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long blond hair and the patchy plot of beard. She’d not been in place on his previous visits.
    Working up a smile, she managed, “Yes? Is there something?”
    “Is Mr. Underhill in?” He smelled the old man’s cigar smoke but that didn’t mean he was present. He’d been smoking in the same offices for a very long time.
    Before she could answer, Nat Underhill appeared in the doorway, thumbs hooked in his vest. He smiled, his watery blue eyes twinkling; he was a small man but erect, fit.
    “Bill! How are you?” He motioned Bill through the doorway to his private office, hot, dry, cluttered with memorabilia, bits and pieces of a lifetime spent digging at the past. “You may lock up now, Miss Thompson, and get a head start home. Nasty weather. Be sure to take your bumbershoot, that’s the girl. Now, come on, Bill, have a chair. Don’t tell me you’ve made another find …” He settled down in the leather swivel chair behind the broad gleaming desk.
    “Nope, same find, sir. But to tell you the truth—ah, it makes me a little nervous carrying it around.” He swallowed drily. “Y’know what I mean? Say I lost it or something, the glass got broken and cut it up … And I don’t like to leave it in my room either. No damned security, stuff always disappearing, y’know?” He put the bookbag on the desk, pulled it open, and withdrew the package. “I mean, look, I don’t know if it’s as valuable as you say—no offense, Mr. Underhill, I’m sure it is—”
    “No offense taken, I assure you. Go on.”
    “But the value, that’s your business. My interest is historical, what it means to all of our scholarship if it’s true …” He shrugged. “Look, can I leave it here with you? You’ve got a place, a safe, something?”
    “Of course, of course.” Nat Underhill poured tea from a china pot and offered it to Bill who shook his head no. Methodically he poured cream, dipped a tiny spoon of sugar. “Did you show it to Professor Chandler?”
    “No, I went today but missed him. Anyway, he can come down here and the two of you—both experts, you can look it over together. It makes sense to me …”
    “That’s fine with me, Bill. We’ll get together on it. No problem.”
    They chatted a few minutes while the heavy ormolu clock ticked loudly and the clouds darkened over Beacon Hill. They both knew the documents packed inside the frame, knew them backwards and forwards, and there was nothing left to say. And neither one of them knew just what to do with them. They’d gotten used to their staggering implications but they were at a loss as to the future … You couldn’t just have a press conference and blurt it out, not something like this … The thought was absurd. But what to do? Perhaps Chandler would know.
    Back outside in the rain which had become a spitting drizzle and was making the steep sidewalk slippery as night fell, Bill Davis felt relieved. Getting the damned thing off his hands was the best thing he could have done. Now it was Underhill’s problem. At the newsstand among the pigeons he bought a Penthouse, a Playboy, Time, Newsweek, and The Village Voice; he stuffed them into the green bookbag, looking forward to crawling into his old bed at home with the Celtics playoff game on the radio and no class on Wednesday until noon. With luck Chandler would call him at Adams House in the afternoon. Now that the picture was gone he’d forgotten the two men in funny hats.
    The smell of Big Macs and fries lingered in the Pinto’s interior. Ozzie was making it worse with another cherry-scented Tiparillo, nervously chewing the mouthpiece, working his hands one on the other in his lap. The trees along the Brookline residential street were bare, grasping, streaked with rain, black in the glow from the streetlamp. Thorny had opened his window a couple of inches in an attempt to air out the car. Ozzie coughed: “God, these things really do taste like shit. Well, here he comes.” He was