I nodded understandingly.
"Dr. Pilon, I really came down here to make inquiries about Doctor Chetzisky."
"Yes?" His eyes took on that cunning look again. He knew something, I was sure. I wondered how much.
"You knew him, I believe."
"I did. In fact, I visited him once, you know." He looked at me, a suppressed grin trembling in the corners of his thin mouth, with the air of a mouse that has deftly side-stepped the swiping paw of a cat.
"A peculiar man, wasn't he? Had some strange ideas."
"Peculiar, yes. In the same sense that Mahatma Ghandi was peculiar," he snapped at me, the blue eyes gleaming with a fanatic's adoration. "As for strange ideas, bringing peace to this fear-ridden planet can hardly be called one."
Ah, so Pilon knew! He realized immediately he had given himself away and became morosely truculent; I had reached the end of the line with him. But I had one card left: Pilon's diary.
While talking to him, I had spotted the marble-edged ledger on the crate-improvised table in the corner of the tent. I was sure it was his journal; I hoped earnestly that it was.