Then faintly, faintly, they heard the sirens approaching over the airstrip. The first to come was a fire crew, who put a ladder up against the door and got it open. Next to come were the police, who told them they were all under arrest. “You’re going to be let off in lots of ten,” one of the policemen said. “You’re going to be questioned.” He was gruff, but they were magnanimous. They were alive, and no incivility could disturb them. The police then began to count them off in lots. The ladder of the fire truck was the only way of getting down from the plane, and the older passengers mounted this querulously, their faces working with pain. Those who waited seemed immersed in the passivity of some military process; seemed to suffer that suspense of discernment and responsibility that overtakes any line of soldiers. Coverly was No. 7 in the last lot. A gust of dusty wind blew against his clothing as he went down the ladder. A policeman took him by the arm, a touch he bitterly and instantly resented, and it was all he could do to keep from flinging the man’s arm off. He was put with his group into a closed police van with barred windows.
A policeman took him again by the arm when he left the van and again he had to struggle to control himself. What was this testiness of his flesh? he wondered. Why did he loathe this stranger’s touch? Rising before him was the Central Police Headquarters—a yellow-brick building with a few halfhearted architectural flourishes and a few declarations of innocent love written in chalk on the walls. The wind blew dust and papers around his feet. Inside he found himself in the alarming and dreary atmosphere of wrongdoing. It was a passage into a world to which he had been granted merely a squint—that area of violence he glimpsed when he spread newspapers on the porch floor before he painted the screens. Roslyn man shoots wife and five children. . . . Murdered child found in furnace. . . . They had all been here, and had left in the air a palpable smell of their bewilderment and dismay, their claims of innocence. He was led to an elevator and taken up six flights. The policeman said nothing. He was breathing heavily. Asthma? Coverly wondered. Excitement? Haste?
“Do you have asthma?” he asked.
“You answer the questions,” the policeman said.
He led Coverly down a corridor like the corridor in some depressing schoolhouse and put him in a room no bigger than a closet, where there was a wooden table, a chair, a glass of water and a questionnaire. The policeman shut the door, and Coverly sat down and looked at the questions.
Are you the head of a household? he was asked. Are you divorced? Widowed? Separated? How many television sets do you own? How many cars? Do you have a current passport? How often do you take a bath? Are you a college graduate? High school? Grammar school? Do you know the meaning of “marsupial”; “seditious”; “recondite”; “dialectical materialism”? Is your house heated by oil? Gas? Coal? How many rooms? If you were forced to debase the American flag or the Holy Bible, what would be your choice? Are you in favor of the federal income tax? Do you believe in the International Communist Conspiracy? Do you love your mother? Are you afraid of lightning? Are you for the continuation of atmospheric testing? Do you have a savings account? Checking account? What is your total indebtedness? Do you own a mortgage? If you are a man, would you classify your sexual organs as being size 1, 2, 3 or 4? What is your religious affiliation? Do you believe John Foster Dulles is in Heaven? Hell? Limbo? Do you often entertain? Are you often entertained? Do you consider yourself to be liked? Well liked? Popular? Are the following men living or dead: John Maynard Keynes. Norman Vincent Peale. Karl Marx. Oscar Wilde. Jack Dempsey. Do you say your prayers each night? . . .
Coverly attacked these questions—and there were thousands of them—with the intentness of a guilty sinner. He had given his watch to the thief, and had no idea of how long it took him to fill out the questionnaire. When he was done, he shouted, “Hullo. I’m finished. Let me out of here.” He tried the door and found it open. The corridor was empty. It was night, and the window at the end of the hall showed a dark sky. He carried his questionnaire to the elevator and rang. As he stepped out of the elevator on the street floor, he saw a policeman sitting at a desk. “I lost something very valuable, very important,” Coverly said.
“That’s what they all say,” the policeman said.
“What do I do now?” asked Coverly. “I’ve answered all the questions. What do I do now?”
“Go home,” the policeman said. “I suppose you want some money?”
“I do,” Coverly said.
“You’re all getting a hundred from the insurance company,” the policeman said. “You can put in a claim later if you’ve lost more.” He counted out ten ten-dollar bills and looked at his watch. “The Chicago train comes through in about twenty minutes. There’s a cab stand at the corner. I don’t suppose you’ll want to fly again for a while. None of the others did.”
“Have they all finished?” Coverly asked.
“We’re holding a few,” the man said.
“Well, thank you,” Coverly said, and walked out of the building into a dark street in the town of West Franklin, feeling in its dust, heat, distant noise and the anonymity of its colored lights the essence of his loneliness. There was a newsstand at the corner, and a cab parked there. He bought a paper. “Disqualified Pilot Robs Jet In Midair,” he read. “A Great Plane Robbery took place at 4:16 this afternoon over the Rockies . . .” He got into the cab and said, “You know, I was in that plane robbery this afternoon.”
“You’re the sixth fare who’s told me that,” the driver said. “Where to?”
“The station,” Coverly said.
Chapter XX
It was late the next afternoon when Coverly finally made his way from Chicago back to Talifer. He went to Cameron’s office at once but he was kept waiting nearly an hour. Now and then he could hear the old man’s voice, through the closed door, raised in anger. “You’ll never get a Goddamned man on the Goddamned moon,” he was shouting. When Coverly was finally let in, Cameron was alone. “I’ve lost your briefcase,” Coverly said.
“Oh, yes,” the doctor said. He smiled his unfortunate smile. Then it was a toothbrush and some pajamas, Coverly thought. It was nothing, after all!
“There was a robbery on the plane coming West,” Coverly said.
“I don’t understand,” Cameron said. The light of his smile was undiminished.
“I have a newspaper here,” Coverly said. He showed Cameron the paper he had bought in West Franklin. “They took everything. Our watches, wallets, your briefcase.”
“Who took it?” Cameron asked. His smile seemed to brighten.
“The thieves, the robbers. I suppose you might call them pirates.”
“Where did they take it?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Cameron left his desk and went to the window, putting his back to Coverly. Was he laughing? Coverly thought so. He had duped the enemy. The briefcase had been empty! Then Coverly saw that he was not laughing at all. These were the painful convulsions of bewilderment and misery; but what did he cry for? His reputation, his absent-mindedness, his position; for the world itself that he could see outside his window, the ruined farm and the gantry line? Coverly had no means of consoling him and stood in a keen agony of his own, watching Cameron, who seemed then small and old, racked by these uncontrollable muscular spasms. “I’m sorry, sir,” Coverly said. “Get the hell out of here,” Cameron muttered and Coverly left.