on the glass-topped table. I just couldn't help it. It was funny." "Sure, Doc. But I had to play it straight. It was part of the act. But it was corny; I don't blame you for acting amused. And Doc, I'm sorry I did it. I didn't know the whole score ­ you've got proof of that. If I had, I wouldn't have drunk what was in that bottle. I didn't look like a man who wanted to die, did I, Doc?" I shook my head slowly, looking at the laughter-lines around his eyes and his mouth. He didn't look like a man who wanted to die. But he had died, suddenly and horribly. "I'm sorry, Smitty," I told him. "I'm sorry as hell. I'd give a hell of a lot to bring you back, to have you really sitting there." He chuckled. "Don't get maudlin, Doc. It'll spoil your thinking. You're trying to think, you know." "I know," I said. "But I had to get it out of my system. All right, Smitty. You're dead and I can't do anything about it. You're the little man who isn't there. And I can't ask you any questions I can't answer myself, so really you can't help me." "Are you sure, Doc? Even if you ask the right questions?" "What do you mean? That my subconscious mind might know the answers even if I don't?" He laughed. "Let's not get Freudian. Let's stick to Lewis Carroll. I really was a Carroll enthusiast, you know. I was a fast study, but not that fast. I couldn't have memorized all that about him just for one occasion." The phrase struck me, "a fast study." I repeated it and went on where it led me, "You were an actor, Smitty? Hell, don't answer it. You must have been. I should have guessed that. An actor hired to play a part." He grinned a bit wryly. "Not too good an actor, then, or you wouldn't have guessed it. And pretty much of a sucker, Doc, to have accepted the role. I should have guessed that there was more in it than what he told me." He shrugged. "Well, I played you a dirty trick, but I played a worse one on myself. Didn't I?" "I'm sorry you're dead, Smitty. God damn it, I liked you." "I'm glad, Doc. I haven't liked myself too well these last few years. You've figured it out by now so I can tell you ­ I was pretty down and out to take a booking like that, and at the price he offered me for it. And damn him, he didn't pay me in advance except my expenses, so what did I gain by it? I got killed. Wait, don't get maudlin about that again. Let's drink to it." We drank to it. There are worse things than getting killed. And there are worse ways of dying than suddenly when you aren't expecting it, when you're slightly tight and­ But that subject wasn't getting us anywhere. "You were a character actor," I said. "Doc, you disappoint me by belaboring the obvious. And that doesn't help you to figure out who Anybody is." "Anybody?" "That's what you were calling him to yourself when you were thinking things out, in a half-witted sort of way, not so long ago. Remember thinking that Anybody could have got into your printing shop and Anybody could have set up one line of type and figured out how to print one good card on that little hand press, but why would Anybody­" "Unfair," I said. "You can get inside my mind, because ­ because, hell, that's where you are. But I can't get into yours. You know who Anybody is. But I don't." "Even I, Doc, might not know his real name. In case something went wrong, he wouldn't have told me that. Something like ­ well, suppose you'd grabbed that `Drink Me' bottle when you first found the table and tossed it off before I could tell you that it was my prerogative to do so. Yes, there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in so complicated a deal as that one was." I nodded. "Yes, suppose Al Grainger had come around for that game of chess and we'd taken him along. Suppose ­ suppose I hadn't lived to get home at all. I had a narrow squeak earlier in the evening, you know." "In that case, Doc, it never would have happened. You ought to be able to figure that out without my telling you.. If you'd been killed, you and Smiley, earlier in the evening, then ­ at least if Anybody had learned about it, as he probably would have ­ Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison wouldn't have been killed later. At least not tonight. A wheel would have come off the plans and I'd have gone back to ­ wherever I came from. And everything would have been off." I said, "But suppose I'd stayed at the office far into the night working on one of those big stories I thought I had ­ and was so happy about. How would Anybody have known?" "Can't tell you that, Doc. But you might guess. Suppose I had orders to keep Anybody posted on your movements, if they went off schedule. When you left the house, saying you'd be back shortly, I'd have used your phone and told him that. And when you phoned that you were on your way back I'd have let him know, while you were walking home, wouldn't I?" "But that was pretty late." "Not too late for him to have intercepted Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney on their way back from Neilsville ­ under certain circumstances ­ if his plans had been held in abeyance until he was sure you'd be home and out of circulation before midnight." I said, "Under certain circumstances," and wondered just what I meant by it. Yehudi Smith smiled. He lifted his glass and looked at me mockingly over the rim of it before he drank. He said, "Go on, Doc. You're only in the second square, but your next move will be a good one. You go to the fourth square by train, you know." "And the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff." "And that's the answer, Doc," he said, quietly. I stared at him. A prickle went down my back. Outside, in the night, a clock struck four times. "What do you mean, Smitty?" I asked him, slowly. The little man who wasn't there poured more whisky from an imaginary bottle into his imaginary glass. He said, "Doc, you've been letting the glass-topped table and the bottle and the key fool you. They're from Alice in Wonderland. Originally, of course, called Alice's Adventures Underground. Wonderful book. But you're in the second." "The second square? You just said that." "The second book. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. And, Doc, you know as well as I what Alice found there." I poured myself another drink, a short one this time, to match his. I didn't bother with ice or seltzer. He raised his glass. "You've got it now, Doc," he said. "Not all of it, but enough to start on. You might still see the dawn come up." "Don't be so God damn dramatic," I said; "certainly I'm going to see the dawn come up." "Even if Kates comes here again looking for you? Don't forget when he misses that rusty gun in your pocket, he'll know you were at the courthouse when he was looking for you here. He might recheck all his previous stops. And you're awfully damned careless in filling the place with cigar smoke, you know." "You mean it's worth a thousand pounds a puff?" He put back his head and laughed and then he quit laughing and he wasn't there any more, even in my imagination, because a sudden slight sound made me look toward the door that led upstairs, to Smiley's rooms. The door opened and Smiley was standing there. In a nightshirt. I hadn't known anybody wore nightshirts any more, but Smiley wore one. His eyes looked sleepy and his hair ­ what was left of it ­ was tousled and he was barefoot. He had a gun in his hand, the little short-barreled thirty-eight Banker's Special I'd given him some hours ago. In his huge hand it looked tiny, a toy. It didn't look like something that had knocked a Buick off the road, killing one man and badly injuring another, that very evening. There wasn't any expression on his face, none at all. I wonder what mine looked like. But through a looking- glass or not, I didn't have one to look into. Had I been talking to myself aloud? Or had my conversation with Yehudi Smith been imaginary, within my own mind? I honestly didn't know. If I'd really been talking to myself, it was going to be a hell of a thing to have to explain. Especially if Kates had, on his stop here, awakened Smiley and told him that I was crazy. In any case, what the hell could I possibly say right now but "Hello, Smiley?" I opened my mouth to say "Hello, Smiley," but I didn't. Someone was pounding on the glass of the front door. Someone who yelled, "Hey, open up here!" in the voice of Sheriff Rance Kates. I did the only reasonable thing to do. I poured myself another drink. CHAPTER FOURTEEN "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose­ What made you so awfully clever?" Kates hammered again and tried the knob. Smiley stared at me and I stared back at him. I couldn't say anything ­ even if I could have thought of anything to say ­ to him at that distance without the probability of Kates hearing my voice. Kates hammered again. I heard him say something to Hank about breaking in the glass. Smiley bent down and placed the gun on the step behind him and then came out of the door into the tavern. Without looking at me he walked toward the front door and, at sight of him, Kates stopped the racket there. Smiley didn't walk quite straight toward the door; he made a slight curve that took him past my table. As he passed, he reached out and jerked the cigar out of my hand. He stuck it in his mouth and then went to the door and opened it. I couldn't see in that direction, of course, and I didn't stick my head around the corner of the el. I sat there and sweated. "What you want? Why such a hell of a racket?" I heard Smiley demand. Kates' voice: "Thought Stoeger was here. That smoke­" "Left my cigar down here," Smiley said. "Remembered it when I got back up and came down to get it. Why all the racket?" "It was damn near half an hour ago when I was here," Kates said belligerently. "Cigar doesn't burn that long." Smiley said patiently, "I couldn't sleep after you were here. I came down and got myself a drink five minutes ago. I left my cigar down here." His voice got soft, very soft. "Now get the hell out of here. You've spoiled my night already. Didn't get to sleep till two and you wake me at half past three and come around again at four. What's the big idea, Kates?" "You're sure Stoeger isn't­" "I told you I'd call you if I saw him. Now, you bastard, get out of here." I could imagine Kates turning purple. I could imagine him looking at Smiley and realizing that Smiley was half again as strong as he was. The door slammed so hard it must have come very near to breaking the glass. Smiley came back. Without looking back at me he said quietly, "Don't move, Doc. He might look back in a minute or two." He went on around behind the bar, got himself a glass and poured a drink. He sat down on the stool he keeps for himself back there, facing slightly to the back so his lip movement wouldn't show to anyone looking in the front window. He took a sip of the drink and a puff of my cigar. I kept my voice as low as he'd kept his. I said, "Smiley, you ought to have your mouth washed out with soap. You told a lie." He grinned. "Not that I know of, Doc. I told him I'd call him if I saw you. I did call him. Didn't you hear what I called him?" "Smiley," I said, "this is the screwiest night I've ever been through but the screwiest thing about it is that you're developing a sense of humor. I didn't think you had it in you." "How bad trouble are you in, Doc? What can I do?" I said, "Nothing. Except what you just did do, and thanks to hell and back for that. It's something I've got to think out; and work out for myself, Smiley. Nobody can help me." "Kates said, when he was here the first time, you were a ho ­ homi ­ what the hell was it?" "Homicidal maniac," I said. "He thinks I killed two men tonight. Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney." "Yeah. Don't bother telling me you didn't." I said, "Thanks, Smiley." And then it occurred to me that "Don't bother telling me you didn't" could be taken either one of two ways. And I wondered again if I had been talking to myself aloud or only in my imagination while Smiley had been walking down those stairs and opening the door. I asked him, "Smiley, do you think I'm crazy?" "I've always thought you were crazy, Doc. But crazy in a nice way." I thought how wonderful it is to have friends. Even if I was crazy, there were two people in Carmel City that I could count on to go to bat for, me. There was Smiley and there was Carl. But, damn it, friendship should work both ways. This was my danger and my problem and I had no business dragging Smiley into it any farther than he'd already stuck his neck. If I told Smiley that Kates had tried to kill me and still intended to, then Smiley ­ who hates Kates' guts already ­ would go out looking for Kates and like as not kill him with his bare hands, or get shot trying it. I couldn't do that to Smiley. I said, "Smiley, finish your drink and go up to bed again. I've got to think." "Sure there's no way I can help you, Doc?" "Positive." He tossed off the rest of his drink and tamped out the cigar in an ash tray. He said, "Okay, Doc, I know you're smarter than I am, and if it's brains you need for help, I'm just in the way. Good luck to you." He walked back to the door of the staircase. He looked carefully at the front windows to be sure nobody was looking in and then he reached inside and picked up the revolver from the step on which he'd placed it. He came walking over to my table. He said, "Doe, if you are a ho ­ homi ­ what you said, you might want to kill somebody else tonight. That's loaded. I even replaced the two bullets I shot out of it, earlier." He put it down on the table in front of me, turned his back to me and went back to the stairs. I watched him go, marveling. I'd never yet seen a man in a nightshirt who hadn't looked ridiculous. Until then. What more can a man do to prove he doesn't think you're insane than give you a loaded gun and then turn his back and walk away. And when I thought of all the times I'd razzed Smiley and ridden him, all the cracks I'd made at him, I wanted­ Well, I couldn't answer when he said "Goodnight, Doc," just before he closed the door behind him. Something felt a little wrong with my throat, and if I'd tried to say anything, I might have bawled. My hand shook a little as I poured myself another drink, a short one. I was beginning to feel them and this had better be my last one, I knew. I had to think more clearly than I'd ever thought before. I couldn't get drunk, I didn't dare. I tried to get my mind back to what I'd been thinking about ­ what I'd been talking about to the little man who wasn't there ­ before Smiley's coming downstairs and Kates' knocking had interrupted me. I looked across the table where Yehudi Smith, in my mind, had been sitting. But he wasn't there. I couldn't bring him back. He was dead, and he wouldn't come back. The quiet room in the quiet night. The dim light of the single twenty-watt bulb over the cash register. The creaking of my thoughts as I tried to turn them back into the groove. Connect facts. Lewis Carroll and bloody murder. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. What had Alice found there? Chessmen, and a game of chess. And Alice herself had been a pawn. That was why, of course, she'd crossed the third square by railroad. With the smoke alone worth a thousand pounds a puff ­ almost as expensive as the smoke from my cigar might have been had not Smiley taken it out of my hand and claimed it as his own. Chessmen, and a game of chess. But who was the player? And suddenly I knew. Illogically, because he didn't have a shadow of a motive. The Why I did not see, but Yehudi Smith had told me the How, and now I saw the Who. The pattern. Whoever had arranged tonight's little chess problem played chess all right, and played it well. Looking- glass chess and real chess, both. And he knew me well ­ which meant I knew him, too. He knew my weaknesses, the things I'd fall for. He knew I'd go with Yehudi Smith on the strength of that mad, weird story Smith had told me. But why? What had he to gain? He'd killed Miles Harrison, Ralph Bonney and Yehudi Smith. And he'd left the money Miles and Ralph had been carrying in that brief case and put it in the back of my car, with the two bodies. Then money hadn't been the motive. Either that, or the motive had been money in such large quantity that the couple of thousand dollars Bonney had been carrying didn't matter. But wasn't a man concerned who was one of the richest men in Carmel City? Ralph Bonney. His fireworks factory, his other investments, his real estate must have added up to ­ well, maybe half a million dollars. A man shooting for half a million dollars can well abandon the proceeds of a two thousand dollar holdup and leave them with the bodies of the men he has killed, to help pin the crime on the pawn he has selected to divert suspicion from himself. Connect facts. Ralph Bonney was divorced today. He was murdered tonight. Then Miles Harrison's death was incidental. Yehudi Smith had been another pawn. A warped mind, but a brilliant mind. A cold, cruel mind. And yet, paradoxically, a mind that loved fantasy, as I did, that loved Lewis Carroll, as I did. I started to pour myself another drink and then remembered that I still had only part of the answer, and that even if I had it all, I hadn't the slightest idea what I could do with it, without a shred of evidence, or an iota of proof. Without even an idea, in my own mind, of the reason, the motive. But there must be one; the rest of it was too well planned, too logical. There was one possibility that I could see. I sat there listening a while to be sure there was no car approaching; the night was so quiet that, I could have heard one at least a block away. I looked at the gun Smiley had given me back, hesitated, and finally put it in my pocket. Then I went into the back room and let myself out of the window into the dark alley. Carl Trenholm's house was three blocks away. Luckily, it was on the street next to Oak Street and parallel to it. I could make all of the distance through the alley except for the streets I'd have to cross. I heard a car coming as I approached the second street and I ducked down and hid behind a garbage can until it had gone by. It was going slowly and it was probably either Hank and the sheriff or the two deputies. I didn't look out to see for fear they might flash a spotlight down the alley. I waited until the sound of it died away completely before I crossed the street. I let myself in the back gate of Carl's place. With his wife away, I wasn't positive which bedroom he'd be sleeping in, but I found pebbles and tossed them at the most likely window and it was the right one. It went up and Carl's head came out. I stepped close to the house so I wouldn't have to yell. I said, "It's Doc, Carl. Don't light a light anywhere in the house. But come down to the back door." "Coming, Doc." He closed the window. I went up on the back porch and waited until the door opened and I went in. I closed the door behind me and the kitchen was as black as the inside of a tomb. Carl said, "Damned if I know where a flashlight is, Doc. Can't we put on a light? I feel like hell." "No, leave it off," I told him. I struck a match, though, to find my way to a chair and it showed me Carl in rumpled pajamas, his hair mussed and looking like he was in for the grandfather of all hangovers. He sat down, too, while the match flared. "What's it about, Doc? Kates and Ganzer were here looking for you. Waked me up a while ago, but they didn't tell me much. Are you in a jam, Doc? Did you kill somebody?" "No," I said. "Listen, you're Ralph Bonney's lawyer, aren't you? I mean on everything, not just the divorce today." "Yes." "Who's his heir, now that he's divorced?" "Doc, I'm afraid I can't tell you that. A lawyer isn't supposed to tell his clients' business. You know that as well as I do." "Didn't Kates tell you Ralph Bonney is dead, Carl? And Miles Harrison? They were murdered on their way back from Neilsville with the payroll, somewhere around midnight." "My God," Carl said. "No, Kates didn't tell me." I said, "I know you're still not supposed to tell his business until a will is probated, if there is one. But listen, let me make a guess and you can tell me if I'm wrong. If I guess right, you won't have to confirm it; just keep your mouth shut." "Go ahead, Doc." "Bonney had an illegitimate son about twenty-three years ago. But he supported the boy's mother all her life until she died recently; she worked, too, as a milliner but he gave her enough extra so that she lived better than she would have otherwise, and she sent the boy to college and gave him every break." I stopped there and waited and Carl didn't say anything. I went on. "Bonney still gave the boy an allowance. That's how he ­ hell, let's call him by name ­ that's how Al Grainger has been living without working. And unless he knows he's in Bonney's will, he's got proof of his parentage and can claim the bulk of the estate anyway. And it must be half a million." Carl said, "I'll talk. It'll run about three hundred thousand. And you guessed right on Al Grainger, but how you guessed it, I don't know. Bonney's relations to Mrs. Grainger and to Al have been the best-kept secret I've ever known of. In fact, outside of the parties concerned, I was the only person who ever knew ­ or even suspected. How did you guess?" "By what happened to me tonight ­ and that's too complicated to explain right now. But Al plays chess and has the type of mind to do things the complicated way, and that's the way they happened. And he knows Lewis Carroll and­" I stopped because I was still after facts and didn't want to start explaining. The night was almost over. I saw a greenish gleam in the darkness that reminded me Carl wore a wrist watch with a luminous dial. "What time is it?" I asked him. The gleam vanished as he turned the dial toward himself. "Almost five o'clock. About ten minutes of. Listen, Doc, you've got so much you might as well have the rest. Yes, Al has proof of his parentage. And, as an only child, illegitimate or not, he can claim the entire estate now that Bonney isn't married. He could have cut in for a fraction of it, of course, even before the divorce." "Didn't he leave a will?" "Ralph didn't ever make a will. Superstitious about it. I've often tried to talk him into making one, but he never would." "And Al Grainger knew that?" Carl said, "I imagine he would have." "Is there any reason why Al would have been in such a hurry?" I asked. "I mean, would there have been any change in status if he'd waited a while instead of killing Bonney the night after the divorce?" Carl thought a minute. "Bonney was planning to leave tomorrow for a long vacation. Al would have had to wait several months, and maybe he figured Bonney might remarry ­ meet someone on the cruise he was going to take. It happens that way, sometimes, on the rebound after a divorce. And Bonney is ­ was, only fifty-two." I nodded ­ to myself, since Carl couldn't see me in the darkness. That last bit of information covered everything on the motive end. I knew everything now, except the details and they didn't matter much. I knew why Al had done everything that he had done; he had to make an airtight frame on someone because once he claimed Bonney's estate, his own motive would be obvious. I could even guess some of the reasons why he'd picked me for the scapegoat. He must have hated me, and kept it carefully under cover. I could see a reason for it, now that I knew more about him. I've got a loose tongue and often swear at people affectionately, if you know what I mean. How often, when Al had beaten me in a game of chess had I grinned at him and said, "All right, you bastard. But try to do it again." Never dreaming, of course, that he was one, and knew it. He must have hated me like hell. In some ways he could have picked an easier victim, someone more likely than I to have committed murder and robbery for money. Choosing me, his plan took more gobbledegook; he had to give me such a mad story to tell that nobody would believe a word of it and would think, instead, that I'd gone insane. Of course, too, he knew how much Kates hated me; he counted on that. A sudden thought shook me; could Kates have been in on the deal with Al? That would account for his trying to kill me rather than lock me up. Maybe that was the deal ­ for a twenty or fifty thousand dollar cut of the estate, Kates had agreed to shoot me down under the pretense that I had attacked him or had tried to escape. No, I decided on second thought, it hadn't been that way. I'd been alone with Kates in his office for almost half an hour while Hank Ganzer had been on his way back from Neilsville. It would have been too easy for Kates to have killed me then, planted a weapon on me and claimed that I'd come in and attacked him. And when the two bodies had been found in my car, the story would have been perfectly credible. It would even have pointed up the indication that I'd gone homicidally insane. No, Kates' motive for wanting to kill me had been personal, sheer malice because of the things I'd written about him in editorials and the way I'd fought him in elections. He'd wanted to kill me and had seen a sudden opportunity when the bodies had been found in my car. He'd passed up a much better chance because, when I was alone with him for so long in his office, he hadn't known the bodies were there. No, definitely this was a one-man job, except for Yehudi Smith. Al had hired Smith to keep me diverted, but when Smith's job was done, he was eliminated. Another pawn. Chess isn't a team game. Carl said, "How are you mixed in this, Doc? What can I do?" "Nothing," I said. It was my problem, not Carl's. I'd kept Smiley out of it; I'd keep Carl out of it, too. Except for the information and help he'd already given me. "Go up to bed, Carl. I've got a little more thinking to do." "Hell with that. I can't sleep with you sitting down here thinking. But I'll sit here and shut up unless you talk to me. You can't tell whether I'm here or not anyway, if I shut up." I said, "Shut up, then." Proof, I thought. But what proof? Somewhere, but God knew where, was the dead body of the actor Al had hired to play the role of Yehudi. But this had been planned, and well planned. Suitable disposal of that body had been arranged for long before Al had taken it away from the Wentworth place. I wasn't going to turn up at random and one guess was as good as another as to where he'd hidden or buried it. He'd had hours to do it in and he'd known in advance every step he was going to take. The car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me to the Wentworth house and which he'd switched for my own car after he'd used mine for the supposed holdup. No, I couldn't find that car as proof and it wouldn't mean anything if I did. It could have been ­ probably was ­ a stolen car, and now returned to wherever he'd stolen it from, never missed by its owner. And I didn't even remember what make or model it was. All I remembered was that it had an onyx gear shift knob and a push button radio. I didn't even know whether it was a Cadillac convertible, or a Ford business coupe. Had Al arranged any kind of an alibi for himself? Maybe, maybe not, but what did it matter unless I could find something against him besides motive? That, and my own certainty that he'd done it. I hadn't any alibi, none at all. I had an incredible story and two bodies and the stolen money in my car. And a sheriff and three deputies looking for me and ready to shoot on sight. I had the murder weapon in my pocket. And another gun, too, a loaded one. Could I go to Al Grainger and scare him into writing out and signing a confession? He'd laugh at me. I'd laugh at myself for trying. A man with the warped brain that would work out something like Al's plan tonight wasn't going to tell me what time it was just because I pointed a gun at him. A faint touch of light was showing at the windows. I could even make out Carl sitting there across the table from me. "Carl," I said. "Yes, Doc? Say, I was letting you think but I'm glad you spoke. Just had an idea." "An idea's what I need," I told him. "What is it?" "Want a drink?" I asked, "Is that the idea?" "That's the idea. Look, I'm hung over to hell and back and I can't have one with you, but I just realized what a lousy host I was. Do you want one?" "Thanks," I said, "but I had a drink. Listen, Carl, talk to me about Al Grainger. Don't ask me what to say. Just talk." "Anything, at random?" "Anything, at random." "Well, he's always impressed me as being a little off the beam. Brilliant, but ­ well, twisted, somehow. Maybe his knowledge of who and what he was contributed to that. Smiley always felt that, too; he's mentioned it to me. Not that Smiley knows who or what Al is, but he just felt something was wrong." I said, "My opinion of Smiley has changed a lot tonight. He's smarter, and a better guy, than both of us put together, Carl. But go on about Al." "Touch of Oedipus, complicated by bastardry. Probably, in some obscure way, managed to blame Bonney for his mother's death. Not a real paranoiac, but near enough to do something like that. Sadism ­ most of us have a touch of it, but Al a little more than most." I said, "Most of us have a touch of everything. Go on." "Pyrophobia. But you know about that. Not that we haven't all got phobias. Your acrophobia and my being afraid of cats. But Al's is pretty bad. So afraid of fire that he doesn't smoke and I've noticed him wince when I've lighted a cig­" "Shut up, Carl," I said. I should have thought of it myself, sooner. A lot sooner. I said, "I'll have that drink, Carl. Just one, but a good one." I didn't need it physically, but I needed it mentally this time. I was scared stiff at the very thought of what I was going to do. CHAPTER FIFTEEN One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. The windows were faint gray rectangles; now, with my eyes accustomed to the decreasing darkness, I could see Carl almost clearly as he went to the cupboard and groped until he had the bottle he was looking for. He said, "Doc, you sound happy enough that I'll have one with you. Hair of the dog, for me. Kill or cure." He got two glasses, too, from over the sink, breaking only one glass by knocking it into the sink in the process. He said a nasty word and then brought the glasses to the table. I struck a match and held it while he poured whisky into them. He said, "Damn you, Doc, if you're going to do this often. I'm going to get some luminous paint. I could paint bands around the glasses and the bottles. And say, know what else I could do? I could paint a chessboard and a set of chessmen with luminous paint, too. Then we could sit here and play chess in the dark." "I'm playing, Carl, right now. I just reached the seventh square. Maybe somebody'll crown me on the next move, when I reach the king-row. Have you got any cleaning fluid?" He'd started to reach for his glass, but he pulled his hand back and looked at me instead. "Cleaning fluid? Isn't whisky good enough for you?" "I don't want it to drink," I explained. "I want it not to burn." He shook his head a trifle. "Again and slowly." "I want some of the kind that isn't inflammable. You know what I mean." "Wife's got some kind of cleaning fluid around. Whether it's that kind or not, I don't know. I'll look." He looked, using my matches and examining the labels of a row of bottles in the compartment under the sink. He came up with one and looked at it closely. "Hope. This is marked `Danger' in big letters and `Keep away from fire.' Guess we haven't got the non-inflammable kind." I sighed. It would have been simple if Carl had had the right brand. I had some myself, at home, but I didn't want to go there. It meant a trip to the supermarket. And I didn't ask Carl for a candle. I could get that at the supermarket, too, and I neither wanted Carl to think I was crazy or to have to explain to him what I was going to do. We had our drink. Carl shuddered at his, but got it down. He said, "Doc, listen, isn't there anything I can do?" I turned back at the door. "You've done plenty," I told him. "But if you want to do more, you might get dressed and ready. I might be phoning you soon if everything goes all right. I might need you then." "Doc, wait. I'll get dressed now, and­" "You'd be in the way, Carl," I told him. And got out quickly before he could press me any farther. If he'd even guessed how bad a jam I was in or what a damn fool thing I was going to do, he'd have knocked me down and tied me up before he'd have let me out of there. Dim gray light of early morning now, and I no longer had to grope my way. I'd forgotten to ask Carl the time again but it must be about a quarter after five. I was under greater risk, now, of being seen if Kates and the deputies were still cruising around looking for me, but I had a hunch that they'd have given up by now, convinced that I'd holed in somewhere. Probably now they were concentrating on the roads so I couldn't get out of town. And getting out of town was the farthest thing from my mind. I stayed in the alleys, just the same. Back the way I'd come and ready to dive between garages or behind a garbage can at the first sound of a car. But there weren't any cars; five-fifteen is early even in Carmel City. The supermarket wasn't open yet. I wrapped my handkerchief around the butt of one of my two revolvers ­ Two-Gun Stoeger, they call me ­ and broke a pane in one of the back windows. It made a hell of a racket, but there aren't any residences in that block and nobody heard me, or at least nobody did anything about it. I let myself in and started my shopping. Cleaning fluid. Two kinds; I needed some of the non- inflammable kind and, now that I thought of it, a bottle of the kind that was marked "Danger. Keep away from fire." I opened both of them and they smelled about alike. I poured the inflammable kind down the drain of the sink at the back and replaced it with the kind that doesn't burn. I even made sure that it wouldn't burn; I poured some on a rag and tried to light the rag. Maybe it would have been in keeping with everything else that had been happening if that rag had burned and I hadn't been able to put it out, if I'd burned the supermarket down and added arson to my other accomplishments of the night. But the rag wouldn't burn any more than if I'd soaked it with water instead of the gasoline-smelling cleaning fluid. I thought out carefully what other items I'd need, and shopped for them; some rolls of one-inch adhesive tape, a candle, and a cake of soap. I'd heard that a cake of soap, inside a sock, made a good blackjack; the soap is just soft enough to stun without killing. I took off one of my socks and made myself a blackjack. My pockets were pretty well laden by the time I left the supermarket ­ by the same window through which I'd entered. I was pretty far gone in crime by then; it never occurred to me to leave money for my purchases. It was almost daylight. A clear gray dawn that looked like the herald of a good day ­ for someone; whether for me or not I'd know soon. I stuck to the alleys, back the way I'd come and three blocks on past Carl's house. Al Grainger's. A one-story, three-room house, about the size of mine. It was almost six o'clock by then. He was asleep by now, if he was ever going to sleep. And somehow I thought he would be asleep by now. He'd have been through with everything he had to do by two o'clock, four hours ago. What he'd done might have kept him awake for a while, but not into the next day. I cased the joint, and sighed with relief at one problem solved when I saw that the bedroom window wasn't closed. It opened onto the back porch and I could step into it easily. I bent and stepped through it. I didn't make much noise and Al Grainger, sleeping soundly in the bed, didn't awaken. I had my gun ­ the loaded one ­ in my right hand and ready to use in case he did. But I kept my right hand and the loaded gun out of sight. I got the rusty, unloaded Iver-Johnson, the gun that had been used as a bludgeon to kill Miles and Bonney, into my left hand. I had a test in mind which, if it worked, would be absolute proof to me that Al was guilty. If it didn't work, it wouldn't disprove it and I'd go ahead just the same, but it didn't cost anything to try. It was still dim in the room and I reached out with my left hand and turned on the lamp that stood beside the bed. I wanted him to see that gun. He moved restlessly as the light went on, but he didn't awaken. "Al," I said. He wakened then, all right. He sat up in bed and stared at me. I said, "Put up your hands, Al," and held the gun in my left hand pointed at him, standing far enough back that he couldn't grab at me but near enough that he could see the gun clearly in the pale glow of the lamp I'd lighted. He looked from my face to the gun and back again. He threw back the sheet to get out of bed. He said, "Don't be a fool, Doc. That gun isn't loaded and it wouldn't shoot if it was." If I'd needed any more proof, I had it. He was starting to move his feet toward the edge of the bed when I brought my right hand, holding the other gun, around into sight. I said, "This one is loaded, and works." He stopped moving his feet. I dropped the rusty gun into my coat pocket. I said, "Turn around, Al." He hesitated and I cocked the revolver. It was aimed at him from about five feet, too close to miss him if I pulled the trigger and just too far for him to risk grabbing at, especially from an awkward sitting-up-in-bed position. I could see him considering the odds, coldly, impartially. He decided they weren't good. And he decided, probably, that if he let me take him, it wouldn't matter to his plans anyway. If I turned him over to the police along with my story, it wouldn't strengthen my story in the least. "Turn around, Al," I repeated. He still stared at me calculatingly. I could see what he was thinking; if he turned, I was probably going to slug him with the butt of the revolver and whatever my intentions, I might hit too hard. And if I killed him, even accidentally, it wouldn't help him any to know that they'd get me for one extra murder. I repeated, "Turn around, and put your hands out in back of you." I could see some of the tenseness go out of him at that. If I was only going to tie him up­ He turned around. I quickly switched the revolver to my left hand and pulled out the improvised blackjack I'd made of a sock and a cake of soap. I made a silent