grimaced.
‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Get out of my light. It’s bad enough as it is.’ He looked up and saw me, wedged between his desk and a bank of file cabinets, and softened his tone. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘sorry, I didn’t recognize you. What is it?’
‘I’ve been clearing up Bob Holman’s office,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘It was a mess. And I found this loose on the floor. It had your name in it, so I thought you might know what it’s about, so I could file it properly.’
‘Let me see,’ he said, taking the 1936 conference program from me.
He leafed through the brochure.
‘It’s just what it says it is. A program from a hydrology conference. Listing presentations from expert hydrologists and hydrographers. Like me. Before I became a map librarian. I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea why this was in Holman’s office.’
‘You didn’t send it to him?’
‘No. Look, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to hand over a preliminary list of North African maps to a typist, if I can find one who’s free, in an hour, and I have a God-awful headache.’
‘Have we got any good maps of North Africa?’
‘Not really. The British Admiralty charts of Egypt and the Suez Canal are excellent, but we need the French colonies, Algeria and Morocco. For them we’ve only got a National Geographic map, two oil-company road maps and some tourist guidebooks, only one in English. They show nothing of strategic value. We’ll have to rely on the local Resistance for information, and those damn Arabs, they’re almost as shifty as the Japs.’
I threaded my way between stacks of books and desks out of the office and into the hallway. What now?
I wondered if Marvin Metcalfe still taught at George Washington University and if I could invent a plausible pretext for visiting him.
Lying proved to be easier than I thought. I told my girls that I had a severe toothache and had to leave work to go to the dentist. No one questioned me when I left the building.
After waiting an hour for the bus, I gave up and walked north. George Washington University was on ‘G’ Street, south of my boarding house, within easy walking distance despite the heat. Uniformed men of all ages and scores of businesslike young women crowded the campus sidewalks, hurrying to class. I envied those women. If the war had come earlier, if I was younger, or if my aunt’s bequest hadn’t shrunk during the Depression, I might be in a real college now, too, learning something meatier than secretarial skills. I stopped an army captain toting an armful of engineering textbooks and asked directions to the geography department.
Inside the squat stone building it was refreshingly cool and dark. I had to wait a few seconds while my vision adjusted from the intense light outside to the dim interior. A secretary seated at a metal desk kept watch inside the doorway. She was an older woman, at least forty, with minimal typing skills, as I could see as she pecked at the antique Remington on her desk.
She tilted her eyes over her reading glasses and looked me up and down. When she spotted my OSS badge she deigned to speak to me. ‘Yes?’ she asked.
‘Can you tell me the way to Professor Metcalfe’s office?’
‘He’s not a professor,’ she said. ‘He’s an instructor. Down that hall, last door on the right.’
I saw right away why Metcalfe wasn’t in the military. He wore a brace on his left leg, which he stuck straight out along the side of his desk. Polio, I supposed, like so many. Otherwise Metcalfe lived up to my image of a college instructor. He needed a haircut, his collar was frayed, and the leather briefcase that rested on the floor was creased with wear. Metcalfe looked up from a stack of blue books when I tapped on his open door.
‘And you are?’ he asked.
‘Louise Pearlie,’ I said. Damn, I thought, should I have used an alias? I hadn’t given a cover story any thought at all. And my OSS ID tag still dangled from my collar.
‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Get out of my light. It’s bad enough as it is.’ He looked up and saw me, wedged between his desk and a bank of file cabinets, and softened his tone. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘sorry, I didn’t recognize you. What is it?’
‘I’ve been clearing up Bob Holman’s office,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘It was a mess. And I found this loose on the floor. It had your name in it, so I thought you might know what it’s about, so I could file it properly.’
‘Let me see,’ he said, taking the 1936 conference program from me.
He leafed through the brochure.
‘It’s just what it says it is. A program from a hydrology conference. Listing presentations from expert hydrologists and hydrographers. Like me. Before I became a map librarian. I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea why this was in Holman’s office.’
‘You didn’t send it to him?’
‘No. Look, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to hand over a preliminary list of North African maps to a typist, if I can find one who’s free, in an hour, and I have a God-awful headache.’
‘Have we got any good maps of North Africa?’
‘Not really. The British Admiralty charts of Egypt and the Suez Canal are excellent, but we need the French colonies, Algeria and Morocco. For them we’ve only got a National Geographic map, two oil-company road maps and some tourist guidebooks, only one in English. They show nothing of strategic value. We’ll have to rely on the local Resistance for information, and those damn Arabs, they’re almost as shifty as the Japs.’
I threaded my way between stacks of books and desks out of the office and into the hallway. What now?
I wondered if Marvin Metcalfe still taught at George Washington University and if I could invent a plausible pretext for visiting him.
Lying proved to be easier than I thought. I told my girls that I had a severe toothache and had to leave work to go to the dentist. No one questioned me when I left the building.
After waiting an hour for the bus, I gave up and walked north. George Washington University was on ‘G’ Street, south of my boarding house, within easy walking distance despite the heat. Uniformed men of all ages and scores of businesslike young women crowded the campus sidewalks, hurrying to class. I envied those women. If the war had come earlier, if I was younger, or if my aunt’s bequest hadn’t shrunk during the Depression, I might be in a real college now, too, learning something meatier than secretarial skills. I stopped an army captain toting an armful of engineering textbooks and asked directions to the geography department.
Inside the squat stone building it was refreshingly cool and dark. I had to wait a few seconds while my vision adjusted from the intense light outside to the dim interior. A secretary seated at a metal desk kept watch inside the doorway. She was an older woman, at least forty, with minimal typing skills, as I could see as she pecked at the antique Remington on her desk.
She tilted her eyes over her reading glasses and looked me up and down. When she spotted my OSS badge she deigned to speak to me. ‘Yes?’ she asked.
‘Can you tell me the way to Professor Metcalfe’s office?’
‘He’s not a professor,’ she said. ‘He’s an instructor. Down that hall, last door on the right.’
I saw right away why Metcalfe wasn’t in the military. He wore a brace on his left leg, which he stuck straight out along the side of his desk. Polio, I supposed, like so many. Otherwise Metcalfe lived up to my image of a college instructor. He needed a haircut, his collar was frayed, and the leather briefcase that rested on the floor was creased with wear. Metcalfe looked up from a stack of blue books when I tapped on his open door.
‘And you are?’ he asked.
‘Louise Pearlie,’ I said. Damn, I thought, should I have used an alias? I hadn’t given a cover story any thought at all. And my OSS ID tag still dangled from my collar.
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