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without number, and a rhinoceros here and there, could be brought to testify, if ghostly testimony were admissible. (And, of course, subject to translation.)
    â€œAll the same,” Bill Weigand said, “it sounds a bit preposterous, doesn’t it? Grant he was annoyed—”
    â€œUnless,” Pam said. “Before he was shot, poor Mr. Payne kept saying that Willings must be crazy. And there’s something about that somewhere—great something is—”
    â€œâ€˜Great wits are sure to madness near allied,’” Jerry said. “Dryden.”
    â€œSo terribly literate,” Pam said, fondly. “On the other hand, I thought that Willings had merely too much taken. And Mr. Payne, poor man, was a bit of a twerp, all things considered.”
    She was looked at, waited for.
    â€œNot evidence,” Pam said. “One woman’s opinion. And I’m not impartial. I don’t like his books.”
    Jerry sighed.
    â€œThis new one,” Pam said. “It’s called The Liberated . It ought to be called, The Dismembered .” She looked at Jerry. “Which you know perfectly well,” she said. “Where was I?”
    â€œAdmit a spot of torture here and there,” Jerry said. “A bit of sadism. We don’t offer it as a juvenile.”
    â€œCatering,” Pam said. “I won’t say pandering.” She paused to consider. “On the other hand,” Pam said, “I will say pandering.”
    â€œBy all means,” Jerry said.
    â€œPlease, you two,” Bill Weigand said. “Why a twerp? Only because you don’t like his books?”
    â€œHe acted like a twerp,” Pam said. “I don’t mean by knocking Mr. Willings down. I think that was pretty much an accident, anyway. Don’t you, Jerry? And—wasn’t he a twerp? Tom won’t send it out as a release.”
    Jerry thought for some seconds.
    â€œAll right,” he said. “His review of Willings’s book was vicious. Over and above the call of duty. Malicious and—jealous. Envious.”
    â€œTwerpish.”
    â€œIf you like. And, for what it’s worth, he wasn’t precisely—intrepid—when Willings came at him. No special reason to be intrepid. Only—” He looked at Pam.
    â€œHe wrote intrepid,” Pam said. “In I Know Africa .”
    â€œThe Africa I Know,” Jerry said. “Yes. The conquering-hero type. Facing down enraged natives.”
    â€œI’ve never blamed the natives,” Pam said. “He was a twerp. And somebody asked me to tell him to drop dead.” She stopped abruptly. She had not been thinking of, talking of, the Anthony Payne of flesh and blood. Particularly of blood. An abstraction is all very well. A man, alive seconds before, dying bloodily on a sidewalk—Everything seemed, momentarily, to waiver.
    â€œAll right, Pam,” Jerry said, and reached out and put a hand on hers. “All right, girl.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Pam said. “All at once I—”
    â€œI know.”
    The wavering of everything ended.
    â€œWho,” Bill Weigand said, “said that? Asked that?”
    â€œA man named Lars something,” Pam said. “He—wait a minute. Lars Simon. He adapted Uprising . Made a play of it. And—he was very annoyed at Mr. Payne. Seemed to be. Perhaps it was just—theater people dramatize. I met him and—”
    She told, briefly, of meeting Lars Simon; of his, perhaps dramatized, attitude toward Anthony Payne. Bill Weigand looked at Jerry.
    Jerry had heard something about it; heard from Livingston Birdwood. Simon was not only the author of the play version of Uprising . He was also directing the play. He felt that Payne had been “horning in”; interfering not only with the dramatization itself, but with the direction. Even with selection of the cast, Simon had complained to Birdwood. He had told Birdwood