Free After Dachau by Daniel Quinn Page B

have to be repeated at least twice more.
    She listened, she paused, she thought. At last she said that Miss Crenevant’s class would be the best for my purpose. Miss Crenevant taught a world history class for seniors—seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. Dr. Reese said she’d have Miss Crenevant call me, unless I wanted to have her dragged out of class while I waited. I said it would be fine if she called at her convenience.
    She called during the luncheon break.
    “I’m not sure I understand what you want,” Miss Crenevant said. “Dr. Reese explained, but I’m not sure I have it right.”
    When I asked her what she was covering in her course, she said it was the period between the birth of Christ and the so-called Great War that broke out in Europe when the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated in Sarajevo.
    “That’s fine,” I said. “In fact, it couldn’t be better for my purpose,” which I then explained again.
    She listened, pondered. “It will be a good exercise for them,” she said at last, meaning her students, of course.
    “That’s what I thought,” I told her modestly. “Useful to me and a good opportunity for them to use what they’ve learned.”
    “We could actually do it tomorrow afternoon, if that’s not too soon for you.”
    “Tomorrow afternoon will be perfect,” I told her.
    She thought for a moment. “Will you want me to set it up? To explain to the girls what you want from them?”
    “No, I think I’d better do that.”
    She thought some more.
    “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been a classroom teacher.”
    “No, never.”
    “Then I feel I should warn you that girls of this age and social class—all very bright, very rich, and very spoiled—can be a handful, even for a veteran.”
    “Yes, I have some dim recollections of that kind from my own school days.”
    She replied with a silence that said I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, and she was doubtless right. I didn’t think it wise to explain that it would actually help if her girls focused on the possibility of humiliating me. It would distract them from the possibility of humiliating Mallory, for whose benefit the enterprise was being mounted.
    We arranged that Mallory and I would be escorted to the classroom by one of the girls, who would meet us at the school entrance between one and one-fifteen.
    Having been ditched and ignored for two and a half days, Mallory was predictably rather chilly when I finally reached her at her condominium apartment that night.
    “I’m not going to apologize,” I told her, “because I’ve been working on your behalf, and I had to leave to do it.”
    “Working how?” she wanted to know.
    “I can’t explain. I’ll have to show you. Will you come with me somewhere tomorrow?”
    “Where?”
    “If I tell you that, you’ll just ask why.”
    “Why shouldn’t I ask why?”
    “Because it’s something I have to show you. I’m not going to answer questions about it. Either you trust me or you don’t.”
    “I trust you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be curious.”
    “You can be curious all you want. At one o’clock you’ll know.”
    “Okay.”
    “Where shall I pick you up, at the apartment or the studio?”
    “The studio. At one o’clock?”
    “No, at noon sharp. I’ll tell you this much. You’ll probably feel more comfortable if you’re wearing something other than your painting clothes.”
    “You mean like a dress.”
    “Like a dress, yes.”
    “Am I supposed to impress someone?”
    “No, just the opposite. Something casual and inconspicuous will do fine.”
    She grunted unenthusiastically.
    “Noon,” I repeated.
    “I heard you,” she snapped, and broke off the connection with a bang.

A GOOD TEN MILES from the distractions and temptations of the nearest village, the Gramercy Park Academy for Girls stood in the center of an immense walled park as bright and cheery as a prison yard. The school itself, at the end of a suitably impressive