The Step

They walked up Main Street together, father and son, at ten minutes past midnight, and for the first hundred yards neither of them said anything.

The street was still full. June Week did not go to bed. There were people sitting on the steps of every house with their collars undone and their shoes off, and midshipmen in white going up and down in threes and fours, and a gramophone in an upstairs window playing a song about a girl in Kalamazoo, and the mist had come up off the water behind them and was lying in the bottom of the street like milk in a saucer. Warren walked on the brick pavement in his bare feet, carefully, the way boys walk when they have suddenly remembered that brick pavements have glass on them.

“Where are your shoes?” said Pershing at last.

“On the windowsill, sir.”

“Why?”

“I climbed down the porch roof.” Warren considered. “There’s a wisteria. It goes all the way down. Mrs Tull said in the afternoon that it was a hundred years old and could hold a horse. I thought I’d see if it could hold me. You can’t climb a wisteria in patent leather.”

“You might have used the stairs.”

“You’d have heard me on the stairs.”

“I would.”

“So I used the wisteria.” Warren walked another few yards. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Pershing did not answer that. He was thinking about what to answer, and finding that each answer he arrived at was one he had already given, on some other night, in some other year, for some other wisteria, and that none of them had worked then. A Methodist on a skipjack had emptied a jug into the City Dock rather than hand it to a Member of Parliament in front of him. His son had climbed down a hundred-year-old vine in the dark to watch it happen. He did not, at that moment, know which of those two things he minded more, and he suspected that it was neither, and that what he minded was that his son had been on the dock for an hour before he was, and had seen it all, and had known exactly where to stand.

“Why did you go?” he said.

“I was observing, sir.”

“Observing what?”

“For the referee.” Warren looked at him sideways. “You said, if there’s a question, you answer it. I thought there’d be a question. I thought it would be a good idea if somebody who was on the referee’s side was there when it came up. So I’d know what had happened before Mr La Guardia told you what had happened.” He paused. “He was going to tell you about the chimneys. He’d been practising on me for half an hour.”

They came up the last steep piece of Main Street on to Church Circle, and the church stood in front of them, black and silent in its yard of old graves, with its clock lit and its spire going up into the stars, and the west door shut now for the night.

“Were they Government House’s chimneys?” said Pershing.

“I don’t know,” said Warren. “Honestly. I looked very hard.” He stopped on the pavement and turned and looked back down Main Street at the water, as if he could still see them. “I think they might have been. But you can’t tell. You’d have to be up there to know which house they were on. And then you wouldn’t be down here.”

Pershing stood beside him and looked at the street and the lights and the mist on the water, and the dark corner of the chandlery with the fish on its cupola, and thought that this was the most accurate statement about clause three that he had heard all evening, and that it had been made by a boy of sixteen standing on Church Circle in his stockinged feet, except that he was not in his stockinged feet, he was in no feet at all.

“Come,” he said. “You will cut yourself.”

“Already have,” said Warren cheerfully, and they went on round the circle and up School Street toward the house, in the gap between the old roofs, where Pershing, without meaning to, looked back over his shoulder once, at the church door.

---

There were midshipmen on State Circle.

There were a great many of them. There were perhaps forty, standing on the grass round the State House in their whites, in a loose crowd that had gathered, Pershing realised as he came up School Street, in front of Government House, and was facing it, the way a crowd faces a balcony. They were very quiet. They were talking among themselves in low voices and passing something from hand to hand, which turned out, when he got closer, to be a large map of Annapolis torn from a guidebook, and they were looking at the front of the house, and then at the map, and then over their shoulders at the streets that ran down from the circle, and then back at the house, with the concentrated attention of young men who have been trained for four years to plot a field of fire and have just been given one.

When they saw him they stopped talking all at once, and came to attention, forty of them, on the grass, in the dark.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Pershing.

“Good evening, sir,” said forty midshipmen.

One of them came forward. He was tall and thin and red-haired, with a long freckled face and very large ears, and he saluted, which he should not have done, because Pershing was a civilian in a borrowed coat, and then realised he should not have done it, and went redder than his hair, and did not take the salute down, because he could not now think how.

“Midshipman Ruark, sir. Class of ‘twenty-six. Sir.”

“Mr Ruark.”

“Sir. Begging your pardon, sir. We were told, sir. That is, sir, we heard. There was a fellow from the Sun at Carvel Hall, sir, and he.” Ruark stopped and began again. “Sir. We understand there’s a referee.”

“There is.”

“Yes, sir. And that there are terms, sir.”

“There are.”

“And clause three, sir.” Ruark swallowed. “Sir, the class has some questions about clause three.”

Behind him, forty midshipmen nodded.

Pershing looked at them. He looked at their faces in the light from the State House lamps, young and brown and earnest and very nearly grown, and at the map torn from the guidebook, which somebody had marked with pencil in a great many places, and he thought of the class of 1917 at West Point, who had come to him in the spring of that year with a map of the Western Front torn from a newspaper and a great many questions about the Marne, and who had been in France by the autumn, and of whom eleven had not come home.

“Mr Ruark,” he said, “you are being commissioned tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“By me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you had better ask your questions now,” said Pershing, “while you can still be refused,” and went up the steps of Government House to the porch, and turned, and stood at the top of them, and the forty midshipmen of the class of 1926 came across the grass and gathered at the foot.

---

He did not stay in the coat. It was too hot, and it was not his, and he would not rule on anything in another man’s coat. He went in and gave it to the night footman, who had been standing in the hall with his mouth open, and went upstairs to his room on the garden and took off his dinner jacket and his collar and his tie, and put on his dressing gown, which was dark blue and plain and very old and had been bought in Zamboanga in 1910 and never replaced, and came down again with a lantern from the hall table in his hand, and went out on to the step.

Warren was sitting on the porch rail with his feet in the air. Bramwell was standing just inside the door with a notebook. Somewhere upstairs a window had opened and Mrs Tull was looking out of it in a white wrapper with her hair down, and when Pershing looked up at her she nodded to him, once, gravely, and did not withdraw.

“Mr Ruark,” said Pershing. “Your first question.”

“Sir. The Academy gate, sir. At the bottom of Maryland Avenue.” Ruark held up the map. “From the gate you can see straight up Maryland Avenue to State Circle, sir. To the State House. Is Government House within sight of the Academy gate?”

Pershing turned his head and looked down Maryland Avenue.

It went away from the circle to the northeast, straight and broad, between two lines of trees and two lines of brick houses, for a quarter of a mile, to a gate in a grey stone wall with lamps on either side. He could see the gate. He could see the lamps. He could see the sentry box beside the gate, and a sentry in it, very small.

“Mr Ruark,” he said, “can you see me?”

“Sir?”

“If I can see the place,” said Pershing, “then from the place, the house can be seen. That is the principle. It runs both ways. Light does not care which end it starts from.” He held up the lantern. “Send a man to the gate. Tell him to stand in front of it, under the lamps, and wave his cap.”

Two midshipmen ran. They ran down Maryland Avenue in the dark at a pace that would have done them credit on the field, and the rest of the class watched them go, and so did Pershing, and so did Warren from the rail, and so did Mrs Tull from her window, and in a little under two minutes, a quarter of a mile away, a small white figure arrived under the lamps of the Academy gate, and turned, and waved its cap.

“I can see him,” said Pershing. “The gate is within sight.”

There was a noise from the class like a held breath being let go.

“Next.”

“Carvel Hall, sir. The hotel. On Prince George Street.”

“Send a man.”

They sent a man. Carvel Hall was round a corner and could not be seen. They sent a man to the corner of Prince George Street, and he could be seen. They sent a man halfway down Maryland Avenue, to the corner of Prince George Street where it crossed, and he could be seen, very clearly, under a street lamp, waving his cap with great energy, and then a man to the next corner down, where King George Street crossed, and he could be seen too, a little less clearly, and then a man a little way along King George Street toward the Academy chapel, and he could not.

“Not within sight,” said Pershing.

Bramwell wrote it down.

They did the Treasury building, which was on the circle and could be seen from anywhere and was not in dispute. They did the Methodist chapel, which was on the circle too, and could be seen, and was not in dispute either, except that a midshipman at the back said, “It’s a chapel, sir, it doesn’t count,” and Pershing said, “Clause two does not distinguish,” and there was a ripple, and Mrs Tull at her window put a hand over her mouth. They did Francis Street, and East Street, and a piece of Cornhill Street, and the porch of a boarding house where somebody’s mother was staying who had gone to bed and was woken up by a midshipman waving his cap outside her window and screamed. They did School Street, which was the short street down to Church Circle, and Pershing did not need a man for that, because he could see from the step, framed in the gap between the two old roofs, the white spire of St Anne’s and the clock and the shut west door, and he knew from the afternoon that from the door the house could be seen.

“School Street is within sight,” he said, “as far as the church door,” and looked at the door, and moved on.

They did the City Dock again. Ruark asked about the City Dock, and Pershing said, “The City Dock has been ruled,” and Ruark said, “Yes, sir, but from the top of a mast, sir,” and Pershing said, “The City Dock has been ruled, Mr Ruark,” in a voice that the class of 1926 would remember, he suspected, for the rest of their careers, and the City Dock was not asked about again.

At twenty to one Bramwell had a page and a half of notes and the class of 1926 had a map of Annapolis on which a great many streets had been marked in pencil with a tick or a cross, and Pershing was standing on the step in his dressing gown with the lantern in his hand and his feet, he realised, also bare, because he had not stopped to put on his slippers, and his son was sitting on the rail looking at his father’s feet with an expression of enormous and wholly undisguised satisfaction.

“Is that all, Mr Ruark?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Ruark began to salute, and stopped, and stood there with his hand halfway, in agony. Then, very quietly, as if it had been on his mind all evening: “Sir. May I ask. Which way is the referee, sir? Personally?”

There was a silence on State Circle.

“The referee,” said Pershing, “is not a party.”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Go to bed, Mr Ruark. You have a commission to receive.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.”

The class of 1926 went to bed, more or less. It went off across State Circle in a white crowd, talking in low voices again, and down Maryland Avenue toward the gate, with the map held up between two of them under each street lamp, so that Pershing could see it all the way down, a quarter of a mile, ticks and crosses, until it went in under the lamps of the gate and the sentry came out of his box to look at it.

---

He had his hand on the door when the two men came round the side of the State House.

They came separately. They came from opposite directions, one round each side, at the same moment, like the two figures on a weather house, and they met at the foot of the steps of Government House and stopped, and looked at each other, and then both looked up at the Governor-General in his dressing gown with his lantern.

“Your Excellency,” said Spratt.

“Your Excellency,” said Voss.

“Gentlemen.”

“Your Excellency,” said Voss, before Spratt could speak, “I am obliged to report that at twelve thirty-one I placed under arrest a man named Purnell, a ship chandler of this city, whom I found on the cupola of his premises with a lighted lantern, signalling, as I believe, to a vessel in the harbour.”

“Mr Purnell,” said Spratt, without any expression at all, “is the Baltimore district’s informant on the City Dock. He was signalling to me. To tell me the Sister Rose had come in. He has been signalling to me from that cupola every time she comes in for three years. It is the reason I was on the dock tonight.”

Voss’s face did not change.

“I was not informed of that,” he said.

“No,” said Spratt. “And at twelve thirty-five, Your Excellency, I placed under arrest on the porch of this house a man named Aldridge, of the Baltimore Sun, whom I found in possession of a hip flask.”

“Mr Aldridge,” said Voss, “is the source of the Bureau’s information. He is the man who telephoned the night desk.”

“I was not informed of that,” said Spratt.

They stood at the foot of the steps and looked at each other.

“What was in the flask, Mr Spratt?” said Pershing.

Spratt took a small silver flask out of his coat pocket, unscrewed the top, sniffed at it, and then, for the first time in Pershing’s acquaintance with him, which was now eleven hours old, something happened to his face that was very nearly an expression.

“Coffee, Your Excellency.”

“Is coffee an offence under the Act?”

“No, Your Excellency.”

“Is signalling from a cupola an offence under the Act, Mr Voss?”

Voss opened his grey notebook, and turned a page, and turned another, and closed it again.

“Not as such, Your Excellency.”

“Then I suggest,” said Pershing, “that you each go and release the other’s informant, and apologise to him, and go to bed. It is a quarter to one. There are two days left.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said both of them, at the same moment, and turned, and went off in opposite directions round the State House, the way they had come, and Pershing stood on the step and watched them go, one round each side, and heard, very faintly, from somewhere behind the dome, Aldridge of the Sun singing.

---

He did not sleep.

He had not expected to. He lay in the high bed in the room on the garden with the blinds up and the windows open and the warm wet air coming in off the water, and the sounds of June Week going on below him in the town, fainter and fainter, until there was nothing but a dog somewhere and the State House clock, which struck every quarter, and which he counted.

He thought about clause three.

He thought about it the way he thought about everything, by walking the ground of it: the circle, the streets, the gate, the corner of Prince George Street, the chandlery and the fish. He thought about the chimneys. He thought about his son on the pavement at the top of Main Street saying, You’d have to be up there to know which house they were on, and then you wouldn’t be down here. He thought that this was true of a great many things, and that he had spent his life up there, on the ridge, at the headquarters, on the step with the lantern, looking down at the town and ruling on what could be seen from it, and that the people down in the town could see, every one of them, perfectly well, which house the chimneys were on.

He thought about clause five, and did not know why.

And then, because it was one in the morning and he was sixty-five and alone in a strange bed in a strange house with the window open, and the house was full of other people’s sleep, he thought about Helen.

He did it once. He did it briefly. She was on the porch at the Presidio in a white dress in the summer of 1914 with the girls round her on the steps, and she was laughing at something he had said, which had not been meant to be funny, and she was saying, Jack, you are the only man alive who could make a joke by accident and then refuse to admit it, and he was standing at the foot of the steps in his uniform, looking up at her, with his hat in his hand.

Then he put it away. He had a place where he put it. He had been putting it there for eleven years, and most of the time it stayed.

Most of the time.

The State House clock struck the half hour, and he counted it, and turned over, and lay looking at the dark garden through the window until it began, very slowly, to be grey.