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bow of the boat that now shielded him. The prowling trawler's wake rolled into the moored boat, which then drifted against the concrete. Crown's hand was caught and cruelly pinched between wood and concrete. He yanked it free. Two disjointed fingers were bent at right angles to his hand. Cold blocked the pain.
    He drifted toward the stern of the boat. There was no hurry. He had no plan. There was only an endless line ofboats to shield him from the gunman's shots. Cold penetrated to his bones. His strength was nearly gone, and his body had almost quit responding. Breaths came in short spastic gasps.
    Once again Crown felt a warm rush against his legs. His mind flashed to his friend's blood wasting away in the river. But this wasn't blood. Warm fluid was pouring into the river. Crown spread his hands along the shore wall, feeling for the outlet. His knees smashed against the wall as he groped for the pipe and tried to keep his head above the water. A fetid stench wafted toward him. Wisps of odorous steam rose from the water. He inched along the wall, his exhausted legs pushing him through the increasingly warmer water.
    His right hand grasped an edge, an indentation in the shore wall. He gripped and pulled himself to a hole in the concrete wall. The tunnel's tepid effluent pushed against his body and rolled around him into the river. The top of the corrugated-sheet-metal opening was twelve inches above the waterline. He grabbed the lip of the tunnel opening, tucked his legs under him, and lifted himself into the shaft. The sound of another shot reverberated in the tunnel.
    The shaft was four feet high, three of which were filled with slowly flowing sewage. Crown duck-walked upstream. His head rhythmically bumped against the metal roof of the tunnel as he tried to keep his mouth and nose above the sewage. Blackness was absolute. Sewage vapors seared his nostrils. Methane gas emitted by the human waste would kill him in a few moments, but his exertions forced his aching lungs to gasp great quantities of the gas. An age passed. His body was airy and distant. Concentrate. Walk. Keep alive. Hurry. Thoughts came in simple, weak pulses. Survive. Walk. His mind was failing, victim of the gas. Thought was fog.
    The bumping stopped. Crown's head no longer hit the topof the tunnel. Rising slowly to his full height, he saw dark purple sky strained through a manhole grating above him. He reached blindly for the wall and found an iron rung. With the last of his mental reserve, he willed his weak legs to climb. Hand over hand, step by step, he ascended the ladder. Near the top, he hooked one leg over a rung to prevent falling and lifted the manhole cover out of its slot and to one side. His head emerged from the hole. He was at a warehouse truck-loading dock. No one was in sight.

III
    C HICAGO'S FIRST WINTER SNOW fell two nights later. By next morning, smog had discolored the white blanket. The sky was ash-hued, and the trees were gray and lifeless. Crown's eyes searched in vain for some relief from the monotonous juxtaposition of drab on drab as he walked across the midway, passed Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, and north on Woodlawn. He had received the telephoned summons a few minutes before. Meet the Priest at a home on Woodlawn and Fifty-sixth Street. That the Priest had flown in from Washington was an indication of the importance of the assignment. Operatives went to the Priest. He did not go to them.
    Crown hadn't given the present mission his attention. He was obsessed with one question: Who killed Miguel Maura? In the two days since his friend's death, Crown had secluded himself in his bleak studio apartment on the corner of Sixtieth and Woodlawn, asking that question over and over. When he reported Maura's death to Sackville-West,he had been ordered not to search for the killer. Crown's mission was too important to draw attention to himself by investigating a murder. So he sat in his room drinking Blue Ribbon and trying to piece