eyes, and a quiet, efficient look about him.

“Good afternoon,” I said, “what can I do for you?”

“Mr. Godwin?” he asked pleasantly.

“That’s right,” I said.

He put the briefcase on the counter and held his wallet in front of me, opened to an identification card. “Ramsey,” he said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

I suppose everybody has that same sinking feeling in the first fraction of a second, wondering what crime he’s committed to get the F.B.I, after him. Then it’s gone, of course, as soon as you realize it’s just a routine security check. Your old friend Julius Bananas has applied for a job balancing a teacup for the State Department and they want to know if he was ever a Communist and how he stood on some of the fundamental issues like girls.

I grinned at him. “Don’t tell me I’ve made the list.”

He smiled, but he didn’t get carried away with it. He’d probably heard all those feeble gags a thousand times. “Are you busy?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if I could.”

“Sure,” I said. “Fire away. Or, wait; let’s go in the office. There’s a fan.” The whole day had been still, and now in the late afternoon the dead, humid air was stifling.

We walked back to the office and I switched on the fan. He sat down in the straight chair in front of the desk with the briefcase in his lap. I pushed the typewriter stand out of the way and sat down in the swivel chair. Taking out cigarettes, I offered him one, which he refused with a smile and a shake of his head. I lit mine and leaned back.

“What’s it about, Mr. Ramsey?” I asked.

He unstrapped the briefcase and took out an oblong Manila envelope. It seemed to me to be rather small to contain much of a file on the aspiring Mr. Bananas, but then maybe they’d just started and hadn’t come up with much yet in the matter of his political aberrations and mating habits.

“I wanted to ask you about this,” Ramsey said. He slid something out of the envelope and dropped it on the desk between us. I stared at it.

It was a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill. It was, in fact, the same twenty-dollar bill I had in my wallet.

I wondered if I’d gone crazy. It had to be the same one; there was that narrow brown stain in exactly the same place, Then I got it. It was obvious, of course. This was the one I’d deposited in the bank. They’d both had that stain, but I just hadn’t noticed it. When I looked at them in the cash drawer, they’d probably been turned end for end.

“It’s familiar?” he asked quietly.

So that explained Pressler’s hesitation when he came to it as he was counting. He’d spotted something phony about it, or it had rung a bell of some kind in his mind, just enough to throw him off stride.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I deposited it in the bank this morning.”

This morning; It must be hot, whatever it is. That was only seven hours ago, and it took three to drive here from Sanport. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“Reasonably so,” I said. “It’s new. And there’s that hairline discoloration at the bottom. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing it.”

He leaned forward a little. “When?” he asked. “I mean, do you remember where you got it?”

“Then it is the same one?” I asked. “It came from the bank?”

He nodded. “I picked it up over there just a few minutes ago. Presumably somebody spent it here at your store. Do you remember who it was?”

I was just about to reply when the phone rang. It was up front on the showcase next to the cash register.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I went out and picked up the receiver. “Boat Supply. Godwin speaking.”

“My, you sound businesslike.” It was Jessica’s voice, teasing and faintly provocative. “Mrs. Godwin speaking,” she went on, imitating me. “Look, honey, would you be a real cute lamb and run over here for a minute?”

“Where?” I asked.

“Mr. Selby’s office. We need your signature on a thing.”

We. We need your signature. Oh, what the hell, I thought; cut it out. You’re developing rabbit ears.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m busy right now, but I should be able to make it in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

”But, Barney, he wants to go home. It’ll only take a minute.”

I regarded the enormity of it. I was keeping Mr. Selby from the