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immediately pushed the door shut behind himself and shot the bolt. There were lines under those light eyes and he wasn’t wearing a bright doublet and long hose. He needed a shave and he had on a brown wool suit. He carried a gabardine overcoat over one arm and wore dark suede shoes. But he was Random, all right—the Random I had seen on the card—only the laughing mouth looked tired and there was dirt beneath his fingernails.
    “Corwin!” he said, and embraced me.
    I squeezed his shoulder. “You look as if you could use a drink,” I said.
    “Yes. Yes. Yes....” he agreed, and I steered him toward the library.
    About three minutes later. after he had seated himself, with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he said to me, “They’re after me. They’ll be here soon.”
    Flora let out a little shriek, which we both ignored.
    “Who?” I asked.
    “People out of the shadows,” he said. “I don’t know who they are, or who sent them. There are four or five though, maybe even six. They were on the plane with me. I took a jet. They occurred around Denver. I moved the plane several times to subtract them, but it didn’t work—and I didn’t want to get too far off the track. I shook them in Manhattan, but it’s only a matter of time. I think they’ll be here soon.”
    “And you’ve no idea at all who sent them?”
    He stalled for an instant.
    “Well, I guess we’d he safe in limiting it to the family. Maybe Bleys, maybe Julian, maybe Caine. Maybe even you, to get me here. Hope not, though. You didn’t, did you?”
    “‘Fraid not,” I said. “How tough do they look?”
    He shrugged. “If it were only two or three, I’d have tried to pull an ambush. But not with that whole crowd.”
    He was a little guy, maybe five-six in height, weighing perhaps one thirty-five. But he sounded as if he meant it when he said he’d take on two or three bruisers, single-handed. I wondered suddenly about my own physical strength, being his brother. I felt comfortably strong. I knew I’d be willing to take on any one man in a fair fight without any special fears. How strong was I?
    Suddenly, I knew I would have a chance to find out.
    There came a knocking at the front door.
    “What shall we do?” asked Flora.
    Random laughed, undid his necktie, tossed it atop his coat on the desk. He stripped off his suit jacket then and looked about the room. His eyes fell upon the saber and he was across the room in an instant and had it in his hand. I felt the weight of the .32 within my jacket pocket and thumbed off the safety catch.
    “Do?” Random asked. “There exists a probability that they will gain entrance,” he said. “Therefore, they will enter. When is the last time you stood to battle, sister?”
    “It has been too long,” she replied.
    “Then you had better start remembering fast,” he told her, “because it is only a matter of small time. They are guided, I can tell you. But there are three of us and at most only twice as many of them. Why worry?”
    “We don’t know what they are.” she said.
    The knocking came again.
    “What does it matter?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “Shall I go and let them in?” They both blanched slightly.
    “We might as well wait”
    “I might call the cops.” I said.
    They both laughed, almost hysterically. “Or Eric,” I said, suddenly looking at her. But she shook her head.
    “We just don’t have the time. We have the Trump, but by the time he could respond—if he chose to—it would be too late.”
    “And this might even be his doing, eh?” said Random.
    “I doubt it,” she replied, “very much. It’s not his style.”
    “True,” I replied, just for the hell of it, and to let them know I was with things.
    The sound of knocking came once again, and much more loudly.
    “What about Carmella?” I asked, upon a sudden thought.
    Flora shook her head.
    “I have decided that it is improbable that she will answer the door.”
    “But you don’t know what