made it halfway to the office by the time I figured out what had happened. I was standing outside Central Terminal. I’ve never had to take the train anywhere, because I’ve lived in this city my entire life. But suddenly I knew I could never go to work again. I really don’t know why.”
“Why,” said the woman in the plaid coat.
“Well, because Enoch Hoffmann was gone,” Unwin said. “The Rook brothers, Cleopatra Greenwood, they’d all left. Sivart’s reports were—only reports. I could tell he didn’t care about the work anymore. What was the point?”
“The point.”
“Yes, I’m coming to it. I went into the terminal. I bought a cup of coffee and drank most of it. It was awful. I took a schedule of trains from the information booth, and I even bought a ticket. I was going to go into the country, and I was never coming back. Sivart had imagined his cottage in the woods—why shouldn’t I have mine? By then it was twenty-six minutes after seven in the morning. That’s when I saw you. You came through the revolving doors at the east end of the terminal, and you went to Gate Fourteen and waited. I watched you. I pretended to look at my train schedule, but all I could do was watch you. And when the train arrived, and no one came to meet you, and you turned around and went back into the city, I knew—just as certainly as I had known a moment before that I could never go back to work—that I would go back to work, that I could not leave the city. Not while you were in it, left alone to wait.”
“Wait,” said the woman in the plaid coat.
“I will,” Unwin said. “I have a bicycle that I clean and oil every day, and I have a hat that I’ll never part with. My umbrella does everything it’s supposed to do. I have a train ticket, and I keep it in my pocket, just in case that person you’re waiting for ever gets back. But what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I still don’t know your name.”
The woman in the plaid coat was applauding—all the guests were. Unwin turned to look at the stage. Miss Greenwood had joined the musicians. She went to the microphone, and the music struck up, slow and somber. Arthur leaned into his accordion as he played, and in his hands it breathed like a living thing. The words Miss Greenwood sang were unfamiliar to Unwin, except for the refrain, which he knew from somewhere. Maybe he had heard it on the radio. Yes, it might have been the song that was playing in Zlatari’s kitchen, behind the curtain in the Forty Winks.
Still I hear that old song
And I’m sure I belong
In my dream of your dream of me.
Applause rose up again, and several guests threw long-stemmed roses onto the stage. She caught a few of the flowers and let the others fall at her feet. Unwin clapped, too.
“Mr. Charles Unwin?”
He turned in his seat. Detective Pith, very much awake and still in his herringbone suit, stood at his shoulder. “You,” growled Pith. “Outside. Now.”
Unwin rose from his chair and followed the detective from the room. They went outside and stood under the portico, where a few sleepwalkers were quietly puffing on cigars and mumbling insensibly to one another. Pith swung his hat as though he were going to hit him. “Damn it, Unwin, are you trying to get us both killed? What are you doing here? You came with Greenwood, didn’t you? This is no good, Unwin, no good at all. Screed’s trying to pin a murder on you, and now you’re hanging around with Greenwood.”
“I’m trying to find Sivart,” Unwin said. “I thought she might know where he went.”
“The Agency’s through with the guy. If word gets out that you’re looking for him, it could bother people high up, and I mean very high up. People you don’t want to bother.”
Unwin fiddled with his umbrella; he could not get the clasp buttoned.
“Now, I didn’t expect to see you out in the field yet. That takes guts, Unwin, I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t take brains. You should have spent a day or two with your copy of the Manual. Have you read a word of it yet? If you want my advice, you’ll get out of here and forget about the Cat & Tonic, forget about Cleo Greenwood. Talking the way you