"You may do as you like. We don't have any rules about sleeping."

"Oh, I see," he says, smiling shyly. "Well, then, Hector, you should know I never go to bed without someone sitting nearby. Now please believe me when I tell you it's very easy. You needn't say a word. In fact, it's better if you don't. And please don't read to me because that tends to make me fidget. All you need do, really, is sit there, and I go right out."

It never occurs to me to remonstrate with him. My hand, indeed, is already drawing the chair over.

"Monsieur Tepac," I say. "Did he sit with you?"

"Why, yes. Agatha, too, sometimes, but her bones would creak, and one can't ask a bone to be quiet, it can't be done."

"I don't suppose it can."

"But you're still young," he says, agreeably. "I don't imagine you creak at all."

"No," I say, lowering myself with terrific care into the chair. "I'll try not to."

We sit for a few moments, regarding each other.

"Perhaps you'd care to get ready for bed," I say.

"Oh! " He stares down at his dead man's clothes. "You're quite right. Let's see now. . . ."

He gives the boots a gentle tug. Tugs again and then relapses into confusion. And when I think back on this moment, what will most amaze me is the absence of hesitation on my part. I am already moving toward him, you see. With the express purpose of kneeling before him and prying his boots loose. The only thing that stops me is the cracked tremolo issuing from the doorway.

"There you are! " cries Father Time.

Not on his way to bed, no, but dressed for going out. And brimming with the prospect. Even his ragged necktie and old square coat look as if they were bracing for new possibilities.

There are two additions to his customary wardrobe. A lantern, still unlit. And a spade.

"I wonder if you'd care to join me," he says. "I'm off to the Bois de Boulogne."

"Professor, it's . . . nighttime. . . ."

"Yes, I know. But I just remembered where the archive was." "The archive."

"The one you were asking me about! Concerning your father, I mean. When he was taking care of You-Know-Who at the You-KnowWhere. Oh, good evening! " he says, suddenly drawing Charles into his ken. "How rude of me. Would you like to tag along, Monsieur?"

CHAPTE R 26.

In Which a Corpus Is Exhumed "Bu rying someone , are we?"

We're standing at the corner of the Rue d'Ulm and the Rue des Postes, and from the height of his box, a cabdriver scowls down at the spectacle of Father Time, who is caressing his spade like a bound lamb.

"Why, no," answers the old man. "We're all very much in the pink, I think. Although with me, one never knows. Now if you'd just take us to the Bois de Boulogne, we'd be your eternally devoted vassals."

"Don't need vassals," the driver says. "Remuneration'd be nice."

Stunned by this demand, Father Time turns slowly round to face me. "I say, my boy, do you-"

And before I can equivocate, Charles chimes in: "Oh, yes ! That smelly man gave him a whole pile of gold coins."

One of these coins is now prized from my purse and dropped in the cabman's rein-calloused palm. He gives it his closest attention, then drops it down his trousers-straight into some waiting receptacle, from which the faintest clank emerges, like a far-off tocsin.

"Well, gentlemen," he says. "At these rates, you can bury ten bodies." Spring has se t up house in the Bois de Boulogne. Just a few strokes shy of midnight, and life thrums on all sides. Linnets, sparrows . . . a single butterf ly, the color of young cheese . . . and lovers, discarding things in their haste-a pair of clogs, a canezou jacket, a lace stocking. Through the shrubbery, we can hear them, rustling and moaning, as we follow Father Time from the city wall to Lac Inferieur.

Some three hundred yards east of the Parc de Bagatelle, he stops abruptly. Wrinkles his nose and gazes round.

"Do you gentlemen know what a linden looks like?"

"Tilia cordata," answers Charles, with a trace of outrage.

"Oh, dear me! A fellow Linnaean! Very well, my young worthy, tell Hector what he should be looking for."

"Well, lindens don't drop f lowers till June. But I've always thought they have an April smell. You must imagine a toad, Hector. Lying in hay for several days altogether, not a care in the world. That's what it smells like. You'll also find very distinct bore holes in the linden's bark, courtesy of Chrysoclista linneella. I could trace them out for you, if it-"

"Please," I say, putting out my hand. "I know what lindens look like. But there are hundreds in this vicinity alone. Which one are we to look for, Monsieur?"

"Oh." Father Time's mouth unhinges, then quickly snaps to. "Why, the one with the X on it, of course."

We walk now in slowly contracting circles, and the light from Father Time's lantern walks ahead of us, startling the buds from the trees. For the first time tonight, I notice the cold. Waves of wind, rolling in from the east. At last one gust catches Father Time by the arm and nudges the lantern from his grip. The taper gutters out, the shadows dissolve . . . and moonlight rains down.