HAMILTON-Date With Darkness
Author: Laurie Smith
Date: 2014-01-02 00:00:00+00:00

1. Chapter 1

DATE WITH DARKNESS

By Donald Hamilton

©1947

HE TOOK DOWN her suitcase and her fur coat. She said she did not have a hat. She let him put the coat over her narrow shoulders, like a cape, and sat down beside the suitcases on the seat to wait out the uncomfortable last minutes while be braced himself, in the aisle, against the people crowding past. Daylight was snatched from the windows as, slowing, they entered the station.

He followed her along the platform with the two suitcases and they climbed the stairs into the rotunda where, stepping out of the flood of people into an eddy behind a pillar, she stretched out her hand for her bag. "Can't I ... ?" he asked.

"No, I'm taking a taxi. This is fine," she said. "Thanks an awful lot." Even in the low-heeled pumps she reached to a level with his eyes. He could just see over her and no more.

"Well," he said, "thanks for the company.

"I'll call you if I can," she said. "The Cooper. I'm sorry to be so indefinite."

"That's all right," he said.

"Well," she said, "so long."

He watched her, tucking the purse under her arm, carry the small black suitcase away from him. Her name, she had said, was Janet Haskell. He did not for a moment believe she would call him. He felt very lonely and thrust his unlighted pipe into his mouth for company.

It made him feel a little better to walk into the hotel bar with the two gold stripes on his sleeve in a city where nobody knew him. It made him feel a little reckless and carefree, and he was pleased to be six feet tall even if underweight, and to have the uniform fit him seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents worth, and to have fifteen days leave, even if he did not know what he intended to do with it. He ordered Scotch and, tasting it, leaned his elbow on the bar and looked about the dark, crowded, low-ceilinged room. His mind started absently to work on a plausible letter to his mother explaining why he had not spent this leave, probably his last in uniform, at home like the others.

"Pardon me, sir," said a voice behind him.

He turned to see a large young man in an ill-fitting ensign's uniform. His glance touched the left breast of the blouse and was relieved to find no ribbons. It put them on the same footing, and he had the extra stripe.

"Weren't you on the train, sir?" the large young man asked.

"Well, I was on a train," he said.

I thought I recognized you, sir," the ensign said. f wondered if you could tell me where we could get a room. My wife's with me and we don't know New York at all."

"Frankly, neither do I," said Phillip Branch. "You've tried the desk?"

"Oh, yes," said the ensign. "And we've called every hotel in town. Constance is calling some friends, but..."

"Well, I'm sorry," Branch said uncomfortably. I really don't know...."

"There's Constance now," said the younger man, and a small girl wearing a heavy green skirt and a limp white cotton shirt came between the tables to them :

"Nothing," she said tiredly, pushing back her hair. they've moved." She spoke to the ensign, ignoring Branch in her weariness. "Have you got a drink for me" she asked.

Branch felt a slow, trapped resentment as he looked from one to the other of them. He watched the girl taste her drink and thought, I wonder at what rummage sale she picked up that skirt? The bulkiness of the skirt, the ill-fitting looseness of the shirt, and the low-healed flatness of her laced brown oxfords gave her a dumpy look that annoyed him because she was quite a nice looking girl. She caught him watching her and smiled at him uncertainly. The ensign apologized quickly, and they introduced themselves. They were Paul and Constance Laflin, from New Orleans.'

"Anyway," said the girl bitterly, "that's the last place we're from."

"Oh, cheer up, darling," said Paul Laflin. "It's not that bad."

"Well, first it was indoctrination, at Parkhurst, and then," she said, ticking them off on her fingers, "there was that course you took in Philadelphia, and then New Orleans, and now here. Not bad for nineteen months." Branch glanced at the ensign, a little surprised. "Nineteen months"

"Just about," said the younger man. "How about you, sir?"

"A little over three years," Branch said. "All in Chicago, except indoctrination."

"Some people have all the luck." The girl smiled quickly to erase the sharpness of her tone.

The man asked hastily, "Where did you go, sir"

"Tucson, Arizona," Branch said. He grinned. "And did we sweat. How was it at Parkhurst"

As they talked he tried to remember what someone had told him about Parkhurst, but he could not remember it. You heard a little about all of them, and they were, after three years, all the same. There was always the signal drill where someone was very clever, and the fouled-up navigation lesson, and the day when half the section passed out in ranks from the typhoid shots. After three years, indoctrination school was a faintly pleasant memory of a time when you felt you were really a naval officer, or would be when you got through, and not merely a civilian in disguise. You never felt that way again.

'Well, look," said the girl presently, interrupting them, "look, I'm starving.

"Do they serve chow in here?" asked the ensign. ""Would you care to join us for lunch, sir?" Sure," said Branch. He had resigned himself to eventually giving up his room to them, but he wished the ensign would not call him "sir" so assiduously.

Paul Laflin turned from asking a question of the bartender. "He says go up the ladder to the second deck. They don't serve down here."

Branch rubbed his face to smooth away a grin as he followed them. When we've gone up the ladder, he thought, to the second deck, I suppose we turn to starboard. My God. Salty as hell, ain't he? The younger man stood aside to let him, by virtue of his superior rank, go first through the door after the girl who dropped back to walk beside him as they mounted the stairs.

"Paul was sure you were married," she said shyly. "We had a long argument about it."

He glanced at her. "You mean on the train?"

"Yes, you were sitting with a girl, weren't you?"

"Oh", he said, a little embarrassed. "Yes. That's right, I was, but....."

ÒShe was all right, too," the younger man said, walking on the other side of him.

"Was she a friend Of yours?" Constance Laflin asked.

He shook his head. "She just happened to sit beside me."

Paul Laflin grinned. "How did you make out sir?"

"I don't know yet," Branch said, laughing. "I didn't get her phone number. But she said she might call me."

"There isn't much to do on a train except talk about the people," Constance Laflin said a little apologetically." We just happened to notice you because of the uniform. We were behind you in the car.

"You don't realize how much army there is Until you start to travel," her husband said. ÒIt makes you feel kind of lonely.Ó

They turned into a small dining room that had the functional and impersonal brightness of a well-kept washroom. The change from the intimate dusk of the bar was almost embarrassing Phillip Branch seated the girl and sat down beside her, the ensign sitting down opposite him, and seeing them both clearly for the first time he had a momentary feeling of being completely out of touch with them, as if there had been a pane of glass between them and him. It was probably, he reflected, his knowledge that they were deliberately working him for his room that gave him this sensation, and he opened his mouth to tell them they could have the damned room but the girl started to speak and they both stopped at once and laughed. "Go ahead," he said.

"Oh, I was only going to ask you where you're from, Mr. Branch."

"Indianapolis," he said.

"You don't talk quite like a Midwesterner."

"Well, I lived in Boston till I was fifteen," Branch said.

"Are you on your way to visit your relatives there the younger man asked.

Branch laughed. "Not if I can help it:" After a moment he said, "I just thought I'd spend one leave away from home while I still had a uniform to impress the girls with."

"You're staying in New York, then?" the girl asked.

"Until I get tired of it," Brand; said. "I've got fifteen days. If I get bored maybe I'll give the uncles and aunts a break, later on.Ó He looked at the ensign's sleeve. There were three kinds of braid: the silver-base that paled as the gold rubbed off; the copper-base that turned red; and the nylon that, not being gold at all, remained a bright garish yellow. The cheaper uniforms generally came with the copper or nylon braid; and Paul Laflin's single stripe was a dull rust color.

"Looks like you're about due for another half stripe," Branch said, indicating the worn braid. He thought, nineteen months; they're running longer all the time. He had made his half stripe in fourteen.

"Well, it depends how my new C.O. feels about it," Paul Laflin said.

Branch looked up at him sharply, a little startled.

The younger man said, "Well, I was sort of stuck down in New Orleans. That's one reason I asked for a transfer. I didn't want to stay an ensign all my life."

"We were thinking of having a baby," his wife said quickly. "And the way rents were down there..."

Branch looked from one to the other of them, and he could feel his heart beating heavily, and he saw that he was about to make an officious ass of himself.

"You mean they wouldn't promote you?" he asked the ensign.

Paul Laflin shrugged. "The whole place was full of j.g.'s already...."

"Look," said Branch slowly, "look, would you mind .. ." He grinned uncomfortably to make his request seem less arbitrary. "... would you mind showing me your I. D. card?"

"I don't ..." The younger man frowned across the table. "What's the matter, sir?"

"For Christ's sake," said Phillip Branch. "For Christ's sake belay that Sir." will you?"

"What's the matter, Paul?" the girl asked quickly, leaning forward.

Paul Laflin grinned and shrugged. "I don't know. He wants to see my identity card."

She stared at Branch and, suddenly throwing back her head, laughed delightedly. Then she stopped laughing. "Oh, for heaven's sake!"

Feeling the blood singing in his ears and looking directly at the man across the table, Branch said tightly, "I still haven't seen the card. Or your orders. Or leave papers. Anything . ,." He watched the face across the table. It was wide and small-featured, the features too small for the face. He watched the small girlish mouth tighten.

Paul Laflin stood up and brushed at his uniform.

"Come on, dear," he said. "The man's crazy. Let's get out Of here."

"Wait a minute!" Branch said sharply. Then, as they walked away from him, he glanced at the other diners, as yet undisturbed, and sank back into his chair and watched the two of them go out of the room and out of sight. Nineteen months an ensign, he thought, ladder, deck, sir. And Parkhurst closed six months after I came to Chicago. I suppose should call the shore patrol, but where do you find it? It depends on my new C.O., he thought, God, the man must have been talking to somebody in the Army. I suppose he picked up the uniform in a hock shop. But what the hell did they want? That's an awful risk to run just to get a room.

He looked up to see the waitress. "No," he said. "Just.... They won't be coming back."

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG he sat up and reached for the instrument and looked at his watch, which read a quarter of three. It gave him a certain sense of loss to know that he had slept away two and a half hours of his leave.

"Yes," he said curtly. "Lieutenant Branch here."

The low careful voice of the girl who had sat beside him on the train said, "This is Janet Haskell, Lieutenant."

He sat quite still for a moment. Then he said, "Well, hello," and swung his feet to the floor and pulled his dressing gown about him. He found his glasses on the bedside table and put them on, bringing the walls of the room into focus. He could feel his heart beating rather more heavily than usual. He had really not expected her to call, and the excitement of anticipation put out of his mind the last remnants of the nagging sense of guilt with which the incident downstairs had left him, which he had retreated to his room to forget.

Dressing, he watched the narrow dark face in the mirror contort itself as he wrestled the starched regulation collar about the rather long and knobby neck. The gold-rimmed glasses supplied him by the naval dispensary when he had broken the old horn-rimmed pair reflected back to him the light from the ceiling fixture. Dressed, he brushed himself off with a small whisk-broom. In the Navy you were always brushing at yourself. It became automatic.

He looked at himself in the ribbonless undecorated uniform and thought, well, it's too late now. Anyway, I lived through it. What did you do in the Great War, daddy? Well, I was an officer in the Navy. Yes, but what did you do.... ?

Outside it was cold, gray and blowing, and the skirts of his uniform raincoat snapped at his legs as he walked, referring occasionally to the Guide to Greater New, York that he carried in his pocket. He could feel the anticipation growing in him as he approached her hotel, and when he reached it he stopped inside the doors and brushed the dust from his coat and straightened his tie before advancing to the desk. The clerk said she would be right down, and he sat down on the unyielding sofa in the lounge and polished his glasses while he waited. Then she came around the end of the desk and he rose, returning the glasses to his nose. She was a tall girl and her dark yellow wool suit, minutely striped with white, had the casually loose ht characteristic of the clothes of girls who know themselves to be a little too thin. She wore her brown hair neatly rolled up about her head and carried her fur coat over her arm. "Hello," she laid.

"Hi," he said, and held the coat while she fastened the ,t, gold buttons of the jacket of the suit and turned to slip her arms into the coat. He watched her face while she buttoned herself and pulled on her gloves. She had a triangular face, the wide cheekbones set a little back from the wide forehead and the long pointed chin; and her mouth was very carefully delineated by the precise, subdued lipstick.

"Let's get out of this hole," she said, glancing around and grimacing. "If it hadn't been the only room in the city of New York ..."

"I thought you were staying with friends," he said, following her.

She stopped on the sidewalk as they came out and looked up at the gray sky between the tall buildings. "I hope it doesn't rain," she said, "I don't think I could stand it if it rained on top of everything else."

He wanted to get her away from the hotel. "Which way do we go?" he asked. He wanted to get her far enough away that she could not change her mind and retreat.

"Left," she said after a moment. "I want to try Lord and Taylor's first. You're sure you don't mind ... ?"

"Not at all," he said.

"If you'd rather wait for me somewhere .. ."

"No, I'll tag along," he said. "Tell me when to look the other way." He took her arm, somewhat gingerly, and started her walking.

"Oh, I'm not going to try anything on," she said. "Not today. What do you call it when everything goes wrong in the Navy"

"All fouled up," he suggested. "Snafu."

"Snafu," she said. "That's it."

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said. "Everything is just snafu, that's all."

"What?" he asked, feeling that they were now far enough away that he could afford to show interest.

"You wouldn't be interested."

"All right," he said, "don't tell me."

She laughed and released her arm from his grip and put her hand under his elbow. "I was going to leave a message for you."

He admitted that he had been taking a nap when she called.

"How terribly wholesome," she, said. "I'm sorry if I waked you,"

"I was really waiting for you to call, of course," he said and grinned.

She grimaced unbelievingly, smiling.

"I didn't honestly expect it," he admitted. "To be frank with you, I thought you were giving me the gentle brush-off, at the station. Weren't you?" He glanced at her.

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe."

They covered about a mile of Fifth Avenue and she did not find what she was looking for. He did not think she knew what she was looking for, but was waiting for something to strike her just right. In the last place she bought some stockings, but it seemed to be an afterthought. As they came out on the street again he said, grinning, "God, if I were a salesgirl I'd slap your face."

She stopped on the sidewalk and looked at him; a little startled. "Why?"

"Making them haul all that stuff out without-"

"Well, it's not my fault if they don't have anything worth buying," she said irritably. Then she laughed. "Oh, all right, let's give it up and get a drink."

Presently they found a small bar done in black and chrome and sat down at a table by a pillar of black the, facing each other. As he settled himself across the table from her and watched her strip off her black gloves absently, looking around, he could feel the accumulated annoyance and embarrassment of the preceding hour slowly seep out of him; and he gave her a cigarette and lighted his pipe.

"You're having dinner with me, aren't you?" he said.

She nodded, shrugging back her coat and smiling at him.

"I don't suppose there's any chance of getting tickets to anything," he said.

"If you want to try ..." she said.

"Tired?"

She nodded. "A little."

"I could use a night's sleep myself," he admitted. "Tell me..."

"Yes?" she said.

"How long are you staying?"

"I don't know," she said. "Tomorrow or the next day."

He gave the order to the waitress. "Where are you from, anyway?" he asked when the girl had gone.

"Evanston," Janet Haskell said, and he felt a small disappointment. He did not want her to be from Evanston. If she was from Evanston he would have to look her up when he got back to Chicago; or decide not to look her up. He would rather have their acquaintanceship terminate itself automatically when the time came.

"Well," he said heartily, "well, that's practically right next door to home, isn't it?"

She looked up and smiled and he was uncomfortably afraid that she knew what he had been thinking. The waitress returned with their drinks. Janet Haskell picked up her old-fashioned and tasted it thoughtfully, watching him across the small table. It seemed to him the shape of her mouth was suddenly a little strained through the very even, unobtrusive lipstick.

"Could you lend me two hundred dollars?" she asked abruptly, not ceasing to watch him.

He was proud of himself that his voice did not falter. "Say that again. It seemed to me you said two hundred dollars."

She did not say anything, only putting down her drink and regarding him, her face calm and preoccupied.

"Do you need some money?" he asked stupidly.

"Yes," she said. "Two hundred dollars."

"Well," he said, grinning, "yes, but let's talk in practical figures. Would twenty do you any good?"

"It would pay for my room," she said.

"My God," he said. "You mean you haven't any? She did not say anything. He demanded, "Well, what was all this shopping business, anyway?"

She smiled at him thoughtfully. "I was going to pretend they wouldn't cash my check and ask you ..." There was a sharp edge to her laughter. "Well, something like that. I didn't have it all worked out."

"Listen," he said, "I wouldn't write a check for two hundred for my best friend." He tapped the stripes on his sleeve. "Just two. Count them. Two."

"Oh, I wasn't going to do it all at once," she said, her face relaxing and looking almost happy.

"What do you want it for, anyway?"

"You're not going to give it to me," she said gaily. "Why should I tell you?"

"Oh," he said a little angrily. "Oh, now it's give."

"You probably wouldn't get it back," she agreed. "Well, let's talk about something else." She glanced at him. "Or should we just leave?"

"It has to be two hundred?" he asked. "It can't be ninety-nine ninety-eight, or a hundred and fifty, it has to be two hundred?"

"Well, a hundred and fifty would be all right," she said. "I could pawn my coat and watch for the rest."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he said.

"Let's not talk about it any more," she said. "Are we still having dinner together?"

When they had finished their drinks he took her back to her hotel in a taxi and waited in the lobby while she changed. Two hundred dollars, he thought, my God. She came down very quickly and he watched her cross the lobby to him, dressed now in a black silk dress that fitted her narrow body loosely. There were gold buttons down the front of the tunic and skirt of the dress. She had changed her shoes and walked, in high heels, a little less freely.

"You look fine," he said as she stopped by him. He took the coat and helped her into it. She touched the smooth roll of her hair.

"Am I coming down? I didn't take time-"

"No, it's fine," he said.

She glanced at him over her shoulder as she tested the fastening of an earring. "Don't overwhelm me with enthusiasm, Lieutenant." He looked at her irritably and thought, why did She have to spoil it? Two hundred dollars. Christ.

"You look beautiful," he said. "If you've got yourself all assembled, let's go."

It was raining as they came out and New York in the thin rain was no different from Chicago in the rain or even from Indianapolis in the rain. There were the same crowds and the same policemen and the buildings did not look much taller when you were among them. The small dignified dining room they came into did not differ except in detail from other dining rooms in other expensive hotels that he had entered.

The headwaiter seated them at a table for two by the wall and the girl slipped her arms out of the sleeves of her coat, but Branch did not look at her but sat polishing the rain from his glasses and looking about the room, a little fuzzy in detail to his uncorrected vision. There were many other uniforms in the room. Some were foreign and he did not recognize them.

"I'd like a cigarette," Janet Haskell said.

He gave her one and took one for himself, feeling that his pipe was not compatible with the genteel atmosphere of the room.

"Look," he said, "look, what do you really want it for?"

"If I told you, you wouldn't give it to me," she said. In the low-necked dress the rolled-up hair made her neck seem quite long, the head small and neat on the long graceful neck. She had an air of complete reserve. He felt that he was only barely in communication with her.

"I'm not going to give it to you anyway," he said, grinning. Then he said, "Just tell me the guy's name. I'll shoot him free, for nothing."

She smiled a little, tolerantly. He was glad for the arrival of the colored waiter with the rolls and water. When the man had gone he began quickly to tell her about what had happened that morning. Halfway through the recital some breathless quality in her silent attention made him wish he had not started, following the foolish and ineffectual ending that was coming. He got it over with quickly, and she looked up.

"But why didn't you ... ?"

"What was I supposed to do??" he demanded. "Start a fight?"

"But you could have ... ?"

"All right," he said irritably. "I suppose I could have told somebody, but I didn't fancy myself explaining why I had let him get away." She was still watching him. "Jesus Christ," he said, "by the time I'd caught my breath they were six blocks away. You don't generally expect ... Why?" he said. "Do you know anything about it?"

After a moment she laughed. "No. No, of course not. What made you ... I still don't understand how you ...

"The promotions, dopey," he said slowly. There was no point in pressing her about it. She would not tell and the thing was beginning to be vaguely clear, up to a point. He remembered the small girl saying, Paul was sure you were married, and the man, how did you make out, sir? And I thought it was the room they were after he thought bitterly, sometimes I'm not very bright.

He buttered his roll slowly. "We're all promoted from Washington," he said, "up to full lieutenant and sometimes even lieutenant commander. Your commanding officer hasn't got a thing to do except sign the papers. When you've put in your time you go up, if there's a promotion at the time. Sometimes you have to wait a couple of months for them to catch up with you. I've heard of guys getting spot promotions, but I've never heard of a man being held back when the ALNAV came out if he was healthy and not under sentence of court-martial and not newly transferred." He laughed. "Mother was very upset about it. She thought it was simply awful that her son had to wait as long as everybody else when he was ever so much smarter. But I don't know. At least I didn't have to worry whether Commander Tollifer liked me or not, I knew I'd get my two stripes eventually, if the war lasted."

Their dinners were set before them and he told her what he had paid for the new stripes six months ago, and how two of the boys had gone on a toot to celebrate, and the physical was announced for the next morning; their urine samples had been practically pure water and alcohol and they had had to come back the following day.

"Well, anyway," he said, grinning. "It was a nice comfortable way to fight a war.

He felt her eyes watching him a little too keenly. "Do you wish you had got out there, Lieutenant?"

"Oh, hell," he said, "Mother would have thrown a fit. I probably wouldn't have liked it anyway." He grinned quickly. "These glasses made a good excuse," he said dryly.

"Would they have let you go?"

He said, "Listen, at the beginning, when I first came , if you could find the doorknob to let yourself out of the room, your eyes were O.K. I could have got it, all right, if I'd asked for it." He grimaced. "I don't know why they insist on making you volunteer for everything. I hate to make up my mind." He laughed. "To tell you the honest-to-God truth I'm just as glad I didn't get out. I just feel that maybe ... maybe I missed learning something, if you know what I mean. Now that it's over."

"When do you expect to get out?" she asked.

He was grateful to her for turning the conversation and said quickly, "Oh, a couple of months. I don't really give a damn. I'll just pop back in the office and pick up my slide rule where I left it. Mother wanted Dad to write a letter requesting release for me. I guess he is pretty shorthanded, but I told him to lay off. He's got along without me this far and I don't want to start pulling strings at this stage in the game."

He let her keep him talking about himself, and after dinner they walked out into the lobby. A neon sign at the head of a stairway said "Tap Room" in archaic script, with an arrow pointing down, and they walked slowly past the groups of talking people and the pillars and the shiny impersonal settees, to the stairs, still talking about him, and down. The Tap Room had heavy oak beams and massive furniture, hardly any light, a minimum of waiters, and it was crowded to the doors. After fifteen minutes they squeezed themselves into a vacated seat along the wall. Half an hour later they were served.

It was close to midnight when they came into the lobby of her hotel. She touched her hair and shook her fur coat to dislodge the rain on it, and turned to him where he stood waiting.

"Do you want to come up?" she asked.

He looked at her for a moment and was careful to make his voice match hers when he spoke. "Yes. I'd like to."

They went past the desk where the clerk was half asleep and did not look up, and in the alcove beyond took the automatic elevator to the third floor. He followed her down the narrow corridor and waited while she opened the door and turned on the light. Standing behind her he thought he heard her breath catch a little as the light went on. She turned to him.

"I forgot I hadn't tidied up," she said. "I'm rather a terrible housekeeper."

Beyond her he saw the small traveling case on the bed that occupied two-thirds of the room. The contents of it were scattered over the rumpled bedspread. Coming into the room he could see that the drawers of the bureau were half open. The clothes she had been wearing earlier lay over and around the single straight chair in the comer.

"Take off your coat," she said, closing the door behind him. "Sit down somewhere while I pick up a little."

He picked his way to the bureau and laid his raincoat on top of it on the small paper bag that contained the stockings she had bought that afternoon. He dropped his cap on top of the coat. This room, he thought, has been searched. This room has been searched, it's been searched.

"Can I help you?" he asked, turning after running a comb through his hair.

She was sweeping the things on the bed back into the traveling case. "No, that's all right." She carried the case into the corner and picked up and brushed off her striped yellow suit, carrying it into the closet with her coat. "Well," she said emerging, "well, that looks a little better," and she returned to the bed and plucked at the coverlet. When she turned, her face had the look of smiling reserve that he was coming to know. "Well?" she said.

"Cigarette?"

"Thanks."

She came forward, watching him as he reached into his pocket, smiling a little, and he brought his hand out empty and took her wrist, drawing her to him and kissing her, a little afraid until he felt the pressure of her narrow young body against him. Then he picked her up and carried her the three steps to the bed, putting her down and bending over her, then lying against her.

"Let me take off my dress, darling," she whispered, suddenly still, and he was still holding himself tightly. "I want to take my dress off, Phillip," she said with a trace of insistence in her voice. He raised himself and began to unfasten the small gold buttons, aware that she was smiling up at him. His fingers did not function properly and, afraid of tearing something, he left her to do it and walked stiffly across the room to the light switch.

When he came out the tall buildings had the beautiful clarity that always came to things afterwards. The street lights and the lights of the cars reflected themselves in the wet pavements. It was no longer raining, but he buttoned his uniform raincoat to his chin, not quite sure that he had put on his collar and tie properly in the dark. He pulled on his gloves as he walked away briskly and the palms of his hands remembered the warmth of her body and the faint harshness of the lace of her nightgown. A small part of his mind warned him that now was the time to leave, pack up, check out. It would not ever be as good again. Nothing more could make it any better than it already was. He looked back at the dark dingy brick front of the hotel as he turned the comer. You never really knew what a girl thought about it.

In the morning the telephone awakened him, and as he rolled over to reach it he wondered if the hotel would cash a check for two hundred. He had the momentary thought that it was certainly an expensive way of getting something you could get for five bucks if you knew where to go and wanted to go there. He told himself sharply, don't make it dirty now, don't be cynical about it, you know it was the nicest thing that has happened to you in a long time; and he reached for the telephone that was still ringing, and the desk told him that Mr. Dickerson wanted to see him.

After a moment he set himself up less precariously in the bed and asked, "Who?"

"Dickerson," said the desk. "Mr. A. J. Dickerson, Lieutenant."

"Oh, all right," said Branch irritably. "Send him up. He was quite sure that he had never in his life met anyone named Dickerson, but it was easier to see the man.

He swung his legs out of bed and sat looking at the sunlight on the roofs that did not quite come to a level with the window of his room, but the morning was a little spoiled. Who the hell is Dickerson? he thought angrily, yawning; and standing up, he pulled about him the thin blue silk dressing gown that his mother had given him for traveling. Christ, he thought, and I haven't written to her yet, either.

The knock on the door came while he was washing his face and he dried himself, ran a comb through his hair, and went back through the room, closing the bathroom door behind him, putting on his glasses, and drawing the belt of the dressing gown snug about him before he opened the door to the hall. The man who stood there was a little below medium height, but heavily built, and he had black hair streaked with gray that grew in a short peak over his forehead, the long strands from this peak carefully brushed over the thin spot immediately behind it. He had a square fleshy face with the pores of the skin greatly emphasized; and he wore a very well-pressed suit of gray with a fine colored stripe, an immaculate white shirt, and a conservative silk tie.

"No," he said. "That's right, you don't know me, Lieutenant."

Branch grinned and stopped grinning. "Well, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"You can let me come in."

"Well," said Branch, not moving, "I'm sorry, but I just got up."

"Yes," said Mr. Dickerson, "I guess you would be kind of sleepy this morning."

Branch stood for a moment quite still; then he stepped back and the stocky man came in and walked across the rug to the untidy bed, smoothed the blankets into place and sat down, putting his hat carefully beside him. Branch closed the door and made himself go to get the pipe and tobacco from the uniform he had worn the night before.

"Pictures," said the man behind him.

Branch pulled open the slide fastener of the tobacco pouch. "How much?" he asked without turning. Oh, you fool, he said silently to the absent girl, you little fool, you didn't have to do it this way, why couldn't you wait?

"Don't you want to see them?" Mr. Dickerson asked.

"I had a match around here somewhere," Branch said vaguely, looking about him. The stocky man offered him a folder of matches and he walked to the bed and, lighting his pipe, stood looking down at the other. "Thanks," he said, returning the folder.

Mr. Dickerson gave him a narrow strip of photographic paper.

"You'll need this," Mr. Dickerson said.

He looked up from the pictures and took the magnifying glass the stocky man held out. The pictures had the horrible fascination of an illustrated medical textbook. He heard himself asking how they had been taken.

"Infra-red film and flashbulbs with filters," the stocky man's voice said. "The first set in the light were Super Double-X film, mercury hypersensitized, at F-one-five."

"You were in the bathroom?"

"Uh-huh. It connects through with the other room. I paid the guy fifty bucks to give it up." After a moment Mr. Dickerson said, "I had two Leicas, one for each room.

Branch looked at him and said bitterly, "Listen, I don't care if you had a trunkful. I'm not buying cameras." He held out the strip of prints.

"Oh, that's all right," said the man on the bed. "Keep them. I've got the negatives."

Branch put the pictures on the bedside table. "All right, what's the price?"

"Just beat it," said Mr. Dickerson. "Just beat it. Go back to Chicago and in a month or so you'll get the negatives in the mail. All right?"

Branch sucked at his pipe and, after a moment, went back to the chair that held his clothes, put the clothes aside on the dresser, and sat down. It seemed to him that this was not making very good sense. It seemed to him also rather silly that his first instinct should be to feel almost happy at the possibility that the girl might not, after all, be guilty of what he had automatically accused her of. As if that were any help.

"It's a little confusing," he said.

The stocky man was lighting a cigarette. "Nothing confusing about it," he said genially. "You've got a return ticket, haven't you? Use it."

"Who are you, anyway?" Branch demanded.

"Well," said the other, and as he threw back his head from the smoke, the light from the window picked out the coarse pores of his skin in detail, "well, I'm one of these guys they write stories about. In the magazines. I'm a private detective. I get a hundred and fifty flat, plus ten dollars a day, plus expenses, and," he grinned, you should see my expenses.

"No use asking you who's paying you?"

"Not a damned use in the world, bud."

"Can't you get in trouble?" Branch asked. "I thought you were licensed or something.

Mr. Dickerson's face changed a little. "Sure," he said, "if you want to make trouble for me you can, all right."

After a pause, Branch said, "What's the point? I mean, what's the point in my going back?"

"If you don't go your commanding officer gets copies of those, nice big ones on glossy paper." Mr. Dickerson jerked his thumb at the tiny prints.

"And then?" asked Branch. "After all, somebody has to prefer charges, don't they? Is she going to say I raped her?"

Mr. Dickerson said, "Hell, don't you know there's a law against it?"

"You mean, just doing it?"

"Federal statute, fornication, six months in jail or a hundred bucks...."

"I thought you had to cross a state line or something. My God," said Branch. "Listen ... I"

The detective laughed. "That's what they all think. Don't look at me, I didn't write the damned law."

"Why does your client want me back in Chicago?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Dickerson, rising. He blew a careful smoke ring and watched it float towards the door on the still air of the room.

"Well, what do I tell him?" he asked softly, without looking at Branch.

"Tell him to go to hell," Branch said.

The detective's glance touched him briefly. "O.K."

Branch started up as the door closed. Then he relaxed and listened to the footsteps receding dully along the carpet of the hall. The stocky man's departure left a void in the room, and everything seemed very much more final than he had intended it to be. He got up slowly and went to the telephone book on the shelf of the table beside the bed, and the name was there, Dickerson, A. J., pvt. detective serv. As he stood there he saw the strip of prints on the varnished table. If only it didn't look so damned undignified, he thought. He burned the prints carefully in the ashtray and emptied the finely powdered ash into the wastebasket and opened the window to let out the biting smoke. The air from outside was quite cold.

He went into the bathroom to shave and found his refection in the mirror gradually replaced by Commander Tollifer's pale, impatient, freckled face: the face of a young man on an old man's body. Mister Branch, the Commander would say, Jesus Christ, do you have to do it in front of a camera, Mr. Branch. This is not the kind of manliness the Navy is proud of developing, Mr. Branch. God, haven't I told you boys to keep your goddamned noses clean, haven't I told you? Yes, sir, Lieutenant Branch, S(E), USNR, would say, standing stiffly in front of the desk in a reasonable facsimile of the posture of attention, yes sir, yes sir, no sir, his eyes avoiding the pictures on the desk.

When he came into the small room she was sitting on the bed wearing the plain skirt of her yellow wool suit, and a yellow silk shirt with a small S-shaped gold pin at the throat. The jacket of the suit was thrown over her shoulders and her dark brown hair was neatly tucked about her head. She looked up as he closed the door behind him.

"I was just about to call you," she said, smiling a little. Then, ceasing to smile, she said breathlessly, "What's the matter?"

He went past her to the bathroom door and looked in, finding the small cubicle empty; turning, he found himself in the exact position from which the pictures had been taken. Janet Haskell came around the bed to him.

"What's the matter, Phillip?"

He told her, watching her face. As he told her it seemed to him she moved away from him a little without moving, and an unspoken mutual embarrassment came between them.

She touched her tongue to her lips. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "How nasty. You'd better go, hadn't you?"

"I've already told him ..."

"But you can call him." She touched his arm, looking up at him. "Don't ..." She paused. "Don't stay ... on my account." Her voice was a little uncertain, her eyes very wide and helpless, watching him.

He slapped the side of her face smartly. He stood quite still, hardly breathing, watching her after a moment step back and reach slowly back to retrieve the jacket the impact of the blow had jarred loose from her shoulder. He heard his voice mimic the tragic breathlessness of hers. "Don't stay ... on my account." He laughed.

"Phillip," she whispered.

"Cut it out," he said. "Cut it out. Quit it."

"Please," she whispered. "Phillip. It was so nice and now it's spoiled, but don't make it worse."

He waited, a little frightened at having started this.

"Oh, all right," she said, turning away. "Oh, all right," and he let himself breathe again. She sat down on the side of the bed facing the window. "Cigarette?"

"Sure," he said, giving her one.

"Sit down," she said, patting the space beside her. He lit her cigarette and sat down. "Oh, for heaven's sake relax," she said irritably, looking at him. "Please relax! Don't act like a ..."

"You should talk about acting."

"Well, stop trying to look so ... so tough. You're not really very hard-boiled, you know, even if you did slap me." She glanced at him again. "Aren't you going to say you're sorry?"

"No."

"I told you to go, didn't I?"

"Like that," he said. "With tears in your eyes. Nuts."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"The mystery woman," he said. "God, come out from behind that mask."

She smiled a little. "You didn't seem to mind it, Phillip. In fact, there were times when you seemed rather to enjoy it. Tell me ..."

"Yes?"

"How many times have you ... ?"

He looked at her quickly. "I don't know," he said stiffly. "Should I keep count?"

She smiled again, clearly knowing that he was lying. "Does your mother know about it?" she asked sharply.

"No."

"I'm sorry, Phillip," she said smoothly. "You're really very sweet. But you shouldn't accuse people of acting after putting on an imitation of a class A roue. The way you took me in your arms. And carried me to the bed. It was really very masterful."

He sat looking at the geometric pattern of windows on the far side of the airshaft. Presently he reached for his pipe.

"Well," he said, drawing a long breath, "well, we've pretty well taken that apart."

She said in a small voice, "Yes. We have rather, haven't we?"

"It's kind of too bad," he said. Looking at her, he saw that she was crying. "Don't do that," he protested.

"I can't help it. I'm not acting," she gasped, blinking her eyelids and biting at her lips as, the tears running down her face, she stared blindly at the confined emptiness of the airshaft. "It's so nasty," she whispered.

"There are now two kinds of Frenchmen," the girl who had called herself Janet Haskell said. "Those who guessed right and those who guessed wrong. My father guessed wrong, but he was a cautious man. He thought the Germans would win, but he sent me to safety while he could." She smiled wryly. "I'm afraid I can't feel very moral about it, Phillip. He was my father and he is dead. It is probably very dreadful of me, but I cannot hate him for his politics."

He looked through the plate glass window at Times Square, a little disappointing, like most of the places you have heard about and finally see. I suppose Trafalgar Square or the Red Square in Moscow would be the same way, he thought; or Place de la Concorde, or Unter den Linden. Well, maybe not Unter den Linden right now. Niagara Falls was a little more water falling off a cliff than you had ever seen before. Miami Beach was a lot of sand. He tried to concentrate on what the girl was saying, to decide what attitude he should take about it. But the whole thing seemed farfetched and improbable. The waitress put breakfast in front of them.

"Where did you learn your English?" Branch asked.

"Is it all right? I learned it in England before the war. That's rather a handicap, but. I've been working on it."

"I suppose your real name is Jeannette."

"Yes. Jeannette Lalevy."

"Who s Haskell?"

"Nobody. I made it up."

"This bird who called on me," Branch said. "He was no Frenchman. And the others didn't talk like Frenchmen."

"They would naturally be picked for their ability to speak English, stupid," she said, smiling.

"Not Dickerson," he said. "If he wasn't what he said he was then I'm talking Greek right now. I bet he thinks hors d'oeuvres are something you keep in a stable."

Jeannette Lalevy hesitated and punctured her eggs with a fork and watched the yolk flow over the plate. "No," she admitted. "He is probably American. That is another matter entirely." There was a small silence. "Phillip," she said, "Phillip, I swear to you it's a private thing altogether. It had nothing to do with my father. Nothing at all. Nor with politics." She looked up at him. I could have lied to you. I did not have to tell you that my father was of Vichy."

He said, "That's just about the only thing you have told me."

"You will have to take me on faith, Phillip. They want something, they all want something, but I cannot tell you what it is."

"And knowing that your father was Vichy I'm supposed to play it blind and give you two hundred bucks just for the hell of it." He laughed a little bitterly. "That's a hell of a lot of faith, toots." Presently, seeing that she was not going to tell him any more of what he needed to know, he changed the subject. "What made you pick me on the train?"

She looked up from her plate, startled. "But," she said, "Phillip..."

"All right," he said. "All right."

She looked away and smiled a little. "Well, you were rather conspicuous in that uniform," she said. "And you looked nice. The Army uniform looks more martial, I think, but the Navy uniform makes you look like a gentleman." She glanced at him and added, "You were an officer.

He grinned. "I was an officer and I looked easy to handle."

"Yes." She laughed. "Are you angry?"

He shook his head, watching her. Her face showed no signs of the tears of half an hour before and her hair was again smoothly rolled about her head; but he could remember how she had cried and knew that, at least, had been genuine. For a moment he had broken through the guarded reserve that she carried like an armor, and beneath it she was quite young and rather frightened. And there were too many against her, whoever she was and whatever she was trying to do; and he owed her something for last night.

He said uncomfortably, "I'll cash a check as soon as I can get to a bank. Will that take care of you?"

She hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I think it will, Phillip."

"All right," he said, grimacing. "How much do you need ?"

"Why are you doing this for me?"

"You know why I'm doing it," he said.

After a little she turned her face away and looked at the momentary sunshine on Times Square. "Don't be cruel," she said softly. Then turning back quickly, "Couldn't you.... come with me? No," she said, "you have to get back, don't you? Because of the pictures."

He grinned at her. "Stop it," he said. "You're breaking my heart."

"You see right through me, don't you, Phillip?"

"No," he said. "Not all the way. It's sort of like peeling an onion. There's one layer after another.

She said, "Heavens!, couldn't you make it a little more romantic, like an artichoke, perhaps?"

They laughed foolishly, unable to stop, and the waitress came with more coffee and took away their empty plates.

"Well," Branch said when they had stopped laughing. "Well, where is this place we're going to, anyway?"

The girl reached across the table to touch his hand lightly. "Really you should go back, shouldn't you?" she said. "I mean, really?"

"Oh, I'm not going back," he said. "To hell with that stuff. They can send their pictures to BuPers if they like." He felt himself growing red as he tried to explain. "It's not that I don't care, you understand. It's just that, well, nobody's going to tell me ... Oh, rats," he said. "I'm just stubborn, I guess. Nobody's going to tell a two-bit private detective, here's this guy Branch and I want him to go to Chicago, see, so get a move on and make him go.

Jeannette Lalevy said, "that is very stupid."

"Anyway," said Branch, disregarding her, "what they probably want is to keep me from giving you money, isn't it? If you haven't any money you can't do anything. If I give you money they don't give a damn if I stay or go back, do they?"

She laughed. "You talk as if you knew all about it."

"That much is obvious," he said. "I wish you'd tell me about a few things that aren't so obvious, like why your room was searched, and who was that fake ensign, and why do you want me along."

She smiled at him, still touching his hand. "Do you have to ask why I want you, Phillip?"

"Oh, cut it out," he said impatiently, withdrawing his hand. "What's the matter, honestly? Do you feel the need for masculine protection?"

Having stopped smiling, she said a little sharply, "Well, I do need help."

"Well, I can't go into it blind," he said. "I've got to know what it's all about."

She picked up her gloves and purse. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to go without you, Phillip." She stood up.

"Don't rush off mad," he said, looking up at her.

"I'm not mad."

"Will you be at the hotel?" he asked.

She nodded. He watched her go to the door, liking the swing of her coat and the easy movement of her long straight legs. It occurred to him that this was another meal she had got out of him, and now he was supposed to get two hundred dollars for her somewhere. Not that he couldn't afford it. A single man spending his weekends at home could save a great deal on a lieutenant's salary. But he disliked the idea that perhaps all it meant to her was the money. He was glad to be going with her, as of course he was, to see what she did with it. If she had not asked him he would have made the suggestion himself.

There were some very nice things about Jeannette Lalevy, but she was not a girl who inspired a great deal of trust and he did not like what she had told him of her father, although the fact that she had told him was certainly a point in her favor. He grinned to himself at the thought that keeping an eye on her promised to prove a highly interesting way of spending a leave. You could go farther and fare worse, as the saying went.

Commander Tollifer's face came to him, with that weary, well-what-can-you-expect-of-a-reserve-officer look; and he shivered a little and got up, automatically brushing at the inevitable lint deposited by the napkin on his uniform trousers. He set the cap squarely on his head and paid the bill and went out, belting his raincoat about him, to find a bank that would cash an out-of-town check.

Outside it was still cold in spite of the sun, and a wind was blowing strongly. Northeast, he thought idly, and he looked at the sky that was a little hazy between the buildings. He wondered if the small-craft warnings were up along the coast. Hell, I wish I could have got to sea just long enough to find out what it was like, he thought. Then he reflected that this was probably just one of those things you thought you ought to want.

A car separated itself from the stream of traffic and drew alongside the curb abreast of him, clearing his mind of everything but an instinctive sense of danger, but there was nothing to do on the crowded sidewalk that was not utterly ridiculous. You could not throw yourself to the ground or run for a doorway. You could not make a damn fool of yourself in public. He continued to walk stiffly.

"Lieutenant Branch?"

He turned his head and looked at the man in the car, squinting against tire dust thrown up by the wind. Then he went slowly to the curb. "Yes?"

The man was nobody he had ever seen before, and he was alone in the car, a long, gray, Packard sedan. The man was very big, with the smooth, pale smiling face of a successful minister. Even sitting down he was one of the largest men that Branch had ever seen.

"I'd like to talk to you, Lieutenant," the man said, opening the door of the car, the window of which he had cranked down earlier.

"Go ahead and talk," Branch said.

The man waited, smiling. There was no threat in his smile, but Branch could not help remembering the pictures; and there were a great many things he needed to know that the man might tell him.

"Oh, all right," he said, and he got into the car, closing the door behind him. The man sent the car away from the curb.

"There's a carton of cigarettes in the compartment in front of you," he said easily. "Help yourself."

"No, thanks."

The big man laughed. "Hell, take a couple of packs. You can give them to a friend if you don't smoke them yourself."

Branch glanced at him and, opening the compartment, removed two packages from the carton of Phillip Morrises and put them in his pocket. All right, he thought, all right, Mr. Smugface. He watched New York slide effortlessly past the windows. It was, insulated and relaxed as he was in the big car, like watching a motion picture.

"She's a great little town," the big man said heartily. "The greatest town in the world, Lieutenant. There's nothing like New York."

"No, I don't guess there is," Branch said without looking at the man.

"Any place you'd like to see while we're riding?"

Branch shook his head. I'll wait him out, he thought, if it takes until Christmas. I'll be damned if I'm going to ask him what he wants.

"If there is," the big man insisted, "just say so."

"All right, Central Park," Branch said.

The big man laughed. "Sure, Central Park," he said. "But you really ought to have a girl along when you ride in Central Park."

Branch, still not looking at him, said, "She went to her hotel. Do you want to stop by and get her?"

The big man's laugh filled the car. He laughed as if he had heard quite the funniest thing in the world. He clapped Branch on the knee. "I like a man with a sense of humor, Lieutenant."

"Just call me Mister," Branch said. "I don't rate a title until I make Commander, sometime in nineteen-ninety."

He heard the laugh roll out again and thought, oh, put a sock in it. He found himself wondering where the money had come from that had paid for the car, and the cigarettes, and the beautifully cut tweed overcoat that the big man was wearing, but he could not even make a reasonable guess. It seemed to him that ever since he had met her on the train people had been different, so that it was a constant surprise to him that he actually understood what they were saying, as if they should have been talking a language quite incomprehensible to him, since he did not have the slightest understanding of their thoughts or backgrounds. She herself was that way, and the Laflins had been that way, and now this man. Only the heavy businesslike manner of Dickerson had been familiar, like a policeman handing out a ticket.

He saw the leafless trees of the park go past the windows on either side, and through them and over them he could see the buildings of Fifth Avenue.

"Lieutenant--I mean Mister Branch," the big man said, and laughed.

Branch glanced at him.

"You don't want to get mixed up in that stuff", big man said.

"What stuff?"

"Don't kid me, Branch," the big man said. "Don't kid me.

"All right," said Branch. "I won't kid you."

"I want to apologize to you," the big man said.

Branch laughed abruptly. "Go right ahead," he said.

"Dickerson was a mistake," the big man said. "He and I talked it over and we both agreed ..."

"That he was a mistake?" Branch turned in his seat and laughed again. "That I want to see," he said. "Dickerson agreeing that he was a mistake."

"I get what you mean," said the big man, also laughing. "Yeah, I get what you mean, all right. Well, have you seen enough of it? That's Fifth over that way and down there's where you can rent a horse and buggy to ride around in. I never liked horses myself," he said. "Suppose we go some place where I can park this hearse and we can have a talk, if you've seen enough of it."

Branch nodded and shortly they were parked in a residential section that looked like any residential section in any moderately large city in America. The big man took an envelope from his pocket and gave it to Branch. "It's all yours," he said.

Inside the envelope were half a dozen strips of film, cut to lengths of four pictures each. The pictures, even in the negative, were unmistakable and caused a reminiscent crawling sensation to go down Branch's neck and shoulders. Branch looked at the big man beside him, who was carefully cutting the end from a cigar with a small nickel-plated penknife.

"What do I do with them?" Branch asked.

"Shove them, Lieutenant," the big man said genially. "Burn them. I told you it was a mistake." He lit the cigar thoroughly and then, holding the match, took one of the film strips, and put it in the flame. The film melted and curled under the heat and then, with a hissing sound, exploded into flame.

"Hell!" cried the big man, dropping it, and he brushed the fiercely blazing snake-like spiral from the seat onto the door and stamped on it, both of them coughing in the bitter smoke. Branch opened the door beside him and got out The big man kicked the flame into the street where it flared up again and burned itself out.

"Well!" said the big man, "Well, Jesus Christ!"

Branch said, "I'm afraid you've scorched your upholstery."

"My God," said the big man and wiped his face with a large linen handkerchief. They got back into the car, leaving the windows open. "Burn them yourself," said the big man. "To hell with that stuff"

Branch put the envelope in his pocket. "How do I now this is all of them?"

"It's the negatives, isn't it? And he gave you the prints this morning." The big man was rubbing at the blackened spot on the cushion between them.

"He could have made more prints."

"Well, he didn't"

"Well," said Branch. "All right. And what do we do now?"

The big man straightened up and found the cigar he had laid aside against the windshield, examined it, and re-lighted it to make certain it was burning evenly.

"Look, Branch," he said at last. "Look, let's put it this way. You came here to have a good time, didn't you? You picked the best place in the world, all right, there is no place like it, but suppose somebody made it worth your while to pass it up this time? You've seen a little of it and you can always come back. New York won't run away. Next year, say, you can do the town right. I'11 give you cards to some folks I know and then turn this little burg inside out for you. ..."

"What about showing me around yourself?" The big man laughed his rolling laugh. "Always kidding," he said. "Always kidding. That's what I like about you, Branch. I should give you my card, eh?"

"What about the license-plates?" Branch asked.

The big man, still laughing, slapped him on the knee. "Just for a gag, check up on them. It could give you a laugh, maybe."

Branch looked at him laughing and felt a little tired of everything being so funny. "Well," he said, "how much is it worth to you?. The big man stopped laughing. Name your own price, Branch. That way you won't be feeling I jewed you down."

"All right," said Branch, "A thousand.

The big man raised his eyebrows but said only, "One grand. Check," and took a wallet from his hip pocket and counted ten new one-hundred-dollar bills into Branch's hand. "You'll take the first train leaving and you won't see her again, right?" he said when he was through.

."Check," said Branch, putting the bills away in his wallet.

Coming into his hotel room a little breathless, he closed and locked the door and looked around the familiar impersonal room with a feeling of having reached sanctuary. After a moment he took off his coat and cap, opened the window, set an ashtray on the sill, and one after another burned the strips of film. The envelope he flushed down the water closet in the bathroom and, standing there, he took the wallet from his pocket and dropped the first hundred-dollar bill into the returning water, waited until the cistern had filled, and flushed it again, watching the green rectangle swirl out of sight into the plumbing.

HE SAID ANGRILY, Listen, I don't give a damn what you think. Pack your bag and let's get out of here."

"But," she said, "a thousand dollars, Phillip"

"It was my thousand," he said. "If I want to flush it down the drain I'll flush it."

She frowned with the effort of trying to understand. "It just seems so stupid," she said. "Just so terribly stupid. If you didn't want it .. ."

He said slowly and distinctly, "Now, Jeannette, listen. The man gave it to me, see. I didn't want to give it to you. Understand? I wanted to throw it in the johnny and let the water run. I only took it in the first place because the big ape was so damned sure he could buy me." He let his voice change. "Listen, they were brand-new bills numbered consecutively and he's got the numbers or I'm a horse's neck. What he could do about it, I don't know but I'm not running around with hundred-dollar bills in my pocket that I can't account for, not after those pictures, and I don't think you'd want to either. It doesn't seem very sensible at the moment."

There were tears in her eyes. "I don't think very much of your way of being sensible, Phillip," she said in a choked voice. Turning away, she began to fold her black dress carefully in preparation for putting it away into the bag that lay open on the bed.

He stood by the door watching her. "Can I help you?" he asked presently.

"No, thank you."

"Well," he said. "Hurry up. I don't want to meet that lad again." After a moment he said, "He must have some kind of racket. No honest man would flash a roll like that."

She turned her head quickly, "Oh, Mr. Sellers isn't a ...." Then she stopped.

"Oh," said Branch, "You know him?"

"Of course I know him," she said irritably over her shoulder. "Do you think he'd be worried about me if I didn't know him?"

"Well, what is he, then?"

"I don't know what he is," she said, and went away from him into the bathroom to get her toilet articles. Returning, she said with a sudden mechanical smile, I'n sorry, Phillip. It's so hard, when you've been afraid for years, to trust anyone. Actually Sellers was something of a ... a business associate of my father's. My father would send him goods that, because of the wartime laws here in America, could not be brought in by legal... Well," she said, flushing a little, "Sellers smuggled them in, really. I don't see why I should talk around it; the American women were ready enough to buy. You are probably right that Sellers is a racketeer, although I don't know what he is doing now. During the war he had quite an organization in the Eastern ports, and when it was decided that I should come over here, it was Mr. Sellers who helped me get to the people in Evanston where I was going to stay. It was quite melodramatic, really. Like an underground. Only now Father is dead and the war is over and Mr. Sellers doesn't want to be reminded ..." She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "I was not very clever. I was so sure that he would help me that when he said he wouldn't... when he acted as if I were a...a beggar. I lost my temper and threatened him. He thought I would try to blackmail him, I guess."

"That's why he had your room searched?"

"I suppose so, to see if I had any papers that might involve him." She patted her hair into place. "Will you close my bag for me, Phillip? It's a little full." He went past her and put his knee on the suitcase to close if and she said, "It was rather a silly performance on my part. But I simply couldn't help myself. I had been so sure that everything would be all right if I could speak to him, and then to find that he would not even lend me the money...."

Branch said, "Well, let's go. Get your coat. Here." he said as she came back to him, "for the bill."

She fingered the two fives he had given her. "Did you ... get to the bank?"

"Yes," he said without expression.

"Can I... ?"

"Later," he said.

"Does it give you pleasure to make me feel cheap, Phillip?" she murmured and, drawing her coat about her she went ahead of him out of the tiny room. He picked up the two bags and followed her, waited while she settled at the desk, and they took a taxi to the station.

"How did you happen to join the Navy, Phillip?" she asked him idly as they sat waiting for the train to move. 1 mean, why not the Army? Do you like boats?"

"I used to sail all the time when I was a kid," he said. Through the window beyond her he could see the people hurrying along the platform. Whenever a man came who was taller than the rest he felt himself contract a little inside. "A couple of the boys and I got together and bought a sailing dinghy in Chicago. Sail around the harbor. Makes us feel salty as hell..."

She said, "But if you knew about boats it would seem to me they would have... It seems rather wasteful."

He shrugged his shoulders, still watching the window. "I guess they figured they could make sailors faster than they could make engineers, starting from scratch. After all, it took me four years to get my degree. And, as the Commander loves to point out, somebody's got to do the work." he grinned briefly at the girl beside him. "What's the name of this place we re going?"

"Queen's Harbor," she said after a moment's hesitation.

"Never heard of it." As the train began to move he let himself relax, and he looked at the girl again, she looking out the window away from him, and he began to feel a little reckless and adventurous. It was a feeling he had not had since, as an ensign in a brand-new uniform, he had boarded the train for Tucson, Arizona, quite sure that he was going to war. Jeannette Lalevy's face was clear and lovely in profile and everything he had ever known was a long way away and nobody he knew would ever learn of this journey and he would never tell them.

He took off his cap and rose to put it, and his raincoat, into the baggage rack. "Want to get rid of your coat?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "lt's a little chilly."

"I hadn't noticed it," he said. "I thought it was too warm, myself."

The movement of the train threw him against her as he sat down and there was a crackling sound as of paper from the pocket of her fur coat.

"Sorry," he said. "What's that in your pocket?"

"I don't know." She pulled out a brown paper bag and looked at it and laughed. "Oh," she said. "The stockings I bought, remember? t must have been carrying them around ever since...."

He sat very still and did not look at her because she was lying to him. It was quite unimportant, but the bag had been lying on her dresser the previous evening.

"I'll put it in your suitcase," he said, taking it from her.

She said, "Oh, never mind. I'll put it in later," and he let her take it back and put it back in her pocket. He sat beside her and looked at the double row of heads before them.

Jeannette Lalevy ran her gloved finger along the window sill. "This car is positively filthy," she said.

"Yes," he said, "they're getting worse all the time."

"The one from Chicago wasn't bad."

"No," be said. "It was all right."

"What's the matter, Phillip?" she asked. "Are you still worried about Mr. Sellers?"

"What are we going to do in Queens Harbor?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "It depends."

He said dryly, "It always depends, doesn't it?"

"What do you ...?"

"That's what you told me before. When we were coming into the station."

She laughed. After a moment she said, "Phillip."

He glanced at her. The light from the window fell across her flat cheekbones, dividing her face into a pattern of light and dark, so that he could not see her expression.

"Yes," he said.

"When can I ... Could you give it to me now?"

"What's the matter, don't you trust me?"

"Sometimes..." She moved in her seat, settling the brown fur coat about her. "Sometimes I wonder why I thought I liked you, Phillip."

"You'll get it," he said. "Just don't rush me. I want to. .."

"What?" she demanded.

"I want to find out a little more about it." he said.

"I'm not going to blow up anything, dear" she said. "I'm not going to sabotage anything. If that's what is worrying you."

The term of endearment gave him a feeling that was half embarrassment and half pleasure. "Well, what the hell are you going to do?" he demanded. "What's it all about, anyway?"

"I can't tell you," she said. "Don't you understand? I can't tell you. You wouldn't like it, darling. You wouldn't understand."

"I wouldn't like it," he said, "But I'm supposed to give you two hundred bucks to do it with nevertheless."

She was silent and he said irritably, "What's all this dear darling business."

She patted his hand, smiling. "I won't do it any more if it embarrasses you."

The rhythm of the train changed slightly and continued to change, Like a victrola record running down, and she glanced at the window.

"We're stopping," she said. "How far have we come?"

He reached for the timetable he had picked up in the station.

She said, "Oh, never mind," and, looking out, "Why do towns always look so dirty from the railroad tracks."

"Maybe the trains have something to do with it," he suggested.

"You'll like Queen's Harbor," she said, settling back. "It's Like an old French fishing village. I don't know much about boats myself," she said, "But when I was there I loved to watch the oyster boats coming in. ..."

"When was that?" he asked. The stopping of the sound of the train made every sound in the car much louder, and they were instinctively talking in half-whispers.

She said, "There's only one hotel that's any good. The Manor House.... Excuse me a minute, please." She gathered her coat about her and crowded past him, and presently she was back, saying disgustedly, "It was closed."

"They always close them when they come to a town," he said. "Where have you been all your life?"

"Well," she said, "I hope they start pretty soon, then. Before I have an embarrassing accident."

"Tsk, tsk," he said.

She straightened up, sitting on the arm of the seat, and they watched the porter rolling a ponderous wagon of luggage past the window.

"I wish I knew who was getting on," Branch said uncomfortably.

She patted his shoulder, rising as the train gave a tentative jerk preparatory to starting. "I wouldn't worry about it, darling."

He watched her go up the car. She was doing something to her coat, buttoning it, and he felt a small pulse of apprehension begin to throb in his ear. Then the train began to move slowly and she was running for the door.

He started up as the open door let in with a rush the slowly accelerating rhythm of the train, and ahead of him a middle-aged woman had got up and was running forward. The door closed and opened again. Branch pushed himself across the seat, thinking, don't. Don't, you'll hurt yourself, darling and then he saw Jeannette Lalevy through the window, already having jumped, on hands and knees at the end of the platform. As the motion of the train brought her abreast of the window she was rising, brushing at her gloves and her coat, and, turning in the seat he saw her, a moment before the window frame shut her off from him, part her coat and raise her skirt to examine her stockings. He remembered the small brown bag in her pocket and found himself laughing in spite of his indignation at knowing that she had planned this escape far in advance, but had not trusted him enough to tell him. Stockings, he thought, my God.

The middle-aged woman re-entered the car with a slightly breathless air. He watched her as she came down the aisle. Her face was very narrow, wedge-shaped towards the strong, bony nose, and her skin had a white lifelessness, and, in spite of its pallor, looked leathery. She was wearing a shapeless navy blue dress speckled with round white dots the approximate diameter of a lead pencil. Branch noticed her hands, both gripping the large bag she carried: they were long, strong, almost beautiful. You could easily picture her playing the harp, with those hands, or the piano, or strangling somebody. She did not stop at her seat but continued through to the car behind without looking at Branch, but he felt her eyes touch him glancingly as she went past.

It occurred to him suddenly that if he were smart he would take the best connection he could make to Indianapolis and get out of this; and it war disconcerting to realize that Jeannette Lalevy had estimated accurately the mixture of curiosity and adventurousness, of stubbornness and perhaps loyalty, and certainly of expectation, that would make him take the traveling bag she had left behind to the place she had told him to go and wait there for her as long as there was any reasonable chance of her coming. He did not love her, there were too many questions yet to be answered, but he could not by his own action cut himself off from any chance of ever seeing her again. There was certain fascination about a girl who had the courage and recklessness to throw herself off a moving train and the forethought to bring along a spare pair of hose when she did it.

It was only a little annoying to know that she had told him where to go, even the hotel where he was to register, so certain of him that she had left her bag in his charge with, probably, everything she had in the world except what she was wearing. After a moment's thought he decided that this, too, had been calculated. She had left the bag as a hostage for her return, something tangible of hers for him to touch to reassure himself that he war not making a fool of himself, if the waiting got tiresome.

"Is this seat taken?"

A little startled, he looked up and saw the small girl he had met before, when she had called herself Constance Laflin. She stood in the aisle, waiting a little uncertainly for him to answer.

"No" he said, "No, It's not taken," and he moved aside to give her room to sit down. Then he sat there smoking and watched the landscape roll by in the sunlight outside the dirty window of the car. You could see that it was fall out there, and the wind was strong enough to send swirls of dust across the dirt road that for a little, paralleled the tracks. The single houses stood naked among the bare fields and did not look like places where people lived.

Well." said the girl beside him presently. "Well, hello."

He turned his head to look at her. "Hello."

"Where did she go?" the girl asked.

"How would I know?" It annoyed him that they should send a girl to question him, as if they considered him a sucker for women. Perhaps they were right. "How's your husband?" he asked. "Does he like the Navy?"

She smiled a little. He was demobilized yesterday." She laughed. "Demobilized all the way around."

"Not only demobilized but divorced," Branch said.

The girl nodded. "You know. These war marriages."

Branch grinned a little and made himself stop. "Well, what's your name today, then?" he asked.

"It's still Constance," she said.

"Constance what?" When she hesitated, he said. "That's right, pick a good one."

"Constance Bellamann" she said.

"Oh, pick something easy to carry around," he said. Smith, Jones, Brown, Green, Doe.... Bellamann?"

She smiled at him. She looked fourteen years old when she smiled, young and very helpless, and you expected to find gold braces still on her teeth.

"It really is Bellamann," she said "Honest."

"All right," he said. "I'll take your word for it."

"They wanted me to ask you to come back in the other car," she said. "There's more room back there."

He looked at her for a moment, and could not see that it would do any harm, and rose.

"Thanks," she said, turning the smile on him again. "I was afraid you wouldn't... "

"Well, I haven't anything else to do," he said uncivilly, and watched her as, steadying herself against the motion of the train, she made her way down the aisle ahead of him. She was still wearing the green skirt and the low-heeled shoes and the same or another ill-fitting white shirt that needed tucking in at the waist. After you became accustomed to the idea you could recognize the slight, small-waisted young body through the disfiguring clothes. Her ankles were quite good in spite of the shoes.

As they came into the car the woman with the hands broke off what she was saying to the others and came up the car, passing the two of them without speaking. The rather large young man with the small boyish features in the wide square face, who had worn a Navy uniform when Branch had last seen him, rose as they approached; but his companion remained seated, a tall, very thin man, a little older, who wore a brief bushy mustache over a chin that was little more than a deep wrinkle between his face and his throat.

"This is Mr. Hahn," Paul Laflin said. Mr. Hahn nodded to nodded to Branch. Paul, reaching over the back of the seat ahead of him, gathered up a purse, a brown jacket, and a magazine, gave them to the girl, and pushed the seat over so that they could all sit together. "Make yourself comfortable, Lieutenant," the large young man said. "If you mind riding backwards ..."

Branch shook his head that he did not mind riding backwards.

The girl looked at the three of them. "Do you want me to...?"

"Oh, no," said Paul Laflin. "No, you can stay, Constance." When they were all settled he glanced at the chinless man beside him. "Well...P?"

Mr. Hahn was carefully filling a pipe. "Try some of my tobacco, Lieutenant," he said, offering the pouch.

"Thanks, I ..." Branch flourished his own pouch.

"Try it. I think you will like it," the chinless man said, and Branch put away his pouch and led his pipe with the tobacco that was, as he had feared, coarsely cut and aromatic. "Where do you expect to meet her?" Mr. Hahn asked abruptly.

Branch glanced at him over the flame of a match. "Queen's Harbor, I suppose, " he said, returning the oilskin pouch.

He was aware of a sudden sharpening of their attention on him, as if his frankness had caught them unready. He found himself enjoying himself, a little uneasily. It was a little like playing hookey to go fishing. He did not have any business being there, but it was becoming rather exciting, even if he could not make it seem quite real.

The large young man with the boyish red face laughed abruptly. "Oh, come, Lieutenant, weÕre not as simple as that. "

Branch raised his eyebrows. "He asked me. I told him. I don't know how simple you are."

"Why do you say you suppose, Lieutenant?" Mr. Hahn asked.

"Well," said Branch, "I asked her where we were going and she said Queen's Harbor. Then she jumped off the train. For all I know she may be heading for San Francisco...."

The girl moved beside him and he glanced at her. She was sucking at a cigarette, holding it inexpertly to her pursed lips. She blew out the smoke with an air of achievement and said, "Didn't she tell you?"

Branch shook his head. "Not a damned thing and I've still got her suitcase. I figured the only thing to do was go down to Queen's Harbor and wait for her to turn up"

Mr. Hahn said, "You are not really trying to tell us, are you, that on the off-chance of being able to deliver a cheap suitcase you are willing to make a totally unnecessary trip down into Maryland."

Branch pulled at his pipe and found that the borrowed tobacco had gone out. He took the pipe from his mouth and sat toying with it.

"You're making things very complicated," he said. "You think that I have to be lying because I'm answering your questions instead of trying to stall you. Let me ask you this, suppose you had fifteen days leave and you met a reasonably good-looking and cooperative young lady. ... Well," he grinned, "what more can you ask of a leave? Sure, I'm willing to run down to Maryland. Hell, I'd ride clear to Florida. I've got plenty of money saved up and I haven't been out of Chicago in three years except to go home."

The girl beside him said sharply, "It doesn't matter to you if she ... ?"

Paul Laflin silenced her with a look. "It doesn't bother you," he said to Branch, "that she felt it necessary to jump off this train?"

"Oh, listen," protested Branch, "I'm not a dope, I know something's going on, so what? After all, I'm not going to marry the girl, you Know."

"The chinless Mr. Hahn said dryly, "Well, that's fortunate. Since she already has a husband."

Branch looked down at the pipe in his hands. After a moment be pushed at the charred tobacco with a forefinger, not speaking.

"Didn't you know?" he heard the girl beside him asking softly.

"No." he said. Then he looked up. "Well, so what?"

"The great American attitude of so what," said Mr. Hahn.

He stood on the dock at Queen's Harbor and watched a single-masted oyster boat tack into the river under reefed mainsail and small spitfire jib, keeping between the channel buoys that showed as distant black dots among the darting reflections of the sunlight on the broken water. He could feel the wind behind him, causing him to lean a little backwards, and he could see that even in the sheltered water of the river mouth the oysterman was taking spray aboard. He thought, Christ, I bet it's cold out there, and watched a small motorboat come into sight astern of the larger boat he had been watching, coming around the point and heading up the river with a fine disregard for all buoys and channel.

The open water from which it had come was, on the chart pinned to the post-office wall, was still considered as Stigman River, and Chesapeake Bay was to the right behind the point of land. He felt a momentary sense of deceit and treachery in the remembered knowledge, gained from the chart, that through most of the glittering expanse stretching from the river mouth to the recurving shoreline in the distance, and out of sight behind the point of land to the right, the water was no more than waist or armpit deep. Where he had sailed as a boy you could drown twenty feet offshore.

There had been no word from her and, after reaching the town, he bad not seen any of the others except the girl, one day, sitting in the lobby of the hotel, waiting. He had managed to learn from them that the name of the girl they were all waiting for was actually Duval. Lalevy had been her maiden name. That made three names she had had in three days, and he summed up what be knew about her, damningly: her father had been a wealthy businessman who had come to terms with the Nazis, she had entered the country, probably illegally, under the auspices of a man who by her own admission was a black-market specialist if not worse. Probably Jeannette Duval was not the first questionable refuges who had been taken care of by the smooth-working wartime organization, reminiscent of the underground, in operation if not in motive, that Mr. Sellers was now so eager to have forgotten. Probably Branch reflected grimly, when he learned with whom she had stayed in Evanston he would get another shock. Everything new he learned about her was a shock.

But the girl herself had carried a certain conviction There was something about the way she had never taken the trouble to explain or apologize; he could help her or not as he damn well pleased. He knew that if, when he met her again, he were to accuse her of concealing a husband she would simply ask him if it would have made any difference to him that night in New York, and he would have to admit that it would not. If he were to insist on her telling him just what it was they were all after she would say, flatly, that if he had to know or leave, he could leave. She did not ask for help, she merely gave you the opportunity to help her if you wanted to. Branch grimaced and turned away from the sunlit water, remembering that she also paid well for assistance. It did not look so nice when you put it like that.

But he had wasted two days of his leave on her already and, like a man waiting for an overdue bus, he could not bring himself to throw away the investment of time and boredom by giving up. Besides, it was unlikely that the others would let him go. They would follow him in the hope that he was on his way to meet her. He could not take the chance of having them following him back to Indianapolis where everyone knew him. And, in the final analysis, four of them, plus the man Sellers and his detective, against one girl did not seem quite fair. But it would, he reflected wryly. he nice of her to turn up and get things settled, one way or the other.

When he returned to the Manor House the clerk said there was no message for him. He started for the stairs, then turned back with sudden inspiration.

Look," he asked the man, "do you have a Miss Bellamann staying here? Miss Constance Bellamann ?" Them was really no sense in being bored to death.

The clerk looked it up automatically. "Yes, Lieutenant. Room 214. Do you want me to call her?"

"No," he said. "Maybe later." He climbed the stairs to the third floor and unlocked the door of his room and stepped inside letting the door close behind him while he without moving examined the room with his eyes. Then he reached gently back and pulled the door tight and walked to the bathroom and looked in, pulling back the shower curtain; then crossing the bedroom again to the closet and pushing the clothes along the rack to look at her suitcase on the floor. It was still there and nothing had been moved anywhere. He threw his cap and raincoat on the bed in a gesture of irritation and walked around the bed to retrieve the cap when it rolled of to the floor.

Listen, he thought, brushing the cap off against his sleeve, Listen, I can't spend my whole leave in this graveyard. As he walked across the floor to the dresser the ancient brown-painted boards creaked under his feet. He pulled off his tie and the gray shirt he had been wearing and, looking at it, reflected that pretty soon he would have to do something about laundry. He put on a white shirt that he had worn once before, the collar buttons and cuff links still in place, and found a clean collar. With his blouse on again he looked at himself in the mirror. The white shirts were almost worth the discomfort and trouble of the stiff collar. It made him feel better to look at himself in the uniform and the white shirt, and he brushed himself off with a small whisk-broom and went out into the hall, determined the way the numbers ran, and followed them to ?14.

The door opened quickly to his knock, and the girl stood there in her stocking feet, a little surprised to see him.

"May I come in?" he asked.

"Yes," she said after a moment. "Of course."

He entered and closed the door behind him, watching her turn away from him to put her feet into her shoes. She was wearing a black wool skirt that needed brushing and a white cotton shirtwaist with a round collar. She went to the dresser and picked up a comb. Her short, soft brown hair was a little untidy, as if she had been lying down.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked suddenly, looking at him in the mirror.

"Well," he said, "I was real bright, like Sherlock Holmes. I asked at the desk." After a moment he added, "Besides, I saw you sitting in the lobby."

She turned slowly to face him after touching her hair indifferently with the comb. When it was apparent that she was not going to speak, he said, "I don't know about you, but I'm getting bored. What about taking in a show with me tonight?"

She moved her lips as if to speak, but changed her mind. He said quickly, "Call them if you like. It's not a trick, but you call them. Let me know what you decide. I'm in 105."

"Yes," she said, "I know."

"Well, give me a ring," he said. "I'll be waiting." He turned and went out.

In ten minutes his telephone rang and he heard her voice. "It's all right."

"Dinner?" he asked.

"If you want to."

"I'll meet you in the lounge in half an hour," he said.

He was sitting in the lobby when she came down and he knocked out his pipe, rising and watching her thoughtfully as she hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looking about her, not yet seeing him. She had changed to a short-sleeved brown dress that fitted her loosely except where the waistband drew the thin printed silk against her body. She looked small and young and awkward. Seeing him, she gave him a brief vision of her trusting, defenseless smile, and he thought, all right, sister, all right, we'll see, and went forward.

"I didn't see you," she said, smiling.

He took the brown wool jacket she was carrying. "Where do you want to eat?" he asked. In spite of himself his voice sounded a little harsh and abrupt.

"Oh," she said. "I thought we were eating here."

"All right, well eat here," he said. "I don't want to spoil any of the boys' plans."

As they went across the lounge to the dining room he glanced at her and saw that she had stopped smiling and looked unhappy. The headwaiter seated them at a table looking out on the porch that traversed the rear of the building. They were early and the dining room was, except for one group of three at a corner table, empty, but there were loud voices in the bar across the hall.

"Do you want something to drink?" Branch asked..

She looked up from the menu and shook her head quickly. "No. But you go ahead if you ..." She smiled. "I don't drink."

He glanced at her and did not say anything, wondering if she had forgotten that they had met in a bar in New York. "How about some roast beef for a change?" he asked. "If I eat any more fish I'll sprout scales behind the ears."

"All right," she said, laughing.

"And a shrimp cocktail," he said, and gave the order to the waiter. When the man had gone, he asked, "Who's going to watch the lobby?"

She looked away from him at the high, pillared room with its ancient chandeliers. "Mr. Hahn," she said.

"How long does this go on, anyway?" he demanded. She did not look at him. "Don't you know?"

"No," he said, and then irritably, "Two days in this cemetery is about all I can stand."

After a moment she laughed abruptly and looked at him. "It's not my fault, Lieutenant," she said demurely, sitting back to let the colored waiter put an iced bowl of shrimp in front of her. Branch watched her as she toyed with her fork. Her face looked unfinished, the features a little crowded and a little indefinite in outline in the small asymmetrical face. She had no makeup on except for a touch of inexpertly applied bright lipstick, and hair was pinned up from her temples and allowed to fall straight into a loose wave at the nape of her neck. She looked up to see him watching her.

He said quickly, "Tell me about something."

"About what?"

"Anything." he said. "Anything that makes sense of this mess."

After a moment she glanced at him sideways and asked, "Madame Duval?"

The title put the girl he had known in the New York hotel room a thousand miles away from him. "All right," he said. 'Tell me about her. Who's Duval?"

"Her husband," said Constance Bellamann. "Louis Duval."

"What does he do?"

"Don't you know?"

He grinned briefly. "If I didn't know she had a husband, would I know what he did?"

The girl put down her fork. "Why don't you go back to Chicago?" she asked impulsively. "Why don't you ... ?" She stopped.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"Christ," he said. "Everybody wants me to go back to Chicago."

Constance Bellamann did not look at him, but impaled a shrimp carefully on the tiny three-pronged fork she held. He wanted to ask her again about Louis Duval and what he did, but the feeling that she was expecting it restrained him. They ate their meal in almost unbroken silence.

Presently she was putting on the rather shabby brown jacket over her thin dress. He rose to help her, saying, "Hadn't you better get a coat? You'll freeze to death."

She smiled quickly, "No, I'll be all right," and he realized that she did not have a coat. A little embarrassed, he retrieved his cap and raincoat from the check room where he had left them so as not to have to return to his room, and they went out of the hotel. With the coming of darkness the wind had diminished, and the clear sky of the afternoon had become clouded so that there were no stars.

"Looks like we'll have more rain," he said, taking her arm to guide her across a street. Her arm was unresponsive under his hand, and he released it as they mounted the curb on the far side. "They have the damnedest sidewalks in this town," he said as she stumbled over the ancient uneven bricks.

She tossed aside a strand of hair that blew across her face and smiled up at him but did not speak. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was talking to himself, and he remembered once, under pressure from his mother, taking the daughter of some family friends to a dance: I don't see why you don't take Ellen, she's such a sweet girl and the McIntyres are our best friends.... She had been a sweet girl, all right, in the stiff pink taffeta all sweet girls wore, and she had smiled at him in just that shy helpless way when he had tried to talk to her.

When they came out of the movie the wind was barely strong enough to stir the short full skirt of her dress as she stood under the marquee buttoning her jacket. "Well," he said, "Did you like it?"

"I don't see why they give them food," she said. He frowned uncomprehendingly.

"How about taking a stroll down by the water?" he asked. "It's early."

She glanced at him. "All right," she said after a moment, and they turned away from the hotel and walked slowly past the darkened store fronts of the small business district.

He said suddenly, "Oh, you mean the newsreel."

She nodded. "With all the other people who are starving, to give them food!"

"Well, you can't let them starve," he said.

"Why not?"

He glanced at her quickly, a little irritated. "Don't be silly," he said.

Her small insistent voice said, "It's not silly. Maybe it's not practical to kill them all, but you don't have to give them food that other people ..."

"Don't be so bloodthirsty," he said, laughing uncomfortably. "After all, the war's over. You can't let people starve."

"They did."

"They also beat up Jews and tortured people. Do we have to do that, too""

"No, but..."

They had stopped, facing each other, in front of a weather-beaten shopfront displaying a few dusty automobile accessories and one large tire. Suddenly she laughed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I liked the movie."

They went on, out of the business district, and he walked beside her, not touching her, a little resentful at the way she had changed the subject, as if it were something he were not quite bright enough to discuss.

"Listen ..." he said presently.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said, smiling at him. "We wouldn't agree. We wouldn't ever agree, so there's no use talking about it, is there?" She touched his arm to make him look at her and, after a moment, curled her fingers about it. "These sidewalks are awful," she said.

They walked under the bare trees between the white-painted frame houses in the darkness, and then the houses stopped and they came around the side of a great blind building, like a barn, and saw the water dark before them.

"God, what a stink," Branch said, and he looked at the warehouse and read the faded letters in the darkness: Queen's Harbor Fertilizer Co.

"What is it?" the girl asked, sniffing.

He told her. "Let's get to windward of it," he said, and they walked quickly across the cinders of the wharf to where a long pier jutted out into the river. At the end of it they stopped, and Branch, sniffing, laughed. "That's the trouble with water, there's always something that smells." He pointed down at the motorboat tied to the pier below them. "Fish or oysters. Can you stand it?"

"I don't mind it," she said.

She bent down to test the rough boards of the pier, and sat down, unbuttoning her jacket, her legs dangling over the moored boat. He sat down beside her. She moved a little, uneasily, and giggled. "Splinters," she said, feeling of herself.

"Want me to put my coat ... ?"

"No, it's all right."

In front of them the water stretched unbroken and hardly rippled in the darkness to the mouth of the river. There were a few lights on the far shore and to the right was the wharf and the warehouse; and over the end of the wharf showed the masts of the oyster boats tied up in the cove beyond. The water splashed gently at the pilings below them, rocking the boat at their feet.

Constance Bellamann said abruptly, "I've never been in one.

"A boat?"

She nodded.

He said, "What did you do, come over by plane?"

"No, but ..." She broke off sharply and bit at her lip. "You tricked me! How did you know?"

"She said she-"

"Oh," Constance Bellamann said. "Well, I meant a little one. Like that."

"That's not so small," he said. "It's close to thirty-five feet."

"Do you like them?" she asked. Then she laughed. "that's a silly question. You're in the Navy."

He grinned in the darkness. "Well, it doesn't always follow, but I used to sail when I was a kid."

"A boat like that?"

"That's a motorboat, stupid," he said. "You don't sail motorboats."

"Could you?"

"Listen," he said, grinning, "anything that floats, I can handle it. Give me a battleship and I'11 show you. Go ahead. I dare you."

She was silent and unsmiling and he looked at her again, feeling a little deflated.

"Are you cold?" he asked her.

"No," she said. She put her hand on his arm. "Why don't you-?" she said quickly, and stopped.

He grinned. "Sure. Anything you say."

"If I told you ..."

"Tell me," he said.

She took her hand away and stood up, brushing at her dress. He got up slowly and stood looking down at her. "What's the matter, Constance? Something wrong?"

Her eyes watched him out of her small, pale, crowded face. "Yes," she said, "You're wrong. And I don't know how to tell you without ..."

"I won't get sore," he said. "What's the matter? Am I on the wrong side?"

She nodded, and took the lapels of his raincoat in her fingers, not looking at him, but at her fingers holding the waterproofed blue serge. "You should ... be helping us," she whispered. "You're too ... nice to be ..."

He took her by the shoulders and shook her minutely. "Cut it out," he said. "Quit laying it on with a shovel." He was suddenly very angry with her because she had almost had him believing in her, and he took her to him abruptly and kissed her mouth.

Then he stood there, still holding her, feeling stupid and bewildered because nothing had happened and it had been like kissing an inanimate object, and her body was as unresistant to his grasp as her mouth had been to his kiss. Her eyes were open, looking up at him with a curious flat calm. lie waited for her to protest or struggle or slap him. The bright lipstick, black in the darkness, was a little streaked on her upper lip to show that he had really kissed her.

Suddenly she shivered a little. He released her and stepped back, licking his lips.

"All right," he whispered. "All right, if it was that bad... ."

She did not touch her hair or her dress or do any of the things they did after being kissed, but walked beside him off the pier and across the harsh cinders of the wharf and around the warehouse to the sidewalk.

"Listen," he said as they came up the sidewalk. "You don't have to throw an epileptic fit just because a guy makes a pass at you."

He heard the tempo of her low heels on the pavement increase beside him, and she did not speak. She was almost running, and there was a quality of panic in her silence. The unfair advantage of his long legs kept him easily abreast of her.

"Your mouth is crooked," he said as they approached the hotel. She pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and rubbed at her lips, hurrying up the steps ahead of him, and he followed her through the lobby to the foot of the stairs. The large young man came out of the alcove below the stairs to face them, and the girl stopped abruptly.

Paul Laflin, looking down at her, grinned. "Well, Constance," he said, "did you have a nice time?"

She tried to slip past him, but he blocked her way. Over her head he looked at Branch, still grinning. His grin became a low chuckle.

"Constance is a little shy. Men seem to frighten her."

The girl stood hopelessly still in front of him, waiting until such time as he would permit her to go. The chinless man stepped out of the shadow of the stairwell.

"She had a rather unfortunate experience with the Boche," he said, smiling, to Branch; and to the younger man: "Let her go, Paul."

Paul Laflin moved aside. The girl darted up the stairs, the brief loose skirt of her dress fIuttering about her knees with the rapidity of her ascent. Paul Laflin stood watching her until she was out of sight. Presently he began to laugh.

Mr. Hahn said, "Oh, be quiet, Paul," and turned to Branch, taking his arm. "How about a drink, Lieutenant?"

The younger man followed as Branch reluctantly allowed himself to be drawn towards the taproom. Branch felt a finger touch his shoulder.

"Did she... ?"

Mr. Hahn looked back and said, sharply, "Stow it, Paul." He smiled at Branch. "That is the nautical expression, I believe." As they sat down, he said, "She was at Rochemont. You have heard of Rochemont."

Branch put his cap on the table and unbuttoned his raincoat. He had not heard of Rochemont. He felt unpleasantly at a disadvantage, as if he had been caught making improper advances to the neighbors" ten-year old daughter. He took his pipe from his pocket, the smooth worn surface of it reassuring to his fingers, and began to fill it automatically. He told the waiter whisky and ginger ale. The mural above the two men facing him annoyed him in that the three square-rigged vessels shown against a background of green shore and white-porticoed mansions were each sailing to a different wind. You'd think, he reflected, that anybody would have sense enough to check up on a thing like that before he painted a picture.

"Don't feel bad about it," Mr. Hahn was saying. "Paul tried it a long time ago. It was very hard on his ego. The chinless man, smiling, glanced at his companion. "Shall I tell him?"

Paul Laflin shrugged his shoulders. "You will anyway."

"When Madame Faubel came in afterwards," Mr. Hahn said happily, "she was in the bathroom being, well.. ."

"She was puking her guts out," the younger man said. "Don't be polite on my account." He turned to Branch. "It is his one big joke. Every time I now speak to a girl..."

"On her knees in front of the w.c.," the chinless man said slyly. "Romeol"

"All right," said Paul Laflin. "All right!"

Branch asked, "What the hell is Rochemont?"

He felt the tension between the two of them evaporate in a moment and saw them look at him across the table as if he were a backward child.

Mr. Hahn said slowly, "Rochemont was hell, Lieutenant. Hell on earth."

"A camp?" Branch asked irritably, refusing to be impressed. There was always that special tone of voice that people used in referring to those places, and he was a little tired of hearing about them. After all, the Nazis had not invented evil. It was not as if Roman emperors and Spanish priests had not thoroughly explored the methods of in inflicting pain on the human body centuries before. He listened unsympathetically while Mr. Hahn described Rochemont in the pedantic tone laden with unspoken moral superiority that he might have used in discussing sexual perversion in a psychology class in a coeducational university. Then he looked up, and they all looked up, to see the thin-faced middle-aged woman standing by the booth.

"I was telling the Lieutenant about Rochemont," Mr. Hahn said.

The woman sat down beside Branch. "I heard you," she said. "You are always telling about Rochemont. What do you know about Rochemont?" She swept off her hat and unbuttoned the jacket of her heavy brown tweed suit.

"Madame Faubel, Lieutenant Branch," said the chinless man.

"The trouble with the girl," the woman said, speaking to Branch, "was that she did not know. You understand? They wanted something important, and she simply did not know, and like a fool she said so, at first, and then she began to lie. It is always fatal to lie. When it is happening to you, you cannot remember what you told them even five minutes ago. You contradict yourself. They think you are weakening and keep on ... Get me a drink, Paul," she said. "Coca-Cola."

The younger man rose and went to the bar.

"I cannot drink alcohol." Madame Faubel's dry, thin face smiled painfully. "The diet ruined my digestion. I think it is ulcers.... Now I," she said, "told them that I knew and that I was not going to tell them, and after a while they believed me. I was in for a different matter, but she was in my hut. I told her, girl, either tell them the truth, that you do not know, and nothing else; or tell them that you do know and do not intend to tell them, but for God's sake don't lie to them beyond that. I said, they will keep it up forever if you start lying to them." She smiled again and shrugged her shoulders. "She was new then. She was clean and fresh and she resented advice from a dirty old woman. Later it was too late."

Paul Laflin returned with the familiar small bottle and a glass.

"She was in there by mistake, then?" Branch asked presently.

"Mistake? Perhaps, or perhaps someone did not like her. Or perhaps-" Madame Faubel smiled her thin lipped smile. "-perhaps she was unwittingly serving France by taking the place of someone who did know."

"Kind of tough on her," Branch said. He could not feel that they were talking about real people.

Madame Faubel sipped her Coca-Cola. "I am not saying it was not a simple mistake, you understand," she said gently. "I do not know. It was nothing to do with me, except that she was in my hut."

Branch looked at the primitive colors of the mural and chewed at his pipe. At the back of his mind was the feeling he always had when hearing about it, that he could not really feel indignant about it, because the thousands who had experienced this personal malevolence were relatively insignificant against the millions who had known the blind inquisition of the battlefield. It was a legalism to draw an arbitrary line and say, this is a crime, and this is war. It was all war. You could blame them for starting it, but to itemize the horrors, now that they were defeated and it was over, seemed petty.

Mr. Hahn said, "She was an object when we broke in, I can tell you. Even Paul did not want her."

"After you have nursed anything long enough you become rather attached to it," the woman said. "She did not want to go back to her family. I offered to take her, but she did not want to." She tasted her drink again. "Pride, I suppose. So I brought her along. She has been useful. You cannot deny she has been useful. She does as well as she can." The last was addressed to the two men across the table.

Paul Laflin said dryly, "Oh, yes, we could not do without Constance."

"But you can see that she might be a little cold in certain respects," Madame Faubel said to Branch. "I hope you did not..."

Branch said uncomfortably, "Well, I made a pass at her, all right. Hell," he said, "she was feeding me a long line about how nice I was and how I .. ." He stopped defending himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Oh, she will be all right," the woman said easily. "She will be all right in the morning."

"Well," said Mr. Hahn, "let's forget about it."

"I'll get another round of drinks," Paul Laflin said, rising.

Branch watched the large young man cross to the bar and did not like him; and he did not like the chinless man either. For the woman he had a definite respect, and her long hands fascinated him. He asked her, "What did you do before ..." She glanced at her hands. "I played the violincello, she said. "It is always a little ridiculous, a woman playing the cello, is it not? In an evening dress it looks like a joke." After a moment she said, "Perhaps I will take it up again some day. But music seems a little frivolous now. A little like a luxury."

Madame was a concert cellist," Mr. Hahn said.

"That is an exaggeration," the woman said. "I gave a few concerts, it is true, but mainly I played with a small provincial orchestra of which you have never heard."

"But only because of the prejudice against women,*

Madame Faubel spread her long hands. "That is as good an excuse as any. The truth of the matter is, I was not very good."

"Here we are," Paul Laflin said, returning with three glasses clustered in his hands.

Mr. Hahn said, "Paul, you had better take yours ..." He jerked his head towards the door that led into the lobby.

"Nuts to you," said the younger man and sat down.

Mr. Hahn said, after a pause, "His command of these Americanisms is quite striking, isn't it, Lieutenant?" He laughed heartily.

"That goes for all of you," Branch said. "If I didn't know about you I'd never notice your accents."

Paul Laflin said heavily, "Would you expect that they would send persons who would need interpreters?" He tasted his drink and asked, "When is she coming?"

"I wish to God I knew," Branch said. Then he laughed, "You people would look mighty silly-if she didn't show up, wouldn't you?"

Paul Laflin's broad, small-featured face had momentarily a very unpleasant look, that passed quickly; and Madame Faubel was speaking:

"Has she any money?"

"Six or eight dollars," Branch said.

"Plus a fur coat and a watch," Mr. Hahn pointed out. "A very good fur coat and a very good watch."

Branch said, "Why don't you just tell me what it's all about. Who she is and what she's doing...."

Paul Laflin leaned forward. "And have you tell her how much we know?"

"How can I tell her when she isn't here?"

"The truth of the matter, Lieutenant," said Mr. Hahn, "is that our position is really, with respect to the American law, no better than hers. While we feel ourselves morally justified ..."

Madame Faubel stirred beside Branch. "You talk too much, Georges."

"The Lieutenant is sympathetic," Mr. Hahn defended himself. "Aren't you, Mr. Branch?"

"I'm neutral," Branch said. "All I want now is to get out of it, I guess. I've had enough of sitting around here. But if I get on a bus-" He grinned at them, "I can't have you people following me the rest of my life. And I wouldn't want you to think I had deliberately led you off the trail. You might get mad."

"I believe him," Mr. Hahn announced to the others. "You see? He has come to an impasse, also. If he stays he is wasting time, and if he leaves we will have to follow him."

Madame Faubel finished her Coca Cola. "We do not need you to interpret for us, Georges." She turned to Branch. "What is in the suitcase?"

"Clothes. Nothing but clothes. Do you want to come up and take a look?"

"Yes," she said. "If you don't mind."

Branch swallowed the remainder of his highball, glad of the excuse to leave. "Well," he said to the two men, "thanks for the drinks," and, picking up his cap, he rose and followed the woman through the crowded room, only now realizing how crowded it was, and how dense the air was with smoke. He had not realized that he had been under a heavy tension. It was always hard to be polite to people you did not like.

Upstairs, he closed the door to his room behind him and threw his cap and coat to the bed.

"I'll get it for you," he said to the woman.

"Do you mind if I look around?" she asked.

He glanced at her. "Hell, no," he said. "Help yourself. Bathroom, wardrobe, bureau. There's no fire escape."

He watched her go into the bathroom and had the sudden absurd fear that Jeannette Duval could have come in while they were talking, but the woman came out again immediately and tried the closet, emerging with the small black traveling case, which she put on the bed and opened, laying the contents carefully aside, one by one, on the bedspread. Then she as carefully repacked them and closed the bag.

"What did you expect to find?" Branch asked.

Nothing," she said. She gave the suitcase a small push away from her, dismissing it. "Nothing," she repeated. "I merely wanted to talk to you in private, Lieutenant." She accepted the cigarette he offered her and allowed him to light it for her. Because she was a quite homely and badly dressed middle-aged woman in whom he could have no possible emotional interest it gave him a perverse pleasure to be very polite to her, and he drew the heavy chintz-covered easy chair from the corner for her, and sat down on the bed, facing her.

"You're an intelligent man, Lieutenant," she said. "I think you know quite well what the situation is, even if I cannot describe it to you in detail."

"Why not?"

She glanced at him, brushing ashes from her heavy skirt. "Because, as Georges said, our position is very bad legally, and I do not want to give you enough information that you can go to the police. In case I am not able to convince you...."

Branch said, "Listen, tell me just this: did she, I mean Jeannette, have anything to do with what happened to--" He gestured in the direction of the smaller girl's room. "-her?"

Madame Faubel hesitated. "No," she said finally. "She did not."

"Did her husband?"

She shook her head. "No. Not directly, but ..."

"I don't," Branch said, "like people who pull a long and irrelevant sob story on me before asking me to do something for them. I'm very sorry about the girl-"

"There are hundreds of others like her," Madame Faubel said angrily. "Thousands of others."

"And the way to cure them is to drag them around the country and expose them to passes by every wolf in Navy uniform who comes along?" He laughed sharply and went on before she could retort. "Anyway, I don't see the connection, if neither of them had anything to do with it."

The woman's narrow white face was quite expressionless. "We are not free agents, Mr. Branch," she said. "We take our orders from the Central Committee. There are some to whom I would like to attend personally, myself, but so long as I know they are being attended to I do what I am told to do." She made a sharp" gesture with her cigarette. "We are not agents of revenge, but of justice."

Branch sat silent and wished that his pipe were cool enough that he could smoke it again.

"You are quibbling, Lieutenant," the woman's voice went on. "Would it seem better to you if we were avenging mere personal injuries?"

"By God, it would," Branch admitted. "Anyway, it would seem nice and normal and natural." He laughed uncomfortably. "Tell me..."

"Yes?"

"If you could, would you shave her head like in the pictures?"

"Perhaps," Madame Faubel said stiffly. "If it did not interfere with more important business."

"Well...." Branch grimaced and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He got to his feet. "Well, I certainly won't help you."

Madame Faubel rose to face him. "If you had-"

"But I didn't," he said. "I wasn't. And I don't want any part of it. It stinks."

He watched her go out of the room. Agents of Justice, he thought, Central Committee, nuts. The door closed and he heard her footsteps diminish down the hall in the direction of the staircase. When the sound of them had ceased he went to the bureau and, with the whisk-broom, brushed away the lint the coverlet of his bed had deposited on his uniform. He went out of the room and along the hall in the opposite direction from that taken by the woman.

More than a minute passed between his knock and the opening of the door.

"I'm sorry, he said. "Did I wake you?"

She looked down at her rumpled dress and brushed at it absently. "I must have fallen asleep," she said. Her face was puffy from crying.

He licked his lips. "I wanted to apologize," he said. "I'm awfully sorry."

She did not say anything. He could feel her wanting to say something but it did not come and she stood there watching him, trying to make it come, but it did not come. He thought, all she needs is for somebody to be nice to her, somebody should make a job of being nice to her.

"Well, I just wanted to tell you," he said helplessly. "Goodnight."

IN THE MORNING it was raining. He lay in bed and listened to the rain and thought, wouldn't you know it would rain? as if this place wasn't grim enough without rain. There was nothing to do that was worth getting wet for, and he tuned over and was soon half asleep again. Then the rain had stopped and someone was opening the door in a tentative sort of way, As he sat up abruptly he was quite sure that it was the girl, but it was only the colored woman to clean the room. She withdrew, saying something apologetic, in the slurred, almost incomprehensible dialect that they had down here, white as well as colored, that had no relationship to the conventional southern drawl, but was a sort of verbal shorthand in which only the important syllables of the important words were spoken.

Branch got up and showered, shaved, and dressed. The colored woman was just emerging from the next room when he stepped into the hall.

"All clear," he said to her, grinning, to show that he had not minded her coming in. Down here he felt the necessity for being very polite to them to show that he did not approve of the Jim Crow laws that existed in this state.

The woman did not smile back at him but stood by the open door of the room out of which she had come, without speaking, as he went past, and something in her attitude made him look back as he reached the corner, and she was still standing there, looking after him. Then, seeing him turn, she gathered up her broom and dustpan and went to the door of his room. He went on, but more slowly, and halfway down the stairs he turned and went slowly back. The door of his room was closed and the woman was not in sight. He opened the door abruptly and walked in as if returning for something he had forgotten. She was kneeling on the floor by the wardrobe and Jeannette Duval's suitcase was open in front of her. Branch closed the door gently behind him, a little angry and a little embarrassed. "Well!" he said loudly. "Just help yourself!"

The woman remained kneeling by the suitcase and did not answer.

"God, don't sit there," he said. "Get up, for Christ's sake.

She got clumsily to her feet, a small woman in a shapeless print cotton dress and a gray coat sweater that was partially unraveled. She was well over middle age and her face had the prim, pious look they sometimes had, and her lips were tightly closed.

"Wasn't stealing," she said sullenly.

"Just looking, I suppose," he said.

She spoke a long sentence that he did not understand until he had thought about it for a moment, at last realizing that she had told him she was honest and had never been in any trouble and the suitcase had come open when she picked it up to dust it, and she had been putting the things back when he came in. She was talking again by the time he had interpreted her first speech, and a few key words told him she was elaborating on her respectability.

"Shut up," he said. She was silent, tugging angrily at her ragged sweater.

"Who sent you?" he demanded. When she did not speak at once he said sharply, "What's your name?" Her eyes, regarding his uniform, were suddenly afraid, and she launched into another long sentence that was quite incomprehensible to him until he had considered it for a while, she watching him warily.

"No," he said, "I won't tell him you told me."

It was like speaking to a foreigner of whose language you knew only a few basic words. It made him feel as if he were no longer in America. The woman's eyes held the same wary fierce resentment you would expect to meet in a conquered country.

She said she was a respectable woman and he had no right to threaten her. She said Mr. Parks had sent her.

"Mr. Parks?" he demanded.

Yes, she said, Mr. Parks who had a farm and a store out by Three-Mile Oak on the old River Road. And Mr. Parks had told her all about it, she said.

"All about what?"

It seemed that Mr. Parks had a friend in the service who had heard that his wife was running around with an officer while he was at sea. The colored woman's eyes lowered to the suitcase from which she had pulled a very pale cream-colored satin negligee trimmed with lace. She looked up at Branch, her mouth very tight and prim and condemning.

After a moment Branch asked, "How much did he pay you?"

"Five dollars, sir," she said primly.

Branch licked his lips. "Well," he said, "it's none of his goddamned business, see?" Watching the woman, he slowly took out his wallet. "Suppose ..." he said, "suppose you pack that stuff and just forget about it, eh?" He grinned. "Just tell him you didn't find anything, huh?" he said, looking at her sideways as he put two five-dollar bills on the unmade bed.

The woman said nothing. Branch hesitated, turned sharply, and went out. Outside he drew a long breath and, finally, grinned and walked quickly away down the hall, but the grin did not make him feel any better. It was funny, all right, but he could not make himself truly laugh at it. When he returned after breakfast the bed was neatly made and the money was gone.

Later walking across the river bridge he could look downstream and see the pier on which they had sat the previous night, the motorboat still lying there, and everything was dark and wet with the rain. The river had a gray look, like dull iron, under the low, thick, unmoving clouds. It looked cold and hosthe and its expansion beyond the harbor mouth seemed coldly treacherous when one recalled the barely covered mudflats revealed by the chart. When he had climbed the rise of the road on the south side of the river he was in the country. He began to feel a little conspicuous striding along a country road in city shoes and clothes, and he wondered what the passengers of the occasional cars thought about him. Then a car stopped.

"Take you somewhere?" the man asked.

Branch went to the door of the car. "Well, I'm trying to find Three-Mile Oak on the old River Road," he said, grinning. "A guy named Parks ..."

"Hop in," said the man. "I'll take you."

Branch got in and the car gained speed down the smoothly curving concrete of the highway.

"Liable to get wet before you get there, walking," the man said. "Know George Parks?"

Branch shook his head. "Just thought I'd walk up and have a drink and come back. They said he had a store up there."

"He'll sell you beer," the driver agreed. "I just got tired of sitting around the hotel watching it rain," Branch said. Then, as the man turned the car onto a badly kept black-top road, he said, "Look, I'm not taking you out of your way, am I?"

"Only half a mile longer," the man said. "Joins the state highway again, oh, about two miles beyond Park's place. Used to be the main road till they put the other in, back in '?7."

He drove carefully along the winding road, on either side of which the woods, now leafless, were a tangled jungle of trees and bushes lashed together by long ropy vines, and it was hard to remember that New York was only six hours distant by bus and train. Then they emerged among open fields dotted by warped houses and barns that needed painting.

"All niggers in here," the man said. "Niggers and dogs."

They rolled unevenly through another patch of woods and past farms where the houses had more paint, and stopped in front of a shingled two-story building in front of which stood four cars and an orange gasoline pump.

"There you are, sir," the man said.

"Thanks a lot," Branch said, stepping down to the gravel.

The man waved his hand and sent the car away, and Branch watched it go out of sight. Then he turned and went into the store. Two colored men and three white men lounged around the soft-drinks dispenser in the corner, and three small boys were buying candy from a stout woman behind the counter to the right. At the rear of the store by the cash register a plain straighthaired girl was adding up, on a piece of paper, the bill of a middle-aged man in overalls who put the items in a paper sack as she checked them off.

Branch went to the corner and one of the colored men got off the cooler and made way for him. All of them continued to talk and it was as if he did not exist. He fished a bottle of beer from the ice water and opened it and let the foam go into his mouth as it rose. He walked back across the store and put a quarter in front of the stout woman who had finished with the children. He stood looking out the window and drinking occasionally of the beer until she returned with his change.

"Is George Parks around?" he said casually.

"George is down to the farm," she said.

"It's not important," he said.

"It's just up the road a piece," she said. "If you want to see him."

"How do I get there?"

"First road to the left. Gray house on the right-hand side, you can't miss it, sir. Name's on the mailbox."

He looked at her for a moment. "You're Mrs. Parks?"

"Yes, sir," she said. He felt that she was watching him a little too closely, as if she were afraid of him.

"Oh, I'll go down, I guess," he said indifferently, turning away from her to sit down on a pile of cardboard cartons to finish his beer, aware of the short pause before the woman moved away behind the counter.

He knew the house from the woman's description before he read the name on the mailbox: George C. Parks, RFD 2, Box 64. It was a tall, narrow gray frame house that looked naked and lonely without houses on either side of it. Close behind it stood a barn and a chicken-house, and behind these was an open field sloping back to a tangled ravine that led down into the woods towards the river that could not be seen from here. Branch stood by the mailbox and thought, why crowd it all up against the road like that? looking at the small rough patch of lawn and the concrete walk and the ragged hedges. He went up to the porch with the feeling that most traffic went around the side of the house to the kitchen. When he knocked on the door a small boy stuck out his head, glanced at him, and retreated, shouting, "Hey, Dad! Oh, Dad, there's a man round front."

Presently a slightly built man of medium height came to the door and pulled it open to look at Branch through the screen. He wore grimy brown trousers and a worn denim shirt, and he needed a shave. His face had a thinlipped, underfed look and he studied Branch for a moment contemplatively without speaking.

Then he said, "I'm Parks. Was there something you wanted?"

"Mind if I come in?" Branch asked.

The man shook his head and pushed the door open; then turning with sudden loud savagery, he shouted, *Hey, you Charley, what did I tell you about them chickens?" and the boy standing immediately behind him walked away without haste, stopping at the far door to look back. "Do you want I should come after you?" George Parks shouted, making a motion to follow, and the boy put his hands in his pockets and walked leisurely out of sight. "Come on in," the man said quietly to Branch. Branch stopped in the middle of the soiled rug and watched the man close the door through which the boy had gone.

"That Charley," said George Parks. "I've got five head and it's like to drive me crazy."

"You hired a colored woman to search my room at the hotel," Branch said.

"I figured you was Branch," the other man said. He groped in his pocket for a cigarette which he put into his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I did." The cigarette bobbed between his lips as he spoke. "She tell you?"

"I caught her at it."

"Damned nigger woman," George Parks said without heat. "Don't none of them have any brains."

"What's the big idea?" Branch asked.

"Wanted to know if she was coming," the smaller man said. "Don't want no trouble around here."

"How did you find out about it?"

"I heard."

"Who told you?"

George Parks lighted his cigarette, cupping his hands about it as if a wind was generally blowing when he lighted cigarettes. He threw the match at the fireplace.

"I heard," he said without expression.

Branch stood in the middle of the room, looking down at him, and knew that he would never learn anything from this man. He did not have what it took to impress George Parks or outwit him. He looked at the sallow, boneless, unshaven face a little unhappily.

"I've got her suitcase," he said. "You know as much as I do whether she's coming to get it. She didn't tell me.... So don't send any more people digging in my closet, will you?" As he turned away, the other not speaking, he saw lying in the deep round chair in the corner, a tan leather camera case with the word Leica stamped on the cover. He walked across the porch and down to the road quickly and away from the house, suppressing the desire to glance back at the upper windows.

THE PANEL TRUCK let him off beyond the bridge, the driver apologizing for not being able to take him by the hotel. Branch walked rapidly through the thin rain and felt strangely grateful to see the neat, closely spaced houses, and the stores and the sidewalks. He always I felt like a tourist in the country: a little ridiculous to those who lived there.

He found himself relieved to have this business of George Parks and the colored woman fall into place with the rest of it. There was only one man to whom an expensive camera such as he had seen could be attributed: the stocky detective who worked for the big man, Sellers. I used two Leicas, the detective had said, one for each film. I ought to get out of here, Branch thought, I ought to get out of here, but quick, before the whole thing closes in on me. He removed I his cap as he entered the hotel and shook the rain from the black, waterproof cover and dried his glasses and went to the desk. The clerk said there was no message. Then he changed his mind and said there was a message. Branch stood slowly unbuttoning his damp raincoat while the man searched for the message. He could hear his heart beating.

"A Mr. Haskell," the clerk said. "A Mr. Frank Haskell, from Evanston, Illinois, was asking for you, sir."

Haskell, Branch thought, Janet Haskell. Frank Haskell. "Where is he?"

"Room 227," the clerk said, and changed his mind again. "No, I thought I saw him go in the bar a minute ago, sir. He came in on the noon bus."

Branch turned and strode towards the taproom, suddenly furiously angry with an anger that was partly bewilderment. He entered the room and walked without looking to either side between the half-deserted tables to the bar, his open damp coat flapping about him. As he gave his order he was aware of being joined by a short man with a smooth, well-fed stoutness and the pink clear skin of a child.

"Lieutenant?"

"Yes," said Branch, watching his drink approach.

"Your name wouldn't be Branch, would it?"

"It would," Branch said. He saw his long dark face sharp and irritable in the bar mirror, and it seemed to him that he was being silly and he paid the barman and picked up his drink and turned.

"Yes, I'm Branch," he said.

"My name's Haskell, Lieutenant," the stout man said holding out his hand. "Frank Haskell, from Evanston."

Branch shook the hand. "I'm from Chicago, myself," he said.

"Yes," said the stout man. "Mr. Sellers told me."

"Oh?"

"How about lunch, Lieutenant? They told me you'd gone out early and I figured I'd wait...."

"Sure," said Branch. "Sure. Let's eat."

They carried their drinks across the corridor to the dining room table by one of the fluted white wooden columns that ran the length of the center of the room.

"A lot of phony atmosphere," the stout man said as they sat down. "And do they charge you for it!"

Branch found himself suddenly quite happy, and it was like coming home. They called you Lieutenant assiduously and they gave you cigars and there was sometimes a bottle produced from a bottom drawer, and they asked you where you came from and how you liked the Navy, and then, having given you the old line, the old salesmanship, the old oil, rising abruptly as if recalling that they were busy men, they would clap you on the shoulder. Well, you'll find everything all right, they would say confidently, I'm sure you'll find everything all right, Lieutenant, haha, and Mr. Blank will take care of you. If you need anything just ask Mr. Blank, he'll take care of you. And you would go down there with Mr. Blank and you would make damned sure nothing was being put over on you or the Navy before you let the material go out.

"Are you a friend of Mr. Sellers?" Branch asked the pink-faced man.

"Well," said Haskell judiciously, "Well, I've done business with him, haha. A case of Scotch now and then and of course the other stuff..."

"The Lalevy business," Branch said idly, gambling.

"Oh, she told you. Yeah, Lalevy's shipped through Sellers. Wasn't any other way they could get stuff through after they got on the State Department black list. We didn't like to handle it but, hell, you couldn't take a chance. If the Nazis had come out on top over there we wouldn't have had any contacts left if we'd got Lalevy down on us. It was mainly cosmetics, anyway. The Germans let them do it to get the dollars...." He went on almost without a pause, "I wouldn't say I was a personal friend of Sellers', no, but when she went off like that I was pretty sure she'd go to him, so I called him long distance-"

"What made you think she'd go to him?"

"Hell, who else would she go to? She doesn't know i anybody in this country except a few people she met around Evanston while she lived with us." Haskell laughed. "She'd hardly be likely to go to them, would she? What could she tell them? After passing out that Free French line for three years she'd look mighty funny explaining why those birds were after her. Hell, it's a pity they didn't get her husband at the same time they got her old man, isn't it? I don't know why she wants to waste time on saving his hide. From what I've heard he's had five different women in the time she's been over here."

Branch watched the waiter put the shrimp cocktails in front of them. It seemed to him that he had spent interminable lengths of time, learning a little more each time, while people gradually worked around to the point of what they were going to say. But the pink-faced man, although he had not yet got to his own point, was a rewarding source of information.

"I tried to talk her out of it," Haskell said cheerfully, filling his mouth with shrimp, but not ceasing to talk. "For her own good, I tried to talk her out of it. Things are different now, I told her, you don't want to start stirring things up, baby. Do you know what she did? She tried to blackmail me. Can you picture that? Trying to blackmail me after we'd kept her for three years. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Hell, I'd almost got to thinking of her like my own daughter. But you can't tell about these foreigners. I remember a guy Lalevy sent over once...."

Branch listened and the story led to a dirty joke about a colored washerwoman which led in turn to a long, involved, and bitter anecdote about the O.P.A. At last the pink-faced man sat back comfortably and lit a cigar.

"As a matter of fact, Lieutenant," he said casually, "as a matter of fact, when I checked back, I found she did have a little money coming to her.

"Oh?" said Branch.

Haskell nodded. "Lalevy's account was in a hell of a shape, naturally, ever since he was killed we've been trying to... Well, after she'd gone I began to wonder if one of the clerks maybe hadn't made a mistake, and sure enough, he had." He laughed uncomfortably. "It I puts me in a hell of a spot, Lieutenant. But she didn't have to call me a crook. She didn't have to threaten me. If she'd acted sensibly-Hell, anybody can make a mistake and the way the thing was handled it's no wonder. Well, I don't like to admit I'm wrong, Lieutenant, I guess none of us do, and I still say she had no right to talk to me like she did, but...." Be took a plain envelope from his breast packet and passed it across the table. Branch pulled out the flap and looked at the bills. My God, he thought.

"It's all there, Haskell said. "You can count it if you like. Thirty-seven hundred and fourteen dollars." He laughed. "I gave her a break on the cents."

After a moment Branch said, holding the envelope, "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with it?"

"Give it to her," the stout man said. "Tell her I said it was a mistake, it was all a mistake."

Branch said quickly, "You give it to her," and held out the envelope.

Suddenly Mr. Haskell's pink face had a very unpleasant look. "Listen," he said, "If I never see that flat-faced bitch again, it's too soon."

Branch watched him rise and glance at his watch.

"Think I'll try to catch the three o'clock bus," the stout man said, and then sharply, "Don't try to kid me, Lieutenant. Sellers told me all about you. Well, I wish you luck. You'll need it with that tart."

Branch watched him walk way with the slightly rolling gait of a very young child, or a drunk, or a fat man. Everybody gives me money, Branch thought, thirty-seven hundred dollars. My God. He wished the man had not called Jeannette Duval a tart. Bitch was merely bad-tempered, but tart sounded knowing and cheap.

He went upstairs and, locking his door, pulled the suitcase out of the wardrobe and put the envelope inside a drawstring bag containing a pair of high-heeled black suede pumps.

CONSTANCE BELLAMANN came into the dining room and he watched her hesitate inside the doorway, wearing again the short high-necked brown print dress, so that at a distance she looked about fifteen years old. She saw him and came towards him between the busy table and he rose as she stopped beside him.

"Hello," she said, smiling up at him.

"Hello," he said, and he heard himself ask her if would care to join him; and he seated her and returned to his chair. She spread a napkin in her lap and looked about the room, smiling a little, the haphazard lipstick very bright in her pale face. Her short brown hair on either side, held back from her face with the kind of narrow silver clips the girls had been wearing the last year of the war.

"It seemed silly to pretend I didn't see you," she said, looking at him suddenly.

He could not think of anything to say. Last night seemed a long time ago, but it was still an uncomfortable memory. The waiter came with a glass of tomato juice and a plate of hot rolls, and took Constance Bellamann's order.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings last night," the girl said presently She crushed a crumb on the tablecloth with the brief unlacquered nail of her forefinger. "I trying to be clever," she said.

"You should have slapped my face," Branch said. "But good."

"Oh, no," she said. "I was trying to be clever. You had every right to think ..." Her mouth had a pinched look. "Did they tell you about... ?"

He nodded.

She looked up from the tablecloth. "Well, I'm not crazy," she said. "Even if Paul ..."

He was very uncomfortable and he did not say anything.

She laughed quickly. "But we can't have you thinking that women find you repulsive, Mr. Branch," she said carefully, glancing at him sideways.

He grinned. "Now you're kidding me."

"It was nice of you to come and apologize." He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable again.

"I think," she said, "If you have a cigarette ..." He gave her one and as he leaned forward to light it for her, she said, "Paul and Mr. Hahn think you are a fool, Mr. Branch," watching him with a trace of mischief in her small face.

He held the match for her and, when she had got her light, shook it out and dropped it in the ashtray, sitting back in his chair to look at her. He was glad to feel them getting away from last night.

"What does Madame Faubel think?" he asked.

"Madame has not yet made up her mind about you. She says you are politically undeveloped, but that that is true of most Americans."

"And what about you?" Branch asked, grinning. "What do you think?" Constance Bellamann glanced at him. "Oh, I don't think you're a fool Mr. Branch," she said demurely, "I think you're a very clever man. After all, you never were in Rochemont. You have never been hungry. There is no need for you to hate anybody."

He waited while the colored man set their dinners before them. Then he said, "Don't be bitter, Constance. What am I supposed to do?"

"No one should have to tell you what to do, Mr. Branch," she said gravely. "It should be very clear to you what you should do." Suddenly she put down her fork. "You don't understand," she said quickly. "You don't understand what people are like after-oh, I don't mean myself. I mean everybody. You don't understand what it is to hate."

He said a little angrily, "I understand all right. I'm just against it."

"Have you ever hated anybody?"

"Perhaps not, but...."

"Then you simply don't know," she said. "People who have learned to hate, Mr. Branch ..."

He felt himself vaguely threatened and said harshly, "That's all right. All I say is that nobody's going to I shave anybody's head while I'm around."

Small wrinkles of bewilderment appeared on the girl's forehead.

Branch said, "It's just an example. Happened to come up when I was talking to Madame Faubel. What I mean is, I don't like vigilantes or lynching or any kind of mob law at all."

The girl carefully separated the flakes of fish meat from the bones before looking up again.

"Even if you had a personal interest?" she asked. "If you had been-"

"All right," he said, "what is your personal interest? You've all had a hard time and you're sore at the world, isn't that it? Did you know Jeannette Duval before... ?"

The girl, after a moment, shook her head.

"None of you did, did you? Somebody sicked you on her and here you are. What's personal about that?"

"The committee..."

"What is this damned committee, anyway?" he demanded. "Does your government know about it?"

Her small bright mouth formed a grimace. "Oh," she said. "the government!" She laughed.

He was a little shocked.

Presently they were talking about Queen's Harbor and she told him that it was very much like a small French town that she had known, except for the Negroes; and he suggested, grinning a little to show that he was teasing her, that probably all small towns all over the world were very much alike, fundamentally, even small towns in Germany.

Her face showed no amusement, and she began to tell him wherein the Germans differed from all other peoples. He listened respectfully, because she had, after all, a certain right to her opinion; one might even say that she had earned it. He could remember a time when the Germans had seemed to him different from all other peoples, because no other peoples had seemed to be able to stop them. But that time was over with. He watched her asymmetrical small face as she talked and wondered what she had been like before the war. He thought she had probably been rather a nice girl; a little opinionated and probably, like most reasonably pretty girls, a little selfish; but quite nice and it was rather a pity. Somebody ought to do something about her, he thought, somebody really ought to do something about her.

When they got up he asked her what she had planned for the evening.

"I'm going for a walk," she said, laughing. "Madame told me to go for a walk as soon as it stopped raining. Every so often she decides that she is neglecting me and thinks of something like this. I'm only glad she did not suggest castor oil instead."

He looked at her for a moment and remembered the i money in his room. "Well," he said, "if you'll wait for me to get my coat. ..."

"If you want to," she said politely.

Something in her voice made him look at her again. "Only if I'm not intruding," he said with equal politeness.

"Oh, no," she said. "I only meant ... "

"I'11 be right down."

The money was still in the suitcase. He debated taking it with him, but he did not like to carry nearly four thousand dollars on his person. The hotel safe was the logical place for it, but they would want to count it and they would remember it; even if he gave them the envelope sealed they might remember it and he did not want, not knowing what might happen, to be remembered too well. He could not make himself feel any great responsibility for the money, considering the way it had been given to him and the way the girl had left him, and he thought irritably, to hell with it, I'm not going to worry about it, and pushed it back in the shoebag, closed the suitcase, and put it out of sight in the closet.

When he came down, Constance Bellamann was standing by the door, buttoning her shabby brown jacket, and she started out as he came to her. Outside it had stopped raining and the wind had started again. The wind filled her thin skirt as she went down the steps to the sidewalk, and her bare legs looked very cold.

"You'll freeze to death," Branch shouted as, pulling his cap over his eyes, he hurried beside her along the sidewalk. Bent over to control her dress, she glanced at him, but she did not speak until they had turned the corner into the lee of the terrace on which the hotel was built.

Then she stopped and looked up at him, the hair blown against her face by an eddy of wind. "Did you bring it with you?" she demanded. "What?"

"The money," she said. "The three thousand seven hundred dollars Mr. Haskell gave you at lunch."

Branch did not say anything.

Her tongue touched her lips minutely. "You thought I was getting you out of the hotel so that they could steal it," she whispered.

"How did you know about it?"

She shook back her hair impatiently as the wind plucked at it. "Of course we knew about it," she said bitterly. "They've been watching him ever since they found out where she was staying." Her eyes watched him. She was almost crying. "I didn't ask you to come with me. I only came to your table because it would have been silly not to. We're not thieves, Mr. Branch."

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly. "Anyway, it's still up there. You can search me if you like.

He grinned disarmingly, but she did not smile but turned away and started to walk against the wind, and he walked beside her, but she paid him no attention. They could see the river at the end of each street they crossed. When they reached the main highway she turned to the right, towards the bridge.

On the bridge the wind was icy and the water below was slashed with white. Over the harbor the sky was clearing but nothing was out there and the low sun had not yet broken through. The small distant channel buoys leaned heavily away from the waves the wind blew past them.

Constance Bellamann stopped at the end of the bridge to push at her loosened hair.

Branch said, "Listen, you're going to catch pneumonia.

"I'm not an invalid, Mr. Branch," she panted. "Just because I don't like to have men paw me-"

He caught her by the arm as she turned away sharply. "Listen," he said. Then he released her arm."What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"I didn't ask you to come with me," she gasped. He saw that she was crying. She turned away again and he let her go and watched her run blindly up the road, stumbling a little, and turn in among the trees. Now where the hell, he thought irritably, is she going? And he followed her reluctantly because it would be dark soon and should she get lost, with no more clothes than he had on, she quite probably would catch pneumonia. He wondered if perhaps they were now searching his room; and if not, it seemed to him that he had nevertheless every right to expect it, and it was nothing to have hysterics about.

He found a reasonably well-kept dirt road where the girl had turned, the deeper holes filled with oyster shells; and he walked briskly, hearing the wind go through the trees above him and, occasionally, the steady rushing of the waves against the foot of the bluff that was to his right, hidden by the trees. Twice he caught a glimpse of the river when the road traversed the head of a choked ravine. The ruts held pools of water from the rain.

She was sitting on a log at the side of the road where the woods finally ended; and when she saw him she got up and brushed the clinging flakes of bark from her dress and stood waiting for him to reach her.

"Are you all right?" he asked, stopping in front of her.

She nodded dumbly.

" Well he said, "we'd better get back before it gets dark."

She said, "Phillip-"

"Yes?"

She put her hands on his wrists and looked up at him. Then her hands were holding him tightly and there was movement among the trees behind him. He tried to break free of her and she buried her face in his uniform raincoat and braced herself to hold him, throwing her slight weight against him and losing her footing in the ruts; and with sudden desperation he brought his knee up sharply and felt her gasp and release him, falling. He crouched, bent and turned, driving his elbow backwards against the man who was there; then; backing away, he stepped on and fell over the girl.

When he scrambled to his feet, Paul Laflin was on him, striking at him with a short length of wood that knocked his cap off; and, closing his eyes, he charged bodily into the heavier man, butting him in the chest so that Paul Laflin tripped in the ruts and fell backwards. Someone else was telling him to stop or they would shoot, but he followed the large young man to the ground and rolled free and, on his feet before the other, kicked at the face. Paul Laflin turned his head and the impact caught the bone behind his ear. Branch stood over him, waiting for him to move, but he did not move.

"All right," said the voice of Mr. Hahn. "All right, that's enough of this nonsense."

FROM THE SCREENED PORCH that ran the front of the bungalow one could look down through the trees into a small cove where a rambling long narrow wooden pier on pilings jutted far out into the water. From the end of the pier a line led to the stern of a motorboat moored to a white-painted conical buoy; the boat lying quite still between the two lines on the sheltered water of the cove, covered from cabin to stern by a dingy gray tarpaulin. The wind that drove through the trees about the bungalow reached down to make small dark darting cat's-paws on the water.

Branch turned to look at the chinless man, who said, "All right go on in," and he went inside. Inside there was the musty summer-cottage smell.

Beside the door Constance Bellamann stood hugging herself with cold; and Madame Faubel, who had been waiting for them, had pulled away the screen of the fireplace at the end of the long room, and was pushing crumpled newspapers under the logs that were already laid for a fire. The large young man had dropped into a wicker rocking chair and, oblivious of everyone else, was rocking himself minutely back and forth, bent forward to hold his head in his hands. Except for the rocker, the furniture was of heavy varnished wood and the upholstery of coarse cloth, simulating home-spun.

"There is some more kindling in the kitchen, Constance," Madame Faubel said, watching the fire flicker dubiously.

As the girl started to cross the room, Paul Laflin raised his head and said, "And bring me a glass of water.

"The water is turned off," Madame Faubel said. "So is the electricity and the gas." She rose from her knees and began to walk slowly around the windows, closing the Venetian blinds. She glanced at the injured man, and turned to Mr. Hahn, who sat carelessly on the arm of a chair by the door, holding his pistol loosely pointed at Branch.

"There was to be no violence," she said.

"When our Paul gets an idea," Mr. Hahn said, "there is no arguing with him. I told him the gun would be sufficient." He laughed. "The Lieutenant showed a well-developed sense of self-preservation, when given a little time to think. But his reflexes were rather violent, not to say unchivalrous."

The woman glanced at Constance Bellamann, returning with an armful of kindling and a dusty open bottle of Coca-Cola. There was mud on the girl's knees, on her dress, and on the elbow of her jacket, and a small triangular tear in the thin material of the skirt of the dress.

"So I see," the woman said dryly.

"I wouldn't." Mr. Hahn said gently to Branch.

"Just getting my pipe," Branch said, halting the movement of his hand.

"Slowly," Mr. Hahn said.

The girl gave the bottle to Paul Laflin. "I found it in the pantry," she said. "It's warm." She went to the replace and dropped the kindling on the hearth, brushed herself off, and walked across the room to a sofa under a print of a hunter in a duck-blind. Presently she took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to scrub at her knees.

The room was beginning to smell of smoke. Paul Laflin drained the Coca-Cola bottle and swore loudly in French, rising.

"Open the damper, for God's sake!" he said to the woman. "Do you want to stifle us?"

He stood unsteadily by the wicker chair, watching as she went to the fireplace; then, as the smoke, instead of welling into the room, began to draw up the chimney, he walked across the bright rag rug to Branch and knocked the pipe from his mouth.

Branch stood quite still. The heavier man put his foot on the pipe with deliberate violence and the shank snapped off the bowl; and Paul Laflin trod out the glowing tobacco and, moving carefully sideways, herded the ashes and the parts of the broken pipe with his foot across the rug to the fireplace and kicked them into the fire.

Constance Bellamann rose from the sofa and walked quickly out of the room.

"Take off your coat," Mr. Hahn said to Branch. "Stay a while."

Branch walked to the sofa and stripped off his raincoat and cap and laid them down.

"Make yourself comfortable," said the chinless man. "Don't be formal, Lieutenant. Take off your jacket and make yourself at home."

Branch laid his uniform blouse on top of the other clothes and turned, cold in his shirt sleeves, to face Paul Laflin. The large young man regarded him for a moment and swung a fist at his face. Branch stepped back, letting the blow go past, and felt the sofa against the calves of his legs. Paul Laflin swung again, and he took the blow on his raised arms and let it throw him backwards into the corner of the sofa, bracing himself to roll aside, but the heavier man stepped back, his wide, small-featured, boyish face suddenly drawn with pain brought on by the exertion. He turned away and lowered himself into the wicker rocking chair that creaked woodenly upon receiving his weight; and he put the heels of his hands against his eyes.

It was almost dark inside and the only light in the room was the light of the fire. Branch sat up in the corner of the sofa and watched Madame Faubel touch a match to the candles in one of the double pewter candlesticks on the mantelpiece. He could hear the wind outside and he was cold. There was a dull anger inside him but it was of no importance. If you insisted on playing with people who were irrational you could expect something like this. It was no time to be angry. Later you could be angry, but now anger was irrelevant. Now there was only to wait for it to be over. Madame Faubel carried the branched candlestick to the clumsy table in front of the sofa.

"Better to tie him," she said to Mr. Hahn, and to Branch, "Move to that chair, please.

He got up and walked to the chair and sat down; and Madame Faubel went out and returned with a length of clothesline and tied his arms to the back of the chair, the chinless man watching with the gun resting easily on his knee as he sat on the side of the table. Madame Faubel kneeled in front of Branch and removed his shoes and socks. She rose again and went past him and he heard her shoes on the bricks of the hearth. He opened his mouth to say something flippant and brave and closed it again. It was better to be silent. He could feel the warmth of the fire against his back.

Madame Faubel returned with a blackened poker, the end of which was smoking.

"We do not like to use these methods," she said, the chinless man with the gun sitting silent on the table beside the candles behind her, his leg, swinging a little. The woman said, "But there is no cure for stupidity."

"Don't apologize," Branch said.

Presently he found himself sitting alone in the room, still tied to the chair and, turning his head he saw the fire burning down in the grate behind him. His outer clothes still lay on the sofa where he had put them. He tried his bonds but they were still tight and he sat quite still for a space of time. The room had become measurably warmer through the fire and he did not feel cold although his shirt was wet across the back and under the armpits with perspiration. His feet throbbed steadily and when he rubbed them against each other he could feel the pain shoot up again. He sat watching the candles burning on the table. When a gust of wind went by outside the flames felt a sympathetic draft. Some shack, he thought, the wind goes right through it.

After a while he started without enthusiasm to work on the ropes. He felt weak and a little nauseated and the effort of trying to feel and, craning his neck, to see the pattern of the knots sent a wave of nervous irritation through him, so that he had to stop working and sit motionless and tell himself to get a grip on himself. The bastards, he thought, sitting there, the stupid sadistic bastards.

The porch door slammed. Telling himself that it was only the wind he sat unmoving, listening, knowing himself to be afraid they were returning to start it again.

The front door opened and flickered the candles on the table. Constance Bellamann came in and pressed the door quietly closed behind her and stood for a moment with her back against it, catching her breath. Her short soft hair was windblown and she shook it back abruptly and went through the automatic motions of drawing out the loosened silver barrettes and setting them into place again. She came across the room to him.

"I'm sorry," she said after a little pause. Looking up at her he could recall how expertly she had decoyed him here, he preoccupied with the money as in New York he had been preoccupied with the room. It annoyed him to have twice fallen blindly for the same technique.

"You're sorry?" he said, "What do you think I am?" She bent down and he said quickly, "Don't monkey with them. If you want to be helpful, get these ropes off."

She hesitated, biting her lip, and looked at the blank Venetian blinds of the windows. "All right," she whispered, "But you mustn't tell them."

He said savagely, "Anything I tell them, I'll tell them with a shotgun." Then he forced a grin and said, "Untie me, will you? I'm getting the screaming meemies sitting here."

She went around the chair and he could feel her tugging at the clothesline. She straightened up and bit at a broken fingernail.

"You've pulled them too tight," she whispered. "I can't... ."

"Penknife," he said. "In my right pants pocket." He felt her find the knife and then he was loose and he sat rubbing the reddened welts on his wrists. He started to get up.

"No!" The girl caught his arm in protest.

"Oh, to hell with them," he said, shaking her off; and he rose and the pain blazed through his legs and he made himself walk to where his shoes and socks lay on the floor under the table and bend over to pick them up, his fingers clumsy from the bonds, and walk deliberately without hurrying to the sofa and sit down. God, he thought, how far is it back to the hotel, anyway? He could feel the sweat on his face. He bent over to draw on his socks. The girl stopped him.

"They'll stick," she said. "Let me look in the bathroom. Perhaps they have some vaseline."

He looked up at her small face. "You're being awfully good to me," he said ironically.

Her mouth tightened. "You're being very heroic," she said, "and very stupid. How would you like to have it happen every night for a week? For two weeks? For months? Anybody can stand it once."

He watched her go out of the room and after a little be grinned and felt better. Waiting for her, he examined his feet. They had not yet begun to blister. He wondered how long they would take to heal.

Constance Bellamann returned with a small canvas covered first aid kit such as you buy in a drugstore for seventy-five cents. She sat down on the floor, crossing her legs under her thin full skirt, and fished out a small tube of burn ointment. Everything in the kit was diminutive in size except for a bottle of iodine that, not belonging to the assortment, had been squeezed in later. Branch held out his hand. "I can do it."

She glanced at him. "If you want to," she said.

"Oh, all right," he said and after a moment she began to apply the salve to the bottom of his right foot. "You dry them with your hair, afterwards," he said through his teeth. "Me and Jesus Christ."

She looked up again. "It would be rather sticky, wouldn't it?"

"What did you come back for?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I just ..."

"Felt sorry for me," he prompted.

She smiled a small, reserved smile. "I don't think you really know when she is coming," she said presently.

"I don't," he agreed.

She shifted herself along the door to reach his other foot. "Then why did you say... ?"

"When she was telling me about Rochemont she said the best thing was to tell them you knew and weren't going to tell. I don't know what the theory is, but I figured she probably knew what she was talking about."

Constance Bellamann smiled minutely again. "It doesn't work for everyone," she said. "She thinks everyone is like her. You have to make them believe you aren't ever going to tell and you can't do that if ... if you scream rather easily." She put the cap on the tube. "Do you want me to try to put a bandage on?"

"No, I'll fix them up at the hotel," he said. "Did I make them believe... ?"

She stood up, brushing at her dress. "You made them believe they couldn't do it in one night, Mr. Branch," she said dryly.

He glanced at her with some resentment and put on his socks and his shoes and stood up gingerly. The salve helped and it was not as bad as he had expected it to be. While he put on the rest of his clothes the girl carried the candlestick to the mantelpiece and then pulled the fire apart with the poker.

When they reached the hotel he was, when he thought about it, still able to walk as if it did not hurt; and he felt quite proud of himself. He put the roll bandages and the tube of ointment that he had bought at the corner drugstore into the pocket of his coat went to the desk to ask if anyone had inquired after him, but nobody had. Out of the corner of his eye saw the girl go out of sight up the stairs and he hurried after her, shuffling a little in spite of himself; and caught her as she stopped in front of her door to fumble for her key in the pocket of her brown jacket. She looked up him slowly and he let fall the hand with which he had seized her arm.

"Did you find out everything they wanted to know," he demanded savagely. "If there's anything you're the least bit doubtful about ..."

She touched her lips with her tongue. "No," she said. "Just that you didn't really know. And to make sure you got back all right before somebody found you." She turned and went into the room and he watched the door close.

HE STEADIED HIMSELF against the wall and, the constant nagging pain of his feet suddenly unbearable, leaned his forehead against the wall while the darkness behind his closed eyes became red, shot through with darting black specks that vanished like soap bubbles. He heard the door reopen and felt the girl's hand on his arm; and he forced himself to open his eyes and look down at her small concerned face. She had had time to remove her jacket and unbutton the neck of her dress.

"Just a minute," she said, her fingers fastening the small round buttons. "I'll help you to your room, Mr. Branch."

He shook his head to clear it and straightened up. "I'm all right," he said. He managed a grin. "Just came all over queer for a moment. I'm all right." She let her hands fall to her sides and he turned away from her and made himself walk away from her down the corridor to the door of his room. As he took out his key, not looking back, he heard the closing of her door.

His key would not turn in the lock. He made himself concentrate on the problem; and he turned the key the other way, and it turned, all right; and then he turned it back the way it had been and tried the knob. The door opened. He gave it a small push away from him. After a moment he reached inside and turned on the light. Then, the room empty, he went in and closed and locked the door behind him. He crossed the rug to the bed and sat down, glanced at the bathroom door and at the door to the closet; shrugged his shoulders, and bent over to remove his shoes. As he struggled with the knots that had become wet in the walk back through the woods, he was abruptly aware that someone was standing by the closet door. He pulled on a shoe without looking up and began to work on the laces of the second.

Presently she said, "Hello, Phillip."

He did not raise his head. "Hi," he said. "It's about time you showed up."

She was silent while he pulled off the other shoe and began to remove his socks carefully. Then she said, "Aren't you glad to see me, Phillip?" Her voice sounded a bit annoyed. "Aren't you going to look at me, Phillip?"

When he looked at her she tossed aside to a chair the fur coat she had been holding, and held herself erect for his inspection, still wearing the striped dull-yellow suit with the ornate gold buttons. Her hair was pinned in a snug roll about her head and her unobtrusive lipstick was as even as ever; but the soft, loosely fitting suit was, from long wear, a little shapeless about her narrow figure; and the yellow silk shirt was quite limp, the collar crushed under the lapels of her jacket, and not very clean.

She tugged and brushed at her skirt and plucked at her rumpled blouse. "Don't I look simply awful, darling?" she said, coming forward. "I feel as if I hadn't bathed for a week. Did you think I wasn't coming?"

He said, "No, I figured you'd get here eventually."

She stopped in front of him and looked down at his feet. "What's the matter, Phillip?" Then she kneeled quickly and, after a moment, looked up at him. "What did they want?"

"You."

"Poor darling. And you didn't know. Have you got anything for it?"

He tugged the packages he had bought out of his pocket and watched her, sitting on her heels, open the tube of ointment and squeeze a quantity of the paste into her hand.

"What have you been doing?" he asked.

"Oh," she said vaguely, "Things." She applied the ointment gently with the tips of her fingers and said, "It's a nuisance, darling, but it will be all right in a week or so. You've already put something on it, haven't you?"

He nodded.

"I didn't have any money for hotels," she said. He watched her face, correcting the picture of her he had carried in his mind, as she talked. "I had to pawn my watch," she said. "I stayed in the strangest places, Phillip. One night I slept in a parked car. Last night. You walked right by me with that girl. I would have tried to get in then but I thought maybe you were going to bring her ..." She laughed under her breath as he moved uncomfortably. "Am I hurting you, darling? I'm being as gentle as I can.

He felt the pain of her fingers and squirmed.

"I'll never trust you out of my sight again, darling," she said gaily. "Never again. Anyway, I couldn't get in. They were all around the hotel. But tonight they all went off...."

He pulled his foot free. "All right," he said. "You don't have to massage it. Wrap something about it, will you, so it doesn't get all over everything."

She turned her face up to him, betraying a certain curiosity. "How did it ... Did you ...?"

"Did I howl?"

"Well, I didn't mean ..."

"I grunted," he said. "Have you ever had your feet toasted?"

She shook her head.

"All right," he said, "Then don't be so damned nonchalant about it." He pulled open the box containing bandages. "I'll do it," he said. "Get me a drink, darling. There's a bottle in my suitcase." As she rose, on a sudden impulse, he seized her and drew her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. "Mrs. Duval," he said.

She stood looking down at him. Presently she rubbed her hands absently together and drew them along her hips to remove the slipperiness of the ointment.

"Mrs. Haskell-Lalevy-Duval," he said. "Get me a drink, Mrs. Haskell-Lalevy-Duval."

He watched her turn slowly away and go to the wardrobe. Then he looked at his feet. A nuisance, he thought, but it will be all right in a week or two! "While you're in there," he said loudly, "There's thirty-seven hundred dollars in your bag. A guy left it for you."

She came to the door and looked at him.

"A guy named Haskell left you some money," he said impatiently. "If nobody's got to it, it's in with your black shoes."

As she vanished again he looked down at his feet and wondered what to do about them. If I bandage them, he thought, I can't get my shoes on.

"Did you find it?" he asked loudly.

She emerged, thrusting the bills into the pocket of her jacket. With her hands in her pockets she leaned against the wall, watching him.

"What have they told you about me, darling?" she murmured. "What did Haskell say?"

"He said you were a flat-faced bitch and a tart and he didn't want any part of you."

She smiled briefly.

"He said you tried to blackmail him," Branch went on.

She said slowly, "For three years he has been paying his income tax with my money and I have kindly been allowed to earn my keep around the house. Washing dishes. Tending the children. Mending for his wife. While he banked the checks as they came in and burned the letters. No, he would say, smiling and pinching me, no, there's no mail, baby, but don't worry, well take care of you. Now he's afraid I will implicate him. He thought Sellers would stop me, but Sellers did not, so now he pays me my money so that I will not be angry with him. So that, in case I am caught, I will not feel it necessary to volunteer unnecessary information."

"How did you nd out?"

"Louis must have guessed there was something wrong. He sent a letter by another route."

"That's your husband, right?"

"Yes," she said. "He's coming here. They want to kill him."

"Why?"

Leaning unmoving against the wall she thrust her fists deeper into the pockets of her jacket. "Don't be a fool, Phillip."

"All right," he said. "All right. But what was his particular angle?"

"I don't know," she said. "I never asked him."

He watched her smooth self-contained face with suspicion.

"I don't," she insisted. "What difference does it make? He had to, to live. To keep all of us alive. When it got too bad he helped Father smuggle me out of the country. He got me out and Father arranged it on this side. The Maquis killed Father when the Americans came."

"But Louis escaped?"

She nodded.

"And now he's coming here?"

She nodded again. "Yes," she said bitterly. "Those who stayed, who made the best terms they could, who kept France alive; they are now dead or in prison or hiding; while the ones who had apartments in London or New York-"

"Or Evanston," Branch murmured.

"Yes," she said. "But it's the least I can do, isn't it, to help him?"

"God, I don't know," he said. "Don't ask me what's the least you can do. I don't know."

She came forward stiffly with that long-legged walk she had, her hands thrust deeply into her pockets, and stood looking down at him. "Do you want me to leave, Phillip?"

He said angrily, "For Christ's sake sit down and relax. You make me nervous stalking around like that." He felt the bedsprings yield to her weight, but he did not turn his head to look at her. "Look," he said, "I don't like to have my feet burned. It annoys me."

"Yes, Phillip," she murmured.

"That bastard got a kick out of it," he said. "That Laflin bastard. He was holding me and every time it got to me I could see him grin like a hyena. He was having a swell time.... I don't like that," he said angrily, turning to her. "If they feel they have to know something bad enough to do that, all right, but damned if I can stand anybody's enjoying it." He stared at her for a moment. "On the other hand," he said harshly, "it's not worth getting court-martialed for, if you know what I mean. It's not worth landing in jail for."

Her evenly colored mouth smiled a little in her smooth face. "You mean, you would like revenge, Phillip, but you don't want to take any risks."

"Listen," he said, "I want to beat hell out of the bastard. I'd kill him if there wasn't a law against it."

"But you won't."

"You've got four thousand bucks," he said irritably. "What the hell do you need help for?" He laughed. "You see what a lot of good I am for protection," he said, gesturing towards his feet.

She put her long-fingered hand on top of his hand. *You can run a boat, Phillip," she said.

He could feel her fingers moving gently, stroking the back of his hand, she looking down at them and not watching his face at all. It occurred to him that the other girl had also brought up the subject of boats. Anything that floats, he had said, I can handle it. "How do you know I can run a boat?" he asked.

"You told me," she said. "When I asked why you had joined the Navy. You said you had sailed boats all your life."

"I sure hand out a lot of free information about myself," he said. "Well, I'm not going to."

Her shoulders moved in a minute shrug. "All right, darling."

"Cut it out," he said. "Darling, darling, darling. What about this Louis guy?"

She looked down at her hands, now folded against her yellow wool skirt. "That's different," she said. "It was partly for me that he did what he did, and he is my husband. I am quite fond of him and I owe him a great deal, perhaps my life. But-" She shrugged. "After three years ...

He smiled thinly and said, "In other words you'll go to bed with me again if I'll run your boat for you." He had a momentary vision of the impression this conversation would make on his mother, if she could hear it, and in his mind he whistled softly and expressively. Then the girl was standing over him, quite tall and very slender and rigid with anger.

He looked up at her. "Well," he said mildly, "isn't that what you were saying? Let's get down to brass tacks, darling."

He sat unmoving and let her slap him. Then he rose gingerly to his feet and struck her smartly, in return, on the cheek.

"No," he said harshly as her hand twitched to retaliate. "That's enough. We can keep this up all night." He sat down quickly to relieve his feet. After a moment she sat down again beside him.

*When's this husband of yours coming?" he asked presently.

"Why did you say that?" she gasped. "Why? Even if I was.... It was so unnecessary to say itl!"

He said, "You did it better last time, sweetheart. You delivered the goods without asking me to sign a contract."

"Phillip," she whispered. "Please!"

"When's he coming?" He watched her produce a small and very crumpled handkerchief. "Do we have to go through all that?" he demanded.

She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes and turned to look at him. "I'm very sorry," she said stiffly. "I don't mean to annoy you." After a moment she said, "And I'm not going to tell you when Louis is coming."

"Well, is it this week?" he asked impatiently. "Or next month, or what? In other words, how much longer do you have to stall?"

She hesitated. "Well, it isn't very much longer," she said at last, and then, "What difference does it make to you, Phillip?"

"Never mind that," he said. "And he's coming by ship, I suppose, and somewhere he'll jump off and you'll pick him up in a boat, right?"

She did not say anything.

"It sounds screwy to me," he said. "Have you got a boat?"

After a short delay she nodded sullenly. "That's what I needed the money for. I knew this man would want-"

"That's what you've been doing?"

She nodded again. "I gave him fifty that I got for my watch and promised to bring him the rest."

He laughed suddenly. "It wouldn't be a guy by the name of Parks?"

He felt her start. "Yes," she said, and gripped his arm. "Yes. George Parks. Why?" She shook him a little. "Tell me!"

"Dickerson is there," he said. "Sellers' detective, you remember, the guy who took the pictures."

"Oh," she said flatly. Then she laughed uneasily. "Oh. Well, I don't see what he can do." After a little she said, "Parks won't run the boat. He's going to show me where it is and have it ready for me, but if anything happens he is going to claim I stole it. That's why I need ..."

She was silent and he did not speak. Finally she said, "I stayed with Parks the week after I first came."

"That must have been nice," Branch said.

"Yes," she smiled. "It was. But he had an organization among the men who unloaded the ships in Baltimore. They smuggled all sorts of things. Sellers was in it, too, and when they were sure nobody had followed me I went to Sellers and he helped me get to Haskell. But they are not doing that any more and if Louis stays on the boat until he gets to Baltimore he will be arrested and sent back to France. He is on the list. You know?" She glanced at him. He nodded. "Yes. I read the papers."

"Then they will kill him," she said.

"Lots of people want to kill him," Branch said. "If he's going to be killed in France why are these birds so eager to kill him over here? They could just keep you from helping him and Louis would go to Baltimore and the U.S. Government would present him to the French Government, who would save them the trouble."

"Well," she said reluctantly, "he might only be imprisoned for a while. They are slowly coming to their senses again, over there." Suddenly she looked up and said savagely, "What do you think of a people who the minute the Nazis stop killing and torturing them, start killing and torturing their own people. Wouldn't you think they had had enough terror? Wouldn't you think they would want to stop it? Somewhere?"

He did not say anything.

Presently she asked, "How did you learn about Parks?"

"Dickerson must have warned him about me. He sent a colored woman to see if I were keeping you in my room."

"You didn't tell them about it?"

"No," he said.

"Well," she said, rising. "If you don't mind ..." She touched his knee lightly. "If you don't mind I would like to take a shower."

He nodded. "Go ahead." He watched her go to the closet and turn to look at him.

"I never got you that drink," she said, smiling.

"That's all right," he said. "But if you'd get me my spare pipe. That bastard broke my good one. It's in the little pocket in the top of my suitcase." He pulled off the raincoat he was still wearing, and his blouse, and stretched out on the bed in his shirtsleeves. She brought him the pipe. Filling and lighting it, he watched her carry her own suitcase into the tiny adjoining bathroom and after a little he heard water hissing in the shower.

At last she came out and he lay unmoving, smoking and watching her, not looking at him, stop to fasten about her, over the pale ivory satin nightgown she was wearing, a negligee of the same color and material. The lace on the hem of the nightgown rustled faintly against the worn rug as she came around the bed to him. Her hair was loose on her shoulders.

She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. "I should have washed my hair," she said. "But it takes so long to dry."

He could feel his heart beating. The condition of his feet and the greasy ointment on them made him feel awkward and stiff and a little ridiculous.

"You look very beautiful," he said.

She touched his hand. "Do you want me, Phillip?"

"Yes," he said, "Yes. Very much. But not for a price"

She leaned over him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "You're sweet, Phillip," she said. "Do you love me?"

He smiled and shook his head minutely, looking up at her. "I don't think so."

"It's nice to be frank, isn't it?" she said with just a touch of tartness in her voice. "You'd better put something on your feet. I don't want that stuff all over my nightie."

HE WAS AWARE Of having been asleep.

"Are you asleep, Phillip?" she whispered. The whisper made her a person again in the darkness beside him.

"No," he whispered. "I'm not asleep, darling." He moved his hand up her arm as she moved to lie close against him, and smoothed back the displaced strap of her nightgown. It occurred to him that the gown and the matching negligee had shown the crisp brightness of newness, as if she had bought them for the benefit of her husband, but the idea had no power to embarrass him.

"Do you love me now?" she whispered.

"Sure. More than anything."

Her fingers searched his face in the darkness. "Liar."

He laughed and held her snugly against him, shifting the position of his head on the pillow so that her hair would not tickle his face. He felt very good.

"Phillip?"

"Yes?"

"When did you the first time?"

"Do I have to tell?"

"She must have been nice," Jeannette Duval whispered. "You're very gentle."

"Am I?" He had not thought of himself as gentle and he was not sure that he liked it; nor was he sure that she really liked it. "What am I supposed to do, black your eyes?"

"No, you shouldn't change," she said.

"It was a mess," he said. "After a dance. Freshman year. She didn't know a damned thing about it either. It took me two hours to get her calmed down and pinned together afterwards, enough that she could sneak back into the dorm; but it was a month before she gave up the idea she was going to have a baby. Cured me until senior year."

"In a car?" the girl's voice murmured. "I always wondered what it was like in a car."

"Then I was going with one of the intellectuals," he went on sleepily. "You know, straight hair, skirt and sweater, low-heeled shoes. Dark. You always thought, why doesn't she look like hell? But she didn't. I'd been going with her almost a year, and one night we dropped in on these people in town and they left and we drank their beer and played Mozart on their phonograph and I got up enough nerve to kiss her for the first time. Well it's about time, she said, do you want to? and I, after catching my breath said sure, of course, and we went I upstairs and did."

The girl moved slightly in his arms. "I was educated in a convent," she said. "I never kissed a man until I was engaged to be married."

"We were quite busy that spring," Branch said. "But I never saw her again after graduation. After a while we stopped writing. I don't know why."

"Louis wanted to when he left for the front," her voice said in the darkness beside him. "But at the time the idea was very shocking to me. But, my dear, I said, we are not married yet, what an idea! laughing at him because I was so deeply embarrassed. And every day waiting for him to come back I regretted it, not only for his sake, but because I was so very curious; and when he came back he found me very compliant. It is fortunate that he really wanted to marry me, because of Father's money, and showed me what precautions to take, because, he said, it was not a time for Frenchwomen to bear children. I did not ask where he had learned this information." Her voice was a little stilted, as if it embarrassed her, even in the darkness, to talk about herself.

"And what would Louis say?"

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing, darling. After all, we are civilized people."

He grinned in the darkness. "I don't know if I'd like my wife to be so damned civilized."

"I do not intend to ask any questions of Louis when I meet him," she murmured, and laughed a little, almost fondly, "since I already know the answers. And I am quite sure that he will ask none of me. We will simply pretend that three years have not existed."

They were silent for a little.

"Isn't it strange," she whispered at last, "how candid one can be in bed? Can you imagine us talking like this over dinner? My ears would be scarlet." Then she shattered their small dark intimate world. "Are you going to help me, darling?"

He turned a little and was aware again of the bars of light from the curtained window, and of the wind still blowing outside; and someone passed down the hall and walked down the stairs without haste. He felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable; all around them the hotel was still awake, and outside the hotel the town was still awake; and only the walls of the room and the locked door prevented the wakeful eyes from seeing them in bed together.

"No," he said. "No, I'm not, darling."

He switched on the bedside light and, raising himself on one elbow, looked down at her for a moment. The youthful shape of her mouth and the dusky softness of her hair on the pillow made an ache inside him.

"It's too bad," he said harshly, "that we didn't meet about five years back." He felt as if he wanted to cry.

"Yes," she murmured, looking up at him unmoving. "Isn't it, rather?"

He threw back the covers and swung his feet to the floor, sitting up. "You could always let this Louis bastard get himself killed," he said dryly.

Her voice behind him said, "Yes, I could do that, of course." He felt her sit up and, finding her negligee and drawing it about her, she moved across the bed to sit beside him.

"God, I feel lousy," he said. They sat on the side of the bed without touching each other. "We shouldn't have done that, darling," he said at last. "I'm getting positively fond of you. It makes things so goddamned complicated."

She smiled. "Does it?"

"Cut it out," he said. "I'm not going to run your bloody boat. That's flat."

"Darling," she said, taking his hand. "Why not? It wouldn't-"

"Because I'm in the bloody Navy," he said. "That's why. It would make such a lousy stink if I got caught." He looked at her, trying to explain it to her so that she would see it clearly as he saw it. "Look," he said, "I'm not much of an of officer, but I've got kind of a kick out of being one. Some of the guys hate it. I know one fellow that goes home every night and puts on a full suit of civilian clothes, coat, vest, tie, and everything, just so he'll feel natural again. But I've got a kick out of it, and I'm going to feel kind of sorry when I have to pack my uniforms in mothballs. Well," he said, "it's one thing to be court-martialed for being caught with a girl in a hotel bedroom, like in New York. That's personal to me and I consider it my own damned business. Anyway, nobody could blame the Navy for it. But this other business is getting damned close to treason. I may personally think that your husband can't do much harm, but he's officially a traitor and I haven't any right to drag the Navy into a mess like that. You know what the papers would do with it if I got caught. As long as I'm in uniform I've got to stay out of it. It's the least I can do to thank them for a very pleasant war."

She patted his hand lightly and took her hand away. "All right, darling," she said, rising.

"Don't rush away," he said.

She turned to look down at him, sweeping back her hair. "What else is there to say, Phillip?"

"You didn't think ... ?"

She smiled slowly. "No. I wanted it. But I did think you might change your mind."

"I wish I had a picture of you like that," he said. "You're kind of beautiful." He shook his head. "Nuts," he said.

"Yes," she said."Well, I had better get dressed now."

"Don't rush off," he repeated. "I'm going to take those bastards off your neck."

Forgetting, he started to rise and sank back again, wincing. Then he forced himself to rise and walk over to the window. He drew the blind aside and looked out at the naked branches of the trees swinging black against the dark sky. She was beside him and he put his arm about her waist, drawing her to him.

"You're going to have a wet ride, darling," he said, "unless this wind breaks before you start. Better get yourself plenty of warm, clothes and some oilskins. He's probably got oilskins on board, but don't count on it."

"But.. ."

"Listen," he said impatiently, "you've got money, haven't you? For two thousand, George Parks would cut out his grandmother's heart and eat it. Offer him five hundred and see what he says."

"He's already asked four hundred for the boat, since he thinks he may not get it back." She laughed without embarrassment. "I was ... going-to break it to you gently."

He laughed. "Well, you've got plenty of money now. Don't let him know how much or he'll get ideas. Now, he said," drawing her to the desk and sitting down, "Here's the bay. He made a rough sketch on a piece of hotel stationery. "Here we are and here's Annapolis. They generally hit Annapolis about dawn to take on the pilot for the upper bay. O.K.? I don't know what your arrangements are, but I suppose you'll want to do it while it's still dark. There's a chance the ship may anchor off Annapolis in the dark to wait for the pilot, otherwise you'll have to run down a ways to catch them before morning twilight."

He glanced at her over his shoulder to see if she were understanding him. It was always difficult, when you talked about something you knew very well, to know if you were making sense to someone who did not know anything at all about it. Her face was grave and attentive, intent on the diagram. He pushed the paper aside.

"Now what I'm driving at," he said, "the wind has been swinging between northeast and northwest for the past week and there's a good chance it will stay there. That means you'll have an easy run downwind to where you do your business. Well, what you do, when you've got your Louis on board; you tell George Parks to run you clear over to the western shore and drop you there. There'll be two of you, and between you, you ought to be able to handle him. You understand? When you've got Louis aboard and pumped out and everything under control, have Parks keep her running southwest until she hits bottom. He'll know where to pull in over there, guys like that always know their water. If you let him talk you into coming back here you'll be bucking the sea all the way up. You'll have stuff coming over solid and you'll freeze to death before you get in. Let him worry about getting back alone. But don't tell him until there are two of you or he'll pull a fast one on you." He turned and grinned at her. "You'll be colder than you've ever been in your life, darling, but this way you won't be getting a shower bath every ten seconds, except while you're getting out of the river. Once you're out past Signal Point it will all be clear sailing."

The satin of her negligee rustled as, picking up the paper, she seated herself on the edge of the desk to study it. Then she looked down at him curiously, lowering the paper.

He laughed. "Well, I could guess you weren't coming down here to eat oysters, couldn't I?"

"How did you find out all this?" she asked, smiling. "About the pilots, for instance?"

"Oh, I chatted with the loafers around the dock. God, I used to hang around the wharves all the time when I was a kid. Mother had fits about the language I picked up." He started to rise, laying his hand on her satin knee, and sat down again abruptly, looking at his feet, in black regulation socks, below the striped pajama trousers. He patted her knee gently. "What time is it getting to be, darling?"

She looked at the clock by the bed. "Eleven-thirty," she said.

"Put on the same clothes you've been wearing," he said. "Leave me the suitcase. Don't take anything out of it. That long-nosed bitch has been through it and she's the kind that would miss a bobby pin if you took it away with you."

"But darling!"

He pressed his fingers into her knee through the satin. He found that he wanted to hurt her a little. "I'm going to take them off your neck," he said. "Don't argue with me. You've got enough money to buy another trousseau."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get a telephone call from you in the morning," he said, moving his hand in a gesture that was a little too rough to be a caress, and taking it away when she looked at it, not annoyed, but questioning. "While I'm at breakfast," he said, "so I'll be paged all over the hotel. Then I'll inform my girl friend down the hall that one dose of hot poker was enough and I'm on my way home. I'm going home to mama and have her kiss my feet and make them well. If they want to be damned fools and follow me, all right." He grinned. "After the phone call, you can bet they will. I'll get off at some jerkwater stop up the bay and make as if I was trying to lose them and then put on a big disappointed act when you don't run up to kiss me at the hotel. If you don't have a clear trail by that time it's your own damned fault."

The feeling of wanting to cry was with him again as he looked up into her face, no longer reserved and distant, but smooth and young and a little flushed with the experience they had shared. Her hair was loose and there was more of it than you would ever think, seeing it always neatly coiled about her head. It had a soft, smoky look about her shoulders.

"I think," he said. He licked his lips. "I think this is the best plan, sweetheart. It gives you an open field."

"Yes," she said.

"We'd have a hell of a time with them," he said, "if we tried it together."

"Yes," she said. "I suppose so."

"Christ," he said. "Isn't it a hell of a note?"

She slipped off the desk and stood beside him, and pushed her fingers gently through his hair. "Have you considered... ?"

He did not look at her."What?"

"Have you considered, darling," she said breathlessly, as if she were forcing herself to speak against her better judgment, "that they will be very angry when they find you have tricked them?"

He pulled her against him, looking up at her. "You aren't trying to talk me out of it?"

"It isn't very smart of me, is it, Phillip? But you will be careful?"

"Well, don't cry about it? he said," grinning. "It's a good plan, isn't it?"

She nodded, looking at the window.

"You just want to put yourself on record as having warned me," he said. "Don't you, darling?"

She said stiffly, "Is that what you think of me?" Then, before he could speak, she smiled and said, "I'm really ... very fond of you, Phillip. Don't let them ..."

He laughed and slapped her smartly across the narrow buttocks. "I was afraid of that," he said heartily. "Now for God's sake go put some clothes on, Toots, I can't keep my hands off you when you look like that."

He lay in bed smoking, watching her iron dry the blouse that she had insisted on washing, with the small traveling iron from her suitcase, using the wooden arm of the largest chair in the room for a board. The domesticity of the scene hurt him and he wondered how she got along with Louis. Then she was ready and he sat up, putting aside his pipe.

"Don't get up, darling," she said.

"I'd better see if the coast is clear," he said, and limped to the door and looked out. The hall was empty. He turned and kissed her.

"I'll call you," she said breathlessly, stepping back. "At nine-thirty."

He nodded.

"I ... had better go now."

He nodded again, and watched her hurry out of sight toward the rear stairway, not turning to look back; and he closed the door softly and leaned against it, feeling empty and shaken. It did not seem possible that he might never see her again.

IN THE MORNING he ran the shining satin of her nightgown through his fingers, pleased with the texture of it, before packing it away, with the other articles she had left out, in her suitcase. Well, he thought, that's over; and he carried the small black bag into the bedroom and set it by the door. You were always losing part of yourself to other people. He debated keeping the nightgown as a remembrance but was deterred by the knowledge that, when he got home, his mother would inevitably find it; and it was a silly idea anyway.

As he left the room he glanced at his watch; it read a little after nine. He went down to the dining room and ate breakfast slowly under the ancient ostentatious chandeliers that always looked a little tawdry in daylight, like the tinsel on a Christmas tree. Beyond the porch the day was a dull gray color and the trees were stirred by brief gusts of wind, but it was not raining.

From the table he had chosen he could see the door to the lobby without turning his head; and he watched the people coming in and, having breakfasted, leaving. Constance Bellamann was not among them, and none of the others were in evidence. Now in the morning he did not feel very strongly about them. His feet, having blistered, were uncomfortable but not excessively painful. Everyone had to do what he had to do, he told himself philosophically; if he had been kicked around enough perhaps he would be screwy too.

Then the old colored waiter came up to refill his coffee cup and he looked at his watch and it read a quarter of ten.

He could not sit there indefinitely, obviously waiting for a call that, if genuine, he would have wanted to keep desperately secret and, filling his pipe, he wandered out into the lobby. He walked to the front door and stood at the top of the high steps looking about him. The wind was not so strong this morning. He wondered if she would get seasick in the boat; and how the cold would affect her, and if she would be afraid. It was seven minutes of ten, and suddenly it seemed to him that he knew very little about her, after all; he did not know the thing that, in the normal course of events, you always ]earned first about a girl: whether she was punctual or would keep you waiting. He could recall the sound of her voice and the shape of her mouth and the texture of her hair, but like a girl met in a dream, she had only physical characteristics.

He shivered a little, turned abruptly, and went inside; everything that had happened suddenly churning inside his head like a series of newsreel snapshots played too fast.

"I'm checking out," he said to the clerk at the desk. "Will you get my bill ready?"

"Shall I send a boy... ?"

"I'll call. I haven't packed yet." He ran up the stairs to his room and began to throw his belongings into his suitcase. There was, he knew, a bus at ten-thirty; but he knew also that this was not the reason for his haste. He had to get out before the telephone rang. He could not hear her voice again. He had to get out of it.

Leaving his suitcase on the bed, he took the small black bag down the corridor to Constance Bellamann's door. The girl did not answer immediately to his knock; he heard her moving inside while he stood waiting. At last the door opened minutely and a segment of her face looked out at him. The door began to close again.

He frowned and put his foot into the crack and, leaning his weight against the panels, forced himself inside. When she whirled to run he seized her arm and felt her resistance cease with sickening abruptness, as if the touch of his hand had been the crack of a whip. She stood quite still, facing him, wearing a faded blue flannel robe over a rumpled pink cotton nightgown. Her face was strangely shiny and her short hair was untidy and looked damp. He watched the childish smile come to her lips, knowing it now to be as mechanical as her obedience to his touch; and he shivered a little as his mind unbidden formed pictures of the conditions under which she had learned these reactions.

"Please," she whispered. "I'm not dressed."

She gestured helplessly at her robe and gown; then her face seemed to contract and became ugly and frighteningly pale; he kicked the door shut behind him, set down the suitcase, and led her to a chair. She crouched in the chair, hugging herself. He could hear her breathing short and harsh with pain behind him as he went to the tumbled bed and quickly straightened the bedclothes. Returning, he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

"Do you want your robe off?" he asked.

Speechless, her teeth tightly clenched, she made a small movement of taking it off; and he untied the sash and helped her out of it; and covered her with the blankets as she rolled over to her stomach, pressing her face into the pillow. As she hugged the pillow to her it exposed a small automatic pistol that had been hidden beneath it. He put this quickly into his pocket.

"Can I get you something?" he asked, standing by the bed. She shook her head minutely. "Do you want me to call a doctor?" he asked.

She answered with the same brief movement of her bead. "Is there anything I can do?"

There was nothing he could do, and he sat down in the chair and looked at his watch. Well, he thought, I can always catch the next one. He did not want to look at the girl. It was always unpleasant and unfair to watch anyone suffer. He took the gun out of his pocket and examined it. To his inexpert eyes it seemed unbalanced and strangely formed, and he turned it over and read, Waffenfabrik Mauser, Oberndorf a/n 6.35 mm. His limited experience with the big service Colt did not tell him whether this weapon was on safe or not, and he dropped it gingerly back into his pocket. His mother had never allowed him to own a gun.

He heard a movement in the bed and looked up to see the girl lying on her side watching him without raising her head from the pillow.

"Do you want a glass of water?" he asked.

"No," she whispered. "No. Nothing."

"You should have a doctor," he said.

"No," she whispered. "I ... just walked too far yesterday. When I overexert myself ... and the cold ... "

"I hit you," he reminded her.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. "Just the cold. Walking."

He said uncomfortably, "I didn't mean to barge in on you like this. But you acted ..."

She licked her dry lips. "Yes."

"I just dropped in to say good-bye," he said.

She lay watching him without speaking, her small face colorless against the cheap brash pink of her nightgown. At last with an effort she raised herself and pulled the gown straight and drew the robe about her shoulders, sitting up.

"You ..." She licked her lips again. "Leaving?"

He nodded. "There's her suitcase, in case you find her."

"And ... the money?"

He said irritably, "I'm sending it back to Haskell, what did you think? After last night I'll be damned if I'm going to contribute thirty-seven hundred dollars to your war chest."

He watched her a moment to see if this looked reasonable to her. She brushed mechanically at the matted damp hair on her forehead, looking small and plain and sick in the big bed. He was not even quite sure that she knew what he was saying.

"I suppose," he said, "I suppose there's no use claiming I'm not leaving because I'm scared."

Constance Bellamann smiled, making her eyes focus on him. "Does it.., matter, Mr. Branch?" she whispered.

He grinned abruptly. "I guess not. Anyway, I gave her a chance to turn up. She can't expect me to spend all my leave in this hole...." After a moment he said, "You ought to have a doctor."

She shook her head. "I will be all right."

"Here's your popgun," he said, rising to throw it to he covers. She did not move to take it and he stood by he bed looking down at her, feeling angry and helpless. "Goddamn it," he said roughly, "why don't you get a doctor to fix you up? What do you want to trail round with this gang for if you're sick? It seems to me..."

"What?" she whispered, not really interested, and obviously praying silently for him to leave quickly. He gestured aimlessly. "To go through all that and then risk killing yourself with a lot of half-ass melodramatics. I know damned well that if I'd lived through it I'd be so tickled at being alive that you wouldn't find me even crossing a street in the middle of the block. I wouldn't take any chances at all."

She licked her gray lips. "If you knew you were all ... all wrong inside? And up here?" She rubbed her forehead. "You don't know," she whispered wearily. "After a while ... it doesn't make much difference."

As he turned away he was aware of her, desperately furtive, slipping the pistol under her pillow and then, exhausted, lying back to stare at the ceiling. He went out quickly, feeling angry at everything; irritated even at the girl herself, because of course something could be done about it. There was always something that could be done about it, and somebody ought to do it. He could not see that it was in any sense his problem, but as he walked back to his room he had a feeling of evading responsibility. Then he heard the telephone ringing inside the door and he stood with his hand on the knob for a long moment, listening to it, hoping it would stop, but it did not stop, and he shivered a little and went inside.

"PHILIP?" her voice said.

"Yes," he said. She did not speak at once and he said lightly, "It's about time you called." Then, she still not speaking, he asked, "How are you, darling?"

"I'm fine, Phillip," her voice said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine too," he said. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter," her voice said quickly. "Why?"

Sitting on the side of the bed he frowned a little, cradling the telephone in the crook of his shoulder while he filled his pipe nervously.

"I just meant," he said, "that I was waiting in the dining room until a quarter of."

Her voice, indistinct through the instrument, said, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't get to a phone."

"Well, I'm just about ready to pull out," he said. "If everything's all right...."

It was like talking to a stranger. He could not bring it back at all, any of it. He lighted his pipe, waiting for her to speak. Two distinct sets of footsteps went past in the corridor outside the room.

"Are you there?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm here."

"Is there anything else?" She was silent again and he said irritably, "Listen, what's the matter with you, anyway?"

After a moment her voice said, "It didn't work, darling."

The strangeness was gone with the term of endearment, and it was as if she were in the room with him. He took his pipe from his mouth and laid it gently on the bedside table.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What didn't work?"

"I need you, Phillip," she said.

He said mechanically, "Listen, we were through all that last night." It did not matter what he said now and he wished she would get to the point so that he could know how bad it was.

"But I ...".she began, and broke off. In the silence he could hear a man's voice prompting her in a whisper, "Parks knows where I am." Then she was speaking, "Parks knows where I am, darling."

His eyes rested for a moment on the packed suitcase beside him. I should, he reflected, have got the hell out while I had the chance.

"Let me talk to them, sweetheart," he said without expression.

"I don't know what you ... "

"Let me talk to them," he repeated.

"Oh," she said, and her voice became indistinct, as if she had turned away from the phone, and said, "He wants to talk to you." Then it became loud and cried, "I didn't .. .!" and he heard the sound of the blow and the brief cough of pain very close to the telephone.

"Laflin here," said a man's voice.

"What goes on?" Branch asked.

"Come and find out," said the large young man's voice.

"You've got her," Branch said. "What more do you want?"

"Parks will tell you how to get here," Paul Laflin's voice said.

"To hell with Parks. You tell me."

He listened as, after a moment's hesitation, the other gave the directions, which he repeated back into the instrument.

"That's right," Paul Laflin's voice said. "We'll expect you. I wouldn't consider the police."

"I wouldn't consider them either," Branch said wryly. "But if I come, what does it get me?"

"That's for you to decide." The telephone rattled as if put down on a hard surface and Paul Laflin's voice, a little muffled by distance, said, "Speak for the gentleman," as if talking to a dog; and suddenly Jeannette Duval screamed abruptly and very loudly, locking the mechanism of the instrument in a brief sharp blare of sound. Branch pulled the phone away from his head and heard, above the ringing in his ear, the click of the circuit being opened. Presently he replaced the telephone gently in its cradle.

He passed his finger slowly along the smooth heavy leather of the suitcase that lay on the bed, making a clear streak through the dust that had accumulated in the days it had stood in the wardrobe. His parents had given him the suitcase on the occasion of his joining the Navy. His mother had cried a little when she packed it. Those had been the days when anything had seemed possible and he had been quite certain that he would eventually get to sea. He sat beside the suitcase, remembering. Then he stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. He had put on a gray shirt and his second best uniform preparatory to traveling and he looked, in the mirror, rather tall and thin, a little gawky in spite of the gold braid, and quite worried. It's quite pointless, he told the long worried image in the mirror, if I go it's just two of us. He picked up the telephone.

"I've changed my mind," he said to the desk. "I'll be staying for another day or two. Sorry if I've caused you any-"

"That's quite all right, Lieutenant," the desk said. Branch grimaced and put down the phone. Oh, you think so, he thought irritably. He picked up his cap and coat, and his pipe, lying forgotten on the table, and went out.

Outside it was blowing fitfully, occasional gusts of wind sweeping the dust along the pavements. He walked with his eyes half-closed against the backwash of small gritty particles that blurred his vision of the suddenly brightly sunlit streets. When he came to the bridge the water was glittering below and the draw was open for a small white motor cruiser to pass through. He could lean over the bridge railing and look down on the yellow foredeck and the spray-flecked glass of the superstructure. He called the boat a damned floating greenhouse in his mind and watched it pick up speed and proceed up the river against the wind at a good eight knots, pitching in the short chop and leaving a V-shaped wake.

The draw settled into place and the gates opened and he walked slowly on, his feet crushing small particles of glass on the cement sidewalk of the bridge. It was apparently a local sport to pitch beer bottles from the windows of passing cars, low shots hitting the masonry of the railing. He declined a lift from a man who was going to Arnold, five miles down the main road, and walked on, thinking, if I wasn't a damned fool I would get to hell out of here.

A stationwagon with the door stenciled "Wayside Farms" picked him up a quarter of a mile up the river road and he sat beside the driver, feeling his feet aching and watching the road slide past. He had the man drop him out of sight beyond Parks' store. When the stationwagon had turned the next corner he walked back to the bend and turned into a small road following the edge of the fields, over which he could see the store at the crossroads. He could see Parks' house down in the hollow, and the other houses, and, feeling conspicuous in his uniform, hurried a little to get down to where the woods would hide him. If something happens, he thought, if something happens and I get out of it, I don't want to be connected with it. He could not think clearly what could happen. The road went down the hillside at an angle so sharp that it seemed unlikely that anything other than a horse or a jeep could use it. Once he caught a glimpse of the river in the sunlight through the thin trees to his left. He did not look around him more than casually as he walked.

Then Mr. Hahn's voice behind him said, "That's far enough Lieutenant."

He turned and looked at the chinless man. "Too damned far," he agreed. "My feet hurt."

Mr. Hahn said gently, "That is too bad. That is really too bad."

He came forward between the trees, wearing a closefitting gray overcoat with a black velvet collar, and a gray felt hat. The gun in his hand, that Branch had seen before, was of a more familiar shape than the gun the girl had kept under her pillow. Madame Faubel stepped out of the bushes behind him and brushed the twigs from her skirt and pulled a small pistol from the pocket of her jacket. Mr. Hahn looked back over his shoulder to see if she were in command of the situation; she nodded, and he put his gun away, stopping beside Branch in such a position that he did not interfere with the woman's line of fire. His narrow mustached face looked puzzled.

"You must be very fond of her," he said as he ran his hands expertly over Branch's body, feeling of the armpits and the arms, the waist, the crotch and, squatting, the legs. "Or very stupid," he said with a quick grin, looking up. He straightened up. "Turn out your pockets."

He examined the objects Branch gave him and returned everything except the small penknife, which he kept.

"Americans must be a very chivalrous race," he said dryly, considering Branch for a moment. "I didn't think you'd be fool enough to come."

Madame Faubel said, "All Americans are afraid of being thought afraid. That is why their casualties are so high."

"With a population of a hundred and thirty millions they can afford a few casualties," Mr. Hahn said. "But why should he care what we think of him?"

Madame Faubel came forward. "They are always worrying what people think of them. He did not even bring a gun?"

"Not unless he has it up his youknowwhat."

"I don't like it," the woman said.

"You were the one who was sure he would come."

"But with a gun," the woman said. "With, at least, a knife ..."

Branch listened to them and heard also the wind in the tops of the small trees on the hillside. Under the trees the hillside was almost clear of brush and carpeted with damp dead leaves.

"Did you tell anyone that you were coming?" the woman demanded.

Branch looked at her pale face. "Don't ask silly questions," he said irritably. "If I had, I would lie about it, wouldn't I?"

He stood and listened to them talk about it some more, and shifted his feet in the ruts of the road and wished he could sit down. He felt a little sleepy and he yawned; then knew he was very far from sleepy by the way the yawn became incomplete in his throat.

"Go back to the road," Madame Faubel said at last to the chinless man. "See if there is anyone waiting."

"I have told you," said Mr. Hahn angrily, "He came in a stationwagon marked 'Wayside Farms.' The stationwagon went on. I followed him down. There was no one."

The woman turned to Branch. "Who was the driver?"

Branch shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Some farmer. He picked me up just after I turned off past the bridge."

"Go on," Madame Faubel said to the chinless man. "We will wait here." When Mr. Hahn opened his mouth to protest further, she said sharply, "Hurry up. We can't spend all day in this place."

They watched the narrow figure labor out of sight along the ruts; then the woman sat down on the damp leaves and Branch sat down beside her.

"May I take out my pipe and smoke?" he asked her politely, glancing at the gun resting on the heavy tweed of her skirt.

She nodded without speaking.

Presently be said, "I saw Constance this morning. She wasn't feeling so good."

"She is not well," Madame Faubel said.

"Why don't you turn her over to some relief?" Branch asked. "Get her fixed up a little. She'd be a nice kid if she got straightened out a little.

"And then?" Madame Faubel asked, unimpressed.

Branch glanced at her.

"What would a nice kid do?" she asked. "Where would a nice kid go?"

"Her folks ... ?"

The woman shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Perhaps. If she would. But she would still need special food and care."

"Her folks weren't poor," Branch said.

"You can see that?" Madame Faubel asked. "No, she is from good family. But everyone is poor in France today. France is poor."

"Why doesn't she want to go back to her folks?" Branch asked after a pause.

The woman looked at him. "You do not know. There were so many coming back. At first to be received with cries of joy, and then with sympathy only, and then only with embarrassment: what was to be done with them? They were sick, they cried at nothing, they jumped at small noises. They could not work. They could only eat.... Would you go back to be greeted with hollow cheerfulness, sympathy, ma pauvre enfant, what have they done to you? and then in bed at night to hear them talking below, knowing that they are wondering how they are to feed and care for another one. When one has been pretty and never sick a day ... The woman rose. "She is better with us. She can feel she is useful. Here is Georges." Branch rose and brushed the leaves from his coat.

They stood watching the chinless man come down the steep road slack-kneed, sliding a little in the loose dirt of the ruts. Branch looked at the woman beside him.

"Just the same," he said. "It seems a damned piddling occupation for intelligent people. Is Jeannette's husband really very important?"

Madame Faubel shrugged her shoulders. "I do not know," she said. "They did not tell me. They said: Duval, Louis, age thirty-five, height, weight, description, place last seen, believed to be trying to reach America. Tickets, money, passports. The sentence is death. Execute." She turned to look at Branch directly. "There has to be some payment," she said.

Mr. Hahn slid to a halt before them and caught his breath. "Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing. As I told you."

"Well, it is better to be sure," Madame Faubel said dryly. She crossed the road and started down the hillside. Mr. Hahn made a protesting sound and took the gun from his pocket, pointing it at Branch. The woman looked back. "Don't be a fool," she said irritably. "He came this far of his own accord, did he not? He will not run away before he has seen her."

"Well, I'll keep behind him, nevertheless," Mr. Hahn said. "In case he should change his mind."

They left the road, and, sliding on the dead leaves, worked down the sparsely wooded hillside to a footpath, where they turned. Branch looked around and the older man, following him closely with the gun, said, "You didn't think we would give you the right directions, did you?"

Branch shrugged and did not look back again. The path had suffered in the recent rains and his low shoes gave no support to his ankles when he slipped. Whenever he slipped he thought of the gun in the hand of the man behind him and felt the muscles of his back contract. He estimated that they had passed well below Parks' house and were at least a mile down river from it when the woman at last turned upward and labored to the top of the ridge, stopping there to catch her breath. As he reached her Branch saw a group of summer cottages through the trees ahead. It looked almost like a suburban development, with hedges, terraced small lawns, and a graveled road leading out of sight towards the main highway.

They went forward and stopped to scrape the mud from their shoes on the gravel, then going on along the road past the first of the five houses, all obviously closed for the winter, forming an L on the top of a bluff overlooking the junction of a creek and the river. The trees on the bank below had been thinned to improve the view and, looking down, Branch could see a boathouse on the point, and a pier with a diving board, and two boats moored in the shelter of the creek.

SHE WAS ON HER FEET when they came into the living room from the screened porch. "Phillip," she said. "Phillip!"

"Hi," he said, stopping inside the door, mindful of the gun, to see what they wanted him to do next.

Paul Laflin swung his feet off the large davenport that, with two deep chairs, formed a group about the fireplace at that end of the room. The nearer portion of the room looked barren and open and naked; the rug taken up from the floor to be stored for the winter, and the light maple furniture set back against the walls. The blinds were drawn on the bare uncurtained windows against the sunlight outside.

Paul Laflin looked at them over the back of the davenport as Mr. Hahn, still holding the gun, closed the door behind them.

"Did you have a pleasant walk?" the younger man asked ironically.

"Very pleasant," Mr. Hahn said. "Invigorating."

"Phillip," said the girl, hesitated, and came to him across the naked varnished floor. She took his wrists in her hands. "Are you all right, darling How did they catch you?"

He looked down at her, glad, as always, to be able to look a little down. She looked so tall when you saw her alone. It surprised him that her nearness still had the power to leave him slightly breathless. It seemed a very long time since he had last seen her; and he had been quite prepared, only two hours before, to leave and never see her again.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You look like you could use another shower."

She smiled a little and stood unmoving as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and scrubbed at her face. Her face was dusty but unmarked and, except for a run in one stocking, her clothing was intact.

"Where's your coat?" he asked.

"I left it down there," she said. "In the cellar. I didn't want ... It already ripped a seam when he twisted my arm.

"Did he hurt you?"

She glanced at Paul Laflin, standing on the hearth now, talking to the others; and she laughed abruptly, looking back at Branch.

"No, darling, he didn't hurt me." Suddenly she said. "I wouldn't mind it if it wasn't so dreadfully humiliating, Phillip. On the floor feeling your stockings pop and your coat come out at the seams ..." She stepped back, touched back her hair at the temples with her knuckles, her hands dusty; then rubbing her hands on her skirt and lifting them again to roll up the trailing wisps of hair at the nape of her neck. "I'm going to die if I don't get out of this suit pretty soon," she said, looking down at herself distastefully. "I've been wearing it for years. What did you do with my ... ?"

"The girl's got it," he said. "The suitcase?"

She nodded, her eyes watching him. "Do you hate me, darling?"

"No," he said. "It's all right." He could not keep a little stiffness out of his voice. If she only had a black eye, he thought, a black eye or a cut lip, anything.

"I couldn't help it," she said. "He twisted my arm. I couldn't ... It was so ... undignified." She laughed quickly, watching him. "That's rather a dreadful thing to admit, isn't it, Phillip?"

"How did they catch you?" he asked after a moment.

"Parks," she said. "I was simply dead for sleep, darling. I arranged for the boat and paid him and just fell on the bed with my clothes on. He must have called them while I was asleep. They let him keep the money. All of it. For calling them." She touched his arm. "I'm so sorry, darling. Why did you come? You shouldn't have come."

"What did you expect me to do?" he asked deliberately. "After you almost blasted out my eardrum?"

"Don't be cruel, Phillip," she whispered, looking down at the toe of a dusty black low-heeled pump. When she raised her head her mouth was angry. "How did they catch you, darling?" she asked sharply.

"They didn't catch me," he said. "I just came."

She smiled coolly. 'Wasn't that... a little stupid? I thought you'd at least ..."

"I'm not very good at guns," he said. "It was either come or get out of there. Why do they want me, anyway?"

The anger died from her face. "I don't know," she said wearily. "I didn't ask them."

He watched her as she turned away, nervously touching her hair, to look at them, and found himself vaguely sorry for her, because she was afraid, and because there was a run in her stocking, and because her yellow suit was a little grubby and a little baggy at the seat and elbows and her lipstick was not quite even any longer. He went forward and put his arm about her shoulders. She stepped free of him with a quick angry movement. He followed her as she walked towards the davenport and made her way around it to the three of them standing there.

"Well?" she asked with an upward inflection.

"You're through?" Mr. Hahn asked, smiling. "You have settled everything. We did not want to interrupt..."

"All right, Georges," Madame Faubel said. "All right. Watch the Lieutenant." Her pale narrow face was expressionless as she turned to the girl. "The ship," she said, "the name of the ship."

Jeannette Duval shook her head. The large young man, smiling a little, stepped forward; the girl backed away from him, then, in the space between the davenport and the chair, stopped, standing rigidly awaiting him, her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

"No?" asked Madame Faubel softly.

She shook her head, watching the man, at the last moment freeing her hands, but too late to ward off the blow that struck her in the chest and knocked her heavily to the door. After a little she swept her skirt down mechanically and rose, shaking back her suddenly disheveled hair, and backed away from the davenport. Paul Laflin followed her deliberately, feinted, laughed as she dodged, and struck her accurately on the chin only hard enough to knock her down again. Sobbing a little, she scrambled to her feet and he hit her a third time, and she did not rise, but pushed herself up to sit, gasping and breathless, in the middle of the bare door.

If she weren't so tall, Branch thought irritably, if she didn't have such damned long legs. Madame Faubel had crossed the room to touch Paul Lafiin's sleeve. The girl looked up, the side of her face gray with the dust of the door, and covered herself with a clumsy movement, raising herself from the floor to draw the skirt about her.

"Princess McGregor," she panted. "Princess McGregor. Day after tomorrow."

"And the signals?" the woman asked.

The signal was a red light shown three times in a certain fashion. The girl buried her face in the striped yellow wool of her rumpled skirt and began to cry. Madame Faubel turned away.

"Paul," she said. She looked back. "Paul!" she said, sharply.

Paul Laflin looked up, a curiously rapt expression slowly fading from his face. He settled his sweater over his hips and buttoned the jacket of his suit and followed the woman to the davenport, looked back, and glanced at Branch.

"Take them downstairs, Paul," the woman said. She glanced at the large young man. "No. Take a walk. Walk up to the road and back."

"I'll take them down," Paul Laflin said.

"You will do as I say," the woman said. "Walk up to the road. Take a pail and bring some water on your way back. Georges will ..."

"I'm all right. It isn't necessary." The young man's voice was irritable.

"Well," said Madame Faubel, and glanced at him sideways. "Well, all right. But I want no monkey-business with the girl. We are not Nazis."

As he walked across the room in obedience to the jerk of Paul Laflin's thumb, Branch-could feel his feet throbbing angrily. The girl had stopped crying and, approaching her, he knew that crouching there she was waiting and listening and trying to identify his footsteps, although she did not look up until he stopped above her. Then she raised her streaked face and, reaching up, raised herself with the aid of his hand, awkwardly, her clothes loose and ridiculously awry about her long body. She leaned against him for a moment to set her feet properly in her shoes, then, not looking at herself or touching herself, walked ahead of him towards the door where Paul Laflin, grinning a little at her appearance, waited. When she passed him the large young man flicked his fingertips smartly across the rear of her skirt and laughed when she was unable to control a start.

"All right," he said, and looked at Branch, "Hurry it up, you."

"Just a minute," said the woman's voice. "Mr. Branch."

Branch was aware of the girl, turning to look at him with an expression of bright malevolent anticipation. Her teeth showed minutely white in her stained face. He knew that she was not aware of her expression and could not help it. It was her turn to watch.

"Come here a moment, Mr. Branch, please," said the woman politely from the end of the room.

Branch turned and walked across the room, his shoes loud on the bare floor. Madame Faubel took his arm and guided him around the davenport to where Mr. Hahn was spreading a chart of the bay on the gray mohair cushions. The man and the woman looked strangely impermanent, still wearing their hats and outer clothing, as if they had just come or were just about to leave. The chart was new and crisp and colored in clear blues and yellows.

"Do you know what this is, Lieutenant?" the woman asked.

"How would I know what a chart is?" Branch demanded. "I'm just a reserve officer."

"Be polite," Madame Faubel said, smiling. "It never hurts to be polite, Lieutenant."

"It's a chart of the bay," Branch said. "Grice Point to Point Darby. C and G. S. Number 1278, corrected to 1944. Scale one to eighty thousand. All soundings in feet at mean low water-" The woman slapped him across the face. He stepped back and set the glasses level on his nose again. "Well," he said. "If you have to ask stupid questions ... !"

"Please show us," the woman said briskly, "where a ship would be just before dawn if it were planning to reach Baltimore by noon. Baltimore is about eighteen miles above Signal Point."

He thought, I know where Baltimore is, all right, you don't have to tell me where Baltimore is. Over the back of the davenport he could see the girl's figure in the doorway, arbitrarily untidy in silhouette against the sunlight on the porch. He could not see her face. The wind through the doorway tugged at her disordered hair and clothing. He thought that it had really taken very little to make her come apart.

Madame Faubel held down the chart as it moved in the draft from the open door. "For Heaven's sake, Paul, close the door before you freeze us to death."

Paul Laflin pulled the door to with a loud sound.

"You are going to take us, you know," Mr. Hahn said, smiling, to Branch.

Branch looked away from the girl. "Am I?"

The woman slapped him a second time, her face impassive. Cut it out, he told her silently, looking down at her, cut it out, cut it out, cut it out. It seemed to him very strange that what these people had been through should have led them to the conclusion that the way to make a man do something was to beat him up. Or perhaps not so strange. Perhaps they had discovered, from personal experience, that it worked. He straightened his uniform cap and pushed his glasses back along his nose.

"Cut it out," he said. "Why the hell don't you ask me before you start slapping me around?"

THEY HEARD Paul Laflin's footsteps recede along the flagged walk that led from the cellar door to the corner of the house. His legs showed suddenly and surprisingly at the window at the end of the cellar as he mounted the outside stairs to the porch. The screen door slammed, the heavy steps walked deliberately along the porch over their heads, the door opened and closed; and the indistinct murmur of voices came down to them from the living room.

"Give me my purse, darling," Jeannette Duval said. "What?"

"My purse. On my coat. On the woodpile beside you."

"Do you want the coat?" Branch asked, turning.

"Yes," she said. "Please, darling. He picked up the purse and lifted the fur coat carefully away from the rough bark of the logs stacked chest high under the window.

"Just put it over my shoulders," she said.

When he had dropped the coat about her she pulled it into place, moving with deliberate caution, as if her clothes were binding her and she did not wish to tear them. Branch watched her open the purse and, pushing back the untidy strands of her hair, examine her face in the mirror.

"Have you got a handkerchief?" she asked, holding out a hand without looking away from the mirror.

He gave it to her. She started to dab at her mouth; then looked at him sideways, the streaked mouth suddenly savage in her dirty face.

"I don't know what I would do without you, Phillip," she said. "I really don't know what I would do without you, darling."

He did not say anything, but stood watching her.

She scrubbed at her lips with the handkerchief. "Didn't even make a pretense.....!I" she breathed. "Staring as if it were ... a burlesque show...."

"Take it easy," he said. "Is there a head in the joint?"

The anger died out of her face, leaving it empty.

"Can," he said irritably. "Johnny. Plumbing."

"In the corner," she said. "But the water isn't running."

Emerging from the wallboard cubicle, he closed the door behind him and began to pick his way along the junk piled against the rear wall of the cellar; and he had a sudden vision of impaling Paul Laflin on a spading fork, or beheading Mr. Hahn with a hoe. Across the cellar, the girl, her purse propped up on the edge of the washtubs, was combing her hair, forming the hair into braids behind each ear, and drawing the braids up to pin them together across the top of her head. She did not look up, and, reaching the windows, he tested them surreptitiously and found them not too secure. They were held by rusty ten-penny nails driven into the rotten sill.

In the sunlight the woods outside looked sparse and open along the hillside, but he pictured the two of them running, the girl in her fur coat, suit, silk stockings, and low pumps; he in uniform, raincoat, and city shoes; and he recalled the vine-choked ravines he had seen from the road. It was just as well, he thought, that they were not going to do it. If I can only get that mill going, he thought; if the damn thing starts for me, and keeps running, and if the wind holds up. If only the wind holds up. It annoyed him that they should have put him in a place from which escape would be so easy that it was impossible not to consider it. He pulled a striped canvas deck chair from a pile in the corner and, carrying it into the center of the cellar, set it up, the dust transferring itself liberally to his blue raincoat and trousers.

The girl touched the loose dark wave at her temples with the comb, put the comb away, closed the purse, and came across the cellar to him; just enough shorter than he that she could walk erect under the beams where he had to bend his head. She sat down on the footrest of his chair, he making room for her, and without embarrassment raised first one long leg and then the other to draw and smooth the damaged stockings into place.

"Now your blouse," he said boldly. "You're practically hanging out."

She glanced at him and down at her partially unfastened shirt.

"Now you are flattering me, Phillip," she said, smiling, as she arranged the undergarments over her flat, small breasts and pinned the yellow silk of the shirt, one button missing, with the S-shaped gold pin that he could remember her wearing on the train when he had first seen her. She shivered a little and put her arms into the sleeves of her coat and drew the coat about her. "Give me a cigarette, darling."

When he had lighted it for her she tossed back her neatly combed head. "Philip, do you remember Clara Petacci?"

"Never met the girl," he said.

"Mussolini's-"

"Oh," he said. "Yes."

"I used to have nightmares about it," Jeannette Duval said, moistening a finger to touch a run in one stocking. "But after all, she was dead when it was happening. She did not have to ... to watch herself disintegrating." She touched her finger to her tongue again and bent over, ministering to her stockings. "If it wasn't so cold I would take them off," she said.

"You can't tell me they keep your legs warm," he said.

"You'd be surprised," she said. She glanced at him. "It wasn't worth it, Phillip," she said. "I am really quite fond of him, but it wasn't worth it. I have done everything I could. It is not my fault that everything went wrong."

"Am I going to be in the boat?" she demanded abruptly.

"I don't know," he said after a moment. "They didn't say."

"I would rather not be in the boat," she said. "I would rather wait here. Will you ask them ... ?"

"What makes you think that my asking will do any good ?"

"You can tell them that it would be overloaded."

"A tub like that?" He laughed. "Don't be silly."

"How would they know?" she demanded. "Can't you even do that for me, Phillip? I thought you came here to help me."

She turned her face towards him, smoothly made up again, and no bruises showed. He could see a new thought come into her mind.

"Can't you run aground or do something to the motor so we'll be late?"

He said, "Andy Gump is going to sit right beside me with his pistol. It's ten to one that the minute anything happens he'll let go at me. He's the nervous type." He saw the flicker of her eyelids. "Sure," he said. "That would be swell for you. They'd probably have to wait for her to drift ashore since none of them knows anything about it. They'd be late, all right. But I'd be dead. No thanks, darling."

She rose and parted her coat to brush at the soft striped yellow wool of her skirt, badly smudged with dust; and tried to fit together the edges of the single pleat, but the wool was strained and warped and the edges would not meet or stay together. She straightened up. "If you had let me change last night... ."

"You didn't have anything to change to."

"My black dress."

"Wouldn't you look lovely, he said. "He wouldn't have left enough of it to pin together. Not to mention the dust. Look at me in these damned blues."

"Well, I could at least have put on a sweater instead of this rag," site said, plucking at her limp shirt. She sat down abruptly on the edge of the footrest, facing him. "What's the matter with us?" she demanded. "What has happened to us, Phillip?" There was a trace of panic in her voice. "Is it because I ... ?"

"I don't know what you mean, darling," he said uncomfortably. "I'm sorry if I don't seem ... I'm kind of bushed and my feet hurt like hell...."

"Poor darling," she said bitterly. "Poor frightened darling. I wish I knew why in God's name you bothered to come."

PAUL LAFLIN cast a long shadow across the cellar door, the sky orange behind him, as, standing in the doorway, he pushed the door back against the washtubs to assure himself that there was no one behind it. He carried a tray and no weapon. His eyes searched the cellar narrowly and he began to ease the tray from his hand to the woodpile beside him without locking at it.

"Don't have a fit," Branch said. "She's in the head."

The large young man straightened up and rid himself of the tray, not wholly convinced, hesitating to expose himself to a trap by coming inside while the girl was yet invisible; then she emerged from the cubicle in the corner, pulling her skirt straight about her waist. She looked up, stopped, and dropped her hands into the pockets of her coat.

"Food," said Paul Laflin.

The girl remained motionless. Branch rose, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and crossed the cement floor to the tray.

"Sandwiches," he said, "and coffee...." He turned to the girl. "Anyway, they aren't planning to starve us to death."

"Hurry up," Paul Laflin said. "I have to bring the tray back."

Branch began to pull the waxed paper from a sandwich, regarding the man beside him: the width of the shoulders and the smallness of the mouth and nose in the wide fleshy face. I don't like you, he told the other man silently as he began to eat; I don't like big men with curly hair and turtle-necked sweaters. I don't like women who slap my face or men who point guns at me, or anyone who has anything to do with burning my feet; but I particularly don't like you, you big moron, in fact I think I would enjoy killing you.

Aloud he said, "If Madame came down we could have a rubber of bridge if we had some cards.

The man ignored him, watching the girl and asking, "Aren't you going to eat, Madame Duval?"

He reached for a sandwich and thrust it at her as she came slowly forward. "Here, Madame Duval."

Jeannette Duval stopped, her hands still buried in the deep pockets of her fur coat. Branch watched her and thought, oh, for God's sake, take it! and presently she freed one hand and took it.

"Thank me," said Paul Laflin.

"Thank you," she said mechanically.

"But with a smile," the man said.

She threw the sandwich into his face without violence, merely tossing it at him. The paper wrapping opened and pieces of bread and sandwich meat fell to the floor apart from the portion still remaining in the waxed paper. The girl smiled slowly.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you very much, M. Laflin."

Her hands had returned to the pockets of her coat and in some way this made her seem defenseless and remote and detached. She was almost as tall as the man but, even in the bulky coat much slighter.

"Thank you so much," she whispered, and suddenly there were small crinkles of laughter about her eyes; and her eyes were laughing at him; and she slipped under his arm as he reached for her, and turned again to face him, her back to the doorjamb. He slapped her hard on the cheek.

The blow brought tears to her eyes, but she continued to smile and did not lift her hands.

"You are so kind, M. Laflin. Thank you so much," she whispered breathlessly. "Yes ..." she breathed as he glanced down. "Yes, make me eat it. Rub it on the dirty floor and make me eat it."

She detached herself abruptly from the doorjamb and took a swinging step forward to stand against him, her fur coat brushing his sweater, her eyes only a little lower than his eyes. Her heel made a small impatient sound against the cement.

"You're a fool, Laflin," she said.

She did not move or free her hands as he seized her, his fingers gradually closing so hard that where her coat was already torn at the shoulder the ripped seam opened further.

"You're tearing my coat," she whispered.

Abruptly the man released her and glanced at Branch, his breathing audible. The girl turned away from him and went to the tray.

"Pour me some coffee, Phillip," she said, reaching for a paper-wrapped sandwich.

Branch watched the large young man hesitate, shrug his shoulders and laugh uncomfortably, and go out. The door closed and the key rattled in the lock. Branch leaned against the woodpile and looked at the girl. Her face was deliberately expressionless and she took a large bite of her sandwich, holding it with both hands gingerly away from her coat. Then, chewing, she craned her neck to look over her shoulder at the extent of the damage, wiped her hands on Branch's handkerchief, and explored the rent with her fingers.

"Aren't you going to pour me some coffee, darling?" she asked impatiently.

He poured it for her and, leaving it for her, carried his own cup and a fresh sandwich to the deck chair and sat down, considering her from the ten-foot distance. She turned to look at him. He could not see her expression for the light from the window behind her.

"Well, Phillip.. "

He took a mouthful of sandwich and washed it down with bitter coffee. "Don't worry about me, sweetheart. If you think it's worth it, go ahead. I'll make out all right."

"Don't be hardboiled, Phillip," she said stiffly. "It doesn't become you."

Something in her voice made him look up sharply. He swallowed the last of his sandwich and drained his cup and carried it back to the tray.

"Jeannette," he said, touching her.

She turned away from the window. "Do you think that boat is any good?" she asked quickly. "It looks to me..."

"It's all right," he said, and grinned. "Anything that floats, baby, anything that floats." He saw her face a little bewildered by the allusion and remembered that he had made his boast to a different girl. She regarded him gravely and he stopped grinning. "What are you going to do, darling?"

"Darling!" She laughed. "Do I have to teIl you?"

He licked his lips. "What about Louis?"

Her laughter faltered and died. "I'm tired of Louis," she said dully. "I've done all I could for Louis. I can't help that it didn't turn out very well. After a moment she said, "I simply don't want to die, you understand, Phillip."

He saw the fear in her eyes and searched for the words that could reassure her without committing him too deeply. "Nobody's going to die, sweetheart," he said.

"You can't say that," she whispered. "You don't know that."

He could feel her watching his face for encouragement.

"No," he said heavily. "I don't know it." How the hell, he asked her silently, could I know it? What am I supposed to do, hand out a printed guarantee?

Her laugh was brittle in the growing dark of the cellar. "You are only ... whistling in the graveyard, Phillip, aren't you?" she said lightly. "Thank you for trying to cheer me. You are quite a swell person, darling. It is only too bad you are a coward."

He saw the fear now displaced by anger in her eyes and knew that she was thinking that, with luck, she could have struck on someone who would have consented to her demand the previous night; and she would never have gone to Parks' house alone, and the rest would never have happened. Or someone who even now could guarantee a way out....

He grinned with forced malice. "You're some little heroine yourself, darling," he said, patting her shoulder. He turned to the tray. "Well, since he left the stuff here ..."

"Don't hurry yourself," she said. "He won't come back until it is quite dark."

When he came they had been sitting in the dark for some time. The glow of the girl's cigarette wavered when the footsteps descended the outside stairs, brightened as she drew smoke into her lungs, and vanished as, leaning over the side of the deck chair Branch had set up for her, she crushed the cigarette out on the floor. The door opened and the beam of a flashlight slashed across the cellar. Branch could hear the man's low chuckle. He watched the light cross the cellar to the girl's chair; she sitting up in the circle of it and touching her hands to her braided hair. She said something in the language Branch could not understand, and the man spoke harshly, commanding her. She swung her legs off the footrest and spoke again, laughing a little, and he kicked away the support for the backrest of the chair, laughed loudly as the chair collapsed, and turned out the flashlight and pulled the girl to her feet, the rent in her coat audibly enlarging itself.

Branch watched the shapes of the two of them appear against the dim rectangle of the floor and stop, the girl tossing back her loosened hair and laughing and freeing herself, asking a favor that the man was not inclined to grant. She stood close to him and touched him and pleaded with him, half laughing and half serious, and without waiting for his answer, turned and ran back through the dusk to her chair. The man shone the flashlight on her as she returned and took the purse from her hands and examined it. Then he pushed her outside, followed her, and closed and locked the door behind them.

Well, thought Branch, well, if that's the way she wants it. If she wants to peddle it for a ticket out of here it's none of my business, is it? I only hope, for her sake, that it works. What the hell was I supposed to do, tell her, sure, I've got a foolproof way of getting us out, tell the guy to go to hell, darling, I'l get you out. What the hell does she think I came here for, anyway?

He rose and made his way through the dark to the far window and tested the nails. After five minutes working, the first one came free, and the second yielded even more easily. He slipped the catch and pulled the window towards him, the hinges wailing softly in the darkness; they were stiff enough so that when he released the catch the weight of the sash did not carry it completely closed.

He turned away and moved cautiously, feeling his way, to the chair in which the girl had been sitting, and examined it by the light of a match, bent down, and dislodged a small tuft of brown fur, caught in the angle between two members of the chair when it collapsed. Returning to the window he arranged the scrap of fur artistically on the sharp rusted protruding head of one of the screws attaching the fixed portion of the window catch to the sill. Then he cautiously opened the window a little further so that it would be more noticeable.

Going back, he set up the collapsed chair and, returning to his own chair, removed his coat, drawing it over him like a blanket as he settled himself in the chair. Always, he thought, always I'm the guy that's there when they come around. I hope he beats hell out of her, he thought, I wouldn't mind the job myself. It's only too bad that you are a coward. Why the hell couldn't she trust me? Should I have to draw a diagram? I came when she yelled, didn't I? He knocked out his pipe and tried to sleep.

HE WAITED UNTIL they shone the light on him from only a few feet away before he admitted to being aware of their presence by sitting up abruptly, clutching the coat as it threatened to slip off to the floor.

"Where is Paul?" Madame Faubel's voice demanded.

Branch swung his feet to the floor. After a moment he looked up, squinting at the light. "How the hell would I know?" he demanded uneasily. "We haven't seen him around here since ..." He stood up, looking about him in the darkness made darker by the concentrated illumination of the flashlight. "All right," he said mildly. "All right, where is she?"

"We were about to ask you," Mr. Hahn said.

"I thought she was sitting in that chair," Branch said. "Seems I was mistaken. She was there when I turned in." He grinned at the flashlight. "Maybe they went off together, eh?"

A hand came out of the darkness and struck him across the mouth.

"Paul wouldn't... !" said Madame Faubel's voice sharply.

Branch licked his lips. "Hell he wouldn't. He was ripe for taking her pants down when you stopped him upstairs. You know damned well he was, or you wouldn't have told him to take a walk and cool off."

"He wouldn't desert," the woman's voice said. "He wouldn't betray us for a ..."

"As to that," Branch said. "I wouldn't know." He grimaced at the light. "Do you have to shine that thing... ?"

Mr. Hahn's voice said, "What makes you think ... ?"

"I don't think," Branch said viciously. "According to you they're both missing. I merely suggested they could have left together. For all I know you've got her upstairs with him beating on her again."

A second flashlight joined the first, and Madame Faubel's voice said. "Look around, Georges. I do not like this."

Branch watched Mr. Hahn's flashlight move away and called after it, "Watch out she doesn't pop out of the w.c. and brain you."

"The window is open." The flashlight returned. "She tore her coat on the catch, climbing out," the chinless man said, displaying the scrap of fur.

"Paul must have heard her and followed her," the woman said. "I hope he doesn't ..." Her voice trailed off uneasily.

"What do you care?" Mr. Hahn demanded. "Remember Constance."

The woman turned angrily. "Nevertheless, I am in charge here, and I do not approve of..."

"Paul is Paul," Mr. Hahn said. "I, for mine, hope he does. And strips her and makes her run naked and barefooted through the woods, whipping her with a switch when she does not run fast enough. I saw too many of their arrogant, well-fed women while I was starving."

The woman was silent, indicating displeasure by her silence. At last she said, "Well, there is nothing we can do about it now. Let us take this one upstairs where we can keep an eye on him."

It was cold in the living room and Branch put on his coat and cap and sat down on the couch. Two thick, short candles set in saucers that did not match, burned on the mantelpiece. A blackened aluminum coffeepot stood on the hearth inside the fireplace where a fire was dying into coals. He rose and picked up the coffeepot; it was half full and still warm, and he took a cup from the end table and filled it. Mr. Hahn seized his arm. "That is my cup."

"That's all right," Branch said. "I can stand it."

"It's all right, Georges," said Madame Faubel. "It's all right. There are more cups in the kitchen. In the name of God sit down and be quiet."

She put a log on the fire and stirred with the poker until flames began to lick at the rough bark; then sat down, pulling her chair into the circle of heat, and rubbed her gloved hands together, shivering. The chinless man seated himself in the other chair. Branch set the cup and saucer down on the arm of the davenport and began to brush at the cellar dust that mottled his uniform and raincoat.

"Sit down," said the woman savagely. "Sit down! Be quiet. You make me nervous."

He sat down on the davenport and sipped his coffee. He felt dirty and unshaven and uncombed. The coffee was lukewarm and had suffered from being reheated. He swallowed it quickly, as if it were medicine, and swung his legs to the davenport and lay back, tipping his cap over his eyes to shield them from the candlelight. He could hear the small crackling of die fire feeding on the new log, and feel the warmth of it against his side.

His feet were jerked off the davenport with enough violence that his body followed them to the floor. He sat up, groping for his cap, and looked up at the woman. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mr. Hahn toying with the inevitable gun. It seemed to him they had taken long enough to get around to it.

"Why did you not escape, also?" the woman demanded. "Why did you stay behind?" She kicked him in the hip. "Answer me!"

He seized the cushions of the sofa and clawed himself up and away from the woman.

"Because I like it here," he said angrily. "I've always loved the French. Such a polite and gentle nation." He started to ward off her hand as she slapped him, but thought better of it and felt the sting of the blow on his cheek. "Why the hell do you think?" he cried, moving forward. "Do you think I wouldn't have followed the bitch if I'd known what she was doing?"

"Why would she leave you?" the woman demanded. "Why would she go alone?"

"Goddamn it, how would I know?" Branch shouted. "She didn't wake me up to tell me!"

The woman's eyes watched him warily from her drawn pale face, around which the gray hair, under the hat she still wore, had loosened to hang in wisps down her cheeks.

"I do not think you are the fool you pretend to be, Mr. Branch," she said softly.

"I don't have to pretend," Branch sneered at himself. "It comes natural to me."

The woman went on, heedless of the interruption, "And I am not at all certain that you are either a coward or a traitor. When we were questioning you, last night, you were commendably stubborn; and I have all day been admiring the way you disregard the pain of your feet. You came here unarmed...." She sat down on the davenport, watching him. "And yet we are to believe that rather than face a little of Paul's treatment you would compromise your pride and stubbornness and agree to take us in the boat...."

"Don't be silly," Branch said.

She looked at him sharply.

He said, "He had twisted her arm and hurt her dignity. By God, her dignity! I came here expecting to find her hanging by the thumbs with her back whipped to ribbons or something similar; and she has a run in her stocking! Me with my feet blistered up, I'm supposed to worry about her dignity; and then to watch her quit after two minutes of no worse than you'd get in a game of sandlot football. After that, I should get myself beat up?" He laughed harshly. "Listen," he said, "I was in love with the bitch. Last night I would have done anything for her...."

The last sentence remained in the room, like a sour note, and, writhing inwardly at the mistake, he watched the woman seize on the thought and turn it over in her mind, but it was Mr. Hahn who spoke:

"Then why woukl you not run the boat for her? Parks said.. ."

"I couldn't do that," Branch said flatly. "Don't you see I couldn't do that?"

"You were in love with her, you said," the woman murmured. "You would have done anything for her. And you are running it for us."

"Don't you see?" Branch pleaded, turning to face her. "You're on the right side. She isn't. And I'm an officer in the U.S. Navy. I wouldn't have done it for you if she'd shown a little guts, because I was in love with her, but I couldn't do it for her because of this damned uniform. Don't think I didn't want to, but I couldn't."

Madame Faubel smiled thinly. "You are trying to make us believe that your navy would like for you to... ?"

"The hell with what they like," Branch said irritably. "I'll probably be court-martialed for it if we get caught. But then I'll be only an overzealous officer helping some enthusiastic patriots catch a dirty collaborationist. It may be illegal, but it isn't treason."

He turned and let himself down into the chair the woman had vacated. His mouth was dry from talking and he wanted another cup of coffee. He wanted to busy his hands with his pipe. But it was not a time for stage business. We stretched out his legs and watched the fire.

"In New York," the woman said presently "You were not giving much thought to your uniform in New York." He glanced at her wearily and remembered that she probably did not know about the pictures. It was hard to keep the various elements separate in his mind.

"Ah, go to hell," he said. "Nobody's going to tell me who I can sleep with."

Mr. Hahn said quickly, "I thought you didn't know what she was until we told you on the train."

"You didn't tell me on the train," Branch corrected him. "You told me she was married on the train. You didn't tell me what it was all about until the night I made a pass at Constance, and by that time I was so sick of the bunch of you that all I wanted was to throw a wrench in your works."

To explain your behavior to other people it was necessary to use simple words like love or hate. But it was not as simple as that, you merely went on doing what was easiest or most pleasant until something said stop, this is far enough in this direction; try again, bud, this isn't quite right. Not until you were pushed into a corner did you really bother to think out a course of action that satisfied all the strange little tabus and prohibitions that were half-buried in your subconscious, and the sense of what was right and just that you never examined too closely because, while it never seemed quite to correspond with what other people thought right and just, it was yours and you were stuck with it, when they finally got you pinned in a corner. When the chips were down. When you had to decide what to do instead of letting the decision make itself. Then you found that this man that you had never examined very closely was you, and he did not hate or love anybody in particular, but he had this sense of what was equitable, and a feeling for what ought to be and what ought not to be allowed; and you weren't particularly impressed with his intelligence or the logic of his line of reasoning but he was you and you were stuck with him. He had grown this way while you were not looking, and now you were stuck with him, all right. Goddamn right you were.

"She didn't think I had acted right," he said softly, bringing them back in a circle to the beginning again. "That's why she went off without me, I suppose. She said that while Paul was beating her I just stood by and watched as if it were a burlesque show. She said I was a coward." He grinned at them savagely. "You're a nice boy, Phillip, she said, it's too bad you're a coward. I said, you're some little heroine yourself, darling."

After a little the woman asked, "Why didn't you say you had quarreled? Instead of .. ." Her voice was petulant with weariness.

"Why didn't you ask me?" Branch interrupted. "I mean, why didn't you ask me instead of starting to shove me around. You people are always doing that. As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between you and the Gestapo is the side you're on. If it wasn't that somebody'd fish you out and make trouble for me I'd take you out in the bay and drown you."

He stared at the fire. Presently, no one having spoken, he went on, "I don't give a damn what side you're on, if you have to preface a simple question with a kick in the puss you're a sonofabitch in my vocabulary. The papers may think different. The Navy may think different. That's why I don't mind taking you, much. But after having my feet burned and my face slapped and watching a girl I was once kind of fond of being knocked around till she looked like a rag doll even if she wasn't hurt.... All I can say is I think you're all a bunch of bastards and if I ever meet any of you afterwards when nobody's looking I'll do a little beating up of my own, if I have to use a baseball bat to do it. Or are you going to shoot me when we get back?" He glanced at Mr. Hahn's gun and at the woman. "Or are you just going to roll me over the side? Figuring you can beach the boat by yourself once you've got the poor sucker... ."

"Why should we?" The woman shrugged her shoulders. "You will not dare to talk about it afterwards."

Branch gave her a tired look. "There you go again. I won't dare. God, are you asking me to run to the authorities? Telling me what I dare do and what I don't dare do. Like a little tin goddess because Andy Gump is holding a gun on me.... No," he said, "I won't talk about it afterwards. I wouldn't want people to know I'd had any part in lynching a man." He stared at her angrily as she started to speak. "Don't give me that justice routine at this time of night. I couldn't stand it."

"He is a traitor," she said. "He stood against his own people."

"I don't know," said Branch. "After all this I'm not throwing stones at anybody. It's too damned easy to get on the wrong side once you get started...." After a moment, moved by a vague curiosity, he asked, "You haven't got a picture of him around that I could see?"

He took the snapshot that the woman, smiling a little, produced. Looking at it, he felt suddenly a little cold in spite of the heat of the fire. You got to rationalizing it to yourself; you got to talking in vague magnanimous generalities. Then you saw what you were really talking about: a dapper, dark, rather small man of about thirty with a full-lipped, sensuous face and a head too large for his body. She was with him in the photograph, wearing a fur-trimmed dark suit and a small absurd hat; she taller than the man by several inches, looking young, long-legged, overdressed and unsure of herself; somewhat round-shouldered with the effort of reducing her height to that of the man standing small and polished, erect and certain, beside her. Beneath the images was written on the glossy emulsion in red wax pencil: Louis Montclair Duval, Jeannette Lalevy Duval, 3/7/41, Vichy.

"There is your martyr, Lieutenant," the woman said softly.

Branch returned the photograph. It had not really changed anything.

"Thanks," he said. "I've been wondering what the bastard looked like."

Mr. Hahn said, "He made money from it. They made him rich...."

Nothing was changed, and Paul Laflin's footsteps were ascending the outside stairs with a rush. They were all silent, waiting. The large young man came in.

Madame Faubel asked softly, "Well, did you catch her, Paul?"

The man in the doorway glanced quickly at Branch, puzzled by his presence. It was clear that he had seen and drawn certain conclusions from the open window. Branch allowed his head to move in an almost imperceptible nod. Paul Laflin drew the door closed and threw a mass of brown fur on the nearest chair: Jeannette Duval's coat, torn and clotted with mud and wet leaves.

"No," he said. "I didn't catch her. I found her coat where she had dropped it...."

"What good is a coat, Paul?" the woman whispered "You said the cellar would hold them. You said ... " Her voice rose. "You said, let them try to escape, they would not try more than once. You would be watching. You would like to see them try, you said, so that you could discipline them." She rose and walked to where he stood. "Well, Paul?"

The large young man stood looking down at her. He was feeling very good, guilty but very good, like a puppy that had robbed the kitchen table. He could hardly keep from grinning. His sweater and trousers were muddy and his face was scratched and he was quite happy. The woman slapped his face.

"Don't, Madame," he said, rubbing his cheek. "It was my fault, Madame, but ..." He caught her wrist as she struck at him again and held her effortlessly. "Please don't, Madame," he pleaded. He caught her other wrist and, suddenly angry, threw her away from him so that she caromed off a chair and came to hands and knees on the floor. "She is gone," he said harshly. "She is gone, and you cannot catch her, so what is the use of fighting about it?"

The woman picked herself up, breathless, looked at him and whirled towards Mr. Hahn. "He has not even had the decency to remove the lipstick from his face, she whispered. "He let her go, Georges! He caught her and let her go!" Her hands were clenched into fists and she was trembling. "He is a traitor, Georges. Shoot him!"

Mr. Hahn looked uncomfortable. "Don't be silly, Madame," he said.

The woman looked from one to the other of the men and stumbled to the couch and, burying her face in the cushions, began to cry. Presently Paul Laflin moved, took the mistreated fur coat from the chair, brushed the loose dirt from it, and carried it to the couch and threw it negligently over her.

"Well," said Mr. Hahn as he straightened up, "Well, did you find her ... compatible, Paul?" His eyes watched the younger man calculatingly.

"I let her go, didn't I?" Paul Laflin said truculently.

"That could have two interpretations," Mr. Hahn murmured. "Either she was very good or she was so bad as not to be worth keeping."

"Or perhaps he killed her," Branch suggested, eyeing the larger man.

Paul Laflin licked the lips of his small mouth. "No," he said. "No, I didn't kill her."

Madame Faubel continued to cry chokingly. It made Branch nervous to listen to her, and embarrassed him. He did not like to know that a middle-aged, grayhaired woman could cry like that. When you were that old you should have learned to do almost everything with a reasonable amount of dignity. A bunch of screwballs he thought, looking from one to the other of the three of them, just a bunch of screwballs. Mr. Hahn and Paul Laflin were talking together in whispers and laughing. He did not like the sound of their laughter. It was enough to know that it had happened without hearing it laughed about. He pulled his cap over his eyes and stretched out his legs and pretended to fall asleep. Paul Laflin awakened him, wanting the chair by the fire. He found another chair and put it where Mr. Hahn directed and tried to sleep in it, but it was not as comfortable as the first chair.

In the morning, without having looked once at any of the men, Madame Faubel went into the kitchen and, presently, announced that breakfast was ready. They went in to cold cereal and milk and coffee.

It would be wisest," the woman said suddenly as they were eating, "It would be wisest to go to the boat now." She sat very stiffly as she spoke, red-nosed and frowsy, the torn expensive fur coat pulled tightly about her shoulders. Her eyes did not look at anyone. Paul Laflin glanced at her. "She won't talk," he said.

The woman smiled gently. "Did she promise you, Paul?"

Mr. Hahn said, a little uneasily, "Why should she talk, Madame? The police would take her, also. She has not so far acted like a young lady with an instinct for martyrdom."

"But if they catch her," the woman said. "Look at this coat. Picture her. After a night in the woods she is an object; she cannot dare show herself in daylight...."

"She did not look so badly," the younger man said quickly. "The coat had protected her...."

"From you also?" Madams Faubel asked stiffly.

Paul Laflin flushed. "I say she did not look badly and she was almost to the road and she will not talk; and I say that with this wind and this temperature I do not intend to spend an entire day freezing on a boat." He spooned up the last of his cereal and went out, the opening and closing of the door admitting a flash of bright sunlight and a draft of cold air.

"Paul certainly has a great deal to say this morning," the woman told Mr. Hahn with an abrupt laugh. After a pause, the chinless man not smiling, she said, "I suggest that you, after you have finished, go up to the store and telephone Constance if it is not yet too late. Warn her that she may expect trouble over the suitcase...."

"How would Duval know that Constance had the suitcase?" Mr. Hahn objected.

"The Lieutenant told her, did you not, Mr. Branch?"

Branch nodded.

"You see," Madame Faubel said. "She was already planning... ."

'What do you think, Mr. Branch?"

The woman dropped her spoon into her bowl with a clatter. "What does it matter what he thinks, Ceorges?"

Mr. Hahn did not look at her. "Answer me, Mr. Branch."

"Georges... !"

Branch said carefully, "I think that she won't talk. But she may go to the hotel, all right, for her clothes."

Madame Faubel caught the chinless man's wrist. "Listen to me, Ceorgesl To be married to a collaborationist is not officially a crime. If the police take her she can fear no more than to be deported. And even if she is deported she will meet no more on the other side than a measure of unpopularity, as Duval's wife and Lalevy's daughter...."

"Why do you say she wouldn't talk, Lieutenant?" Mr. Hahn asked, turning to Branch.

"She wouldn't," Branch said. Then he said, "Well, she might, if she got to her suitcase or got some fresh clothes somewhere. But not in the clothes she's wearing. It would hurt her pride to turn up in a police station with runs in her stockings," he said bitterly. He poured more cereal from the bright cardboard carton and helped himself to the milk, not looking at either of the other people at the table.

He heard the woman sigh. "Well, so it is decided she will not talk. But you will warn Constance?"

"I will stay here and watch this one," Mr. Hahn said. "While you go." Then he said sharply, "Don't Madame. I have my hand in my pocket."

Branch glanced up and saw the woman looking at a small nickeled pistol in her hand. She lifted the gun deliberately and laid it on the table. Her face was gray and shiny.

"Do you wish to keep the gun, Georges?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed the chinless man, shocked. "No, I..." He looked uncomfortable and embarassed.

"I might shoot you in the back." Madame Faubel put the gun away and pushed at her straggling hair. "Well, if I am going to the store I had better make myself a little tidy," she said, and went out of the room.

Branch watched the chinless man dry his mustache of milk with a handkerchief and light a cigarette; and he reached into his pocket for his pipe.

"There's too much waving of guns," he said presently. "I draw the line at guns for breakfast. My God."

Mr. Hahn leaned back in his chair, smoking peacefully. "She is still a little upset. The walk will do her good." Then he said, "After a while you become used to guns, young man, if you live in a nation that is at war...." He lifted his hand as Branch stirred. "Oh, you Americans have been manufacturing war, you have been exporting it, you have been reading about it in the newspapers, but you have not been at war. Only relatively few of you have been at war. You," he said, "playing at being a naval officer in a blue uniform, what do you know about war? Have you ever seen a man killed? Do you know what it is like to be shot at? Have you lived in a hole and starved and watched people you loved starving? What do you know about war, Lieutenant?"

Branch sucked his lips together about the stem of his pipe. "Yes,." he said slowly, "I guess you learn more about it when you get licked, all right."

He watched the chinless man stiffen and rise abruptly, and he rose to his feet. "Pretty soon well be hearing all about how you guys won the damned war," he said. "And so help me, if you pull that damned popgun I'll shove it up your ass or die trying."

Wondering a little at himself, he stared at the man standing on the far side of the table, and calculated what would occur if the table should be tipped abruptly; then it all drained out of him, and he said, "Sorry, I guess I'm kind of on edge," and brushed his hand across his eyes in a conscious gesture of weariness.

Mr. Hahn relaxed and smiled and touched his mustache with the edge of his forefinger. "I still maintain that what I said was true," he said softly.

"Oh, God, yes," said Branch. "It probably is."

"It was not a good idea," the chinless man said, smiling. "That about the table. lt would not have worked." His thin mouth smiled with the superiority of a man who knew all about this sort of thing. A man who had come through a dozen encounters of this sort unharmed or at least alive. "You would most certainly have died, trying," he said.

Branch said, "You haven't got a drink around the place, have you?" It was no use having them mad at him, or wary of him. It was stupid to have answered back.

Mr. Hahn came around the table and took his arm. "So early?" he jeered.

From the davenport in front of the dead fireplace which still radiated a measure of heat they heard the woman leave without saying good-bye. Mr. Hahn looked at the sunlight on the porch.

'What do you think of the weather, Mr. Branch?" He laughed at his own threadbare effort at distraction. "I am really interested. It will be cold out there?"

"Cold and wet," Branch said, "if this wind doesn't die soon."

"Fortunately the boat has a cabin. So you will be the only one getting wet."

"Fine," Branch said, grinning, "I'll just run her on the nearest beach and beat it while you're still trying to figure out what happened, down in the cabin." Mr. Hahn laughed. "Oh, I will stand sheltered in the doorway and watch you battle the elements."

"Going down won't he so bad," Branch said, "But coming back will be a lulu...." He turned at a sound and saw Paul Laflin come in from the porch. Mr. Hahn, beside Branch, finished his drink in a long swallow and rose and went to meet the younger man; and the two of them talked momentarily in French. Mr. Hahn laughed, and the two of them glanced at Branch; and Mr. Hahn went out.

Paul Laflin came lazily across the room and gathered up the bottle and Mr. Haim's empty glass on his way to the chair by the fireplace. His clothes were still dirty from the previous night and there was fresh mud on his shoes. His jaw was black with a stubble of beard. Lying back in the chair, his legs crossed, he held the bottle and glass above him and poured himself a generous portion and set the bottle on the floor.

"Water?" Branch asked. The big man turned his head inquiringly.

"Do you want some water in it?" Branch gestured at the pitcher.

Paul Laflin sat up and poured the contents of the glass down his throat, coughed, and shuddered. "No, thank you," he said. "I certainly don't want to have to taste this pig-urine."

"Oh, it's not so bad," Branch said.

"Whisky is a drink for barbarians," the big man said.

"I suppose you drink something esoteric, like absinthe, when you're home," Branch said, surprised and displeased to find himself hating the man. After all, he thought, it's not his fault, he had an invitation. And it was hard enough to maintain the precarious balance of his position without hating anybody. He could see the eyes, close-set in the wide face, watching him lazily.

"Well," demanded Paul Laflin abruptly, sitting up again, "Well, why didn't you?"

"Escape?" said Branch. " Or tell Madame? She would not have believed me if I'd told her. She slapped my face when I even hinted you might have gone off together. She would have thought I was lying to make trouble."

The big man nursed his glass in his hand, looked at it, and hung it arrow-straight at Branch's head. Branch leaned to one side and the glass whined by with a hollow wavering sound and smashed against the wall far behind him, the pieces ricochetting out onto the floor. Almost a minute had passed before the last one was silent. Paul Laflin came to his feet.

"I was to come back and find the story ready for me," he said harshly. "The window. She had escaped while you were sleeping. And I would not dare to point out that you had been wide awake when we left, because that would be to admit ... It was a clever plan, Mr. Lieutenant. I suppose you really are a lieutenant? In the Intelligence? Or are you even a naval officer at all? Was your so accidental meeting with her quite as accidental ..."

"You're making a lot out of the fact that I fell asleep," Branch said calmly.

"A confederate?" Paul Laflin murmured. "She to escape, if possible, to warn him or to get another boat, while you remained to sabotage.... You come here to help her, but you do not help her. You do not move when I beat her up. You make no protest when she goes away with me; and then you open a window and, in God's name! you do not even escape!" he spat into the dead fireplace. "What kind of a game are you playing, Mr. Lieutenant?"

Branch looked up at him. "What the hell would you do?" he demanded, "if you walked into a trap like this and found the girl you'd done it for didn't give a damn about anything except her own skin?"

"And the window?" the big man sneered. "It was to help me, no doubt?"

"Go to hell," Branch said. "A guy your age who doesn't have the sense to wipe the lipstick off his face .. . "

The big man leaned down and shook him. Branch kicked, shoved, and jumped up as the other staggered back.

"All right, beat me up," he panted. "Beat me up and see if I'll run your goddamned boat for you, you babyfaced ape. People slapping me and pushing me around and throwing things...." He crouched and moved forward. "Come on," he whispered, "come on, you're big enough. See if you can make me do it. Just because she was yellow and talked.... Burn my feet for me. Twist my arm. Get Andy Gump with his gun to shoot me.... A bunch of slap-happy morons trying to act like big-time Nazis. I bet the Gestapo got a kick out of you twerps. I bet they laughed themselves silly hearing you squeal. If one of them walked into the room right now you'd get down on your belly and crawl, wouldn't you? ACHTUNGI" He laughed as Paul Laflin winced.

Paul Laflin laughed abruptly and turned away and went to the chair. Sitting down, he retrieved the bottle and put it to his mouth, shuddering as the stuff went down.

"So you fell asleep," he said genially. "You were awake when we left. I saw you watching.

"Yes, goddamn it," Branch said sullenly. "I got the window open and then I figured I'd better wait until you'd had a chance to get clear so I wouldn't run into you. The next thing I knew they were shining a light on me and wanting to know where everyone was. I never was so damned disgusted in my life.

Paul Laflin took another drink from the bottle. He held the bottle up and shook it, shivered, and put the bottle away on the floor. "It stinks," he said. "So you fell asleep." He looked at Branch and began to laugh.

"What's so goddamned funny?" Branch demanded. "God, put a sock in it. You looked funny yourself when I kicked you in the head, you bastard. The big man stopped laughing.

"Who's a bastard?"

"You're a bastard, you bastard," Branch said. "You're all a bunch of bastards." The balance was very exact. If you went too far they would beat you or shoot you; but if you were nice to them they would think you were planning something: you could not afford to be nice to them.

"A bunch of crazy bastards," he said. "You don't like us, eh?"

"Listen," said Branch, "from now on I do all my graphs freehand so I don't have to use a French curve."

The big man laughed uproariously. "There is something I have been wanting to ask you, Mr. Lieutenant," he said when he was through laughing.

"What?"

"It is this," the big man said, "I am just curious. Why do you not have any ribbons on your uniform? I thought all Americans had ribbons on their uniforms."

"I haven't got around to getting mine yet," Branch said stiffly.

"But you do have some? You are entitled to wear some, for what you do in Chicago?"

"Yes," said Branch. "Two."

"Ah," said Paul Laflin, satisfied. "Two. Two medals for sitting behind a desk. Wonderful!" He looked up as Madame Faubel entered the room behind Branch, who did not turn his head to look at her.

The woman came wearily to the davenport. "Yes," she said. "Get drunk, Paul. Drink it all up."

The large young man rose and carried the bottle to the table at the end of the davenport, and slapped the cork into it. Then, leaving the bottle, he went out without speaking. His footsteps receded along the porch. Madame Faubel, having watched him out of sight, swept off her hat and sat down.

"Where is Georges?"

"I don't know," Branch said. "He went out."

"Constance is all right," she said. "The Duval has not yet tried to get her clothes."

He glanced at his watch and was startled to find that it read not yet nine o'clock in the morning. He could feel the woman watching him; they were all of them on watch, waiting for him to betray himself, suspicious of him, contemptuous of him, hating him, and perhaps a little afraid of him. If there had been any alternative they would have got rid of him already, but they were practical people, and there was no alternative available to them, and they could only study him for the fourteen hours that remained. Study him, watch him, prod him, and harass him, waiting for a flaw to develop in his attitude, waiting for the balance to tilt, waiting for a sufficient reason to warrant a major change of plan.

"Is Constance feeling better?" Branch asked politely.

"Yes, much better. She slept well." The woman smiled. "You like her? I could have her come with us. To guarantee us against monkey-business with the boat." She stopped smiling. "I noticed a discrepancy in your figures, Lieutenant," she said, rising to take the rolled-up chart from the mantelpiece. "You gave the distance as forty miles. It is only thirty-three."

Branch rose and, bending over her as she spread out the chart, put his finger on the long blue tongue of a shoal reaching out towards the star-marked lighthouse off Signal Point at the mouth of the Stigman River.

"You measured across this," he said.

"Yes," she said, "There is five feet of water. The boat is only two feet deep."

"You forget the tide," Branch said. "The tide and the wind. With the wind in the north... I'll take you across if you want me to...."

He looked at her and knew that she knew. Like an animal, she could sense it. But it did not matter, unless he allowed it to take shape in her mind. She was too practical to give up for a premonition. Until she could put a name to it she would let them go on to what was waiting for them out there, confident that the three of them could beat it, and him. And perhaps she would be right.

He watched her roll up the chart again and slip a knotted string about it. She could very well be right, he reflected, and the girl could easily have been right to go her own way. It was quite possible that they were right. Two medals for sitting behind a desk, he thought irrelevantly, wonderful.

FROM THE DOCK, the creek in the darkness had a calm, barely ruffled look that was belied by the sound of the wind in the hillside above them. The boat lay almost still between a large creosoted post and the corner of the dock. It was quite a large boat and when Branch leaned his weight on the stern line, Paul Laflin slacking away the bowline, it did not move at all for a noticeable period of time; then yielded slowly, and Branch sat down on the corner of the dock, let himself down to the brief stern deck as it came within reach, and turned to push at the barnacled pilings of the dock, the boat still moving by the momentum he had given it. The stern swung reluctantly past the pilings and the boat slid alongside the dock.

"Check her," Branch said.

Paul Laflin took an awkward turn around the cleat and the motion stopped as the line drew taut. Branch looked up at them on the dock above him.

"Did anybody take a look at the tanks?"

"Parks said they would be full," Madame Faubel said.

"I can't run a boat on what Parks said."

"They are full," Paul Laflin said. "We checked them this morning."

The woman glanced at him. "Oh, is that where you... ?"

"Someone," Mr. Hahn said smoothly, "someone has to think of these things, Madame."

The woman did not look at him, and after a moment she sat down on the edge of the dock, drawing the fur coat about her, and glanced at Branch, who moved, balancing, along the narrow side deck, to stand below her. She gave him her hands and let herself slide, teetered a moment on the cockpit coaming, and stepped hastily down to the long seat at the side of the cockpit, reaching back to explore the damage worked by the rough splintered wood of the dock on the back of the coat.

Mr. Hahn let himself clumsily down beside her, the boat rocking minutely under the repeated additions of weight, and chafing uneasily at the ancient pilings. Heavy old bitch, Branch thought, taking stock in the darkness, anyway she won't fall apart on us. He located the wheel on the after side of the short cabin house; the throttle control and the gearshift lever both within reach of it. No compass, he thought, I could use a compass.

"Did you see a compass aboard?" he asked the big man standing on the dock above him.

"What do you need a compass for?" Paul Laflin demanded. "We are not going out of sight of land, are we?"

Branch shrugged and walked forward along the gunwale and along the narrow strip of deck outboard of the cabin trunk, steadying himself by the handrail in the top of the cabin, to the small forward deck, to throw off the bowline and pass it up to the larger man.

"There are flashlights in the cabin," Paul Laflin said. "On the right-hand berth."

"Check," said Branch, and turned to examine the running lights. "Do these gadgets work, or haven't you tried them?"

Paul Laflin gestured at the cockpit. "There are switches by the wheel. But we will not be using them. Except perhaps the red one, to signal with."

"All right," Branch said. "It happens to be illegal to run without lights, but suit yourself."

"Get the flashlights," Paul Laflin said impatiently. "Get the motor started."

"Keep your shirt on," Branch said. He went aft over the cabin and dropped into the cockpit.

"I have the key," Mr. Hahn said, rising from the engine box.

"Well, break out the flashlights, will you?" Branch said, "While I take a look at this mill."

Mr. Hahn removed the padlock with a flourish. "Get them yourself," he said. "You are merely running this boat for us, Lieutenant. You are in no sense in command."

Madame Faubel stirred impatiently. "Oh, get them for him, Georges," she urged. "Let him get the motor started."

"He must not think that he can give orders, Madame."

Branch pushed back the sliding hatch in the cabin top, opened the doors, and stepped over the high sill. The cabin was not more than shoulder height on him as he stood in the hatchway, the floor only a little lower than the floor of the cockpit. It was not more than eight feet long. He ducked and made his way forward into the darkness that was only intensified by the dim gray ovals of the port-lights. The cabin had the usual dank workboat odor of bilge-water and kerosene and tar, and an incongruous sweetish smell. He hesitated, placed the irrelevant odor, and grimaced in the darkness. God, they're funny, he thought, funny like a crutch. Flashlights.

The boat rocked minutely as Paul Laflin's weight dropped to the cabin top almost above his bent head. He forced himself to reach to the right in the blackness under the port lights, and felt the ridged roughness of heavy canvas and, abruptly, the coldness of bare human skin, and jerked his hand away, thinking, Christ, have they killed her? Then she moved.

"Fancy meeting you here," he said.

She did not answer, but the canvas rattled again in the darkness. Two yellow lights came on, illuminating the cabin, and, in the doorway, Paul Laflin and the chinless man were laughing loudly. The girl on the bunk moved again in a tentative effort to kick away the tarpaulin with which she had covered herself against the cold.

"Where's the rest of your clothes?" Branch asked her, leaning over her to pull away the canvas, since she seemed to want it removed.

She jerked her head in a movement that was half a shudder towards the men in the doorway. She was trying to sit up, and Branch helped her, and saw that her wrists and ankles were bound with strong fishing line. Sitting up, she was almost naked, her slip falling, torn, down her arms. Her face was streaked with dirt and with remnants of lipstick, and her body and the white slip were equally grimy with the dirt of the canvas. Her narrow, half-naked body arched with effort as she strained at the cords that bound her wrists; she sobbed a little and sank back to endure the resulting pain, her face drawn in the yellow light, drained, empty, and a little crazy.

Paul Laflin held out a knife. "Cut her loose. Cut her loose and return the knife."

She forced her wrists past her hip to be cut free. There was blood on them, and, pulling her arms free of the remnants of the slip, she rubbed them savagely while Branch kneeled to release her ankles, she unaware or uncaring that the rags of the slip had gathered about her hips like a loose soiled loincloth.

Paul Laflin took the knife from Branch and dropped in return a bundle of smudged yellow wool that opened to emit a pair of shoes, a pair of hose, a crumpled yellow shirt, and a girdle. Branch felt the girl start to reach for the clothes and control herself.

"Tell her to get dressed," the large young man said to Branch. "Get dressed, Madame Duval, and clean up this cabin. Perhaps we will give you some food when you have cleaned up the cabin, Madame Duval."

"The other one can come out now and start the motor," Mr. Hahn suggested.

The girl sat hugging her naked breasts, trembling a little with cold as she stared fixedly across the cramped space of the cabin. Branch touched her knee as he rose and felt the skin rough with cold, and saw her glance shift minutely to touch him. Her lips moved stiffly.

"Get out. Oh, get out!" she whispered.

He felt a little as if he wanted to cry. He hesitated, crouching under the beams in the faint sweet odor of face powder from the compact broken on the floor.

Jeannette Duval looked at him fully. "You don't have to walk all over my clothes, darling," she said clearly. Her eyes hated him for being there, and for seeing that she had failed. He turned away, suddenly almost happy in the knowledge that she was not hurt. She was only cold, bruised, tired, dirty, naked, and hopping mad. Fundamentally she was undamaged.

They stepped back to let him out. He closed the doors behind him and pulled shut the hatch.

"Now can I take a look at this percolator?" he demanded.

Paul Laflin said, "What do you want to look at it for? If it doesn't start you can look at it."

Behind them the woman's voice said calmly, but with a note of urgency, "It is half past eleven.

Branch looked at her sitting at the side of the cockpit abreast of the engine box. He could see her lips a little compressed and disapproving in the darkness, her disapproval dissociating her from what had happened to the girl: absolving her from guilt.

"I suggest," she said primly, "that if there are no more jokes ..."

Paul Laflin said, "Start the motor, Lieutenant."

Everything was new and yet familiar as he stepped behind the wheel, tested the wheel, tested the gear lever, and set the sliding throttle control slightly open. Under the low arched cabin top in front of him as he stood there, in the yellow light whose overflow spilled through the port lights, the girl, he knew, was again, like a large ruffled cat, licking herself clean; and presently she would emerge, a little more smudged, a little more rumpled, another step removed from the tall girl in the neat striped wool suit who had sat down beside him on the train. But she no longer mattered, nor did it matter that on the seat abreast of the engine the woman very probably had her hand on the small pistol in the pocket of the ruined fur coat she had appropriated. Nor did the two men matter any longer.

"Give me a light here," Branch said, and Mr. Hahn came around him to sit down on the seat and shine a flashlight at the bulkhead.

"Stand by the stern line," Branch said. He heard the larger man make his way aft through the long cockpit. "Don't cast off till I tell you," he said without turning his head.

Start, you little bastard, he thought, and he closed the ignition switch and pressed the button below it. Gears began to grind heavily in the engine box behind him and he wanted to pound with his fist on the wheel: Startstartstartstartstart. Start, you sonofabitch! The engine coughed once, backfired, and ran. He throttled down a little and stood, listening to it, feeling the boat tremble under him, as he measured the dock with his eyes, and the solitary pile set out from it ahead of them, and the space of water between the stern of the boat and the shore.

"Douse that light," he said to Mr. Hahn, and over his shoulder, repeating, "Don't cast off that line till I tell you.

"Aye, aye, sir." said Paul Laflin's voice ironically.

Well, he said to himself, can you get her out of here without taking the piling with you, call you? and he eased the gears into reverse and touched the throttle. A subdued wash of water swirled forward along the sides of the boat. Turning, he watched the dock begin to move past backwards, at first almost imperceptibly, then faster; then the line came taut with a jerk and an audible creaking of strained rope fibers, and he turned forward and opened the throttle to half speed, hearing the engine begin to pound laboriously in reverse against the unyielding resistance of the rope. Flecks of white foam spun past in the dark water. Mr. Hahn stirred and asked a question.

"Pipe down," Branch told him without looking at him, watching the bow of the boat began to swing outwards, away from the dock, the stern held by the rope. When she pointed well clear of the solitary mooring post, he cut the throttle.

"All right," he said softly over his shoulder, "all right. Throw it off." There was always the first moment in a new boat that was larger than, or of a different type from, anything you had handled before, when you did not quite know if you would be able to pull it off, particularly with people looking.

He heard Paul Laflin swear, and looked around. "Cut it," he said angrily. "To hell with it. Cut it. Get rid of it."

The boat, urged by the slow current of the creek, began to swing back towards the dock. Branch waited unmoving, facing forward, hearing the large young man swear in French as he sawed at the rope with a small penknife. And in the middle of the bay, Branch thought, in this wind, they expect to pick up a man in the water. God, talk about optimists. He threw the boat into gear as the big man finished, opened the throttle wide, and leaned hard on the wheel as water boiled noisily out from the stern into the pilings of the dock. She gathered way smoothly towards the large dark shape of the mooring post, and Mr. Hahn started up, saying something and reaching for the wheel. Branch struck his hand aside. The rudder took hold and the creosoted post swung across the bow and slipped past close aboard. Branch reversed the wheel and looked back at the white are of wake foaming in the darkness behind them. All boats were the same and if you could handle one you could handle all of them.

HE WATCHED THE WATER tumbling off the bow glow greenish-white with phosphorescence; and astern the wake was a luminous path following them out of the darkness. The boat, like all motorboats he had ever handled, had no positive tendency to stay on course; and when she started to swing it took a full turn of the wheel to check her. Hard-mouthed old bitch, he thought, I wish I had some gloves. Christ, will you look at that phosphorescence, he thought. When you stood like this behind the wheel, the engine filling the world with sound and vibration, you were only a pair of eyes and a pair of hands and a brain. He looked across the dark water at the serrated masses of reeds closing in on them from either side as they neared the opening. Ahead, the water was calm for a space beyond the reeds, but farther out he could see the dark roughness, flecked with white, where the wind drove hard down the river.

The cabin doors opened and let a hood of light into the cockpit, blinding him. You always thought she was swinging when you could not see; he checked the panic impulse to throw the wheel hard over, and turned out the light by the switch below the engine controls. She was still on course, just starting a sheer to port; he steadied her. Glancing down he saw the girl peering out at him, ridiculously like a dog in a kennel. He thrust back the hatch. She straightened up and stood in the hatchway, watching the reeds come closet in the darkness.

"Don't try it," he said.

"You wouldn't even do that for me, darling?" she asked without turning her head. "Not even to save my life? They are going to kill me."

The wake was breaking in shallow water to either side and rolling on to make a sighing sound in the reeds, audible over the clattering rumble of the motor; and he could not feel greatly concerned over her impending death as he searched the water ahead for clues as to the direction of the channel.

"You could .. ." she said, turning and covering his hand with her hand. "You wouldn't have to ..,"

He shifted his hand to a different spoke of the wheel. She turned abruptly away from him and stood looking forward; her long body in the shapeless yellow suit ungracefully hunched over her folded arms. Paul Laflin's hand struck her across the outthrust buttocks and she straightened up again and turned without surprise or haste or resentment.

"Don't converse with the motorman," the large young man said. "Sit down. Sit down and be quiet."

The woman seated herself in the space to the left of Branch that Mr. Hahn had occupied previously. They had held a council of war behind him, but what they had decided did not matter. Everything was fine. The engine was running well and everything was fine except the girl. The woman watched her make her way to the opposite seat.

"What did she want?"

"Never mind what she wanted," Branch said without looking aside from the channel.

Madame Faubel moved into the angle between the cockpit coaming and the cabin house, and tucked the fur coat about her. It enveloped her like a cloak, reaching almost to the cockpit door as she sat there.

"You were to let her swim ashore," she said presently. "You were to give her time to get ashore before you turned the boat back."

"Don't sit there," Branch said irritably. "You're in my way." He pushed her knees aside with his leg. "She was kidding herself," he said. "She could no more make herself go over the side into that water than she could fly. She's too cold."

Madame Faubel raised her voice. "Watch the girl, Georges. See that she does not go overboard."

The girl looked up sharply, staring at Branch.

As they ran out of the shelter of the creek, the boat came heavily to life, rolling regularly, like a pendulum, with a fixed period of its own that was independent of the impact of the short, steep, crested chop of the river. The wind took on weight and sharpness; and Branch was aware of Paul Laflin turning up the collar of his coat to reinforce the turtle-necked sweater; the man standing spreadlegged beyond the cabin door, prevented by some pride from taking his hands from his pockets to steady himself, so that he weaved from side to side, in a curious static dance movement, with the rolling of the boat.

Beyond him, not so proud, Mr. Hahn clung to the cockpit coaming with one hand while the other gripped the arm of the girl, who huddled beside him holding the upturned collar of her jacket closed at her throat, her back to the wind. The uncombed masses of her hair, dividing themselves, were folded forward along each side of her face by the wind. Branch felt the impact of the dull bitterness of her stare. Goddam it, he told her silently, as he stood at the wheel, I'd only have had to pick you up, damn it, you'd only have got wet, that's all, sweetheart.

As they approached the center of the river he let the boat swing gradually away to the left, downstream, and the rolling stopped as they raced away before the wind, to be replaced by a slow pitching motion as each wave raised the stern, forcing the boat ahead, then passed forward. With the wind astern, steering became a monotonous cranking of the wheel from left to right and back again as the waves passed. In the darkness the speed seemed tremendous, but the leisurely movement of the lights on shore, that only slowly came abeam and fell astern, belied the surging pounding confusion of sound in the boat. It was a little like creeping down a broad highway in low gear.

With the wind astern it was not so cold, but presently the girl rose and, her hand still at her throat gripping the folded lapels of her jacket, pulled herself free of Mr. Hahn, speaking to him. She was visibly shaking with cold. The chinless man nodded. She made her way towards the shelter of the cabin, pushing her way between Branch and Paul Laflin into the hatchway; then turning, the wind blowing the hair free of her face.

"Don't think they're not going to kill you, too, darling," she said to Branch, her voice clear and loud above the roar of the engine. "Do you think they're going to let you go, afterwards? " She was too cold to laugh, but her eyes, narrowed against the wind, laughed, hating I him. "Maybe they promised they would let you go?"

Paul Laflin struck her and the laughter went out of her eyes. She drew back against the hatch coaming, trapped in the narrow opening, while a dark thread of blood made its way down her upper lip. She tasted it with her tongue and touched her finger to it, smearing it, watching the man.

"Well, it's true, isn't it?" she gasped and, as he seized her, dropped to her knees and bit at his hand, he snatching the hand back; and she pushed herself backwards into the darkness of the cabin. Paul Laflin made as if to follow her, changed his mind, and drew back. The boat continued to race loudly down the river. Branch felt rather than heard the scraping sounds as the girl in the cabin picked herself off the floor. He felt cold and a little bitter. You couldn't wait, he told her silently, you couldn't wait, could you? You had to shoot off your big mouth.

Paul Laflin touched him on the shoulder. He turned and saw Mr. Hahn behind him, leaning against the engine box, one hand buried in the pocket of the gray overcoat with the velvet collar.

Paul Laflin said, "I'll take it now, thank you."

Madame Faubel stirred. "Paul," she said. "Georges ..."

They did not look at her, and Branch did not look at her, but shoved the throttle back to idling and put the gears in neutral. It was very quiet with the motor idling.

"Paul," said the woman urgently, "Are you sure ... ?"

"I have been watching him," the large young man said. "It is no more complicated than driving a car."

The boat took a sheer to starboard as the momentum died away and, receiving the waves on the quarter instead of dead astern, began to roll again. Branch turned the wheel to straighten her out; then let it spin free and turned on the cabin lights instead. Let them figure it out, he thought, damn the bitch, anyway. He was wryly amused at the thought that she had not told him he was to be killed until after learning he would not help her get away. The faces that surrounded him in the lighted cockpit looked strange and barely human.

Madame Faubel said reluctantly, "All right, Paul. All right. If you are sure you really can...."

Mr. Hahn said, "Put him in the cabin. We may need him if something goes wrong."

It was quite warm inside the cabin after the doors and the hatch had been closed against the wind. He steadied himself against the miniature galvanized sink and heard the engine thrown noisily into gear; and felt the slow thrusting acceleration, and the sharpened roll of the boat, as the propeller began to turn. You never really knew what was happening, down in the cabin. You could imagine what you wanted to imagine.

He made his way forward, bent double under the beams, and sat down on the unoccupied berth to port. With the doors closed and all parts clearly visible in the yellow light from the single bulb at the head of each berth, the cabin seemed incredibly small and the two of them occupying it like giants in a dwarf's house, except that the berths were full length. The girl lay face down on the starboard berth and he could without rising have reached out and touched her, the space between the berths not more than eighteen inches wide. She held a handkerchief pressed to her face and her clothes were untidily bunched about her. Presently she sat up and some instinct of tidiness or modesty that seemed to derive from another existence made her raise herself in the familiar feminine gesture of drawing down her skirt to her knees.

"Well, you certainly fouled things up, sweetheart," Branch said. She looked at him over the bloody handkerchief, her shirt and the lapels of her jacket also spotted with blood. He recognized the handkerchief as his own.

"What difference does it make?" she whispered.

In the cabin the sound of the engine was weakened but you could hear the water gurgling and splashing as it rushed by just outside.

"Shooting off your big mouth," Branch said. He took the handkerchief from her as she lowered it, crawled aft and let water into the sink from the tank above it, and rinsed out the stained cloth, the water sloshing from side to side with the motion of the boat. The girl sat on the edge of the berth with a finger pressed to her nose to contain the blood. Her face was a streaked mask. Bitch, he thought, bitch, bitch, bitch. The wheel ropes made an insistent squealing and he let himself think that the large young man was steering all over the river, then put the thought away. What you thought in the cabin never meant anything.

"I just told you the truth," the girl said angrily. "I can't see why that should be so terrible."

He sat down again and began to clean her face with the damp handkerchief, she leaning a little forward to help him.

"They wanted to trust me," he said presently. "They knew it wasn't safe, but they wanted to very much, because it made everything easy for them, if they could trust me. But how the hell are they going to trust me with you telling me ... ?"

She moved impatiently to speak and he took away the handkerchief. The engine stopped. He silenced her with an angry sound, listening. The engine started again.

"All I needed was to get out there," he said after a moment, more to himself than to the girl. "Just to get out there, you understand," he said savagely, looking up. "Out of this damned river. Anybody can handle a boat in here." He threw the handkerchief into her lap. "God, wash your face."

She touched the handkerchief gingerly: looked at it, and left it lying on her skirt.

"Why didn't you tell me, Phillip?" she murmured. Then her expression changed and her voice was incredulously angry when she spoke again. "You mean that all the time you were going to ... And you let me--!"

"Let you!"

"You let me think you didn't have any idea of .. ."

"I should draw a diagram?" he sneered. "Ask you please, please to stick around. Don't go off with the nasty man, darling, I'll rescue you. I came, didn't I?"

"You let me go," she whispered. "Last night. All day. Because I thought ... Because you were too proud to tell me..."

"Proud, hell," he said. "Careful. I should tell you and have you spill it to them the first time he touched you?"

"That was different! That was ... "

"What?"

"Louis," she said. "It sounds dreadful, doesn't it?"

"It doesn't sound good," Branch said. "He's your husband."

"And that sounds wonderful, from you," she said, showing her teeth whitely in a smile. "Anyway, I don't owe Louis enough to be a martyr for his sake. But ..."

Branch laughed. "All right, what about me? He twisted your arm and you called me. So you don't want to be a martyr for my sake, either. For whose sake, then? Your own?"

She was silent, not looking at him. At last she said softly, "I thought ... if you really loved me, you would want to know. And if you didn't, you wouldn't come."

He felt a vague sense of hurt as he looked at her and as he looked at her the feeling died away and he was only a little embarrassed for her. Sitting there in the stained shapeless suit, her hair wild, her shirt half unbuttoned, and her stockings slovenly, she was talking about love with complete seriousness, as if it were really important, not realizing that this conversation was really a game. As long as you were quarreling you did not have to think. As long as you were considering only how to be nasty you did not have to remember that you could not talk away the fact that made all conversation meaningless: that unless something happened you were going to die.

"God, you're a mess," he said slowly. "Why the hell don't you at least get rid of those stockings? Christ!"

She winced as if struck and looked at him.

"Did you have a nice time?" he asked her. "I hope you had a nice time."

She licked her lips carefully. "Oh, I had a wonderful time," she whispered. "Simply wonderful, darling. Like a whore, to keep them from beating me. ..." Her laughter was a little shrill. "Simply wonderful experience, you know."

"Are you planning to set up in business if you get out of this?"

"I should, shouldn't I?" she murmured. "With my marvelous experience. Would you give me a reference, darling?"

"How about doing a little business with me while we wait?" he teased her viciously. "It may be the last chance either of us will get."

"I'm sorry, darling," she said. "I'm afraid I would be rather unsatisfactory this evening, rather. A little tired, you know. Would you care to make an appointment .. ?" The mechanical brightness vanished from her face as the boat lurched abruptly, throwing her forward. Branch caught her and together they slid down against the skin of the boat, lying in the angle between the berth and the boat's side as, running sharply heeled, she turned to starboard for an endless time. Then the engine slowed to idling and she came gradually to even keel again while the rippling sound of water running by beyond the planking diminished to a slow trickling, like a leaking faucet.

"What happened"" Jeannette Duval panted.

"She got away from him." Branch sat up, helping the girl up. Her eyes watched him for a moment, she knowing nothing about it and watching his face for a clue as to whether it was good or bad. Then she tipped her head back sharply.

"Oh, damn, it's started again," she said, groping for the handkerchief on the floor. Branch put the damp cloth in her hand. She pressed it to her nose.

He said, "If they let me out there come along with me. Don't stay down here." She shivered a little. "All right, darling."

They were arguing topside. With the engine idling you could hear them over the gentle splashings outside. The boat rolled jerkily, as if impatient at the delay. Madame Faubel's voice spoke sharply, with authority, and the cabin door opened.

"Come out, Lieutenant," the woman said, and impatiently. "Come quickly. We are wasting time." She pushed back the hatch with her left hand, the right holding a gun. "No, you stay inside, girl."

Branch straightened up in the hatchway and felt the impact of the wind. "Let her come out," he said.

The woman backed away before him to the engine box. "All right," she said. "But sit beside me and keep shut the big mouth." She stared fiercely at Jeannette Duval, but her face, in the yellow light from the cabin, looked preoccupied, as if she were thinking of something different and more important than the girl.

"Where do you want me?" Branch asked. He could not allow himself to feel relief. It was not over yet.

"Sit by Georges." The woman stepped back, supporting herself with her left hand against the engine box as Branch and the girl passed in front of her to opposite sides of the boat. Mr. Hahn had his own pistol in his hand. Branch looked at it, and found himself unimpressed, and allowed himself a wisecrack:

"Aren't you afraid it'll rust?"

"Turn out the lights, Paul," Madame Faubel said, seating herself beside the girl. The girl's yellow suit made a clear shape in the darkness as the lights went out, but the woman's borrowed fur coat, and her felt hat, were almost invisible, so that her face and the gleam of the gun in her hand were the only distinct points of reference about her. "Now you, Lieutenant, tell him what to do," she said, and added viciously, "It does not seem to be quite as simple as driving a car, does it, Paul?"

The large young man stood motionless behind the wheel. He had not once looked aside since the cabin doors had been opened.

Branch said, "Wouldn't it be easier just to let me do it?"

He saw the broad shoulders twitch slightly. No one said anything, and the woman sat unmoving, waiting.

"All right," he said. "Put the gears in. Forward. That's right.... Go easyl" he exclaimed. "You don't want to strip them ..."

Paul Laflin turned his head. "Madame!"

"Be quiet," the woman snapped. "Listen to what he tells you, you big-muscled moron. I am not going to give you another chance to drown us. "

"Make him be civil, then. I will not stand for ..."

"You will stand for it," the woman said. "You will stand for it or be shot. You and your women. You and your talk of killing. You and your boat that is just as simple as a car...." She looked across the boat at Branch. "Go ahead. Tell him what to do."

"The throttle," Branch said. "Feed it to her easily." The boat surged forward in a tight circle and took spray over the bow.

"I said easily," Branch said. "Come left. You've got her hard over. Hard left."

He heard the wheel squealing softly as the big man turned. He watched the shoreline cease to pass across the bow, steady, and begin to move in the opposite direction. Above the fringe of trees at the top of the bluff the stars were very bright in a dark cloudless sky, and the wind seemed to come from nowhere.

It was a little like a bullfight, he thought, watching the broad shoulders strain against the wheel.

"That's enough," he said. "Rudder amidships."

Far ahead of them the lights of the bridge out of Queens Harbor made a bright chain across the river.

"Meet her," Branch said. The big man threw a glance over his shoulder, his face visibly puffy and narroweyed with anger.

"You have to make it simple for Paul," Mr. Hahn said loudly enough to be heard across the boat.

"You want to stop the swing," Branch said, ignoring the chinless man. "She's swinging left, meet her with right rudder. Turn the wheel clockwise.... God, take it easyl" he snapped as Paul Laflin yanked at the wheel. "Pick a point on the bridge and watch it. You're not avoiding torpedoes, damn it. Look at that wake.... You're past it," he said wearily. "Come left, now. Bring her back.... Watch it, for Christ's sake!" Astern, the wake, luminous with phosphorescence, formed a sinuous path across the short waves that followed them. Paul Laflin fought angrily to keep the boat on her course. The boat fought back skillfully, swinging always a little too far, or not far enough. No one moved in the cockpit except the big man at the wheel.

"Head for the draw," Branch said patiently, pitching his voice over the sound of the motor. "When it starts to move, follow it with the wheel. Left now. Now right. You've got to anticipate, Laflin. She's stopped, she's going to go left, can't you feel it? Meet her.... Listen, he said, "all it needs is a couple of spokes at a time, goddamn it. You don't have to take it clear up to the stops each time. Just meet her when she starts to ... Right? he said, "right, right, right. Don't look at me, watch the bridge. When it starts to move ... Left," he said softly. "Oh, for God's sake, bring her left, will you? What the hell's the matter with you? Wake up. Pick a point on the bridge ..."

Paul Laflin made a sudden bellowing noise; as he turned, the boat shot off to the right, swinging with increasing momentum and heeling so that Branch, bracing his feet against the engine box, could look down at the woman, pushing herself up, and the girl, clinging with both hands to the cockpit coaming and watching the rising water boil past below her; the wheel turning slowly of its own accord on the rear of the cabin house and the engine laboring loudly.

"Paul," shouted the woman. "Paul!"

The large young man had stopped his advance and clutched the engine box, kneeling, looking back at the slowly rotating wheel that he had left. Then the woman pulled hard at the throttle lever. The sound of the engine died away. As the boat carried its momentum into the wind a wash of spray rippled along the starboard side and was blown across the cockpit. Mr. Hahn winced and wiped his cheek with the hat of his hand, his gun in his lap. Branch felt the water trickle down the side of his neck. He looked at the gun quite calmly and thought: Don't try it, you don't know a damned thing about it; leave it alone, you're all right now.

As THEY CAME UNDER the lights of the bridge the whole cockpit was illuminated almost without warning, like the interior of a train running out of a dark tunnel. Then the exhaust chattered back at them from the sides of the draw and Branch crouched over the wheel and felt Paul Laflin, beyond the cabin door, duck for the sudden darkness, and the beams went by over their heads. The lights struck at them again and gradually died behind them. To the right the lights of the town showed up, sparse at this time of night, and the masts of the anchored oyster boats were silhouetted faintly against a gap in the skyline. Branch made out the first channelbuoys ahead.

As he swung her towards the buoys the boat fought him without malice, as if it were a joke they shared, and he thought, good girl, nice baby, swing all you want to, papa's got you. He rubbed the palm of one hand over the frozen knuckles of the other and, at the right time, pulled hard with both hands to straighten her out. Two medals for sitting behind a desk, he thought a little grimly, and then, wanting to grin: no more complicated than driving a car. He glanced at the sullen shape of the man standing beside him. It was a little too bad the woman had not lost her temper completely and shot him. On the other hand, a dead man would only complicate matters. I really ought to take the bunch of them out and drown them, Branch thought, if a dog gets hydrophobia, you shoot him, don't you? You don't ask what excuse he has for getting it, or who gave it to him.

He did not look at the woman sitting so close to him that as he swayed with the motion of the boat his coat brushed her knees. It must seem a little ridiculous to her, he reflected, that two men, one woman, and two guns, could not be made to equal one man, a boat, and a girl; the girl almost incapacitated by cold and weariness. It was humiliating. It would be so difficult to explain to the nebulous committee how she had come to fail, if she turned back. He carefully avoided looking at her. Turning back was the sensible thing for her to do, and she was a sensible woman; and here in the shelter of the river she could still make him do it. It was possible that she had already made the decision and was only waiting to catch his eye to give the order. It was not safe to look at her.

As they picked up and passed between the second pair of channel buoys the wind began to change, no longer funneled rigidly between the river banks. Branch felt the gusts on his cheek and the boat felt them, rolling with a new motion in the confused short waves thrown up by the chop of the river running into the deflected seas from the estuary. A little spray washed up alongside and was dashed by the wind against the cabin trunk. They cleared the land to the right, and a small point of light winked out at them and was gone. Branch waited for the next flash, looking past the dark shape of Paul Laflin's head and shoulders. The light came on again, and he counted ten long seconds, and the light vanished. The only ten-second light that should be visible was the lighthouse off Signal Point. He was a little surprised to pick it up so early, and looked about irritably for the much closer dashing light that should be just south of Queen's Point, below the town. He did not like picking up the lights in the wrong order, it seemed a little like a bad omen.

I wish to God I could take another look at that chart, he thought, leaning hard on the wheel as an erratic cross sea slammed up against the starboard side of the boat. He tasted the saltness of the spray and turned up his coat collar and pulled down his cap, still looking to seaward. Number eight, quick-flashing white. There was nothing more lonely than to bat around unknown waters in pitch blackness looking for a light that you should be able to see and could not find.

Mr; Hahn, brushing the water from his coat, made his way uncertainly around the rear of the engine box to the leeward seat. Branch glanced at him and thought, that helps, now all we need is for Baby Face to get over there and we'll really be trimmed right. As if this bucket wasn't heavy enough on the wheel without a ten-degree list to port. There was a scratching scramble beside him as Paul Laflin was thrown off balance, catching himself by the edge of the cabin. Branch looked quickly down at the woman, who had stirred, and looked away again.

Signal Point Light showed up again, and abruptly, far to the left of it, a small blinking light appeared almost in the loom of the recurving shoreline that was taking shape ahead as they ran on across the head of the estuary. Well, that's got to be it, Branch told himself, it's a hell of a long ways out, but it can't be anything else. But I wish I could get another look at that bloody chart. When you got out there things never looked quite as you remembered them from a chart. He let the swing of the boat take her to the right well past the flashing light before he checked her. There was plenty of water for a two-foot draft, and they had to get out before the woman came to a decision. There was no time to waste in making piloting easy by running the buoys.

Spray began to come aboard regularly as the wind came ahead, dashing across the forward deck and blowing back over the cabin trunk; and the wind was stronger and colder. The boat had lost her independent rolling motion, the waves now large enough to impose upon her their own period. Branch groped for the throttle in the darkness and surreptitiously eased it up, timing the changes in sound of the engine with the impacts of the seas. The boat rode more easily as her speed dropped, but Paul Laflin could no longer keep his hands in his pockets. The cabin doors slatted and banged noisily until Branch kicked them shut and pulled the hatch closed over them.

The lights remained unchanged. The small one blinked steadily off the port bow and the larger one, brought to the same intensity by its greater distance, flashed periodically away to starboard. The shoreline did not change, and it seemed as if the wind had fought the throbbing engine to a standstill and they would hammer at the same seas forever, the crests glowing phosphorescently as they rolled up against the starboard bow, the boat rising, shouldering its way through, taking spray aboard, and plunging down again to meet the next one. Then abruptly the flashing buoy was close aboard and they could hear the clang of the bell on it and presently see it pitching and snatching at its cable in its own nervous illumination; then it was gone, and the sound of the bell was gone, and it was only a flashing light again, but behind them.

Branch let the lurch of a wave point them up towards Signal Point Light as it came on, thinking, God, we must have been set down a hell of a ways, I thought I had the damned thing half a mile to port. He glanced astern and steadied the boat along the course between the buoy and the light ahead. Now, he thought, I want Cherry Creek abeam to port, quick flashing green, and 36A to starboard. The world was a wet darkness through which the small blinking lights blazed a trail. It seemed strange to know the names, Queens Point, Signal Point, Cherry Creek, as if he had sailed here all his life; and yet to have no notion of what the places would look like in the daytime. 36A, out in the bay, he rhymed without amusement. Won't pick it up for half an hour yet, and Cherry Creek is still behind Signal Point. God, that lighthouse is way to hell out there, isn't it? Must be two miles off the point. He looked astern and pulled at the wheel. They were being blown to the left of the course between the lights. It was always hard to tell, midway between two lights, when you were on the line between them. Well, I guess I can give them a dose of it now, he told himself grimly, I think I've got them now.

The clattering hammer of the engine had been almost blown away by the wind, but as he worked the throttle open it came back into the boat with them. Then steering was no longer a one-hand job and he watched the crests come at the bow out of the darkness in relentless procession; and as she came up to speed the boat began to throw spray in sheets that the wind whipped back across the cabin, and the motion was violently insane. Branch spread his feet, clung to the wheel, and tried to shield his glasses with the brim of his uniform cap, but the light, flashing out ahead, was blurred, multiplied, and magnified by the water on the lenses. He snatched the glasses off and dropped them into his pocket, and watched the light come on again, hazy and trembling because of his nearsighted astigmatism. The spray stung his face like hail where it struck and his hands were wet and freezing. Well, he thought wryly, I've done worse than this for fun. His shoulders began to ache from the struggle with the wheel.

When he looked around at last, daring to look at them, the girl's head, wet strands of hair blowing crazily about it in the darkness, was bent over the side of the boat. Good girl, he thought, that's right, give them the idea. She straightened up, spitting, and wiped her mouth on the drenched sleeve of her jacket; then it got her again, and Mr. Hahn looked away and moved away from her, looking rigidly aft. Come on, boy, Branch told him silently, come on, don't be a hog; give it up, don't sit there chewing on it. The chinless man turned abruptly, clutching the cockpit coaming. As he bent over, the wind caught the brim of his hat. The hat sailed off to leeward and was lost in the darkness. The chinless man, unheeding, clutched the coaming and vomited into the swirling green phosphorescence of the boat's passing.

The boat rose steeply and Branch turned forward again and swung her into it so that the crest passed equally on either side; but the next one was even larger and she pitched forward into it, driven hard, and could not make it. The bow knifed into solid water and the sea fell on the forward deck, smashed against the cabin and sprayed upwards. Spray and solid water and foam sluiced aft over the cabin trunk and caught the two of them in the chest as the boat lurched heavily. Paul Laflin went down and Branch slipped to one knee, clinging to the wheel, pulled himself up and straightened her out. He could feel the water run down inside his clothing. He kicked at Paul Laflin as the large young man rolled against him in an effort to rise.

Mr. Hahn staggered to the cabin door, seeking refuge; then turned and fell to the starboard seat; and the wind blew the stuff back over him as he retched. He clawed his way back uncaring and dove into the cabin. Beside the woman, the girl was being sick again. The woman had her gun in her hand. Branch looked at the gun and grinned. She tried to rise but the roll of the boat threw her back and she waved the gun and shouted, waving towards shore. Branch laughed and turned away from her, ignoring the gun. When he glanced at her again she had put the gun away and was crouching in the shelter of the cabin trunk where a steady stream of water ran down on the shoulder of the sodden fur coat but the wind-driven spray could not reach her.

Paul Laflin had pulled himself up beside the girl, who had her feet braced against the engine box. Her dripping skirt was bunched about her thighs and the wind had blown apart the lapels of her jacket. Her bared legs and throat looked unbearably cold. The large young man studied her in a preoccupied way and turned and was seasick. Relieved, he rose and made his way into the cabin, and was sick a second time into the galvanized sink. Branch closed the doors on him and dropped the padlock into place.

Setting the padlock, he looked about him at the loud pitching darkness that was abruptly dominated by the glare of Signal Point Light ahead. He located another white light to the right, to windward in the bay: that was 36A. He turned and squinted to leeward and there was the small, quickly blinking green light that he had not had time to look for, far down under the shadow of the new shoreline that had opened up behind them as they passed clear of the low dark spit of Signal Point. The lights blurred and pulsated as, clinging to the wheel, he tried to visualize them as they had been on the chart. He put on his glasses and studied them for a moment to be sure. 36A and Cherry Creek in line, he said to himself, then south until the lighthouse is in line with the point. Well, he thought, removing the glasses to his pocket again, better too early than too late; and he let her swing left, helping with a touch of the wheel.

The boat seemed to leap forward as the wind came astern again, and Signal Point Light slashed out brightly from the blackness to the right where there was no shore. The whole world had turned about them. Spray no longer came aboard and the sound of the engine climbed to a high metallic whine; then the whole boat shuddered and the note of the engine dropped with sickening abruptness, the wave rolling past to raise the how, the stern settling heavily into the trough. Branch threw the wheel hard over as the next wave came on; it was, for a moment, not quite enough, and she began to slew up into it; then, as the engine began to scream again, the rudder took hold, all his strength holding it, and she steadied and, balanced in delicate equilibrium, plunged madly down the face of the wave; the wave passed and she sat down suddenly. He threw the wheel hard right as she tried to swing past the course marked by the blinking green blur of the Cherry Creek flasher ahead. Then easing a little, holding it, easing it again, letting it spin, catching it at center, back a spoke, and hard left with all his strength as the roller coaster ride began again. Suddenly his mind formed the words: roll her over. Roll her over. Roll her over and drown the bastards. Two medals for sitting behind a desk. No more difficult than a car. Roll her over. Drown them.

The woman was tugging at his arm, screaming at him and pointing. He flung her off and steadied the boat and watched Signal Point Light turn red; first pink, then rose, then clear angry red. The woman was staring across the boat with a fascination that was almost superstitious terror as the red glaring eve slashed out again. Even the girl had looked up, a dull apprehension on her face. Branch beckoned to the woman and she pulled herself up by the edge of the cabin; and he seized the collar of the drenched fur coat with both hands, spread it and bore it down to pin her arms with one movement; then turning to grasp the rotating wheel and throw it hard over, bracing himself and leaning on it and hearing the wheel ropes groan with the strain as the boat ran wildly off to the left.

The woman, her arms bound, fell helplessly against him and he let her slide off and be thrown across the cockpit as he fought for control, the boat skating madly across the face of the oncoming wave, on its beam ends. Water slapped into the rear of the cockpit and he heard the girl scream. Oh, pipe down, he thought irritably, and speaking silently to the boat: Come on, come on, you bitch, straighten out; and she came straight, rolled viciously, and water came with a rush over the stern as it settled. He could feel it cold through his already soaked shoes. He ran the throttle back to half speed, and, crouching, clawed at the matted fur of the woman's coat, found the gun, and pitched it over the side. The woman had apparently been knocked unconscious by her fall and lay in the ankle-deep sluicing water, moved back and forth by the rolling of the boat. The girl kneeled by the engine box, watching him, unconscious of the water that rushed back and forth about her knees.

He took the boat-hook and kicked it loose from its chocks in the cabin top, levering it over the side; it hit hard bottom before it was half submerged. He threw it into the cockpit and pulled the switch, stopping the engine, and turned the wheel to let the last of her momentum take the boat out towards the bay. Going aft to the engine box, he pulled it open and ripped loose the distributor cap and handfuls of wire and threw them overboard, then took a bucket and sluiced down the engine with cold salt water, feeling a little like a murderer.

There was no sound from the cabin but the woman was struggling to sit up. The girl kneeled by the open engine box.

"Take off your shoes and put them in your pockets," Branch said to her. She stared at him, kneeling in the water. Then she did as he had ordered. "All right," he said. "Over you go."

She did not want to go. He lifted her and half pushed and half rolled her over the side, heard the splash and looked over to see her struggling in the murky water, the yellow suit washing weightlessly about her in the darkness.

"Stand up, stupid," he said. She stood up. The water came to her waist and the next wave struck her shoulders and knocked her down. She started to follow the boat, blown rapidly away from her. Branch dropped over the side, felt the chilling rush of water through his clothing, and pushed at the boat as it drifted down on him, working his way aft along it; then it was past him and he turned to watch it go on into the darkness. The girl reached him. He put his arm about her to steady her. The red eye of the light blinked out. It seemed silly to stand with your arm around a girl, fully clothed in chest-deep water a mile away from land, and he turned away from the light and started for the shore.

AT THE TOP OF THE BANK they stopped to look back. The wind seemed less strong now that they were on shore and the waves drove against the sandy beach below them with a sound made gentle and almost pleasant by distance. When Signal Point Light came on, it looked from up here small and insignificant; a minute red point of light across the black water, flashing on and off meaninglessly.

"What ...makes it red?" Jeannette Duval panted.

Branch pushed her away as she started to take his arm for support and she looked at her hands and wiped them mechanically on her hips to remove the wet earth of the bank up which they had climbed. Branch stood rubbing his hands together in an effort to get rid of the grittiness.

"Red glass, I suppose," he said. He shuddered as a rivulet of cold water ran down his shoulder. Above the more distant sounds of the wind and the water he could hear, close and loud in the darkness, the sound of water dripping from their clothes to the dead leaves. "Marks shoal water," he said. "How did you think I knew where to get out and walk?"

"Don't be unpleasant," the girl said, her teeth audibly chattering. "We can't all ... be great navigators." She began shakingly to squeeze at her drenched suit. "Can you... see them?"

He glanced at her and saw that she shared his own reluctance to leave this place. "No," he said.

She straightened up abruptly. "Why didn't you kill them?" she asked. "Why did you throw the gun away? Why did you let them go?"

He looked down at the luminous white curving line of the breakers on the beach. Everybody wants to kill everybody, he thought. Bunch of murderous bastards. Bunch of murderous bastards puking all over the boat. More damned fun. The girl shook him savagely.

"You let them go!" she gasped. "You let them go!"

He slapped her hard and watched her go to hands and knees among the bushes. She rose slowly and stood rubbing her hands along her thighs.

"Don't push me around," he said. "Let's get out of here before we freeze to death."

It was still dark when, after crossing the bridge, they entered the town; and the town was asleep. Branch looked at his watch but it had stopped at one forty-seven. He did not look at the girl until they paused at the corner of the block on which the hotel was located.

"You know where the alley is," he said.

She nodded.

"I'll open the door for you," he said. "You can't go through the lobby like that."

He watched her go down the side street and found himself neither amused nor touched by her appearance. He removed his cap and rubbed it against his sleeve to remove the crusted salt from the visor. He brushed at his raincoat, finding it almost dry to the touch. There was nothing to be done about the missing crease of his trousers. His feet hurt so that he could hardly stand it. He thought they must have walked five miles.

As he came into the lobby of the hotel, the clerk sat up sleepily, and he waved his key by the tag and said, "That's all right, I've got it." He could feel his underclothes damp against the skin and his uniform felt bunched and shapeless about him as he walked past the desk, but the man sank back, closing his eyes again, having noticed nothing. Branch stopped at the foot of the stairs and unbuttoned and turned down the collar of the raincoat so that the warmth of the hotel could reach him. It seemed to him he had been cold as long as he could remember. He could hardly bring himself to go past the stairs that led up to his room.

Then he stopped again, looking at the stocky black-haired man sitting on the small curved settee in the alcove at the foot of the stairs. The man had just put down a magazine, and a cigar smoked on the ash stand beside him.

"Well," said the man, rising. "So you made it." He buttoned the double-breasted coat of his sharply pressed brown suit. "You remember me," he said. "Dickerson."

"What the hell do you want?" Branch asked.

"What did you do with them, drown them?" the detective asked. "You look like you'd been swimming."

"What would I want to kill them for?" Branch asked. "There's a law against it, isn't there?"

The detective laughed cautiously, neither believing nor disbelieving.

"You've been hanging around Parks," Branch said. "I saw your camera."

Dickerson said, "Those brats. Always into things. If my kids acted like that I'd use a baseball bat on them."

"What are you doing here?" Branch asked.

Dickerson said, "Helping Parks keep his nose clean. That cracker goes nuts when he sees folding money. Mr. Sellers doesn't want him to get into trouble." He picked up his cigar. "Nothing with a foreign angle, if you get what I mean. Because of the connection."

"That's why Parks wouldn't run his boat?"

"His boat?" The detective laughed. "Only boat Parks has is a rowboat with an outboard motor he takes fishing on the river. You don't think he'd let his boat get away from him that easy?"

The stocky man's eyes looked up at Branch with a steady regard. Somehow the conversation seemed remote and unconnected with reality. All this was over with. It was like discussing a football game on Saturday evening.

"You might say I saved the girl's life," Dickerson murmured. "He was going to take her out in the bay and sink her after he saw all that dough."

"You called them?" Branch asked. "She said Parks called them."

"What did she know about it? Asleep on the bed."

"How did you know I was with them?"

"You've been watched, too," Dickerson said. "Sure."

"Quit stalling," Branch said wearily. "For God's sake, quit stalling. My feet hurt."

The shorter man grinned and held out his hand, palm up, and rubbed the thumb acquisitively across the closed fingers. Branch stood looking down at the white, manicured, muscular hand. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he licked his lips he could taste salt. He opened his eyes again.

"Tell him to look in the East River," he said, "or wherever New York sewage goes. I flushed it down the can ten minutes after leaving him."

The hand moved a little.

Branch said, "If anybody else tries to maul me tonight, I'll kill him. I don't like big shots. I don't like guys who act as if I had a price tag on my nose. To make a real good story I should say I used it first, but I didn't. It would have made pretty rough toilet paper, anyway."

"Who do you think you're kidding?" the detective asked.

Branch looked from the hand to the heavy, blue-chinned face. "Nobody," he said. "That's my story. What the hell are you going to do about it?"

"Mr. Sellers.. ."

"Mr. Sellers is in New York," Branch said. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Don't call me, kid," the stocky man said. "Don't get tough with me."

Branch looked down at him through glasses that were still foggy, there having been nothing dry to wipe them on. "I dropped them in one by one and turned the handle," he said slowly. "I got kind of a kick out of it. The girl was sore as hell when I told her." The detective let his hand fall to his side. "You haven't spent it," he said. "It wasn't in the dough we got from the girl."

"I've told you where it is," Branch said.

"You haven't mailed any letters, and the only time you went to a bank you took out two hundred. It's not in your room because I looked and you haven't put it in the hotel safe." The shorter man smiled, looking up at Branch. "Why don't you say you had it on you and they took it away from you, kid? Mr. Sellers isn't unreasonable. He just doesn't like to be double-crossed. And between you and me he's not a guy with a hell of a big sense of humor, if you know what I mean."

Branch looked at him for a moment. "All right," he said, smiling a little. "All right. They took it."

"I don't suppose you'd let me frisk you."

"No," Branch said.

"It would be better if I could say I had frisked you."

"Go ahead and say it," Branch said. Then he grinned. "Oh, to hell with it. Do I have to take my clothes off?"

"Not for a wad of bills like that," Dickerson said. "Just the raincoat."

Presently Branch stood buttoning his damp uniform blouse, watching the detective pick up the magazine and crush out the cigar.

"I'll give you a tip," the stocky man said, stopping again in front of him. "Don't try to spend it."

"I won't," Branch said.

Dickerson grinned. "Hell, I can't spend all my life chasing that grand. But it wouldn't be good for me if you'd turn out to have it, after all."

"I wouldn't worry," Branch said.

The other looked up at him with a certain respect. "I don't know what Sellers will say. Maybe he'll send someone else, I don't know. But if you haven't got it, you're all right. But don't try to spend it. They'll be down on you like a ton of bricks if you try to spend it."

"So he paid me off in bad money," Branch said.

"It wasn't bad when you got it," Dickerson said, "but it sure as hell isn't any good now." He patted Branch's arm. "Well, I'll be seeing you."

Branch looked after him with a vague gratitude: at least he had not tried to get rough. Probably his orders had not included getting rough. There was, after all, a certain immunity connected with the uniform. But it was a relief to meet somebody who did not feel it necessary to slap your face before asking you a question.

He threw his raincoat over his arm and walked quickly through the passage between the men's and women's rooms; the barbershop and the beauty parlor, to the back door, and thumbed back the latch and opened the door. The girl was sitting on the stone step, her chin on her knees and her arms hugging her drawn-up legs. She looked up as the light touched her, rose, brushed at the rear of her skirt, and came to him.

"I thought you had forgotten me, darling," she said.

"How could you ever think that?" he asked, a little savagely.

She glanced at him, slipped past him quickly, and stood in the hallway rubbing her grimy hands together to warm them; then slowly relaxing her grip on herself as the warmth began to reach her. Branch closed the door and she seized him as he turned and buried her face in his shoulder, gripping him hard; her whole body shaking convulsively and uncontrollably. He rubbed her back and arms through the barely damp wool of her jacket.

"Come on," he said, turning her. "Come on, let's get you in a tub of hot water."

He felt her take hold of herself and stop it. "I don't ... know ..." she gasped. "I don't know if ... I want to see any more water!"

"Good girl," he said, grinning mechanically as he pushed her ahead of him into the narrow rear stairway.

She stopped inside the door as they came into the room. He turned on the light, and she walked, after a moment, across the room to the dresser and, pushing back her damp hair with one hand, stood looking at herself. Branch went past her into the bathroom to start the water running in the tub. When he came back she had turned to look at herself from the rear. He went to her and set her up straight, unfastened the still bright ornate gold buttons of her jacket, and slipped the jacket off.

"Get a move on," he said. "If you want the first one."

She looked at him and looked sideways at the mirror and made a short harsh sound in her throat that ended as a giggle. Her fingers fumbled for the fastenings of her skirt; and suddenly she was tugging at the waistband with all her strength, heedless of the pain as the cloth cut into her; the wool yielded abruptly down the side and she ripped it to the hem and put her foot into it and burst the hem apart. Branch stepped back as, kicking the mass of cloth across the room, she reached for the jacket he was holding.

"Cut it out," he said. "You're going to need this. You can't run around in nothing but a silk dress." Her face became slowly sane again. He patted her rear.

"Hurry up," he said.

She went and opened the bathroom door. The bathroom was cloudy with steam.

"Don't do that," she said over her shoulder.

"Do what?"

She did not look at him. "I don't ..." she said. "I want to feel that I don't have to let anybody ... Just for a little while."

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean anything personal."

He felt very tired, but after the door had closed behind her he could not stop moving about aimlessly; hanging her jacket on a wire hanger above the radiator, trying to brush it clean but the wool was still damp; and he sat down on the bed and undressed quickly and, wrapping his bathrobe about him, pulled off his socks and examined his feet, rose again, found a pair of nail scissors in his toilet kit, and returned to the bed to trim the broken blisters. In the bathroom the water had ceased to run and he could hear the girl splashing in the tub; then silence.

In the silence he could hear the remote sound of the wind in the trees outside; but when you were ashore the wind was not a matter of any importance. Nor did you ashore retain the feeling of aloneness, and of being dependent only on yourself, and of power. You could only think about how it had been out there and feel satisfied. He looked at his ragged feet and grinned a little. It did not annoy him to look at his feet any longer. They were not really in bad shape and the matter was taken care of.

He limped to the bathroom door, opened the door, and went inside.

Jeannette Duval's voice said, "Come in, darling," with a trace of irony.

He closed the door behind him and the steamy warm dampness of the tiny room enveloped him. Always such small places, he thought, a hotel room filled by a double bed, a cellar five feet ten inches under the beams, a boat's cabin. In the bathroom there was barely space enough to stand surrounded by washbasin, bathtub, radiator, and water closet.

She had turned to look at him, her long body folded relaxed into the abbreviated tub, only her knees and her head showing above the soapy water. Her wet dark hair, decked with soap, was twisted into a precarious knot on the top of her head. There were two deep scratches on her face and her left cheek was colored and swollen where Paul Laflin had struck her, but she did not really look too bad: she looked clean and, without a trace of makeup, quite young; almost as young as the girl in the picture Madame Faubel carried.

"Isn't it awful?" she said, smiling up at him cautiously, as if it hurt her a little to smile. "And my legs. ... I don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't even any stockings to cover them up with."

"You haven't any anything," he said, "until I get your suitcase from down the hall." He turned away from the question in her eyes and filled the washbasin with warm water. "Are you all right?" he asked. "I mean ..."

"I know what you mean, darling. I'm quite all right. I don't want to think about it, but I'm all right."

"Kind of rugged, eh?" he said. "Fate worse than death and stuff."

"It was rather cold," she said, and sat up, groping for soap and washcloth in the water that surrounded her. There was a large blue welt on her arm just above the elbow and her breast was curiously marked. I should have drowned them, Branch thought, I really should have drowned them.

He asked abruptly, "Well, what are you going to do now?" He was aware that she had looked at him quickly, as he went on: "He'll be getting into Baltimore in three-four hours. They'll grab him and ship him back. He's probably lucky. There was a little too much breeze out there to pick up a man in the water, particularly if he didn't dare show a light."

After a long pause her voice said, "I don't care. It was just something I had to do."

"You're not going to ... ?"

"No. I will not be waiting outside the prison gates for Louis."

He bent over the washbasin and washed and rinsed his face until the taste of salt was completely replaced by the taste of soap. He dried himself with a towel and turned to look at her again.

"Well ..." he said.

She asked, "What are you going to do now, Philip?"

"Get your suitcase," he said, willfully obtuse. Then, she waiting unsmiling for his answer, he said, "I'm going home. Home to mama."

"And you are going without me, aren't you, Philip?" she said, smiling a little. "That's what you are trying to say, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said.

"Because of Louis? Or because of what those men... ?"

He asked, "What would I do with you? Keep you for a pet?"

"I could get a divorce " she said quietly. "It shouldn't be very difficult under the circumstances." He could see the restrained anger in her eyes.

"It's too damned complicated," he said.

"You don't have to worry about ... any consequences," she said. "I am twenty-four years old and I have been married. There will be no little Laflins or Hahns. And I am quite all right."

He watched her shiver a little and sink back into the warm water, her face turned away from him. Her voice was remote when she spoke again, and she did not look at him.

"You had better put on some pajamas if you're going to get my things. Your legs are a bit startling like that."

"I'm sorry...." he began awkwardly.

"Please get my things, Philip," she said wearily. She turned her bruised face towards him. "And I would like that two hundred dollars you were going to give me, darling. If you still ..."

"Yes," he said. "Of course." He passed a comb quickly through his hair and turned to flee.

"Philip."

"Yes." He paused at the door to look back.

"I'm very tired of being an adventuress, darling," she said.

"Oh, for God's sake!" he cried. "For God's sake, leave it alone. It's no good."

SHE WAS STILL IN THE TUB when he returned with the suitcase, which he set on top of the radiator. She glanced at him and reached forward to open the drain.

"Did you have any trouble?" she asked without interest.

He shook his head. "I said I was Georges. She opened the door and popped back into bed. I went in, got the suitcase, and walked out again before she'd got over the shock."

"Strange little girl," Jeannette Duval said."She was in a concentration camp, they told me, Branch said. "Full of psychoses, neuroses, and ulcers." He corrected himself: "No, it was the woman who had the ulcers. She's got something else wrong with her. Beside the psychoses. She's full of those. Just a little breeding ground for psychoses."

They were being very matter-of-fact about it now, and it was all settled, and he said briskly after a moment: "You'd better hurry up. One of these days they're going to drift ashore and head this way... ."

"Aren't you afraid they'll-"

"No," he said. "I can handle them."

She smiled a little. "You're very confident."

"I'm too damned tired to be scared," be said. "Of anything. But if you want a decent start on them ..."

He watched her rise and draw a towel about herself without haste as the water ran out around her feet.

"You're not being very polite," she said, rubbing herself with the towel. "You do not have to stare at me. Sometimes you act very much like an inquisitive small boy, Philip, a little boy who is trying very hard to act like a man but does not always know how."

He made himself laugh as he turned away. "Run one for me, will you?" he said over his shoulder. "Make it good and hot."

"All right, darling."

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, closing his eyes. Think of waking up to that every morning, he told himself, trying to make a joke of it: how would you like to meet that tongue across the table every morning.

Opening his eyes, he saw the small girl that he had left sitting bolt upright in bed, now sitting primly on a straight chair beside the door of his room. She had taken time to pull a dress on, the brown print silk dress with the small buttons down the bodice, the upper third of which were unfastened; and the laces of her low-heeled shoes were untied. Her hair was untidy about her crowded small pale face and she looked small and slovenly and, in spite of what he knew about her, cheaply wanton. The small Mauser rested on the thin silk of her dress where the skirt did not quite reach her knee. Seeing the gun, he realized that he had taken one emotion for another. This was a different kind of excitation.

"I thought I locked the door," he said softly.

Behind him he heard the last gurgle as the water ran out of the tub, a sloshing sound as Jeannette Duval rinsed away the traces of soap, and the heavy rush of water as she opened the taps to draw his bath for him.

"I have a key," Constance Bellamann said.

"You would."

"Where are they?" she asked.

"About six miles south of Signal Point," Branch said. "If they haven't hit shore yet."

The gun moved a little. "You killed them."

"No," Branch said. "We just walked home from the ride." He went to the bed and sat down facing her.

"You killed them," the small girl whispered. "You wouldn't be here if you hadn't killed them. Where is the man? Is he in there, too?"

In the bathroom, over the steady rushing of water into the tub, he could hear a rhythmic whipping sound as Jeannette Duval dried her hair with a towel. She would not be hearing their conversation. The noise of running water would be filling the tiny bathroom.

"No, she's alone," he said, and suddenly he knew that this was true. She was quite alone.

He sat looking at the smaller girl. He had once been sorry for her, but there was, after all, something she could do about it. She did not have to run around with a gun making a damned fool of herself. Somewhere she had a family. There were relief organizations. There were the three of them in the boat who would be returning to take care of her in their fashion. She was not alone unless she wanted to be alone. The other girl had no choice.

"It was quite rough out there," Branch said slowly. "Not dangerous, if you took your time, but I gave her full ahead when we got out clear of the river, and they thought it was a hurricane. Madame tried to order me back. I laughed at her. If she'd shot me they would all have drowned. Both men got seasick and I locked them into the cabin. I ran into the red sector of Signal Point Light and Madame got rattled when the light turned red. Perhaps she thought it was some kind of an omen. I took the gun away from her and wrecked the engine and we went over the side and waded ashore. The last I saw of them they were drifting about south southwest. If they had sense enough to stay with the boat they ought to be coming ashore any time now."

Constance Bellamann smiled a little. "You are lying to me. You killed them."

He looked at the small eye of the Mauser, which trembled a little, and he felt the familiar tightness inside him. Crazy little bitch, he thought, ought to have her fanny paddled.

"Just because all your friends are kill-crazy ..." he said.

"You have no right to talk about us," she said. "You have no right to call us names."

He smiled at the gun. "I should have drowned them," he said. "But they were so helpless out there it was a little pathetic. Like little children. Paul couldn't even steer a straight course in the river. It's just like an automobile, he said, and the boat started to go in circles. They had to ask me please to take over again. I never had so much fun in my life. I should spoil it by killing them...."

"Be quiet," she said sharply. "We will wait until she comes out."

Presently he looked at the traveling clock on the bedside table. It read five-twenty, but the electric light in the room made it impossible to know if there was daylight behind the drawn blinds. But the hotel was awakening a little and a milk wagon clattered down a distant street and cans were rattled in some alley. Then the water stopped running in the bathroom and the door opened.

"It's ready for you, dar-"

"We've got company," he said.

He watched her come slowly into the room, her disfigured face contracting a little, suddenly bitterly weary. She stood fastening the small gold buttons of her black silk dress; then smoothed the tunic over her hips and tied the belt about her waist, standing very tall and slender in high heels.

"My God, darling," she said. "Don't tell me there's another one."

He felt strangely proud of her. She had, as the chinless man had once pointed out, no instinct for martyrdom. If there was a way out she would take it. But now, seeing no way out, she faced the gun without hesitation, perhaps a little unnecessarily contemptuous of it, overdoing it a little, but as unafraid as one could ask of an intelligent person faced with death.

"Both of us?" she asked, and smiled. "Won't that be cozy?"

The small girl got to her feet abruptly. "You are so funny, Madame Duval," she said viciously. "So very funny!"

Branch stood up. Constance Bellamann swung to point the gun at him.

"You can give me the gun now," he said and, walking forward quickly: "Rasch! Die Pistole! Gib sie mir!" He snapped his fingers impatiently. "Quick before I take it away from you, you lousy little French tramp, or I'll beat your goddamned ears off...." The girl shrank back against the wall and dropped the Mauser into his outstretched hand.

He felt his whole body break into uncontrollable trembling and, throwing the gun to the bed, he struck her with all his strength, open-handed, on the side of the head. She fell to the door and crouched there, staring up at him.

"Get the bloody hell out of here, Branch gasped, "Before I take your pants down and give you a good licking. Go on. Scram. Beat it!" He jerked the door open. The small girl picked herself up and edged herself along the wall past him. The side of her face had turned a dull red where he had struck her.

"Bitte?" she whispered, glancing at the door.

"Jawohl," he said. "Heraus."

She darted out. He closed the door behind her and leaned against it, trembling. "It's a good thing ..." he gasped. "It's a good thing the Gestapo had them well trained." He let his breath go out in a long sigh. "Jesus," he said. "Jesus Christ. I don't like guns."

"Come on, darling," Jeannette Duval said, taking his arm. "You had better sit down."

He let her lead him to the bed, and sat down, and picked up the gun; and laughed bitterly. "I've been giving them back and throwing them away and still I wind up with one," he said. He glanced at the girl, who had seated herself beside him. "You'll notice I waited until you came in, so that you could see how brave I was."

"Yes," she said. "I noticed." She was smiling a little, her face relaxing slowly from the strain.

"Showoff Branch,," he said. "Bigmouth Branch.... Poor kid," he said, "I hope she doesn't throw a fit or jump out of a window. Did you see the way she reacted? I've been sitting here trying to remember my German. I couldn't remember anything. I figured it would go better in German.... She must have been through hell, all right," he said. "Like a trained poodle. Did you see how she asked permission before leaving the room? Makes you want to retch,, doesn't it? I didn't mean to hit her. It was just a sort of reflex. I don't like to be scared...." He made himself stop talking. After a while he said, "God, I'm tired, Jeannette" He felt her hand begin to stroke his hair and then draw back, and he turned slowly to look at her. "I should go now," she said.

"Yes."

"Do you ... want me to go?"

"No," he said. "But you'd better go just the same," he said.

He sat quite still and presently felt her rise and go away from him. It was some time before she returned, wearing the wool jacket over her black silk dress, and carrying the suitcase. He glanced at her and rose, went to the dresser, and came back with a sheaf of bills, which he put in her hand. Then he laid Constance Bellamann's pistol on top of the bills and closed her fingers over it.

"You might need that," he said. "I don't know how to use it."

"You'll figure it out," he said.

"You're afraid, Philip," she said. "Afraid of what people will think. Because of the divorce. Because my husband was of Vichy.... You really want me, don't you, Philip?" she whispered. "And you will always remember and regret, and wonder what happened to me....?

What she was saying was quite true, but it did not make any difference.

"It's getting light." he said. "You'd better go. There's a bus at six-thirty."

"You love me," she said. "If you were not afraid ..."

He glanced at her irritably. "It's too damned complicated" he said. "And it isn't worth it. I could love you twice as much as I do and it still wouldn't be worth it."

Her laughter was a little shrill. "That's what I said about ... about Louis, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Yes. He wasn't worth it, to you. Not when it started to hurt. And I wasn't worth it when you thought I might let you swim ashore...."

She was silent. At last she said softly, "I could cry. If I cried, you would let me stay, wouldn't you, Philip?"

He did not say anything. He watched her push the money and the gun into the pocket of her jacket and turn away. It seemed a very long time before the door closed behind her.

Presently he shivered a little and went forward and locked the door and put the chair on which Constance Bellamann had sat under the knob. There was nothing left to do but bathe and sleep and go home.