"Here," Wolfe said, "have another." He was holding a glass of water toward Benjamin. Benjamin thanked him, accepted it, drained the glass.
"Sure you don't want something stronger?" Wolfe asked, grinning.
Benjamin shook his head.
"Well then, allow me." And Wolfe rose and went into the kitchen at the back of the dining hall.
Though his eyes and throat still burned, Benjamin was finally beginning to believe he might survive. Thanks to Samuel Wolfe.
Coming to Edith's lab after speaking with Terrill, Wolfe had pushed open the door, only to discover Benjamin sprawled on the floor with a cloud of angry bees descending upon him. Immediately he remembered about the emergency button, rushed back to the door and pressed it, and then returned to extract Benjamin from the fearsome cloud of yellow gas and dying bees.
The alarm had brought almost everyone at the Foundation to the laboratory. Benjamin didn't recall clearly what had happened over the next hour or so. He remembered someone bringing eyedrops and an inhaler from the medical office and ministering to him as he lay on the wet grass outside the lab. It might have been Gudrun. And soon thereafter he remembered hearing the wail of an ambulance-apparently Arthur had called the nearest hospital, which was some thirty minutes away.
He also remembered someone saying that Edith Gadenhower was dead.
Once the ambulance had left with Edith's body, Wolfe had shooed everyone away, saying he would take Benjamin to the dining hall to get him some "medicinal libation." When Terrill had objected that he should speak to Benjamin first, Wolfe had said with firm authority, "Later, Arthur. He's in no condition to be interrogated now."
"Feeling better," Wolfe said, returning from the kitchen. He had a glass of wine in one hand-"Apparently they won't open the real liquor cabinet until dinnertime"-and some food on a tray for Benjamin: a green salad and some clam chowder.
"Eat up," Wolfe said sternly. "Get something inside you besides that damn gas."
"The… laboratory?" Benjamin managed to get out between dry coughs.
"Quite a mess," said Wolfe. "Apparently in trying to defend against the swarm, Edith knocked over a good deal of equipment. Glass everywhere. And of course dead bees. Hundreds of the little buggers. I was a little concerned. You know, they say a dead bee can still sting." He greeted Benjamin's look of surprise with a smile. "And that damn gas, still enough of it there to make one cough up a storm. But there was Hauser, tromping about, so I thought it was safe enough. By the way, he's still 'putting together' that list of computer serial numbers for us."
"Poor Mrs. Gadenhower," Benjamin said. "It must have been…"
"Yes, it must have," Wolfe said. He drained half the wineglass. "Ah, that's better. Anyway, it was impossible to tell anything about what happened to her."
"It just seems strange," Benjamin said. "She seemed so careful… yesterday. I can't imagine how she… could have been careless enough… to let them out."
"No, that does seem out of character," Wolfe said, eyeing him with some concern. Then he looked down to the books on the table, the ones Benjamin had taken from the library and had with him in Edith's lab. "I saved these from the shambles. I hope they were worth it."
"You have no idea," said Benjamin, wiping his eyes. "It's exactly as I thought. You see-"
"Not now," Wolfe interrupted him. "I must talk with Arthur about how Edith's 'incident' effects our… arrangement. The police will be coming out tomorrow. They have to now. And they'll be bringing the county medical examiner with them. For Fletcher. I don't see how they can delay an official investigation into his death any longer."
Benjamin looked disappointed. "You mean, our work here is over?"
"Not yet it isn't," Wolfe said, shaking his head. "But we don't have much time, at least not… unchaperoned time. Let me talk to Arthur. Then I'll meet you back in Fletcher's room."
Wolfe gulped the last of the wine, then stood, preparing to leave. Benjamin stood up as well, tucking the books under his arm, and, as they walked to the foyer, he turned to Wolfe.
"Gudrun spoke to me," he said.
Wolfe stopped. "Oh?" he said. "Anything… relevant?" Benjamin ignored the smirk in his tone.
"Just that, well, she admitted she'd lied to me."
Wolfe nodded thoughtfully, led him out through the doors into the quad.
"Anyway, get some rest. I'll see you in an hour."
Benjamin turned to cross over to the manse.
"Oh, and Benjamin." Wolfe turned to him. "Let's not talk with anyone else-especially Gudrun-until then, all right?"
Benjamin nodded, then watched Wolfe enter Arthur's office. He crossed the foyer and went to the staircase to go up to his room. Then he stopped.
He had an hour, he thought, and he already knew the parts of the books he wanted to show to Wolfe. Perhaps this was finally a good time for him to take a closer look at the mural.
The foyer's chandelier wasn't yet lit, and the dim light coming through the glass dome overhead didn't provide much illumination. Still, it was enough for him to make out the larger details of the mural. He began to study it, standing in the center of the foyer and turning to follow its narrative.
For narrative it was. He could see immediately that the mural was a historical panorama. And the story it told was the making of America.
One began on the left with a rather cliched (and politically incorrect) version of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Heroic figures in full fifteenth-century garb stood at the top of a hill, greeting Native Americans in loincloths and feathers, while behind and below them the three ships of Columbus's fleet floated serenely in a vast, fading, turquoise-colored ocean. Next, and seemingly crowding them out of History's sweep, came the Pilgrims, dressed for a formal Thanksgiving feast, again accompanied by stock Native American figures. But in the midst of these typical scenes was a rather strange one.
It depicted a grove in some dense forest. In the center of the grove a preacher stood atop a tree stump, a copy of the Bible raised in one hand. He had long white flowing hair and a fanatical light in his eyes. Around him were gathered his pious flock, all kneeling, heads bowed. But what was most strange was that amongst the worshippers were some Native Americans, dressed as Europeans, but with dense black hair; one or two even wore bead necklaces. Benjamin had never seen a rendering quite like this, with Puritans and Natives mixed, praying together.
Then of course came a group of soldiers from the Revolutionary War era; but Benjamin was surprised, given the traditional depictions of the other eras, that there was no figure representing George Washington among them. Instead, there was a figure in a general's uniform-someone who bore a faint resemblance to the representation of Horatio Gates in the portrait over the Morrises' mantel. Next to this was a scene depicting the signing of the Constitution, but once again, none of the figures were recognizable. Where, he wondered, were Jefferson, Franklin, Adams? Or the father of our country, George Washington?
After that, there was another curious scene of some group gathered at a stream in the act of baptism-but into what religion? And what was the historical event represented?
As the panorama moved into the nineteenth century, the scenes became more typical: a farmer plowing rolling fields of yellow wheat, railroad workers laying iron tracks, a miller driving his mules at an enormous grindstone. But in the center of them all was a scene depicting what appeared to be a college campus, with small figures of scholars in academic robes crossing its green squares of common; a campus that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Foundation's oldest buildings.
And then, moving into the Industrial Age, there were factory workers emerging from squat, gray buildings topped by busy smokestacks, steamboats on a wide river, long snakes of trains loaded with cattle and iron and coal… The only Native Americans here were small, indistinct figures perched on the top of hills, vaguely threatening.
As Benjamin continued to turn, he saw more groups of workers-miners, lumberjacks, blacksmiths, cowboys-always with their faces aglow with dedication and purpose, and always pointed toward the right of the mural, as though straining to see the final realization of the true America that lay just over the cloud-covered horizon.
Next, the mural's pale blue sky became crowned with airplanes-the Wright biplane, a tri-motor mail plane, even a flying boat-while down on the earth the factories multiplied, their halos of black smoke apparently indicating the building power of America's industrial might. And it was with this section of the mural, the last, that the faces became somewhat blanker, more generic and idealized. In one or two small scenes he saw what appeared to be strikers or protestors, with signs and torches-but always surrounding them were indistinct figures shrouded in a kind of gray fog…
Finally, the mural reached its near climax with the depiction of the building of a mighty skyscraper: steel girders were suspended in the air, while in the foreground a giant, blond-haired steelworker, stripped to the waist, gazed outward from the mural, directly into the viewer's eyes, as though challenging that viewer to put on some work gloves, climb into the painting, and join the great communal effort depicted there.
And there it ended. There still were another five feet of blank wall space. As Stoltz had said, Bayne hadn't completed it. Given the year he was working in, 1929, Benjamin wondered how on earth Bayne would have rendered the collapse of the American economic system-especially as so much of the mural seemed a tribute to America's economic stability and power-though in places he sensed a strange undercurrent to that tribute, as though it were all an immense parody. Benjamin noticed how, in the background, people seemed to coalesce out of the smoke and clouds and dust, as though the landscape itself was producing Americans.
Benjamin moved closer to make out these background figures, and he began to discern other details in the painting: smaller figures whose clothes and faces were clearly intended to represent historical personages: that was probably Lincoln, that was Edison, here was Teddy Roosevelt… But why were they in the background, as though they were unimportant, mere supporting characters in this historical theater?
And then one of these details caught his attention-a tiny, almost invisible mark which at first he took to be a mere shadow. He looked closer, and saw it was some sort of symbol, painted as though it were carved in the keystone of a granite gate over the entrance of what he took to be a Depression-era university. Then, when he looked back to the left, back in time, as it were, he saw it again. And then again.
After some careful searching, he found it on the architectural plans spread across a drafting table in the section about skyscrapers; again on an X-ray machine in a paean to what was obviously a modern clinic; again on one of the standards being carried by Union soldiers on the charge, the pennant almost obscured by the smoke of battle; then again, scrawled as though a doodle in the notebook of a woman student seated amidst other women students, in what was probably a women's finishing school of the early nineteenth century.
After further searching, he located the strange symbol again as a shaded area in the aura of light above the preacher in the woods where the mural began; in fact here it was most distinct, once one knew what to look for. And then, after poring over the odd tableau representing the signing of the Constitution, he found it yet again: very subtly set into the seal of a letter sitting on a table by the elbow of one of the anonymous delegates.
Benjamin stepped back, slightly out of breath, rubbing his eyes. With a little distance, these symbols and other details quickly melded into the overall complexity of the mural, and for a moment he wasn't even sure he'd seen it at all. These tiny, indistinct marks might easily be taken for mistakes of the brush, shadings, small details…
He looked again over that representation of the Continental Congress signing the Constitution. And now he realized the scene was meant to refer to John Trumbull's famous Declaration of Independence, though without the famous personages that populated that painting. It was as if the painter had replaced every famous delegate with a figure in the same posture and clothes, but a nondescript Everyman, without features or personality.
Except one.
He leaned in closer again, brought his face to within a few inches of the part of the scene depicting a particular seated delegate. The delegate's right elbow was propped on a small table, and upon that table was what looked like a group of letters. On one of those letters was a wax seal, and set into that seal-unless his eyes were playing tricks on him in the dim light-was that same symbol. Then he looked to the face of the delegate seated at that table.
He felt a chill spread down his back.
He quickly looked over his shoulder, saw that the foyer was empty. But for some reason he took small comfort in being unobserved.
After a last glance at the mural, Benjamin hurried up the staircase to find Wolfe as quickly as possible.