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to what Vullo and Murfin were saying because they were discussing some administrative problem. I perked up only when Vullo said, “That’s all, Murfin. Out.”
    It was a peremptory dismissal, rude in its curtness, arrogant in its phrasing, and delivered in a tone that is usually reserved for dismissing army privates, indentured servants, and maybe even rotten little kids.
    Murfin had brought me into Vullo’s office, introduced us, and I had sat down in a chair although nobody had invited me to. Murfin had remained standing while he and Vullo discussed their problem and I had admired Vullo’s fingernails and remembered Mary Jane.
    Now Murfin had been abruptly dismissed and I thought I saw his back stiffen. But when he turned to leave he winked and grinned at me so I assumed that Vullo spoke to all the help like that and probably had since he was five.
    I decided that Roger Vullo had treated himself to either the fifth or sixth largest office in Washington, possibly even the fourth. It also looked as though the decorator had been admonished to fill the room with an air of rich, permanent grandeur and hang the cost. Vullo ran things from behind a huge, gleaming desk that was at least two centuries old. During all those years it must have been waxed daily. Perhaps even twice daily. Jutting out from the desk was a narrow refectory table, long enough for two dozen Spanish monks to have dined around once, possibly five hundred years ago. I assumed that it was now used for staff conferences.
    The rest of the furniture was mostly solid, leather stuff, including the chair that I sat in, the sixteen chairs around the refectory table, the divan against one wall, and the three wing-backed chairs that went with it. The place had the pleasant, mildly pungent smell of a shoe repair shop.
    On the floor was a thick beige carpet and covering the walls was something that looked like pale burlap, but probably wasn’t because burlap would have been too cheap. One wall was lined with old leatherbound books, but I was too far away to read their titles. The wall opposite the books was hung with a series of Daumier drawings, six in all, and for all I knew they may have been the originals. Vullo could probably afford them. I rapidly was becoming convinced that he could afford almost anything.
    The only thing that clashed with the decor was Vullo himself and, now that I think about it, me. After Murfin had gone Vullo sat slumped in his chair behind the immense desk staring at me coolly, maybe even coldly, with narrowed hazel eyes that seemed shrewd, clever, and possibly even brilliant. He quit staring only when he remembered that it was time to bite his fingernails.
    He gave his right thumb a couple of fierce nips, admired the results, and said, “You live on a farm now.” It was an accusation the way he said it.
    I decided that I might as well confess, so I said, “That’s right.”
    â€œNear Harpers Ferry.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œJohn Brown.”
    â€œLee, too.”
    â€œLee?”
    â€œRobert E. Lee,” I said. “He was a U.S. colonel then and he led the detachment of marines that wounded Brown and then captured him.”
    â€œI didn’t remember that it was Lee.”
    â€œNot everybody does.”
    â€œThey hanged him, didn’t they?”
    â€œBrown? They hanged him all right. They captured him on October eighteenth and hanged him on December second.”
    â€œWhat year was that?”
    â€œ1859.”
    â€œHe was quite mad, wasn’t he? Brown.”
    I thought about it for a moment. “Everybody says so, but I’m not so sure. He was a fanatic anyway and maybe all fanatics are a little nuts. Crazy or not, they hanged him.”
    Vullo abruptly lost interest in John Brown. He went back to me. “What do you grow on your farm?”
    â€œVegetables, clover, goats, honey, and Christmas trees.”
    Vullo nodded as if all that were perfectly logical.