ound that my  knees  were  shaking.  This was the
second man  I'd  seen die tonight. But I hadn't so much minded about George.
He'd had it coming, for one  thing, and for another his body had been inside
the crumpled-up  car; I'd not  actually seen him  die. Nor  had I been alone
then;  Smiley had  been with  me. I'd have  given my whole bank account, all
three hundred and twelve dollars of it, to have Smiley  with me there in the
attic.
     I wanted  to  get out of  there, fast, and I was too scared to  move. I
thought I'd be less scared  if I could figure out what it was all about, but
it  was  sheerly mad.  It didn't  make  sense that even a madman would  have
brought me out here under so weird a pretext so that I  could be an audience
of one to his suicide.
     In fact, if I was sure of anything, I was sure that Smith hadn't killed
himself. But who had, and why? The Vorpal Blades? Was there such a group?
     Where were they? Why hadn't they come?
     A sudden thought put shivers down my spine. Maybe they had. I'd thought
I heard a car  come and go, while we'd waited.  Why couldn't it have dropped
off passengers? Waiting for me  downstairs - or  even  now  creeping up  the
attic steps toward me.
     I  looked  that way.  The  candle flickered and the  shadows danced.  I
strained my ears, but there wasn't any sound. No sound anywhere.
     I was afraid to move,  and then gradually I found that I was afraid not
to move.  I had  to get out of  here before I went crazy.  If  anything  was
downstairs I'd rather go down and meet it than wait till it decided to  come
up here after me.
     I wished to hell and back that I hadn't given Smiley that revolver, but
wishing didn't get me the revolver back.
     Well, the whisky bottle was a weapon of sorts. I shifted the flashlight
to my left hand and picked  up the whisky bottle,  by its neck, in my right.
It was still more than half full and heavy enough for a bludgeon.
     I tiptoed  to the head of the steps. I don't  know why I tiptoed unless
it was to avoid scaring myself worse  by making  noise; we hadn't been quiet
up here before and  Smith's  fall had shaken the whole house. If anyone  was
downstairs, he knew he wasn't alone in the building.
     I looked at  the square post  at the top  of the railing and the short,
thick candle still burning on top of it. I didn't want to touch it; I wanted
to be able to say that I hadn't touched anything at  all, except to feel for
a  heartbeat  that  wasn't there. Yet  I  couldn't leave the candle burning,
either;  it  might set  the  house afire if  it fell  over,  as Smith hadn't
anchored it down with molten wax, but had merely stood it on its base.
     I compromised by blowing it out but not touching it otherwise.
     My  flashlight  showed  me there was  nothing or no one on  the  stairs
leading down to the second floor and that the door at the bottom of them was
still closed, as we had left it. Before I started down them I took one  last
look around the attic with  my flash. The  shadows jumped as the  beam swept
around the walls, and then, for some reason, I brought  the circle of  light
to rest on Yehudi Smith's body lying sprawled there on the floor, eyes  wide
open  and  still staring unseeingly at the rafters overhead, his  face still
frozen in the grimace of that horrible, if brief, pain in which he'd died.
     I hated to leave him alone there in the dark. Silly and  sentimental as
the  thought was,  I couldn't help  feeling that way. He'd been  such a nice
little guy. Who the hell had killed  him, and why, and why in such a bizarre
manner, and what was it all about? And he'd  said  it was dangerous  to come
here tonight, and he was dead right, as far as he himself was concerned. And
I-?
     With  that thought, I was afraid  again. I wasn't out of here  yet. Was
someone or something waiting downstairs?
     The attic stairs  were uncarpeted and  they squeaked  so loudly that  I
gave up trying to walk quietly and hurried. The attic door creaked, too, but
nothing was waiting for me on the other side of it. Or downstairs. I flashed
my  light  into the big  living  room as  I passed  the  doorway  and  got a
momentary fright as I thought something  white was coming toward me - but it
was only the sheeted table and it had only seemed to move.
     The porch and down the porch steps.
     The car was still  there  on  the driveway beside the house.  It was  a
coupe, I noticed  now, and the same make and model as mine. My feet crunched
gravel as I walked  to it;  I was still scared but I didn't dare  let myself
run. I wondered if Smith  had left the key in the car, and hoped frantically
that he had. I should have thought of it while  I was still in the attic and
could have felt in his pockets. I wouldn't go back up there now, I realized,
for anything in the world. I'd walk back to town first.
     At least the car door wasn't  locked. I slid in under the  wheel,  and,
flashed my light on  the dashboard. Yes, the ignition key was in the lock. I
slammed the  door behind me and felt  a little more secure inside the closed
car.
     I fumed the key  and stepped on  the starter and the engine started the
first try. I shifted into low  gear and then, before I let out the clutch, I
carefully  shifted  back into  neutral  again and  sat there with  the motor
idling.
     This wasn't the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The  gear
shift knob was hard rubber with  a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball
I'd  noticed on  the gear shift  lever of his car. It was like the one on my
car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tires that I hadn't got
around to fixing.
     I turned on the dome light, although by then I didn't really have to. I
knew already from the feel of the controls in starting and in shifting, from
the sound of the engine, from a dozen little things.
     This was my car.
     It was so impossible  that I forgot to be afraid,  that I was in such a
hurry to get away from the house. Oh, there was a little logic in my lack of
fear, too;  if anybody had been laying for me, the house would have been the
place. He wouldn't have  let me get this far  and he wouldn't  have left the
ignition key in the car so I could get away in it.
     I got out  of the car and looked, with the flashlight, at the two tires
which had been flat this morning.  They weren't flat now. Either someone had
fixed them, or someone had simply let the air out of them last night and had
subsequently  pumped them up again  with the hand pump I keep in my  luggage
compartment. The  second idea seemed more likely; now that I thought  of it,
it  was strange that two  tires - both in good shape and with  good tubes in
them - should have gone  flat, completely flat,  at  the same time and while
the car was standing in my garage.
     I walked all  the way around the car, looking at it, and  there  wasn't
anything wrong with it that I could see.  I got back in under  the wheel and
sat there  a  minute  with the  engine  running,  wondering if it  was  even
remotely possible that Yehudi Smith had driven me here in my own car.
     No, I decided, not remotely. I hadn't noticed his car at all except for
three  things, but those three things were plenty  to make me sure.  Besides
the gear shift knob, I remembered that push button radio with the button for
WBBM pushed  in - and my  car has no radio at all - and there  was  the fact
that his engine was noisy and mine is quiet. Right  then, with  it idling, I
could barely hear it.
     Unless I was crazy-
     Could  I have  imagined that other car? For that  matter, could I  have
imagined Yehudi Smith? Could I have driven out here by myself in my own car,
gone up to the attic alone- ?
     It's  a  horrible  thing  to  suspect  yourself  suddenly  of  complete
insanity, equipped with hallucinations.
     I realized I'd better quit thinking along those lines, here alone in  a
car, alone in the night, parked beside a haunted house. I might drive myself
nutty, if I wasn't already.
     I took  a long drink  out of the bottle that was now on the seat beside
me, and then drove out to the highway and back to town. I didn't drive fast,
partly because I  was a little drunk - physically anyway. The horrible thing
that had happened up in the attic, the fantastic, incredible death of Yehudi
Smith, had shocked me sober, mentally.
     I couldn't have imagined-
     But at the edge of  town the doubts came back, then the answer to them.
I pulled to  the  side of  the road and turned  on the dome light. I had the
card and the key and the flashlight, those three souvenirs of my experience.
I took  the  flashlight out of my coat  pocket and looked at it. Just a dime
store flashlight; it meant nothing except that it wasn't mine. The card  was
the thing.  I hunted  in several pockets, getting worried  as hell; before I
found it in the pocket of my shirt. Yes,  J had it, and it still read Yehudi
Smith. I felt a little better as I put it back in my pocket. While  I was at
it,  I  looked at the key, too. The  key that  had  been with the "DRINK ME"
bottle on the glass-topped table.
     It  was still  there in the  pocket Smith had dropped it  into; I'd not
touched  it or looked at  it  closely. It was, of course, the wrong kind  of
key,  but I'd noticed  that at first glance when I'd seen it on the table in
the attic; that had been part of my source of amusement when I'd laughed. It
was a Yale key, and it should have been a small gold key, the one Alice used
to open the fifteen-inch-high door into the lovely garden.
     Come  to think of it, all three of those  props  in the attic  had been
wrong,  one  way or  another. The table had been a  glass-topped one, but it
should have been  an  all-glass table; the wooden legs were  wrong.  The key
shouldn't have been a nickel-plated Yale, and the "DRINK ME" should not have
contained poison. (It had, in fact, a sort  of mixed flavour of cherry-tart,
custard,  pine  apple,  roast  turkey,  toffy,  and hot  buttered  toast.) -
according to Alice. It couldn't have tasted anything like that to Smith.
     I started driving again, slowly. Now  that I was back in town I  had to
make up my mind whether I was going to the sheriff's office or going to call
the state  police. Reluctantly I decided I'd better go right to the sheriff.
Definitely this case was in his department,  unless he called  on  the state
police  for help. They'd dump it in his lap  anyway, even if I  called them.
And he  hated my guts enough as  it was, without  my making  it any worse by
by-passing  him in reporting a major crime.  Not that I didn't hate his guts
just as much, but tonight he was in a better position to make trouble for me
than I for him.
     So I parked my coupe across the street from the courthouse and took one
more swig  from the  bottle to give me courage to tell Kates the story I was
going to have  to tell him. Then  I marched myself across the  street and up
the courthouse stairs  to the sheriff's office on the second floor. If I was
lucky, I  thought, Kates might be out and his deputy, Hank  Ganzer, might be
there.
     I wasn't lucky. Hank wasn't there at all; and Kates was talking  on the
phone. He glared at me when I came in and then went back to his call.
     "Hell,  I could have done  it on the phone from  here. Go see the  guy.
Wake him up and be sure he's awake enough to remember  any little thing that
might have been said. Yeah, then call me again before you start back."
     He  put  the receiver  down and his swivel chair squeaked shrilly as he
swung about to face  me. He yelled, "There isn't any story on it yet." Rance
Kates  always yells; I've never heard him say  anything in a  quiet tone, or
even a normal one. His voice matches his red face, which always looks angry.
I've often wondered if he looks like  that  even when he's in bed. Wondered,
but had no inclination to find out.
     What he'd just yelled  at me, though, made so little  sense that I just
looked at him.
     I said, "I've come to report a murder, Kates."
     "Huh?"  He  looked  interested. "You mean  you  found either  Miles  or
Bonney?"
     For a minute neither name registered at all. I said, "The man's name is
Smith."  I  thought I'd  better sneak up on the Yehudi part gradually, maybe
let Kates read it himself off the card. "The body is in the attic of the old
Wentworth place out on the pike."
     "Stoeger, are you drunk?"
     "I've been drinking," I told him. "I'm not drunk." At least I  hoped  I
wasn't. Maybe that last one I'd taken in the car just before I'd left it had
been one too many. My voice sounded  thick, even to me, and I had a hunch my
eyes were looking a trifle bleary from the outside;  they were  beginning to
feel that way from my side of them.
     "What were you doing  in the attic of the Wentworth place? You mean you
were there tonight?"
     I wished again that Hank Ganzer had  been there  instead of Kates. Hank
would have taken my word for it  and gone  out for the  body;  then my story
wouldn't have sounded so incredible when I'd have got around to telling it.
     I said, "Yes, I just came from  there. I went there with  Smith, at his
request."
     "Who is this Smith? You know him?"
     "I met him tonight for the first time. He came to see me.
     "What for? What were you doing out there? A haunted house!"
     I  sighed. There  wasn't  anything  I  could  do  but  answer his  damn
questions and they were getting tougher all the time. Let's see, how could I
put it so it wouldn't sound too crazy?
     I  said, "We were  there because  it is supposed to be a haunted house,
Kates.  This Smith  was interested in the occult - in  psychic phenomena. He
asked me to go out there with him to perform  an experiment. I gathered that
some other people were coming, but they didn't."
     "What kind of an experiment?"
     "I don't know. He was killed before we got around to it."
     "You and him were there alone?"
     "Yes,"  I  said, but  I saw where that was leading so  I added,  "But I
didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. He was poisoned."
     "Poisoned how?"
     Part of  my brain wanted to tell him,  "Out of a little bottle  labeled
`DRINK ME' on a glass  table, as in Alice in Wonderland." The sensible  part
of my brain told me to let him find that out for himself. I said, "Out  of a
bottle that was planted  there for him to drink. By whom, I don't  know. But
you  sound  like you  don't believe  me. Why don't you go  out  and see  for
yourself, Kates? Damn it, man, I'm reporting a murder." And then it occurred
to me there wasn't really any proof of that so I amended it a little: "Or at
least a death by violence."
     He stared  at me and I  think he was becoming convinced, a  little. His
phone rang and his swivel chair screamed again as he swung around. He barked
"Hello. Sheriff Kates," into it.
     Then his  voice tamed  down  a  little. He  said, "No,  Mrs.  Harrison,
haven't heard  a thing. Hank's over at Neilsville, checking up at that  end,
and  he's going to  watch  the road again on his way back. I'll call you the
minute I learn anything  at  all. But  don't  worry;  it  can't be  anything
serious."
     He  turned back. "Stoeger,  if this  is  a  gag,  I'm going to take you
apart." He meant it,  and he could do it, too. Kates is only  a medium-sized
man,  not  too  much  bigger than  I,  but he's tough  and  hard  as a  rock
physically. He can handle men weighing half  again as much as  he does.  And
he's got enough  of a sadistic streak to enjoy  doing it  whenever  he has a
good excuse for it.
     "It's  no  gag,"  I said. "What's this about Miles Harrison  and  Ralph
Bonney?"
     "Missing. They left Neilsville with the Bonney pay roll a  little after
half past eleven and should have been back here around midnight. It's almost
two o'clock and nobody knows  where they are. Look,  if I  thought you  were
sober and there  was a stiff out on the pike, I'd call the state cops. I got
to stay here till we find what happened to Miles and Bonney."
     The  state cops were fine,  as far as I was  concerned. I'd reported it
where it should have been reported, and Kates would have  no kickback  if he
himself called the  state police.  I was  just opening my mouth to  say that
might be a good idea when the phone rang again.
     Kates yelled into it,  and then, "As far  as the teller knew, they were
heading right back, Hank? Nothing unusual happened  at that  end, huh? Okay,
come back, and watch both sides of the road all the way in case they ran off
it or  something... Yeah, the pike. That's  the only way they could've come.
Oh, and listen, stop at the  Wentworth place on your way and take a  look in
the attic... Yeah. I said the attic. Doc Stoeger's  here, drunk as  a  coot,
and he says there's a stiff in the  attic there. If there is one, I'll worry
about it."
     He slammed the receiver down  and started shuffling papers on his desk,
trying to  look busy. Finally he thought  of something to do and  phoned the
Bonney Fireworks Company to see if Bonney had showed up there yet, or called
them. Apparently, from what I could hear of the conversation, he hadn't done
either.
     I  realized that I was still standing  up and that now, since Kates had
given that order to his  deputy, nothing was going  to happen until Hank got
back - at least half  an hour if he drove slowly to watch both sides of  the
road.  So I found myself a chair and  sat down. Kates  shuffled papers again
and paid no attention to me.
     I got to wondering about Bonney and Miles, and hoped they hadn't had an
accident. If they had had one, and were two hours overdue, it must have been
a bad one. Unless both were seriously hurt, one of them would have reached a
phone  long before this. Of course  they could  have stopped somewhere for a
drink, but it didn't seem likely,  not for two hours  at least. And, come to
think of it, they couldn't have; the closing hour for taverns applied to the
whole county, not  just to Carmel  City. Twelve o'clock  had been almost two
hours ago.
     I wished that it wasn't.  Not that I either  needed or  wanted a  drink
particularly at that moment, but it would have been much more pleasant to do
my waiting at Smiley's instead of here in the sheriff's office.
     Kates suddenly swiveled his chair at me. "You don't know anything about
Bonney and Harrison, do you?"
     "Not a thing," I told him.
     "Where were you at midnight?"
     With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? The little man who wasn't there.
     I said, "Home, talking  to  Smith. We stayed there  until  I  half past
twelve."
     "Anybody else there?"
     I shook my head. Come to think of it, nobody but myself had, as far  as
I knew,  even  seen Yehudi  Smith. If his  body wasn't in  the attic  at the
Wentworth place,  I  was  going  to have a hell of  a time proving he'd ever
existed. A card and a key and a flashlight.
     "Where'd this Smith guy come from?"
     "I don't know. He didn't say."
     "What was his first name?"
     I stalled  on  that one. I said, "I don't remember.  I've got his  card
somewhere. He gave me one."  Let him think  the card was probably out at the
house. I wasn't ready to show it to him yet.
     "How'd he happen to come to you to go to a haunted house with him if he
didn't even know you?"
     I said, "He knew of me, as a Lewis Carroll fan."
     "A what?"
     "Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland,  Alice Through the Looking-Glass,"
And a "DRINK ME" bottle on a  glass table, and a key, and Bandersnatches and
Jabberwocks.  But let Kates  find that out for himself, after he'd  found  a
body and knew that I wasn't either drunk or crazy.
     He said, "Alice in Wonderland!" and sniffed. He glared at me a full ten
seconds and then decided, apparently, that he was wasting his time on me and
swiveled back to his paper shuffling.
     I felt in my pockets to make sure that the card and the key  were still
there. They were. The flashlight  was still in the car,  but  the flashlight
didn't mean anything anyway. Maybe the key didn't either. But  that card was
my contact with reality, in a sense.  As long as it still said Yehudi Smith,
I  knew I wasn't stark  raving  mad. I knew that there'd really  been such a
person and that he wasn't a figment of my imagination.
     I slipped it out of my  pocket to look at it again. Yes, it  still said
"Yehudi Smith,"  although my  eyes had  a  bit of  trouble  focusing  on  it
clearly. The  printing  looked fuzzy,  which meant I needed  either one more
drink or several less.
     Yehudi  Smith, in fuzzy-edged type. Yehudi, the  little man  who wasn't
there.
     And  suddenly -  don't ask me  how I knew, but I knew. I didn't see the
pattern, but I saw that much of it. The little man who wasn't there.
     Wouldn't be there.
     Hank was going to come in and say,  "What's this  about  a stiff in the
Wentworth attic? I couldn't find one."
     Yehudi. The little man who wasn't there. I saw a man upon  the stair, A
little man who wasn't there.  He wasn't  there again today; Gee, I wish he'd
go away.
     It was preordained; it had to  be. That much of the pattern I  saw. The
name Yehudi hadn't been an accident. I think that almost, just then, I had a
flash of insight that would have shown me most of the pattern, if not all of
it. You  know how it  is sometimes when you're drunk, but not too drunk, you
think you're trembling on the verge of understanding something important and
cosmic that has eluded  you all your  life? And - just barely possible - you
really are. I think I was, at that moment.
     Then I looked up from the card and the  thread of  my thought  was lost
because Kates was staring at me. He'd turned just his head this time instead
of the  squeaking  swivel  chair  he  was sitting on. He  was looking at  me
speculatively, suspiciously.
     I  tried to ignore it; I was  trying to  recapture  my thoughts and let
them lead me. I was close to something. I saw a man upon  the  stair. Yehudi
Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs, just ahead of me.
     No, the dead body with the contorted face - the poor piece of cold clay
that had been a nice  little guy with laughter lines around his eyes and the
corners  of  his mouth  - wouldn't be there in  the attic  when  Hank Ganzer
looked for  it. It couldn't  be there;  its presence there wouldn't fit  the
pattern that I still couldn't see or understand.
     Squeal of the swivel chair as Rance Kates turned his body to  match the
position of his head. "Is that the card that guy gave you?"
     I nodded.
     "What's his full name?"
     The hell with Kates. "Yehudi," I said. "Yehudi Smith."
     Of course it wasn't really; I knew at least that much now. I got up and
walked  to Kates' desk. Unfortunately for my dignity, I weaved a little. But
I made it without falling. I put the card down in front of him and went back
and sat down again, managing to walk straight this time.
     He looked at the card and  then at me and then at the card and  then at
me.
     And then I knew I must be crazy.
     "Doc," he asked - and  his voice was  quieter  than I'd ever  heard  it
before - "What's your bug number?"

        CHAPTER ELEVEN

          "O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
                "You've had a pleasant runt
          Shall we be trotting home again?"
                But answer came there none-

     I just stared at him. Either he was crazy or  I was - and several times
in the last  hour I'd been wondering about myself. What's  your bug  number?
What a question to ask a man in the spot I was in. What's yours?
     Finally I managed to answer. "Huh?" I said.
     "Your bug number. Your label number."
     I got it then. I wasn't crazy after all. I knew what he meant.
     I  run a union shop,  which means that I've signed  a contract with the
International  Typographical  Union and pay  Pete, my  only  employee, union
wages. In a  town as  small as  Carmel City, you can get by with a non-union
shop, but I happen to believe in unions and to think the typographical union
is a good one.  Being a union shop, we put the  union label on everything we
print.  It's a little oval-shaped dingus, so small  you can  barely read the
type if you've got good eyesight. And alongside it is an equally tiny number
which is the number of my particular shop among the  other union shops in my
area. By the combination of the place name which is part of the label itself
and the number of the shop beside  it, you can tell where any given piece of
union printing has been done.
     But  that little oval  logotype  is known to non-union printers as "the
bug." It  does, I'll admit, look rather like a  tiny bug crawling across the
bottom corner of whatever it's  put on. And non-union printers call the shop
number  alongside  the "bug" the "bug number." Kates wasn't a printer, union
or otherwise,  but I remember now that two  of his brothers,  both living in
Neilsville, were  non-union printers, and naturally he'd have picked up  the
language - and the implied prejudice back of it - from them.
     I said, "My label number is seven."
     He  slapped the calling  card  down on  the desk  in front  of him.  He
snorted -  quite  literally; you often read about people snorting but seldom
hear them  do it.  He said, "Stoeger, you  printed this damn thing yourself.
The whole thing is a gag. Damn you-"
     He started to get up and then sat  down  again and looked at the papers
in front of him. He looked back at me and I think he was going to tell me to
get the hell out, and then apparently  he decided he might as well wait till
Hank got back.
     He shuffled papers.
     I sat there and tried to absorb the fact that - apparently, at any rate
- that Yehudi Smith calling card had been printed  in  my own shop. I didn't
get up to look at it. Somehow, I was  perfectly willing  to take Kates' word
for it.
     Why not?  It was part of the pattern. I should have guessed, it myself.
Not from  the typeface; almost every shop has eight-point Garamond. But from
the fact that the "DRINK  ME" bottle had contained  poison and Yehudi wasn't
going to be there when Hank looked  for him. It  followed the pattern, and I
knew now what the pattern was. It was the pattern of madness.
     Mine - or whose?  I was getting  scared. I'd been  scared several times
already that night, but this was a different  variety of  scaredness. I  was
getting scared of the night itself, of the pattern of the night.
     I needed a drink,  and I  needed it bad. I stood up and started for the
door. The  swivel chair  screamed and Kates  said, "Where the hell you think
you're going?"
     "Down to  my car. Going  to get something. I'll be back." I didn't want
to get into an argument with him.
     "Sit down. You're not going out of here."
     I did want to get into an argument with him. "Am I under arrest? And on
what charge?"
     "Material witness in a murder  case, Stoeger. If there's a corpse where
you say  there's  one.  If  there  isn't,  we  can  switch it to  drunk  and
disorderly. Take your choice."
     I took my choice. I sat down again.
     He had me over a barrel and I could see that he loved it. I wished that
I'd   gone  to  my  office  and  phoned  the  state  police,  regardless  of
repercussions.
     I waited. That "bug number" angle of Kates' had thrown  me off thinking
about how it  could be  and why it would be that Yehudi Smith's calling card
had been printed  in my own print shop. Not  that, come to thick of  it, the
"how" had been difficult. I lock the door when I leave, but I lock it with a
dime-store skeleton key.  They come two on a card  for  a dime. Yes, Anybody
could have got in. And Anybody, whoever he was, could have printed that card
without knowing a damn thing about printing. You have to know the  printer's
case  to set  type in quantity, but anybody  could pick out a dozen letters,
more or  less, to  spell out Yehudi Smith  simply  by  trial  and error. The
little hand press I print cards on is so simple that a child - well, anyway,
a high school kid - could figure out how to operate it. True, he'd get lousy
impressions and  waste  a  lot of  cards  trying  to  get  one good one. But
Anybody, if he tried long enough, could have printed one good card that said
Yehudi Smith and carried my union label in the bottom corner.
     But why would Anybody have done something like that?
     The more I thought about it the less  sense it made, although one thing
did emerge that made even less sense than the rest of it. It would have been
easier to print  that  card without the union label than with it, so Anybody
had gone to a little  additional trouble to bring out the fact that the card
had been printed at  the Clarion.  Except  for the death of Yehudi Smith the
whole thing might have been  the pattern of a  monstrous practical joke. But
practical jokes  don't include sudden death. Not even such a fantastic death
as Yehudi Smith had met.
     Why had Yehudi Smith died?
     Somewhere there had to be a key.
     And  that reminded me of  the  key in  my pocket and I took  it out and
stared at it, wondering what  I could  open with  it. Somewhere there was  a
lock that it fitted.
     It didn't look either familiar or unfamiliar. Yale keys don't. Could it
be mine? I thought about all the keys I  owned. The key to the front door of
my house was a Yale type key, but not actually a Yale. Besides-
     I took the keytainer from my pocket and opened it. My front door key is
on the left  and I compared it with the key I'd brought away from the attic.
The notches didn't match;  it  wasn't  a  duplicate of that  one. And it was
still more different from my back door key, the one on the other side of the
row. In between were two other keys but both were quite different types. One
was the  key  to the door at the  Clarion office and the  other  was for the
garage behind my house. I  never use the garage key; I keep nothing of value
in the garage except the car itself and I always leave it locked.
     It seemed to me that  I'd had five keys  instead of  four, there on the
keytainer, but I couldn't remember for sure and  I couldn't  figure out what
the missing one was, if one really was missing.
     Not the key to my  car; I didn't keep  that on the keytainer (I hate  a
keytainer dangling and swinging from my  ignition lock,  so I  carry the car
key loose in my vest pocket).
     I  put  the keytainer back in  my pocket and stared at  the single  key
again. I wondered suddenly if it could  be  a duplicate of my car key. But I
couldn't compare it to  see because, this time, I'd left the key in the lock
when I'd got out of the  car, thinking  I  was going to  be  up  here in the
sheriffs office only  a minute or two and that then  he'd  be heading out to
the Wentworth place with me.
     Kates must  have turned his head -  not his swivel chair, for it didn't
squeak - and seen me staring at the key. He asked, "What's that?"
     "A key," I said. "A key to unlock a riddle. A key to murder."
     The chair did squeak then. "Stoeger, what the hell? Are you just drunk,
or are you crazy?"
     "I don't know," I said. "Which do you think?"
     He snorted. "Let's see that key." I handed it to him.
     "What's it open?"
     "I don't  know." I  was getting  mad again - not particularly at  Kates
this time; at everything. "I know what it's supposed to open."
     "What?"
     "A little door fifteen inches high off a room at the bottom of a rabbit
hole. It leads to a beautiful garden."
     He looked at me a long time. I looked back. I didn't give a damn.
     I heard a car outside. That would be Hank Ganzer, probably. He wouldn't
have found the body of Yehudi Smith  in the attic  out  on the pike.  I knew
that, somehow.
     And how Kates was going to react to that,  I could guess. Even  though,
obviously, he didn't believe a damn word of it to begin with. I'd have given
a  lot, just then, to be inside  Rance Kates' mind, or what he uses for one,
to see just what he was  thinking. I'd have given a lot  more, though, to be
inside the mind of Anybody, the person  who'd printed Yehudi Smith's card on
my hand press and who'd put the poison in the "DRINK ME" bottle.
     Hank's steps coming up the stairs.
     He came in the door and his eyes happened to be looking in my direction
first. He said, "Hi, Doc," casually and then turned to Kates. "No sign of an
accident, Rance. I drove slow, watched both sides  of the road. No sign of a
car going off. But look, maybe we should both do it. If one of us could keep
moving the spotlight back and forth while the other drove, we could see back
farther."  He  looked  at his wrist watch. "It's only two-thirty. Won't  get
light until six, and in that long a time-"
     Kates nodded.  "Okay, Hank. But listen, I'm going to get the state boys
in  on  this case - well, in  case  Bonney's car turns up somewhere else. We
know when they  left  Neilsville, but we can't be positive they  started for
Carmel City."
     "Why wouldn't they?"
     "How would I  know?" Kates said.  "But  if  they  did  start here, they
didn't get here."
     I might as well not have been there at all.
     I cut in. "Hank, did you go to the Wentworth place?"
     He looked at me. "Sure, Doc. Listen, what kind of a gag was that?"
     "Did you look in the attic?"
     "Sure. Looked all around it with my flashlight."
     I'd known it, but I closed my eyes.
     Kates surprised me, after all. His  voice  was almost gentle. "Stoeger,
get the hell out of here. Go home and sleep it off."
     I opened my eyes again and looked at Hank. "All right,"  I  said,  "I'm
drunk or crazy. But listen, Hank, was there a candle stub standing on top of
the post at the top of the attic steps?"
     He shook his head slowly.
     "A glass-topped table, standing in one corner  - it'd be the  northwest
corner of the attic?"
     "I  didn't  see it, Doc.  I wasn't  looking  for tables. But  I'd  have
noticed a  candle stub, if it had been on the stair post. I remember putting
my hand on it when I started down."
     "And you don't recall seeing a dead body on the floor?"
     Hank  didn't even answer me. He looked back at Kates. "Rance, maybe I'd
better  drive Doc home while you're making those  calls.  Where's  your car,
Doc?"
     "Across the street."
     "Okay, we  won't  give  you  a  parking  ticket. I'll drive you home in
mine." He looked at Kates for corroboration.
     Kates gave it. I hated Kates for it. He was  grinning at me. He had  me
in such a nasty spot that, damn  him, he could afford to be  generous. If he
threw me  in the can overnight, I could fight  back. If he sent  me  home to
sleep it off - and even gave me a chauffeur to take me there-
     Hank Ganzer said, "Come on, Doc." He was going through the door.
     I got to  my feet.  I didn't want to  go home. If I went  home now, the
murderer of  Yehudi Smith  would have the rest  of the night, to finish - to
finish what? And what was  it to me, except that I'd liked Yehudi Smith? And
who the hell was Yehudi Smith?
     I said, "Listen, Kates-"
     Kates looked past me at the doorway. He said, "Go on,  Hank. See if his
car  is parked straight  or out in the middle of the street. I want to  tell
him something and then I'll send him down. I think he can make it."
     He probably hoped I'd break my neck going down the steps.
     "Sure, Rance." Hank's footsteps going down the stairs. Diminuendo.
     Kates looked up at me. I was standing  in front of his desk, trying not
to look like a  boy caught cheating in  an examination standing in  front of
his teacher's desk.
     I caught his eyes,  and almost took a step backward: I  hated Kates and
knew that he hated me, but I hated him as one hates a man in office whom one
knows  to be a stupid oaf  and a crook. He hated me,  I  thought, as someone
who, as an editor, had power - and used it - against men like him.
     But the look in his  eyes wasn't that. It was sheer personal hatred and
malevolence. It was something  I  hadn't  suspected,  and it  shocked  me. I
don't, after fifty-three years, shock easily.
     And then  that look was gone, as suddenly as when you turn out a light.
He was looking at me  impersonally.  His voice  was impersonal, almost flat,
not  nearly as loud as usual. He said, "Stoeger, you know what I could do to
you on something like this, don't you?"
     I  didn't  answer; he didn't  expect  me to.  Yes, I knew  some  of the
things. The  can overnight on a drunk and  disorderly charge was a  starting
point. And if, in the morning, I persisted in my illusions, he could call in
Dr. Buchan for a psychiatric once-over.
     He said, "I'm not  doing it. But I want you out of my hair from now on.
Understand?"
     I  didn't answer  that,  either.  If  he wanted  to  think  silence was
consent, all right. Apparently he did. He  said, "Now  get the hell  out  of
here."
     I  got the  hell out of  there. I'd  got off easy. Except for that look
he'd given me.
     No, I didn't feel  like a conquering hero about it. I should have faced
up to it, and I should have  insisted that there had been a  murder in  that
attic, whether there  was a corpus  delicti there now or not. But  I was too
mixed up myself. I wanted time to think things out, to figure what  the hell
had really happened.
     I went down the stairs and out into the night again.
     Hank  Ganzer's car was  parked right in front, but he  was just getting
out of my car, across the street. I walked over toward him.
     He said, "You were  a little  far out from the curb, Doc. I moved it in
for you. Here's your key."
     He handed me the key and I stuck it in my pocket and then  reopened the
door he'd just closed  to get  the bottle of  whisky  that was  lying on the
seat. No use leaving that, even if I had to leave the car here.
     I stepped back, then,  to  the  back of the car to take another look at
those back tires.  I still  couldn't  believe them; this morning they'd been
completely flat. That was part of the puzzle, too.
     Hank came back and stood by me. "What's the matter, Doc?" he asked. "If
you're looking  at your tires, they're okay." He  kicked the one  nearest to
him and  then walked around and  kicked  the  other. He  started  back,  and
stopped. He said, "Say, Doc, something you got in  your luggage  compartment
must've spilled over. Did you have a can of paint or something in there?"
     I shook my head and came around to see  what he was  looking at. It did
look as though something  had run  out from  under  the bottom edge  of  the
luggage compartment door. Something thick and blackish.
     Hank turned the handle and tried to lift.
     "It's not locked," I said. "I never bother to lock it. Nothing in there
but a worn-out tire without a tube in it."
     He tried again. "The hell it's not locked. Where's the key?"
     Another piece of the pattern fell into place. I knew now what the fifth
key,  the  middle  one,  on my keytainer should have been.  I never lock the
luggage  compartment of  my car except  on the rare occasions when I  take a
trip and really have luggage in it. But I carry the key on my keytainer. And
it was  a Yale  key and it hadn't been there when  I'd  looked a few minutes
ago.
     I  said, "Kates  has  got it." It had  to be.  One Yale key  looks like
another, but the card, Yehudi Smith's card, had been printed in my own shop.
The key would be mine, too.
     Hank said, "Huh?"
     I said again, "Kates has got it."
     Hank looked at  me strangely. He said, "Wait just  a minute, Doc,"  and
walked across to his own car. Twice, on the way, he looked back as though to
be sure I wasn't going to get in and drive away.
     He got a flashlight out of his glove compartment and came back. He bent
down with it and took a close look at those streaks.
     I stepped closer  to look, too. Hank  stepped  back,  as  though he was
suddenly afraid to have me behind him and peering over his shoulder.
     So I didn't have to  look. I knew what those streaks were, or what Hank
thought they were.
     He said, "Seriously, Doc, where's the key?"
     "I'm  serious," I told him. "I  gave it to Rance  Kates.  I didn't know
what key it was then. I'm pretty sure I do, now."
     I thought I knew what was in that luggage compartment now, too.
     He looked at me uncertainly and then walked part way across the street,
angling so he could watch me. He cupped his hands around his lips and called
out,  "Rance! Hey, Rance!" And then  looked  quickly back to see that I  was
neither sneaking up on him nor trying to get into the car to drive away.
     Nothing happened and he did it again.
     A window opened and Kates was silhouetted against the light back of it.
He called back,  "What the hell, Hank,  if you want  me  come up here. Don't
wake up the whole God damned town."
     Hank looked back over  his shoulder  at me again. Then he  called, "Did
Doc give you a key?"
     "Yes. Why? What kind of a yarn is he feeding you?"
     "Bring down the key, Rance. Quick."
     He  looked back over his shoulder again, started  toward, me, and  then
hesitated. He compromised by staying where he was, but watching me.
     The window slammed down.
     I walked back around the car and I  almost decided to light a match and
look at those stains myself. And then I decided, what the hell.
     Hank came a few steps closer. He said, "Where you going, Doc?"
     I was at the curb by then. I said, "Nowhere," and sat down.
     To wait.

        CHAPTER TWELVE

          Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
                 And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
          Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea-
                 And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times three!

     The courthouse door opened and  closed.  Kates crossed the  street.  He
looked at me and asked Hank, "What's wrong?"
     "Don't  know,  Rance.  Looks like  blood  has dripped from the  luggage
compartment of Doc's car. It's locked. He says he gave you the key. I didn't
want to - uh - leave him to come up and get it. So I yelled for you."
     Kates nodded. His face was toward me and Hank Ganzer couldn't see it. I
could. It looked happy, very happy.
     His  hand went inside his coat  and came out with a pistol.  He  asked,
"Did you frisk him, Hank?"
     "No."
     "Go ahead."
     Hank came around Kates and came up to me from the side. I stood up  and
held  out my hands to make it easy for him. The bottle of whisky was  in one
of them. He found nothing more deadly than that.
     "Clean," Hank said.
     Kates didn't  put his pistol away.  He reached into a pocket  with  his
free hand and  took  out the key  I'd given him. He tossed it to Hank. "Open
the compartment," he said.
     The key fitted. The handle turned. Hank lifted the door.
     I heard the sudden  intake  of his breath and  I turned and looked. Two
bodies; I could  see  that  much. I couldn't tell who they were from where I
stood. Hank leaned farther in, using his flashlight.
     He said, "Miles Harrison, Rance. And Ralph Bonney. Both dead."
     "How'd he kill 'em?"
     "Hit over the  head  with something. Hard.  Must've been  several blows
apiece. There's lots of blood."
     "Weapon there?"
     "What looks  like it. There's a revolver  - an old  one - with blood on
the  butt.  Nickel-plated  Iver-Johnson,  rusty  where  the  plating's  off.
Thirty-eight, I think."
     "The money there? The pay roll?"
     "There's what looks like a brief case under Miles." Hank turned around.
His face was as pale as the starlight. "Do I got to - uh - move him, Rance?"
     Kates thought a minute. "Maybe  we better not. Maybe we  better take  a
photo  first.  Listen,  Hank,  you go  upstairs  and  get  that  camera  and
flash-gun. And while you're there, phone Dr. Heil to get here right away. Uh
- you're sure they're both dead?"
     "Christ,  yes, Rance. Their heads are beaten  in. Shall I call Dorberg,
too?"  Dorberg  is  the  local  mortician  who  gets whatever  business  the
sheriff's  office can throw his  way; he's  Kates' brother-in-law, which may
have a bearing on the fact.
     Kates said, "Sure, tell him to bring the wagon.  But tell him no hurry;
we want the coroner to have  a look before we  move 'em. And we want the pix
even before that."
     Hank  started for  the courthouse door  and then  turned  again.  "Uh -
Rance, how about calling Miles' wife and Bonney's factory?"
     I sat down on the curb again. I wanted a drink  more badly than before,
and  the bottle was  in my  hand. But it didn't  seem  right,  just  at that
moment, to take one.  Miles' wife,  I thought, and Bonney's factory.  What a
hell of a  difference that was. But Bonney had been divorced  that very day;
he had no  children, no relatives at all - at least in Carmel City  - that I
knew  of.  But  then  I didn't  have either.  If I  was  murdered, who'd  be
notified? The Carmel  City Clarion,  and maybe Carl Trenholm, if whoever did
the notifying  knew that Trenholm was my closest friend.  Yes,  maybe on the
whole it was better  that I'd never  married. I thought of Bonney's  divorce
and  the facts behind it  that Carl -  through  Smiley - had told me. And  I
thought of how Miles Harrison's wife would be feeling tonight as soon as she
got  the news. But that was different; I didn't  know whether it was good or
bad that nobody would feel that way about me if I died suddenly.
     Just  the same I felt  lonely as hell. Well, they'd arrest  me now  and
that would mean I could call Carl as  my attorney. I was  going to  be in  a
hell of a spot, but Carl would believe me - and believe that I was sane - if
anybody would.
     Kates had been thinking. He said,  "Not yet -  either  of  them,  Hank.
Milly especially;  she might rush  down here  and get here before we got the
bodies  to Dorberg's.  And  we  might  as  well be able to tell  the factory
whether  the pay  roll's  there when we phone  them. Maybe  Stoeger  hid  it
somewhere else and we won't get it back tonight."
     Hank  said, "That's right,  about  Milly. We  wouldn't  want her to see
Miles  - that way.  Okay, so I'll call  Heil and Dorberg and  then come back
with the camera."
     "Quit talking. Get going."
     Hank went on into the courthouse.
     It  wasn't  any use, but I had to  say it.  I  said, "Listen, Kates,  I
didn't do that. I didn't kill them."
     Kates said, "You son of a bitch. Miles was a good guy."
     "He was. I didn't kill him." I thought, I wish Miles had let me buy him
that  drink  early in the  evening. I wish I'd known;  I'd have insisted and
talked him into it. But that was silly, of course; you  can't know things in
advance. If you could, you could stop them from happening. Except of  course
in the Looking-Glass  country where people sometimes lived backwards,  where
the White Queen had screamed first and then later stuck  the needle into her
finger. But even then - except,  of course, that the Alice books were merely
delightful nonsense, - why hadn't  she simply not  picked up the needle  she
knew she was going to stick herself with?
     Delightful  nonsense,  that is,  until  tonight.  Tonight  somebody was
making gibbering horror out of Lewis Carroll's most amusing episodes. "Drink
Me" - and die suddenly and horribly. That key - it had been supposed to open
a  fifteen-inch-high door into a  beautiful garden.  What it had opened  the
door to - well, I didn't care to look.
     I sighed and thought,  what the  hell, it's over with now. I'm going to
be arrested  and Kates thinks I killed Miles and  Bonney, but I can't  blame
him for thinking it. I've got to wait till Carl can get me out of this.
     Kates said, "Stand up, Stoeger."
     I didn't. Why should I? I'd just thought, why would Miles or Ralph mind
if I took a drink out of  this bottle in my  hand? I  started to unscrew the
top.
     "Stand up, Stoeger. Or I'll shoot you right there."
     He meant it. I stood up. His face, as he stood then, was in the shadow,
but I  remembered that look of malevolence he'd given me in his office,  the
look that said, "I'd like to kill you."
     He was going to shoot me. Here and now.
     It was safe as  houses for him to do  so. He could claim - if I  turned
and ran and he shot me in the back - that  he'd shot because I was trying to
escape.  And if from the front that I - a  homicidal maniac  who had already
killed Miles and Bonney - was coming toward him to attack him.
     That was why he'd sent Hank away and given him  two phone calls to make
so he wouldn't be back for minutes.
     I said, "Kates,  you're not  serious. You wouldn't shoot a man down  in
cold blood."
     "A man  who'd killed  a deputy of mine, yes. If  I don't, Stoeger,  you
might beat the rap.  You might  get certified as a looney  and get away with
it. I'll make sure." That wasn't all of it, of  course,  but  it gave him an
excuse to help his own conscience. I'd killed a deputy of his, he'd thought.
But he'd hated me enough to want to  kill me even before he'd  thought that.
Hatred and sadism - given a perfect excuse.
     What could I do? Yell? It wouldn't help. Probably nobody awake - it was
well  after  three  o'clock  by  now  - would hear me  in  time to see  what
happened.  Hank would be phoning in the back office; he wouldn't  get to the
window in time.
     And Kates would claim that I yelled as I jumped him; yelling would just
trigger the gun.
     He stepped closer; if he shot me in the front there'd have to be powder
marks  to show  that  he'd shot  while  I was coming at him.  The gun muzzle
centered on my chest, barely  a  foot away. I could live seconds longer if I
turned  and ran; he'd probably  wait until I was a dozen  steps away in that
case.
     His face was still in the shadow, but I could see that he was grinning.
I  couldn't see his eyes or most  of the rest of his face, just that grin. A
disembodied grin,  like  that  of the Cheshire cat in Alice. But unlike  the
Cheshire cat, he wasn't going to fade away.
     I  was. Unless something unexpected  happened.  Like  maybe  a  witness
coming along, over there on the opposite  sidewalk. He  wouldn't shoot me in
cold blood before a witness. Carl Trenholm, Al Grainger, anybody.
     I looked over Kates' shoulder and called out, "Hi, Al!"
     Kates  turned. He  had to; he couldn't take a chance on the possibility
that there was really someone coming.
     He turned his head just for a quick glance, to be sure.
     I  swung  the  whisky bottle. Maybe I should say  my hand swung  it;  I
hadn't even remembered that I still held it. It hit Kates alongside the head
and like as not the brim  of his hat saved his life. I  think  I  swung hard
enough to have killed him if he'd been bare headed.
     Kates and the revolver  he'd been holding  hit the  street, separately.
The  whisky  bottle slid  out of my hand and hit  the paving; it  broke. The
paving  must  have  been harder  than Kates' head - or maybe it  would  have
broken on Kates' head if it hadn't been for the brim of his hat.
     I didn't even stop to find out if he was dead. I ran like hell.
     Afoot,  of course.  The ignition key of my car  was still in my pocket,
but driving off with two corpses was just about the  last thing in the world
I wanted to do.
     I ran a block and winded myself before I realized I hadn't the faintest
idea  where  I was going. I slowed down and  got off Oak Street.  I cut back
into the first alley.  I fell over a garbage can and then sat down on  it to
get my wind back  and to think out what I was going to do. But I had to move
on because a dog started barking.
     I found myself behind the courthouse.
     I wanted,  of course, to know  who  had killed Ralph  Bonney  and Miles
Harrison and put their bodies in my car, but there was something that seemed
of even more immediate interest; I wanted to know if I'd killed Rance  Kates
or seriously  injured him. If  I had, I was  in a hell of a jam because - in
addition  to everything  else against me - it  would be my word against  his
that I'd done it in  self-defense, to save my own life. My word against his,
that is, if he were  only injured. My word  against nothing  at all  if  I'd
killed him.
     And my word  wouldn't mean a damn  thing  to anybody until and unless I
could account for two corpses in my car.
     The  first window I tried was unlocked. I guess they're  careless about
locking  windows of the courthouse because, for  one reason, there's nothing
kept  there that  any ordinary burglar would want to steal, and  for another
reason because the  sheriff's office is in the  building, and somebody's  on
duty there all night long.
     I  slid  the window up very slowly and it didn't  make much  noise, not
enough, anyway, to have been heard  in the sheriffs office, which is  on the
second floor and near the front. I pat it down again, just as quietly, so it
wouldn't be an open giveaway if the search for me went through the alley.
     I groped in the dark till I found a chair and sat  down to collect what
wits  I had left and  figure  what to  do next. I  was fairly safe  for  the
moment. The room I'd entered was one of  the  small anterooms off the  court
room; nobody would look for me here, as long as I kept quiet.
     They'd found the sheriff, all right, or the sheriff had come around and
found himself. There were footsteps on the front stairs,  footsteps of  more
than one  person. But back  here I was too far away  to  hear what was being
said, if any talking was going on.
     But that could wait for a minute or two.
     I wished to  hell that I had a  drink; I'd never wanted one worse in my
life. I cussed myself for having dropped and broken that bottle - and  after
it had saved my life, at that.  If I hadn't happened to have  it in my hand,
I'd have been dead.
     I  don't  know  how long I sat there, but it probably wasn't over a few
minutes  because I  was still breathing  a little  hard when  I decided  I'd
better move. If I'd  had a  bottle to  keep me company, I'd have  gladly sat
there the rest of the night, I think.
     But I had to find out what happened to Kates. If I'd killed him - or if
he'd been taken to the hospital and was out of the picture - then I'd better
give  myself up and  get it  over  with. If he was all right, and was  still
running things, that wouldn't be a very smart thing to do. If he'd wanted to
kill me  before I'd knocked him out with that bottle, he'd want to  do it so
badly  now  that he would  do  it,  maybe without even bothering to  find an
excuse, right  in front of  Hank  or  any  of  the  other deputies  who were
undoubtedly being waked up to join the manhunt, in front  of the  coroner or
anybody else who happened to be around.
     I bent down and took my shoes off before I got up. I put one in each of
the side pockets of my coat and then  tiptoed out through  the court room to
the back stairs. I'd been in the building so many thousand times that I knew
the layout almost as well as that of my own home or the  Clarion office, and
I didn't run into anything or fall over anything.
     I guided myself up the dark back  staircase with a hand on the banister
and avoiding the middle of the steps, where they'd be most likely to creak.
     Luckily there is an el in the upstairs hallway that runs from the front
stairs to the back ones so there  wasn't any danger  of my being seen,  when
I'd reached  the top of  the  stairs, by  anyone  entering  or  leaving  the
sheriff's  office.  And I had  dim light now,  from  the light in the  front
hallway near the sheriff's office door.
     I tiptoed along almost to the turn of the hall and then  tried the door
of the  county surveyor's office, which is next  to the sheriff's office and
with only an ordinary door with a ground glass pane  between them.  The door
was unlocked.
     I got it open very quietly. It slipped out of my hand when I started to
close it from  the inside and almost slammed,  but I caught  it  in time and
eased it shut. I would have liked to  lock it, but I didn't know whether the
lock would click or not, so I didn't take a chance on that.
     I  had  plenty of light, comparatively, in the  surveyor's  office; the
ground glass pane of the door to the  sheriff's office  was  a bright yellow
rectangle through which came enough light to let me see the office furniture
clearly.  I  avoided  it carefully and  tiptoed my  way toward  that  yellow
rectangle.
     I could hear voices now and as I neared the door I could hear them even
better, but I couldn't  quite  make  out whose they were or  what they  were
saying until I put my  ear against the glass.  I  could hear perfectly well,
then.
     Hank Ganzer was saying, "It still throws me, Rance. A gentle little old
guy like Doc. Two murders and-"
     "Gentle, hell!" It was Kates'  voice.  "Maybe when he was sane he  was,
but he's crazier than a bedbug now. Ow! Go easy with that tape, will you?"
     Dr. Heil's voice was soft, harder to understand. He seemed to be urging
that  Kates  should  let himself be taken to the hospital  to  be sure there
wasn't any concussion.
     "The  hell with that," Kates said.  "Not till we get  Stoeger before he
kills anybody else. Like he killed Miles and Bonney and damn near killed me.
Hank, what's about the bodies?"
     "I made a quick preliminary examination." Heil's voice was clearer now.
"Cause of death is pretty  obviously repeated blows on their heads with what
seems to have been that  rusty pistol on your  desk. And with  the stains on
the pistol butt, I don't think there's any reason to doubt it."
     "They still out front?"
     Hank  said, "No,  they're at Dorberg's - or on their way there.  He and
one of has boys came around with his meat wagon."
     "Doc." It  was  Kates' voice and  it  made  me  jump a  little until  I
realized that he was talking to Dr. Heil and not to me.  "You about through?
With that God  damn  bandage, I mean. I  got to get going on this. Hank, how
many of the boys did you get on the phone? How many are coming down?"
     "Three,  Rance.  I got  Watkins, Ehlers  and Bill  Dean. They're all on
their way down. Be here in a few minutes. That'll make five of us."
     "Guess that fixes up things as well as I can  here,  Rance," Dr. Heil's
voice said. "I still suggest you go around to the  hospital for an X-ray and
a check-up as soon as you can."
     "Sure, Doc. Soon  as I catch Stoeger. And he can't get out of town with
the state police watching the roads for us, even  if he steals a car. You go
on around to Dorberg's and take care of things there, huh?"
     Heil's  voice,  soft  again, said something I  couldn't hear, and there
were footsteps toward the outer hall. I could hear other footsteps coming up
the stairs. One or more of the day-shift deputies were arriving.
     Kates said, "Hi, Bill, Walt. Ehlers with you?"
     "Didn't see  him. Probably be here in a minute." It  sounded  like Bill
Dean's voice.
     "That's  all right. We'll  leave him here,  anyway. You both  got  your
guns? Good. Listen, you  two  are going  together and Hank  and I  are going
together.  We'll work in pairs. Don't worry about the roads leading out; the
state boys are watching them for  us. And there's  no train or bus  out till
late tomorrow morning. We just comb the town."
     "Divide it between us, Rance?"
     "No. You,  Walt,  and Bill  cover the whole  town. Drive  through every
street  and alley. Hank and I will take places he  might have  holed  in  to
hide. We'll  search  his house and the Clarion  office,  whether  there  are
lights on or not,  and  we'll  try any place else that's  indoors  where  he
might've holed in.  He might pick an empty house, for  instance. Anybody got
any other suggestions where he might think of holing in?"
     Bill Dean's voice said, "He's pretty thick with Carl Trenholm. He might
go to Carl."
     "Good idea, Bill. Anybody else?"
     Hank said, "He looked pretty drunk to me. And he broke  that bottle  he
had. Might get into his head he wants another drink and break into a tavern.
Probably Smiley's; that's where he hangs out, mostly."
     "Okay, Hank. We'll  check - That must  be Dick coming.  Any more ideas,
anybody, before we split up?"
     Ehlers  was coming  in  now. Hank said,  "Sometimes a guy  doubles back
where  he  figures nobody'll figure  where he is.  I  mean,  Rance, maybe he
doubled back here and got in  the back way or something, thinking the safest
place to hide's right under our noses. Right here in the building."
     Kates said, "You heard that, Dick. And you're staying here to watch the
office, so that's your job. Search the building here first before you settle
down."
     "Right, Rance."
     Kates said, "One  more  thing. He's dangerous. He's probably  armed  by
now. So don't take any chances. When you see him, start shooting."
     "At  Doc  Stoeger?"  Someone's voice  sounded  surprised  and a  little
shocked. I couldn't tell which of the deputies it was.
     "At  Doc Stoeger,"  Kates said.  "Maybe  you think of him as a harmless
little  guy - but that's  the kind  that  generally makes homicidal maniacs.
He's  killed two men tonight and tried  to kill me,  probably thought he did
kill  me,  or he'd stayed  and finished the job. And don't forget who one of
the men he did kill was. Miles."
     Somebody muttered something.
     Bill Dean - I think it was Bill Dean - said, "I don't get it, though. A
guy like Doc. He isn't broke; he's got a paper that makes money and he's not
a  crook. Why'd he  suddenly want  to kill two men for  a couple of thousand
lousy bucks?"
     Kates swore. He said, "He's nuts, went off the beam. The money probably
didn't have much to do  with it, although he  took it all  right. It was  in
that brief  case under Miles' body. Now listen, this is the last time I tell
you; he's a  homicidal maniac and you  better remember Miles the  minute you
spot him and shoot  quick.  He's crazy as a bedbug. Came in here with a cock
and bull story about a guy being croaked out at  the Wentworth place - a guy
named Yehudi Smith, of all names.  And Doc had  a card to prove  it, only he
printed the  card himself. Crazy enough to put  his  own bug number -  union
label number -  on it. Gives me a key that he says opens a fifteen-inch-high
door  to  a  beautiful  garden.  Well,  that  was  the  key to  the  luggage
compartment of his own car, see?  With  Miles' and  Bonney's bodies, and the
pay roll  money, in it. Parked right in front. He'd driven it here. Comes up
and  gives me  the key. And tries  to  get me to go to a haunted house  with
him."
     "Did anybody look there?" Dean asked.
     Hank said,  "Sure, Bill. On my way back  from Neilsville.  Went through
the whole dump. Nothing. And listen, Rance is right about him being crazy. I
heard some of  the I stuff  he said,  myself.  And  if you don't  think he's
dangerous, look at Rance. I'm sorry about it, I liked  Doc. But damn it, I'm
with Rance on shooting first and catching him afterwards."
     Somebody: "God damn it, if he killed Miles-"
     "If he's that crazy-" I think it was Dick Ehlers. "-we'd be doing him a
favor,  the way I figure it. If I  ever go that far off the beam, homicidal,
damn if I wouldn't rather be shot than spend the rest of my life in a padded
cell. But what made him go off that way? All of a sudden, I mean?"
     "Alcohol. Softens the brain, and then all of a sudden, whang."
     "Doc didn't drink that much. He'd get drunk, a little, a night or two a
week, but he wasn't an alcoholic. And he was such a nice-"
     A fist hit a desk. It would have been  Kates' fist and Kates'  desk. It
was Kates' swivel chair that squealed and his voice said, "What the hell are
we  having a sewing circle for. Come on, let's go out and get him. And about
shooting  first, that's orders. I've  lost one deputy tonight  already. Come
on."
     Footsteps, lots of them, toward the door.
     Kates' voice calling back  from  it. "And don't forget  to  search this
building, Dick. Cellar to roof, before you settle down here."
     "Right, Rance."
     Footsteps, lots of heavy footsteps, going down the steps.
     And one set of them turning back along the hallway.
     Toward the County Surveyor's office.
     Toward me.

        CHAPTER THIRTEEN

          And he was very proud and stiff;
                 He said "I'd go and wake them, if-"
          I took a corkscrew from the shelf;
                 I went to wake them up myself.

     I  hoped he'd take  Rance Kates' orders literally and search  the place
from cellar to attic, in that order.  If he did, I could get out either  the
front or back way while he was in the basement. But  he might start  on this
floor, with this room.
     So I tiptoed to the door, pulling one of my shoes out of my pocket as I
went. I stood flat against the wall by the door, gripping the shoe, ready to
swing the heel of it if Ehlers' head came in.
     It  didn't. The footsteps went  on  past  and  started  down  the  back
staircase. I breathed again.
     I  opened the door  and  stepped  out  into the  hall  as soon  as  the
footsteps were at  the bottom of the  back steps. Out there in the  hall, in
the quiet of the night, I could hear him moving  about down there. He didn't
go to the  basement;  he was  taking the main floor first. That wasn't good.
With  him  on the first floor I couldn't  risk either  the front or the back
stairs; I was stuck up here.
     Outside  I heard  first one  car start and then  another. At  least the
front entrance was  clear  if I had  to try  to  leave that  way,  if Ehlers
started upstairs by the back staircase.
     I took a  spot  in the  middle  of the hallway,  equidistant from  both
flights of  steps. I could still  hear him walking  around down on the floor
below, but it was difficult to tell just where  he was. I had to be ready to
make a break in either direction.
     I swore to myself at the  thoroughness of Kates'  plans for finding me.
My house, my office, Carl's  place, Smiley's or another tavern - every place
I'd actually be likely to go. Even here, the courthouse, where I really was.
But luckily,  instead of all of them pitching in for a quick once-over here,
he'd left only one man to do the job, and as long as I could hear him and he
couldn't hear  me - and probably didn't believe I was really here at all - I
had an edge.
     Only,  damn it, why  didn't Ehlers  hurry?  I wanted a drink,  and if I
could get out of here,  I could get  one somewhere,  somehow. I was  shaking
like a leaf,  and  my thoughts  were, too. Even  one drink  would  steady me
enough to think straight.
     Maybe Kates kept a bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk.
     The way I  felt just then, it was worth trying. I listened hard to  the
sounds  below me and decided Ehlers was probably at the back of the building
and I tiptoed to the front and into Kates' office.
     I  went  back to his  desk and pulled the drawer  open very quietly and
slowly. There was a whisky bottle there. It was empty.
     I cussed Kates under my breath. It wasn't bad enough that he'd tried to
kill me; on top of that, he'd had to finish off  that bottle without leaving
a single drink in it. And it had been a good brand, too.
     I closed the drawer again as carefully as I'd opened  it, so there'd be
no sign of my having been there.
     Lying on  the  blotter on Kates' desk was  a revolver. I  looked at it,
wondering whether I should take it along with me. For a second the fact that
it was rusty didn't register and then I remembered Hank's description of the
gun  that had been  used as  a bludgeon to kill Miles and Bonney, and I bent
closer. Yes, it was  an Iver-Johnson, nickel-plated where the plating wasn't
worn or knocked off. This was the death weapon, then.
     Exhibit A.
     I reached out to pick it up, and then  jerked my hand  back.  Hadn't  I
been   framed  well  enough  without   helping  the  framer  by  putting  my
fingerprints  on that gun? That was all I needed, to have my fingerprints on
the  weapon  that  had  done  the  killing.  Or  were  they  there  already?
Considering  everything else, I wouldn't have  been too  surprised  if  they
were.
     Then I almost went through the ceiling. The phone rang.
     I  could hear, in  the silence between the  first  ring and the second,
Ehlers' footsteps starting upstairs. But back here in the office, I couldn't
tell whether  he was coming up the  front way  or the back, and I  might not
have time to make it anyway, even if I knew.
     I looked around frantically and saw a closet,  the door ajar. I grabbed
up the Iver-Johnson and ducked into the closet, behind the door. And I stood
there, trying not to breathe, while Ehlers came in and picked up the phone.
     He said, "Sheriff's  office,"  and  then, "Oh, you  Rance," and then he
listened a while.
     "You're phoning from the Clarion? Not at Smiley's or there, huh?... No,
no  calls have  come in... Yeah, I'm almost  through  looking  around  here.
Searched the  first floor and the basement. Just  got to go over this  floor
yet."
     I  swore at myself. He'd been down in the  basement, then, and I  could
have got away. But  the building had been so  quiet that his walking  around
down there had sounded to me as though it had been on the main floor.
     "Don't worry, I'm not taking any chances,  Rance. Gun in one hand and a
flashlight in the other."
     There was  a gun  in my hand too, and suddenly I realized what a damned
foolish thing I'd done to pick it up off Kates' desk. Ehlers must have known
it was  there. If he  missed it,  if he happened  to glance down at the desk
while he was talking on the phone-
     God must have loved me. He didn't. He said,  "Okay, Rance," and then he
put the phone down and walked out.
     I heard him  go back  along the  hallway and  around the  el  and start
opening doors back  there. I had  to  get  out quick, down  the front steps,
before he worked his way back  here. As a matter of  routine, he'd  probably
open this closet door too when he'd searched his way back to the office he'd
started from.
     I let  myself out and tiptoed down the steps. Out into the night again,
onto  Oak Street.  And  I had to get off it quick, because either of the two
cars looking for me might cruise by  at any moment. Carmel City isn't large;
a  car  can cruise all  of its streets  and  alleys  in  pretty short order.
Besides I still  had my shoes in my pockets  and - I  realized now - I still
had a gun in my hand.
     Hoping Ehlers wouldn't  happen to be looking out of any of the windows,
I  ran  around  the  corner  and into the  mouth of  the  alley  behind  the
courthouse. As soon as I was comparatively  safe in the friendly darkness, I
sat down  on  the alley curbstone  and put my shoes back on, and put the gun
into my pocket. I hadn't meant  to bring  it along at all, but as  long as I
had I couldn't throw it away now.
     Anyway, it was  going to get Dick Ehlers  in trouble  with  Kates. When
Kates looked for that gun and found it was missing, he'd know that  I'd been
in  the courthouse and that  Ehlers had missed  me. He'd know that  I'd been
right in his own office while he'd been out searching for me.
     And so there I was in the dark, in safety for a few minutes until a car
full of  deputies  decided to cruise down that particular  alley looking for
me. And I had a gun  in  my pocket that might or might not shoot -  I hadn't
checked that - and I had my shoes on and my hands were shaking again.
     I didn't even have to ask myself, Little man, what now. The  little man
not only wanted a drink; he really needed one.
     And Kates had  already been to Smiley's looking  for me and  had  found
that I wasn't there.
     So I started down the alley toward Smiley's.
     Funny, but  I was getting over being  scared. A little, anyway. You can
get only  just so  scared, and then something happens to your adrenal glands
or  something.  I can't  remember  offhand whether  your  adrenals  make you
frightened or whether they get going and operate against it,  but  mine were
getting either into or out of action, as the case  might be. I'd been scared
so much that night that I - or my glands - was getting tired of it.
     I was  getting brave, almost. And it wasn't  Dutch courage,  either; it
had been so long since  I'd had a drink that I'd  forgotten what  one tasted
like. I was cold damn sober. About three times during the course of the long
evening and the long night  I'd been on  the borderline of intoxication, but
always something had happened to  keep me from drinking for a while and then
something had sobered me up. Some foolish little thing  like being taken for
a ride by gangsters or watching a man die suddenly or horribly by quaffing a
bottle labeled "Drink Me" or finding murdered men in the  back of my own car
or discovering that a sheriff intended to shoot me down in cold grue. Little
things like that.
     So I kept going down the alley toward Smiley's. The dog that had barked
at me before barked again. But I  didn't  waste time barking back. I kept on
going down the alley toward Smiley's.
     There was the street to cross. I took a quick look both ways but didn't
worry  about  it  beyond  that.  If the sheriff's car  or the  deputies' car
suddenly turned the  corner and started spraying me with headlights and then
bullets,  well, then  that was that.  You can  only get so worried; then you
quit  worrying.  When things can't get any worse,  outside of  your  getting
killed, then either you get killed or things start getting better.
     Things started to get better; the window into the back room of Smiley's
was open. I didn't bother  taking  off  my shoes this time.  Smiley would be
asleep  upstairs, but alone, and Smiley's so sound  a sleeper that a bazooka
shell  exploding  in the next room wouldn't wake him.  I  remember times I'd
dropped  into the  tavern on a dull afternoon and found him  asleep; it  was
almost hopeless to try to wake him,  and I'd generally help myself and leave
the money on the ledge of the register. And he dropped asleep so quickly and
easily that even if Kates and Hank had wakened him when they'd looked for me
here, he'd be asleep again by now.
     In fact - yes, I could hear  a faint rumbling sound overhead, like very
distant thunder. Smiley snoring.
     I groped my  way  through the dark back room and opened the door to the
tavern.  There was a dim light in there that burned  all night long, and the
shades  were  left up. But Kates had already been here  and the  chances  of
anyone else  happening  to pass and  look in at half past three of a  Friday
morning were negligible.
     I took a bottle of the best bonded Bourbon Smiley had from the back bar
and because it looked as though there were still at least a fair chance that
this might be the last drink I ever had, I took a bottle of seltzer from the
case under  the bar. I took them to the table around the el,  the one that's
out of sight of the windows, the table at which Bat and George had sat early
this evening.
     Bat and George seemed,  now,  to have sat there  along time ago,  years
maybe, and seemed  not a tenth as  frightening as  they'd been at  the time.
Almost, they seemed a little funny, somehow.
     I  left  the  two  bottles on the  table  and went  back for a glass, a
swizzle  stick, and some ice  cubes  from  the  refrigerator. This drink I'd
waited a long time for, and it was going to be a good one.
     I'd even pay a  good price for it, I decided, especially after I looked
in my wallet and found I had several  tens but nothing  smaller. I put a ten
dollar  bill on the ledge of the register, and I wondered if I'd ever get my
change out of it.
     I went back to the table and made myself a drink, a good one.
     I lighted up a cigar, too. That was  a  bit risky because if Kates came
by here again for another check, he might see cigar  smoke in the dim light,
even  though I was out of his  range of vision.  But I decided the  risk was
worth it. You can, I was finding, get into such a Godawful jam that a little
more risk doesn't seem to matter at all.
     I  took a  good long  swig of the  drink  and then a deep drag from the
cigar, and I felt pretty good. I held out my hands and they weren't shaking.
Very silly of them not to be, but they weren't.
     Now, I thought, is my first chance  to  think for a long time. My first
real chance since Yehudi Smith had died.
     Little man, what now?
     The pattern. Could I make any sense out of the pattern?
     Yehudi  Smith  - only that undoubtedly wasn't his  real name, else  the
card he gave  me wouldn't have been printed in my own  shop - had called  to
see me and had told me-
     Skip  what he told you, I told  myself. That was gobbledegook, just the
kind of gobbledegook  that would entice you  to go to such a crazy place  at
such a crazy time. He knew you - that is, I corrected myself - he knew a lot
about  you. Your hobby and your weakness  and what  you  were and what would
interest you.
     His coming there was  planned. Planned well in advance; the card proved
that.
     According to a plan, then, he called on you at a time when  no one else
would be there. Probably,  sitting in his car, he'd watched  you  come home,
knowing  Mrs. Carr was there  - in all probability he  or  someone had  been
watching the house  all evening - and waiting  until she'd  left  to present
himself.
     No one had seen him, no one besides yourself.
     He'd  led  you on a wild-goose chase. There weren't any  Vorpal Blades;
that was gobbledegook, too.
     Connect  that with the  fact  that Miles Harrison and  Ralph Bonney had
been killed while  Yehudi Smith  was keeping you  entertained and busy,  and
that their bodies had been put in the back compartment of your car.
     Easy. Smith was an accomplice of the murderer, hired to  keep you  away
from anybody else who might alibi you while the crime was going  on. Also to
give you such an  incredible story to account for where you really were that
your own mother, if she were still alive,  would have a  hard time believing
it.
     But  connect that with the  fact that  Smith had been killed, too.  And
with the fact that the  pay roll money had been left in your car  along with
the bodies.
     It added up to gibberish.
     I took another  sip of my drink and it tasted weak.  I looked at it and
saw  I'd been sitting there  so long between sips that  most of the ice  had
melted.  I put more  of the bonded  Bourbon  in  it and it tasted  all right
again.
     I remembered about the gun I'd grabbed up  from Kates' desk,  the rusty
one  with which  the  two murders  had been  committed. I took  it out of my
pocket  and looked at  it.  I handled it so I wouldn't have  to touch  those
dried stains on the butt.
     I broke it to see if  any shots had been fired from it and found  there
weren't  any  cartridges  in it, empty or otherwise. I clicked it  back into
position  and tried the trigger. It was  rusted shut.  It hadn't, then, been
used as a gun at all. Just as a hammer to bash out the brains of two men.
     And  I'd certainly made a fool of myself by bringing it along. I played
right into the killer's hands by doing that. I put it back into my pocket.
     I wished that I had someone to talk  to. I felt that I might figure out
things aloud better  than I could  this way. I wished that Smiley was awake,
and for  a moment I was tempted  to  go upstairs to  get him. No, I decided,
once already tonight  I'd put Smiley into danger -  danger out of which he'd
got both of us and without any help from me whatsoever.
     And this was my problem. It wouldn't be fair to Smiley to tangle him in
it.
     Besides, this wasn't a matter for  Smiley's brawn  and  guts. This  was
like  playing chess, and  Smiley didn't play chess.  Carl might possibly  be
able  to help me figure  it out, but Smiley -  never. And I  didn't want  to
tangle Carl in this either.
     But I wanted to talk to somebody.
     All right, maybe I was a little crazy - not drunk, definitely not drunk
- but a little crazy. I wanted to talk to somebody, so I did.

     The little man who wasn't there.
     I imagined him sitting across the table from me,  sitting there with an
imaginary drink in his hand. Gladly, right gladly, would I have poured him a
real one if he'd been really there. He was looking at me strangely.
     "Smitty," I said.
     "Yes, Doc?"
     "What's your real name, Smitty? I know it  isn't Yehudi Smith. That was
part of the gag. The card you gave me proves that."
     It wasn't  the right question to ask. He wavered a little, as though he
was going to disappear on me. I shouldn't  have asked him a question  that I
myself  couldn't  answer,  because he was  there  only  because my  mind was
putting  him  there.  He couldn't tell  me anything I didn't know  myself or
couldn't figure out.
     He wavered  a little, but he rallied. He  said, "Doc,  I can't tell you
that. Any more than I can tell you whom I was working for. You know that."
     Get it; he said "whom I was working for" not "who I was working for." I
felt proud of him and of myself.
     I said, "Sure, Smitty. I shouldn't have asked. And  listen, I'm sorry -
I'm sorry as hell that you died."
     "That's all right, Doc. We all die  sometime. And - well, it was a nice
evening up to then."
     "I'm glad I fed you,"  I said. "I'm glad I  gave you all you  wanted to
drink.  And listen,  Smitty, I'm  sorry  I laughed out loud when I  saw that
bottle and key on the glass-topped table. I just  couldn't  help it.  It was
funny."
     "Sure, Doc.  But I had to play it straight. It was part of the act. But
it was corny; I don't blame you  for acting amused. And Doc, I'm sorry I did
it. I didn't know the whole score - you've  got proof of that. If I  had,  I
wouldn't  have drunk what was in that bottle. I didn't look like a  man  who
wanted to die, did I, Doc?"
     I shook my head slowly,  looking at the  laughter-lines around his eyes
and his mouth. He didn't look like a man who wanted to die.
     But he had died, suddenly and horribly.
     "I'm sorry, Smitty," I told him. "I'm sorry as hell. I'd give a hell of
a lot to bring you back, to have you really sitting there."
     He chuckled. "Don't get maudlin, Doc. It'll spoil your thinking. You're
trying to think, you know."
     "I know," I said. "But I had to  get it  out of my system.  All  right,
Smitty. You're dead and I can't do anything about  it. You're the little man
who isn't there. And I can't ask you any questions I can't answer myself, so
really you can't help me."
     "Are you sure, Doc? Even if you ask the right questions?"
     "What do  you mean? That my subconscious mind  might  know  the answers
even if I don't?"
     He  laughed. "Let's not get Freudian. Let's stick  to Lewis Carroll.  I
really was a  Carroll enthusiast, you know. I was a fast study, but not that
fast. I couldn't have memorized all that about him just for one occasion."
     The  phrase struck  me, "a fast study." I repeated it and went on where
it led me, "You  were an actor, Smitty? Hell, don't answer it. You must have
been. I should have guessed that. An actor hired to play a part."
     He grinned a  bit  wryly. "Not too good an actor, then, or you wouldn't
have  guessed it.  And  pretty  much of a sucker, Doc, to have accepted  the
role. I should have guessed that there was more in it than what he told me."
He shrugged. "Well, I played you a  dirty trick, but I played a worse one on
myself. Didn't I?"
     "I'm sorry you're dead, Smitty. God damn it, I liked you."
     "I'm glad, Doc.  I  haven't liked myself too well these last few years.
You've figured it out  by now so I can tell you - I was pretty down and  out
to take a booking like that, and at the price he offered me for it. And damn
him, he didn't pay me in advance except my expenses,  so what did I gain  by
it? I got killed. Wait, don't get maudlin  about that  again. Let's drink to
it."
     We  drank to it. There are worse things than getting  killed. And there
are  worse ways of dying than suddenly  when  you  aren't expecting it, when
you're slightly tight and-
     But that subject wasn't getting us anywhere.
     "You were a character actor," I said.
     "Doc,  you disappoint  me by belaboring the  obvious.  And that doesn't
help you to figure out who Anybody is."
     "Anybody?"
     "That's  what you were calling him  to yourself  when you were thinking
things out, in a half-witted sort of way, not so long ago. Remember thinking
that Anybody could have got  into your printing shop and  Anybody could have
set up one line of type and figured out  how to  print one good card on that
little hand press, but why would Anybody-"
     "Unfair," I said. "You can get inside my mind, because - because, hell,
that's where you  are. But I can't get into yours. You  know who Anybody is.
But I don't."
     "Even  I, Doc, might not know his  real  name.  In case something  went
wrong, he wouldn't have  told me that. Something  like - well, suppose you'd
grabbed that `Drink Me' bottle when  you first found the table and tossed it
off before I  could tell you that it was my prerogative to do so. Yes, there
were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in so complicated  a deal as
that one was."
     I  nodded. "Yes,  suppose Al Grainger had come around  for that game of
chess and we'd taken him along. Suppose - suppose I hadn't lived to get home
at all. I had a narrow squeak earlier in the evening, you know."
     "In that case, Doc, it never would have happened. You ought to  be able
to figure that out without my  telling you..  If you'd  been killed, you and
Smiley, earlier in the evening, then - at least if Anybody had learned about
it,  as  he  probably would have - Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison  wouldn't
have  been killed later. At least not tonight.  A wheel would  have come off
the  plans and I'd have  gone back to - wherever I came from. And everything
would have been off."
     I  said, "But suppose  I'd  stayed  at  the office far  into the  night
working  on one  of those big stories I thought  I had -  and  was  so happy
about. How would Anybody have known?"
     "Can't tell you that, Doc. But you might guess. Suppose I had orders to
keep Anybody  posted on your movements,  if they went off schedule. When you
left the house, saying you'd be back shortly, I'd  have used your  phone and
told  him that. And when you phoned  that you were on your way back I'd have
let him know, while you were walking home, wouldn't I?"
     "But that was pretty late."
     "Not  too late for him  to  have intercepted Miles  Harrison and  Ralph
Bonney on their way back from Neilsville -  under certain circumstances - if
his plans had been held in abeyance until he was sure you'd be home and  out
of circulation before midnight."
     I said, "Under certain circumstances," and wondered  just what I  meant
by it.
     Yehudi  Smith smiled. He lifted  his glass and  looked  at me mockingly
over the rim of it before he drank. He said, "Go on, Doc. You're only in the
second square, but your next move will be  a good one. You go  to the fourth
square by train, you know."
     "And the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff."
     "And that's the answer, Doc," he said, quietly.
     I stared at him. A prickle went down my back.
     Outside, in the night, a clock struck four times.
     "What do you mean, Smitty?" I asked him, slowly.
     The  little man  who wasn't there poured more whisky from an  imaginary
bottle into  his imaginary glass.  He said, "Doc,  you've been  letting  the
glass-topped table  and the  bottle and the key fool you. They're from Alice
in Wonderland. Originally, of course, called Alice's Adventures Underground.
Wonderful book. But you're in the second."
     "The second square? You just said that."
     "The  second book. Through  the  Looking-Glass,  and  What  Alice Found
There. And, Doc, you know as well as I what Alice found there."
     I poured myself another drink, a short  one this time, to match his.  I
didn't bother with ice or seltzer.
     He raised his glass. "You've got it now, Doc," he said. "Not all of it,
but enough to start on. You might still see the dawn come up."
     "Don't be  so God damn dramatic," I said; "certainly  I'm going  to see
the dawn come up."
     "Even if Kates comes  here again looking for you? Don't forget  when he
misses that rusty gun in your pocket, he'll know you  were at the courthouse
when he was looking for you here.  He might recheck  all his previous stops.
And you're awfully  damned  careless in filling the place with cigar  smoke,
you know."
     "You mean it's worth a thousand pounds a puff?"
     He  put back  his  head  and laughed  and then he quit laughing  and he
wasn't there any more, even in my imagination, because a sudden slight sound
made me look toward the door that led  upstairs, to Smiley's rooms. The door
opened and Smiley was standing there.
     In a nightshirt. I hadn't known anybody wore  nightshirts any more, but
Smiley wore one. His eyes looked sleepy and his hair - what was left of it -
was tousled  and  he was  barefoot. He had  a  gun in his  hand, the  little
short-barreled  thirty-eight Banker's Special  I'd given him some hours ago.
In his huge hand  it looked tiny, a toy.  It didn't look like something that
had  knocked  a Buick  off  the  road, killing one  man  and badly  injuring
another, that very evening.
     There wasn't any expression on his face, none at all.
     I wonder what mine looked like. But  through a looking- glass or not, I
didn't have one to look into.
     Had I been talking  to myself aloud? Or had my conversation with Yehudi
Smith been imaginary, within my own mind? I honestly didn't know.
     If I'd really  been talking to myself, it  was  going to be a hell of a
thing to  have to  explain.  Especially  if  Kates had,  on  his  stop here,
awakened Smiley and told him that I was crazy.
     In any case, what the hell  could I possibly  say right now but "Hello,
Smiley?"
     I opened my mouth to say "Hello, Smiley," but I didn't.
     Someone was  pounding  on  the glass  of  the  front door.  Someone who
yelled, "Hey, open up here!" in the voice of Sheriff Rance Kates.
     I did the only reasonable thing to do. I poured myself another drink.

        CHAPTER FOURTEEN

           "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
                 That your eye was as steady as ever;
           Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-
                 What made you so awfully clever?"

     Kates hammered again and tried the knob.
     Smiley stared at me and I stared back at him. I couldn't say anything -
even if  I  could have thought of anything to say - to him at that  distance
without the probability of Kates hearing my voice.
     Kates hammered again. I heard him say something to Hank about  breaking
in the glass. Smiley bent down and placed the gun on the step behind him and
then  came out of the door into the tavern. Without looking at  me he walked
toward the front door and, at sight of him, Kates stopped the racket there.
     Smiley didn't  walk  quite  straight toward the door; he made  a slight
curve that took him past my  table. As he  passed, he reached out and jerked
the cigar out of my hand. He stuck it in his mouth and then went to the door
and opened it.
     I couldn't see in that direction, of course, and I didn't stick my head
around the corner of the el. I sat there and sweated.
     "What you want? Why such a hell of a racket?" I heard Smiley demand.
     Kates' voice: "Thought Stoeger was here. That smoke-"
     "Left my cigar down here," Smiley  said. "Remembered it when I got back
up and came down to get it. Why all the racket?"
     "It  was  damn near  half  an  hour  ago when  I was  here," Kates said
belligerently. "Cigar doesn't burn that long."
     Smiley said patiently, "I  couldn't sleep after you  were here. I  came
down  and got myself a drink  five minutes ago. I left my  cigar down here."
His voice got soft, very soft. "Now get the hell out of here. You've spoiled
my night  already. Didn't get to sleep till two and you wake me at half past
three and come around again at four. What's the big idea, Kates?"
     "You're sure Stoeger isn't-"
     "I  told you  I'd call  you if I saw  him. Now, you bastard, get out of
here."
     I could imagine Kates turning purple.  I could imagine  him looking  at
Smiley and realizing that Smiley was half again as strong as he was.
     The door  slammed so hard  it must have come very  near to breaking the
glass.
     Smiley came back.  Without looking back at me he  said quietly,  "Don't
move, Doc. He might look back in a minute or two." He  went on around behind
the bar, got himself a glass and poured a drink. He sat down on the stool he
keeps  for  himself back  there, facing slightly  to  the  back  so  his lip
movement  wouldn't show to anyone looking in the front window. He took a sip
of the drink and a puff of my cigar.
     I kept  my voice as low as he'd kept his. I said, "Smiley, you ought to
have your mouth washed out with soap. You told a lie."
     He grinned. "Not that I know of, Doc. I told him I'd call  him if I saw
you. I did call him. Didn't you hear what I called him?"
     "Smiley," I said, "this is the  screwiest night  I've ever been through
but the screwiest thing about it is that you're developing a sense of humor.
I didn't think you had it in you."
     "How bad trouble are you in, Doc? What can I do?"
     I said, "Nothing.  Except what  you just did do, and thanks to hell and
back for  that.  It's something  I've got to  think out;  and work  out  for
myself, Smiley. Nobody can help me."
     "Kates said, when he was  here the first time, you were  a ho  - homi -
what the hell was it?"
     "Homicidal maniac," I said. "He thinks  I killed two men tonight. Miles
Harrison and Ralph Bonney."
     "Yeah. Don't bother telling me you didn't."
     I said, "Thanks, Smiley." And then it occurred to me that "Don't bother
telling me you didn't" could be taken either one of two ways. And I wondered
again if I had been talking to  myself aloud or only in my imagination while
Smiley had been walking down those stairs and opening the door. I asked him,
"Smiley, do you think I'm crazy?"
     "I've always thought you were crazy, Doc. But crazy in a nice way."
     I thought how  wonderful  it is  to have friends. Even if I  was crazy,
there were two people in Carmel City that I could count on to go to bat for,
me. There was Smiley and there was Carl.
     But, damn it, friendship should work both ways. This was my  danger and
my problem  and I had no business dragging  Smiley into it any  farther than
he'd already stuck  his neck. If I told Smiley  that Kates had tried to kill
me  and still intended to,  then Smiley - who hates  Kates'  guts  already -
would go out looking for Kates and like as not kill him with his bare hands,
or get shot trying it. I couldn't do that to Smiley.
     I said,  "Smiley, finish your drink and go up to bed again. I've got to
think."
     "Sure there's no way I can help you, Doc?"
     "Positive."
     He tossed off the  rest of his drink and tamped out the cigar in an ash
tray.  He  said, "Okay, Doc, I  know you're smarter  than I am,  and if it's
brains you need for help, I'm just in the way. Good luck to you."
     He walked back to the door of the staircase. He looked carefully at the
front  windows to be sure  nobody was looking in  and then he reached inside
and picked up the revolver from the step on which he'd placed it.
     He came walking over to my table. He said, "Doe, if you are a ho - homi
-  what  you  said, you might want to  kill  somebody else  tonight.  That's
loaded. I even replaced the two bullets I shot out of it, earlier."
     He put it down on the table in  front of me,  turned his back to me and
went back to the  stairs. I watched him  go, marveling. I'd never yet seen a
man in  a nightshirt who hadn't looked ridiculous. Until then. What more can
a man do to prove he  doesn't think you're insane than give you a loaded gun
and then turn his  back and walk away. And  when I thought of  all the times
I'd razzed Smiley and ridden him, all the cracks I'd made at him, I wanted-
     Well, I couldn't  answer when he said  "Goodnight, Doc," just before he
closed  the door behind  him. Something  felt a little wrong with my throat,
and if I'd tried to say anything, I might have bawled.
     My hand shook a little as I poured myself another drink, a short one. I
was beginning to feel them and this had better be my last one, I knew.
     I had to think  more  clearly than I'd ever thought before. I  couldn't
get drunk, I didn't dare.
     I tried  to get my mind back to what I'd been thinking about - what I'd
been  talking about to  the  little man who wasn't  there -  before Smiley's
coming downstairs and Kates' knocking had interrupted me.
     I looked across the  table where Yehudi Smith,  in  my mind,  had  been
sitting. But he wasn't there. I couldn't bring him back. He was dead, and he
wouldn't come back. The quiet room in the quiet night. The dim  light of the
single twenty-watt bulb over the cash register.  The creaking of my thoughts
as I tried to turn them back into the groove. Connect facts.
     Lewis Carroll and bloody murder.
     Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
     What had Alice found there?
     Chessmen, and a game of  chess. And Alice herself had been a pawn. That
was why,  of course,  she'd crossed the third  square by  railroad. With the
smoke alone  worth a thousand pounds  a puff - almost  as  expensive as  the
smoke from  my cigar  might have been had not Smiley taken it out of my hand
and claimed it as his own.
     Chessmen, and a game of chess.
     But who was the player?
     And suddenly I knew. Illogically, because he didn't  have a shadow of a
motive. The Why I did not see, but Yehudi Smith had told me the How, and now
I saw the Who.
     The pattern. Whoever had arranged tonight's little chess problem played
chess all right, and played it well.  Looking- glass  chess and  real chess,
both. And  he  knew  me  well  - which meant I  knew him,  too.  He knew  my
weaknesses, the things I'd fall for. He knew I'd go with Yehudi Smith on the
strength of that mad, weird story Smith had told me.
     But  why? What had he to gain? He'd killed Miles Harrison, Ralph Bonney
and Yehudi Smith.  And he'd left the money Miles and Ralph had been carrying
in that brief case and put it in the back of my car, with the two bodies.
     Then money hadn't been the motive. Either that, or the motive had  been
money in such large  quantity that the couple of thousand dollars Bonney had
been carrying didn't matter.
     But wasn't a  man concerned who  was one  of the richest men in  Carmel
City?  Ralph Bonney. His fireworks factory, his other investments,  his real
estate must have added  up to - well,  maybe half  a  million dollars. A man
shooting  for half a million dollars can well abandon the  proceeds of a two
thousand dollar holdup and  leave them with  the bodies of  the men  he  has
killed, to  help  pin  the  crime  on  the pawn  he  has selected  to divert
suspicion from himself.
     Connect facts.
     Ralph Bonney was divorced today. He was murdered tonight.
     Then  Miles  Harrison's  death was  incidental.  Yehudi Smith had  been
another pawn.
     A  warped  mind,  but a brilliant mind.  A cold, cruel mind.  And  yet,
paradoxically, a mind  that  loved  fantasy,  as  I  did,  that  loved Lewis
Carroll, as I did.
     I started to pour myself another drink and then remembered that I still
had only part of the  answer, and that even  if I  had  it all, I hadn't the
slightest idea what I could do with  it, without a shred of  evidence, or an
iota of proof.
     Without even an idea, in my own  mind, of the reason,  the motive.  But
there must be one; the rest of it was too well planned, too logical.
     There was one possibility that I could see.
     I sat there listening a while to be sure there was no  car approaching;
the night was so quiet that, I could have heard one at least a block away.
     I looked at the  gun Smiley had given me  back,  hesitated, and finally
put it  in my pocket. Then I went  into the back room and let  myself out of
the window into the dark alley.
     Carl Trenholm's house was  three blocks away. Luckily,  it was  on  the
street  next  to Oak  Street and  parallel to it.  I could make  all of  the
distance through the alley except for the streets I'd have to cross.
     I heard  a car coming  as I approached the second street  and I  ducked
down and hid behind  a garbage can until it had gone by. It was going slowly
and  it  was probably  either  Hank and the  sheriff or the  two deputies. I
didn't look out to see for fear they might flash a spotlight down the alley.
     I waited until  the sound of  it died away completely before I  crossed
the street.
     I let myself  in the  back gate of Carl's  place. With his wife away, I
wasn't positive which bedroom he'd be  sleeping  in, but I found pebbles and
tossed them at the most likely window and it was the right one.
     It went up and  Carl's head came out. I stepped close to the house so I
wouldn't have to yell. I said, "It's Doc, Carl. Don't light a light anywhere
in the house. But come down to the back door."
     "Coming, Doc."  He closed the window. I went up on  the  back porch and
waited until the  door opened and I went in. I closed the door behind me and
the kitchen was as black as the inside of a tomb.
     Carl said,  "Damned if I know where a flashlight  is, Doc. Can't we put
on a light? I feel like hell."
     "No, leave it off," I told him. I  struck  a match, though, to  find my
way to a chair and it showed me Carl in rumpled pajamas, hi