"Secret?"
"Yes. I have been too ashamed to reveal it to you until now. But with all that is happening, I think you should know."
"Go on," said Harold Smith, unable to comprehend what his wife could have on her mind. She seemed incredibly calm under the circumstances.
"You have always been a good husband. You know that."
Harold Smith cleared his throat. "Thank you."
"But you have not always been home. You were away a lot during your days with the CIA. After you came to Folcroft, I thought that would change, but if anything, your absences grew worse."
"I have my responsibilities," Smith said defensively.
"There was a time many years ago when you were away for nearly a year. Do you remember?"
"I remember. I was in the Philippines."
"During that time, Harold, I am afraid I was not entirely faithful to you."
Harold Smith reeled on his feet as if punched in the stomach.
"No," he said, shocked.
"His name doesn't matter. We were younger then. It was brief, passing, inconsequential. But I have suffered pangs of guilt to this very day."
"Why tell me now?"
"Because," Maude Smith said, lowering her voice and eyes, "during that time I had a baby. A son."
"Impossible."
"I know it sounds ludicrous, but it's true. He was a happy little boy with dark eyes and such a winning smile. I wanted to keep him but I knew it was impossible." Maude's faded blue eyes squeezed shut in the frumpy cushion of her face. "Harold, to this day I don't know if he was your son or the product of my... indiscretion. You see, I learned I was pregnant only six weeks after you had left. There was no way to tell by whom I had the boy, so the week he was born, I put him up for adoption."
"A son," Smith said dazedly. "By now he would be grown. An adult."
"Harold, you have no conception of how this has torn me apart all these long years."
Smith touched the glass before his wife's pained face. "Maude..."
"As time went on, I became more and more convinced that he was your son, Harold. I don't know how I knew that. But I feel certain of it. And every day I miss that little fellow more and more."
"I...I don't quite know what to say. What happened to this boy?"
"I put him up for adoption."
"He can be traced. Surely he can be traced."
"I left him on the steps of an orphanage in New Jersey one morning. And I never looked back. I don't know how he could be found now."
"Orphanages keep records."
"This one burned down long ago, Harold. It's a dead end."
Something caused Harold Smith's gray face to pale. "This orphanage, Maude. What was it called?"
"Saint something. A Catholic name. I chose it because no one would think to trace it to me."
Smith's voice grew low and urgent. "Maude. Think carefully. Did you leave a note? Perhaps identifying the baby by some name?"
"Yes. I gave him a made-up name. I guess I thought I might recognize him later by that name."
"And this name?"
"Williams. Remo Williams."
Harold W. Smith stared at his wife as if at a ghost. There was a sudden roaring in his ears.
"You named your son Remo Williams?" he croaked.
"I picked the name off a map of Italy. San Remo. It had such a nice sound. Williams was the name of the college my sister went to."
Harold Smith wore his face loose with shock. He had to swallow twice before he could speak again. Even then, his voice shook and quavered.
"Maude. We cannot speak of this here. Go to your sister's and wait for me. I promise that together you and I will find this boy and determine his paternity. I promise."
"Oh, Harold, you're so good to me. So understanding."
And Maude Smith pressed her pale lips to the glass of the window, leaving a colorless imprint there.
Then she was gone. Harold Smith stared at the faint imprint by the wan light of the corridor for a long time before he returned to his bunk.
He did not sleep the remainder of the night. His mind was working furiously.
And in his tired gray eyes was a new light and a new resolve.
DR. MURRAY SIMON was making his rounds.
He pushed the cart that contained the various generic prescription drugs for the remaining inhabitants of Folcroft's psychiatric wing ahead of him. Normally a nurse dispensed medications. But the nursing staff had been cut to the bone, and the remaining nurses were attending to patients' needs in the convalescent ward.
And normally the rounds Dr. Simon made were Dr. Gerling's responsibility. But Dr. Gerling was in the convalescent ward himself, where he had been taken after he had somehow been overpowered by one of the patients he was discharging from the psychiatric wing.
Dr. Gerling had not yet given a coherent story. And in the hectic aftermath of the IRS seizure, his situation did not warrant great concern. He would recover. Folcroft, on the other hand, might not. A great many patients had gotten loose from their rooms and had been rounded up and returned with difficulty. There were whispers of IRS agents having been taken to the hospital morgue. No one knew what had happened to them, and no one dared to inquire. After all, this was the IRS. They knew how to punish people with long noses.
So while IRS agents ran hither and yon, to God alone knew what purpose, Dr. Murray Simon took responsibility for dispensing psychiatric patients their medication.
It was fairly routine. Dr. Gerling had left very clear instructions. The routine brought Dr. Simon to the door marked Beasley.