The Old Boys Read Free Page B

looked away. Had she thought, climbing out of sleep, that it was Paul at the door?
    She said, “This really is something Paul asked you to do?” I said, “Yes, Stephanie, it is. I have no idea why.”
    “I do,” she said. “He trusted you.” She was holding herself together with what was becoming visible effort. Her next words, unspoken, could be read in her eyes, in her lip that quivered ever so slightly: Why did he trust
you
? Why not me?
    Gathering herself, Stephanie said, “How much time do you need?”
    “Idon’t know. I have to find the safe first.”
    “Do what?” she said.
    I said, “Find the safe. Paul just gave me just a general idea of its whereabouts. You really don’t know where it is?”
    Her hand was on the latch. She said, “No, I don’t. I didn’t even know it existed.”
    “He was quite specific.”
    Now there were tears in her eyes. I had put them there and, male that I am, I felt a twinge of guilt.
    Stephanie said, “Make yourself at home.” She shook her head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Who but Paul could hide a safe from his wife in a house where they lived together for fifteen years?”
    Who indeed?
    Recovered, Stephanie said, “I’m going running. After that I’ll go home and get dressed and go to the office. Do what you have to do, but please be out of here by evening. I want to sleep here again tonight, God knows why.”
    I thought I knew why, but for once I held my tongue.

4

    Apart from the film of dust that had accumulated during his absence, Paul’s office was in apple-pie order. He was tidy by nature. The furnishings were spartan: an antique leather-top writing table with sturdy legs that he used as a desk, a rolling chair, bookshelves with volumes arranged in alphabetical order according to author and subject, an unlocked cabinet containing his correspondence (meager) and the manuscripts of many poems. As a young man Paul had published a couple of books of verse, and it looked as though he had continued to write poetry. I read a few lines of the unpublished stuff and thought it slow and far too sad. His early poems had been melancholy, too, but with a lilt, something like
A Shropshire Lad
. All this was not much, taken as the record of a lifetime. Had I been searching an enemy’s house I would have suspected that the suspect had left these harmless documents out in the open as bait while hiding the incriminating stuff somewhere else. But this was Paul, who knew that there was no such thing as a safe hidey-hole, so what I found was probably all there was.
    He had said that the safe was under his desk. I sat down in the chair and, rolling myself around the desk very slowly, examined the floor from every angle. It seemed to be nothing but what it was, a well-waxed oak parquet, very likely the original nineteenthcentury flooring, with a black geometric inlay, somewhat warpedby time and usage. I saw no sign of new boards or inlay or variation in color, but of course there would be none if the secret compartment had been properly installed. I got down on hands and knees and felt the floor, inch by square inch, with my hands and fingertips, searching for irregularities in the surface or differences in tension. Wood, even oak nailed to floor beams, is flexible because, between beams, it is a bridge over empty space. A steel floor safe placed under the flooring between two beams will create a numb space that the fingers will feel, like a kneecap at the end of a pliant thigh.
    No luck. The art of searching is as ancient as the impulse to conceal and like any other art, it has its rules. The first of these is that an object can be hidden in a limited number of places, all of them obvious. Inside a book or between two books, under the rug or the mattress, between a picture or a mirror and its backing, in a plant or buried in the backyard, taped to the back of a drawer or in a secret compartment, in the refrigerator, in the garbage, in milady’s intimate effects,