Shadowland

    'You're right. That's not what we were talking about.'

    'Okay. So let's go back to the towers of ice and the prince and the three ravens and the magic fish.'

    'By all means, let us leave the Hillmans behind. I have an idea.'

    'It's about time.'

    'You were talking about rescue. Prince — ravens — that stuff.'

    'I guess. Sure. I guess.'

    'Why don't you come to visit Cole Collins with me over Christmas? I'm supposed to go see him. Come with me. Then you could meet him.'

    Tom felt an extraordinary mix of emotions, fear and pleasure and dread and anticipation, protectiveness and weakness: He looked at Del, and wanted to embrace him. He saw Del all alone in an Arctic landscape. Then he thought of his father and said, 'I can't. I just can't. I'm sorry.'

    It took him a second to realize that Del was crying.

    'Sometime I will. I will, Del. Jesus, stop that. Let's do some card tricks or something — that shuffle you were showing me.'

    'I don't have to be awake to shuffle cards,' Del said. 'Whatever you want, Master.'

TWO

The Magic Show

1

On the Monday before the nine-week exams, Laker Broome announced frigidly in chapel that an eighteenth-century glass owl had been stolen from the refectory room at Ventnor School, and that the Ventnor headmaster had told him that the theft must have occurred during the afternoon of our football game. 'Mr. Dunmoore is a tactful man, and he did riot directly accuse our school of harboring the thief, but there are certain inescapable facts. The Ventnor collection is regularly dusted. Last Saturday the pieces on open shelves were dusted by the school housekeeper at eleven-fifteen, shortly before our arrival at the school. They were doing their best to give us a good impression of Ventnor, gentlemen. After our departure it was noticed that the piece was missing, and the matter was immediately reported to Mr. Dunmoore. It represents a serious loss, not only because the piece in question is valued at something like twelve hundred dollars, but because its theft renders the collection incomplete. Therefore, the value of the entire Ventnor collection is affected. And that is a matter of several hundred thousand dollars.'

    Mr. Broome whipped his glasses from his head and took a step back from the lectern. 'It is also a matter of the honor of this school, which is beyond any value. I do not wish to believe that any of our boys would do anything so disgraceful, but I am forced to believe it. It is abhorrent to me, but I must accept that looking at me this moment is the boy who stole that owl. Ventnor is a boarding school. Over the weekend, extensive searches were undertaken in the quarters of both students and staff — not a single person at the school failed to cooperate. So you see where that puts us, gentlemen.'

    The glasses went back on the taut face. 'We have only a few boys at this school capable of such a disgusting act, , and we know who they are. We believe we know the identity of the thief. I want him to come forward. I want the boy to identify himself to me personally sometime during the school day. Things will go much easier for him if he voluntarily accepts the responsibilities for his actions. If the boy has the courage to confess his deed, we will be able to limit his punishment to expulsion. Otherwise, more serious measures will be called for.'

    Mr. Broome inclined his head to look directly at us in the first two rows. He stared almost pugnaciously at Dave Brick, then at Bob Sherman, then at Del Nightingale. 'I promise you,' he said, 'that the culprit will be found out. Dismissed.'

    As we filed out, Dave Brick bulked up beside me. He grabbed my elbow. 'He thinks I did it!'

    'Quiet,' I said.

    'What do we do?'

    I knew what he meant. We both turned to look for Skeleton Ridpath, and saw him slouching out of the seniors' row, hands in pockets, smiling faintly. We were both too afraid of him to report what we had seen. We went up the stairs in silence.

    'But they must know,' Dave moaned. 'He's the only one who . . . '

    We had reached the door of Thorpe's classroom, and Dave Brick exhaled loudly, a sound of pure despair. His skin had suddenly gone white and oily — terror made him look like a thief.

    Inside, Mr. Thorpe began to shout almost at once. Of the tirade I can remember only a few words, one of the Latin tags which peppered his classroom rejoinders. Mala causa est quae requirit misercordiam. It is a bad cause which asks for mercy. Ostensibly he was speaking of the exams in two days, but all of us knew that he meant the theft as well. Several times he used the word 'vermin.' It was a harrowing session, and it left all of us shaken.

    As we left Thorpe's classroom to go to our lockers, I looked down across the glassed-in court and saw Skeleton sneaking out through the big doors at the back of the stage. Damn you, I thought, damn you, damn you, damn you. Do us all a favor and flunk out.

2

One the Monday the exam grades were posted outside the library, I shoved my way up to the board with the freshman list. I read down it to find my name, and saw that I had more or less the same grades as my rivals. We could hear the seniors shouting and groaning before their own board.

    Mrs. Tute struggled through us to get to the library door, muttering, 'Heavens! Heavens!' Her palsied head looked pained and angry — all of the staff had looked irritated since the theft at Ventnor.

    Back at the Upper School after lunch, I saw that only Hollis Wax was standing before the seniors' grade list, and I crossed the hall and stood beside him. 'You never gave me those gin-and-tonics,' he said. 'Freshman labor is unreliable this year.' 'Yes, sir,' I answered, and searched out Ridpath, S., hoping for a row of F's. When I found his name I was amazed to see that he had three A's and two B's. Hollis Wax had nothing better than a C. 'Nosy maggot,' he said, and dropped his books on the floor. I picked them up and did ten push-ups and tied his shoes.

3

Dave Brick had been summoned to Laker Broome's office. The note was delivered to Mr. Thorpe's class in the hands of Mrs. Olinger, who looked as bruising and chill as an iceberg: even Mr. Thorpe submitted quietly to her presence. He unfolded the note, looked both stern and pleased, and said, 'Brick, see the headmaster.' Poor Brick the Prick shuffled his books into his briefcase and trembled toward the door. He'd had a particularly brutal haircut just before the exams, and on his cannonball head all the visible flesh turned bright pink. After that he was not seen for the rest of the morning. His frightened ghost seemed to wail from his empty desks during the two remaining classes before lunch.

    'Actually, it's neat,' Sherman told me. 'This way, Snake proves that he runs a taut ship, and everybody else is off the hook.'

    Brick's absence from classes and later from his table at lunch affected the teachers much as it did Sherman. They were more relaxed; and most of us, seeing their new ease, realized with a little shock that the staff had also decided that Brick was the thief. I decided that if Brick had been expelled, I would see Mr. Fitz-Hallan privately and tell him what I knew.

    But Brick was sitting on the stone back steps of the Upper School as we came up from lunch, and he saw us and stopped tapping his slide-rule case against the concrete. The five or six of us walking together stalled for a moment, unsure of how to treat him. But then we realized that he would not still be at the school if Broome had expelled him during the first period, and we surged forward, full of questions.

    He did not want to answer most of them. 'Hey, guys, all he wanted was just to talk to me — honest. That's all he wanted.' Close up, it was obvious that he had been crying, but he said nothing about it and we were too embarrassed to ask; though I saw Bobby Hollingsworth revving himself up to say something truly vile, he had the sense to check it before someone punched him. Dave Brick had been given the complete Lake-the-Snake treatment, and he had not deserved it and he had come through it well; at that moment he had more goodwill than he'd ever known at Carson.