No one said anything. Phineas had been sitting motionless, leaning slightly forward, not far from
the position in which we prayed at Devon. After a long time he turned and reluctantly looked at
me. I did not return his look or move or speak. Then at last Finny straightened from this
prayerful position slowly, as though it was painful for him. “Leper’s here,” he said in a voice so
quiet, and with such quiet unconscious dignity, that he was suddenly terrifyingly strange to me.
“I saw him go into Dr. Carhart’s office this morning.”
“Here! Go get him,” said Brinker immediately to the two boys who had come with us. “He must
be in Carhart’s rooms if he hasn’t gone back home.”
I kept quiet. To myself, however, I made a number of swift, automatic calculations: that Leper
was no threat, no one would ever believe Leper; Leper was deranged, he was not of sound mind
and if people couldn’t make out their own wills when not in sound mind certainly they couldn’t
testify in something like this.
The two boys left and the atmosphere immediately cleared. Action had been taken, so the whole
issue was dropped for now. Someone began making fun of “Captain Marvel,” the head of the
football team, saying how girlish he looked in his graduation gown. Captain Marvel minced for
us in his size 12 shoes, the sides of his gown swaying drunkenly back and forth from his big
hips. Someone wound himself in the folds of the red velvet curtain and peered out from it like an
exotic spy. Someone made a long speech listing every infraction of the rules we were committing
that night. Someone else made a speech showing how by careful planning we could break all the
others before dawn.
But although the acoustics in the Assembly Hall were poor, those outside the room were
admirable. All the talk and horseplay ended within a few seconds of the instant when the first
person, that is myself, heard the footsteps returning along the marble stairway and corridors
toward us. I knew with absolute certainty moments before they came in that there were three sets
of footsteps coming.
Leper entered ahead of the other two. He looked unusually well; his face was glowing, his eyes
were bright, his manner was all energy. “Yes?” he said in a clear voice, resonant even in this
room, “what can I do for you?” He made this confident remark almost but not quite to Phineas,
who was still sitting alone in the middle of the room. Finny muttered something which was too
indecisive for Leper, who turned with a cleanly energetic gesture toward Brinker. Brinker began
talking to him in the elaborately casual manner of someone being watched. Gradually the noise
in the room, which had revived when the three of them came in, subsided again.
Brinker managed it. He never raised his voice, but instead he let the noise surrounding it
gradually sink so that his voice emerged in the ensuing silence without any emphasis on his
part—”so that you were standing next to the river bank, watching Phineas climb the tree?” he
was saying, and had waited, I knew, until this silence to say.
“Sure. Right there by the trunk of the tree. I was looking up. It was almost sunset, and I
remember the way the sun was shining in my eyes.”