of it anywhere in this country swarming with F.B.I, agents. . . . Was I any better off? It was just slower this way, prolonging the agony. No. No, no, no. I had to turn her off some way. But how? I couldn’t ask her not to say anything about it. She wasn’t that stupid. She’d guess.

Well. I’d stopped Cliffords, hadn’t I?

Jesus Christ, no. Not that. Not ever again. . . . I’d rather go on and get it over with. Not this kid. . . . She trusted me. She practically followed me around because she thought I was something special.

Well? Hadn’t Cliffords? Are you all right, Mr. Ward?

Stop it, I thought. I felt sick.

“Didn’t he come home at all last night?” I asked.

“Yes. But it was late.”

Then he didn’t even know she’d been up there at all. Wait. . . . The warning bell was ringing in my mind. It was something she’d said. “—to wrap up the fish.” That bass! That big bass Cliffords had caught, the one I thought he’d thrown back into the lake.

“You said something a minute ago,” I prompted her. “Something about a fish. What did that have to do with it?”

“Oh. It was a great big thing Mr. Cliffords had caught. He insisted on me taking it. He said George might like to have it mounted to put in the lunch-room.”

Well, we were back where we started.

“Didn’t George ask you where it came from?”

She shook her head. “I guess I wasn’t very nice. I didn’t want to take him any fish. But I couldn’t hurt the old man’s feelings. When I got down to the lake I threw it away.”

I couldn’t take much more. This yo-yo routine was too rough.

There was something else that didn’t jibe, too, but maybe it didn’t matter. Cliffords had said he’d phone her from the jail to collect his stuff and sell some of it. But she’d just been there. Why hadn’t he told her then; Probably didn’t think of it until she’d gone, I thought.

“Does George know where you are now?” I asked. “I mean, does he know you came to Hampstead?”

She shook her head. “He’s up the lake. Guiding for a man.”

In other words, it was now or never. Nobody knew where either of us was.

Why? I thought in agony. Why did they do it; Both of them—Cliffords, and now this kid—cut you off at every turn. You’d think they had spent a year studying the precise moves to back you into a spot from which you could not escape without killing them. They insisted on it; they left you no choice at all.

I had to do something. I couldn’t sit here all day trying to make up my mind.

“Barney,” she said quietly, “I get afraid of him when he’s like he was last night. He thinks there’s something between us. We know there’s not, but . . .”

But there could be. She might as well have said it.

Then, suddenly, I got it. The whole thing solved itself at once. Of course I couldn’t do anything to her, even if I were able to bring myself to do it. There was another reason. Nunn suspected us; so did Otis. If anything happened to her, the police would pick me up for questioning within hours.

But if you merely turned it around, it fell right into place for me. It was made to order. All I had to do was get her out of the country. Today. Now, before she had a chance to speak to one other living person. Run away with her. Sure, they’d know we had gone together, but that just made it better. Wouldn’t that answer all Ramsey’s questions at once, if he had any? I didn’t know anything about Haig’s money; all I’d been doing was chasing some other man’s wife.

I turned and gave her a long, somber look. “Do you mean that?”

“What, Barney?”

“About being afraid of him?”

“I don’t know really. But . . .

“You’ve got to leave him,” I said. “We’re going away together.”

She stared. “We—we can’t do that.”

I caught both her arms. “Today,” I said harshly. “You’re not going back there at all. If he ever hurt you I’d kill him.”

“Barney, you’re squeezing my arms . . .”

I turned them loose and dropped my head contritely. “I’m sorry,” I said. I took a deep breath and exhaled it shakily, still looking down at my hands clenched in my lap. “I—I’ve got to tell you something, Jewel. You’ve never been out