“What telegram?” said Roger, jovially. “I sent no telegram. Now, of a sudden, the police come pouring onto the southbound train, pull me off in some jerkwater, and I’m calling you to get them off my neck. Hugh, if this is some joke—”
“But, Roger, you just vanished!”
“On a business trip. If you can call that vanishing. I told Dorothy about this, and Joe.”
“This is all very confusing, Roger. You’re in no danger? Nobody’s blackmailing you, forcing you into this speech?”
“I’m fine, healthy, free, and unafraid.”
“But, Roger, your premonitions …?”
“Poppycock! Now, look, I’m being very good about this, aren’t I?”
“Sure, Roger.”
“Then play the good father and give me permission to go. Call Dorothy and tell her I’ll be back in five days. How could she have forgotten?”
“She did, Roger. See you in five days, then?”
“Five days, I swear.”
The voice was indeed winning and warm, the old Roger again. Fortnum shook his head, more bewildered than before.
“Roger,” he said, “this is the craziest day I’ve ever spent. You’re not running off from Dorothy? Good Lord, you can tell me.”
“I love her with all my heart. Now, here’s Lieutenant Parker of the Ridgetown police. Good-by, Hugh.”
“Good—”
But the lieutenant was on the line, talking angrily. What had Fortnum meant putting them to this trouble? What was going on? Who did he think he was? Did or didn’t he want this so-called friend held or released?
“Released,” Fortnum managed to say somewhere along the way, and hung up the phone and imagined he heard a voice call all aboard and the massive thunder of the train leaving the station two hundred miles south in the somehow increasingly dark night.
Cynthia walked very slowly into the parlor.
“I feel so foolish,” she said.
“How do you think I feel?”
“Who could have sent that telegram? And why?”
He poured himself some Scotch and stood in the middle of the room looking at it.
“I’m glad Roger is all right,” his wife said, at last.
“He isn’t,” said Fortnum.
“But you just said—”
“I said nothing. After all, we couldn’t very well drag him off that train and truss him up and send him home, could we, if he insisted he was okay? No. He sent that telegram, but he changed his mind after sending it. Why, why, why?” Fortnum paced the room, sipping the drin
k. “Why warn us against special delivery packages? The only package we’ve got this year which fits that description is the one Tom got this morning—” His voice trailed off.
Before he could move, Cynthia was at the wastepaper basket taking out the crumpled wrapping paper with the special-delivery stamps on it.
The postmark read: NEW ORLEANS, LA.
Cynthia looked up from it. “New Orleans. Isn’t that where Roger is heading right now?”