The muscles along Will’s jawline tightened. “No.”
“C’mon, Professor. You two can’t be on the outs forever. You gotta break the ice sometime. I saw her last night and—”
“Wait a minute: You saw Evie?” Jericho interrupted.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Professor, I’m telling ya, one word from her on the radio and we’re made. And if she agrees—”
“Where did you see Evie?”
“The Grant Hotel… If she agrees—”
“But how did—”
“Settle down there, Freddy,” Sam said. “Like I was saying, if she agrees to be our special guest for the Diviners exhibit party, everything’s jake.”
“I’m sure we’ll come up with the money for the taxes without having to sully the ideals of this institution,” Will said sharply.
“So you won’t make nice with her? Not even to save the museum?” Sam held up the notices. “We’ve only got until March before the city takes this place, Professor.”
Will shoved the tax letter beneath the stack of clippings on his desk. “We’ll pull through. As for these sightings, there are more of them in the past couple of months, ever since John Hobbes. Have you noticed?” And just like that, the topics of a Diviners exhibit, the party, and Evie were dismissed. Will tapped a fountain pen in a slow rhythm against the desk. “There’s something there. Somehow I sense that it’s all connected.”
“How?” Jericho asked.
Will was up and pacing. “I don’t know. Yet. But I don’t think I’m going to find out by staying here.” Will stopped beside the tall globe stand. He gave the world a spin, trailing a finger over its curved surface. “That’s why I’m considering going out into the field, like in the old days when I was a researcher. Do you think the two of you could run the museum while I look into a few of these cases? I’d only be gone for a short while. Ten days. A few weeks at most.”
Jericho shook his head. “Will, I don’t think—”
Sam stepped on Jericho’s foot, cutting him off. “Of course we could! Why, the giant and I are a terrific team!”
“Very well, then. It’s settled. I’ll leave tomorrow around two o’clock.”
Suddenly, Miss Walker’s mysterious telephone message made sense to Jericho. Will had decided to leave long before he brought up the idea. This conversation they were having now was strictly a formality.
“Well then,” Will said abruptly, “I believe I’ll take a walk, if you don’t mind.”
Sam followed Will down the museum’s long hallway. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Professor. I’ve got this all under control.”
“That is precisely the statement that makes me worry,” Will said, throwing wide the front door. The morning sun had given way to the first warning drops of what surely would become a dismal drizzle. He shook out his umbrella.
“Don’t open that in here, Doc,” Sam cautioned.
“Why not?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s bad luck. Everybody knows that.”
“We make our own luck.” Will released the black spiderlike canopy, angling its full bonnet through the door like a shield.
After seeing the Mystical Mediums out, Sam returned to the library to find Jericho perched at a long table, reading as usual. “I’m back. Did you miss me?” he said, dropping into Will’s chair.
Jericho didn’t look up from his book. “Like typhoid. By the way, as regards the party, I told you so. And that’s Will’s chair.”
“Yeah. Comfy. I had no idea it was so soft.”
“Out.”
“C’mon, Freddy. Dad’s not home.”
“Out.”
With a sigh, Sam moved to the Chesterfield. He put his feet up on the table near Jericho’s hands just to annoy him. “Pal, we gotta pull off this Diviners exhibit. We can’t let Will lose the museum.”
Jericho gave Sam a dubious glance as he turned the page. “Since when did you become so invested?”
“I’m a caring fella. Can’t a fella want to do a good turn for another?”
“There’s gold buried in the walls, isn’t there?”