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  “Dining upstairs?” Thatcher asked.

  “No,” George replied. “I think I’ll drop in on The Ivy League Club for lunch.”

  “George, you are a sucker for punishment.”

  Lancer could not honestly deny this as he was taxiing up to the Club. He did not expect to enjoy lunch: the food was terrible and he did not have high hopes for the conversation. Yet, because of all the Lancers who had attended Dartmouth for so many years he felt obligated to keep a watching brief.

  There was at least no need for delicate introduction of the subject troubling him and others. The first person Lancer saw after entering the gloomy lobby was Ralph Armitage, who was coming down the staircase looking shaken.

  “My God,” he burst forth instantly, so shocked that conventional greetings were superfluous. “It’s true George. There’s a cop up here. He won’t let me into the Dartmouth office. Says that somebody is going to come down and search it. I didn’t believe it. I really didn’t.”

  Lander, trading away his topcoat, found that Armitage was waiting to join him on the way to the dining room. There was, in short, no need to ask. The Dartmouth Club had learned that the estimable Elliot Patterson was now a fugitive from justice.

  “I just heard about this,” said a new voice. “Oh you’re here too Mr. Lancer? Excellent.”

  Marsden, a symphony in conservative tailoring, had hurried up. “To be quite truthful, I find it very difficult to believe Elliot is a hit and run killer.”

  “You’d believe it,” Armitage interrupted, “if you went upstairs and tried to get into our offices.” They’ve got a cop standing guard, big as life.”

  Marsden was horrified.

  They had reached the dining room and were being escorted to a corner table by an aged steward. A table for four Lancer noted. It was assumed on all fronts that Marsden had rushed to the Club to join the Dartmouth Committee deliberations. This in fact was why he had come, but nevertheless he nettled.

  “Even on the Expressway, police terrify me,” Marsden babbled in a high nervous voice. “But here at the Club!”

  Lancer could not decide whether this was an ill-timed stab at humor. Whatever it was, it succeeded in restoring Ralph. Glossing over his own shock he glared at Marsden across the top of his menu.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said sourly. “No use letting the whole dining room know. And this isn’t a ticket for speeding. This is a manslaughter charge.” He turned to George, one man of sense to another. “Why couldn’t the darn fool stop? Bad as it was…oh what? Oh I’ll take the vegetable soup. Then the leg of lamb.”

  After a stately pause for ordering the battle resumed.

  Marsden was openly spiteful. “That’s very easy to say, Ralph. Elliot was probably drunk as a fish.”

  “He doesn’t drink much,” Ralph retorted. “Look, no matter what happened, speculating about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. The thing is Elliot seems to be on the run.”

  Marsden said nastily, “I suppose you think we should ask him to resign.” Just then Dunlop arrived full of apologies for his tardiness and added a new constraint.

  George was not the man to let a lack of official standing keep him from taking a hand. Clearly time for that hand had come. “This is tragic,” he said calmly. “I think the best thing we can do is hope that Elliot’s connection with the college will not get blown out of proportion. In the meantime, let’s ignore the entire affair. Of course we all hope that this is simply another misunderstanding.”

  Marsden nodded but Dunlop studiously kept his eyes on his grapefruit.

  Ralph said, “I took that line too, until I got upstairs and saw the cop.”

  Lancer continued to counsel prudent inaction, unsurprised by Armitage’s disproportionate response to the presence of one lone policeman. On the contrary, he understood it very well. Hit and run murder is like famine in India and the atom bomb; dreadful but remote. The mind registered but the spirit remained aloof. Only when the world’s evils touch homely details do most of us respond. The single charred doll at the holocaust. One torn letter on a battlefield. A shovelful of dirt at the graveyard.

  “I never thought I’d see the day when we had cops at the Club,” said a portly gentleman pausing at their table. “What’s this I hear about your Patterson killing his wife and kids?”

  Surprisingly Marsden took up the cudgels. “We had the police here during the New Year’s Open House you recall. And Elliot has been in an accident. This is simply a formality.”

  He was quelling enough to repel the portly gentleman, who had misbehaved disgracefully during the aforesaid open house, but his departure revealed a middle aged man with a meager face and shrewd eyes that brooked no nonsense. Pulling up a chair he joined the party.

  “Now what is all this,” he demanded testily. I’ve been hearing more darn nonsense about Patterson. What exactly is going on?”

  Whelby Kitchener, treasurer of the Club, was a highly expert real estate appraiser. His usual manner of barely suppressed moral outrage made it a kindness as well as a pleasure to convey bad news to him. Ralph did so.

  “We’re not broadcasting it.” Here Kichener bridled at the implication. “But Patterson appears to be wanted by the police for a hit and run accident. From the little we know, it seems that he’s taken it on the lam. At any rate, no one has seen him since last Monday, when we had our Committee meeting.

  Kitchener looked at him without enthusiasm. “So that explains why I have not received the bond.”

  The silence was complete. Then: “What bond?” George asked with a sinking heart.

  Kitchener eyed him snappily. “The bearer bond for $50,000 that Mrs. Curtis has donated to Dartmouth.”

  The committee came to life: “That’s right. I remember.”

  “Of course.”

  This litany soothed Kitchener. “I understand that Patterson picked up the bond from Mrs. Curtis sometime over the weekend, although why these old women insist in keeping valuables in their homes…”

  Marsden nodded. “That’s right. He said you’d have the bond on Wednesday. Remember, we congratulated Elliot on pulling it off? We sat around discussing it.”

  “I missed most of that,” Dunlop mumbled, but Marsden still went on.

  “Elliot was tickled pink to finally have his hands on the bond and we kid him about how great he was with old ladies until the boys arrived for their interviews.”

  Marsden’s garrulity struck Lancer as forced and out of character, but Kitchener merely demanded, “Well where is the bond now?”

  Dunlop looked up. “Maybe it is upstairs in the file cabinet, Mr. Kitchener. I remember scooping up those folders and putting them away before we went out to the waiting room to see the kids.”

  “And,” said Ralph, not giving Kitchener any opportunity to deprecate such arrangements, “that office is now locked and guarded by a policeman. You will have to wait.”

  Kitchener rose. “I should very much like to see the policeman who can keep me out of an office containing a $50,000 bond for which I am in any way responsible.”

  He strode off.

  “Hurrah for the old team,” said Marsden.

  “As I was saying…” George recommenced.

  For 15 minutes they discussed the repercussions, probable, possible, and avoidable, of Patterson’s difficulties. It was agreed to bend every sinew to keep newspaper coverage to a minimum, and failing that, to keep references to Dartmouth altogether out. It was decided that the Admission Committee would continue to interview applicants, acting for the time being as a three man body. It was decided that flowers for Mrs. Patterson were premature. Indeed, the grating personality conflicts that characterized the Committee were temporarily put aside over the question of how to indicate appropriate support and sympathy. Somebody had mentioned a book when Kitchener reappeared. “Hah,” he said in triumph.

  “Did you?”

  There was no real need to ask. Only difficulties overcome could produce that self-satisfaction. Phone
calls, contacts in the Mayor’s office, sheer force of personality finally put Kitchener into the Club files. Striding through the waiting room he had stalked into the inner office ignoring the resentful policeman at his heel.

  “And did I find a $50,000 bearer bond? I did not. I found no Curtis file at all. Do you know what that means?”

  Again Marsden surprised George with his readiness for combat. “Of course we know what that means. It means that Patterson was too careful to leave that bond here overnight. He took it home with him, just as right and proper as anybody could want. Unless, of course, it means that you simply didn’t look in the right drawer.”

  Before Kitchener could riposte, Ralph raked his flank. “Elliot is extremely careful about financial details. Whelby. We should have thought of that. He certainly wouldn’t leave anything of value in a file cabinet.

  Whelby gave ground. “You’re right,” he admitted. “At least that fits in with my previous dealings with Patterson. He’s always been very careful. He was the one who insisted on receipts for every transfer. First rate methods.”

  George contributed his own soothing syrup. “And remember he may have left that bond in the safe at Target. Or did any of you actually see the bond itself?”

  After thoughtful reconstruction of the recent past, the Committee agreed that the discussion of Mrs. Curtis’s donation had centered on suitable ways to express gratitude rather than on the bearer bond itself.

  “In fact,” said Marsden, “When I heard you were thinking of a letter from the president, I remember suggesting that the old lady might like being invited up for the weekend.

  Nods concurred, but Kitchener was impatient. “Well I shall certainly be in touch with Gabe immediately. But,” he brightened slightly, “have you considered what may have happened if Elliot had that bond with him? For the most upright reasons of course?”

  Ralph sounded hollow. “If that’s so, Elliot is trying to escape from the police and just happens to have a $50,000 bearer bond to help him.”

  Given the current situation, it was not surprising that there were no more testimonials to Patterson.

  “I think the best thing to do,” George said falling back on a time tested technique, “is to wait and see.”

  After all, as he later reported to Thatcher, sufficient unto the day….

  Chapter 6

  Supplementary Reading on Reserve

  The fact Patterson, until days ago a model husband, devoted father, pubic spirited citizen, and exemplary employee, had become a hit and run killer did not prove newsworthy enough to distress the loyal sons of Dartmouth. There were no headlines. But the brief, uninformative article about two dead teenagers, one of them an honor student, describing police inquiries as vigorous was not inaccurate. A uniformed policeman on the second floor was enough to tell the whole Ivy League Club that Patterson, and the Club, was in trouble. Sally, after her initial shock, knew she must break the bad news to Target. She was taken aback to discover that her call came hard on the heels of two detectives. Target already knew.

  “Yes Sally,” Marian had said in her cool voice. “No they just asked routine questions. Of course there was nothing to say. Yes I agree this is some sort of mistake. No one knowing Elliot could believe it for a moment. I told them so. Now is there anything we can do for you? Oh yes, Gabe wants to know if you’re all right for money? Fine. Well I’ll keep in touch. Bye.”

  She put down the phone and looked at her employer. “Gabe, you are a coward.”

  He admitted it frankly. “I usually like the wives,” he said truthfully. “But Sally,” and he shrugged.

  Marian was amused. Gabe’s approach to women, from 13 to 90 was playfully tenderly flirtatious. Marian had seen a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee blossom under it. But even the most decorous lovemaking requires some response. Marian treasured the memory of an evening a Target dinner for a departing colleague, when Sally smiled kindly at Gabe’s performance, then turned the discussion to the antipoverty program in Westchester County.

  Marian herself had passed from woman to colleague within six weeks of her arrival at Target.

  “Sally still has faith in Elliot? Gabe asked.

  “She knows he could never leave the scene of an accident,” Marian quoted. “I agree with her.”

  This last said something to Gabe. He wriggled slightly. “Of course. Of course. Still if he was drunk…”

  He peeped at her, and then subsided. In many ways Gabe and Marian knew Patterson better than his wife did. His notorious temperance did not require comment from them.

  “But where can he be?” Marian was almost talking to herself and not Gabe. “Poor Elliot. Poor, poor Elliot.”

  As his employees and competitors had good reason to know, Gabe was not really Mr. Pickwick despite his appearance.

  “Now listen Marian. I know you can’t explain it. But believe me, the police don’t send two detectives up here on a wild goose chase. Crazy as it seems, it looks as if for some reason or other Elliot was driving down Putnam County last Monday night. God knows why. And he did have an accident. And he did drive on. I agree he couldn’t have been drunk. You heard me tell the cops that. But other things can happen. Maybe he got sick. Maybe he had a blackout.”

  She listened. Gabe’s persuasiveness was directed to a goal. Nevertheless she would not finish his argument for him. “I suppose you must be right Gabe, but I’m not really convinced. So…”

  Glumly he finished it himself. Maybe he had a million dollars of Target money on the front seat.”

  “It is possible.”

  “So you think we ought to go on with the audit?” he fired at her.

  She nodded.

  “The poor fish. Innocently he gets into a heck of a mess. God we could all do it. And you still think we should audit every penny. Marian it’s a shame you don’t follow the horses, though I’d fire you if you did. You’d make a great long shot player. I’ll say that much.”

  Marian relaxed and watched Gabe go through a familiar performance. He was whipping himself into a frenzy, pouring scorn and contempt on a proposition which, in his heart of hearts, he knew to be reasonable.

  “So we’ll audit Clayton’s books too, while we are at it,” he declaimed. Clayton was five years dead. “We will call in the FBI. We will …”

  The phone ringing interrupted him. Marian picked up.

  Yes, he here Doris. It’s for you Gabe.”

  The voiced announcing Gabe here was free of tension, creamy with smooth promise and confidence, “Yes, Mr. Kitchener? Yes … oh yes. Fine….”

  The conversation lasted 10 minutes longer. Gabe confined himself to monosyllables. They were enough to tell Marian trouble was afoot.

  “All right Kitchener. I’ll check and call you as soon as we find out. How do I know how long it will take? That’s the best I can do.”

  He slammed the phone down, glared at Marian, and said, “Well there you are.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  She listened to the story of the missing $50,000 bearer bond, which Gabe told with great care. Gabe and she knew Patterson better than any of the members of the Committee. To them it was unthinkable that he might have left $50,000 in an unsecured office. But it was equally unthinkable that a professional fund raiser should casually shovel the equivalent of $50,000 in ready currency into a dispatch case and drive off for a merry evening tooting around Putnam County.

  “You’re going to check the safe?” she asked Gabe as he started for the door. There was no real need to ask: the care of other people’s money was the vital core of Target’s being, despite Gabe’s little eccentricities.

  “Of course he might have taken it to a bank during the day,” he said over his shoulder as he left.

  “So he too did not expect to find the bond in the office safe.

  Marian shook her head. She should have learned her lesson. She thought she knew what Gabe was expecting but did she? Until the last few days she would have said she knew what Elliot Patters
on was thinking. Certainly 10 years of their working side by side had given her ample opportunity to learn. Elliot was serious, high minded, and just a little dull. In bits and pieces, over lunch, during 10 minute chats, in unguarded asides, Marian had followed his dull life in a detail. She had weighted the decision to leave the Peter Cooper apartment for a house in Rye. She had listened to confidences about how many children the Pattersons wanted. She had given her opinion on the advisability of purchasing a second car. She had heard about schools, slipped discs, vacation plans. Without saying much, Elliot had told her all.

  Or had he, she wondered.

  But suddenly she pulled herself together. Not only was she a successful and highly paid executive, she was also the wife of a busy well known architect with a son beginning to follow in his father’s footsteps at Harvard. Her life was full enough to occupy her. Her colleagues at Target were restful interludes not the answer to private emotional needs.

  She listened to tales of mortgages, getting children into bad colleges with friendly detachment. But had she really listened to all that Elliot had to say?

  And had she even noticed when he stopped saying it?

  She shook herself. One thing was certain. Elliot might be a hit and run driver; he might be hallucinating; but he might also be on the way to Brazil with Target’s money.

  There was no room for any doubt about the last.

  The police inquiries, meanwhile, were vigorous but fruitless. Patterson’s features and description were telephotoed to law enforcement agencies up and down the East Coast, but this did not produce a rash of erroneous IDs. It produced nothing. Business executives in their late 30s with thinning hair, horn rimmed glasses, and anonymous clothing were so common as to be invisible. Patterson’s relatives, including as sister in Illinois, and an aunt in Florida denied having seen him recently and insisted that Elliot had always been an exceptionally good boy. The representatives of several Target clients, including the Secretary of the Westport Home for Unwanted Cats as well as Mrs. Florence McBee, candidate for the State Assembly, all averred that Patterson had been his usual slightly reserved, but very helpful self when last seen and had not been seen since. Rye neighbors all swore that sounds of strife had never emanated from the Patterson home and managed to insinuate that Rye is zoned against sounds of strife. Regulars on the 8:15 due at Grand Central at 9:07 recalled Elliot, who regularly read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal like all the other regulars, but they were divided 50/50 over whether he had been aboard and reading on the Monday in question.