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added, "I wonder who else thought of that, besides myself?"
    "You drew it right out," he said, "and threw it away?"
    "Should you keep a thing like that?" Garrison countered. "I drew it right out then and there, so it wouldn't happen again. She got sore, so I got sore in sympathy. Morgan wasn't here, so I brought a pair of pliers out here and did it myself. And you want to know something funny about it?"
    Cameron said with deadly earnestness, "I want to know something funny about it, yes."
    "It was driven in the wrong way around. The head was the part imbedded in the wood, the point was the part sticking out."
    "Then it wasn't hammered in. A nail can't be hammered in in that position. It would simply bend over and fold up. The entering wedge has to be sharp, not flat."
    "But it was all the way in, deep. It was a long devil, almost as long as my hand."
    "A hole could have been bored with an awl first, and then the nail simply slipped in backward, filling it. If it was as long as you say, the very depth it took would have held it fast. Did it come out easy?"
    "One good wrench."
    "Notice anything about it?" Cameron asked him. "Was it bright, was it rusty?"
    "I didn't hang onto it long enough to really take a good look at it. I was sore, as I've said. And with one and the same gesture, I drew it out of the wood and swung the pliers up over my shoulder and let it fly off into the dark. But it did pass before my eyes for a moment, on its way up, and it seems to me there was a dirty little strip of gray rag caught around it, or tied around it under its head. Just a wisp. Such as you often find clinging to stray nails. But I can't say for sure, it traveled past my eyes too fast."
    "Stray nails," repeated Cameron, in that same dry way he'd used before.
    Garrison waited for him to say something more, but he didn't.
    "Is all this any good to you?" he asked finally.
    "Not now any more. The nail is gone beyond recall," answered Cameron cryptically. "Your wife is dead."
    "I don't get what you were driving at," Garrison told him blankly.
    "That's the answer right there. You've just given it yourself," Cameron assured him dourly. "As much of a one as there'll ever be."

    Cameron's chief handed him a thin sheaf of clippedtogether papers. "I'm assigning you to this," he said tersely.
    Cameron looked them over. Then his mouth became an open oval. "But this is another matter," he said. "This isn't the Jeanette Garrison--"
    "Drop the case," his chief interrupted. "Or rather, since there never was a case in the first place, drop the informal investigation you've been engaged upon. Oh, yes, I know all about that. I don't like these personal sidelines. You're on homicide, and you stick to homicide. I can give you enough to keep you busy."
    "But sir, this woman--"
    His chief pasted his hands flat down upon the desk, in such a way that his elbows went up on each side of him. As if he were about to hoist himself to his feet, though he wasn't.
    "The woman died of lockjaw. Her personal physician attests to that. The specialists he called in, who have nation-wide reputations, attest to it. The death certificate of our own medical examiner attests to it. As if that weren't enough, you obtained an exhumation order and I allowed you to carry it out. The findings of the autopsy only corroborated what was already known before. If there is any mystery there, and I grant you that there is, it's a biological mystery, for the department of health to worry about, and not ourselves. Even there, you only covered ground that they had already been over. I think, by this time, it's entirely incapable of solution. You could spend the rest of your natural life, Cameron, and never find out how that germ got into her bloodstream. And your business isn't germs, it's two-legged killers. If you wanted to go after germs, why didn't you enter a medical school?"
    Cameron tried to say something. This time he didn't even get a "but" out. His chief seemed to read his mind. He swung