I am reliably informed by those who should know, that there is a popular slogan extant, �Save Your Confederate Money, The South Will Rise Again�. The gypsies seem to doubt this... although others do not.

Vanya hurried down the side of the highway to the place where the trailer was parked. The trailer was pulled off the side of a road into a small clearing. When she stepped across the ditch, she saw Sandor lying on his back under the nearest tree. He had his fiddle in his hand, but he was not playing.

Vanya stopped to look at Sandor from a distance, before he should be aware of her presence. He was a Rom any gypsy girl could be proud of loving. He was tall, handsome, his black hair curled about his ears, and he played the fiddle as the old ones had played it. Vanya herself was small, dark, pretty; but she had never expected to capture such a Rom as this one. Watching him, she felt the old familiar stab of love and pride inside her.

She came on, then, and Sandor looked up to watch her approach. He scowled, slightly, and she knew that he had planned the scowl for her appearance.

�Well, Vanya,� he said. �Are you through dukkering? It was yesterday that I wanted to coor the drom and get started traveling.�

�We can travel tomorrow,� Vanya said breathlessly. �Today is the day for telling fortunes.�

�So how much money did you make?� Sandor said indifferently.

�None,� she said. She saw the frown again between his black eyes and she hastened with the news. �But I�ve got a big bajoor.�

Sandor sat up. Vanya watched him with pride and joy. For a year, now, they had been married and she had not had a big bajoor. Every good wife makes the big bajoor for her Romany husband. Without the big bajoor she was not a good wife; and for a year now Vanya had not found it.

�Boro Dad!� Sandor said, his voice tense with the excitement. �You don�t mean to say. Who are we going to swindle?�

Vanya sat on the ground beside Sandor. She took off her kerchief and loosened her hair to cool the heat from her head. �There�s an old gajo woman who lives up the road,� she said. �Yesterday I stopped for a drink of water. She lives in a big house just on the edge of the town, a house that was painted twenty years ago. It has seventeen rooms and it sits on a very large lot. The old woman lives there alone.�

�So?� Sandor said impatiently.

�So today I stopped again. Today I told her fortune. She believed the fortune, for more than an hour I had to tell her all the bad she has seen and all the good that she will see. She is a very lonely old lady.�

�She�s probably got next week�s grocery money,� Sandor said. �This is a big bajoor?� But his eyes were sparkling with the excitement and the smile was in them that was not on his lips.

�I told her that I was a queen of the gypsies,� Vanya said. �I told her I had the power to bless money in such a way that would keep it safe and increase it by as much again. The old gajo woman believed. I could tell that she believed.�

Vanya turned to Sandor, put her hand on his arm. She squeezed the arm tightly. �She showed me the money, Sandor. She opened the trunk to show me this great bundle, wrapped in newspapers and tied with string. I told her I would prepare the magic and this afternoon I would bless the money for her, because she was a kind lady who gives a gypsy a drink of water.�

Sandor grinned. He loved Vanya. But it is good for a man to be proud of his wife, too. He could hear himself now, telling the story of the big bajoor and how his lovely young wife had worked it.

�The old gypsy switch,� he said.

Vanya nodded her head. �Yes,� she said.

He frowned uncertainly. �Can you work it?� he said. �Have you ever tried?�

Vanya drew herself straight. �My mother worked a great bajoor,� she said. �Ten thousand dollars for my father. In one day.�

He grinned ruefully. �Don�t I know it? That�s all I heard about when I set out to buy you from your father. It raised your price nearly out of my range.�

She touched him again. �I will work the big bajoor,� she said. �Or I will riot come back.�

She went then to prepare the meal. While she worked she sang, because she was so full of the happiness she had found today. She knew that her price had been high and she knew that Sandor loved her for he had paid a great deal of money for her. And until now she had made them only a living, nothing more.

They sat on the ground and ate companionably of the noon meal. They did not speak of the swindle again. After the meal would be soon enough. When the meal was finished, they went silently to work to prepare. Sandor helped her with the preparations. He drove into town and bought two reams of white paper and an ample supply of newspapers. They cut the white paper into dollar-sized pieces, stacking them carefully, Vanya measuring the stack from time to time with her hands.

�That�s about the size of the bundle she had,� she said at last.

�Then your daughters will be old maids,� he said, laughing. �For no Romany will be able to afford them.�

She laughed with him, tasting the sheer happiness in the sound of his voice, and together they wrapped the bundle in newspaper and tied it with the red string. She went into the trailer and changed into the dress with ampler folds, and put on the cloak over it. She wrapped up some of the left-over newspaper with a supply of the red string, and put the incense into a pocket of the dress.

She came outside again and picked up the bundle of blank paper wrapped in the newspaper and tied with the red string.

�Can you handle it all right?� Sandor said anxiously. �It�s a pretty big bundle.�

�I can handle it,� she said confidently. She smiled at him and her hands moved quickly, concealing the bundle inside the voluminous dress. �See?�

�But the switch...�

She laughed. �Don�t worry, Sandor,� she said. �I can make the switch. I am the daughter of my mother, and I am Sandor�s wife.�

�I will be ready,� he called after her as she started toward the road. �We will leave as soon as you return.�

She tried not to hurry. But she was anxious for the deed to be accomplished, to have it a fact of her life that she had made a bajoor bigger than her mother had ever done. There was the love of Sandor and the thirst for fame strong in her throat and both were urging her on in spite of the flutter of fear deep down in her stomach. Vanya was young, only twenty, and her mother had been already old when she had accomplished her great feat.

There was nothing to arouse her suspicions. Everything looked as it had this morning. She entered between the old broken concrete gateposts and went up the walk. She stopped on the porch and the door opened immediately without her knock.

She looked at the woman standing in the doorway. She was tall, spare, with a large nose. Her hair was white and once, you could tell, she had stood erectly. But now her shoulders were stooped.

�I have come,� Vanya said in an impressive voice.

�I followed your instructions,� the old lady said, her voice whispering. �You must bless my money. You must keep it safe.�

�And double it,� Vanya said.

�I don�t care about doubling it,� the old woman said. �But I must keep it, for if I don�t I could never face my father again.�

Vanya had started for the room where she had told the fortune this morning. Now she stopped, turned.

�Your father?� she said. �Is he...?�

�He is dead,� the old lady said. �If I lost the money I would even be afraid to die.�

Vanya went on, followed by the old lady. She went into the room and looked about her. It was the same as this morning, cool, high-ceilinged, dusky with darkness from the thick drawn drapes in spite of the great sunlight outside. No preparation of the room would be necessary.

There was a chair before a table and the old lady had placed the bundle of money, wrapped in tattered newspaper, on the table.

�Sit in the chair,� Vanya said.

The old lady sat down. Vanya lit the incense and placed it on the table. The fragrant sweet smoke billowed up into the room, making the old lady blink her eyes. Vanya spoke some words in Calo, the gypsy tongue, reverberating them with her diaphragm so that they echoed in the room.

�Now,� she said. �Take this newspaper and this red string and wrap your money carefully. Tie it with many knots.�

The old lady took the newspaper and string uncertainly, with trembling hands. �I have arthritis,� she said. �You will have to wrap it and tie it.�

Vanya drew back in horror. �No� she said. �I cannot touch the money. If I touched the money while I was blessing it, I would die.�

She began chanting in Calo while the old lady began to prepare the bundle with the newspaper and the red string. She was slow and uncertain but Vanya pushed down the impatience that rose within her.

�You are so kind,� the old lady said. �No one has been kind to me for so long. Nobody comes here any more, you know. People used to come here. Before the War Between The States they held great dances here. People still came in my father�s time. But they don�t come any more.�

�When you are kind to a gypsy, great blessings come into your life,� Vanya said. �For this reason I bless your money.�

�I want to pay you, though,� the old lady said. �I have five dollars right here to pay you with.�

�I cannot take pay for the blessing of money,� Vanya said. �This is a thing that gypsies do only for friends, and from a friend a gypsy cannot take money.�

Vanya did not let herself think about the old woman and her loneliness and her money. She kept herself thinking about Sandor instead, and how much more he would love her now, and be proud of her. The woman was a gajo, wasn�t she?

At last she was finished. The bundle sat on the table in the gloominess of the room. The room was filled with incense now, making it hard to see, the incense overwhelming the mind as well as the senses.

�Now,� Vanya said. �You must close your eyes, for no one may look upon the blessing. To look upon the blessing would strike your mind, for it is a terrible and a hurting thing.�

She watched closely to see if the old lady obeyed her. The eyes were tightly closed, the hands held stiffly in the lap, clenched into fists.

Vanya began chanting in Calo. She started low and far away, began coming nearer and louder, her body beginning to thump and beat against the sound of the voice. Her legs jerked out from under her and she thumped to the floor, where she thrashed, uttering terrible cries. She inched her way toward the table, making the sounds and watching the old lady. Not once did she look toward the table as her hand took out the fake bundle and held it ready. The eyes were closed. Swiftly, soundlessly, she switched the bundle, keeping up the thump and bang of her body against the floor while she edged away from the table. When she had reached her place, she began to let the terrible sounds subside, going gradually away into the distance until she lay silent.

At last she sat up and said, �You may open your eyes.�

The old lady looked at her and Vanya stood up, wearily, making her face vacant and drawn.

�I have blessed the money,� she said in a dull voice. �I have made it safe and it will double within three months. You must put it away into your keeping place and speak of it to no one. At the end of three months you may open it and see the increase my magic has brought you.�

�Are you all right?� the old lady said, peering at her. �You look...�

�I must sleep for twenty-four hours,� Vanya said in the weary voice. �Then I shall recover my strength. Gypsy magic is very strong. Remember. You must not look at the money. You must not speak of the money. Or the magic will be destroyed.�

The old lady followed her as Vanya edged toward the door, anxious to be gone. �It worked all right?� she said anxiously. �It will be safe? My father gave the money to me, just like his father gave it to him.�

�The magic worked,� Vanya said. �I must go. I must sleep. I will be very ill, perhaps even die, if I do not sleep soon.�

She got to the doorway, but the old lady was right behind her. The old lady put her hand on her arm. �You�re sure it�s all right?� she said.

�Of course it�s all right,� Vanya said, her voice cracking with the strain.

�Maybe we�d better look,� the old lady said, her voice getting frenzied. She started toward the table where the package lay.

Vanya froze, watching her. Then her voice snaked out at her. �No,� she said. �Not for three months.�

The old lady turned to look at her and Vanya knew that she was suspicious now. It had risen up in her suddenly at the thought of the three months without seeing the money.

�I�ve got to be sure,� the old lady said. �I don�t care whether it doubles or not. That part doesn�t matter. But it must be safe. I�ll look. Then it�ll be safe, even if it won�t double...�

Already she was fumbling with the string. Vanya felt an impulse to flee. But she knew it would be wrong. That would certainly arouse the old lady. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, not knowing what to do, thinking, I tried it too soon. I am too young for the big bajoor.

The old lady�s impatient hands ripped the newspaper and the white paper showed beneath. She looked toward Vanya, clutching a dollar-sized sheet of paper.

�What have you done with the money?� she screamed.

She came toward Vanya, almost running, clutching at her with both hands. Vanya, panicked, wheeled toward her, pushing her away, thinking now only of escape. She still had the money. If she could escape...

The old lady fell backward, clawing at the air. She made a strange cry when she landed on the floor, and there was in her an immediate limpness that frightened Vanya. She stood holding the door, looking down at the old woman, who lay twisted in a strangely familiar way.

At last Vanya left the door. She stood over the old lady, then she knelt down and put her hand on her face. �Mullah,� she whispered. �Dead. Dead.�

She squatted beside the old woman�s body. It had been such a little push. But the old gajo woman had been so old. She knelt there, feeling the disaster that had come upon her in her youthful pride. She was no good for Sandor, no good for herself. She scarcely deserved to be called by the name Romany.

After a time, how long she did not know, she began to think more calmly. She still had the money, didn�t she? She could hide the other bundle, clear away the incense and the other signs of a gypsy presence, and go away. The old lady lived alone. When she was found everyone would assume that she had fallen. She had fallen. Vanya had given her only a little push.

Vanya cleared the table of the incense holder, looked about the room. She didn�t know what to do with the fake bundle. She picked it up, then, and took it to the chest where the old lady had kept her money. She put the bundle inside the chest, under a quilt, and locked the chest door. Let her relatives figure out why the old lady kept a bundle of paper tied up in newspaper and red string.

She went to the door and looked out carefully. Nothing stirred. She walked out on the porch, turned once and waved back toward the house as though speaking farewell to the old lady, and then went casually toward the highway. She made herself go slowly down the highway until she had covered more than a mile. Then she began to hurry.

She would not tell Sandor. She would tell him only that the big bajoor had worked, that she had the money. He need not know how she had failed. No one would ever know that the old lady had fallen.

When she arrived, Sandor was ready. She got into the car beside him and immediately Sandor pulled into the highway.

�Did you get it?� he said briefly.

�Yes,� she said, taking the bundle out of the voluminous dress and putting it on the seat between them.

They drove for a long time. At first Vanya slept, for she was weary, but when she awoke they were very gay. They laughed and sang and Vanya was warm with his love and with the coming fame of the big bajoor when their people should be told the story.

They did not stop until daylight.

�Time for breakfast, little one,� Sandor said tenderly. He put his hand on her head and tousled her gently. �But first... let�s look at our fortune.�

His lean strong fingers began to undo the red string. Vanya watched him, not looking down at the money but watching his face as he saw it for the first time. She saw the change in him and her mind could not understand it. At last he looked up at her and his voice was strange when he spoke.

�Well, little Vanya,� he said. �We�re rich now. We�re rich � just as soon as the Confederate States of America come back into power.�

Vanya looked, then. She saw the bundle of carefully preserved Confederate bills, large and strange-looking, and she felt her soul curl inside her.

Sandor had never punished her, as gypsy men punish their wives. But she knew that he was going to do it now. Her mind revolted. She had killed the old woman and then the big bajoor had been a swindle on her instead. But her body did not move as she waited for Sandor to begin.

There was a silence. Then he opened the door of the car on his side. �Get out,� he said. �Build a fire.�

She got out of the car and went around to his side. She kept her eyes to the ground. He did not touch her.

�Build a fire,� he repeated. �I want my breakfast, woman.�

�Sandor,� she said.

There was no pleading, no tears, in the voice.

�You are going to cook breakfast with the heat of your great bajoor,� Sandor said above her.

She went away from him, began gathering the dry pine limbs. She moved numbly, as though she were an old woman. Sandor stood still, watching her as she knelt before the pile of sticks. He threw a match at her feet. Dazed, she struck it.

�A bigger fire,� Sandor said.

She piled on the limbs she had brought. With one foot he kicked the package of Confederate money near her. Her hands tore the bills out of the stacks. She stopped, then.

�I can�t burn money,� she said. �Not even...�

�Burn it,� he said.

She began putting the bills into the resin-hot fire. The flames licked at them, curling the edges, wisping them into ashes that preserved still the engraved pictures. She fed the fire steadily with the bills, her hands moving with a slow hurt that came from deep within her. It was a greater punishment than a beating from his broad leather belt.

Sandor went away, came back with the utensils for cooking. He dropped them by her side. �You have swindled me a great breakfast fire,� he said. �See now if you remember how to cook my breakfast.�

She put in the last handful of bills, scrabbled in the old newspaper to see if there were more. She picked up the thin booklet that had lain under the bills, hidden by them, and looked at it stupidly. It fell open in her hands. She kept on looking at it, laughing, a laughing that sounded like crying.

Sandor came back to her side, his face angrier still. �What�s the matter with you, stupid woman?� he said.

She looked up at him, for the first time. She thrust the booklet toward him. �Look,� she said. �Look. Where she has made the mark with the pencil.�

He looked. His face turned white. He stalked away from her toward the car. She looked at the booklet again, seeing where the old woman had marked the page.

�This money catalogue is old too,� she called after him. �Yet here they are worth seventeen dollars apiece. Bodo Dad alone knows how much they are worth now.�

He was gone into the trailer. She stood up shouting after him. �The father of the gajo woman was wise,� she shouted after him. �He told the truth when he told her never to let it go. And you burned it. You burned my big bajoor. Seventeen dollars apiece!�

There was only silence. The anger and the weeping laughter left her. She squatted again beside the fire and looked into its red heart. She could still see the ashy outline of the last bill. She touched it with a stick and the ash crumbled so that it could not be distinguished from the rest.

She added the rare-money catalogue to the flames. Then she began cooking breakfast for her Romany man.

I�d just ducked inside and my nerves were almost normal when Mrs. Parker came back, looking for something. Raising a brow, she looked at me.

I shrugged and motioned behind me. �Parker�s in the wash room. He�s in no condition but if you like, I�ll be glad to tell him you�re waiting.�

She gave me the deep freeze and finding her purse where it had fallen behind the seat, went back again. The car was swaying and she had trouble opening the front door. In the vestibule she nearly fell as she lurched against the wall.

After a moment I gave my seat a going over and followed Mrs. Parker. No telling when Parker�d be missed. The upper half of the outside door was open in the vestibule. A lunch box, some tools and a keg of railroad spikes had been left by the workmen. No wonder she nearly fell; some of the spikes were rolling on the floor.

In the diner, Grace Parker was sitting alone and seemed nervous. Coffee or something brown stained her white glove. She was obviously disturbed and with Parker, I didn�t wonder. I sat down opposite her and smiled in my best Jack Barnes manner. She smiled too, a worried smile. �Please excuse the way I acted,� she said. �Allen was so... Don�t judge him too harshly.�

I said something intended to be charming but she never answered, and smiling sweetly, excused herself.

Everyone was back in our car and Mrs. Parker was waiting. �Do you know where my husband is?�

�Why no... Last time I saw him, he was going to the men�s...�

�But he isn�t there! The porter looked. He isn�t in any of the cars!�

�Maybe he...�

�He fell off the train!� she cried. �You got him drunk and he fell off the train.�

Everyone was staring. I tried to quiet her. And as if this was a cue, the train was coming to a stop. We were in the middle of a sunburned space that paralleled the highway. A brakeman hurried through and people shot questions but he kept going. While everything was in such a turmoil, I went back to my chair. I could smell Parker, his sweat and whiskey and stale cigar.

The brakeman was back in a few minutes and a sailor stopped him. �Say, Mac, what�s the hold-up?�

The brakey shrugged. �Don�t know. Th� block signal stopped us. We gotta wait till it�s clear.�

Grace Parker grabbed him, begging he search the train for her husband. He said the conductor was handling it and left her looking like a desert rose in a weed patch � and yes, still beautiful.

The bulge of bills in my pocket felt good and there was no reason not to be sympathetic. Besides, I had other plans. Sitting down beside Grace, I said quietly, �Mrs. Parker, I couldn�t help hearing when you said Parker had all your money.�

�Yes! And now you�ve got it!� Her voice was loud and people were looking.

�No, Mrs. Parker.� I tried to speak confidentially. �Please understand. He took me too � twelve hundred dollars.�

�You mean... Allen won?� Her voice was back to normal.

�I can afford it. But he said something you should know. It�s none of my business but with him gone...�

�What did Allen tell you?�

�I�m sorry, but he said... Well, he said, �I�ve had it with Grace. Next stop, I�m checkin� it to her, catch a ride an� get back to Las Vegas.��

She blanched, then lowering her eyes, nearly whispered, �I should have known. What... What�ll I do, Mr. Barnes? Allen had all my...�

�If it�s money you need, I could loan you some or...�

She tried to smile. �You�re very kind, Mr. Barnes. Allen wasn�t much of a... I�m sorry if I misjudged you.�

I was in. I knew it as I told her to call me Jack and she half whispered, �And I�m Grace.�

Just then someone cried, �Police!� And everyone ran to the windows.

Outside, a car with a whip antenna was stopping. Two men in big hats got out and were met by the conductor. In a moment they came toward our car. Suddenly, Grace ran to meet them, crying her husband had fallen off the train.

They gave her to a motherly looking woman, who took her into the next car, then came directly to me. The short one squinted at me and said, �You the man as was drinkin� with Mr. Parker?�

�He was drinking, not me.�

�Lemme see some identification.�

He made funny noises in his throat as he tapped it with his thumb. �J. W. Barnes, eh? What is your occupation, Mr. Barnes?�

I gave him the same answer I�d given Parker, even producing a business card. His face relaxed a bit, he even smiled. �Kinda outa my line, Mr. Barnes. When was the last time you saw Parker?�

�Well, we were playing cards but he had one drink too many. When he went into the mens� I went to the diner. When I got back he was gone.�

He turned and cried, �Anyone see the man as was with this gentleman?�

No one wanted to get involved. But when the sheriff turned back his smile was gone. He sniffed as if he could smell something. �You say you didn�t drink?�

�Never touch it. But Parker... He...�

�J. W. Barnes...� He seemed to be thinking out loud. Then frowning, he added, �Seems I�ve seen your name someplace.� And turning to the deputy, he said, �Get the front; I�ll take th� back.�

After they�d gone the car buzzed like a beehive and we waited. It was close and the air-conditioner was dead with the train stalled. It seemed the smell of Parker got worse. That was probably what the sheriff was sniffing. I could hear him and the crew banging around in back.

Then returning, he looked under the seats, all the time sniffing like a coon dog. But in a moment he grinned and offered me a cigarette.

�No, thanks. Don�t smoke.�

When his deputy returned with no information, they left with the conductor. Outside, I could see them talking on their police radio. Just then I realized he hadn�t returned my bogus business card. But it didn�t matter. There are dozens of Barnes in the L.A. directory, probably even an investment broker. But... he hadn�t given me back my driver�s license either. He might be only a County Sheriff but he was big city sharp. Drivers licenses contain a lot of identifying data � too much.

They sat in a secluded corner of the Palms Grill. There had been a few amused and surprised glances from acquaintances, but Patricia didn�t care. It felt so good being out with somebody, and Henry had insisted they have wine and she was not only feeling good but dizzy. She giggled frequently, and didn�t know why and didn�t care about that either. Henry actually reached over the table and touched her hand occasionally. His touch went deep and took hold of her arid spun her and made her dizzier. Her face was flushed. Sometimes, under the table, her bony knees quivered.

�More wine, Pat?�

�Don�t mind if I do, don�t mind at all.�

He poured. They drank. His eyes were bright through his glasses as he watched her. �Good to see you enjoying yourself, Pat.�

�And I am, Henry. I really am. You have no idea.�

�Oh but I do. It�s like being out of jail. Some things are worse than loneliness.�

�What?� she said, incredulously.

�Being married and never knowing who you are for one thing.�

�Suppose so.�

�Being dead, that�s worse, I imagine. Getting raped, tortured, murdered. There are worse things than being by yourself.� Henry sipped wine. �Those two little girls that Jackson cut up, they could tell you, only of course the dead can�t say anything. Or Clem Dayton�s wife could tell you, but she�s dead, too.�

Patricia wondered if the smile on her face looked as strained as it felt. She wanted to be cooperative in the discussion, and it wasn�t really such an unpleasant subject, she decided. Sort of like the true crime stories she sometimes read and scared herself with at nights.

�Aren�t criminals sick sometimes?� she said coyly. �I mean not right in the head?�

�There are no extenuating circumstances for murderers,� Henry said. His mouth tightened just a bit. �Send them to a doctor instead of the gas chamber and soon they�re running loose again. You can�t rehabilitate them. They usually kill again.� He took a clipping from his pocket and said it was a quotation from J. Edgar Hoover himself. ��Most of the demands for abolishing capital punishment,�� Henry read from the clipping, ��come from good-hearted people who simply do not know at first hand of the horrors man can and does perpetrate against his fellow beings, and have never seen the savagely mutilated bodies and mentally ravaged victims of murder, rapists and other criminal beasts!��

�Beasts? Did he say that?�

Henry nodded. �He should know, shouldn�t he? But these minority groups, these crackpots making excuses for murderers. There�s no excuse for such people. What about the Mosaic law? An eye-for-an-eye?� His smile widened and stiffened and he had it aimed past her and his eyes seemed fixed far away and on nothing in particular. �Now because someone calls himself crazy, is no excuse, Patricia. Not as far as the victims are concerned. I�ve had time to think a lot these past months. Killing people is a crime. I�m against that, aren�t you?�

�Yes,� she said quickly. �I am, Henry. I�m against it.�

�So am I unless it�s warranted and it seldom is, even in war. And I think that people who kill people should be killed themselves. Sane or insane. More wine?�

�Well, just a wee little bit more, Henry.�

�Is saying they�re sick good enough for the corpse when the sun sets forever and birds don�t sing anymore? Those girls Jackson cut up. That innocent woman Dayton beat to death. They wouldn�t sympathize much with their killers because they were sick, would they?�

Patricia agreed with exaggerated nods of her head. Henry Dowd�s smile seemed to drift at her across the table, almost like a floating leaf in a gentle breeze. �So what if a man is mad? Mad dogs are put out of the way fast, Patricia.�

Before you abduct anyone for ransom, it is prudent to make sure the family of the victim is willing and anxious to have him back, for a consideration, of course.

The threat of competition, an ugly noise that generally starts when your back is turned, can waken a man�s pride and arouse his self-respect until it glitters like the eye of a tiger. Competition is a disease that sooner or later infects every trade and profession and makes it take a long step forward. Still, it remains the obligation of every honorable man to oppose it with all his skills.

As a matter of record, Me and my associates, Jack and Buck, have long been the leading exponents of the delicate art of scoop-�em-up, which is the art of abduction fined down to a science whereby not a footprint, fingerprint, howl, yelp, or regret is left behind. Perfection is the only formula for success in this tricky profession. Tyros have long studied our techniques and have tried, with no luck, to emulate them.

So I was quite surprised to hear one day that another organization had scraped up the men, the courage and the resources, to go into competition with us. I met the captain of the crew one afternoon while paying my semi-annual visit to my aged father (a retired second-story man who had developed vertigo) at the Home For Retired Vikings, which is a fine old institution maintained by the trade, catering to sore-footed footpads, conscience-stricken swindlers, abstemious rum runners, arthritic forgers and cattle thieves turned vegetarian.

On the way back to the bus I chanced to run into Barney Blue, an old friend from bars both legal and alcoholic. Barney had been visiting his father, an old safecracker who had been forced into premature retirement after developing an unaccountable fear of the dark.

�Bush,� said Barney to me as we headed for the bus, �I have long admired your organization. You and your boys have stood pre-eminent and par-excellent in the field for years. Your capers have captured the hearts of bold men everywhere and become veritable textbooks on the art. I know all this because I�ve been studying them for years. Now, having learned the craft from the master, I�ve organized a little group of my own and we�re going into competition with you.�

�We�re a nation of free enterprise, Barney,� I said. �There�s nothing wrong with you going into business for yourself, but I ought to warn you that you�ll be doing yourself a severe disservice by announcing yourself as a competitor. You�re encroaching on very, very private ground. Why try and buck perfection? Why don�t you take your boys and go into something that calls for initiative, like holding up stagecoaches or selling protection to the vendors on the Oregon Trail?�

He laughed; but it was a terse sound.

�Don�t like the idea of somebody coming into your pasture, eh, Bush,� he said. �Well, maybe the profession can stand a little more dash and daring. The talk is that you and your boys have become a bit smug and conservative lately. The grapes are withering on your vine, old boy,� he said.

Well, I laughed him off gently. But when I returned home I found myself brooding a bit. Perhaps it was true that we had been doing some laurel-resting of late. I felt that we were on top and could afford to coast. But now this threat of competition cast a new light on everything. It was just possible that Barney Blue and his boys could score some tremendous coup and put us in the background. I decided there was but one thing to do; give my career a fresh crown. So I gathered together the boys and let them know.

�In order to repel this dreary threat,� I said to Buck and Jack, �we have to perform a job which, for skill and audacity, will belittle anything that Barney Blue and his boys can conceive, as well as make all our previous efforts look like blueprints. We have to swing a job that will gladden every heart in the Home For Retired Vikings, give inspiration to novices and hope to failures, as well as teach an enduring lesson to Barney Blue and his boys.� And I meant enduring.

�It sounds big,� said Jack.

�It will have to be big,� I said. �It can be nothing less than the greatest scoop job in history. I want a job of such magnitude that it will bathe our competitors in shame, of such brilliance that historians the world over will skip a hundred pages in their manuscripts and begin recording us in the next century.�

Jack beamed happily; the boys had an ardent and spirited attitude in these matters. Big Buck remained sullen, but I could tell that even he was inspired.

�Who do you have in mind as a subject, Bush?� Jack asked.

�See if you can guess: who is the richest man in the world?�

�Not him,� said Jack, shocked.

�Yes, him,� I said.

�But it�s practically impossible to get near him,� Jack said. �He�s only too well aware of people like us. His car is a tank and his bodyguards are Neanderthals.�

�Those are his achievements,� I said. �He also has his weak points. He�s impressed and disarmed by millionaires and other dubious celebrities.�

�Who are we talking about?� Buck asked, making a rare utterance. He was strictly brawn.

�J. J. Griggen, the bilious billionaire,� I said.

�The oil man,� Jack said.

�Yes,� I said, �oil. Whenever any thing in the world stops, stalls, or squeaks, it�s another windfall for J. J. Griggen.�

�He sounds likely,� Buck said.

�We can ask five million for him,� I said. �And get it. We�d be depriving him of a week�s salary, but what of it. He�ll buy up a few Congressmen, have them put through a ransom-is-deductible law, and then forget about the whole thing.�

�But how do you make the scoop?� Jack asked.

�I�ve got that worked out,� I said. �Barney Blue�s audacious intrusion upon our personal domain has inspired me to conceive the noblest attempt of our career. J. J. Griggen is going to attend a Charity Ball for Overprivileged Children two weeks from tonight. The ball is being held in order to raise funds to build mosaic handball courts for these kids in their Adirondack summer retreats. And the enchanting thing is it�s going to be a masquerade ball. It was in the papers today. Boys,� I said, �pick out your costumes, unbutton your alter egos, and let your hearts sing out � for we�re going to a ball!�

From Handy Harry, the corner forger, we obtained our invitations to the ball. It was being primed as the social event of the season, and little did the primers know how eventful it was going to be. The affair was going to be held at one of those commodious Long Island mansions where they play polo in the living room on rainy days. We drove out there several times to inspect the premises, then back to the city to formulate the plan which, as it took shape, was by turn feasible, infallible, ingenious and diabolic.

I chose the costumes for my entourage. Buck was going to go as a cave man, Homo extinctus, with loin cloth, club and scowl. Jack was going to be Lord Byron, with frills and ruffles and pithy couplets. I was going to be Millard Fillmore, dignified and undistinguished. And with us we were bringing an added, unannounced guest who was going to play an important role later in the evening.

We arrived at the ball at about nine-thirty. The place was ablaze with lights and jewels. They were all there, dukes and duchesses and princes and princesses from places that are remembered today only by stamp collectors and retired map-makers; and all the playboys and tycoons and titans, and the men who live in Wall Street�s shadow and the women who shadow Wall Street�s men. All of them in costume. The grand ballroom was a whirl of bizarre celebrities. I shook hands with Oliver Cromwell, Talleyrand, William McKinley (there were three of them), Julius Caesar, Beau Brummel, Marie Antoinette, Madame Du Barry and dozens of others.

After an hour or so of calculated mingling, I finally caught sight of J. J. Griggen. Humble man that he was, he had come as Moses; not Michelangelo�s Moses, but Griggen�s Moses, short and paunchy and ferret-eyed. He might have been the real article, the way everyone stepped aside for him and stared after him.

I jostled him at the punch table.

�Excuse me, Moses,� I said, and he laughed. He liked that.

�So you recognized me, eh?� he said.

�It was easy.�

�And who might you be?� he asked.

�President Millard Fillmore,� I said.

�President of what? G.M.?�

�U.S.�

�Ah Steel!� he said and graciously patted me on the back. �Always a pleasure, always a pleasure. Are you really in Steel, sir?�

�In a way, if you want to say it�s a play on words.�

We talked, and while I beguiled the old boy with anecdotes, I was maneuvering him out onto a balcony. Outside, on the balcony, out of sight, we met a caveman. With a club.

�Ah,� said Griggen with a laugh, �a representative of Organized Labor!� He offered to shake hands. But this caveman was not one for social niceties. One tap with the club and J. J. Griggen was stretched out on the balcony.

Then we went to work. Buck retrieved the parcel we had cached there, containing the unannounced guest � a bearskin which we had bought from a store that sells bearskins and halberds and morions and shrunken heads and Mini� balls from the Gettysburg battlefield. While I propped up old J. J., Buck fitted him into the bearskin and zipped him up. Then Buck hefted the bear into his arms and I led them back into the ballroom.

�Thomas Jefferson,� I announced to all the smiling, costumed guests, �leading behind me the symbolic brawn and brute strength of America.� Several men, Lewis and Clark particularly, cheered, while a woman said how cunning it was.

I led the symbols out the front door and down the path to the parking lot. There I found Lord Byron at the wheel of our car, the motor running, the back door open. Buck dropped the bear onto the back seat and got in beside it. Then we took off down the driveway and through the gate where the special police in charge there for the evening saluted us nicely; after all, it wasn�t every night they saw Millard Fillmore, Lord Byron, a cave man and the world�s richest bear.

We sped along the dark, woodsy Long Island lanes, towards the little cabin I had prepared, up a dirt road, perfectly secluded. While it wasn�t one of the great mansions that Griggen was accustomed to, he was going to have to call it home for the next few days.

By the time we pulled up to the place in dark, warm, crickety night, Griggen was beginning to stir. I don�t suppose he had any idea what he was wearing (I think there is hardly a man anywhere who can conceive of himself waking up in a bear skin), but he began to yell for us to get the horrid thing off of him, and in a voice that bespoke authority, hurrying subordinates, scurrying waiters, scuttling doormen and gushing oil wells. But we were having none of his impertinence. Buck � Buck, who was rich only in brawn and friends � Buck told him to shut up. Griggen almost gagged on that.

We led him into the cabin and then removed the bear skin. Griggen looked with amazement at the thing, then peered at us in our costumes, and I guess the knock on the head made him lose his bearings for a moment, as he said:

�What have I fallen into � a time machine or a lunatic asylum?�

�Neither, Mr. Griggen,� I said. �We�re all fugitives from the charity ball and you�re our guest. In the spirit of the evening I might say that we�re masquerading as your abductors and you as our victim, but don�t believe it � the ball is over and this is the real thing.�

�This is an outrage!� he howled.

�Agreed,� I said. �But we haven�t brought you here because we needed a fourth for bridge. I warn you, we�re desperate men who will stop at nothing to achieve our aims. So please sit down and make yourself comfortable. This whole outrageous business won�t take more than a day or two, depending upon what cooperation we receive from you.�

�Cooperation? What are you talking about?� he demanded, cutting quite an indignant figure in his toga.

�We�re going to trade you for five million dollars, and at the same time make you famous not only in the world of high finance and low dealings, but in the history books too. You are now a key figure in the greatest scoop-up caper of all time. Welcome to the history books, Mr. Griggen. You�ve risen this evening from the footnotes to a chapter-heading.� He was perversely unimpressed, however.

�You�ll never get away with this, Mr... Mr...�

�Fillmore.�

�Damn you, Fillmore. You can�t do this to me. It�s an outrage, and besides, I can�t stand notoriety.�

�It�s already half done, Mr. Griggen. Now, we�ve got beer and baloney in the ice box. Not very substantial, but homey. Won�t you join us?�

Later we changed clothes, and Moses, Byron, Fillmore and the nameless cave man vanished. As befitted a man of his economic stature, Griggen proved quite a nuisance. He was forever demanding a battery of telephones with which to call his lawyers. Only when we threatened to put him back into the bear skin and train him to ride a bicycle, did he finally desist and go to sleep. Buck sat watch over him while Jack and I sat in the kitchen and drank beer and congratulated ourselves.

�Let Blue and his boys top this one,� I said with pardonable pride. �Once they hear about it they�ll pull in their nets and close shop and leave the field to the professionals.�

�I have to hand it to you, Bush,� said Jack. �You�ve got genius. But do you really think we�ll get five million for him?�

�No question about it,� I said. �Now you could never get five million for the King of England or for a billionaire�s grandson; but for somebody like J. J. Griggen, yes, absolutely � because he�s still capable of making that a hundred times over; that�s why whoever we contact will be only too eager to dish it out and get him back. Griggen can go right back to his desk, roll up his sleeves and start making money again. Get it?�

�What a theory,� Jack said admiringly. �Pure genius.� It was a conservative estimate at best, but I blushed nevertheless.

The next morning we jostled Griggen out of bed, treated him to a free breakfast and then got down to brass facts, as my old grandpa used to say.

�Whom do we contact for the payment?� I asked.

�I�m not saying a word,� Griggen said.

�Mr. Griggen,� I said, giving him my darkest and deadliest look, �we have in the basement of this cabin a medieval torture chamber, replete with racks, whips, vises and long playing records of television commercials. If you don�t prove to be an amenable client you�ll find yourself subjected to the more barbaric side of human nature. Now � answer the question.�

He sighed. He was beaten and, shrewd business man that he was, saw it. But he made the best of it.

�You contact my wife, Mrs. Hildegarde Griggen.� He gave us the number. �She�s the only one who can do anything. She has the key to my vault.�

�Is she an hysterical woman?�

�Cold as ice.�

�She�ll follow my instructions?�

�If she knows my welfare depends on it, certainly.�

�Excellent.�

That afternoon I drove into town and stepped into a phone booth, about to make a thin dime turn into five million dollars. I dialed the number J. J. had given me, and waited. The phone rang and rang, and rang and rang. After five minutes I decided there wasn�t going to be an answer. I returned to the cabin.

�What did you give me here, boy,� I asked Griggen, �Custer�s number on the Little Big Horn?�

�What do you mean?� he asked. �That�s Mrs. Griggen�s private phone.�

�It�s so private that nobody answered.�

�That�s not so odd. Mrs. Griggen is very active.�

�Won�t she be sort of alarmed at your being missing?�

�Not yet she won�t. I often spend the night away from home. My interests are far-flung, Mr. Fillmore; they demand constant attention, day and night; as you�ll soon learn.�

I tried again, later that afternoon, then that evening again. No answer. I was beginning to get nervous about things. A man like J. J. Griggen does not remain missing for long without about a thousand people starting to miss him. Once somebody caught wise to what was going on there would be enough heat put on to fry every egg in New Jersey.

�Didn�t your wife accompany you to the ball?� I asked this creature of opulence.

�No,� said Griggen. �She doesn�t like those things. I wish you would get hold of her and consummate this deal. I�m getting damned sick of this place.�

That night passed and then it was morning again.

�This has to be it,� I said to Jack. �We either contact the old lady today or we have to let him go. By tonight he�ll be so thoroughly missed that I wouldn�t be surprised if both Wall Street and the Wall of China collapsed. We�ll have the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and a reactivated CCC looking for us.�

So I drove back to town, thinking again about the thin dime that stood between me and five million dollars. I would tell Mrs. Griggen not to be panicky, not to tell a soul, merely to go into the vault with a shovel and a barrel and she could have her husband back.

But I didn�t tell her anything. Because she wasn�t there. All I got for my dime was a soft constant ringing of a telephone. Then I had to hang up and go back to the cabin.

�Mr. Griggen,� I said to him, �you�re a free man. Go back to your oil wells.�

�Are you getting the five million?� he asked with a certain fascinated interest.

�Go home, Mr. Griggen,� I said. I couldn�t wait to get him out of my sight. It hurt me to look at him.

We watched him walk through the door, down the path and out into the road.

�There goes five million dollars, tax-free,� I said to my tragic-faced associates. �Lost for want of a woman�s voice. All she had to do was come home from the beauty parlor or the tea at Mrs. Vanderfeller�s or wherever she was, and say hello into the phone, and we had five million.�

�This will become a day of mourning for me,� said Jack.

Buck grunted.

Being an odd fellow, not wanting notoriety, J. J. Griggen said nothing to the police of what had happened. And I, of course, was not about to go mentioning it to people. For one thing, I didn�t want our abysmal competitors, the Barney Blue boys, to hear about how I had to let five million dollars pass through the door. It would have cast a tarnish on my reputation that not even the latest detergent could have gotten out.

As it was, I ran across the Barney Blue some weeks later at a downtown tavern where gentlemen of a certain stripe generally converged.

�How is my competitor?� I asked him.

Instead of the bright smile and flippant remark, all I got from him was a glum look.

�We�re out of it, Bush,� he said. �The field is all yours again. And believe me, after getting my feet wet in the profession and seeing what a complicated business it is, you have all my esteem and admiration.�

�Well, thank you, Barney, thank you very much. You�re giving up?� �We tried something big, but it didn�t work out. I guess we just didn�t have your know-how. Do you know who we scooped up, Bush?�

�Tell me.�

�The wife of the richest man in the world � Mrs. J. J. Griggen. It worked out perfect, except we couldn�t get the old man on the phone to hold him up.�

�This was about three weeks ago?� I asked, trying to maintain my composure as the blood left my body.

�Exactly. How did you know?� �There are no secrets in this business, Barney. None at all,� I said. And for the first time I could see myself sitting on a rocking chair on the porch of the Home For Retired Vikings, discussing burglar alarms, alert policemen, eye-witnesses, and all the other pitfalls of the profession.

An artist is popularly supposed to be a poor business man, always in need of money. With rare exceptions, this is the case. We deal here with one of those rare exceptions.

Martin stared balefully at the still life tacked to his easel. His was a small mean talent, he realized. Long ago he had given up all hope of becoming a renowned artist and had contented himself with being a second-rate dauber. Yet occasionally he did sell. More often perhaps than his friend, Nathan, whose splashes of bold color and bizarre designs accentuated his own mediocrity.

He wandered over to the wide bay window and leaned against the frame. Half an hour to kill before he met Nathan at Paddy�s Bar to lift a few as a prelude to making the regular rounds of the Village.

On the floor below he could see the wilted geraniums and dried-up ivy on the Brackhams� terrace. A pang of envy shot through him at the thought of Charles Brackham. The man was tall, powerfully built, with strong, finely chiselled features. Brackham owned the house and Martin had been told that he was a power on Wall Street. He�d heard other rumors too lately, that Brackham had overshot the mark and was in hot water, that his wife, Betty, held most of the property in her name and refused to help him.

Whatever else he might envy Brackham, he certainly didn�t covet his wife. Betty was a faded blonde with a shrewish manner and a whining voice. Often, as he stood here in the window, he could hear the couple bickering. Usually the quarrel would end with Charles slamming out of the apartment and the smothered sounds of Betty�s weeping.

They were going at it now, hammer and tongs. Only tonight they sounded different. The man�s tones were quieter than usual with a sneering, mocking edge. The woman sounded taut, hysterical, as though she were genuinely frightened.

Martin leaned out the open window to catch the words.

She was saying, �Take the pearls. They must be worth a couple of thousand. Take anything you want. I�ll never complain, if you�ll just go away and leave me alone.�

The answer was spoken in a lazy drawl. �What good are the pearls to me? I wouldn�t have the foggiest idea where to sell them. Everybody knows I�m a lousy business man.�

There were other sounds then, hard to identify. A cry, broken off almost before it had started, the sharp release of breath that could be a gasp of pain, followed by a muffled thud, like that of a body crumpling to the floor.

Martin listened intently. Minutes passed in silence. Then somewhere a door was shut softly and light footsteps made a slithering descent.

Martin remained motionless, his heart pounding painfully, tremors racing along the backs of his hands. Had murder been committed in the room below? If so, it was his duty to call the police, but the thought appalled him. He knew himself to be a timid, ineffectual man. What if he was mistaken? He imagined the bullying voices of the police, their ridicule and scorn. Even if he was right, would he be able to stand up against a man like Charles Brackham? In his mind was a deadly certainty that Brackham would somehow turn the tables on him. He might even be accused of the crime.

Knuckles rapping at his door startled him from his gloomy reverie and threw him into momentary panic. But it was only the janitor come to fix a leaking faucet. Martin watched and tipped the man sparingly. He thought of speaking to him of what he had heard but his instinctive caution warned him to remain silent. It was no affair of his, and he wanted no part of it.

He arrived at Paddy�s Bar a few minutes late. Nathan was already in the midst of a group of convivial drinkers but he crossed the room to throw his arms about Martin in an exuberant embrace.

�Marty boy, tonight we celebrate. I just sold a picture. We�ll hit every bar in the Village. What do you say, man?�

Martin protested feebly, pointing out that every time that Nathan made a sale he spent the money in a single night.

Nathan cut him off. �That�s what the folding stuff�s for. Easy come; easy go. That�s my motto.�

Martin had intended to ask Nathan�s advice but there was no chance to do so without blurting out the story in front of half a dozen people. As the drinks flowed faster and faster, he almost forgot about the Brackhams and, when he remembered, the details of what he had heard were blurred and fuzzy like those of a half-remembered dream.

It wasn�t a nightmare, though. When he got home, the place was swarming with police. Maybe if he�d been sober he would have told them the truth but he�d had enough to drink so that he was sure they�d trip him up. So he�d held his tongue and claimed he hadn�t heard a thing.

He�d expected the cops to be on his back but everything went smooth as butter. During the next week a Lieutenant Payson from Homicide dropped around a few times to check on his story but he�d trapped himself into silence and there was no way out. And why should there be? He had nothing to gain by blabbing to the police.

All the same, Brackham�s calm manner irritated him. At first the man had assumed a phony air of grief but, by the week�s end, he was his usual self, striding along as though he owned the world, giving Martin a supercilious smile when he met him on the stairs. He wouldn�t be so cocky if he knew the power that Martin held over him. Come to think of it, why shouldn�t he be told? Martin had done him a big favor. Brackham ought to be grateful.

The more Martin turned the matter over in his mind, the more certain he was that he should approach Brackham. It wouldn�t be blackmail. He wouldn�t make any threats or mention money. Just the barest of hints that he was hard up ought to turn the trick.

Martin steeled himself for the interview. He mustn�t forget the man was a cold-blooded killer. To brace him alone in his apartment was too dangerous. He�d have to catch him in a public place with enough people around for protection but none within earshot.

That evening he trailed Brackham when he left the house. The man made it easy for him. Within a few minutes he entered a restaurant. A plush place, not the kind where Martin ever ate. Martin hesitated, then summoning all his courage, followed his quarry inside. The set-up was perfect. The restaurant was half filled but Brackham sat alone at a table in the corner.

Brackham�s eyebrows shot up in an expression of annoyance when Martin slipped into the seat opposite him.

Martin had his speech all prepared but he had a hard time getting the words out and couldn�t keep the stammer from his voice.

�Mr. Brackham, there�s something I think I ought to tell you about your wife�s death.�

As Martin stumbled through the story the man�s manner changed, becoming disarmingly cordial. He wanted all the details and Martin gave them to him, feeling a surge of victory swelling inside him. He had Brackham by the short hairs. The guy wasn�t even putting up a fight.

When he�d finished, Brackham said seriously, �I want to thank you, Martin. I really do. Now I�m going to ask one more favor.�

�Sure. Anything I can do.�

�Just wait here for a few minutes. There�s someone else I think should hear your story.�

Martin was confused but he nodded. Brackham rose and strode to a telephone booth in the corner. The conversation didn�t take more than a minute and then Brackham was back, urging Martin to have a cocktail with him.

Martin had the sudden impulse to run but that was crazy. Maybe Brackham had called a friend to bring some money over. Maybe the pay-off would come right now without any fuss, bother or hint of blackmail.

A shadow fell across the table and Martin looked up. His stomach seemed to cave in and it was all he could do not to scream. The man standing there was Lieutenant Payson.

Brackham was on his feet, smiling. He said, �Thank you for coming so quickly, Lieutenant. You�ll remember Martin, I�m sure. The boy�s got a story you should hear. Of course, he should have given his information immediately but I hope you won�t be rough on him. Martin didn�t mean to do anything wrong. He�s just a timid type.�

Payson nodded solemnly and took a seat. Dazedly. Martin repeated his story, while the Lieutenant took notes. Then Payson suggested that he should go back to Martin�s room. Martin was scared stiff but, throughout the interview, Payson remained courteous. No rough stuff at all. Just a gentle insistence that Martin go over the ground again and again until the words were almost automatic.

Not until two hours later did Payson rise to leave. He said quietly, �There�s one more question I want to ask, Martin. And you�d better tell me the truth. Did Brackham put you up to this?�

�Brackham! Why should he? This proves he killed his wife.�

Payson shook his head. �Quite to the contrary. You�ve provided him with an absolute alibi. According to you the murder took place at ten minutes of five and that corresponds with the time shown on Betty Brackham�s broken wrist-watch. But a watch can be broken purposely and the hands arranged to suit the killer. That�s what we suspected Brackham of doing, but our theory won�t hold water any longer. Brackham was at a board meeting between four and five-thirty. He�s got at least a dozen witnesses to prove it. Sound business men. Solid citizens. If your story is true, it puts him in the clear. Do you want to change it, Martin?�

Martin licked dry lips. �I can�t. It�s the truth.�

Payson shrugged. �Maybe you think it is, but one thing�s for sure, whoever you heard that day, it wasn�t Charles Brackham.�

Payson left then and Martin was alone. He dug around in the pantry until he found a bottle of rye and poured himself a stiff shot. He gulped it down and slumped into the leather armchair to think.

He�d heard the quarrel and Betty Brackham�s choked-off scream. The memory was too clear for an hallucination. Betty�s voice had been high-pitched with fear but easily recognizable. The man�s voice had been familiar too. The slow drawl, the mocking intonations he�d heard many times before. He�d been sure that it was Brackham speaking because that was the voice he�d expected to hear. But come to think of it, Brackham�s speech was more clipped. Even in anger, it was cold but not mocking.

The truth came to him with a shudder that jerked him upright in his chair. Of course the voice was familiar. He remembered the words now: �Everybody knows I�m a lousy business man.� Charles Brackham wouldn�t say that, but it was the boast of Martin�s best friend.

He started to stumble to his feet and fell back in the chair. He hadn�t heard the door open, hadn�t heard a sound, but Nathan was leaning against the wall only a few feet from him, a black-snouted revolver in his hand.

A rueful smile twisted Nathan�s lips. �I hate to do this, Marty boy. I really do. But you know me, always a sucker. I let Brackham con me into chilling that shrew of his for a measly two grand, when I should have got double the price.�

�I won�t tell, Nathan. Honest.�

Nathan shook his head sadly. �That�s what I tried to sell Brackham but he wouldn�t listen. He said sooner or later you�d work things out and spill to the cops. You know something else, he�s not even paying me for this job. He says its for my own protection. So I got to plug you for nothing.�

Martin couldn�t answer. Not even when he saw the slow pull of Nathan�s finger on the trigger and felt something like a giant fist slamming him against the back of the chair.

But he could still hear Nathan�s mocking voice. �It�s a rotten deal, Marty. But, like I always say, I�m a lousy business man.�

He walked from headquarters to the Church of San Lorenzo, feeling the blessed warmth of the Tuscan sunshine on his shoulders. He went down Canto di Nelli, beside the church, picked his way through the voluble crowds of Florentines who were buying everything from crocheted gloves to screw drivers at the open air stalls in the Piazza Madonna, and entered the crypt of the Medici Chapel behind the church. Ducking under the low arches, he found the stairway to the Chapel of the Princes and ascended it briskly.

When he came out on the tessellated floor of the Chapel, he paused momentarily, filled with the pride that every Florentine takes in his city�s artistic heritage. He gazed around him at the lofty octagonal chamber sheathed in precious marble � a splendid room housing the tombs of six of the Medici Grand Dukes. He crossed the floor to the sarcophagus of Ferdinand II, for this was the one specified by Signor Gozzoli.

It was placed in a niche in the wall, high above the floor. On its massive top, carved out of granite and richly decorated, was a wide cushion. And on this stone cushion, directly at the feet of a larger-than-life statue of the Grand Duke, lay a replica of the Duke�s crown, gilded and set with chunks of crystal and colored glass. At the front of the crown, in its exact center, was set a large rectangular green stone, perhaps two inches long in its widest dimension and an inch high. This was the stone that Signor Gozzoli had thought looked real. It was twenty feet above Cantini�s head. And to him, it looked merely very small and very green.

He went over to the Chapel attendant who was selling postcards and colored prints to tourists. He called him aside.

�You sent me another crank, Giovanni,� he said to the attendant.

The man flashed a smile. �The craziest one yet,� he said.

�True. Tell me about it.�

�What is there to tell? Didn�t he tell you himself, investigatore?� The man always called Cantini investigatore, detective, to tease him and Cantini did not object since Giovanni was his wife�s cousin.

�Did you observe him come in?�

�I did. It was early, just after the Chapel opened. He came up the stairs and went into the sacristy with his camera and guide-book, just like any other tourist; he stayed there for a time, maybe fifteen minutes, and then came out again and began to look at this Chapel. I saw him admiring the Ferdinand over there...� the guard waved a hand... �and then he lifted his binoculars and took a good look through them at the Duke�s crown. Then he came over to me.�

�What did he say?�

�He said, �Signor, it reports in my guide-book here that the jewels in these crowns that rest on the tombs of the Dukes are merely colored glass and crystal. Is that right?� I told him it was. Then he says he thinks the green jewel in Duke Ferdinand�s crown, the one right in front, is not green glass at all, but a genuine emerald.�

�And you laughed at him, I suppose,� Cantini said.

�Of course, the fool. I assured him he was mistaken. I even went over with him to take a closer look through his glasses at the crown. He seemed a nice fellow, in spite of being poco matto, a little crazy. I tried to be polite.�

Cantini nodded. �And did you think the green stone looked like glass or emerald?�

Giovanni laughed. �It�s no different from all the other glass jewels in the Dukes� crowns in this room,� he said. �I told him so, too. But he still thought that one particular piece of glass looked different. He said he�d been a jeweler at one time and knew something about jewels. So I sent him to you.�

�A jeweler!� Cantini said. �Why didn�t you say so?�

With some justice, the guard replied, �I did.�

�He didn�t mention that to me,� Cantini said. �Get me a ladder, Giovanni.�

�A ladder? Are you mad, investigatore? There�s no ladder nearer than the crypt. And it�s the middle of the day. Look at the crowd around my postcard booth! I can�t leave to get a ladder now.�

�Get it,� Cantini said. �I�ll take the responsibility for your absence. We must look at Duke Ferdinand�s crown at close range.�

There are those who maintain that any competitive game is an outlet for aggressions which would otherwise be suppressed. Suppression, you know, is allegedly very, very damaging to all concerned.

When they took Mr. Stein away yesterday, he was screaming. Not because of where they were taking him, or how... with his arms wrapped around him. He was screaming mad because they wouldn�t let him finish his dart game.

They brought him down in my elevator car, non-stop from the top floor. As he went past me, he stopped yelling. He smiled that actor�s smile of his and said to me, �Hold the car, Pancho. I�ll be right back. Just taking time out from my dart game.�

When I first came here to the Acme Building to run an elevator, I thought Mr. Stein was a swell guy. A little nutty, of course, but then you sort of expect that from these advertising men. Some days he�d cut up and joke with me, flirt with the girls in the car, and give out with his charm. Other times, he�d be gloomy and frowning, wouldn�t seem to notice me or anybody else.

I first got the idea that he was more than a little offbeat when I heard Mr. Burman, fourth floor, talking to his partner. It�s funny how people will talk in front of an elevator operator as if he was just part of the equipment.

Mr. Burman said, �How about that Leo Stein? They say he�s losing accounts even faster than he�s losing his hair.�

His partner, Mr. Billingsley, said, �Let�s face it, Joe, who wants to do business with a prima donna? He�s so damned impressed with his own genius that he puts on a show, instead of a sales presentation. He�s a real ham, from way back.�

As they got out on the ground floor, Mr. Burman was saying, �Don�t be too hard on him, Bill. I�m afraid the poor guy is sick. I mean real sick.�

From then on, I pieced together a lot of information from what tenants and other people let drop when they were in the elevator. It seemed that Leo Stein had started out with a bang. He made a name for himself as a brilliant advertising man. He was temperamental, but everybody liked him pretty well. Then he got to depending on his charm and stopped being very serious about his work. He neglected his clients, they said, and spent too much time chasing skirts. He made a pass at the secretary of one of his clients. It turned out she was ace-high with her boss, and when he heard about Stein�s advances, he took his account elsewhere. Things like that have a way of getting around, and bad luck always snowballs, so it wasn�t long before the Stein Agency began to lose business.

Even so, Mr. Stein never got to the office before noon. You�d think he would work harder when business was slow, but not him. His office was always in an uproar, what with new help all the time. He hired or fired people every couple of weeks, it seemed. Only one gal, his secretary, Jane Curtis, stayed on, no matter who came or went. She knew more about his business than he did, people said. Maybe that�s why he kept her on. I guess the main reason why she took his ranting and raving and sloppy business practice was that she was a widow with a little boy to support, and she needed her job.

One night I brought Jane down in the elevator. She looked as beat as an army drum. I made some remark about her being tired. She said, �Pancho, I just can�t tell you how tired I am... and I have to come back later for a conference. It�ll probably last until midnight. They usually do.�

A few minutes later, Mr. Stein came down with Wilma, his new copy girl. She had already been there a month, longer than most, and it looked like they got along real well. As they went out the door, he was saying; �We�ll have a nice leisurely dinner, Gorgeous. Good old Jane can hold the fort up there until we get back.� They were both laughing as they left.

One afternoon soon after that, Mr. Stein was carrying a big flat package when he got in the elevator. He smiled and said, �Come up and play a game of darts with me some day, Pancho. It�s good exercise... and besides, it�s fun.�

The next day, I took a Special Delivery letter up to his office. When I handed it to Jane, I could see into his conference room. He was singing a song, and throwing darts at the board. They whacked into it like bullets, never missing a beat, as he kept time to the music. I could see Wilma over to one side, curled up on the couch like a blonde kitten, smiling up at him as if she thought he was pretty wonderful.

Yesterday, the way I heard it, Mr. Stein was playing darts again. He said, �It�s getting stuffy in here. Let�s take the dart board out on the balcony and get some air while we�re playing. You, too, Jane... I�ve got a couple of letters I want to dictate between games. Bring a chair. Wilma, you can sit on the railing. The sun will do you good.�

The top floor office opens out onto this balcony... a ten foot wide stretch of roof with a low railing around it. Because it�s twenty floors above the ground, you can get a dandy view of the bay, and of the roof tops all around.

Jane said to me today, �When I got out there with my chair, he and Wilma were laughing about some people sun-bathing on a roof across the way. The people didn�t have much clothes on, and he got a bang out of that.�

Then, she said, her boss began to play darts again. He was singing, of course. This time the song was �Old Black Magic�. When he got to the part about �down and down I go, �round and �round I go,� he stopped and laughed.

�I wonder,� he said, �if things really do go �round and �round when they go down and down?�

He went back to throwing his darts, keeping time to the music. Just as he started the song over for the third time, Jane heard the telephone ring. She went inside, closed the door, and answered the phone. While she was talking, she thought she heard Wilma laughing. The door was closed, so she couldn�t be sure. Just as she was finishing her conversation with the man on the phone, the door opened and Mr. Stein walked in. He was smiling.

He said, �Go out and get my dart board for me, will you, Jane? I�ve got the darts here, and I want to play another game before lunch.�

Well, Jane went out and started to take the dart board down off the wall, when she suddenly realized that Wilma wasn�t around. The only way off the balcony is through the office door. Jane ran into the office. Mr. Stein was in his conference room, singing �Old Black Magic�.

Jane had the dart board in her hand. She had a sick feeling inside, but she thought she must be wrong. She said to him, �Where�s Wilma? I didn�t see her on the roof.�

Mr. Stein smiled as he reached out to take the board from her. He said, �Oh... Wilma. Too bad you missed the experiment, Jane. I found out that people really don�t go �round and �round when they go down and down.�

When the police came for him, he was thumping darts into the board, keeping time to his song. They say he didn�t even glance at the blood splashes on the sidewalk, or the blanket-covered heap in the gutter. He was just screaming mad because they had interrupted his dart game.

Homo sapiens, in his early beginnings, relied upon fire for warmth, light, and protection. These basic qualities have not changed, but the uses to which it is sometimes put vary with the users, and are not always to their credit.

Hosemen still chased wisps of smoke in the fifth floor apartment at one A.M. as Fire Marshal Ed Manning swung his light over the figure lying in the blackened ruin of the bed. Anger crawled up the back of his red head under the white helmet. Loss of life from fire was bad enough when due to human carelessness, but this poor guy hadn�t died from smoking in bed. Too much of the box spring was too evenly burned. Manning leaned closer, sniffing, trying not to be revulsed by the stench of overcooked flesh. From long experience he singled out and classified a faint, pungent odor.

�Barbecue starter fluid,� he snapped. �It was poured all over the bed, and over him.�

Sims, his elderly game-legged assistant, gestured toward a terrace beyond the jagged heap of a glass door that had been shattered by heat.

�There�s a portable barbecue out there, and the boys found an empty gallon can down in the alley. That�s why I called you.�

Manning nodded, grimly thinking of the sights he�d seen on the way up from the street. Dishevelled tenants roused from sleep. A woman with a leg broken from a fall down a murky stairway. Trampled, frightened, and smoke-sickened kids. All because of what had happened in this bedroom! Arson to conceal murder, and to hell with how many other people might become victims too!

�Did you notify the Homicide Squad?� he demanded.

�After I called you,� Sims said reluctantly. �Look, Ed, we�re not going to back off this, are we?� Sims, incapacitated for more active duty, hated his job as Fire Prevention Bureau Inspector, and too often tried to take out his bitterness on fire ordinance violators. Recently, on another arson case, he�d stepped on the toes of the Police Department and Manning had received a memo from the Old Man. Manning knew there wouldn�t be a memo if this case weren�t solved quickly. He�d be up on the carpet because there was a pyro in jail, awaiting trial for a series of apartment and hotel fires. The suspect�s bigshot lawyers would turn on the pressure, insisting that Manning had tracked down the wrong man.

�We�ll cooperate with the Police Department,� Manning said uneasily. He tilted his helmet toward the bed. �Have you found out anything about him?�

�His name is... was Burgess,� Sims replied. �Lived here alone, a widower semi-retired from the hardware business now being run by his two married sons. I�ve sent for them. He attended a company banquet with them tonight, their wives were also along. As far as I�ve found out, they dropped Burgess at the curb about an hour ago, and didn�t come up with him.� He moved to worriedly face Manning. �If their alibis check out��

�We, and the police will have to find someone else,� Manning declared. �Got any more information on him?�

�He has a secretary, been with him in the business for about thirty years. She�s been helping him write his memoirs, and has a key to the apartment. She was at the banquet too, but didn�t ride in the same car.�

Manning managed a slight smile. �You sound like an old gossip.�

�I found one who lives in the building. It helps on a case like this, Ed. I�ve been listening, too, to the Department grapevine about that pyro. If that case is pulled apart, we come unglued too.�

�Get that secretary down here,� Manning said grimly. He jerked his head around as the telephone rang in the partly burned living room. Brushing past hosemen and pulling out his handkerchief he called sharply to a battalion chief. �Leave it, I�ll get it.� He carefully picked up the handset. �Hello?�

�Well, at last,� said a man�s voice. �Sorry to disturb you at this hour, Mr. Burgess, but you�re a hard man to catch. I�ve been trying all day and evening.�

�Got tied up with a company banquet,� Manning murmured. �Who is this, please?�

�I�m Frank Al�� There was a pause. �Are you Burgess?�

�He can�t come to the phone at the moment,� said Manning, making motions with his free hand. Sims dashed out to find another phone. �Who shall I say is calling? Mr. Frank��

�Allenbeck. Why can�t he come to the phone?�

�I�ll take a message,� Manning stalled.

�Are you his lawyer?�

�What�s the message?� Manning persisted.

�Er... I�ll call him back in the morning.� The line went dead, too soon to be traced. Manning hung up slowly. He told a downcast Sims to start a rundown on the name, Frank Allenbeck.

�It rings some kind of a bell,� Sims muttered.

Manning nodded. �See if you can get it loud and clear.� Lighting a cigarette he prowled the apartment until the Homicide Squad arrived. Cupping a hand for cigarette ash, unable to find any trays and too safety-conscious to flick ashes on the black sodden floor, he briefed Lieutenant Ricardo Torrey, a ponderous man with a jet black widow�s peak and sleepy-lidded eyes.

�Burgess is too badly burned to tell whether he was stabbed, shot, or what when he was put on the bed fully clothed. The medical examiner will have to determine that with an autopsy. I�d say it was done by someone he knew.�

�You would?� Torrey remarked.

Manning hesitated. Torrey was ordinarily a square-shooter, cooperative in arson cases, the toughest type of crime in which to secure evidence. He�d wanted to move slowly in that recent pyro arrest. He�d been getting pressure from high sources, and he had six kids to support. But Sims had stepped on his toes, which put Manning in a bad light as chief of the Arson and Prevention bureau.

�I�m not trying to jump the gun,� Manning explained carefully. �Outside of determining the originating spot and cause of the fire, I�ve made only a cursory examination. So far, I haven�t found any indications of burglary.� He saw Torrey�s gaze slide toward the littered bedroom. �Just part of blacking down. The boys can�t be neat when they�ve got a hot one to lick.�

�That�s the hell of it when I have to work with you,� Torrey said. �You let everything burn up. Why don�t you drop that butt and complete the job?�

�What do you want, a gift-wrapped case?� Manning demanded, smiling. He held up the stub of cigarette. �This might be a lead. No ashtrays. So whoever wanted to make it look like smoking in bed didn�t know he was a nonsmoker. Maybe that alibis his family,�

�We�ll see,� said Torrey. His gaze swung toward the door as Sims came in with the police lab technicians. �Thanks for the cooperation, Ed. We�ll get to work, from where you left off.�

Manning looked him in the eye, and grinned as he said, �I�m a bachelor, Sims had a row with his wife, so we�ll stay and help you get back to your family.�

�I know better than to spell a nasty word,� said Torrey. �I�ve got six kids. All right, Ed, we�ve both been eating grapes from the same grapevine. Let�s not try to pick any sour ones.�

The dead man�s sons arrived. Their alibis, for themselves and their wives, checked out. Manning asked them about the name he�d heard on the telephone. Frank Allenbeck. He got a blank stare from one and a shake of the head from the other. Torrey sighed at the interruption and took over the questioning again.

�Your father�s secretary, Miss Driscoll, left the banquet separately. Right? She also has a key to this apartment.� Manning frowned, and offered Torrey a cigarette as a reminder that someone didn�t know Burgess was a non-smoker. The Lieutenant went right on with his own line of thought. �Was there any hint of something more than a business relationship?�

The older son, the one with the thinning brown hair, glanced at his brother. �We�ll be very frank, Lieutenant. Dad�s been very lonely since Mother died three years ago. We thought it would help if he wrote his memoirs. It would be somewhat like re-living his life with her. There�s been nothing outstanding or dramatic in his life��

�Except tonight,� Sims cut in.

The son winced. �We thought writing the book would help him, even though we realized it had no market value. Dad tried to point that out to us, but we said we wanted it for ourselves, and the grandchildren.�

�You figured he was going to die soon?� Torrey inquired.

�Of course not,� exclaimed the younger son. �He was healthy, had a lot of years ahead. We just wanted to snap him out of his blue funk.�

�Miss Driscoll knew what was up then,� Torrey suggested, �and she went along with the scheme. Just as a paid, loyal employee, would you say?�

�She was willing to do it without pay,� said the older son, �but, of course, we wouldn�t hear of that.�

�Without pay,� Torrey began knowingly. �An old man, well off financially, I take it. A lonely widower and��

�For your information,� said the younger son, �Dad had given us full ownership and control of the business. He�d set up trust funds for our children. He�d disposed of the bulk of his estate, to save taxes for us. There was nothing left in an amount to interest a designing woman, if that�s what you have in mind.�

�But enough,� said Torrey, �to keep her comfortably.�

�We even suggested that to Dad,� said the older brother. �It would have dispelled his loneliness. He has... had a high regard for Miss Driscoll, which we all share, but he wasn�t that interested.�

Manning thrust his pack of cigarettes at Torrey. �Smoke?� he asked firmly. Torrey turned away as one of his detectives appeared in the doorway.

�A Miss Driscoll has just come up on the elevator.�

�Send her in,� said Torrey, then spoke to the sons. �I�ll be in touch with you.�

Reluctantly, they took the hint she was to be questioned privately.

Waiting for the secretary, Manning confronted Torrey.

�Are you forgetting Allenbeck?�

�I can�t question him,� Torrey retorted, �until we find him. Why don�t you see what you can do in that direction, if you think it�s a lead.�

�I might just do that,� Manning countered. �You know, pyros, after they make the touch-off, have a habit of coming back to watch the spectacle, or even pitch in and give the smoke-eaters a hand. They think it dulls suspicion. The same thing can apply to murder. Why couldn�t Allenbeck have made that phone call tonight to establish that he had no knowledge of what had happened to Burgess?�

Torrey didn�t answer. He was facing the door.

�Miss Driscoll? Come in, please.�

She was a slim, graying woman. Manning judged her to be in her fifties. Her neatly tailored suit didn�t hide her figure too much. She gave a feeling of efficient reliability, and had a mature charm and grace which seems to heighten in some women in their middle years. Old Burgess must have been blinded by grief for his wife. Miss Driscoll glanced toward the bedroom, went rigid, then came on slowly, fighting a quiet battle with tears in her large gray-blue eyes.

She answered Torrey�s questions, almost in a whisper.

�Miss?� Torrey wondered aloud. �You never married?�

�No.�

Manning saw color creep into her slightly hollowed cheeks. He moved closer.

�Miss Driscoll, do you know anything about a Frank Allenbeck?�

She looked at him distantly. �I�m not sure, but if seems��

Sims came up on the other side of Torrey. �Thirty-odd years on one job,� he said sharply. �You must have liked your boss.�

Manning saw her color deepen. �He was wonderful... to work for.�

Torrey gave Sims a little nod. �In all that time, didn�t Burgess ever remark about you�re not getting married?�

�Of course,� she murmured. �He always wanted to see his family... and his employees... happy, and getting the fullest enjoyment from life.�

�He must have been a swell guy,� Torrey commented. �I take it, Miss Driscoll, you never told him your real reason why you didn�t marry. Not even after he became a widower?�

She closed her eyes, and a tear squeezed out. �He... he never guessed. I never gave him... reason to.�

Manning could believe that. �Getting back to Frank Al��

Torrey�s voice slashed through. �You�re sure you never gave Burgess any come-ons?�

�His sons did,� Sims joined in. �And I�ll bet they discussed it with you, too.�

�Yes, but��

�The old man turned you down,� Torrey suggested. �So, maybe, with the fury of a woman scorned�� He gestured toward the gutted bedroom.

�Oh, no!� she cried.

Torrey hammered away. �You haven�t told us one thing that would provide you with an alibi for after that banquet tonight. You had a key to get into this apartment.�

Manning cut in. �Do you smoke, Miss Driscoll?�

�No.�

�I thought not. Neither did Burgess, did he?� She shook her head. �Was he a heavy drinker?� Another tearful shake. Manning turned to Torrey. �He couldn�t have been smoking in bed. He couldn�t have passed out from drinking. He was in good health, so we can rule out a heart attack. He was a big man, and she doesn�t look as though she could have hauled his dead weight onto the bed and then��

Torrey glowered at discussing a case in front of a suspect and Manning realized he�d overstepped himself. Torrey breathed hard.

�I�ll conduct this part of the investigation, if you don�t mind, Marshal. Why don�t you confine yourself to the fire?�

�I�d be very happy to,� Manning retorted. �The only trouble is, I can�t separate it from human beings.� He turned to Miss Driscoll. �This is as distasteful and embarrassing to us as it is to you. It�s just something that can�t be avoided under these circumstances. I�m sure you understand and want to assist us in getting to the bottom of all this.�

�Of course. But not... that way.�

�Miss Driscoll,� Torrey said firmly, �under the circumstances, I�ll have to question you further.�

�Routinely,� said Manning.

Torrey sighed. �Routinely, at Headquarters. I�m not charging or booking you, so if you decide to be uncooperative��

�I�ll go,� she said, getting to her feet.

Torrey nodded to a detective at the doorway, then he turned to Manning. �Before you sound off, Ed, you�ve got to admit that so far she�s our Number One suspect.�

�Yours,� Manning declared, a bit irked.

�All right, but we�re both under pressure from you-know-where on another case. If we let anyone off too easily on this one, we�re wide open for suggestions that we should have given as much benefit of doubt with that pyro.�

�I�ve got enough evidence to convict him,� Manning maintained. �What are you going to accomplish holding Miss Driscoll? It could be said we�re making a scapegoat of her, while we let the real arsonist... maybe named Allenbeck... get away. If we don�t find him, it might even be suggested that he pulled the other pyro�s jobs. I wouldn�t put anything past those shysters.�

�You worry too much, Ed,� said Torrey. �I�ll have my Department looking for Allenbeck, of course. Now do we compare notes or not?�

�We�ll cooperate,� Manning muttered. Down on the sidewalk, before going to their respective Fire Department cars, he turned to Sims. �You certainly went out of your way to cooperate with him to make up for past performances.�

�Why not, Ed?� Sims retorted. �If we don�t hang this Burgess job on someone we�re going to have a grapevine wrapped around our necks. What�s this Driscoll dame to you anyway?�

�Nothing personal,� Manning snapped. �She just reminds me of a lot of the people I saw on my way up to Burgess�s apartment. An innocent victim.� He unbuckled his turn-out, then remembered he�d pulled it on over his pajamas when Sims had summoned him from home earlier. �I�m going home to change. Meanwhile, see what you can find out about Allenbeck.�

He was on his way downtown later when he overheard a battalion chief radio a request for an investigator. Manning responded to a trailer court. They�d spread canvas over the drunk who�d passed out on a bunkbed, while smoking. Not a burn on him. The smoldering mattress had asphyxiated him. If smoke had been smelled sooner there might have been a chance to save him. Burgess hadn�t been given a chance like that. Why? Who would want to kill a good-natured, generous old man? In most of the detective and mystery stories Manning had read, the victim was always someone with undesirable traits, hated by a lot of suspects. In this case, only Miss Driscoll might have had a motive. But Manning still couldn�t buy it.

From Fire Headquarters he phoned the police. Torrey told him the medical examiner had found no evidence on the body of Burgess of any violence. The Lieutenant asked if Manning had seen the morning papers. The lawyers for the pyro on the other case were getting ready to find loopholes if there wasn�t an arrest on this apartment fire.

�There�s still a little leeway,� he said. �I�ve still got sixty-odd hours left out of the seventy-two before I either book Miss Driscoll or release her.�

�I�ll cooperate that far,� said Manning. �But let�s find Allenbeck before then.�

�It�s spreading out, getting thin,� Torrey growled. �There�s no Frank Allenbeck in this town or the suburbs. I�ve also spoken to Burgess� lawyer, since you told me Allenbeck said he would be in touch there today. The lawyer doesn�t know anything about it, except that Burgess had made an appointment to be there tomorrow, or rather, this morning. Something to do with a deposition about an accident case he witnessed two weeks ago.�

Manning hung up slowly. He felt certain now that Allenbeck was somewhere in this town. That phone call last night sounded more and more like an alibi so that Allenbeck could safely be in town, supposedly to see Burgess� lawyer this morning. But why? Manning turned to Sims.

�Call the papers, or use any way you can think of tracking it down. I want to know where Burgess witnessed an accident. Wait a minute. I�ve got smoke in my brain. His sons ought to know.�

They did. Their father had seen a car go off a road and into a canyon. Despite his age, the old man had made his way down the treacherous precipice and tried to give first aid to the couple in the car. But they died. Their name was Faucks.

Sims echoed the name. �It�s coming in loud and clear, Ed. Maybe I can save us a lot of time and long-distance phone calls since the Old Man isn�t down here to okay them yet. My wife reads all the scandal columns.� He looked at the clock, and winced. �She won�t be up yet, but here goes. Find me a pair of asbestos gloves to hold this phone.�

Manning found a pretext to leave the office while Sims jawed on the phone. Sometimes there were advantages to being a bachelor. Sims stuck his head finally into the corridor.

�Ed!� he called. �Don�t run out like that anymore. We don�t really mean it. I guess I�ve been starting it ever since I got this game leg.�

�Did you find out anything?� Manning inquired.

�Plenty. Where do I start? The Faucks couple had both been married before, both have grown children by the first marriages. Since their deaths, it looks like a no-holds-barred contest shaping up over which of the first families is going to get the big estate. It depends on who died last in that accident, who survived the other, he or she? Mrs. Faucks�s name by her first marriage was... Allenbeck!�

Manning began to see a spark which had started a fire in the Burgess apartment. He looked at the clock. He couldn�t sit around and wait for the Old Man or anything.

�I�ll be over at Police Headquarters.�

Before he went in, he got a pocketful of change, then stepped into a phone booth and called the surrogate�s office up north. He took the stairs two at a time to Torrey�s office.

�I�ve got the angle we�ve been looking for.�

Torrey leaned back wearily. �I�ve been afraid you�d complicate things. It�s looking worse for the Driscoll woman. We can�t confirm anything about her alibi for last night, and believe me, Ed, we�ve tried. There�s something about her... if she were a man you�d call it guts. The hell of it is, she�s getting tired and confused, or guilty conscience is beginning to show through. Anyway, she�s tangling herself up enough so we can�t let go. Now what have you got to add to the mess?�

�Wait until I call up the heavy artillery. Let me use your phone.� He dialed Fire Headquarters and asked for the Old Man. �Manning, Chief. Has Sims told you about that Burgess case?�

�Yes, Ed. How are you coming on it? I�m glad to hear you�re cooperating with the Police Department.�

Manning gritted his teeth and glanced at Torrey who pretended not to be eavesdropping. �Chief, you know how it is with arson cases. Damn hard to get evidence that will hold in court. It�s usually all been consumed in the fire. I think I�ve got our man tabbed, but I have a feeling he�s a cool one. Grilling won�t produce a confession. He�ll have to be trapped. So, Chief, will you support me if I ask the police to release another suspect? Miss Driscoll?�

Torrey�s startled gaze was as black as his hair. The Old Man�s reply was a long time in coming. He was undoubtedly mentally reviewing Manning�s record and judgment, plus thinking that there was enough hell in fire-fighting without arson.

�I�ll back you up, Ed,� he said.

�Thanks, Chief.� Manning turned to Torrey who looked as though he had words stacked for throwing. �Stay shut and listen.� He started to tell about the Faucks� accident, but Torrey had been about to tell him when he came. �All right,� Manning continued. �Now you phone the police who handled that accident. Find out two things from them. First, were there any other witnesses who went down in the canyon with Burgess? I doubt it. But if anyone should ask them, request them to pretend that there might have been. Second, find out if their accident report shows who died first, Mr. or Mrs. Faucks. I�ll bet somebody slipped up on getting that. If I�m wrong, I�ll buy your six kids their next pairs of shoes.�

�I�d like that,� said Torrey, �but they�d prefer ice cream.� He stared long and hard at Manning, then picked up the phone and dialed. When he hung up, he sighed. �I still buy shoes. I think I see how you�re thinking. But you tell me,� he smiled, �then if anything goes wrong I can say it was your idea.�

�Thanks for the cooperation,� Manning said dryly. �Look, if Burgess was supposedly the only one who could testify which of the Faucks survived the other, his testimony could have swung that big fortune to one first family or the other. I think Allenbeck saw him last night, found Burgess was going to say Mrs. Faucks died before her husband, maybe he tried to talk Burgess into swinging the fortune to the wife�s side and when he couldn�t... he killed Burgess.�

Torrey pursed his lips. �He�s probably guessed, or knows, that Burgess hasn�t yet made any deposition to his lawyer about it.�

Manning nodded. �That�s why we�ve got to offer him some bait. We�ve got to let it out that Miss Driscoll was with Burgess down in that canyon.�

Torrey groaned. �For gossakes, Ed!� He sat with eyes closed. �I wouldn�t blame her if she turned us down. It�s a big risk for her.� He opened his eyes. �For all of us.�

�She loved the old guy,� Manning reminded him quietly.

The papers that evening had a front-page story, not too prominently displayed, and not too obscured because there were expected repercussions from a prisoner pyromaniac�s shysters. The story was also on radio and TV. Manning heard it in the bungalow directly opposite the one occupied by Miss Driscoll in the multi-unit court. The story simply stated that she had been released by the police for lack of evidence. She was free to come and go, though if she were needed to testify in the Faucks� accident case up north, then she would have to leave town in the company of a police matron.

Sims shook his head as he was about to slip out of the bungalow with a police officer after they had been relieved on the stake-out by Manning and Torrey. �I wouldn�t fall for that. What does Allenbeck win if he sticks his neck in this noose?�

�We hope he doesn�t suspect it,� said Manning. �Keep quiet about it, and don�t tell your wife.�

�I told mine,� said Torrey. �I also told her, Ed, that you almost bought our kids some shoes. She kissed me and told me to protect you.�

Manning smiled and kept watch on the walk between the bungalows. Fire marshals aren�t armed. If it came to gunplay he knew he could rely on Torrey.

Until midnight, other tenants and their visitors going in and out made the stake-out tense. Then the night dragged, until dawn when the milkmen and newsboys arrived. During the morning there were canvassers and bill collectors, deliverymen. The stake-out watches changed with men disguised as plumbers, dry cleaner salesmen, or just Joe Citizen. Torrey shared the next night watch with Manning. Nothing happened. The same the following night.

�He�s cagey, Ed,� Torrey growled. �And a lot of other things. Did I tell you the ME figures he didn�t use a weapon? Just socked Burgess unconscious, then burned him alive!� Torrey swore softly.

Manning stared across at Miss Driscoll�s apartment. �This waiting must be hard on her. She can�t stay away from work forever, in mourning. We�ve started this, now we can�t drop it. We�ll have to clean up this trap so he doesn�t smell it.�

�Don�t tell me my business,� said Torrey. �Just pass the word to your men to cooperate. I don�t want them dashing out to be heroes.�

Early the next afternoon, just down the street from the bungalow court, there was a resounding automobile �crash� that resulted in a brawl with knives and guns, which weren�t used effectively. Neighbors and bystanders nervously kept their distance, of course, until the police arrived... twenty minutes late! That evening the press, radio and TV all carried a furor about the shameful lack of police protection. A little item on the front page was almost lost with its out-of-town dateline. Mr. Faucks� children, by a previous marriage, expected to offer his will for probate in the next few days.

More visitors than usual came to the bungalow court that night. With the tenants, they discussed the disgraceful fracas down the street. Police and Fire Department ears burned, but tongues were bitten. The night finally settled down. Then dawn came. Another blank night. Manning, watching while Torrey slept, swore softly.

He blearily watched a milkman working up the court with a carrier tray. The man went on past Miss Driscoll�s to units farther back. Manning relaxed, yawning, then snapped his jaw shut. This wasn�t the same driver for that outfit as yesterday. He turned toward snoring Torrey. No, wait, maybe just a substitute milkman, and he�d ignored Miss Driscoll�s, hadn�t he? In the dim light, Manning hadn�t got a sharp look from concealment. But was there a resemblance to pictures of Frank Allenbeck which he and Torrey had been studying?

Coming back, the milkman paused to light a cigarette, but his face was turned away from Manning. He came on with bottles clinking in his carrier, paused again, then grasped the neck of a capped bottled filled with colorless liquid. Suddenly setting down his carrier, he slipped the glowing cigarette under a rubber band about the neck of the bottle, then poised the container like a football as he turned toward the screen of Miss Driscoll�s bedroom window.

Manning shouted. �Allenbeck! Hold it!� Yanking open the door, slamming it back against the wall, he charged out. Allenbeck whirled and hurled the bottle at him. It thumped Manning�s chest, jolted his jaw, hobbled in his hands. Allenbeck sprinted toward the street, too much of a head start for Manning to wait for help from Torrey and other stake-outs. Dashing in pursuit he saw Allenbeck tugging out a gun. He slung the bottle. It staggered Allenbeck, then shattered against the walk. The glowing cigarette must have been lost somewhere in all the hurling. Allenbeck brought his gun up.

�Don�t shoot, you fool!� Manning warned, flinging himself aside.

The flash of the gun caught fumes from the broken bottle. A booming ball of flame enveloped Allenbeck. Manning grabbed a garden hose and tried to fight through the searing heat...

A few minutes later engine companies took over with the burning milk truck and smoldering bungalows. Torrey gritted his teeth as he and Manning stood by Alienbeck�s cindered hulk.

�Two in one week is enough, Ed. Leave me out of your cases for a long time, will you?�

Manning looked down at the charred remains. �Maybe there�s some kind of justice in this,� he muttered, �but it�s still a gruesome way for anyone to die.� He looked up and saw Miss Driscoll peering from her doorway. There were tears in her eyes, unashamed tears. She managed a small smile as she beckoned to Manning and Torrey, the other members of the stake-out, the firemen and police.

�Come on,� Manning said to Torrey. �I�ll bet she makes coffee that has guts too.�

One thinks of bonds as tying up something, such as money, in the stock-market sense, or a captive, as used here. Yet this bond is invisible, intangible, stronger than death.

The black and white squad car wheeled through the afternoon traffic with abandon, siren wailing hideously. The car lurched around a corner, leaning dangerously.

�Ease up,� the man in the back seat said levelly.

�I thought...�

�Just get us there.�

Captain Dan Kellogg was able to see his own face in the rearview mirror. It was a long, ugly face with deeply etched lines, and at the moment, it was a tense face. He let the jaw muscles relax and the face softened slightly. Again, he thought. He had to be prepared. But he was not prepared at all. In a sense, he never was. He had been sipping a cup of coffee in the office, talking about Saturday�s double-header, when the call came. The patrolman had summoned him over the intercom system.

�We�ve got one, Dan. We�re holding a squad car for you.�

He had reached the patrol car on the run, slamming the door as the wheels began to turn. Every moment counted now.

�When you get within six blocks, kill that siren,� he said.

�Yes sir.�

�How long has she been up there?�

�The Lieutenant said twenty minutes. It may have been more.�

�All right.� Twenty minutes. She was probably nearing the critical time. She was having doubts, growing more afraid of it or more determined, and only she knew.

�Captain Kellogg,� the driver said, �what do you say to them?�

Dan Kellogg took a cigarette and flicked the lighter. His hand was almost steady and he inhaled the smoke before answering with another question. �What would you say?�

The patrolman shook his head, keeping his eyes on the approaching intersection. �I don�t know. I couldn�t do it.�

The siren wailed. I�m coming. Wait for me. Please wait.

Perhaps he would fail. Perhaps it would be this time. Dan did not want to think of the possibility of failure. With determination he put it out of his mind for the moment.

The car was approaching the traffic congestion. A radio announcer had broadcast the news of the story and the curious public had rushed to the scene. This was going to be trouble.

�Kill the siren now, please,� Dan said.

The squad car slowed and weaved through the cars.

Dan spotted a woman who stood looking down the block toward the building. She was holding the hand of a four-year-old child as though they had come to witness a circus act.

�I wonder why,� Dan said sadly.

�Sir?�

�Nothing.�

The car came to a stop a half block from the building.

�Do you have any orders, Captain?�

Dan Kellogg opened the door of the car. �Start clearing these people out of here. Send for help. I want every car gone in five minutes. Rope off this area for three blocks. Arrest anybody who resists. I mean that.�

The driver reached for the microphone obediently, and Dan walked away through the tangled mass of cars. When he neared the building, he saw the firetruck, the ambulance, and two other squad cars. The officers, as well as the crowds of people, stood craning their necks up toward the building.

Dan reached the squad car as a flashbulb popped in his face. He jerked his thumb angrily. �You,� he said, �that�s enough. Now get out.�

�I�m from the Daily News...� Arrogantly.

�Lock him up,� Dan said to the officer.

�You can�t...�

�Get him out of here.�

Dan had not allowed his eyes to seek the fourteenth floor. He spoke to the uniformed officer.

�Take this truck and the ambulance around the corner. I want it done in record time. Clear this area. You got that?�

�Yes, Captain.� The officer was nodding, a big blonde Swede who Dan believed would get the job done.

�Has she moved in the last few minutes?�

�No, sir... she�s been frozen there. Looking up at the sky.�

And at that moment Dan let his eyes move up the side of the building. The woman was a small splash of red against the grey walls. The crimson dress fluttered in the breeze, her legs spread for balance, her back against the wall and her head stretched toward an almost cloudless sky.

�What are you going to do, Captain?� The reporter had come back.

�Share the view,� Dan said softly. He walked across the street and entered the building. It was a hotel, a fashionable place. He imagined that she lived there. Not poor. It wasn�t money. But then it never really was.

Are you ready, Dan? You�ve got to be, you know.

Dan moved hurriedly toward the elevator, aware that he picked up the hotel manager and a house detective. He did not hesitate for them.

�How do I get out there?� he asked the manager.

�The window. She climbed out the window.�

�How wide is the ledge?�

�It�s a foot or so.�

Another patrolman stood at the elevator. Dan flipped his billfold, showing his credentials, then turned to the manager and the detective.

�Ride up with me.�

The elevator moved swiftly.

�Who is she?�

�Miss Hanson. Susan Hanson,� the manager said.

�How old?�

�Twenty-eight or nine. She might be...�

�What does she do?�

�She�s an artist. She designs sets for musical productions. Something like that.�

�She�s not married?�

�Oh no she�s...�

�She�s what?�

The elevator stopped, and in a moment the door opened automatically.

�She�s rather plain,� the manager said charitably.

Dan stepped out. A patrolman stood at the door of the apartment halfway down the long carpeted hallway.

�Come on,� Dan said. He took large strides toward the door. �Do you know what might be bothering her?�

�No... she seemed very controlled. I had no idea...� The manager was growing breathless.

�Has she had a man?�

�Sir?�

�A man... coming here recently?�

�Well, we don�t...�

�Just answer me. You know what�s going on.�

The manager turned to the house detective, a short, sharp-eyed Latin.

�Yeah, for a while. But I haven�t seen him lately.�

�Did he stay all night?�

�He stayed late, but not all night.�

The manager frowned.

The patrolman stepped aside as Dan reached the door.

�What�s your name?�

�Sergeant Devore.�

�All right. Devore, I want this place kept empty and quiet. Anybody in there?�

�There�s a couple of reporters and a preacher. And Lt. Mason.�

�That�s just fine,� Dan said angrily.

He opened the door and pointed a stubby finger at the two reporters who were hovering about the open window.

�Okay... out.�

�Hello, Kellogg,� one of them said cheerfully.

Like a picnic. Hello, Kellogg.

�I�m not going to tell you again.� His voice had dropped half an octave.

Lt. Mason pulled away from the window and saw him. His face was flushed and he was sweating. The large soft rear of the other man in the window appeared comical.

�That�s the preacher?� Dan asked.

�Yes. She won�t answer him.�

Dan tapped the minister on the back. �Come on inside,� he said evenly.

The minister was quoting scripture as he drew back inside. He was a young man with a round face from too many potatoes. �I think she�s listening,� he said.

�She is,� Dan agreed. �Did she say she�d come back in?�

�She won�t talk.�

�Do you mind if I take over now?�

�I was reading from St...�

�Do you mind? I�m going out there.�

The minister blinked and glanced at Lt. Mason. He nodded slowly. �Certainly.�

Dan moved and touched the window. �Everybody out. Mason, you take care of that, please.�

In a few moments the room was empty. Dan looked about thoughtfully. He hesitated. Can you do it, Dan? If it comes, can you? He had an uncontrollable sense of inadequacy. He did not want to do this. But he had no choice. None at all.

The muscles of his stomach tightened as he pushed through the window. She stood ten feet away, moving her mouth soundlessly, her face upturned. Her eyes were closed.

Dan eased through the window silently, watching her closely, because he did not want to startle her. Everything counted now. Everything.

He stood on the ledge. It was probably fifteen inches wide. Immediately a queasy weakness crept through his body when he saw the tops of the cars a half dozen blocks away in the background. He made no attempt to move toward her. He slid away from her, to the other side of the window, and drew in a deep breath. He unbuttoned his coat and reached for his cigarettes. The breeze was warm, not strong, and it was pleasant.

Dan slipped his hand into his pocket and took a cigarette. He put it in his mouth, but did not light it. He leaned against the wall casually, as though he might have been leaning against a lamp post waiting for a bus.

We are two people alone now. Isolated from the world. And so terribly hopeless. We have only each other. And eternity.

Dan spoke very softly. �Are you afraid, Susan?�

He watched her body stiffen as she turned her head, suddenly startled. His lips compressed the filter of the cigarette tensely. Her face was grotesque, like that of a gargoyle protruding ornamentally from the side of the building. The muscles of her neck were stretched taut.

Dan smiled. �Don�t be afraid, Susan. Please.�

�Don�t come near me.� Her mouth twisted horribly when she spoke. �I�m going to jump.�

He let her settle a moment before he spoke again. A wave of emotion overwhelmed him. She was like a child, lost and bewildered, ready to plunge into the manmade canyon. Could she imagine the agony this was causing him?

�I sent the cars away,� he said. �They�re almost all gone. I thought you�d want me to do that.�

She looked down briefly and drew in a sudden breath. There was only the ambulance there. In a moment, it too would be moving out of sight.

�I�m going to do it,� she said. �I have to get these last things thought out, but I�m going to do it. Don�t preach to me.�

�All right. But answer me, Susan. Are you afraid?�

�No.� She shouted it.

�Be honest, Susan.�

She turned her head and her fingers dug against the sandstone wall. Her eyes were desperate.

�Yes... yes. But I�m going to do it... I am...�

�Don�t be afraid. That�s the worst part.�

�I�m going to. I am!�

�But not afraid. You don�t want to die afraid.�

She mouthed unintelligible words and her knees buckled momentarily. Her lips trembled uncontrollably as she spoke. �You�re saying I�m a coward.� She almost screamed it.

�No! Not about jumping. That�s the easiest part. But I don�t want you to die afraid of the other.�

�You don�t know.�

�I know,� he said softly.

She turned half away from him and her balance was not good. Dan thought she was going. He closed his eyes and slipped his hand into his pocket and found the lighter. He flicked the wheel and touched it to his cigarette. When he tasted the smoke he opened his eyes and she was still there. And his sense of momentary relief was so powerful that it almost staggered him.

�No matter what happens,� he said gently, �wouldn�t you like to talk to me first?�

�I think,� she said more evenly than before, �that I�m going now.�

�Please... not yet.� His voice was controlled. But his heart had accelerated suddenly.

She studied his face for a long moment.

�You just stand there leaning as though...�

�I�m not afraid. Not anymore,� he said.

�You won�t try to stop me?� she said.

�Have I?�

�No.�

�I won�t do that. I understand, Susan. I do understand. I know that it isn�t jumping at all. Those people who were watching think that, but they�re wrong. They just don�t know.�

She was not pretty. The face was shaped poorly for beauty, but as the eyes became less terrified, he sensed a softness there. A depth.

�You don�t understand,� she said, but without conviction.

�Yes. That�s why I sent them away. They have no right to this moment. This is ours.�

�Ours,� she repeated. She laughed and the laugh broke into a sob. So very sad. So very desperate.

�Susan, would you smoke a cigatette?�

�No... don�t come near me.� Sober again. Control now. Acute awareness.

Dan saw the fat woman in the window of the building across the street pointing excitedly. People... so insensitive. Or were they really?

�I�ll bet she has something cooking,� Dan said. �If we see smoke, we�ll know it�s burning.�

�I hope it does.�

There was the beginning of a smile, but it turned into a grimace and he saw hate there. Wasn�t it that way almost always? The ones who could hate deeply or could love deeply. So completely.

�My name is Dan Kellogg,� he said. �Dan Kellogg,� he repeated it slowly. �I�m a special officer.�

�What are you trying to do?� she asked.

He wondered if she was even aware that she was calmer.

�Share these moments. No matter what happens. These are important.� There was a sadness in his voice.

�Yes, I was trying to be calm,� she said.

�I want you to be calm. Do you know how I do it?�

�No...�

�Would you like to know?�

She glanced at him quickly. He had not moved. Leaning so relaxed against the wall smoking. He wondered if she believed it. And decided she did. When she did not answer him, he began thoughtfully.

�I think of those special moments that were good. Everybody has had them.�

�You think I won�t jump,� she challenged.

�No... but if that happens, I want you to not be afraid. That�s all I want right now.�

He thought she accepted that. �Tell me,� she said.

�I bring those moments back. Do you know what some of them are?�

�Tell me. But hurry.�

Dan lowered his voice. �There were times before all the trouble. Before, I couldn�t seem to handle it. A long time ago, I was a farm kid. Look at me. You can�t imagine me a farm kid, I�ll bet.� He crushed the cigarette against the wall and put the butt in his pocket, because she must not see anything falling... falling...

�Sometimes I�d walk down to this little pond we had and I�d stretch out and listen to the sounds. And let the sun go through me. Kick off my shoes and put my arms behind my head and � this may sound foolish � but I�d be so happy I�d lie there and laugh. At nothing really.�

She was nodding her head.

�Did you ever do anything like that?� he asked.

�I didn�t laugh. It was something like that, but I didn�t laugh.� Dan bit down against his lip harshly. They were so thoroughly alone. Groping for understanding. Seeding some few moments of tranquillity in this crazy, terrible world, before disaster.

�And music,� he said. His voice was even, but heavy with emotion, and she sensed it. She turned curiously, and he made no effort to control himself.

�There were moments that some melody would go through my mind. I remember walking along a street at night whistling some love song. And it made my heart... well, full. It didn�t matter that the love affair ended very sadly. That happened many times, Susan. But � and this was strange � the love song was there, and even when it was unhappy, the song was the thing. Do you understand, Susan?�

She shook her head.

�There is some almost mathematical scale behind it all. As though the deeper the sadness one can experience, the greater the joy one can have when everything is right. Doesn�t this seem true?�

She nodded, and spoke wearily. �And it gets so terribly oppressive that it isn�t worth it anymore.�

�Yes... sometimes,� he agreed.

�I feel better. You can go back. I think I�m ready.�

�You loved him very much,� Dan said.

�Yes.�

�Susan... he ridiculed you, didn�t he?�

She sobbed and removed one hand from the wall and covered her face. Dan leaned away and stood tensely, not drawing a breath, and waited until she turned and saw his outstretched hand. Then he let the hand drop to his side. She did not know what it meant to him or why. But she would soon. He dreaded that moment.

�I understand ridicule,� he said. �But that wasn�t why I surrendered. Not exactly. There isn�t too much difference in us.�

�He said terrible things,� she said.

�He�s a shallow fool, to be pitied. Is he an actor? Vain?�

�No. He was an artist. He used me. Then he didn�t need me any longer.�

�Tell me, Susan.�

�He made me feel loved, and I believed him. It didn�t seem possible that he could be deceiving me. It seemed so deep and genuine. He would repeat dozens of times that he loved me. Like a record going over and over.�

�And you believed him.�

�I asked him to marry me. I thought he couldn�t quite say it. I told him about some work. I said we could do it together. He went to the producer and...�

�He did it alone.�

�Yes.�

�I�m sorry.�

�He said cruel things when he saw me. He laughed and... I don�t think he knew how deeply I loved him. He didn�t even suspect.�

�And didn�t know how valuable a thing he had,� Dan said.

�It isn�t self-pity. I just don�t want to live anymore.�

He had to decide about her. But hadn�t he already? She was not insane. And because she had a mind, he had no real choice. He was committed.

�Mine was different,� he said. �But the same, in a way.�

�What do you mean?�

�When my time happened, Susan. I�ve been here, you know. That�s how I understand. Would you like to hear about it?�

She did not answer. She studied his face thoughtfully.

�I was twenty-two. Eight years ago this spring. There was this kid... he went into a filling station one night and pulled a gun. Somebody saw him through the glass and I got the call. I was only five blocks away in a squad car. He was scooping the money in a hat when I got there, and I jumped out and saw his gun and drew mine...� Dan paused and closed his eyes, because he was seeing it again, and that feeling of despair was returning and growing stronger. �He turned, you see, and he was frightened. The gun was shaking in his hand and he made a movement and I fired. Maybe you know the rest. He died there, crying like a child. His gun wasn�t loaded. The barrel was so fouled that it couldn�t have fired anyway. Later, I found out that his father had been killed in a street accident. A hit-run thing.

�There were seven in the family... and the kid worked from sunup to dark loading trucks, but he didn�t make enough, and when he got desperate, he took the gun and bluffed his way into a robbery. There had been other things before that � many things, Susan, but this was the thing that got me down.�

Did she know? Could she feel what had happened to him?

His voice broke, but he pushed the words out. �It hit me hard, Susan. Day by day, my world fell apart. Finally I drove to a place in the country and got out of the car. I sat down and leaned against a tree. I took my revolver and cocked it and put it into my mouth. And... when I was waiting � you must believe this, Susan � an unexpected thing happened. A farmer who lived nearby appeared carrying a shotgun. He stopped and looked at me for a long time, and he said, �Are you afraid?��

Would she remember? Had his first words gotten through to her?

�He�d been in the war, Susan... and there had been a time when he thought he couldn�t take any more. He understood what I was doing because he�d been there... just as I know how you feel now. He didn�t preach. None of that. He understood!�

�It doesn�t matter. I won�t change.�

�It matters to me. You are all that matters to me.�

�I�m going now.� She meant it. It was an electric moment.

�And,� he said evenly, powerfully, �I�m going with you.�

She turned, the muscles in her face drawn tightly. �What?�

�Because � and you have to understand this � that day in the woods, that farmer told me he was going to go with me if I did it. I made the decision for both of us.� Dan took a step toward her, then hesitated. �Susan, he meant it. I mean it too. If you go... I�ll take your hand. But I insist that neither of us go in terror.�

�You... you don�t want...�

�No... I made it back. I have known many joys, Susan. There are so many.�

�I don�t believe you mean this.�

He stepped toward her and his smile was one of surrender. �There is love,� he said. �There is sadness. There is joy. And pain. But no one is alone in it. I will bear the pain with you. And the sadness. I will rejoice in your love and in your happiness. The time I have had this last eight years has been a gift, because I believed that farmer that day, just as you believe in me now. We are tied together by this. Your weakest hold to life is my weakest. And my courage... now... is your courage.�

The street was empty below. There was a silence as he moved toward her. He was an instant away from eternity and he had put himself in her hands. He reached her side, but did not touch her at all. She looked up into his face.

�I�m prepared, Susan. You know what I want of you. I�m not afraid to live. But I�m not afraid to die either. You must decide for us.�

�Would you?� Her voice was low, incredulous.

He did not reply. He let her see it in his eyes. He let her see that moment with his back against the tree. The great love of which mankind is capable embodied in the farmer. And she did not doubt him any longer. He watched her close her eyes. She did not speak for more than a minute.

Then she shook her head slowly. �Please,� she said, �help me.�

He touched her hair. �I will.�

She searched his face and he watched the desperation leave her.

�In triumph or despair,� he said, �you will not be alone again.� And the face smiled.

�I don�t think I can walk,� she said wearily.

He touched her hand gently. �I�ll help you. Take my arm.�

She nodded, and he slid his feet on the ledge. She followed slowly until they reached the window. He braced her as she turned and climbed inside. Dan followed and closed the window. She had slumped in a chair a few feet away. He lighted two cigarettes and slipped one between her fingers. He turned her face with his hand until she looked at him.

�I�m going to send you to the hospital. You�ll be able to avoid the reporters as much as possible there. But they may manage to talk to you. If they do... you understand you can�t tell them about what we know. Nothing at all.�

�Yes.�

�I�ll be in touch with you. Often.� He ran his fingers along her face. �You�d like to meet the farmer, wouldn�t you?�

She nodded.

�There are seven of us. Eight now, Susan. We meet twice a year. Once the decision was made, we�ve never had anyone fail us. We depend on each other. We depend on you now.�

There were footsteps outside. Dan glanced at the door.

�Are you ready?�

�You took a terrible chance,� she said, shakily, her lips trembling.

He did not answer her until he had gone to the door and beckoned the ambulance attendants to bring the stretcher.

�Because I couldn�t afford not to,� he said.

When the medics were ready to take her, Dan bent and kissed the corner of her mouth. Then she was gone.

Dan Kellogg stood alone and was deeply grateful. For the courage and dignity she had found in herself. For the gift that as yet she did not know she had given. He remembered the sun warming his body beside the lake. And the laughter. He remembered the song stirring in his heart when love was lost. And the sadness.

Dan Kellogg stubbed out his cigarette and went slowly to the door.

In the theater, success or failure is very often a matter of timing, aside from the essentials of casting, direction, and lighting. It can be a fatal flaw, the lack of timing, as it was for one of our characters here.

Arthur St. Clair left his seat before the curtain calls and made his way through the empty lobby. The audience was still clapping furiously as he came out into the damp air and looked about for his taxi. A mounted policeman holding traffic grinned down from the height of his horse. �What�s the verdict? Hit or miss?� And he grinned again.

St. Clair ignored him. A taxi moved smoothly along the curb and the driver held the door open. ��Evening, sir,� he said. St. Clair climbed inside, then leaned back and fitted a cigarette into a holder. He was a tall, coldly handsome man wearing a Chesterfield and Homburg. A columnist had once described him as a combination of �Brooks Atkinson and Brooks Brothers.� He hadn�t liked the label.

The taxi rumbled slowly through the growing theater traffic, but the cabby was silent during the ride. He had driven the critic to dozens of opening nights and knew the man�s eccentricities well enough not to risk the loss of a tip. A few minutes later, when they reached the newspaper building on West 40th Street, St. Clair handed over a dollar and moved purposefully across the pavement, through the revolving doors.

The Features department was on the second floor, a long, untidy room with a few tired men sitting around on tables drinking coffee. He nodded at them and went to his office near the elevator. It was an austere little room, its gray window decorated with a frieze of wet pigeons. The desk contained a typewriter, an ashtray, and the Strobl bust of Shaw. St. Clair removed his coat and hat and carefully limbered up his fingers. Then, without hesitation, he began to type the review he had composed in his head on the way from the theater: ��Enough Rope�, which opened last night at the Carlton, has serious merit, but it is disastrously flawed by the performance of Jack Russo, a wild and uninhibited young man who has learned everything about the theater except how to act. Mr. Russo is one of the so-called Method Men, a mumbling Tarzan who swings from one emotion to another as though from a vine. He strikes me as nothing more than a drugstore cowboy, a fifth-carbon Brando, who sees the theater not as a cathedral, but as a cave where he may grunt and beat his chest...�

St. Clair paused to light a cigarette and then looked up at the door. A young man stood in the entrance, watching him. He was short and squat, dressed in levis and a faded windbreaker, his trousers tucked in muddy leather boots. His flat, triangular face bloomed with a faint orange light that St. Clair recognized as makeup. The young man was obviously Jack Russo, and he must have run all the way from the theater to the newspaper office.

�Mr. St. Clair?� Yes, it was Russo all right. The same dull, brutish tones that had dropped like rocks under the proscenium arch. �I came to read your review.�

�I�m afraid that�s impossible. You�ll have to buy a paper like everyone else.�

�But I came all the way over here � first thing, you know?�

�I appreciate that, Mr. Russo, but I can�t make any exceptions. I�m sorry.�

Russo slowly cracked each finger on his right hand. �You know what I think? I think you just gave me a hatchet-job and you�re too damn scared to let me see it.�

St. Clair began to unroll the paper from the typewriter. �What I�ve written is none of your business until it hits the stands.�

Russo suddenly snatched at the page. It tore, but he was left with the upper, crucial part. His small eyes swooped over the paper, blinked rapidly as he began to read.

�Give me that!� said St. Clair angrily. He stepped forward, but the actor put up a restraining arm. It seemed as solid and muscled as a truckdriver�s.

�Why you louse,� Russo said slowly. His eyes flicked at the paper again, re-reading. �Were you there? Did you see me tonight? Or were you home in bed?�

St. Clair was unruffled. �That�s my review, take it or leave it. Now I�ll give you two minutes to get out of this building before I call the police.�

Russo stared at him blankly, as if he had spoken from a distant planet. Then he slowly crumpled the paper into a small, hard ball and savagely hurled it at the desk. It glanced off Shaw�s mouth and went rolling away on the bare floor. He looked at St. Clair, his face stiff, then he turned abruptly and went out.

St. Clair cleared his throat and lit a cigarette. Without bothering to retrieve the crumpled paper, he sat down at the desk and began to retype the review from memory.

Legend has it that a henpecked husband had chiseled on the tombstone of a domineering wife, the epitaph: SHE IS AT PEACE AND SO AM I. The words are echoed in the hearts of many, and on the tongues of a few brave men.

The new bread man asked, �How many loaves do you usually take, Mr. Jones?�

Before Henry Jones could reply, his fat wife bustled from the rear of the grocery store and said, �Another new man on the bread truck? What�s the matter with your company, they can�t keep a man on this route?�

�He asked for a transfer,� the bread man said. He turned back to Jones. �How many did you say, Mr. Jones?�

Hazel Jones said testily, �I do the ordering around here, mister. Henry, go mark those soup cans like I told you. How many times I got to tell you to do something before it gets done?� Returning her attention to the bread man, she said, �Two dozen. And be sure you take the old ones out. Don�t let me catch you putting the stale ones on top, and don�t try giving me stale loaves you took out of some other store. You hear?�

�Yes, ma�am,� the bread man said in a pained voice.

Picking the four remaining loaves of yesterday�s bread from the bakery shelf, the man carried them out to his truck. At a glare from his wife, Henry Jones scurried over to the canned-goods section, picked up a stamp pad and price stamp and began stamping price marks on soup cans.

Delivery men all asked for transfers to some other route after a month or two of dealing with his virago of a wife, Henry thought. It was too bad husbands couldn�t ask for transfers. Twenty years of being treated like a stock boy, doing all the menial work, while Hazel strutted importantly around giving orders. If she actually did something, it wouldn�t be so bad, he thought. But she wouldn�t even wait on customers. She was the executive type, good only for telling other people what to do.

If she only knew what was in store for her tonight, he thought with grim satisfaction, viciously slamming the ink stamp onto the top of a can. It would shock her speechless to realize even the lowest worm can turn.

The bread man returned carrying a double armload of loaves. He stacked them on the empty shelf to the accompaniment of a steady tirade of criticism of the bakery�s service, the quality of its product and its unreasonable prices. When he finished, he silently handed Hazel the slip to sign and went out without saying good-bye.

He would be asking for a different route in a week, Henry thought. Then he paused with the stamp upraised and mentally corrected himself. The man wouldn�t ask for a transfer at all, because after today he wouldn�t ever have to deal with Hazel again.

Behind him Hazel�s rasping voice said, �You posing for a statue, bonehead? Hurry up and get that marking done. We need soap powder from the stock room.�

With a spastic movement Henry brought the stamp down on the can it was poised over.

Henry Jones was a mild looking little man in his late forties with a slight paunch and a fringe of sparse hair about his ears. The eyes behind his rimless glasses always seemed to be faintly apologetic, as though he were constantly asking the world�s pardon for existing. He looked as little like a potential murderer as it is possible to look, and knew it. He considered this his best defense, for he had read enough true crime stories to know the husband is always automatically a suspect when a wife is murdered, even when all clues point to someone else.

All clues would point to someone else in this case. And he banked on his widespread reputation for soft-heartedness as insurance against the police giving him more than cursory consideration. He could visualize the neighbors and customers scoffing at police questions. �Henry Jones?� they would say in unison. �Why, Henry wouldn�t swat a mosquito he caught in the act of biting him.�

The neatest thing about it was that the police would find no one anywhere to negate the neighborhood picture of him as a softhearted man, because he really was one. With the exception of human beings, there wasn�t a living thing Henry could have brought himself to hurt. Up to now there had never been an occasion where it was necessary for him to express his poor opinion of the human race. Even now he wouldn�t have dreamed of harming Hazel if there were any other solution. But he had exhausted all alternate plans. He suspected that if he suggested divorce, Hazel would kill him. Running away and changing his identity meant losing his beloved store. The only other alternative, that of continuing to put up with her domineering after twenty years of subservience, was unthinkable. Henry had had it.

It was to be that night.

Jones� Grocery Store stayed open until nine nightly six days a week in order to compete with the chain stores, which closed at six. The routine at closing time was always the same. Henry would follow the last customer to the door and lock it after him in deference to Hazel�s chronic fear of holdup men. Then, as Hazel counted the money and, in this case, a Saturday night, bagged the week�s receipts in a night-deposit bag, Henry covered the vegetables and, if it didn�t look like rain, carried the trash can out to empty into the burner, so that it would be ready for a match in the morning.

Tonight Henry deliberately departed from routine. When the last customer, Mrs. Hoffman from up the street, left the store, he pretended to be busy rearranging the contents of a shelf until she was out of sight. This was important to his plan because he couldn�t afford to have the last customer testify that he had locked the door behind her.

Hazel called, �What�s the matter, you don�t lock the door, bonehead? You want some holdup man to walk in while we�re all alone and take our money?�

�Sorry,� Henry muttered. Hurrying over, he locked the door and dropped the keys in his pocket.

A moment later he departed from routine again by starting out back with the trash can before covering the vegetables.

�You in a trance or something?� Hazel yelled after him. �You never covered the vegetables.�

Henry didn�t have time to cover the vegetable bins. The chore usually took a good ten minutes, and he wanted to act as soon after Mrs. Hoffman�s departure as feasible.

He said in an apologetic tone, �As soon as I come back in, Hazel. It doesn�t make any difference which I do first, so long as it gets done, does it?�

�Well, just don�t forget,� Hazel said irritably.

Just outside the back door Henry set down the trash can and opened the lid of one of a number of cardboard boxes piled against the rear of the store. Groping inside, he drew out the nickel-plated hammerless revolver he had bought in a pawnshop six months before and thrust it into his belt under his apron. He reached inside again and drew out a small pinch bar. He picked up the trash can, one hand holding both a side of the can and the pinch bar, and carried it to the incinerator near the back fence at a rapid trot. Quickly dumping it, he set down the can, pushed open the rear gate and stepped into the alley.

The only light back here came from a green-shaded bulb over the store�s rear door, which cast a circle of light on the ground only about fifteen feet across. The reflected glow from this was just enough to make for bare visibility in the alley. It was sufficient for Henry to make out the broad metal disk imbedded in the alley�s center.

Kneeling, he used the pinch bar to pry up one side of the manhole cover. Getting his fingers under it, he dragged it partially off the manhole, just enough to leave an opening about six inches wide. He dropped the pinch bar through the hole and, after a moment, heard a satisfying splash some distance below.

Uttering a silent prayer that no automobile would drive up the alley during the next few minutes and wreck both itself and his plans by dropping a wheel into the manhole, he pushed back through the gate, picked up the trash can and hurried back into the store.

As he set the can down in its accustomed place, Hazel said, �You took long enough. You been walking around in a daze all day.�

She had finished bagging the money and the night-deposit bag lay next to the register. Glancing through the front windows at the street, Henry saw that no one was in sight.

�Did any customers try to get in while I was outside?� he inquired, and held his breath for the answer. If some late-arriving customer had tried the locked door, all plans would have to be off for tonight. He couldn�t afford having a possible witness who could testify that Hazel had still been alive after the door was locked.

�You crazy?� Hazel said. �Everybody knows we close at nine.�

Henry went over to the door, took the keys from his pocket and unlocked it. He pocketed the keys again.

�You in your second childhood?� Hazel yelled at him. �You think it�s morning, we should be opening up already?�

Henry made no reply. Walking toward her until only the counter separated them, he drew the nickel-plated gun from under his apron. Hazel�s eyes widened in shocked disbelief when he pointed it at her.

Henry shot her in the chest three times.

Hazel�s body had hardly hit the floor when he was racing behind the counter. Thrusting the nickel-plated gun into his hip pocket, he jerked open the drawer in the counter immediately beneath the cash register and drew out a blue-steel thirty-eight revolver. Kneeling, he grasped the dead woman�s right wrist, placed the gun in her hand and curled her fingers around the stock. Then he pulled it from her hand again, closed his own fingers around the butt and rose to his feet. The whole operation took no more than thirty seconds.

A glance through the front windows told him the street was still deserted. But he knew it wouldn�t be within thirty more seconds. In this quiet neighborhood the blast of pistol shots would bring curious neighbors to investigate from all directions.

Sweeping the night-deposit bag into his left hand, Henry sped for the rear door and outside. He made the back gate at a dead run, slammed through it and stooped over the manhole. The night-deposit bag went in first, then the nickel-plated gun. With his heel he pushed the manhole cover back into place.

Straightening, he aimed the blue-barreled pistol down the alley in the direction of the street and fired two spaced shots. Then he turned and slowly plodded back inside.

When he re-entered the store, elderly Tom Bower, who lived in one of the apartments next door, was leaning over the counter staring down in horror at Hazel. Mrs. Caskin, from the apartment house on the other side of the store, was just coming in. Behind her other neighbors were converging from all directions.

Henry said in a deliberately dull voice, �I think I hit him, but he got away.�

Bower gulped and looked at the gun in Henry�s hand.

Seeing that the old man hadn�t comprehended what he said, Henry made it clearer. By now Mrs. Caskin and several other neighbors were in the store, and he spoke for their collective benefit.

�It was a holdup man, Mr. Bower. I forgot to lock the front door and he got in while I was out back emptying the trash. When I came back in, he was pointing a gun at Hazel. He turned to cover me and ordered me behind the counter with Hazel. When he turned his head, Hazel jerked open the drawer beneath the register, where we keep a gun.� He held up the gun in his hand. �This one. When she pulled it out, he shot her. Then he picked up the money bag and ran out the back way. Hazel had dropped the gun on the floor. I grabbed it up and chased him. I shot at him twice while he was running down the alley, and I think the second shot hit him, because he staggered. But he kept running and disappeared around the corner toward Grand Avenue.�

A dozen people had crowded into the store by the time he finished the explanation. Those who had arrived too late to catch the first part of it asked earlier arrivals what it was all about. The babble of low-toned voices kept increasing as the first to arrive repeated the story and it was relayed on to others still coming in.

Mrs. Caskin moved behind the counter and knelt over Hazel. Rising, she said in an awed voice, �I think she�s dead.�

Setting his pistol on the counter, Henry leaned over to look down at Hazel. Then he let his shoulders slump and buried his face in his hands.

There was a moment of silence before someone said awkwardly, �Maybe we better call a doctor. And the police.�

One of the neighbors went after old Doc Mauser, who was only a block away over on Eichelberger. The doctor got there at the same time a one-man radio car arrived with a uniformed officer driving it. There was nothing Dr. Mauser could do for Hazel, except pronounce her dead, so he turned his attention to the bereaved widower. Henry had managed to work up a pretty convincing state of shock, only half simulated. The doctor gave him a tranquilizer.

By the time Henry had swallowed his tranquilizer, the uniformed policeman had managed to sort out the simultaneous explanations thrown at him by a dozen neighbors. He asked Henry for a description of the bandit. This was easy, because Henry had been memorizing a description for months.

�He was big,� Henry said in a low, grief-crushed voice. �Six one, I�d say, and maybe two hundred pounds. I�d guess he was around thirty-five years old. He was wearing a brown felt hat, a tan jacket and brown slacks. He had a swarthy complexion, a big, hooked nose, dark hair and there was something wrong with his left eye. The lid drooped lower than the right one. There was a black mole on his right cheek with hair growing out of it and a red scar running from his left ear clear down to the corner of his mouth. It made that side of his mouth kind of pucker up.�

The policeman looked impressed by this detailed description. He went out to his car to call it in over his radio and have a dragnet thrown around the area.

When he returned, he contented himself with making a list of everyone present, including the corpse. He didn�t ask Henry anything else, seeming to feel that in his upset state it was better to leave the principal witness to the experienced hands of the Homicide Squad.

A Sergeant Harry Newton from Homicide showed up about a quarter of ten. He was a stolid, square-faced man of middle age with deceptively sleepy eyes, which never missed a thing. He had with him a thin, lanky man in civilian clothes who carried a laboratory kit and a flash camera. Sergeant Newton addressed the man as Mac, and Henry got the impression he was a civilian employee of the police lab.

Meantime an ambulance from City Hospital had arrived and was standing by to take Hazel to the morgue when the homicide officer released her body.

Sergeant Newton first listened to the uniformed officer�s account of what had happened. After a bare glance at Henry, now seated in a chair someone had thoughtfully brought from the back room, he turned to Dr. Mauser.

�What�s the dope, Doc?� he inquired.

�There�s almost no bleeding, Sergeant, so she must have died instantly. Any of the three bullets could have done it. All three hit her directly in the heart.�

The sergeant glanced around. �Any of you people know anything you haven�t told the officer here?�

When no one said anything, he asked, �Which one of you was first on the scene?�

�I was,� old Tom Bower told him.

�Okay,� the sergeant said. �What�s your story?�

Bower explained that he lived in a downstairs apartment next door and had been sitting in his front room, which had its windows open because of the warmth of the night. He said that when he heard the shots, he knew instantly they were gunshots and not merely backfires.

�How come?� Newton asked.

�Well, they sounded like they came from inside. I don�t know how I knew, because the way they sounded, you couldn�t tell what direction they came from. But I was sure they came from over here. Right away I thought of a holdup and I came running.�

The sergeant thoughtfully tugged at an earlobe. �Why�d you think of a holdup?�

�Mrs. Jones was always afraid the store would be held up some night. Lots of times when I was the last customer out, she�d yell for Henry to lock the front door when I was only halfway to it. If he didn�t move sharp, she�d make some crack like did he want a holdup man to walk in on them alone and take their money. I knew she kept that gun in the drawer under the register, and what I really thought was that she�d blasted some bandit. Didn�t even occur to me he�d blasted her. If it had, I wouldn�t of been in such a hurry to get over here.�

Sergeant Newton emitted a noncommittal grunt.

�The front door was unlocked when I got here,� Bower continued. �I couldn�t see anybody inside, so I come on in. When I got to the counter, I seen Mrs. Jones lying on the floor behind it. About then a couple of more shots sounded out back and a minute later Henry come in by the back door with a gun in his hand. He told me what happened.�

The sergeant looked around at the circle of faces, but no one had any further details to offer. To his general inquiry as to what time the shots had been heard, the consensus was that the first three had sounded about five after nine, the ones in the alley only about a minute later.

�You got all these people�s names and addresses?� Newton asked the man in uniform.

�Sure, Sarge.�

�Then all of you please clear out of here,� the homicide officer directed. �Give us some room to work. You can leave too, Doc.�

Reluctantly the assemblage drifted outside. But no one, with the sole exception of Dr. Mauser, went home. The rest stood on the sidewalk watching the goings on inside through the front windows.

At Sergeant Newton�s direction the thin man named Mac snapped pictures of the corpse from several angles. Then Newton told him to dust the gun for prints.

All this time Henry had been sitting dully in his chair, apparently paying little attention to what was going on around him. Now he roused himself.

�Why do you want to check that gun for fingerprints?� he inquired. �It isn�t the one the holdup man used. That�s ours � the one Hazel kept in the drawer.�

�Just covering all bets,� the sergeant said laconically.

After carefully dusting the gun with a silver-colored powder, the lab man used inch-wide Scotch tape to lift the fingerprints which appeared. When he had fixed the tape to some white cards, he had a permanent record of the prints.

�Take his prints,� Newton said, pointing at Henry. �Then the dead woman�s.�

Laying an ink pad on the counter, the lab man motioned Henry over. Henry put a puzzled expression on his face, but he made no objection. Docilely he allowed his fingers one-at-a-time to be rolled over the pad, then gently rolled over a white card.

When the process was completed, Sergeant Newton asked, �Got anyplace to wash up here?�

�Upstairs,� Henry said. �Our apartment is right over the store.�

The sergeant permitted him to go upstairs to wash the ink from his hands while Hazel was being fingerprinted. When he returned, the lab man was comparing the two sets of prints with the ones he had lifted from the gun.

�Checks out,� he said to the homicide officer. �A clear set of his superimposed over hers. Hers are mostly smudged, but a couple of partials are good enough for comparison purposes.�

Henry was thankful that he had taken the precaution of closing Hazel�s hand around the pistol grip. While he hadn�t been sure the gun would even be checked for fingerprints, he had read enough not to want to risk the lack of Hazel�s prints on the stock.

Sergeant Newton said, �Stick that gun in your kit to take back to ballistics, Mac.� Then he said to the man in uniform, �Tell those guys out front they can have the body now.�

As the policeman went out to relay this message to the ambulance attendants, Newton finally turned his attention to Henry.

For the next twenty minutes Henry repeated his story, answered questions, re-described the bandit and, finally, went out back with the sergeant to show him exactly where he had been standing when he fired at the fleeing robber and just where the man had been when he staggered as though hit.

Back inside again Henry noted that Hazel�s body was now gone and that the ambulance was missing from in front. The crowd on the sidewalk still lingered, however.

Sergeant Newton asked, �How much money did he get?�

�The duplicate deposit slip should be in the register,� Henry said. �It was quite a lot because it was a full week�s receipts. We make a night deposit on Saturday night, you see, so that money isn�t lying around over the weekend. Do you think he may have been watching the place for some time, and knew the most money would be here on Saturday night?�

�He probably had the job cased,� Newton agreed.

Walking behind the counter, carefully avoiding stepping where Hazel�s body had lain, Henry opened the register and lifted out the duplicate deposit slip Hazel had left there. He winced slightly when he saw the total. It was a lot of money to have thrown down a hole, but he hadn�t dared risk hiding it somewhere. He had decided in advance to leave no loose ends whatever lying around for him to trip over accidentally. It was this planning which had made him pick Saturday night for the crime, despite the cost involved. Haying a logical mind himself, it had seemed to him more plausible for a professional holdup man to strike at a time when the take would be greatest.

�Fourteen hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventeen cents,� he said in a low voice. �Let�s see. There�s three � almost four hundred in checks, which I suppose I can get people to stop payment on. But it�s still over a thousand in cash.�

�Describe the bag.�

�It was a regular night-deposit bag,� Henry said. �With Security National stamped on its side. The keys to the bag and the night vault must be in Hazel�s pocket. I always drove her over and waited in the car while she made the deposit.�

Sergeant Newton was silent for a moment, apparently going over all the testimony in his mind and mentally checking to see if there were any questions he had missed. Presently he glanced about the store.

�Where�s the empty trash can you were carrying when you came in from out back?� he inquired.

Henry pointed to where it stood against the wall over by the meat counter.

Newton�s sleepy-looking eyes drooped half shut. �How�d it get way over there? That�s halfway across the store from the back door and also from the register. When he ordered you behind the counter with your wife, did you carry the trash can clear over there first?�

Henry�s stomach gave a lurch. Thinking furiously, he said, �I... I guess I just reacted automatically. For so many years I�ve been carrying that empty can in the back door and setting it down in the same place, I went right ahead and carried it over where it belonged when he pointed the gun at me and told me to put it down. That�s when Hazel made her break. He had to turn half away from her in order to keep me covered.�

This explanation seemed to satisfy the sergeant, for he didn�t pursue the matter. Turning to the uniformed policeman, who was still standing by, he said, �Get on your radio and find out if the dragnet has pulled anything in. If it hasn�t, have a half dozen officers report to me here. I want that alley scoured for the two bullets Mr. Jones fired.�

He returned his attention to Henry. �I guess that�s all we can do here tonight, Mr. Jones. As soon as my assistants get here and I set them to work, you can lock up and we�ll go down to headquarters.�

�Headquarters?� Henry repeated, his stomach lurching again. �What for?�

�Want you to look at some pictures,� the sergeant said mildly.

Relief flooded over Henry. For one terrible moment he had thought he was under arrest.

It was well past midnight before Henry got back from downtown. In the interim he had looked at hundreds of mug shots of men with records of armed robbery. He had identified none, of course. To make it look good, though, he had hesitated over one or two before finally moving his head in definite negatives.

Sergeant Newton drove him home and told him he would get in touch with him as soon as there were any developments.

On Sunday Henry phoned a funeral director to make arrangements for Hazel�s interment. When he explained the circumstances of his wife�s death and that her body was presently at the city morgue, the mortician told him that a date couldn�t be set until they learned when the morgue planned to release the body. He told Henry not to worry about it, however, as he would contact the morgue himself and let Henry know.

In the middle of the night it started to rain. When Henry arose Monday morning it was coming down in such solid sheets, he could barely see the other side of the street from his front-room windows. A river of water gushed along the gutter out front, piling up at the intersection to form a small lake because the curb sewer slots there couldn�t drain it off fast enough.

Just as Henry finished breakfast Sergeant Harry Newton dropped in. The detective wore a raincoat and rubbers, but they hadn�t been adequate protection against the deluge. When he shed his rubbers and raincoat in the upstairs hall, the lower legs of his trousers were soaked through and his shoes sloshed when he walked.

�Want to dry your trousers and shoes over the kitchen range?� Henry asked solicitously. �I�ll loan you a robe while they�re drying.�

The homicide officer shook his head. �They�d only get wet again when I went back outside. This is going to last all day.�

Sloshing into the front room, he carefully seated himself on the sofa so that the damp lower part of his trousers didn�t touch the upholstery.

At first it appeared to Henry that the only purpose of the man�s visit was to brief him on developments. He told Henry that the three bullets recovered from Hazel�s body were all good enough specimens so that ballistics would readily be able to identify the murder weapon if it ever turned up. He added casually that they hadn�t been fired from the gun Henry had used, and weren�t even the same caliber, as the murder weapon had been a thirty-two instead of a thirty-eight.

�We recovered one of the bullets you fired from a telegraph pole in the alley,� the sergeant went on. �We couldn�t find the other, so maybe you did wing the guy. We�ve issued his description to all area doctors, in case he tries to get a wound patched up. I spent yesterday talking to a lot of your neighbors.�

�Oh?� Henry said, a trifle confused by the abrupt switch of subject.

�Uh-huh. Seems to be general knowledge that your wife was kind of a shrew. Always on your back. Nobody thinks you�ll grieve over her very long.�

Flushing, Henry said nothing.

�On the other hand, everybody says you�re the most softhearted guy in the world, that you wouldn�t even set a trap for a mouse. Let alone kill a human.�

Henry felt his stomach turn over. In a faint voice he said, �You mean... you mean�� and couldn�t get any more out.

�I mean we haven�t swallowed your story whole,� Newton finished for him. �Not that you�re under more than routine suspicion. We always automatically suspect the husband when a wife is murdered.�

�But in a case like this!� Henry protested.

�It wouldn�t be the first time a guy rigged a robbery to cover uxoricide. That�s wife-murderer, in case you don�t know the word. We haven�t got any concrete evidence that you did, but there are a couple of angles we don�t like.�

�What?� Henry managed.

�One is your description of the bandit. You must have a photographic mind, it�s so complete. I�m not saying you made him up. All I�m saying is you might have. It�s the sort of description an amateur murderer might dream up, thinking the more complete it was, the more convincing it would be. Another thing is the location of that trash basket. Maybe things happened like you say, but it�s hard to imagine a bandit letting you walk clear across the store like that. Seems more likely he would have ordered you to drop it right where you were and get behind the counter with your wife.�

�It�s the way it happened,� Henry insisted, sweating.

�We can�t prove it didn�t, Mr. Jones. The thing I have most trouble swallowing is your chasing the guy and shooting at him. Doesn�t seem in character for a mild guy like you.�

Henry said faintly, �He�d... he�d just shot my wife. I guess I saw red.�

�Maybe,� the sergeant conceded. �People do odd things under stress. But I have to ask you this question, because it�s part of our routine. Did you kill your wife and rig this robbery?�

�Of course not,� Henry said with forced indignance.

�Well, if you did, you�ll probably get away with it,� Newton said.

Henry stared at the man in fascination. The homicide officer stared back at him speculatively.

�Why do you say that?� Henry finally got out.

�What can we prove? You�ve got a pretty good story. And if it was rigged, you did a thorough job. Even down to such details as your wife�s prints being on that gun under yours. I imagine you�d be smart enough to dispose of the other gun and money bag so we�d never find them. We looked, of course. We sifted every ashpit, garbage can and trash can in that alley. If you did kill her, we�d never prove it in a million years, unless we got a confession.�

As Henry stared at him numbly, Sergeant Newton said, �This is just routine suspicion, of course. It doesn�t mean I think you killed her. It just means I think you might have. I hope I haven�t upset you. As I said before, we always consider the husband as a possibility.�

With that he rose, bid Henry a laconic good-bye and sloshed out into the hall to put back on his dripping raincoat and useless rubbers. It was a half hour after he left before Henry stopped shaking.

During the next two nights he had trouble sleeping. Partly this was because the rain continued to come down in torrents and its steady beating on the roof disturbed him. But mostly it was because he kept visualizing being dragged down to headquarters and questioned for hours on end with a white light in his face. He wondered if the local police employed rubber hoses to make suspects talk.

But when he heard nothing further from Sergeant Newton, his alarm gradually subsided. It had been just routine suspicion, he decided, and the sergeant merely had an unsettling way of expressing himself.

For several reasons Henry didn�t open the store during this time. For one thing he felt a period of mourning would be expected of him. For another, funeral arrangements and the funeral itself took up so much time. For a third, there would have been little business anyway because the torrential rain kept everyone indoors except those who had vital errands.

Fortunately Henry�s basement was so well sealed, he only got dribbles of water in it. But according to news reports, many basements were flooded to the rafters. The city streets became shallow rivers, with water reaching to the hubcaps of the few automobiles whose drivers were brave enough to venture onto them. The mayor declared a state of emergency and business came to a virtual standstill as the city waited for the downpour to stop.

It stopped abruptly on Wednesday morning and the sun came out hot and bright. By noon the overtaxed sewers had drained away the surface water and the streets were steaming moisture.

Hazel�s funeral had been tentatively scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, depending on the weather. With the streets now unflooded, it took place as scheduled. Henry managed to look appropriately sad during the service.

By Thursday morning the sun had baked the streets dry and the only evidence of the fifty-five-hour deluge was a few rapidly evaporating puddles on lawns where there were low spots. Henry engaged young Thad Bower, Tom Bower�s grandson, to help out as a combination clerk and stock boy, and opened for business.

He still had heard nothing more from the police.

Friday morning, when Henry went out back to set a match to the trash deposited in the incinerator the night before, he found a truck marked Department of Streets and Sewers parked in the alley. A tall, lean man wearing hip boots and a cap with a miner�s lamp on it was prying up the manhole cover with a crowbar. A stolid, middle-aged man in a rumpled brown suit stood watching him. Henry�s heart began to thump when he recognized the latter as Sergeant Harry Newton.

Henry forgot the incinerator. Pushing open the gate, he stepped into the alley.

The homicide officer glanced at him with sleepy eyes. �Morning,� he said in an unnaturally husky voice.

Henry said, �What... what�s going on?�

Sergeant Newton drew out a handkerchief and blew his nose. �Had a cold all week,� he said hoarsely. �Guess I should have dried out my shoes like you suggested. Just making a routine check.�

�On what?�

The sergeant blew his nose again, put the handkerchief away. �Fellow named Lischer came in to make a report last night. Seems he drove up this alley the night your wife was killed. His headlights hit this manhole just in time to save him from running a wheel into it. He says it was part way open. He managed to swerve enough to straddle it, and he drove on with his heart in his mouth. He only lives over on Delor, a couple of blocks from here. He was pulling into his garage when it occurred to him he should have stopped and shoved the cover back in place so nobody else would wreck a car. So he backed out again and drove back here. He says he was back within ten minutes, but by then somebody had replaced the cover. He figures he arrived the second time about a quarter after nine. He didn�t hear any shots either time he drove through the alley, so all the shooting must have taken place between his two trips. He drove back home again and forgot about it until he read about the robbery-murder.�

Henry didn�t say anything. He was watching the man in hip boots, who now had the cover off and was placing a circular metal guard rail around the open hole. When this was in place, the man drew a garden rake from the rear of the truck and descended into the hole.

Sergeant Newton said, �When Lischer read about the murder, he got to thinking about the open manhole and wondered if there was any connection. He wasn�t sure your store was in the same block as the manhole, though, so he decided to drive over and take a look before saying anything. But the rain kept him indoors the first part of the week. Like a lot of people, he didn�t even make it to work. And Wednesday he just didn�t get around to it. On his way home from work yesterday he drove past your store, then around into the alley. When he saw the manhole was directly behind your place, he came in and told us about it.�

Henry swallowed a couple of times before managing, �What do you suppose it means, Sergeant?�

The homicide officer shrugged. �With all the water that�s been rushing through the sewers since that night, anything dropped down there has probably been washed for blocks. There�s twenty blocks of sewer pipe between here and the River Des Peres. But there�s also ten manholes. A Department-of-Streets-and-Sewers worker is climbing into each of those holes with a rake right now. Whatever�s down there, we�ll find.�

Henry felt ill. He said, �I�d better get back to the store. I�ve got a brand new clerk I don�t like to leave alone.�

He pushed back through the gate, forgetting to set a match to the trash as he passed the incinerator. Inside he collapsed into a chair in the back room and stared helplessly into space.

Ten minutes later young Thad Bower came back hunting for him to ask the price of potatoes. Rousing himself, Henry accompanied the boy out front and took over the waiting-on of the customer himself.

For the rest of the morning Henry functioned automatically, his lips smiling at customers but his insides churning. Every time there was a lull in business, he went to the back room to glance out at the alley. The city truck was still parked there.

At noon Henry sent his new clerk home to lunch. Ten minutes later Sergeant Harry Newton came in the back door. Henry�s heart rose to his throat when he saw what the sergeant carried. In one hand he held a small pinch bar, in the other a nickel-plated revolver with spots of rust on it.

�We found this a block away,� the homicide officer said, hefting the pinch bar. �The gun was two blocks away. They could both have been dropped through the manhole out back and carried that far by the rushing water.�

Henry gulped.

�The other guys didn�t find a thing,� the sergeant said. �Or at least nothing we can connect to the robbery. They turned up a lot of miscellaneous junk ranging from flashlight batteries to a set of tire chains. I was hoping we�d find that night-deposit bag, but it must have washed clear to the river.�

�Why did you expect that to be in the sewer?� Henry asked in a squeaky voice.

�Seems obvious what happened,� the sergeant said. �Or at least two alternatives are obvious. The first is that the bandit opened the manhole just before he pulled the job, so that he�d have a place to dump the bag after removing the money. He�d know about the bag, if he had the job properly cased, and he�d want to get rid of incriminating evidence as soon as possible. After using the gun, he�d want to get rid of that too. So it could be that when he ran out back, he cut open the bag with a pocket knife � he�d have to cut it because it was locked and the keys were in your wife�s pocket � took out the money and dumped the bag and checks down the sewer along with the gun. He�d have time to do that and kick the cover back in place while you were scrambling around for the gun your wife dropped. Maybe that�s what delayed him enough for you to get a couple of shots at him. If we had found the cut bag, it would tend to support that alternative.�

�I see,� Henry said, afraid to ask what the other alternative was.

Sergeant Newton told him anyway. �Then it could be that there never was a bandit, that you rigged the whole thing and dropped the murder weapon and the bag down the hole yourself. If we�d found the bag uncut and with the money still in it, we�d know you rigged it.�

Henry managed to ask in a relatively steady voice, �Which do you think happened?�

The sergeant shrugged. �Without the bag showing, it could be either way. This may not even be the murder weapon of course. But if ballistics says it is, we can probably trace the gun.�

�How?� Henry asked, relatively secure on that point because he had given the pawnbroker a fake name when he purchased the gun six months before.

�We�ll send the serial number to the manufacturer and get its original retail outlet. The outlet will have the name of the original purchaser recorded, and we�ll let him explain what he did with it. We�ve traced guns through a half dozen different owners that way. We won�t even have to go to all that trouble if it turns out the gun was bought in some local pawnshop.�

�Oh? Why not?�

�It�ll be registered at headquarters. A city ordinance requires pawnbrokers to report the purchase and sale of all small arms.�

Henry�s feeling of security began to evaporate.

�If the gun came from a pawnbroker, it will be a snap,� the sergeant went on. �Even if it was bought under an assumed name. Pawnbrokers have a remarkable memory for faces. Particularly for the faces of gun buyers, because they get questioned about them so often. We�ll give him a description of the bandit and show you to him. He should be able to tell us which of you bought it.�

Henry was unable to make any comment whatever. He just stood there numbly.

Sergeant Newton didn�t appear to notice Henry�s reaction. With a final remark that he would keep Henry informed of any developments, he left by the same way he had entered.

When the back door closed, Henry started doing some furious thinking. Fortunately no customers came in during the next few minutes, so he was able to devote his full attention to the problem. The solution came to him quite suddenly.

The police still had possession of the thirty-eight revolver which Hazel had kept in the drawer beneath the cash register, but there was still a box of thirty-eight-caliber shells in the drawer. Henry pocketed six.

When Thad Bower returned from lunch at one P.M., Henry announced that he would now take his lunch break, added that he planned to take a brief nap after eating and requested the boy not to disturb him during the next hour.

�If you don�t know the price of something, make a guess,� he said. �Don�t be running upstairs to wake me every five minutes.�

�Yes, sir,� the boy said. �I�ll manage all right.�

Henry went up the front stairs, walked through the apartment and quietly descended the back stairs. He eased his car from the garage into the alley and let it roll backward to the side street.

Twenty minutes later he parked in front of a pawnshop on Franklin Avenue.

It was a little cubbyhole of a place, and no one was in it but the same bent and wizened old man who had sold him the thirty-two six months before.

When Henry asked, �Do you have any, thirty-eight-caliber handguns?� the old man peered at him with a flicker of recognition.

�Didn�t you buy a gun here once before?� he asked.

The question dispelled any doubts Henry may have had about what had to be done. It was also reassuring to his conscience that the man was so old and looked vaguely ill. He told himself that it would be a blessing to the old man to be put out of his misery.

�I was in a few months back,� Henry said in a steady voice.

The pawnbroker unlocked a case beneath the counter and brought out a thirty-eight police special. Handing it to Henry, he said, �Here�s a fine buy. Hardly been fired and not a spot of rust on it.�

Breaking open the cylinder, Henry peered down the barrel. Then he drew the six shells from his pocket and thumbed them into the cylinder one at a time, keeping his eyes fixed on the old man as he performed the operation. The pawnbroker�s expression grew increasingly worried. He started to open his mouth, then closed it again when Henry clicked the cylinder back into place and pointed the gun at him.

�Get into the back room,� Henry ordered.

�The money�s in the cage,� the old man said, nodding toward a steel-latticed cage at the end of the counter.

�Get into the back room,� Henry repeated.

Shrugging, the pawnbroker came from behind the counter and shuffled through the open door to the back room. Following, Henry closed the door behind him.

When the old man turned around with an inquiring look on his face, Henry pressed the gun muzzle against his heart and fired.

The muzzle being directly against the man�s body muffled the explosion to a dull roar, loud enough in the small room to make Henry wince, but hardly loud enough to carry through two closed doors to the street. Henry felt reasonably sure that it couldn�t have been heard outdoors.

The old man fell on his back without a sound and lay there with his mouth open and an expression of indignant surprise on his face.

Whipping out a handkerchief, Henry rapidly wiped off the gun. Kneeling, he wrapped the dead man�s fingers around the stock.

The front room was still empty when he peeped out. Carefully he wiped both knobs of the back room door and pulled the door shut behind him with his handkerchief over the knob. He used his handkerchief again to open the street door, paused to glance up and down the street, then wiped the outer handle before letting the door click shut behind him.

The only person on the street was a man on the other side looking into another pawnshop window with his back to Henry. Climbing into his car, Henry drove away.

Twenty minutes later he eased his car back into the garage, crossed the rear yard and quietly climbed the rear stairs. It was five minutes until two.

In lieu of lunch he drank two glasses of cold milk from the refrigerator, descended the front stairs and re-entered the store at exactly two P.M.

�Everything went fine,� young Thad told him. �I�m catching on pretty good. Have your nap?�

�A little one,� Henry said. �Better get some canned peas from the stock room. We�re running low on the shelf.�

Just before the nine-o�clock closing hour Sergeant Harry Newton phoned.

�That gun we fished out of the sewer was the murder weapon all right,� he reported. �We traced it to a pawnshop on Franklin.�

�Oh?� Henry said.

�It was registered as having been sold to a George Williams at a nonexistent address up on the north side. Obviously a fake name, since the address was fake. But unfortunately we can�t get a description of the buyer from the pawnbroker.�

�Why not?�

�He committed suicide this afternoon. I�d be suspicious of the timing if circumstances didn�t make it suicide for certain.�

�What circumstances?�

�He used one of his own guns. Since they were kept in a locked case, unloaded, a killer could hardly have gotten at it. And he had a motive. A week ago he found out he had cancer and had only a matter of months to live. It would have been a pretty painful death.�

Henry felt pleased. Actually he had performed the old man a favor.

�Anyway it brings us to a dead end,� the sergeant said. �If you rigged your wife�s death, I guess you get away with it.�

�I�m getting a little tired of your implications, Sergeant,� Henry said.

�I�m not very subtle,� the sergeant admitted. �Sorry if I offended you. As I�ve said before, you were never under more than routine suspicion. There�s still an A.P.B. out on your scar-faced bandit. If we net him, you�ll hear from us. Otherwise I probably won�t be talking to you again.�

�I hope you catch him,� Henry said a trifle stiffly. �Goodby, Sergeant.�

Hanging up, he said to Thad Bower, �You can empty the trash while I check out the register.� He tossed the boy his key ring. �Lock the front door first. We don�t want any more bandits walking in to hold us up.�