“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 done 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 US of A 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,
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.