43

“Sammy, you stay here,” Savage said.

THEY did it to us on a road that ran “Monk and I will get the lay of the ground, through the tidal flats. The road was as lonely before we start doing whatever we can.”

as a coyote on a hill. It crossed a rickety They went away into the darkness.

wooden bridge and S-turned its way, as slimy I stood there by the car. I stood in the with rain as a fishing worm and as crooked rain, soaked to the skin, and didn’t mind.

as one, through a mud flat that was furred Didn’t mind at all. Miss Fenisong was okay.

with brush and winter-dead grass, and the Lovely-voice was on our side—and the funny whole thing was being deluged with the rain thing was that I must have known it all the fit to drown a duck.

time. Oh, I had been disturbed about the Two hundred feet beyond the bridge, Macs working on her, selling her the dark Monk Mayfair was suddenly beside us. The stuff about Savage. But not as disturbed as I road had a starved coat of gravel and he had would have been without confidence. Without pulled his car, a coupé, as far off it as he the kind of confidence a twenty-year-married dared without getting stuck.

husband must feel at a party when he notices Monk said: “They’ve stopped some-some wolf making passes at his wife and where ahead. Not over a quarter of a mile, I knows the fellow will get nowhere. That’s real should judge.” He wore a green slicker and confidence.

with his build looked like the great caricature The pleasant thoughts were wonderful.

of a frog in the rain.

They must have plugged my ears and Savage said: “Let’s see how it sounds,”

blinded my eyes and put sweet mud in my and Monk handed a small case in the win-head—because McCutcheon had a gun in dow. The case had about the proportions of a my back before I knew he was there.

two-dollar novel, but there were knobs on it, “No jump, no holler,” the tall Mac said.

a compass with a luminous dial, and it was “You’ll live longer—just a little bit longer.” The making a high-pitched—but not loud—series edge on his words could have been put there of whining notes. The code letter T repeated with a file.

over and over. A portable radio receiver, ob-He searched me, but found nothing he viously a special job with a built-in directional wanted.

loop.

“We’ll take a walk back the way you Having put the thing to his ear and fid-came,” he said.

dled with the volume control a while, Savage “You won’t get away with this,” I said.

said: “Yes, not over half a mile anyway.” He “Neither will you.”

rotated the thing, got a null—the signal at its We slopped through the streaming least audible point—and gestured. “That night. The wetness softened the soles of my way.”

shoes and the gravel hurt my feet through I was a little slow, but I got it. “The hell.

the flaccid leather. One trouble with cheap You’ve got a radio transmitter planted on shoes. Then the bridge was being bumped them! How did you do that?”

hollowly by our feet.

“There was nothing to it,” Monk said.

At the other end of the bridge, He was wet, anxious and impatient. “Let’s get McCutcheon gave me an extra hard gouge going.”

with the gun muzzle and said: “I’m not bad on “Look, handsome, how did you plant a running targets, Sammy.” He seemed to radio on them?” I demanded.

mean for me to stand still, and I did.

“We had Miss Fenisong’s help,” Sav-McCutcheon got down at a corner of age said.

the bridge. He floundered around in the mud

“Huh?”

and wet grass, lifted a raincoat carefully, and I must have sounded like Zachariah thrust his arm beneath it. His cigarette light when he saw the Angel, because Monk May-flickered, the flame close to a gray cord that fair felt sorry for me. “You’re pretty dumb, looked as if it had been soiled with tar. A aren’t you? You didn’t think Miss Fenisong fuse. The fuse caught fire. It spilled sparks had really thrown in with them, did you?”

and a little twisting smoke.

“Of course not!” I said. And oddly He rejoined me. “Now we move on,” he enough, that was whole truth.

said.

I asked: “How’d you know we were following you?”