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back?”
    “Several reasons. In the first place, I started thinking about your story and began checking it. It’s interesting. And then it occurred to me that if you were caught in the cottage I might be implicated and charged with harboring a fugitive. After all, it could be proved I’d been out there after you’d broken in and therefore must know you were in the place and hadn’t reported it. So it would be safer to go all the way and get you out of there to a place where they couldn’t find you. Then this afternoon I read in the paper that they were thinking of searching all those cottages.”
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “My apartment,” she said. “Sanport is the last place they’d think of looking for you now, and you’ll be completely out of sight until your face heals. I’ve got you some more clothes. But we’re going to have to wait until after midnight before we try to sneak you in there. In the meantime, there are a lot of things I want to tell you.”
    “And a couple I’d like to tell you,” I said. “I think you’re wonderful. And thanks a million.”
    I made a move toward her. She put a hand in my chest. “Easy, boy. Don’t start that parked-car routine. We’re not teen-agers. And I said I wanted to talk to you.”
    “All right. What is it?”
    “First, I want to ask a question. How well do you think you can trust your friend Red Lanigan? Tell me something about him.”
    ”Why?” I asked.
    “What do you know about Red?”
    “Practically nothing, except that I talked to him today.”
    “Does he know who you are?”
    “No,” she replied. “I called him on the phone and merely said I was a friend of yours and that I might be able to help you. What I was doing, of course, was checking your story—or at least the part of it he would know. And he told it the same way. I think you’re telling the truth. I’m also beginning to believe there was somebody in Stedman’s apartment when you got there. And I gathered Lanigan thinks there’s a possibility of it also. What about him?”
    “He’s a pretty nice guy. Used to be a pro-football player, linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I used to play a little football myself in high school, and I’m a nut on the pro game, so we got pretty chummy in the couple of years I’ve known him. That’s a neighborhood bar, and I lived up in the next block, you know. That is, when I was in port. So I was one of the regulars; you know how those neighborhood places are. Sometimes we go fishing together during my vacation. It was Red that stopped me from climbing on Stedman there in the bar last trip. Stedman used to hang out there quite a bit too, you know. Along with several other detectives. But what’s it all about?”
    “I think he’s got something he wants to tell you. About a girl.”
    “What girl?” I asked quickly.
    “That’s it. He doesn’t know, except he thinks Stedman might have been involved with her.”
    “Stedman was involved with plenty of girls. Including my wife.”
    “I know,” she said. “Lanigan told me a little about him. And, incidentally, your wife is in Reno, in case you’ve wondered. The police checked through the Nevada police.”
    ‘’Why?” I asked.
    “Trying to establish your motive. She admitted going out to nightclubs with Stedman a couple of times, but said that was as far as it went.”
    “Sure, sure,” I said. “He was just a Boy Scout. Everybody knows that. But what about this other girl?”
    “He didn’t tell me much. I gathered it was just an idea he had, but he wants you to get in touch with him. He suggested you call the pay phone there in the bar. He gave me the number. You don’t suppose that could be a trap? I mean, that the police would tap it?”
    I thought about it. “No. I don’t think so. Red’s got too much to lose to put himself out on a limb by helping me hide from the police, but I don’t think he’d double-cross me. He wants to use the pay phone because it’s in