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eye fell on the gold lettering above his office door:
    MAGNUS KING, M.D.
Physician and Surgeon
    For a second he imagined he saw the letters M.D. as MAD.
    â€œThis has got to stop all right.”
    He entered the residential section, his heels cracking hollowly on the boardwalk. Most of the homes were dark. Night watchman Herman Bell was nowhere to be seen. Herman Bell was probably playing cards with the tramps in the jailhouse. He’d better be.
    When Magnus reached the end of the boardwalk, his feet automatically found the path in the grass leading to his house.
    His cottage was dark. With the shutters closed it was sometimes hard to tell whether anybody was up or not. He glanced over to see if Herman Bell’s house was dark. It was.
    Again, automatically, his hand slapped his coat pocket to see if his revolver was handy. It was.
    A couple dozen more steps and he began to walk lightly, on his toes. There was no horse or buggy tied to the hitching post out front.
    His footsteps fell soundlessly in the soft dust. Too bad it wasn’t light out so he could check the dust for tracks. His breathing came quick and shallow. He got out his gun. He headed around to the back door. A surprised intruder was more likely to pop out of the back door than out of the front.
    He paused. He listened intently, one foot up on the back stoop.
    The Missouri murmured with a muted ruckle behind its fringe of trees. An Indian drum boomed solemnly aboriginal in Smutty Bear’s camp. Crickets whirred under the fallen stalks in the garden.
    Then, yes, there it was, a low murmur of voices somewhere.
    He listened intently.
    The voices came from inside the house. Aha! There really was someone with Kitty after all. “By the Lord!” He’d been right all along.
    He gripped his revolver hard and tight. There would now be some ball blood spilled.
    When he started to open the back door it creaked lightly. Lord. One more squeak like that and he’d never catch them in the act.
    He lifted the door by the knob a little and then tried it. It worked. No creaking. Good. Silently he closed the door behind him.
    Halfway across the kitchen, and around the table, he stopped again. Perfume in the house. The essence of puccoons. Her perfume.
    And more murmuring.
    He cocked his gun. A remorseless revolver would know what to do.
    He tiptoed into the sitting room. He directed his hearing toward the bedroom.
    The murmuring was gone. Instead he heard what he thought was the slow measured breathing of someone deep in sleep. There was also the sigh of a lighter sleeper. Damn. It was only Kitty and Roddy after all.
    He backtracked a couple of steps; listened. There it was again, the murmuring. In the kitchen.
    Teakettle?
    Yes. It had to be the teakettle. Kitty must have thrown in a chunk of wood before she went to bed for the water to be boiling so long.
    God damn.
    Well, in the long run it really didn’t make much difference. He was right in any case. Somebody else was kissing her better than he was. Made love better than he did.
    He stood stiffly erect in the dark.
    Steady measured breathing continued to come from their bedroom.
    He slipped the revolver back into his pocket.
    â€œWhen will I come into my own?”
    He tiptoed to their bedroom. He felt around in his other pocket for a match. By the Lord. Out of lucifers. He’d have to undress in the dark.
    He placed his clothes neatly in a chair. He made a special point of making the creases of his trousers meet neatly at the knee. The floor creaked under his stealthy moving.
    Goose pimples came out on him as he stood naked in the dark. Surprisingly he found himself partially aroused.
    He reached around behind the bedroom door, found his nightshirt hanging on its peg. Shivering, he slipped it on over his head.
    He felt his way round Roddy’s bed, found the foot of his own and Kitty’s bed, tiptoed around to his side, opened the covers, settled on the edge of the bed and got ready to