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The boy in the picture had the face of the young man who had come to service my furnace in October. It was clearly Richard Atlee, only three or four years younger, wearing a sport shirt and jeans—all in all, a very conventional-looking young man. I handed him back the wallet through the window. “The soldier I don’t recognize,” I said playfully. “But I think I’ve seen the young man before.”

He took the wallet back without a word, and left me smiling dismally all by myself. I wanted to smooth over the rough moment we’d just had. But it was a feeble effort, and it didn’t win me back any of the affection I’d felt pouring out of him shortly before when he’d come thundering out of the woods in response to my calls.

“I’m sorry, Richard. I had to see it.”

“Sure.”

“It would’ve been against the law to let you drive out of here without it.”

“Sure.”

“And you can’t blame me for wanting to know you better.”

He shot me an odd glance.

“Drive carefully, will you?”

“Sure.” He turned the ignition and the motor started up instantly. When he was rolling backwards down the drive, I waved to him. “We’ll wait supper for you.”

That was the first time Richard Atlee went to town as my representative. I felt a great pleasure just standing there watching the car recede into the distance leaving in its wake a languid puff of road dust.

There was a strange inner comfort in the knowledge that he was with us now. Part of us, so to speak. If I were to feel ill or out of sorts or tired and there were errands in town, I wouldn’t have to go. Now there was a strong young man, faithful and dependable, whom I could send in my place.

What a comfort that is to a man in my state of health. Some one to lean on, someone to fall back upon in time of an emergency. And also, in the back of my mind—if something should happen to me, Alice wouldn’t be alone. Yes, even that crossed my mind. Alice’s welfare after my death was a source of great concern to me. Not as regards money, of course. There’d be enough for her to live modesdy, if not graciously, for the rest of her life. But Alice is not one to make friends easily.

How very touching, I thought again, that look of sheer relief on his face when he’d crashed through the thickets and saw me standing there.

I spent the afternoon with Jennings sparring about deductions and finally cleared up all the outstanding problems. After he left I gave the rest of the afternoon over to reading. I picked up the Blake that Richard had borrowed and thumbed through. Almost instantly, my eyes fell on the lines:

The little boy lost in the lonly fen,

Led by the wandering light,

Began to cry; but God, ever nigh

Appeared like his father, in white.

 

He kissed the child, and by the hand led,

And to his mother brought,

Who in sorrow pale, through the lonly dale,

Her little boy weeping sought.

It seemed almost fateful, seeing these lines first. And when I at last closed the book I was very happy.

Along about dusk a car rumbled up the driveway. I assumed it was Richard and went right on reading my newspaper. After about a quarter of an hour Alice poked her head into the parlor.

“Was that Richard who drove up?”

“Yes, I s’pose.”

“He’s not in here with you?”

“No.”

“Why doesn’t he come in?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

She looked at me oddly. “I think he’s just sitting out there.”

“Oh?”

I put my paper down and walked back to the kitchen. You could see the driveway through the window of the kitchen door. When I peered through it I could see my car, and through the half light of dusk, someone sitting behind the wheel.

“Is it Richard?” Alice asked.

“I think so.”

“Well, why is he just sitting there?”

I opened the door and stepped out onto the back porch. Just as I did that, the car door opened and Richard Atlee emerged from behind the wheel.

But still he didn’t come. He just hovered there tentatively in the half light by the car door and stared up at the house as if he were unsure about coming in.

“Something’s wrong,” Alice said and started to push past me. But I stopped her. “I’ll go.”

He stood in the middle of the living room groping for words while we sat there speechless and quaking, listening to his story:

“I kept waitin’ for him to wait on me,” he said. “Just kept waitin’ and waitin’. And still he didn’t pay no attention to me. All these people kept comin’ in after me and he’d wait on them first. They just come in and get right in front of me.” His cheeks were red and his voice fluttered with emotion. “He’d jus’ wait on them and pass me right by.”

“Who, Richard?” I said. “Mr. Petrie?”

“I don’t know—one of ’em.”

“One of the clerks?”

“Yeah—I guess. Some pimply little bastard.”

“But who?” I asked again. I was beginning to smoulder. “Will you stop interrupting the boy, Albert! Let him tell it is own way.”

“I kept tryin’ to get his attention,” Richard went on. “Then he said somethin’ under his breath and started shoutin’ at me. Said, ‘Let’s see your money.’ Just like that. Over and over again, ‘Let’s see your money.’ So I took out that bill you gave me. He took it and went in the back and stayed there a while. Finally he come out again and started waitin’ on other people.”

“He didn’t come back to you?” I said, growing more furious by the moment.

“No. Just went over to the others. People who come in after me. And started waitin’ on ’em. Just like I wasn’t there.”

“But you asked for your money back?” Alice said.

“I did. And he said I didn’t have no money. Said I had nothin’ and told me to get out—”

“Did you go?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied, as much surprised at my question as I was by his answer. “Which one was it?” I asked, growing more and more livid as the story unfolded.

“I don’t know,” he said. “This pimply little guy.”

“It wouldn’t be Petrie,” said Alice. “He wouldn’t do a thing like that. Not to us. We’ve given him so much business.”

“Richard,” I said, “you did mention the fact you were picking these items up for me? You did mention my name?”

He nodded, his head going furiously up and down.

We ate our supper in gloomy silence. Richard scarcely touched his plate. Alice had made him a peach Melba that night. It was one of his favorites, but it remained untouched on his plate.

“Don’t let it bother you, Richard,” I said. “We’ll drive over to Petrie’s in the morning and straighten this whole thing out.”

Suddenly he stood up. It was a bolting motion that shot him to his feet. It startled Alice so that she dropped a coffee spoon into an empty dessert plate. In the next instant, without a word of parting, he turned and left the table. He went directly to his room.

Alice watched the peach Melba dissolving slowly in Richard’s plate. “Poor boy. He feels so bad.”

“He feels he’s failed us.”

Alice turned a troubled face toward me. “I’m worried.”

“Worried? About what, for heaven sake? I’ll go down there in the morning and straighten it out.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course. Petrie’s a good man. He’s reasonable. I’m sure there’s a perfectly plausible—”

“Albert.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he’s telling us the truth?” She’d put her finger on exactly what had been troubling me.

“At first, I didn’t,” I said without any hesitation. “But now I’m convinced of it.”

She kissed me and then together we cleared the dishes from the table.

“Mr. Petrie,” I said after several routine amenities. It was the following morning and I was standing at one of the counters of the nursery, a handful of people drifting about me. From where I stood I could look out into the greenhouse, cluttered with a multitude of blooms. Sun streaming through the glass transoms was transformed into a soft green diffusion of light. The air was moist and heavy with the dungy smells of fertilizer, peat moss, and verdant growing things. From somewhere in the greenhouse, a canary was singing its heart out.

“What time did you say this was?” asked Petrie after I’d told him Richard’s story.

“Around four P.M.”

“Yep,” he shook his head emphatically. “I was here, all right. But I don’t recall no such incident. Leastways I didn’t see nothin’ like that. Tell me again what the boy looked like.”

Again I gave him a fairly detailed description of Richard.

“I’d sure remember somebody who looked like that.” He scratched his head.

“Then you don’t recall him?”

“Nope. Not offhand.”

Petrie was not a good liar. His face flushed when I looked at him closely and he showed the strain of trying to affect a look of earnest concern. He could scarcely meet my eyes.

“Maybe one of the other boys waited on him, Mr. Graves.”

“Would you call them please?”

His lashes fluttered like two moths above his eyes. “Ernie,” he called. “George.”

Two youths converged on us from different directions of the shop.

“This here’s Mr. Graves,” said Petrie. “He’s got some questions to ask you.”

The one called Ernie was an oafish, shambling lad whose mouth hung open chronically. The other one, George was a smirking little character in his early twenties with excessively oily hair and bad skin.

Seeing the two of them there—and with Richard’s vague description of a “pimply bastard” to go on, I put my money squarely on George. Even if I’d had no description at all, I’d have put my money on George. There was a slithering, conspiratorial thing about him, from his toes right up to his sleek, little bullet-shaped head.

I related the story once again, this time for the two boys, making sure to present the whole tiling in the most innocent light. As if it had been nothing but the most honest sort of misunderstanding.

When I finished I was staring into blank faces. The mouth of the one called Ernie hung open even wider in a look of total incomprehension. Both of them denied having any encounter such as the one I described.

“Now, you’re sure,” said Petrie, addressing the two of them with a voice full of fraudulent severity, just for my benefit.

They both nodded blankly, while all about them was the look of angelic choir boys.

Petrie shrugged and looked sympathetically at me. “Maybe he went to some other nursery.”

“No,” I said, “he came here.”

“Might’ve lost the money someplace, somehow, and was too scared to tell you. You know how boys are—” He laughed.

I was about to say something rude, but I checked myself.

“Do you have any other sales help? Part-time people who aren’t here every day?”

“These are the only two I got,” said Petrie. “Both good boys.” George was beaming unctuously at me.

“Wait a moment,” I said and marched to the front door. I opened it and called out, “Richard. Would you step in here a moment?”

He’d been sitting outside in the car. It was still quite early in the morning and there were not more than a half-dozen customers in the store. Richard’s appearance was such as to pull them all together into a small knot of gaping inquisitive people.

I took him by the arm and guided him to the place where the two boys stood. “Richard, which one of these gentlemen took your money yesterday?”

He pointed instantly to George. “That one.”

“He’s a God damned liar!” said George, suddenly red in the face. “I never seen him.”

Richard stiffened beside me. I now directed my remarks to Petrie, speaking as if George didn’t exist at all. “I’ve known Richard for several months now. I’ve never known him to lie.”

“He’s the one,” said Richard, once again pointing to George.

“I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” said George. “I never seen him. I don’t have his money. He’s crazy.”

Richard started to move for George, who quickly ducked behind Ernie. The one called Ernie started to shuffle his feet uncertainly. It was a tense moment when I reached out and checked Richard. A low murmur swept through the store.

“Mr. Petrie,” I said, “I won’t be able to do any more business with you until my fifty dollars is returned and I have an apology. At that time I’ll consider the matter closed and we’ll never mention it again. Until that time, I’ll take care of all my gardening needs over in Banbury.” Petrie was flushed and a little embarrassed about the other people in the store. As he spoke he made a clumsy effort to appear very calm. But his eyes were more guilty than ever. There was a quaver in his voice. “Suit yourself, Mr. Graves, I’ll be sorry to lose your business.” When he stalked out, George was smiling again more broadly than ever.

Driving home that morning, I sat fuming at the wheel, too furious to talk. Richard was also silent. But at a certain point, more than halfway home, he suddenly stirred and spoke: “I’ll get your money back.” There wasn’t a trace of agitation in his voice. It all had an icy calm to it. I should’ve heeded those words. I should’ve paid more attention to the almost nerveless, unfeeling quality with which the line was spoken.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, “Petrie’s a sensible man. I’m sure we’ll fine a check in the mail in a few days.”

“No, we won’t,” he said, then clamped his mouth shut as if he never intended to speak again.

I slowed the car down and look sideways at him. “What did you say?”

But he didn’t answer. He just sat there staring straight ahead at the road unfolding slowly before us.

I knew he felt badly—responsible for the loss of the money and thinking that he’d failed us. He’d been gulled by a slick seed salesman and it bothered him. It would’ve bothered me, too—a sleezy, unctuous petty larcenist like George. Just recalling that nasty little smirk as we were leaving rankled me. I can imagine what it did to him.

That afternoon I thought it was a good time to unveil my surprise. Shortly after lunch I asked him if he’d like to go fishing with me. To my surprise he said that he would. He seemed almost eager about it. But he said that he had no equipment. Whereupon, I went to the closet and produced a long cylindrical cardboard tube wrapped in gift paper, and handed it to him. I had had it sent out to me from town a few days before.