by Robert Adams
Milo just shook his head. "I think you've got what a very brilliant friend of mine, a man who had studied under Dr. Sigmund Freud, used to call a fixation… I think that that was the proper term. Yes, Major Jarvis, you probably would benefit from the attentions of a good psychiatrist and a well-equipped, modern psychiatric facility, for you are clearly disturbed. You are bound to be suffering delusions if you think I'm not human. What the hell else could I be, major? One of H. G. Wells' damned Martians, maybe?"
Chapter VII
Tech Sergeant Milo Moray found Fort Holabird tiny, as posts went, located almost within the actual city limits of Baltimore. Security measures were tight and stringently enforced by a profusion of well-armed guards. Badges and cards bearing photos and fingerprints were de rigueur everywhere on the minuscule post, and without the proper combinations of badges and cards, no individual could even come within close proximity to many of the buildings.
Not that all that much of seeming importance appeared to be happening within those buildings which Milo possessed the proper credentials to enter. After tests had established that he owned a decent command of Swedish, he was set to work that was very reminiscent of what he had done for Dr. Osterreich in Chicago five years before. Day after day, he was presented with Swedish periodicals, newspapers and trade or technical journals for translation. There was no need for a public library, however, at Holabird, for their dictionaries and references were extensive, and, as was often pointed out to him and the others in his section, they were not expected to understand, just to translate for specialists who did not read Swedish.
Milo would have liked being paid by the word as he had been in Chicago, for even with his quarters and food being all provided by the Army, along with uniforms and medical care (something of which he strangely had no need, since he never succumbed to anything worse than an occasional mild cold), his salary was nothing to boast about, especially not in the midst of a civilian economy new-swollen with the high incomes of hordes of war-industry workers. His pay as a tech sergeant was eighty-four dollars per month with an additional thirty dollars per month for his status as a first class specialist, which addition brought his monthly stipend to one hundred and fourteen dollars, within twelve dollars of that of a master sergeant. Even so, his money did not go far, and it was but rarely that he could afford the cost of a bus or railway ticket to meet and carouse with Jethro Stiles at some place between Baltimore and Georgia, nor did he feel that he could or should accept the generous man's frequent offers of money to allay these expenses.
Finally, one night, thinking of the thousand-odd he had left in the care of Pat O'Shea, he wrote to the old soldier. But the return letter came from Maggie.
"Dear Milo,"
"I am so very happy to hear from you once again after all these years. Poor Pat, God keep the dear soul, has been with the angels for almost three years now, which was truly a divine blessing for him, as he had gone stone-blind and was coughing up blood from his gas-damaged lungs day and night. Old Rosaleen suffered a seizure and died in the kitchen during Pat's wake, and I have since retained a new cook, another policeman's widow, Peggy Murphey. But I now fear I may soon have to replace her, for her brother-in-law, a recent widower himself, is paying frequent and serious court to her and Police Lieutenant Robert Emmett Murphey strikes me as a man who gets his way, come —— or high water, as dear old Pat would have put it."
"We have heard nothing of my eldest son, Michael, since the Japs took the Philippine Islands and can only pray Our Lady that he be safe and well. Joseph was wounded at Pearl Harbor on the morning the Japs attacked the fleet there, but he has recovered and the Navy has him in a school now to make an officer out of him. Sally is nursing at the hospital now, and Kathleen was, too, but when the Nazis attacked Russia, she signed up to be a Navy nurse and she's now at a Navy hospital out in California, as too is Fanny Duncan."
"That terrible German priest, Father Rustung, was arrested and taken away by the FBI when they arrested all the other Nazis, and good riddance to the lot of them, say I. They say the other priest, the sissified one, went into the Army Chaplain Corps."
"I hear that Irunn Thorsdottar went back to Wisconsin and was nursing at a hospital in or near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and living there as man and wife with her own elder brother. Somehow, the two perverts were found out and prosecuted and sent to the penitentiary for criminal incest. More good riddance to bad rubbish."
"Dr. Guiscarde went into the Army only a week after the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, and his last letter they say was from a camp in New Jersey. Dr. Osterreich is a captain in the Navy Medical Corps and is somewhere around Washington, D.C. Is that near you?"
"Both of the maids I had when you were here married, and I have two new ones—a girl from Latvia and another little colored girl from Kentucky, who is lighter-complected than the old one and a lot easier to understand when she talks."
"I sure hope the Army is feeding you boys well. This new rationing they have now is just terrible, especially on meat and sugar and lard. If it wasn't for Cook's connections with some people at the stockyards, we would all be on very strict diets here. But if it will help win this war and get all of you boys home safe, then I say we will just have to put up with it until then."
"Milo, as you can see, I am not sending you much money, and the reason is that Pat took it into his head to invest most of the money you left with him in stocks. He bought you shares in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and I am sending those certificates to you, instead. If I was you I would hang on to them, because they already are worth something more than what he paid for them back in 1938 and I don't doubt but what, with the war and all, they are going to be worth way more than they are now in years to come."
"I'd send you more money if I could, but it seems that poor Pat had borrowed against his insurance money and there was just about enough left to get him decently buried and pay for masses for the repose of his dear old soul, and I'm still saving money for a stone of the kind I know he wanted on his grave, too. What with property taxes and income taxes and the extra money I have to give Cook each week to pay for the meat and lard she gets without ration coupons, I am barely scraping by here, and I refuse to touch one penny of the money that comes from the government for the boys."
"Please remember, Milo, prayers to God and His Holy Mother never go unanswered. You might also pray to the Blessed Saint Sebastian, Patron of Soldiers, and I enclose a specially blessed medal of Saint Sebastian for you."
"Our prayers are always for you, Milo. May God bless and guard you always in this war."
There were four ten-dollar bills, a five and three ones in the package, and a silver medal on a flat-link neck-chain of silver. There was also a stiff document folder secured with a cloth tie, and in it were the stock certificates, a bill of sale, transfer documents and a receipt for something over a thousand dollars. But a second, smaller package had come in the same mail call. This one, too, was postmarked Chicago, but there was no return address and the handwriting was large, bold and most obviously masculine.
Fingering it, Milo wondered just who it could be who had written him. Guiscarde was in New Jersey, Oster-reich was in Washington, Pat was dead, Rustung was probably interned or in a federal prison or deported long since. So who was there left whom he had known back there, back then? Sol Brettmann? Or could it be one of the other men of Sam Osterreich's group? He tore the package open to find two envelopes. He opened the thinnest one first and read:
"Dear Sergt. Moray,"
"You never met me, but I know you. I was the cop what found you when you got yourself clubbed down and robbed in Chicago. I done a awful thing to you that night, Sergt. Moray, and I ain't making excuses or nothing, but just then that night I had a awful sick wife at home and little children too and I couldn't barely take care of them on the money I could bring home honest-like. When I seen all of the money had been in the billfold the robbers had done took from you, I guess I went mad for a while is all. I've do
ne confessed to God long since about all of this and more and I've done some heavy penances and all and still I know my poor soul will be in Purgatory for a good long while."
"My poor wife died a year or so back, God rest her soul. I've done rose up real high on the Force, too, in the last few years, and the onliest reason I ain't started paying back what I stole from you before this is just that I didn't know where you was and I was feared to ask them as I knew did know. But now I'm courting a fine widow-lady who does have a way of knowing your address and all and I've talked this here over with her and she thinks I should ought to start paying you back and so here in the big envelope is the first of your money."
"You had nine hundred and sixty-one dollars in bills in your billfold along of two gold eagles. I got ninety dollars for your gold watch and another fifty-four for the chain and fob. That all adds up to one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five dollars, Sergt. Moray. But my intended says that I rightly owe you more than that and I guess I rightly do, so she has calculated out that I should pay you three percent on all I stole off you until now for every year since I stole it and three percent on what I still owe to you after this every year until I gets it all paid off. So that means with this six hundred dollars I'm sending you here, I still owe you seven hundred and fifty-one dollars and twenty-five cents except that it will most probably be another year before I can send you more money so I actually owe you seven hundred and seventy-three dollars and seventy-nine cents."
"I ain't going to give you my name and I recken you can figure why I ain't, but I'll be keeping up with you from now on and praying for you and getting more money back to you just as fast as I can, but you got to realize I still got kids to see to and, God willing, I'll soon have me a wife again and it may take as much as two or three more years to get this all paid up. But I'll do it and you have my sacred word of honor on that, Sergt. Moray. You boys all give them Natzis and Japs hell. You got the whole dam USofA behind you."
"A man who wronged you long ago and has been truly sorry ever since."
In the other, thicker envelope was the six hundred dollars. No old, wrinkled bills such as Maggie O'Shea had enclosed were these, but rather crisp, minty-new twenties, thirty of them, so stiff and fresh that Milo cut his thumb on the edge of one of them, winced and instinctively sucked at the hair-thin red line. But it had closed before he got it down from his lips. His rare razor cuts on cheeks or chin closed and healed very quickly too, and he had long since given up wondering about it and just gratefully accepted the fact that he was a quicker than average healer.
Until he could get an answer from Jethro, Milo found a lodgment for the stock certificates and most of the unexpected windfall of cash in the safe of his section commander.
The return letter from Stiles was short.
"Milo, old buddy,"
"Congratulations on your luck in collecting your old debt—few are that fortunate, alas. As regards the stock, wait until I see you and it. If you can wangle a three-day pass next month, let me know the dates and perhaps we two can meet at someplace in the District of Columbia, where I'll be on training affairs. Come in mufti. I have someone I want you to meet at a place a bit south of the District, in Virginia."
"All my best,"
"Jethro Stiles, Major, USA."
But, what with one delay and another on both ends, it was more than two months before Milo was able to rendezvous with his buddy in the spacious, sumptuously furnished lobby of a hotel in northwest Washington. Although the man he met was lean and hard and browned, the marks of worry and age were beginning to appear on the face and forehead and at the corners of the smiling eyes. The hair at Jethro's temples was stippled thickly now with hairs as silvery as the oak leaves on the shoulders of his carefully tailored blouse.
Without conscious thought or effort, Milo snapped to and crisply saluted his old friend.
Jethro casually returned the salute, his smile broadening, then extended his hand to grip Milo's warmly and strongly. "I am the guy who never was going to accept an offered commission, of course, Milo. Look at me now, huh? All that the bar will sell is beer or a very inferior selection of wines, I'm afraid. But don't worry, we won't go dry for long. I have some cognac in the boot of my car, and far more and better at our destination. Ready to go?"
Milo smiled in return, saying with only a bare touch of sarcasm, "The colonel's wish must be my command, sir."
"Can the shit, Milo, and let's get in the fucking car before I remember who and what I now am and bring you up on charges of gross insubordination." Jethro chuckled, leading the way out of the crowded lobby.
The Lincoln V-12 coupe was shiny and looked to be brand-new. Jethro was an accomplished driver, and he handled the long, heavy vehicle with ease. Nonetheless, before they had finally crossed the Potomac into the peaceful-looking Virginia countryside, Milo had concluded that his nation's capital was never going to be an easy or safe place to drive large numbers of motor vehicles with any degree of rapidity; the circles and spokelike avenues leading off them had no doubt been elegant in an age of horse-drawn carriages, but they were fast becoming deathtraps with their burdens of far faster, far more numerous, far less biddable automobiles, taxis, trucks and the like, many of them apparently operated by suicidal or homicidal maniacs.
"How in the name of God can you get enough gas to drive this thing, Jethro?" demanded Milo. "I'll bet that that engine drinks as much gas, mile for mile, as a deuce-and-a-half, at least. Or doesn't rationing apply to field-grade officers?"
Jethro laughed. "Oh, yes, rationing applies to me, too, at least for my private vehicle when I'm not using it for Army business. But, my dear Milo, there is in this land of the free and home of the brave a thriving sub rosa market for such things as foods and liquors. These markets sell for only cash, no coupons necessary, just so long as the buyer is willing to pay substantially more than said items are actually worth. One also can buy any quantities of ration coupons from these same sources, and this is how I can continue to drive this fine, but always horrendously thirsty, automobile."
"You, a high-ranking officer of the Army of the United States of America, are dealing on the black market? Buying gas-rationing coupons that in all likelihood are counterfeits?" said Milo in mock horror. "Colonel Stiles, sir, I am frankly appalled!"
The heavy car ate away at the miles, and they drove into Loudon County, passing a sterling-silver flask of a fine cognac back and forth between them. At a turnoff from the main road onto a narrower, graveled one, Jethro pulled off onto a grassy shoulder beneath the spreading branches of a stand of stately, massive old oaks. Beside the car, skirting the road shoulder ahead, was a freshly painted white wooden fence some five feet high, and beyond the section of it immediately to his right, away in the distance across acres of grassy meadow, Milo could barely discern a scattering of animals that looked to be horses or cattle.
After taking a long pull from the quart flask, Jethro said, "Milo, my good old friend, you are about to be made privy to a secret known by no one else with the sole exception of Colonel James Lewis. I'll not ask for or expect any avowals that you'll not betray my trust in you, for did I not trust you implicitly, you'd not be here this day."
"Milo, forgive me, please, but I have not been completely candid with you in the years since I first met you. I am married, Milo, and you are about to meet my wife, Martine Stiles, as well as my two children, Per and Gabrielle."
"Before you ask the obvious, Milo, no, it has not been an easy life for her, but she understands me, my self-imposed exile and penance, she loves me deeply, and our children bind us one to the other despite my lengthy absences and necessarily brief returns. She is much younger than I am. I have known her for much of her life, you see, for she is the daughter of two old and very dear friends from my first days in Europe, years ago."
"I first bought this farm as a place for her to rear our children, before ever there were any to rear. It is fortunate that I happened to buy this particular farm, in this particular plac
e, for now, with my necessary trips to Washington every so often, I am able to spend more time with her and them than ever before." He chuckled. "So much so, that now it would appear that Martine will be bringing forth a new little brother or sister for them in about six months' time."
Jethro's pretty young wife was not the only surprise awaiting him in the rambling, gracious brick house nestled among its bounteous gardens fringed by a profusion of outbuildings with rolling meadows stretching out on every hand.
While a servant drove the Lincoln away, the petite blond woman first greeted her husband with an embrace and unabashed kisses. Even after bearing two children, so slender and fine-boned was she that her three-month pregnancy was already obvious, but her face radiated her soul-deep happiness and her blue eyes glowed with love each time she looked at the graying officer.
She welcomed Milo in a cultured French tinged with both Parisian and the Swiss dialect, beckoned over another servant to take his bag, then herself ushered him into her home. There, in the comfortably furnished and lavishly decorated parlor to the left of the entrance foyer, four wing chairs faced a huge hearth on which a log fire was laid but not yet lit behind a pierced-brass screen. Two of these chairs were occupied.
Rank and increased responsibilities had not made an easily obvious change in one line or hair of James Lewis' appearance. His new pinks and blouse fitted him like a glove, as his uniform always had for as long as Milo had known the man; the silver eagles on his shoulders did not look at all out of place on the sometime first sergeant, and the row of campaign and award ribbons affixed over the breast pocket of that selfsame blouse told at a casual glance that here stood not just another new-made civilian-soldier. But even as he pumped Lewis' big, hard hand, Milo was reeling numbly in shock at sight of the other guest in Jethro's home.