“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Let’s see what this horseflesh looks like, shall we?”

“Certainly, sir. Just walk this way.”

“Come along, Rumsey.”

Come along? They didn’t want the butler; they didn’t need the butler in this scene; this was supposed to be just themselves and Monroe Hall.

But what could Mac do about it? Here came the butler, slope-shouldered and heavy-browed, and here came Hall, and there was nothing for it but to walk ahead of them down the path from house to pickup and along the side of the pickup and the trailer, where in fact he did have a previously prepared line to deliver, as a signal to the group inside the trailer: “This way, Mr. Hall.”

Well, he did have to say it, butler or no butler, and so he said it, and then, all according to plan (except for the butler), that door in the side of the trailer popped open and out jumped four people in a variety of masks with Buddy (paper bag with eyeholes cut in it) carrying the burlap sack meant to go over Hall’s head.

And Hall couldn’t have played his part better. His reaction was stunned astonishment. He didn’t try to run; he didn’t bob and weave; he didn’t even holler; he just froze.

Buddy leaped forward, raising the sack, as Mark (green ski mask, with elks) and Ace (Lone Ranger mask) jumped to grab Hall’s arms, while Os (rubber Frankenstein head), who was supposed to grab Hall’s ankles, pointed instead at the butler and cried, “Who’s that?”

“The butler,” Mac said, apologetic even though it wasn’t his fault.

“Grab him!” Mark yelled, he already having his hands full with the belatedly struggling Hall, Mark and Buddy and Ace now tugging the sacked Hall toward the trailer.

Up to this point, the butler had just been watching events unfold, interested but not involved; as though he thought of himself as merely a bystander. But now, when Os lunged at him, shouting, “Come on, Mac!” the butler backed away, putting his hands up as he cried, “Hey, don’t call me Mac, I’m the butler, I’m not in this.”

“He’ll raise the alarm!” Mark shouted from halfway into the trailer.

Mac, having already figured that out, leaped forward to join Os in grabbing the butler by both arms and dragging him in his employer’s wake.

The butler struggled like mad: “What are you doing? I got work here! I got things to do!”

What, was he crazy? Mark on one side, Os on the other, they lifted the butler by his elbows, ran him forward, tossed him through the trailer door onto the fallen cluster inside, Os jumped on top of the scrum, Mac slammed the door, and three minutes later the guards were waving bye-bye as he drove out the gate.

46

“OF COURSE,” KELP SAID into the phone, “Mr. Hall would expect to contribute to the orphans’ picnic, other than merely providing the grounds and the staff to cater the affair.”

The child welfare woman had not yet thawed. Nor had she yet agreed to provide orphans to assist in Monroe Hall’s rehabilitation. Icily, she said, “Contribute. He’d want to supply milk and cookies, would he?”

“Well, beyond that. Mr. Hall was thinking,” Kelp said, making it up as he went along, “of contributing a bus.”

“A… I’m sorry?”

“A bus,” Kelp repeated. “A large vehicle for conveying fifty-four seated persons, and twelve standees.”

“I know what a bus is,” she snipped.

Kelp waited. Let the penny drop. Well, more than a penny.

Thud. “A bus?” There was a new squeak in her voice. “He would—he’d—he’d contribute a bus? Oh, I see, you mean, he’d pay the rental.”

“No,” Kelp said, “he’d pay for the bus. Surely there are other times you’d like to take the kiddies on excursions. You’d have to come up with your own driver, though.”

“Excuse me, Mr. …?”

“Blanchard, Fred Blanchard.”

“Mr. Blanchard, are—”

“Fred, please.”

“Are you,” she insisted, “saying that Mr. Hall would buy and donate to us a bus?”

“He’s been impressed by the work you’re doing over there.”

“Mr.—”

“Fred, please. And you’re?”

“Alice Turner.”

“Alice, why don’t we work out a date here, agreeable to both of us, so Mr. Hall can be sure to have the bus ready in time to bring the kiddies to the picnic?”

“Well…”

“Sunday after next, would that be good?”

No, as it turned out, that would be a little too soon, as Kelp had expected. Alice had board members to consult, and so on, and so on, but by the end of the conversation all ice was gone, and it was pretty clear that Monroe Hall was in one picnic with sixty kiddies and out one bus.

Kelp was just hanging up, pleased with himself—charitable work is always satisfying, particularly with somebody else’s money—when Mrs. Hall walked in, for the second time in ten minutes, but this time looking worried. “Fred,” she said, “have you seen Mr. Hall?”

“He’s out riding a horse,” Kelp told her. “They left about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well, no, he’s not,” she said.

Kelp said, “The instructor drove in with his own horse, fifteen minutes ago.”

“And left, just a few minutes later,” Mrs. Hall said. “When I couldn’t find Monroe, and I didn’t see any horse transporter out front, I called the gate, and they said the horse transporter left not five minutes after it arrived. They thought it was merely somebody bringing a horse on approval, for Monroe to possibly buy.”

“No, it was to learn to ride.”

“I know that,” Mrs. Hall agreed. “But the gate didn’t know that. Nobody thought it necessary to tell the gate why a horse transporter was coming into the compound, so when it went right back out, they assumed it was merely a horse that Monroe had decided not to buy.”

Frowning, Kelp got up and went over to look out the front window. No horse transporter in front of the house. Nothing in front of the house, all the way down to the guardshack. “Maybe,” he said, and turned around to look at Mrs. Hall’s worried face, “he decided he wasn’t ready to ride a horse after all, and sent the guy away. Or just didn’t like the guy.”

“Then where did he go? Fred, where did my husband go?”

Kelp looked out the window. “Well, he wouldn’t leave the compound.”

“Not willingly.”

Kelp studied that worried face again, and this time he suspected his own face showed a little worry as well. “Mrs. Hall,” he said, “nothing’s happened, everything’s okay.”

“Then where is Monroe?” she said. “I’ve called all the other places around the compound where he might be, and no one’s seen him. Not since the horse transporter came in and went right back out again.”

“But—” Kelp didn’t like what Mrs. Hall was thinking, because he knew it was the same as what he was thinking, and he wasn’t ready for what they both were thinking. He was too busy for what they both were thinking.

Mrs. Hall said, “There are people who would like to get their hands on Monroe.”

This was true. Their hands and probably also their feet. Feeling discombobulated, not himself, not even Fred Blanchard, Kelp said, “Couldn’t he, uh, couldn’t he be, uh …”

She was shaking her head. “He isn’t on the compound,” she said. “He wouldn’t leave, but he isn’t here.”

“Uh…”

“Fred,” she said, “call the police.”

What Kelp thought was, Wait a minute, you’ve got this backwards here! I don’t call the police, other people call the police about me! What he said was, “Yes, Mrs. Hall.”