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I’ll buy him a drink down in the Brig in about ten minutes.”
    “I think he’ll be glad to break away.”
    I went up to the room and unpacked my stuff with the efficiency of a great deal of practice. My possessions are down to a severe minimum. Apart from clothing—and not too much of that—I have a thin black folder of photographs of jobs I have worked on, crews I have worked with, and a few photographs from way back. Then there are some personal papers: birth certificate, Navy discharge, diploma. And there is the revolver, a Smith and Wesson .38 in a spring clip belt holster worn shiny from wearing it on the jobs where you had to wear it, on those jobs where the junglies would come out and snatch a can of gas on the dead run.
    I went on down to the basement, to the Brig. When I had been in town before it had been a favorite hangout of the kids from Sheridan College. The Staubs had acquired somewhere the crude iron door from an early American cell and incorporated it into the decor. The walls were hung with antique manacles, whips, goads and other implements of lusty pioneer punishment. There were two sets of authentic stocks. The decor was macabre, but it seemed to appeal to the college trade. Six college kids sat at one of the big trestle tables drinking beer and talking in low tones. There were two others at one of the smaller tables. I had expected to see a lot more business on a Friday night. I had a drink at the bar and in a few minutes Charlie came up beside me. We shook hands. He acted genuinely glad to see me. We took our drinks over to a far corner.
    “Where’s all your business, Charlie?”
    He shrugged. “It’ll come back, I hope. I guess you can say the village is being sort of boycotted by the kids up on the hill. Can’t blame them too much. You know, in the old days there used to be a lot of trouble between the town and the college. It had all died out. Then we had the murder. Before they caught up with the Landy kid, things were rough around here. Town toughs beat up some of the hill kids, and vice versa. The college fathers declared the village off limits. Before that happened some of my more stupid fellow merchants were giving the college kids the business. Now when they get a night out, they go over to Warrentown. But they’re beginning to drift back. It’s hard to preserve a united front through the summer vacation. But don’t think this town is going to forget quick.” He shook his head sadly. Charlie is a balding man, thickening around the middle, with the bland wise eyes of the professional host.
    “Everybody is pretty certain the Landy kid did it?”
    He gave me a shocked look. “My God! Certain? There isn’t a single shred of doubt.”
    “His sister doesn’t think he did it.”
    He tilted his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. “Now I remember. I should have remembered that, Hugh. You and Vicky. And stars in her eyes. You know, I guessed wrong on that one. I never thought it would blow up. You both used to look so sold on each other.”
    “Maybe it’s starting up again.”
    “It would be good for her. You ought to get her out of this town. People go out of their way to give her a bad time. There’s no sense to it, but they do it. The way they act, you’d think she handed him the knife and made the suggestion. There’s even dirty talk about them sharing the apartment. A boy and his sister. Imagine! Get her out of town if you can. Where have you been working?”
    “Spain, ever since I left here. To get back to Vicky, I understand the college fired her.”
    “Fast. They never stick their neck out up there on the hill. An aristocracy of fear. That’s what they’ve got up there. A lot of tired little feuds and jealousies and cliques. They were delighted when Frank Leader put together the airtight case against Landy. It took the heat off the school. So they helped jump on the kid. You know, big thoughtful opinions about how the kid was emotionally unstable,