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some explorer’s ancient sailing vessel, trying to find North America, wallowing uneasily around in a heaving sea in the middle of the night, and he was wedged in the hold like a piece of cargo, and far over his head he could hear the distant shouts of the seamen on deck. He wanted to tell them they were off the coast of New Jersey, because after all he came from New Jersey, and he knew the coast of New Jersey like the back of his hand. He could even smell the wild grapes on the shore and hear the shore birds cry. But the damnfool captain was yelling, “Port! Port your helm!” and the ship was coming about. They were missing the mainland altogether, heading in their doomed boat back out to sea.

Chapter Ten

    It was an expeditionary force that assembled on the second balcony above the great hall. Fire Chief Campbell was there, and Frank Harvey from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and Oliphant from the Cambridge Police, and Peter Marley, Chief of the Harvard Police, and Donald Maderna, the mechanical foreman from the Buildings and Grounds Department for the North Yard, and a swarm of men from Captain McCurdy’s department in Boston. Then McCurdy himself came puffing up the second flight of stairs.
    â€œWe found a belt buckle,” he said, “and some melted plastic credit cards, and a fulminate of mercury detonating cap. That’s all so far.”
    Donald Maderna led the way up the third flight of stairs to the door at the summit of the ceiling, where the arching hammer beams met nearly a hundred feet above the floor. Homer climbed the last stairway slowly, looking down, feeling a pleasant sense of vertigo, enjoying the panorama of the colossal chamber. It had once been a dining hall, he knew that, but now it was more like an empty unused attic or lumber room on a stupendous scale. The wooden walls were a clutter of dusty hangings, marble busts, painted portraits of officers in the Union Army, electric fans, old radiators, and, wires meandering from here to there. Shriveled balloons hung from the ridgepole, left over from a freshman mixer. The room was as long as a football field, a cavernous, yawning, empty space. The stairway led to a series of empty rooms, one above another, in the turret at one side of the north entry. There was a mattress on the floor of the uppermost chamber. “What’s that doing here?” said McCurdy.

    â€œMaybe somebody used to live here once,” said Homer. “Nice room. Great stained-glass windows. Terrific view. All the colors of the rainbow.”
    Oliphant kicked the mattress. Dust flew out of it. “Not lately. Nobody’s slept here lately. Who would have a key to these rooms up here anyway?”
    â€œOh, of course nobody’s supposed to have keys unless they’re issued by the university,” said Donald Maderna. “But after the keys get out of our hands, we can’t really guarantee what happens to them.”
    â€œThey have to change the locks all the time,” explained Marley of Harvard Police. “We get a hundred break-and-enter complaints a year around here. I mean, let’s face it, this is a high-crime area.” He turned to Homer Kelly. “You should have seen all those little rooms in the basement. Crazy mess of offices and organizations they’ve got down there. And the whole place was full of cots and blankets and sleeping bags and illegal hot plates. Makes you wonder what the hell’s going on.”
    â€œNot like that in my time,” said Frank Harvey darkly. “Back in the fifties. Not so many fruit cakes around here then. Whole Boston area’s gone to hell.”
    Donald Maderna opened another door. “Careful now,” he said. “From here on it’s all catwalks and ladders.” He climbed a narrow stair and led them crouching under a low-hanging jungle of ventilating ducts and pipes. “Your people will have their work cut out for them up here, Mr. McCurdy. It’s