Free The Whenabouts of Burr by Michael Kurland Page B

you find something. It would sure be nice to be able to prove I’m not crazy.” Pencil poised, he looked up at them. “I’m not, you know.”
    â€œI know,” Nate said. “I saw him this time, remember.”
    â€œThat’s right,” the attendant said happily, settling down to his puzzle. “Search away, gentlemen.”
    Ves led Nate into the steam room. “Tap the wall,” he said.
    â€œWhat for?” Nate asked.
    â€œDidn’t they teach you anything in Coast Guard Intelligence School besides port and starboard ?”
    â€œThere is no Coast Guard Intelligence School,” Nate told him. “There was one once, but it got misplaced. I was sent to Army Intelligence School at Fort Geronimo, Kansas.”
    â€œHaving been associated with this government for some time in my youth,” Ves said, “I am, somehow, not surprised.”
    â€œWent there for a year,” Nate told him. “Picked up a lot of useful skills. Tank recognition—they were big on tank recognition. Order of battle, uniforms of foreign officers, chain of command, marching, crawling over barbed wire, saluting, and playing poker; those were the major skills they stressed.”
    â€œWhat about raping and looting?” Ves asked.
    â€œIt wasn’t in my curriculum,” Nate said. “Only career Army officers took it. It was a seminar, I believe. Why am I tapping the walls?”
    â€œListen,” Ves told him. “If there’s a hollow space, or anything else funny behind the wall, it will sound different. Here, watch!” He went around the wall with his ear pressed against it, tapping it every few inches. It gave a solid thunk .
    The solid thunk continued everywhere either of them tapped, all around the wall, high and low. Ves finally stopped and glared accusingly at the ceiling. “Let’s try the locker room,” he said.
    Nate worked his way around the locker room walls, while Ves tried inside the lockers, over the lockers, and under them. “Incredible!” Ves said finally, sitting down on the wooden bench. “He came in here, he came not out of here, but he is here not. And my grammar isn’t nearly as mixed up as my mind right now. There must be a way. And if there is, I can find it; I know I can!”
    â€œI believe you,” Swift said. “Where do we look now?”
    â€œLet’s just stand back and examine these rooms,” Ves said. “Not search them, but look at them: see what they look like. See if they differ in any way from what they should look like. See if there is anything unusual or different about the rooms, no matter how subtle. Sherlock Holmes once solved a difficult case by noting how deep the parsley had sunk into the butter.”
    â€œRight,” Nate said, “different it is.”
    â€œDon’t humor me,” Ves said. “If you have a better idea, let’s have it.”
    â€œThat’s the difference between you and Sherlock Holmes,” Nate said. “He wouldn’t ever have acknowledged that there might be a better idea.” They both went back into the steam room and stood in the middle, staring at the four bare walls.
    â€œBare walls,” Nate said.
    â€œExcept for the steam pipes and valve,” Ves amended, “and that design carved into the tile.”
    â€œStrange little device,” Nate said, going over to the waist-high pattern and examining it. “It looks like the decorative friezework they did in the New York subway stations during the depression. A little WPA in the steam room, do you think?”
    The design was a simple one: a circle pieced out in green tile with a T inscribed in it in gold. “Probably the initial of the original owner,” Ves said.
    â€œYou said anything different,” Nate said.
    â€œI know, I know,” Ves came over and peered at the device, “but I didn’t mean… say, you know the grout between