mr. von Heilitz’s pale face, swimming out at him from the back seat of a wrecked green sedan with a look of pure recognition.

Tom walked toward An Die Blumen through pools of light alternating with hour-glass shaped areas of darkness. He came to the red pillar postbox on the corner of An Die Blumen and withdrew the long white envelope from the pages of the novel. The typing on the envelope, Captain Fulton Bishop, Central Police Headquarters, Homicide Division, Armory Place, Mill Walk, District One, looked disturbingly adult and authoritative. Tom pushed the long envelope into the open mouth of the pillar box, pulled it part of the way out again, then pushed it into the box until his fingers touched the warm metal. Then he released the envelope, and a second later heard it fall softly on the mound of mail at the bottom of the pillar box.

In a sudden depression Tom turned around and looked down An Die Blumen to the corner of The Sevens, where an enclosed wooden telephone booth stood half-engulfed by an enormous stand of bougainvillaea. He began to walk slowly down the block.

The inside of the booth was permeated with the thick, heavy perfume of bougainvillaea. Tom hesitated only a moment, wishing that he really had been able to turn into The Sevens and ring Sarah Spence’s doorbell, and then dialed the number for directory inquiries. The operator told him that there were four listings for Lamont von Heilitz. Did he want the listing on Calle Ranelagh, Eastern Shore Road, or—

“That one,” he said. “Eastern Shore Road.”

When he had the number, he dialed again. The phone rang twice, and a surprisingly youthful voice answered.

“Maybe I have the wrong number,” Tom said. “I was trying to reach a Mr. von Heilitz.”

“Is this you, Tom Pasmore?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” Tom said, so softly he could scarcely hear his own voice.

“Your father seems not to want you to accept my invitation to dinner. Are you at home?”

“I’m out on the street,” Tom said. “In a call box.”

“The one around the corner?”

“Yes,” Tom virtually whispered.

“Then I’ll see you in a few seconds,” said the old man’s vibrant voice. He hung up.

Tom replaced the receiver on the hook. He felt intensely afraid and intensely alive.

Scent leaked from the closed-up parchment of the bougainvillaea blossoms. Geckos and salamanders scurried through the grass and flew along dark plaster walls.

Tom came to Eastern Shore Road and turned left. Down behind the houses the water washed rhythmically up on the shoreline. An enclosed horse-drawn carriage came rattling down Eastern Shore Road. The coachman wore a neat grey uniform almost invisible in the night, and the horses were matched bays with sleek muscles and arching necks. The equipage moved smoothly past Tom Pasmore, making surprisingly little sound, like an image from a dream but so secure in its reality that it made Tom feel as if he were the dream. The elegant apparition continued past the corner and rolled north down the drive toward the Redwing compound.

Light escaped in chinks and beams from the curtained windows of Lamont von Heilitz’s house.

When he got to the front door of the von Heilitz house, Tom hesitated as he had before dropping the letter into the pillar box. He wanted to flee across the street and escape upstairs into his room. For a moment Tom regretted everything that had made him commandeer poor Dennis Handley and his car. At that moment, he could have given up and gone home, chosen what he already knew instead of the mystery of what he did not. At a turning point such as this, many people do turn away from what they do not know—their fear, not only of the risk, is too great. They say no. Tom Pasmore wanted to say no, but he raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Of course when he did this, he had no idea at all of what he was doing.

It opened almost immediately, as if the old man had been standing behind it, waiting for Tom to decide.

“Good,” Lamont von Heilitz said. Until this moment, when his eyes met a pair of very pale blue eyes, Tom had never quite realized that the old man was nearly his own height. “Very good, in fact. Please come into my house, Tom Pasmore.”

He moved out of the way, and Tom stepped inside.