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dark. I missed. I heard him scrambling away. He was on his feet. He crashed into the doorframe, and then he was gone down the hall.
    I sat up dizzily and dug my own flashlight out of my pocket. He might or might not leave the house, and it made a lot of difference now who had the gun. I held the light out from my side and snapped it on, shooting it around the floor. The gun was lying in a hash of broken phonograph records, and his light was on the floor the other side of what was left of the player. I picked up the gun, checked the safety, and put it in my pocket, conscious of the heavy way I was breathing. It had been short, but it had been rugged.
    I squatted on the floor to get my breath. Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. I had the gun, so it wasn’t likely he’d tackle me again. I could leave, provided, of course, I didn’t run into half a dozen more on the way out.
    I thought of Diana James. She was cute. She just needed somebody to search this old vacant house. There was nothing to it. And if the first sucker she sent got killed, she could always find more. Well, she was going to get a sucker’s full report when I got back to Sanport.
    I stood up. I’d better get started. Flicking on the light again, I looked down at the girl. Her shoulders had fallen off the divan and she was lying on the floor beside it with her head on an outstretched arm. She was going to have an awful headache in the morning, I thought, when she tried to figure out how she could have wrecked the room this way. It would be a rough way to wake up.
    I got it then. If I left, she wasn’t going to wake up.
    That guy had come here to kill her. He’d wait around until he saw me shove off, then he’d finish the job I had interrupted. He didn’t need the gun. She was asleep; he could kill her with anything. He was good when they were asleep. You could see that.
    Well, what was I supposed to do? So I didn’t have the stomach to sit there and see her butchered in cold blood; so now I was the protector of the poor? The hell with it. If I hung around here until she sobered up, she’d probably have me arrested for burglary. And I could just tell the cops how it happened, couldn’t I? They didn’t get many laughs in their work. Housebreaker saves woman’s life. Hey, Joe, come listen to this one.
    Then a very chilling thought caught up with me. Suppose they found her in here murdered, tomorrow or the next day? Maybe nobody on earth knew that other guy was here. But there was one person who knew damn well I’d been here, because she’d brought me here. And if she ever leaked, I’d be in the worst jam I’d ever heard of.
    I had to do something. Time was running out. I squatted there in the dark, thinking swiftly. I began to
    see it then. It was the answer to everything.
    Here was where I went in business for myself.
    All I’d accomplished in this thing so far was to get shoved around. I’d been played for a sucker by a smooth operator who’d told me about 10 percent of the whole story, but now the program was going to change.
    We were all looking for that money. And the only person that really knew whether or not it was in this house was Mrs. Butler. She was the key to the whole thing. I didn’t believe now that it was here, but she knew where it was, or where it was last seen. So what I wanted was Mrs. Butler. If I left her here she’d be killed, but if I took her with me I’d have the exact thing I needed: information.
    And I knew just where to take her where we wouldn’t be interrupted. I could sober her up, and maybe if I kept asking the right questions long enough, I might find out a little about this. Of course, if she didn’t have anything to do with killing Butler, I was laying myself wide open to arrest for kidnapping, but I could see the way out of that. I tried to visualize the road map in my mind. It couldn’t be much over fifty miles…
    It collapsed on me then. Take her? How? I didn’t have my car. Load her on my