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calm.
    “I can’t.”
    “Sure, you can.”
    “I can’t, and you know why.”
    Murray’s cheerfulness dissolved. He stared at his tapping fingers, which had picked up pace.
    “So nothing’s changed,” he said, face coloring.
    “ A , B , and C , Murray,” David said, hoping his calm tone would help to avert a scene.
    “Everybody keeps telling me A , B , and C . You don’t think I’ve outgrown that?” Murray raised his eyes. “Why didn’t you listen to me? What’s the matter with you to come?” His voice rose. “Scaring her to death? Leavin’ her in that state? You know you made her cry?”He raised a fist. “If I had half a brain I’d stick this right down your throat! For makin’ her cry, and for believin’ filthy lies!”
    “Your father didn’t lie. There is proof. I came to get it.”
    “I’m tired of you defending him!”
    “Keep it down over there,” a policeman warned.
    “And I am tired,” said David. “I am so very tired of always trying so hard to get through to you.”
    Surprise, like water, dashed over the glowering face.
    “Why is it always a fight, Murray? You’re the most stubborn, pigheaded, obstinate fellow I know. If you don’t want to believe it, out the window it goes. If it’s not funny, or pleasant, or happy, or fascinating   —it has no part of your world. You’re just as blind as the people you draw those posters for.”
    “It ain’t our war!”
    “Dead children are my war.”
    “Charles Lindbergh said   —”
    “I don’t care what Charles Lindbergh said! I cared what your father said!”
    Murray snarled, and clamped his fists over his ears. David wanted to throttle him.
    But . . .
    But relentless compassion struck David’s heart. Why, God, did you create some people thus? Murray was ten times more aware than the average person of everything , and his imagination was the keenest receptor of all; David had come to understand that if someone said ocean to Murray, he tasted salt and rode the swells   —he encountered the enormity. Murray’s keen reception faculties meant that he had encountered what Arthur Vance had brought to them. He took it in, he knew it, he felt it more than David ever would. It meant he knew evil like David did not, like he never would.
    “Murray,” he said heavily, knowing he was about to murder the final scrap of innocence in him, “your father’s friend, the Americanjournalist in Berlin   —he confirmed that it’s true. He confirmed every word. God help us.”
    Murray’s face broke, and his chest heaved. He shoved himself arm’s length from the table, gripping the table’s edge. He put his head down. “There ain’t nothin’ for Rocket Kid in this. Ain’t nothing he can do.”
    “Murray, there’s a packet. A parcel of some sort. We have to   —”
    “No one could let that happen.” Murray was shaking his head. “No one could go along with it. I won’t believe it!”
    People in the room stopped talking and stared.
    Why had it fallen to David Fitzpatrick to do, and to say, such terribly hard things?
    “You’re not a child anymore, Murray. Act like a man.”
    Murray went very still.
    David sent a swift glance about to make sure no one was listening, and leaned in. “The packet has photographs. The photographs are evidence. They’re pictures of documents, of ledgers, of . . . children. Evidence of everything your father told us. Someone risked his life to get it to the journalist. We have a moral duty to find it. We must bring it home, and get it into the right hands.” He hesitated over the next part. It would be hard for Murray.
    “The Maggie Bright is docked at Elliott’s Boatyard on the Thames in a small village called Bexley. It’s just west of a town called Teddington   —not far from London. Just get to the Thames and follow it west. Your father hid the packet aboard the Maggie Bright . Find that packet, Murray. You’ll believe me.”
    Murray raised his face, white from encounter.
    David’s