The Girl with Silver Eyes

"He knew his measure and the full measure of the person he longed to be."

 - Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan of his enigmatic O.S.S. operative who went by only one name, "Lucas."

Donovan appraised the prisoner with cold eyes and gestured for the M.P.'s to leave his office.

As soon as the door closed, the man casually tossed the handcuffs on Donovan's desk.

"They chaffed my wrists."

Donovan remembered one of Lucas' legends, 

(an alias lived long enough that a cursory examination would be fooled)

was that of a stage magician.

"You're AWOL, out of uniform, and your hair is not regulation." 

"Your sin is greater. You killed Henderson."

"I gave her a graduation assignment that is all. She died attempting it. The O.S.S. is not for girl scouts."

"And I attended her funeral. Sadly, it was held in Wyoming ... a state where I am still wanted for the murder of Sheriff Danvers. So I had to go incognito."

Donovan tapped a manila folder. 

"It says here you were cleared ... that Danvers hanged himself after writing a confession for your mother's murder."

Lucas shrugged. "The governor was friends with the sheriff and knew Danvers would gleefully get into everything ... except a coffin."

Lucas flashed a papercut smile. 

"So there is an unofficial 'Shoot On Sight' order on me. I prefer not to be unofficially dead hence my showing up as Eric Strauss, famed magician."

"Are you saying the sheriff was assisted in his hanging?"

"Of course."

Donovan stiffened, and Lucas continued. "Gravity."

Donovan sensed a calm, pent-up violence in the man ... much like the eye of a hurricane which heralded terrible destruction to come. 

Donovan had seen Lucas, upon entering, coolly assess the entire office and all it contained ... even himself.

It unsettled him, and it goaded him to uncharacteristically ask a needless question.

"What do you think of my office, Captain Lucas?"

Lucas' eyes flicked over the walls lined with yellowed photos of dead comrades, old mentors, and faded medals awarded for forgotten deeds of valor. 

The walls, dense with the past, formed a sad kind of insulation against the present world and all its dangers.

He kept all that to himself and instead said, "The past fills this room like a tide of whispers."

Donovan growled, more mad at himself than at the captain, "Rather melodramatic."

"I do not apologize for the way I think, sir."

"The shrinks say you are sociopathic."

Lucas shrugged. "Psychiatry is in its infancy. But I do admit my moral compass usually points to self-interest."

"Then, why attend Henderson's funeral? The coffin was empty."

"But it represented my only friend." 

Lucas ironed his face with a palm. 

"Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind. You do what you feel is right, or you're a weather vane."

"The doctors say you don't feel."

"Don't trust doctors who go by the book, Major-General. One day, you may end up dead due to a misprint."

Donovan looked off into the distance, seeing things Lucas was just as happy not knowing, then gruffed, "You want revenge for her murder?"

"No. It won't bring her back."

"Too bad. Your graduation assignment is to finish hers. Find the girl with silver eyes."

"Where do I start?"

"Where else? Hollywood, the land of false fronts, empty dreams, and emptier souls."

"Now, who's being melodramatic? And could you be a bit more specific? Where in Hollywood?"

"Her last communication was that she was going to burgle the office of director, Cecil B. DeMille ... then nothing."

"Speaking of nothing ...."

Donovan blinked twice. Lucas had simply vanished.

 No smoke of flash powder. No glare of mirror. He had simply disappeared.

A coldness took him bone-deep. The perfect cover for a true magician would be to pose as a fake one.

What had he just unleashed upon Hollywood?