Bill studied me as he lit his pipe.
“Your ways of coming and going still tend to be colorful.” he said. I smiled.
“Expediency is all,” I said.
“That nurse at the clinic . . . scarcely anyone believed her story.”
“Scarcely anyone?”
“The minority I refer to is, of course, myself.”
“What was her story?”
“She claimed that you walked to the center of the room, became two-dimensional, and just faded away, like the old soldier that you are, with a rainbowlike accompaniment.”
“Glaucoma can cause the rainbow symptom. She ought to have her eyes checked.”
“She did,” he said. “Nothing wrong.”
“Oh. Too bad. The next thing that comes to mind is neurological.”
“Come on, Carl. She’s all right. You know that.”
I smiled and took a sip of my drink.
“And you,” he said, “you look like a certain playing card I once commented on. Complete with sword. What’s going on, Carl?”
“It’s still complicated,” I said. “Even more than the last time we talked.”
“Which means you can’t give me that explanation yet?”
I shook my head.
“You have won an all-expense tour of my homeland, when this is over,” I said, “if I still have a homeland then. Right now, time is doing terrible things.”
“What can I do to help you?”
“Information, please. My old house. Who is the guy you have fixing the place up?”
“Ed Wellen. Local contractor. You know him, I think. Didn’t he put in a shower for you, or something?”
“Yes, yes he did. . . . I remember.”
“He’s expanded quite a bit. Bought some heavy equipment. Has a number of fellows working for him now. I handled his incorporation.”
“Do you know who he’s got working at my place-now?”
“Offhand, no. But I can find out in just a minute.” He moved his hand to rest on the telephone on the side table. “Shall I give him a ring?”
“Yes,” I said, “but there is a little more to it than that. There is only one thing in which I am really interested. There was a compost heap in the back yard. It was there the last time I passed this way. It is gone now. I have to find out what became of it.”
He cocked his head to the right and grinned around his pipe.
“You serious?” he finally said.
“Sure as death,” I said. “I hid something in that heap when I crawled by, decorating the snow with my precious bodily fluids. I’ve got to have it back now.”
“Just what is it?”
“A ruby pendant.”
“Priceless, I suppose.”