know what I’m selling, Smith?”

“No, I have no idea. I am interested, though, because of Paar’s—ah—recommendation. He doesn’t phone me too often, but he did feel obliged to tell me about you. What are you selling, Catell?”

“Gold.”

Smith didn’t answer right away. He just sat with his hands folded, smiling at Catell.

“Did you say gold? Plain gold?”

“Yeah, plain gold.”

There was another silence while Smith pulled his lower lip and looked at Catell with that smile.

“Let’s understand each other, Catell,” he said finally. “What you have isn’t plain gold. It’s radioactive gold.”

Catell didn’t back down under the voice. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at Smith with a plain, hostile stare. “All I know for sure is I got gold. Maybe it’s radioactive, maybe it isn’t. When it’s radioactive, the stuff makes you sick, doesn’t it? Well, I’m not sick. I’ve had it with me for a while now and I’m O.K.”

“You still have the gold then?”

“I’ve got it.”

“Have you seen it lately?”

“I’ve got it and I want to sell it.”

Smith swiveled his chair to face in the opposite direction. With head back, he sat like that for several minutes, thinking. There were a lot of things that Smith knew about. He knew about business, about organizing men, about demand and supply, he even knew about scientific things. When he’d organized his territory for prostitution, he’d got together information on incidence of venereal disease, on percentages of income groups patronizing whorehouses. When he’d heard about Catell’s heist, he’d studied the properties of radioactive substances, gold in particular. What he was not sure about was whether the gold had actually been made radioactive. Scientists and FBI men were the worst sources of information.

“So you say you have this gold, eh, Catell?”

“Look, Smith, like you said, let’s understand each other. Either you want it or you don’t. Say no, and I leave. Say yes, and we talk terms.”

For just a moment Smith didn’t move at all. Then he leaned forward on the desk and chuckled with a wet sound. “Catell, I like that. Of course I believe you. Not only because you are that kind of man, but also because, after all, there’s no percentage in your lying to me. In fact—But let it go. So you want to sell your gold. I want to buy it. How much have you and how much do you want?”

“I got thirty-six pounds—regular pounds like in weighing machines, not troy pounds. At thirty-five dollars a troy ounce, that comes to twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty dollars. On the market, I understand, it’s worth more. About twenty-eight thousand. I’ll give it to you for twenty even. Well?”

“Mr. Catell, I’d like to help you, but that’s more than I can pay.”

“Whaddaya mean, more than you can pay? You broke or something?”

Smith hiccupped and gurgled his laugh for a while and then stopped abruptly.

“No, Catell, it’s not that I’m broke. I’m experienced, though, and while I’ve never handled this large a piece of gold, I predict it’s not going to be easy to move. Please don’t interrupt. You want to tell me that lump gold is one of the easiest things to move. Perhaps. But are you forgetting that this stuff may have radioactive properties? And even if it doesn’t, it still has that reputation. All in all, Catell, the circumstances of the entire deal you pulled tend to limit the number of potential customers quite radically. And that, you know, means more work for me, more risk, and therefore less money for you.”

“How much less?”

“Twelve thousand dollars.”

Catell jumped out of his chair and leaned over Smith’s desk. “Smith,” he said, “why don’t you go drop dead?” Then he straightened up and started to turn.

“Wait a minute. Sit down, Catell. Now, look. The least you should get out of this is some good advice. How long have you been out of stir?”

“Two months.”

“And you act like it. I can see your point of view. Here you get out, pull a brilliant piece of work, and naturally expect your recognition. Well, times have been changing. First of all, your lone-wolf type of operation doesn’t mean so much anymore. We work by organization these days. Secondly, things have got tight. In money and everything else. Did you know Slater, biggest fence operation in the Frisco area? Well, he’s locked away. Or Jensen in New Orleans, imports and exports, if you know what I mean? He got life. And so it goes. Let me advise you, Catell, count your friends,