“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 drink. “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?”
A doorknob rattled, a door opened and closed in Fortnum’s mind. Another doorknob rattled, another door swung wide and then shut. There was a smell of damp earth.
He found his hand dialing the phone. After a long while, Dorothy Willis answered at the other end. He could imagine her sitting alone in a house with too many lights on. He talked quietly with her awhile, then cleared his throat and said, “Dorothy, look. I know it sounds silly. Did any special delivery air mail packages arrive at your house the last few days?”
Her voice was faint. “No.” Then: “No, wait. Three days ago. But I thought you knew! All the boys on the block are going in for it.”
Fortnum measured his words carefully.
“Going in for what?”
“But why ask?” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with raising mushrooms, is there?”
Fortnum closed his eyes.
“Hugh? Are you still there?” asked Dorothy. “I said: there’s nothing wrong with—”