die from behind the desk and pushed it across. "This was left with the gateman during the night."

I unwrapped a pair of silver-buckled shoes. A folded piece of paper lay inside one. "His?"

"Yes."

"The messenger?"

"What you would expect. A street urchin of seven or eight. The gateman didn't bring me the bundle till after breakfast. By then the child was too far ahead to catch."

So she had a sense of humor after all. I gave the shoes the full eyeball treatment. It never works out, but you always look for that speck of rare purple mud or the weird yellow grass stain that will make you look like a genius. I didn't find it this time, either. I unfolded the note. We have yore Karl. If you want him back you do what yore told. Don't tell nobody about this. You be told what to do later.

A snippet of hair had been folded into the paper. I held it to the light falling through the window behind the secretary's desk. It was the color I recalled Junior's hair being the few times I had seen him. "Nice touch, this."

Willa Dount gave me another of her scowls.

I ignored her and examined the note. The paper itself told me nothing except that it was a scrap torn from something else, possibly a book. I could go around town for a century trying to match it to torn pages. But the handwriting was interesting. It was small but loose, confi­dent, the penmanship almost perfect, not in keeping with the apparent education of the writer. "You don't recog­nize this hand?"

"Of course not. That needn't concern you, anyway."

"When did you see him last?"

"Yesterday morning. I sent him down to our warehouse on the waterfront to check reports of pilferage. The foreman claimed it was brownies. I had a feeling he was the brownie in the woodpile and he was selling the Stormwarden's supplies to somebody here on the Hill. Possibly even to one of our neighbors."