This touched an interesting point Phineas had been turning over in his mind for a long time. I
could tell that because the obstinate, competitive look left his face as his mind became engaged
for the first time. “It’s very funny,” he said, “but ever since then I’ve had a feeling that the tree
did it by itself. It’s an impression I’ve had. Almost as though the tree shook me out by itself.”
The acoustics in the Assembly Room were so poor that silences there had a heavy hum of their
own.
“Someone else was in the tree, isn’t that so?”
“No,” said Finny spontaneously, “I don’t think so.” He looked at the ceiling. “Or was there?
Maybe there was somebody climbing up the rungs of the trunk. I kind of forget.”
This time the hum of silence was prolonged to a point where I would be forced to fill it with
some kind of sound if it didn’t end. Then someone else on the platform spoke up. “I thought
somebody told me that Gene Forrester was—”
“Finny was there,” Brinker interrupted commandingly, “he knows better than anyone.”
“You were there too, weren’t you, Gene?” this new voice from the platform continued.
“Yes,” I said with interest, “yes, I was there too.”
“Were you—near the tree?”
Finny turned toward me. “You were down at the bottom, weren’t you?” he asked, not in the
official courtroom tone he had used before, but in a friend’s voice.
I had been studying very carefully the way my hands wrinkled when tightly clenched, but I was
able to bring my head up and return his inquiring look. “Down at the bottom, yes.”
Finny went on. “Did you see the tree shake or anything?” He flushed faintly at what seemed to
him the absurdity of his own question. “I’ve always meant to ask you, just for the hell of it.”
I took this under consideration. “I don’t recall anything like that ...”
“Nutty question,” he muttered.
“I thought you were in the tree,” the platform voice cut in.
“Well of course,” Finny said with an exasperated chuckle, “of course I was in the tree—oh you
mean Gene?—he wasn’t in—is that what you mean, or—” Finny floundered with muddled
honesty between me and my questioner.
“I meant Gene,” the voice said.