Honour Among Thieves

searched beyond them for Sally. She raised an eyebrow. 'Sally never came home,' Dr McKenzie explained. 'She'll probably join us in a few minutes, if she's not already here,' suggested his wife. The headmistress knew Sally was not on the school premises, but did not consider it courteous to correct the guest of honour's wife, especially as she had just received a call from the car service that required an explanation. At fourteen minutes to six they walked into the headmistress's study, where a young lady of Sally's age offered the guests a choice of dry sherry or orange juice. McKenzie suddenly remembered that in the anxiety of waiting for his daughter he had left his notes on the hall table. He checked his watch and realised that there wasn't enough time to send his wife back for them. In any case, he was unwilling to admit such an oversight in front of this particular gathering. Damn it, he thought. Teenagers are never an easy audience, and girls are always the worst. He tried to marshal his thoughts into some sort of order. At three minutes to six, despite there still being no sign of Sally, the headmistress suggested they should all make their way to the Great Hall. 'Can't keep the girls waiting,' she explained. 'It would set a bad example.' Just as they were leaving the room, Joni took her husband's notes out of her handbag and passed them over to him. He looked relieved for the first time since 4.50. At one minute to six, the headmistress led the guest of honour onto the stage. He watched the four hundred girls rise and applaud him in what the headmistress would have described as a 'ladylike' manner. When the applause had faded away, the headmistress raised and lowered her hands to indicate that the girls should be seated again, which they did with the minimum of noise. She then walked over to the lectern and gave an unscripted eulogy on T. Hamilton McKenzie that would have surely impressed the Nobel Committee. She talked of Edward Zeir, the founder of modern plastic surgery, of J.R. Wolte and Wilhelm Krause, and reminded her pupils that T. Hamilton McKenzie had followed in their great tradition by advancing the still-burgeoning science. She said nothing about Sally and her many achievements while at the school, although it had been in her original script. It was still possible to be punished for breaking school rules even if you had just won an endowed national scholarship. When the headmistress returned to her place in the centre of the stage, T. Hamilton McKenzie made his way to the lectern. He looked down at his notes, coughed, and then began his dissertation. 'Most of you in the audience, I should imagine, think plastic surgery is about straightening noses, removing double chins and getting rid of bags from under your eyes. That, I can assure you, is not plastic but cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgery,' he continued - to the disappointment, his wife suspected, of most of those seated in front of him - 'is something else.' He then lectured for forty minutes on z-plasty, homograting, congenital malformation and third-degree burns without once raising his head. When he finally sat down, the applause was not quite as loud as it had been when he had entered the room. T. Hamilton McKenzie assumed that was because showing their true feelings would have been considered 'unladylike'. On returning to the headmistress's study, Joni asked the secretary if there had been any news of Sally. 'Not that I am aware of,' replied the secretary, 'but she might have been seated in the hall.' During the lecture, versions of which Joni had heard a hundred times before, she had scanned every face in the room, and knew that her daughter was not among them. More sherry was poured, and after a decent interval T. Hamilton McKenzie announced that they ought to be getting back. The headmistress nodded her agreement and accompanied her guests to their car. She thanked the surgeon for a lecture of great insight, and waited at the bottom of the steps until the car had disappeared from view. 'I have never known such behaviour in all my days,' she declared to her secretary. 'Tell Miss McKenzie to report to me before chapel tomorrow. The first thing I want to know is why she cancelled the car I arranged for her.' Scott Bradley also gave a lecture that evening, but in his case only sixteen students attended, and none of them was under the age of thirty-five. Each was a senior CIA field officer, and as fit as any quarterback in America. When they