It was opened only a second later, almost as if the new fella had been lurking behind it, waiting for him to come to the door.

“Inspector!” Straker said with a narrow smile. “How good of you to drop by!”

“Plain old constable, I guess,” Parkins said. He lit a Pall Mall and strolled in. “Parkins Gillespie. Pleased to meet you.” He stuck out his hand. It was gripped, squeezed gently by a hand that felt enormously strong and very dry, and then dropped.

“Richard Throckett Straker,” the bald man said.

“I figured you was,” Parkins said, looking around. The entire shop had been carpeted and was in the process of being painted. The smell of fresh paint was a good one, but there seemed to be another smell underneath it, an unpleasant one. Parkins could not place it; he turned his attention back to Straker.

“What can I do for you on this so-fine day?” Straker asked.

Parkins turned his mild gaze out the window, where the rain continued to pour down.

“Oh, nothing at all, I guess. I just came by to say how-do. More or less welcome you to the town an’ wish you good luck, I guess.”

“How thoughtful. Would you care for a coffee? Some sherry? I have both out back.”

“No thanks, I can’t stop. Mr Barlow around?”

“Mr Barlow is in New York, on a buying trip. I don’t expect him back until at least the tenth of October.”

“You’ll be openin’ without him, then,” Parkins said, thinking that if the prices he had seen in the window were any indication, Straker wouldn’t exactly be swamped with customers. “What’s Mr Barlow’s first name, by the way?”

Straker’s smile reappeared, razor-thin. “Are you asking in your official capacity, ah…Constable?”

“Nope. Just curious.”

“My partner’s full name is Kurt Barlow,” Straker said. “We have worked together in both London and Hamburg. This”—he swept his arm around him—“this is our retirement. Modest. Yet tasteful. We expect to make no more than a living. Yet we both love old things, fine things, and we hope to make a reputation in the area…perhaps even throughout your so-beautiful New England region. Do you think that would be possible, Constable Gillespie?”

“Anything’s possible, I guess,” Parkins said, looking around for an ashtray. He saw none, and tapped his cigarette ash into his coat pocket. “Anyway, I hope you’ll have the best of luck, and tell Mr Barlow when you see him that I’m gonna try and get around.”

“I’ll do so,” Straker said. “He enjoys company.”

“That’s fine,” Gillespie said. He went to the door, paused, looked back. Straker was looking at him intently. “By the way, how do you like that old house?”

“It needs a great deal of work,” Straker said. “But we have time.”

“I guess you do,” Parkins agreed. “Don’t suppose you seen any yow’uns up around there.”

Straker’s brow creased. “Yowwens?”

“Kids,” Parkins explained patiently. “You know how they sometimes like to devil new folks. Throw rocks or ring the bell an’ run away…that sort of thing.”

“No,” Straker said. “No children.”

“We seem to kind have misplaced one.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” Parkins said judiciously, “yes, it is. The thinkin’ now is that we may not find him. Not alive.”

“What a shame,” Straker said distantly.

“It is, kinda. If you should see anything…”

“I would of course report it to your office, posthaste.” He smiled his chilly smile again.

“That’s good,” Parkins said. He opened the door and looked resignedly out at the pouring rain. “You tell Mr Barlow that I’m lookin’ forward.”

“I certainly will, Constable Gillespie. Ciao.”

Parkins looked back, startled. “Chow?”

Straker’s smile widened. “Good-by, Constable Gillespie. That is the familiar Italian expression for good-by.”

“Oh? Well, you learn somethin’ new every day, don’t you? ’By.” He stepped out into the rain and closed the door behind him. “Not familiar to me, it ain’t.” His cigarette was soaked. He threw it away.

Inside, Straker watched him up the street through the show window. He was no longer smiling.

ELEVEN

When Parkins got back to his office in the Municipal Building, he called, “Nolly? You here, Nolly?”

No answer. Parkins nodded. Nolly was a good boy, but a little bit short on brains. He took off his coat, unbuckled his galoshes, sat down at his desk, looked up a telephone number in the Portland book, and dialed. The other end picked up on the first ring.

“FBI, Portland. Agent Hanrahan.”

“This is Parkins Gillespie. Constable at Jerusalem’s Lot township. We’ve got us a missin’ boy up here.”

“So I understand,” Hanrahan said crisply. “Ralph Glick. Nine years old, four-three, black hair, blue eyes. What is it, kidnap note?”

“Nothin’ like that. Can you check on some fellas for me?”

Hanrahan answered in the affirmative.

“First one is Benjaman Mears. M-E-A-R-S. Writer. Wrote a book called Conway’s Daughter. The other two are sorta stapled together. Kurt Barlow. B-A-R-L-O-W. The other guy—”

“You spell that Kurt with a ‘c’ or a ‘k’?” Hanrahan asked.

“I dunno.”

“Okay. Go on.”

Parkins did so, sweating. Talking to the real law always made him feel like an asshole. “The other guy is Richard Throckett Straker. Two t’son the end of Throckett, and Straker like it sounds. This guy and Barlow are in the furniture and antique business. They just opened a little shop here in town. Straker claims Barlow’s in New York on a buyin’ trip. Straker claims the two of them worked together in London an’ Hamburg. And I guess that pretty well covers it.”

“Do you suspect these people in the Glick case?”

“Right now I don’t know if there even is a case. But they all showed up in town about the same time.”

“Do you think there’s any connection between this guy Mears and the other two?”

Parkins leaned back and cocked an eye out the window. “That,” he said, “is one of the things I’d like to find out.”

TWELVE

The telephone wires make an odd humming on clear, cool days, almost as if vibrating with the gossip that is transmitted through them, and it is a sound like no other—the lonely sound of voices flying over space. The telephone poles are gray and splintery, and the freezes and thaws of winter have heaved them into leaning postures that are casual. They are not businesslike and military, like phone poles anchored in concrete. Their bases are black with tar if they are beside paved roads, and floured with dust if beside the back roads. Old weathered cleat marks show on their surfaces where linemen have climbed to fix something in 1946 or 1952 or 1969. Birds—crows, sparrows, robins, starlings—roost on the humming wires and sit in hunched silence, and perhaps they hear the foreign human sounds through their taloned feet. If so, their beady eyes give no sign. The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep in the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

“…and he paid with an old twenty, Mabel, one of the big ones. Clyde said he hadn’t seen one of those since the run on the Gates Bank and Trust in 1930. He was…”

“…yes, he isa peculiar sort of man, Evvie. I’ve seen him through my binocs, trundling around behind the house with a wheelbarrer. Is he up there alone, I wonder, or…”

“…Crockett might know, but he won’t tell. He’s keeping shut about it. He always was a…”

“…writer at Eva’s. I wonder if Floyd Tibbits knows he’s been…”

“…spends an awful lot of time at the library. Loretta Starcher says she never saw a fella who knew so many…”

“…she said his name was…”

“…yes, it’s Straker. Mr R.T. Straker. Kenny Danles’s mom said she stopped by that new place downtown and there was a genuine DeBiers cabinet in the window and they wanted eight hundred dollarsfor it. Can you imagine? So I said…”