The desk arrived at 10:30.
Two men from building maintenance carried it in and set it beside the window on the far side of the department. It was plain and functional, with nothing decorative about it.
A chair followed. Then an inkwell, a basic ledger, and a pen holder that had clearly been in a storage room for some time.
Noel looked at it.
He looked at Hale's desk, which he had been occupying all morning.
Hale was at the side desk, working through a stack of letters with the focused quiet of someone catching up after two weeks away. He glanced up briefly when the new desk arrived.
"Yours," he said.
"I see that," Noel said.
He gathered his things — the slave papers, which went straight into the top drawer, the ledger Hale had given him, the borrowed pen — and moved.
He sat at the new desk and looked out the window.
The street below was busy.
He opened the ledger and started reading.
.
.
The morning passed slowly.
