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"I shall make every effort," I assured him acerbically, rolling
my eyes. I had no intention whatever of acting goofy or gawky; I
should not be any good at it, I would just have to be a quiet,
polite young man. With somewhat unruly hair.

We went to three clubs in succession that afternoon: the Pacific
Union, the Parnassus, and the Native Sons. This last turned out to
have nothing whatever to do with natives that I could see, being
unaccountably the stuffiest of them all; whereas I had thought the
Pacific Union, from its august reputation, would fill that
bill.

Our game plan in each club was simple. Wish presented his
credentials; he was recognized and quietly welcomed, on account of
his patron having called ahead; he in turn introduced me as his
guest, and we proceeded inside. Now of course I had long been
exceedingly curious as to what really went on in such places, as
they do not allow women except on the occasional ladies' night,
when one assumes the members are on their best behavior. (Father
had assured me this was not so when I had pestered him into taking
me to his club on several occasions; only I'd discovered to my
disappointment that it was all rather boring, and the food was
nowhere near as good as Locke-Ober's.)

What really went on in San Francisco's bastions of masculinity
turned out to be about what one would expect: A lot of smoking,
some drinking, much reading of newspapers and magazines, and as we
surmised, in some rooms where Wish and I were not invited to go,
some gentlemanly gambling at cards.

I did look the part of the country cousin in my secondhand suit,
whereas Wish played the debonair with a flair I hadn't known he
possessed. And indeed, I did not think he had possessed it two
years earlier.

He has learned a lot from Michael, I thought, watching and
listening to Wish at the Pacific Union Club from behind the pages
of an open issue of
San Francisco
magazine. There was in
this magazine an article so fascinating I was hard put to keep my
mind on my job; it told of plans on the part of the city fathers to
have San Francisco designated a host city for one of the World's
Fairs sometime in the next decade. This would, the article claimed,
bring more money flowing into the City's rebuilding coffers. And,
not coincidentally, would encourage visitors to come to our fairest
of cities again by showing how thoroughly we had recovered from the
earthquake and that we had no fear-no siree-of another coming along
to demolish us again. At least, not any time soon.

That had been, as I said, at the Pacific Union Club. Wish had
obtained there some information about the Bell he was ringing, er,
tracking; but I had overheard nothing about Jeremy McFadden, nor
had Wish been able to elicit any conversation on the topic of
McFadden even when he had specifically asked. Wish's story was that
he had money to invest in some scheme McFadden was backing
anonymously.

"They stick together," said Wish with some discomfort as we were
walking to our second stop, the Parnassus Club-McFadden's own club,
where we were much more likely to have the kind of results I
wanted.

At the door, as we were being admitted in the usual routine,
Wish quietly inquired if Mr. Jeremy McFadden might happen to be in
and was told that he was, indeed, having a late lunch with another
member in the dining room. "Shall I announce you, sir?" the
employee on the door asked Wish, who shook his head.

"No need, I don't want to interrupt them. I'll catch him later.
Come on, Tim," he then said to me, giving me a comradely shove
between the shoulder blades. "First time in the City," he confided
to the man at the door in a stage whisper as I staggered on in.

"Thanks a lot, cousin," I muttered. Glancing at him out of the
corner of my eye, I decided that Wish Stephenson was having the
time of his life.

The interior of the Parnassus Club was more opulent than the
Pacific Union. As it, too, was located on Nob Hill, the building
was new and managed to smell that way even through the ubiquitous
cigar, cigarette, and pipe smoke. I rather liked the place,
especially the plush carpet in a shade of deep forest green. I even
gawked a little at the windows of stained glass all across the back
wall of the large, high-ceilinged main clubroom.

"Go on, lad," Wish said, poking me in the ribs playfully when he
saw where I was focused, "take a closer look. Bet they don't have
anything like that back where you come from."

I was too fascinated even to give my colleague the evil look
that his remark required. I walked on over to those windows and
stood up close, staring. I had of course removed my fedora, but
declined to turn it over at the door, and so I carried the hat in
one hand politely up against my chest. And a good thing, too, for a
few moments later I was able to raise the brim up to my face to
hide an unavoidable blush.

The stained-glass windows, which from across the room appeared
to be simply lovely patterns and colors in the sort of style they
are calling in England now pre-Raphaelite, actually depicted nude
women twined about with various vines and flowers, though not in
the strategic places one is accustomed to seeing such flowers.
Women of quite voluptuous proportions. Nipples in stained glass,
who would've thought; oh my. I screwed up my mouth and, sticking
tongue in cheek as I imagined an awkward adolescent male might do
to deal with some embarrassment, turned my back on those windows
and strolled with an exaggeratedly long, slow gait back to where
Wish had taken an overstuffed leather chair on one side of a drum
table, leaving its identical twin on the other side of the table
for me. Amusement danced in his eyes and played about his lips, but
he did not tease me, for which I was grateful.

Instead, Wish leaned across the table and said in a tone clearly
meant for me alone to hear, "We should have something to drink. The
Parnassus is a hard-drinking club where men are expected to imbibe
and to hold their liquor-or so I've been told-and I think it will
look better if we at least have drinks in front of us."

I nodded. Heads turned our way, one at a time; one man in my
peripheral vision had summoned the discreetly circulating waiter
and whispered something, glancing once in our direction as he did
so, and then the waiter disappeared.

"What do you think you can handle, Timothy?" Wish asked in a
slightly louder tone of voice.

"Whiskey, with seltzer," I replied, dropping my voice into the
huskiest register I could manage. I had, of course, practiced this;
and as my natural voice is more in the alto register than the
soprano-that is, if language were sung instead of spoken-I did
passably well in sounding like a young man.

Wish appeared pleasantly surprised. "Say something more," he
urged, whispering.

I said crossly, and loudly enough to be overheard, "I don't see
why we couldn't have gone to the races, cuz."

"Your mother would have my head," he replied, laughing.

The waiter discreetly circled himself around our way, we ordered
our drinks, which came with gratifying rapidity, and I sat sipping
mine while Wish began to circulate and do the male version of
gossiping, whatever that might consist of. I watched him closely,
having decided that it would not be out of character for a
beardless young man to hero-worship his older cousin.

He was good, no two ways about that. He had done his homework,
learned things about the Bell family, and began every conversation
by introducing himself as one of them. Of course his ruse would
soon be known, because it would get back to the miscreant Mr. Bell
that his young cousin had seemed a fine young man, or some such,
and Mr. Bell would ask,
What cousin?
and that would be that.
But we needed only today and tomorrow, by then we would have found
out all there was to be found out, and of course we would go to
each club only once. This was working. Finally, because of Wish
Stephenson, I felt we were doing something constructive about the
case against Jeremy McFadden.

Then the man himself walked into my line of vision even as I'd
thought his name. He proceeded in that ponderous way of his across
the vast expanse of deep green carpet from a direction in which, I
presume, lay the dining room. I picked up the nearest magazine from
the drum table and buried my face in it. Unfortunately this
magazine turned out to have photographs of women in various stages
of removing their underwear; nevertheless I made a good show of
devoting myself to its perusal with eyes and mouth gaping-the
latter not being at all difficult to arrange.

Keeping one eye, as it were, on Jeremy, and the other on this
disgusting yet oddly fascinating reading material, I suddenly
realized that I had done something awful. Something absolutely
appalling, without ever meaning to do it. And to top it all off,
just as if he knew what I had done, here was McFadden headed right
at me.

HOW COULD I have done that? I wondered, feeling slightly
panicky. Indeed, it was so unlike me that I could not help feeling
a little disoriented, as if I'd lost a piece of my own identity,
and with it my equilibrium.

What was this awful thing I'd done? Why, I had set out to prove
Jeremy McFadden's guilt, which was going about the process entirely
backward, for in our legal system people (even persons who beat
their wives, more's the pity) are presumed innocent until proven
guilty. This was very bad of me, but as I watched from the corner
of my downcast eye his heavy, graceless feet in their incongruously
well-made leather shoes stop not two feet from where I sat bent
over the magazine; and as I felt his probing, rude, staring eyes
move over my hunched form; and finally as I could hear perfectly
well in my mind what he was in all likelihood thinking:
What is
this ill-clad probably ill-bred person doing in my club?
I
could not help but reflect that, although Justice might be blind, I
myself was not. Not blind at all to Jeremy McFadden's defects,
though he apparently hid them so well from most of the world.

At least, that was the case if the reports Wish Stephenson and I
had been hearing from most of his clubmates continued along the
lines they had so far.

Speaking of Wish-he had seen McFadden bearing down on me and now
came to the rescue. "Say, aren't you Jeremy McFadden?" Wish asked
in a most persuasive tone, one indeed that I had never heard from
him, that of the disingenuous young businessman. He continued
speaking, while in my line of vision I could see his feet (in old
policeman's shoes, the heavy leather soles rendering footgear of
that sort not the thing to throw away) and McFadden's elegantly
clad ones almost toe to toe: "I ask because if you are he, sir,"
Wish said, "then I have some information you absolutely cannot
afford to miss. Got it straight off the Chicago Stock Exchange day
before yesterday. Been traveling, you see."

Oh certainly! I thought, hunching harder. I also looked harder
at that magazine open on my knees. Really, the pictures of these
women were enough to make one stop wearing underwear altogether, as
anyway the underwear did not seem to be able to contain the parts
assigned without bits of flesh spilling over or popping out here
and there.

"And you'd be who, exactly?" That was McFadden's gruff
voice.

"Aloysius Bell, distant cousin of your illustrious Mr. Bell
here. Somewhat a favorite of his charming wife, you know her, of
course?"

"I believe so," McFadden acknowledged. "Stock tip, you say? In
the market, are you?"

Wish had hooked his fish already. I turned a page in the
magazine; fortunately what was on the next one was not very racy by
comparison-I was able to read word for word the liquor
advertisements and thus appear well occupied. In a minute, though,
Wish was probing my shinbone with the toe of his clodhoppers and
saying, "Hey, you stay put. Me and Mr. McFadden are headed into the
bar for a couple drinks. Business talk, nothing you'd be interested
in."

"Sure." I shrugged in my best postadolescent fashion, as I
turned another page and bit my tongue. A piece of fiction resided
on the new page, illustrated most tastefully, not to say
graphically: Europa and the Bull. Yes, certainly a bull.

I felt greatly relieved when Wish and Jeremy had gone out of my
line of vision, and then out of the room, for I could at last put
that magazine aside. I felt as if I should wash my hands, and
indeed I did wipe my palms on my trousers.

I had no intention of staying put, no matter what I'd said to
Wish. I was restless, eager to learn something concrete, do
something significant, on my own. So I got up, retrieved the
fedora, and started to stroll around, playing not the gawky boy but
just a young man in a new place, looking around.

I had some conversations, cautiously at first, and then more
confidently as I seemed to be accepted in my country-cousin
persona. The men would talk to me, but only perfunctorily; my cheap
suit and celluloid collar labeled me beneath their notice and so
they did not even look me in the eye. But I did learn two things
that were useful. First, Jeremy McFadden was not liked, but he was
respected-his support in this, his own club, was rock-solid.
Second, the men of the Parnassus cared not a whit that two women
mediums were dead. These men were not interested in the occult, the
supernatural, or the Spiritualist, and they thought women who were
involved in such things were uppity, in some ways worse than
whores, who at least knew their place.