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McCafferty? I used to take care of their cars for them.”
    “Goldang it!” he said, and got to his feet.
    I stood up also. “Will this take very long, sheriff? I hardly feel like enrolling at the college until it’s settled.”
    “O’course, you don’t,” he nodded sympathetically. “We’ll have it all straightened out, so’s you can start in next Monday.”
    “I’d have liked to get into New York first,” I said. “I won’t go, naturally, until you say it’s all right. But I bought a new suit while I was there, and the alterations were supposed to be done by this Saturday.”
    I walked to the bedroom door with him, and it seemed to me I heard a faint creak from the door across the hall.
    “A man’s kinda got to get along with everyone in a job like mine, so I wouldn’t want you to repeat anything. But these Winroys—well, it ain’t good economy to stay with ’em, no matter how cheap it is. You take my advice, an’—”
    “Yes?” I said.
    “No”—he sighed, and shook his head—“I guess you can’t very well do that. Jake kicks up a big fuss, and then you move out, an’ no matter what I say or you say it looks bad. Makes it look like you had to move, like maybe there was somethin’ to his crazy carryin’ on.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said. “I surely wish I’d known who he was before I came here.”
    I saw him out the door, and closed it again. I stretched out on the bed with a cigarette, lay with my eyes half closed, puffing smoke at the ceiling. I felt all wrung out. No matter how well prepared you are for a deal like that, it takes a lot out of you. I wanted to rest, to be left alone for a while. And the door opened and Mrs. Winroy came in.
    “Carl,” she said huskily, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry, darling. I’ll murder that Jake when I get my hands on him!”
    “Forget it,” I said. “Where is he, anyway?”
    “At his shop, probably. Probably’ll spend the night there. He’d better if he knows what’s good for him!”
    I walked my fingers up her thigh, and let them do a little wandering around. After a moment or two, she squeezed them absently and laid my hand back on the bed.
    “Carl…You’re not angry?”
    “I didn’t like it,” I said, “but I’m not angry. Matter of fact, I feel pretty sorry for Jake.”
    “He’s losing his marbles. Why, they wouldn’t dare kill him! It would hurt them twice as much as having him testify.”
    “Yeah?” I said. “I guess I don’t know much about those things, Mrs. Winroy.”
    “They—Why don’t you call me Fay, honey? When we’re alone like this.”
    “Fay honey,” I said.
    “They wouldn’t dare to, would they, Carl? Right here in his home town where everyone knows him and he knows everyone? Why—why”—she laughed irritably—“my God! this is the one place in the world where he’s safe. No stranger can get near him—no one he doesn’t know, and—”
    “I got near him,” I said.
    “Oh, well,” she shrugged. “I’m not counting you. He knows that anyone the college sent here would be all right.”
    “Yeah? He didn’t act much like it.”
    “Because he’s full of booze! He’s beginning to see things!”
    “Well,” I said, “whatever he does, you can’t blame him much.”
    “I can’t, huh?”
    “I don’t think you should,” I said.
    I raised up on one elbow and tamped out my cigarette.
    “Here’s the way I might look at it, Fay,” I said, “if I were in Jake’s shoes. Practically all I know about crime is what I read in the papers. But I’m pretty good at putting myself in the other fellow’s place, and here’s the way I’d feel if I were Jake. I’d figure that if they took a notion to kill me, there wouldn’t be any way I could stop them. Nothing I could do, no place I could go. I—”
    “But, Carl—”
    “If they didn’t get me in one place, they’d do it in another. Some place, somehow, and no matter how tough it was. I’d know they’d get me,