Lancelot

father, that with Fluker along on a quail hunt you didn’t need bird dogs, that Fluker knew where the birds were?
    That was part of it sure enough—not that Elgin was like a bird dog but that in being smart and through some special dispensation, perhaps by reason of our very need and helplessness, we could depend on them for anything, not just to smell out quail, but to be M.I.T. smart, smarter than we, Jew-smart, no, smarter than Jews. I could hear my grandfather: I’ll put that Elgin up against a Jew anytime, any Jew. Go pick your Jew.
    â€œDoes it have to be a film?” Elgin looked up at me; his tongue went sideways. I knew he had thought of something.
    â€œWhat else—”
    â€œHow about a tape?”
    â€œI want sight not sound.”
    â€œVideotape.”
    â€œHow does that work?”
    â€œJust like the closed-circuit TV camera you see in stores. Only—”
    â€œOnly?”
    â€œOkay, look. How about this?” He swung round to the desk, picked up my pencil. His black eyes danced. It had come to him, the solution! “We use five mini-compact cameras here and here.” He put X’s in the dumbwaiter outlets to Margot’s and Raine’s rooms.
    â€œI thought of that. But what about the three across the hall?”
    â€œWe’ll use the A/C vents.”
    â€œThe air conditioning?”
    â€œSure. We’ll use mini-compacts with twenty-five millimeter lenses—small enough to see through a slot in the grill.”
    â€œWhat about camera noise?”
    â€œNo noise. No film. It’s a TV camera.”
    â€œWhat about the dark?”
    â€œWe’ll use a Vidicon pickup tube, a Philips two-stage light intensifier—you know, it works on the fiber-optics principle, can pick up a single quantum of light.”
    â€œThen we’ll need some light.”
    â€œMoonlight will help.”
    I looked at my feed-store calendar. “There’s a half moon.”
    He picked up his glasses. “I might use infrared.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œAll I need is a control room. That could be anywhere.”
    â€œHow about my father’s library, here?”
    â€œDon’t Mr. Tex and Siobhan use that? We have to have a completely undisturbed place.”
    â€œAll I have to do is move the TV set. I’ll put it in Siobhan’s room here.”
    â€œThat’s fine. I could bring in lead-in cables from the dumbwaiter and the A/C ducts by way of the third floor.”
    â€œAnd what will you be doing in there?”
    â€œRecording five tapes. I’ll need a Conrac monitor.”
    â€œHow long will it take you to rig up all that?”
    â€œWell, I’ll have to go to New Orleans to get the equipment.” He looked at his watch. “Tomorrow. Then it would take the next day to rig it—if nobody was around.”
    â€œThey won’t be. They’re shooting in town the next two days. A courthouse scene and a love scene at the library.”
    â€œOkay. I guess the best we can do is day-after-tomorrow night—and that’s only if everything goes well and I can get the equipment. But I’m sure I can get it.”
    â€œI hope so. Because they’ll be shooting at Belle Isle in two or three days. Then it will be too late.”
    â€œWe can do it. All you got to do is clear the house tomorrow and the day after and clear the library at night.”
    â€œHow much will all that stuff cost?”
    â€œThe light intensifier is expensive, maybe four thousand. The whole works shouldn’t run over eight or ten at the outside.”
    â€œTen thousand,” I said. “I have that in the house account. I think I’d better get cash for you. The bank opens at nine. You could be on your way by nine-thirty.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œOkay. Then what will you end up with?”
    â€œFive tapes. Something like this.” He picked up an eight-track cartridge of Beethoven’s last quartets. During the last months I found that I could be moderately happy if I simultaneously (1) drank, (2) read Raymond Chandler, and (3) listened to Beethoven.
    â€œThere’s only one problem,” said Elgin, turning the tape over and over.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œTime. Not even this will record five hours. Ah. ” He had it, the solution. For him now in a kind of exaltation of inventiveness, it was enough to put the problem into words. Saying it was solving it. He even