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nurse, embarrassed by the frail face of the dead woman, began to pull the sheet up and over, but she stopped, frightened, when P.T. said, “Don’t.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Kirkaby.”
    P.T. stood over his wife a while. He felt moved and he didn’t like that, not P.T., so he turned then and went to the bedroom door. “It’s over, Maudie,” he said to the large Negro woman.
    “Well ...” Maudie began. But she had no place to go with her thought. “Well.”
    “Tell Arnold to forget about looking for Walt.”
    “Um-hmm.”
    “That’s all, Maudie.”
    She nodded and turned, then, after a step, turned back. “I’m sorry, P.T.”
    “Yeah-yeah-yeah,” he said and he gestured for the nurse to get out. When she was gone he pulled a chair over beside the bed and studied the dead face. He had been unfaithful to her so often, so many times, always, almost, that it came as a shock to him that this once she had beaten him. He had never lost well; it wasn’t in his nature. But she had beaten him, the tiny bird lying dead before him. God, but she had been a sweet thing once, then, before, whenever it was, ago, long, long ago, and probably he had loved her. No. Not probably. He had loved her. That was a fact. A dead fact. A sad one. He had loved her back aways. When he was young and she was younger and that was sad too. Everything seemed suddenly sad to him. He looked again on the quiet face of his wife. “Aw, nuts,” P.T. said aloud. He did not cry; but the thought crossed his mind.
    “Kirkaby?”
    “Yes, Sergeant Quinlan.”
    “I’ve just spoken to the people who live at 274 South Elm. That man you’ve been following? He sells the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kirkaby. He goes from door to door selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Are you wearing blue pants and a tee shirt, Kirkaby? ... Kirkaby?”
    “Aw, nuts.”
    “He saw you following him. You scared him, Kirkaby. He says you were hiding behind trees. Is that what you were doing?”
    “No.” Nobody spots the Whizzer. Walt looked down at his blue pants. “I’m wearing a green suit, Sergeant Quinlan. A green suit with a green tie and maybe he just claims he’s selling that thing. Maybe—”
    “The case is closed, Kirkaby.”
    “He looks an awful lot like that picture of Big Nose Tim Connery they got hanging in the post office. It’s a really fantastic resemblance.”
    “I’m sure it is. But will you let us try to keep crime out of the area, Kirkaby? After all, it’s our job.”
    “I’m just trying to help, that’s all.”
    “I know you are. Goodbye, Kirkaby.”
    Walt hung up the phone, thanked the lady of the house and trudged on out the door, his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets. He paused a moment in front of 274 South Elm. He shoved his glasses up snug against the bridge of his nose with his left thumb. Then he began retracing his steps to the corner of Oak and Archer, where he’d left his bicycle. You couldn’t follow crooks on a bicycle. It was a pretty day, so he started singing. “A wand’ring minstrel I, a thing of shreds and paaaa-tches, of baaaaa-lads, songs and snaaaaaatches, and dreeeeee-meeee luh-ulll-a-bies.” He loved Gilbert and Sullivan and knew all of Trial by Jury by heart, plus most of The Mikado and The Gondoliers . “My ca-ta-log is long ...” Some kids were playing marbles up ahead of him. He was a terrific marble player, the best in the world when he wanted to be, so he reached into his hip pocket for his favorite shooter, a cat’s-eye, worth eight agates any day. Fatso Moran had offered him eight agates for it, but no soap. Nobody got the Whizzer’s cat’s-eye. “How about me playing?” he said to the kids. “You’re too good, Kirkaby,” one of them said—which was victory enough, Walt decided, so he muttered “Chickens” and moved on. How about that? Everybody knew you didn’t mess with the Whizzer at big pot. He broke into a run then, because if he was ever going to break the four-minute mile he had