Free The Navigator of New York by Wayne Johnston Page A

solved, it seems worthwhile to point out that the strange case of Dr. Stead is by no means the strangest in the annals of Arctic exploration. Others have disappeared as surely as if, while sleepwalking, they attempted a crossing of the crevassed glaciers onto which not even the Eskimos will venture after dark.” This man from whom I was waiting to receive a letter about my father might easily be dead.
    As I lay in my warm bed, as I watched Aunt Daphne pile up heaping helpings on my dinner plate, I wondered where at that moment Dr. Cook was, wondered about his safety as I never had about my father’s.

• C HAPTER S IX •
    N EARLY SIX MONTHS AFTER OUR MEETING, BY WHICH TIME I HAD almost given up hope of hearing from Dr. Cook, Uncle Edward came downstairs for breakfast wearing the red paisley handkerchief. How conspicuous it seemed. It seemed impossible that Aunt Daphne would not guess why he was wearing it. As hard as it had been to hide my succession of disappointments, hiding my elation now was all but impossible. I was sure that my face matched the colour of the handkerchief, at which I could not stop staring. My heart was pounding. Uncle Edward was his usual impassive self. Not even I, who knew what he must be thinking, how anxious he must be that I do or say nothing to make his wife suspicious, could detect in his face anything unusual. How would I make it through a morning of school?
    Somehow I did, and at lunchtime I went to Devon Row, crossed the street, stopped. A hansom cab went by, but there were no pedestrians. I went around to the back, opened the gate, let myself in through the door marked “Doctor’s Entrance Only,” closed it quietly behind me, then tiptoed up the stairs.
    Uncle Edward was sitting in a chair on the landing, far enough from the window that he could not be seen from the outside. He was no longer wearing the red handkerchief. (But he was wearing it later, when he came home from work.) On the upper of his crossed legs was a book from which he glanced just long enough to put a finger to his lips. With a shooing motion of his hand, he indicated that I should not stop but go straight into the office.
    The rear door of it was wide open, left that way by him, no doubt, so that his nurse and his patients across the hall would not hear me. I pictured him sitting there on the landing the past few minutes, dreading my audible arrival. I went inside. I had been there once or twice before, but never by myself. I could hear murmuring from across the hall. A shadow fell across the frosted glass of my father’s door. A man putting on his hat. On the desk, there was nothing but a blotter and the pen my father had used to write prescriptions and referral letters, attached to the metal holder in which it stood by a gleaming silver chain. And his beach-rock paperweight, which rested on the far right corner of the blotter. The only wall-hanging was his Edinburgh diploma. There was an empty bookcase with glass doors, a dark brown leather sofa whose armrests were scrolled with studs of brass.
    The top drawer of the desk was open. Another precaution. It was as if Uncle Edward was sitting there in the gloom with his finger to his lips. Looking up at me from the otherwise empty drawer of the desk was an envelope that bore my name. DEVLIN. Only that. No doubt mailed like the first one, I thought, inside another envelope addressed to Uncle Edward. It bore no postmark, no return address. It was slit open. I took from inside it a note that read: “Just a rehearsal. No letter yet.” I replaced it in the envelope.
    Bitter with disappointment, I went back out to the landing. Uncle Edward extended his hand. I gave him the envelope. We went back inside. He struck a match, held it to the envelope, which he stood flame down in the grate of the fireplace so that in seconds there was nothing left but a wisp of glowing ash. Eyes fixed on it, he motioned with his hand for me to leave. I walked down the stairs slowly, as per his