bosom of his happy little family. I was not only an annoying by-product of the community property laws, I was a churl who would inconvenience Mr. Selby.

“Jessie, I’m tied up at the moment. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Or why don’t you drop by here with it?”

“It has to be notarized,” she explained, with just a touch of exasperation. It wasn’t necessary, of course, to explain what the paper was. “Look, Barney, for Heaven’s sake, there isn’t anything so important about selling bass plugs that you can’t get away for five minutes.”

“I told you I’d be there as soon as I could.”

“You’re just keeping us waiting for no reason at all. Mr. Selby . . .”

“And how is dear Mr. Selby? Don’t forget to keep your skirt pulled down.”

“Barney. are you coming over here?”

“I told you. When I could get away. Did it ever occur to you I might be busy?”

“I notice you never seem to have any trouble getting away for those stupid fishing trips you go on. . . .”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Next time I’ll clear through channels.”

“Do you have to do this?”

I could feel that tight band across my chest again. Selby was probably listening to her, Ramsey to me. “No,” I said. “And, anyway, why don’t we wait till we can buy radio time and get on the air with it?”

She hung up.

I put the receiver back on the cradle with a hand that shook. I was raging inside. She could stuff Selby and her lousy real estate—I stopped. What was happening to me, anyway? I was beginning to act like a sucker. What had ever become of Godwin the smooth operator?

I suddenly remembered Ramsey back in the office. I rubbed a hand harshly across my face, trying to wring the emotion out of myself so I could think. So what about Ramsey? The thing that stuck out was that he was after something, and that it was big. You could feel it. Look at the way it had happened. It was only seven hours ago I’d deposited that money in the bank, and now. . . It was like throwing a match in spilled gasoline.

The questions began coming from every direction. What was it? Why was it so hot? Where did Mrs. Nunn fit in? And how had she happened to have two of them? In that backwoods fishing camp? It was impossible, but there it was. And why the F.B.I.? I stopped suddenly.

Haig. Wild Bill Haig. I brushed it irritably aside. Why Haig? The F.B.I, must have a few other men it wanted; it didn’t exist for the sole purpose of trying to run down a man who had simply evaporated eighteen months ago.

I turned and went back to the office. Ramsey had got up and was looking out the window. We both sat down again and I picked up the cigarette I had left in the tray.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Now, where were we?”

“Do you remember when you took it in?” he asked.

I drew on the cigarette and frowned. “Let’s see—that deposit was Saturday’s receipts. No, wait. Friday’s and Saturday’s. I didn’t go to the bank Saturday at all.”

He nodded. “Well, that pins it down to two days. Try to think back. There should be a pretty good chance you can isolate the sale.”

I was thinking, but not about that. I was regarding the haphazard operations of Chance. I could have deposited both those bills. I should have bought the stamps with the other. It could still be out there in the register, where he was certain to look before he left. Instead, it was in my pocket. One could have been a fluke, lost in the shuffle; but not two. If he’d traced two of them to this place he’d know damn well I should remember the circumstances. It would mean either one sale that necessarily had to be more than twenty dollars, or a repeater who came in twice and paid for something with identical, new, fresh twenty-dollar bills.

“Is it counterfeit?” I asked. I didn’t think the F.B.I, had anything to do with that, but I wasn’t sure.

He shook his head. “No. It’s perfectly good.”

“It’s just hot, then?”

He smiled faintly. “You might call it that.”

Kidnap pay-off? I thought. Transportation of stolen property across a state line? What else? Bank robbery? I was back to Wild Bill Haig again.

“Can you place it?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head, frowning. “No-o. It beats me.” I was conscious this was