“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.
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.
It was closing time and the bus he took home was crowded. He tried to judge himself along traditional lines. Had he refused to yield up the briefcase he might have wrecked the plane and killed them all; but mightn’t this have been for the best? What could he anticipate or what could he look back upon with any calm? When he went back to work in the morning what office would he report to? What had Cameron wanted of him in the first place? What sense could he make of the old man sobbing at his window? Would Betsey, when he got home, be watching TV? Would his little son be in tears? Would there be any supper? Some vision of St. Botolphs in the light of a summer evening appeared to him. It was that hour when the housewives called their children in for supper with those small bells that used to be used for summoning servants to the table. Silver or not, they all had a silvery note and Coverly recalled this silvery ringing now from all the back stoops of Boat Street and River Street, calling children in from the banks of the river.
