to lose any sleep over.

In fact, it was a rare occasion when he took any interest in his work greater than the interest in doing a clean and workmanlike job. Today, for example, he had become far too involved with that woman. A client should never even begin to become a person. A client should be no more than a voice on a telephone, just as a victim should be merely a name scrawled (more often, for some obscure reason, typewritten or hand-printed) on a piece of paper. When either became a real person, the job became several times as difficult.

An ideal job was totally impersonal. It was much easier to erase a scrap of paper than to obliterate a human life. One time he had followed a potential victim long enough to gain some insight into the other’s personality. It was infinitely more difficult to pull the trigger, and he had almost bunged that particular job.

For one moment he found himself almost dreading tomorrow’s job, almost hoping that the money would not be at the locker, that the key would not arrive at his post office box.

Then he told himself that he was being foolish, and a moment later he was asleep.

His breakfast, on the table when he descended the staircase in the morning, was the same breakfast he’d eaten for a good many years—orange juice, cinnamon toast, and black coffee. As usual, he was out the door by 7:53 and on the 8:02 to Grand Central. He permitted himself the luxury of a taxi to the post office, leaning back in the backseat of the cab and enjoying the first cigarette of the day.

He studied the cabdriver’s face in the mirror, wondering idly whether he had taken this cab before, whether he had met this very driver somewhere else. At times his lack of memory for people disturbed him; at other times, he recognized it as a double blessing.

For one thing, if his memory were good he would be constantly hailing people whom he had met and who, since he himself was so inconspicuous, would not remember him at all.

And, of course, there was the matter of conscience. While he didn’t consciously feel any remorse over a murder, he was intelligent enough to realize that he was unconsciously beset with periodic visitations of guilt.

When the faces and voices of clients and victims were reduced by time to a vague blur, the guilt was diminished through his own removal from a vivid recollection of the entire affair.

The envelope was in his box. He removed it, closed the box, and took another cab back to Grand Central. He removed the key from the envelope without troubling to glance at the slip of paper, only noticing that the name and address were typewritten.

He located the locker, opened it, and removed $5000, which he pocketed at once. Then he took a room at another hotel in the area.

Once in the hotel, his whole mind and body slipped into the role of the killer, the comfortable and familiar role of the hired murderer.

He had become a machine. The money was in his pocket; in a short while it would be in his bank account. He would now have to purchase a fresh gun from the pawnbroker on Third Avenue, pick up a silencer for the gun, place an ad in the Times announcing the change of address, and prepare himself for the job.

The gun cost him $100. The silencer, purchased in another pawnshop a block further down Third Avenue, set him back another $25. The ad, which stated simply that Acme Services was located at 758 Grosvenor, cost very little. The ad meant, of course, that Harry Varden was now in room 758 at the Grosvenor. To avoid any confusion it was placed in the SITUATIONS WANTED, MALE column—the clients knew where to look.

The next stop was the bank. The money was deposited to his account, quickly and easily. He walked out with a gun in his shoulder holster, a silencer in an inside jacket pocket, a slip of paper still in the envelope in his pants pocket, and the brown felt hat riding easily on his head. He was walking on familiar ground.

The attack of nerves which the book said was inevitable at such a moment was entirely absent, and this worried him at times. Perhaps he ought to feel more. Perhaps the work should revolt him. But it didn’t, and he resolved that this was really something to be thankful for.