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missing. One way or the other, he’s been gone for twenty-five years. If the paint on the picture is comparatively fresh, he probably didn’t paint it.”
    “Sorry, I don’t quite follow that.”
    “It doesn’t matter. The point is that Fred brought the picture here, and he says it was stolen from his room last night. Do you know anything about that?”
    “Hell, no.” His whole face wrinkled as if old age had fallen on him suddenly. “You think I took it?”
    “I don’t mean that at all.”
    “I hope not. Fred would kill me if I touched any of his sacred things. I’m not even supposed to go into his room.”
    “What I’m trying to find out—did Fred say anything about a painting being stolen from his room last night?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Did you see him this morning?”
    “I certainly did. I dished up his porridge for him.”
    “And he didn’t mention the missing painting?”
    “No, sir. Not to me.”
    “I’d like to take a look at Fred’s room. Would it be possible?”
    The suggestion seemed to frighten him. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She hates to have anybody in her house. She’d even like to get rid of me if she could.”
    “Didn’t you say she’s gone to the hospital?”
    “That’s right, she went to work.”
    “Then how would she know?”
    “I don’t know how she knows, but she always does. I guess she worms it out of me or something. It’s hard on me, hard on my nerves.” He giggled shamefacedly. “You wouldn’t have any more of that Tennessee walking whisky?”
    I got out the other half-pint and showed it to him. He reached for it. I held it away from him.
    “Let’s go upstairs, Jerry. Then I’ll leave this with you.” I put it back in my pocket.
    “I don’t know.”
    He glanced up the stairs as if his wife might be there listening. She wasn’t, of course, but her invisible presence seemed to fill the house. Johnson was trembling with fear of her, or with desire for the whisky.
    The desire won out. He switched on a light and led me up the stairs. The second floor was in much poorer condition than the first. The ancient paper on the walls was discolored and peeling. The carpetless floor was splintered. A panel was missing from one of the bedroom doors, and had been replaced with the side of a cardboard carton.
    I had seen worse houses in the slums and barrios, places that looked as if a full-scale infantry battle had passed through them. The Johnsons’ house was the scene of a less obvious disaster. But it suddenly seemed quite possible to me that the house had hatched a crime; perhaps Fred had stolen the picture in the hope of improving his life.
    I felt a certain sympathy for Fred. It would be hard to come back to this house from the Biemeyers’ house, or from the art museum.
    Johnson opened the door with the missing panel and switched on a light that hung by a cord from the ceiling.
    “This is Fred’s little room.”
    It contained an iron single bed covered with a U.S. Army blanket, a bureau, a torn canvas deck chair, a bookcase almost full of books, and in one corner by the blinded window an old kitchen table with various tools arranged on it, hammers andshears and saws of varying sizes, sewing equipment, pots of glue and paint.
    The light over the bed was still swinging back and forth, its reflection climbing the walls alternately. For a moment, I had the feeling that the whole house was rocking on its foundations. I reached up and held the light still. There were pictures on the walls, modern classics like Monet and Modigliani, most of them cheap reproductions that looked as though they had been clipped from magazines. I opened the closet door. It contained a jacket and a couple of shirts on hangers, and a pair of shiny black boots. For a man in his early thirties, Fred had very few possessions.
    I went through the bureau drawers, which contained some underwear and handkerchiefs and socks and a high school senior class picture for the year