The Last Gentleman

change.”
    â€œIt seems a change was made for him,” said Rita dryly.
    He became aware that Kitty was woolgathering. Something had happened and she knew about it
    â€œWhat change is that?” he asked.
    â€œSutter has been discharged from the hospital staff.” Removing her glasses, she thrust them into the deep pocket of her kimono sleeve. Her pale rough face looked naked and serious and justified, like a surgeon who comes out of the operating room and removes his mask. “It was understood that if he left, he would not be prosecuted.”
    â€œProsecuted for what?” Up to his usual tricks, the engineer took her import not from the words she said but from the signals. That the import was serious indeed was to be judged from her offhandedness, the license she allowed herself in small things. She lit a cigarette and with a serious sort of free-and-easiness cupped it inward to her palm like a Marine and hunkered over an imaginary campfire between the three of them.
    â€œWhat were they going to prosecute him for?” asked the engineer again. Within himself he was fighting against the voluptuousness of bad news. Would the time ever come when bad was bad and good good and a man was himself and knew straight up which was which?
    â€œSutter,” said Rita, warming her hands at the invisible embers and stamping her feet softly, “persuaded a ward nurse to leave her patients, some of whom were desperately ill, and accompany him to an unoccupied room, which I believe is called the terminal room. There they were discovered in bed by the night supervisor, and surrounded by pictures of a certain sort. Wynne Magahee called me last night—he’s chief of medicine. He told me, he said: ‘Look, we wouldn’t care less what Sutter does with or to the nurses on his own time, but hell, Rita, when it comes to leaving sick people—and to make matters worse, somebody on the ward found out about it and is suing the hospital.’ I had to tell Wynne, ‘Wynne it is not for you to make explanations to us but rather for us—’”
    Beside him, Kitty had gone as lumpish and cheeky as a chipmunk. “They were not desperately ill, Ree,” she said wearily as if it were an old argument. “It was a chronic ward.”
    â€œVery well, they were not desperately ill,” said Rita, eyeing the engineer ironically.
    Kitty’s lower lip trembled. Poor Kitty, it remained to her, one of the last, to be afflicted. “Poor Sutter,” she whispered, shaking her head. “But why in the world did he—”
    â€œHowever unfortunate the situation might be,” said Rita grimly, “Sutter’s being discovered was not purely and simply a misfortune, that is to say, bad luck. As it happens, Sutter set the time for his rendezvous a few minutes before the night supervisor made her rounds.”
    â€œDo you mean Sutter wanted to get caught, Ree?” cried Kitty.
    â€œThere are needs, my dear,” said Rita dryly, “which take precedence over this or that value system. I suspect, moreover, that our friend here knows a good deal more about the situation than we do.”
    But though Kitty turned to him, he felt fretful and sore and would not answer. Anyhow he didn’t know what Rita was talking about. Instead he asked her: “When did this happen?”
    â€œThursday night.”
    â€œThen when I spoke to him last night, he already knew that he had been discharged?”
    â€œYes. And he also knew that he and Jamie were leaving this morning.”
    â€œBut he told me I could find him if—” The engineer broke off and fell silent. Presently he asked: “Do Mr. and Mrs. Vaught know?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat did they say?”
    â€œPoppy threw up his hands over his head, you know, and rushed out of the room, Dolly took to the bed.”
    He was silent.
    â€œI had supposed that your responsibilities as his tutor and companion might include a reasonable concern for his life. The last time he went off with Sutter he was nearly killed.”
    The hearty thrust of her malice made him want to grin. He thought of his aunts. Malice was familiar ground. It was like finding oneself amid the furniture of one’s living room. He looked at his watch. “I can leave in ten minutes. If he’s in Tyree County, I’ll be back tomorrow. If they’ve gone to New Mexico, and I think they have, it’ll take