And now, amid the stink and enthralling bustle of New York, Drew recalled last Christmas, when Nat and Eliot came home for the holiday and ran with him from room to room, pushing buttons to witness the miracle of light that neither smoked nor smelled nor guttered, that required for its ignition no match or fire but was summoned instantaneously with the tip of your finger. After illuminating every room except those on the servants’ floor, the boys stood outside in the snow to behold the effect. The house looked as merry as the season, each window a beacon shaming the dull archaic glow in the Willoughbys’ windows. The dazzling rectangles in front of them burned with the hope and promise of that future their father had spoken of, and it seemed at that moment to belong to them alone—a possession less sure at the moment, with their lives thrown into such uncertainty.

Eliot mailed his letter in the great, domed post office on Park Row, and then the four walked to Merrill, Chapman and Scott’s offices, in a squat granite building a block inland from the Hudson. There, a dour man, who sat behind a smoked-glass partition with the words CLAIMS INVESTIGATIONS painted on it in black letters, said that Lockwood had not been in all day, and, no, he could not say where he was, but if he didn’t show up for work tomorrow, he would be looking for a new job. The man took out his pocket watch and told them the offices were about to close, and indeed, the lady type writers were rising from their desks and covering their machines, while clerks and underwriters were turning off the banks of green-shaded lamps on their desks.

“Reckon he’ll get fired?” asked Eliot, when they were outside, walking past a row of brass foundries and machine shops. “What do you think, Nat?”

“Hey, I was right there alongside you, so why should I know any more than you do?”

“He’s in a pickle, just like we figured. That’s what all this has got to be about, somehow or other.”

Nathaniel was silent for a time, feeling as he had before: that he and his brothers were acting in a play without knowing what the play was about or what the other characters were saying or doing. The difference now was that he didn’t care what the play was about; he intended to create his own action.

“Let’s forget about Lockwood,” he said finally. “I’ll bet we haven’t seen him to talk to him more than ten times in our wholes lives, so let’s forget about him and get back to the boat.”