“I knocked,” I explained plaintively. “Then I banged and I pounded, Turtle.”
He nodded understandingly. “I’m too used to sleeping through barrages, Bit.” He rubbed the back of his neck and jerked his head around sharply so that something cracked hollowly. This made him feel better but it made me nervous. “Best thing to do is call me by name.”
“Sergeant? Or,” and I grinned maliciously, “Turtle?”
His glower dissolved into an affectionate grin.
“Sarge,” he suggested with a gravelly growl. He raised himself up, deftly knocking a single cigarette from the pack to his lips. “Jeez but it’s good to see you, Little Bit. You’re as thin as a stick but you look great to this old horse.”
“It’s wonderful to see you, too,” I agreed, “but I don’t exack-a-tally like you hobnobbing with the brass before coming to see me.”
Turtle scowled, his glance sliding from mine before he looked back. “I did. I called your boardinghouse and you’d gone out somewhere.”
“When?” I exclaimed, annoyed I hadn’t been told of his call and sick I hadn’t seen him earlier.
“Day before yesterday. I’d just got in.”
“Day before
Oh, yes. Mrs. Everett did say I’d had a couple of phone calls. I was at the dean’s,” and I grimaced at the memory of that “take-it-easy-now” interview. “You called twice.”
“Naw,” he contradicted, surprised. “Just once. Like I said. The lady didn’t know when you’d be back. And I got involved.”
I grinned at him and he waved off the suggestion in my smile that he’d gone off on a bat.
“When I called yesterday morning, you’d just left for the major’s. So I came on down. Lined up my targets.”
“Why did you have to see the major?” I asked as casually as I could.
Turtle looked me squarely in the face, his jaw set, his eyes bleak.
“Comp’ny business,” he growled in a flat no-nonsense voice.
“One of my father’s companies?” I asked.
Turtle didn’t so much as blink.
“I’ve known you since you were an hour old, James Carlysle Murdock. This is company business and that’s all you’ll get from me. Flat out!”
There is nothing stubborner than a Boston Irishman when he gets set. I’d seen Turtle like this a couple of times before. Once with an inspecting general and it wasn’t Turtle who gave in. I acknowledged his obstinacy by standing up abruptly.
“Made you chicken ‘n’ dumplings. And the sun’s over the yardarm.”
Turtle’s face broke into a slow, grateful smile. He cuffed me affectionately on the shoulder. “Good girl.”
He rose and said, through a massive yawn, “Sprung a bottle loose from my sister’s bastard of a bartending husband. God, what a stingy - he is.”
“She must like him. She married him.”
“Ha! Don’t remember Rene very well do you? She had to!” Turtle’s mirthless laugh was accompanied by the multiple cracking of his knuckles.
“Oh, you know I hate that sound, Turtle. Speaking of marriage, is the major?”
Turtle looked at me sharply.
“Or is that company business too?” I added sweetly.
Turtle shook his head. “He was married.” The sergeant paused thoughtfully. “But it broke up sometime before Pearl. He’s been in a while but he’s no Pointer.”
His bachelor status was more of a relief to me than it should have been, considering our brief association. His not being an Academy man was a surprise. I could usually spot the ninety-day wonders. The way Turtle looked at me then decided me against further pumping. It was natural for me to want to know the scuttlebutt about my guardian but if Turtle was reticent about the major, there was no surer indication of the old sergeant’s respect for him.
“Major well liked?”
Turtle nodded solemnly and I left it at that. As Turtle rummaged in his bag for the bottle, I closed the door quietly. I got the locker key from my B-29 and turned resolutely to the back room. If they won’t tell me, I’ll find out myself.
An old chest of drawers had been pushed next to the three footlockers. So, with some pushing and shoving, I got the top locker onto the chest. The major was probably in his study so he wouldn’t hear me rumbling things.
The key fit into the lock all right enough but it took me a little time to get the key to turn the tumblers. Salt air probably, plus the freezing temperatures of the room.
Gritting my teeth, I threw the lid up, exposing the compartmented tray on top. I sighed deeply; there certainly wasn’t much to cry about in this assortment of badly mimeographed orders of the day, manuals, language dictionaries, torn map fragments, handkerchiefs and unmatchedsocks, thready shoulder patches. I could even regard Dad’s Sam Browne belt sanguinely. I poked around unenthusiastically until I realized I was evading the issue.
I lifted the tray out and below it were things that had meaning for me. Stolidly I lifted out the top stamp album. It was, naturally, the very one I’d given him for Christmas three years ago. I found myself stroking the red leather, tracing the gold tooling with an idiot finger as my throat began to tighten. I shook my head, resolved not to cry again, and leafed carefully through the pages. These were his commemoratives and consequently incomplete. I put it carefully aside, my fingers trembling as I reached for the two blue albums, recalling how often they had appeared on the evenings which Dad and I had spent companionably together. He’d spread them out on a table or the bed, losing himself in his hobby for hours of patient study and arrangement, cursing because he missed the one vital stamp that would double the worth of the unit. Beneath the two blue books was the shabby brown one which had been his first. I lifted it a few inches and then dropped it hurriedly. For it covered the triangular shape of a folded flag and that was too much.
Hastily I put the other three albums back in place and started to unpack the other end of the locker. A canvas-wrapped rectangle disclosed a handsome, blue leather, gold-tooled volume bearing the inscription “Briefmarken.” This must have been the German album he had picked up in Paris which had excited him so much. I opened it and two pieces of foolscap fell out. In Dad’s handwriting at the top of the first sheet was the initial “D.” D for Dad? Dog Company?
Below was a list headed “French China,” broken into several categories. The first was headed “handstamped,” carmine and purple, 1903, 1900, 1902-4. The second included stamps from 1 centime to 75, with the 75 underscored heavily for Tchongking, Mong-tseu, Yunnan Sen (Yunnanfu) also Packhoi.
I dredged up what I could remember of half-heard philately lectures from Dad. The 75-centimes was something special but I couldn’t remember what. I did remember that before the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 many of the foreign countries involved in that blatant exploitation had maintained their own postal offices, quite rightly distrusting the vagaries of the Chinese system. Had Dad actually run across a complete series? Oh, that would be a find. I leafed through the album carefully. There were even some of the 75-centimes stamps from each of the various French-China offices, a rather odd combination of deep violet and orange.
I looked back at the list. Just before the carmine and purple handstamp on the 1900 category and the 75-centimes in all the French-China divisions was a tiny checkmark. I glanced again into the album but the ones checked were there. Well, I’d have to dig out the Scott Stamp Catalogue and see what exactly he meant. Perhaps these were more valuable. Although even as it stood these particular stamps were valuable by themselves if I remembered correctly.
Beneath the Briefmarken volume were two more rectangular shapes, carefully wrapped in heavy paper, neatly tied with thin cord. I felt the edges, assuming these were more albums; evidently the covers were made of wood. Or these might be the little surprises Dad had bought and never had time to mail to me. Well, I couldn’t look at them right now. I pushed them to one side and there, half hidden by underwear and socks, were several boxes of forty-five shells and Dad’s service revolver, holster and all. Turtle was slipping up badly, sending live ammunition and a gun. I’d roast him for it.