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woman with her hair bound up in the rag. 'I'll just take a little stroll up with her, Evvie. Make sure she gets there all right.'
    'I'll come along as well, then, won't I?' Evvie said, and put an arm around Doris's shoulders.
    'Now what is it, lovey? Did someone try to mug you?' 'No,' Doris said. 'It . . . I . . . I . . . the street . .
    . there was a cat with only one eye . . . the street
    opened up . . . I saw it . . . and they said something about a Blind Piper . . . I've got to find Lonnie!'
    She was aware that she was speaking incoherencies, but she seemed helpless to be any clearer.
    And at any rate, she told Vetter and Farnham, she hadn't been all that incoherent, because the man and woman had drawn away from her, as if, when Evvie asked what the matter was, Doris had told her it was bubonic plague.
    The man said something then — 'Happened again,' Doris thought it was.
    The woman pointed. 'Station's right up there. Globes hanging in front. You'll see it.' Moving very quickly, the two of them began to walk away. The woman glanced back over her shoulder once; Doris Freeman saw her wide, gleaming eyes. Doris took two steps after them, for what reason she did not know. 'Don't ye come near!' Evvie called shrilly, and forked the sign of the evil eye at her. She simultaneously cringed against the man, who put an arm about her. 'Don't you come near, if you've been to Crouch End Towen!'
    And with that, the two of them had disappeared into the night.
    Now PC Farnham stood leaning in the doorway between the common room and the main filing room — although the back files Vetter had spoken of were certainly not kept here. Farnham had made himself a fresh cup of tea and was smoking the last cigarette in his pack — the woman had also helped herself to several.
    She'd gone back to her hotel, in the company of the nurse Vetter had called — the nurse would be staying with her tonight, and would make a judgement in the morning as to whether the woman would need to go in hospital. The children would make that difficult, Farnham supposed, and the woman's being an American almost guaranteed a first-class cock-up. He wondered what she was going to tell the kiddies when they woke up tomorrow, assuming she was capable of telling them anything. Would she gather them round and tell them that the big bad monster of Crouch End Town
    (Towen)
    had eaten up Daddy like an ogre in a fairy-story?
    Farnham grimaced and put down his teacup. It wasn't his problem. For good or for ill, Mrs.
    Freeman had become sandwiched between the British constabulary and the American Embassy in the great waltz of governments. It was none of his affair; he was only a PC who wanted to forget the whole thing. And he intended to let Vetter write the report. Vetter could afford to put his name to such a bouquet of lunacy; he was an old man, used up. He would still be a PC on the night shift when he got his gold watch, his pension, and his council flat. Farnham, on the other hand, had ambitions of making sergeant soon, and that meant he had to watch every little posey.
    And speaking of Vetter, where was he? He'd been taking the night air for quite awhile now.
    Farnham crossed the common room and went out. He stood between the two lighted-globes and stared across Tottenham Road. Vetter was nowhere in sight. It was past 3:00 a.m., and silence lay thick and even, like a shroud. What was that line from Wordsworth? 'All that great heart lying still,' or something like.
    He went down the steps and stood on the sidewalk, feeling a trickle of unease now. It was silly, of course, and he was angry with himself for allowing the woman's mad story to gain even this much of a foothold in his head. Perhaps he deserved to be afraid of a hard copper like Sid Raymond. Farnham walked slowly up to the corner, thinking he would meet Vetter coming back from his
    night stroll. But he would go no farther; if the station was left empty even for a few moments, there would be hell to pay if it was