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on business.”
    “You’re telling me.” He thrust his gray head forward. “Who you been talking to? Has Kerrigan been griping?”
    “Where does he come in?”
    “It’s Kerrigan’s whisky they lifted.”
    “You mean he owns the payload?”
    “In a way. It was billed to him from the distributors. Butunless he gets delivery, I’m the one that has to take the loss.”
    “You said it was insured.”
    “Ninety per cent insured. I didn’t have full coverage. The other ten comes out of my pocket.” He grimaced painfully, as if he was describing a surgical operation that he faced, a moneyectomy. “Seven thousand dollars more or less.”
    “I’ll work for ten per cent of the ten per cent. Seven hundred if I get the load back.”
    “And if you don’t?”
    “One hundred for expenses. Paid now.”
    He stood in front of me, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. His voice was like a wood rasp rubbing constantly on a single theme. “That’s a lot of money. How do I know you’ll do anything to earn it?”
    “Because I’m telling you. Take it or leave it.”
    He smiled for the first time, foxily. “I hear you telling me. Okay, I’ll make you a deal. Come in and sit down.”
    His living-room was the kind of room you find in back-country ranch-houses where old men hold the last frontier against women and civilization and hygiene. The carpets and furniture were glazed with dirt. Months of wood ashes clogged the fireplace and sifted onto the floor. The double-barreled shotgun over the mantel was the only clean and cared-for object in the room.
    He sat on the swaybacked davenport and motioned me to a chair. “Tell you the deal I have in mind. Seven hundred for the truck and the load. Nothing for nothing.”
    “Aren’t you pretty business-as-usual, for a man who lost a driver and a truck? Not to mention a daughter.”
    “What daughter are you talking about?”
    “Anne. She’s missing.”
    “You’re crazy. She works for Kerrigan.”
    “Not any more. She dropped out of sight last Friday,according to Mrs. Kerrigan. They haven’t seen her all week.”
    “Why doesn’t anybody tell me these things?” He raised his voice in a querulous shout: “Hilda! Where the hell are you?”
    She appeared in the doorway, wearing an apron that curved like a full sail over her breast.
    “What is it, Father? I’m trying to clean out the kitchen.” She came forward hesitantly, looking at him and around the room as if she had wandered into an animal’s lair. “Everything in the house is filthy.”
    “Forget about that. Where’s your sister taken herself off to? Is she in trouble again?”
    “Anne in trouble?”
    “That’s what I’m asking you. You see more of her than I do. Everybody in town sees more of her than I do.”
    “It’s your own fault if you don’t see her, and she’s not in any trouble that I know of.”
    “Have you talked to her lately?”
    “Not this week. We had lunch together one day last week.”
    “When?” I said.
    “Wednesday.”
    “Did she say anything about leaving her job?”
    “No. Has she quit?”
    “Apparently,” Meyer said. He went to the telephone that stood on a desk in the corner of the room, and dialed a number.
    Hilda looked at me anxiously. “Has something happened to Anne?”
    “Let’s not jump to conclusions. You wouldn’t have a picture of her around, a recent picture?”
    “I have at home, of course. I don’t know if Father has. I’ll see.” She moved to the door on white flitting legs as if she was glad to escape from the room.
    Meyer dropped the receiver. He turned to me with his hands open, the palms held forward in a helpless gesture. “She don’t answer. Doesn’t Kerrigan know where she is?”
    “He says not.”
    “You think he’s lying?”
    “I got the idea from his wife.”
    “Don’t tell me she’s waking up after all these years. I thought he had her buffaloed for keeps.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” I said cautiously. “Who is this