Power, The by Frank M. Robinson Page B

bleachers where he might have been in the background?”
    “Try the Eagle . They’d have photographs if anybody would.”
    “Coach …” He hesitated. “What kind of a guy would you say he was?”
    Freudenthal edged forward in his chair, his face glowing. “Do you know, I had another Thorpe or Mathias right at my fingertips, Professor. Honest, I mean it. Right at my fingertips. You should have met this Hart. He was a young sprout but he was one of those few people you meet and know that someday they’re really going to be great. He could have been a great athlete. Hell, he could have been great in anything!”
    “What’d he look like?”
    “Late teens, give or take a year—right at the peak. Kind of a short fellow, dark hair, fairly bulky build. The perfect athletic type. Quiet. He usually didn’t have much to say but when he did, it was worth listening to. Never put on airs, never dressed too sharp. One of the few young fellows you could relax with and talk to. Good head. Mighty good head.”
    The coach had described a third man, Tanner thought. Different from the girl in the cafeteria or Olson’s father. The girl in the restaurant had seen the type of man that young girls always wanted to see in their dreams. Smiling, polite, a sharp dresser, a little on the thin and hungry side. Mark Olson had seen an unblemished Son of the Soil. Coach Freudenthal had seen the perfect athlete.
    And everybody else in town had probably seen Hart in a slightly different light. Hart had been like a mirror, reflecting back what they had wanted to see.
    Which meant that one member of his committee had left seven different impressions on the others. One member looked vastly different to each of the other seven. All he had to do …
    Who am I kidding? Hart wouldn’t leave such an obvious opening. He’s masquerading and he’ll do a good job of it, he’s no amateur. I can bet my bottom dollar he looks the same to all of us.
    But it would be interesting to see what Hart actually looked like. And the only way to find out would be to get hold of a photograph.
     
     
    There weren’t any.
    The Brockton Eagle had no cut of Adam Hart, though the editor remembered him well enough and went on to describe a man who might have made the perfect country editor. Tanner went through the yellowing files of the newspaper and ran across a photograph or two where the caption listed Adam Hart in the background. But the photos were indistinct and blurry, as if the photographer’s hand had jiggled at the precise moment he had taken the picture.
    Adam Hart, apparently the best-known and the best-liked person in town, had been a nonentity as far as pictures went.
    Tanner ate lunch back at the hotel and found out from the waitress that the Hart family home had burned to the ground years ago. Later in the afternoon he walked out to the west side of town to take a look at where it had been.
    There was nothing there now but an empty lot, grown wild with prairie grass and ragweed and straggling bushes. There were a few cherry trees on the back of the lot and some stunted crab apple trees along one side.
    He walked across the street and collared a neighbor who was repairing his front porch.
    “The Hart home burned down eight years ago, mister. Just a few weeks after Adam left. Lucky he did, too, or he would have been burned to death with the rest of his family. Worst tragedy we ever had in this town. Old man Hart and his wife and all their kids and relations. Must’ve been close to fifteen—used every coffin we had.”
    The man drove another nail into a porch step. “Damned shame. Finest family I ever knew. Some say the bear got loose and knocked the connections off the gas tanks outside the kitchen. They shot the bear the same night; it was pretty badly burned, too.”
    “What time did it happen?”
    “Late at night, a little after the evening train went through. People in the house panicked and couldn’t unlock the front door, which didn’t make