They headed back in the worst heat of the day, the streets nearly empty, as the Havaneros took their siesta. It was so hot that, halfway to the legation, the boys sneaked into the interior courtyard of some grandee’s mansion and dunked their heads into a fountain. Cooled off, they made a third climb up the stairs to the office where Joseph labored with several other functionaries.

“I believe this is what you’ve been waiting for,” he said, handed a yellow envelope bearing the stamp OVERSEAS CABLE to Nathaniel, and looking at his wet hair, said, “One heck of a scorcher today, isn’t it?”

Nathaniel tore the envelope open, read the message once, and again, and a third time, and felt something close around his heart like a fist.

“What’s it say?” asked Eliot, alarmed by his brother’s expression.

Nathaniel passed it to him and Drew, and they looked at him, frowning, and he said to Drew, “You’re the one with the Kodak memory. Got any idea what he means?”

Drew thought for a long while. If his mind were clear, perhaps he could summon up a chapter and verse that would solve the riddle, but every channel in his brain was clouded by a bitter anger. There is something seriously wrong with the man, he thought. Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe he’s been crazy all along but we couldn’t see it. And if he isn’t crazy, then he ought to be horsewhipped.

“He means he’s not sending us a penny,” he said to his brothers.

“We can figure that much out, and that isn’t enough,” Nathaniel remarked, and went to Joseph’s desk.

Joseph was typewriting a letter by hunt and peck, and he raised one hand to tell Nathaniel to wait.

“I must say I prefer a pen and foolscap to these machines,” he muttered to himself, and then gave Nathaniel his attention.

“Could we see Mr. Carrington again?” asked Nathaniel. “There’s a problem.”

“He’s engaged presently,” said the secretery. “But I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“Thanks. Do you happen to have a Bible around here we could borrow?”

The missionary’s son produced one from his drawer, bound in soft, black leather and so frequently consulted that its binding was coming apart.

They waited on a bench in the corridor outside, under an electric fan that listlessly paddled the air, Drew reading the first epistle as quickly as he could, salutation to benediction, waiting as he read for a line or a verse to leap from the page and say to him, “Here it is, the key to break the code.” He was into the second epistle when he closed the book and slammed it on the bench.

“This is just what the bastard wants us to do,” he said. “Drive ourselves nuts trying to figure it out. I’m sick of him playing the tune and us dancing to it.”