Part 66 (1/2)
”Tom, boy!” Zenger called.
”There's something else. As long as I'm in the business of shattering images this evening. I've got something else.”
Daniels stood in the doorway, saying nothing but waiting to hear.
Leslie stood outside, struggling to put up an umbrella against the rain.
”Do you know what your own old man did during the war? Big brave Bill Daniels? Remember all those high command stories he told you when you were a boy? A younger boy?”
Thomas listened, waiting.
”A pack of lies, Tommy. A mound of bulls.h.i.+t'” shouted the old man enthusiastically.
”You can check it for yourself, but Bill Daniels sat on his cowardly a.s.s in New York for the whole war. He was a recruiting sergeant. Get that? Too chickens.h.i.+t to go out and pull a trigger himself So he lined up other people to do the fighting. Ask De Septio what a'recruiting sergeant' is, if you live long enough to find him!”
The old man had a rattling, cackling laugh like that of the Devil himself The laughter resounded in Daniels's ears until he quickly bolted forward into the rain and closed the door. He took Leslie's arm and huddled with her very closely beneath the protection of the umbrella. Mercifully, it took only a few steps before the maniacal laughter from the sitting room was drowned by the fury of the cold rain. Moments later, Thomas and Leslie huddled into the chilly car.
He was angry, disgusted. Her mind was flas.h.i.+ng, inquisitive.
”How well do you know him?” she asked.
”The more I see him, the less I think I know him he answered, starting the car and gunning the engine. He glanced at her, frowning slightly and seeing her face illuminated dimly by the house lights.
”I've seen him only a few times in my life,” he admitted, 'even though he was my father's partner. Why?”
”He says I'm an impostor. I say he's lying” she explained briskly and incisively.
”I wanted to know whom yore inclined to believe ' He started to pull the car away from Zenger's isolated driveway” My father gave me a few pieces of good advice in his lifetime' he said.
”One tidbit was,
”Never trust the lawyer for the opposition.
a.s.sume he's lying.”
She smiled, satisfied.
”Good. That answers my question' Upon her insistence, they registered under false names at an old guest house the interior of which recalled and celebrated the glorious slaughter of the great whales. They parked the car for the night in an isolated spot near the center of town, but nowhere near their guest house
”I don't want anyone to be able to find us tonight,” Leslie explained.
Thomas didn't ask why.
Chapter 23 It all began with water, the paleontologists maintain, with life beginning in small tidal pools beside prehistoric oceans. On the next morning in Nantucket, however, as Thomas Daniels and Leslie McAdam drove toward the ferry depot, there seemed a chance that all would end in water just as easily.
Great sheets of water, ripping across the island. It wasn't a hurricane, nowhere close according to the natives, and the dauntless ferry, the Islander, planned to make its very-early-morning crossing as scheduled.
Thomas wondered whether the ferry ran through Yankee ingenuity or Yankee stubbornness, or perhaps an ingredient of both.
There were few pa.s.sengers, no more than fifteen or twenty, although Thomas and Leslie weren't close enough to any to see their faces, and the ferry ran with a skeletal crew of four. Nonetheless, they were both grateful when the s.h.i.+p left at its appointed hour.