"No she doesn't," Neil said.

"She and Wallace Barrow go back a long way. They are like cat and dog."

"Obviously. He's arrogant to her, and she's preachy. And the townspeople are going to lose."

"No they're not. Where do you get these ideas?"

"I listen to people."

"You just don't get it. You're not from New England. You don't know how we are."

"I know how people are, Captain. What are you telling me?"

"Are you looking for other work?"

"No, I am not. I am trusting that enough money to see us through will come through."

"Neil, you really don't get it. There's not going to be enough money. There won't be need of professional staffing. We won't be needing a curator with a Master's degree."

Neil was stunned. His heartbeat quickened. His breathing stopped. The Captain continued.

"Do you know why the Corporation agreed to have a curator with a Master's degree in the first place?"

"To have an efficient, excellent museum?"

"No, not at all. Only in order to get additional fuunding from the town. The Commonwealth said the museum could only obtain additional funding from the town if a professional curartor was hired. Now there won't be any aid coming -- and so we won't be needing a professional curator. I am soft-spoken in this. You should hear the other Corporators."

"You lean in close and you stand there and you tell me these things -- as if we were talking about brands of laundry soap or the weather. I'm hearing your words. I really can't believe my ears. You talk on and you persist. You're talking worse possible Museum trusteeship -- botched stewardship -- and yet you show the opposite of shame. I don't get it. I don't. You talk on, you're educating me, you're insisting Massachusetts people don't need professsional museum services, I'm dumb not to seek work elsewhere, you're calmly trying to teach me that this is all quite reasonable and rational and, with a little bit of luck, I will come to understand this. Thanks so much for your patience with me, trying to get these strange views you hold through my thick skull."

"I look forward to round two," Captain Cunningham said calmly upon leaving, as Mary was turning out the lights.

In the morning, Neil got a call from Nick Wentworth. He asked about how things were going, museum-wise. Neil told him about Captain Cunningham's comments. "The man sounds simply inept," Wentworth said. "A goddamned busybody who wans to stir things up." Wentworth promised he'd call contacts -- friends and reporters -- to have the trustees be interviewed. "Let them be asked certain hard questions," Wentworth said. "And let them answer, for the record, at long last. I know the O'Daceys, a local lawyer and his daughter Marcy, our local representative in the State House. I know these people personally," Wentworth affirmed."We can get these people interested in all this."

Neil asked Nick to wait. He needed to talk to Wallace Barrow regarding Captain Cunningham's comments on Friday. He called Barrow at about 11:00, and told him what Captain Cunningham had said, and asked him what was true and what was not. Wallace told Neil he really didn't know where the hell old Powderkeg was coming from.

"Neil, let me rest your mind," Wallace said. "What the Captain said simply is not so, and I don't have a clue as to why he would ever tell you those things. He's acting on his own initiative in talking to you like that. It is not the opinion of the Board, I can assure you. This is between you and me, Neil: I can promise you that even if we get only enough money to pay your salary, from whatever source, that money will be used to keep you at your job. And even if we get less than your salary, we will see to it that the difference is made up. There are ways of getting that money, and we will. Do you understand?"

"Can I get that in writing?"

"No, I can't sign anything apart from the Board. But listen: you have my word. You know I only want what's best for the library, or I wouldn't even cross the street to help it out. I'm only trying to keep things straight. There's quite a mess emerging. You can't tell what's going to happen next. There are all kinds of factions. Did you know that there's a faction out there that only wants to see one of you stay on board at the museum?"

"One of whom?"

"One of your staff. There are people out there with assorted kinds of power and everybody's playing a different game. Some people are out there campaigning to keep just one of you working at the library, at the expense of the rest of you. You didn't know this?"

Neil knew this too could be a ploy, creating further divisiveness. But there was something straightforward and frank in the way Wheel was speaking.

"I can't tell you who, but you can figure it out."

"Julia Seymour-Stanton?" (She has political connections, she's lived in Camperdene forever, people would certainly rally around her -- I would, too.)

"I can't say," Wallace said. "You can figure it out. But I'll tell you again -- and this is just between you and me: Captain Cunningham has got it backwards. I don't know why he told you what he did. I promise you: if there's any money at all for staffing at the museum come July, you'll be the last to go -- not the first, as Powderkeg told you. Does that put you'r mind at rest?"

"It does. I just don't want this whole thing to blow up in our faces. The last thing I want to see is the museum become a battleground. Thank you for taking time to answer my questions, Wallace. I'm braced for the worst, but I'm going to campaign for the best."

"I know that. The Board thinks very highly of you. Why, just this morning," Barrow said merrily, "Veronica Pillsbury and I were talking about you. Veronica feels very bad about all this mess and thinks it's too bad and that you're a fine fellow. She says we New Englanders can't just come out and say what's what. Stuff gets hidden."

That evening, the Captain sauntered in and helped Neil close the museum. He then offered Neil a ride home. "Did you send those clippings to Eurydice Richeson?" he asked Neil along the way. When Neil said he had, the Captain paused, then asked, "Did you hear back from her?" When Neil said no, he hadn't, the Captain spoke ominously, "I doubt you will." When Neil got out of the car, Cunningham asked another pointed question -- this one a rhetorical question which Neil could not answer: "What's the Latin for 'Don't let the bastards wear you down'?"