and seemed to be changing hands with the light. Then I saw why. Just for a second the gun passed through the beam, steadying up against her temple. The cold-blooded brutality of it made me come out of the closet without even stopping to think.

I was driving, the way they teach you to get up a head of steam in the first three strides. But I forgot the end of the divan. My legs hit it, and I went the rest of the way in by air. He was under me and trying to turn when I sifted down on him, and from then on it was confused, and rough. When nothing crunched, I knew he was no flyweight himself, and as we rolled across and demolished the record player I could feel the tremendous surge of power in the arm about my neck. The light had gone out when it hit the floor, so we were in absolute darkness, and I didn’t know what had become of the gun.

The arm was pulling my head off. I broke it up by getting a knee into his belly and starting to move it down to where he didn’t like it. He scuttled away from it and landed a big fist on the side of my face. It rocked me. I could feel it going all the way down to my toes and back up again like a shock wave. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and swung blindly in the dark. I missed. I heard him scrambling away. He was on his feet. He crashed into the doorframe, and then he was gone down the hall.

I sat up dizzily and dug my own flashlight out of my pocket. He might or might not leave the house, and it made a lot of difference now who had the gun. I held the light out from my side and snapped it on, shooting it around the floor. The gun was lying in a hash of broken phonograph records, and his light was on the floor the other side of what was left of the player. I picked up the gun, checked the safety, and put it in my pocket, conscious of the heavy way I was breathing. It had been short, but it had been rugged.

I squatted on the floor to get my breath. Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. I had the gun, so it wasn’t likely he’d tackle me again. I could leave, provided, of course, I didn’t run into half a dozen more on the way out.

I thought of Diana James. She was cute. She just needed somebody to search this old vacant house. There was nothing to it. And if the first sucker she sent got killed, she could always find more. Well, she was going to get a sucker’s full report when I got back to Sanport.

I stood up. I’d better get started. Flicking on the light again, I looked down at the girl. Her shoulders had fallen off the divan and she was lying on the floor beside it with her head on an outstretched arm. She was going to have an awful headache in the morning, I thought, when she tried to figure out how she could have wrecked the room this way. It would be a rough way to wake up.

I got it then. If I left, she wasn’t going to wake up.

That guy had come here to kill her. He’d wait around until he saw me shove off, then he’d finish the job I had interrupted. He didn’t need the gun. She was asleep; he could kill her with anything. He was good when they were asleep. You could see that.

Well, what was I supposed to do? So I didn’t have the stomach to sit there and see her butchered in cold blood; so now I was the protector of the poor? The hell with it. If I hung around here until she sobered up, she’d probably have me arrested for burglary. And I could just tell the cops how it happened, couldn’t I? They didn’t get many laughs in their work. Housebreaker saves woman’s life. Hey, Joe, come listen to this one.

Then a very chilling thought caught up with me. Suppose they found her in here murdered, tomorrow or the next day? Maybe nobody on earth knew that other guy was here. But there was one person who knew damn well I’d been here, because she’d brought me