football game. The night was overcast and still, the air thick with heat and the smell of dust.

I had changed into the white shirt again back at the camp, but I had on the coat to cover it. I turned the collar up to hide any gleam of white. The gun and flashlight were in the pockets. I looked at her. She was all right, except for her feet. I could see the faint blur of that white trim around her slippers. It couldn’t be helped.

I held her arm for another minute while we listened. There was no sound. “All right,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

We cut across the lot, following the dark shafts of the power-line poles. There was a path of sorts, and we made no sound. In a minute or two we came out onto the next street, the one directly behind the house. I felt a sidewalk under my feet. There were no cars in sight.

She tugged at my arm. “This way,” she whispered. We hurried along the sidewalk, and then cut diagonally across the street. I knew where we were then. I could see the high, shadowy pile of the oleanders. Out the gate, cut left diagonally, half a block, I thought, writing it down in my mind in reverse, the way it would be coming back. I might be in a hurry. And I might be alone.

I eased the gate open, an inch at a time. We slipped through and stood in the dense shadow of the oleanders. I put my lips down next to her ear and whispered.

“Wait here. I want to see if there’s a car around anywhere.”

She nodded. I could see the faint blur of her face as it moved.

I slipped off across the lawn toward the dark mass of the house, cutting a little to the right to pass around the south side near the garage. Stopping beside the shrubs near the corner, I searched the driveway. It showed faintly white in the gloom. I could see no car.

Keeping on the grass to muffle any sound, I eased around the side of the house until I could see the front. There was no car here. The night was empty and silent except for the faint sound of music coming from somewhere across the huge expanse of front lawn and the street beyond it. It was a radio in some house on the other side of the street.

I remained motionless for a minute, thinking. They might be parked out on the street, sitting in a car and watching the drive. Or they still might have a man inside. We just had to chance it.

I started back. I came around the rear corner and past the back porch by the kitchen, moving silently on the grass. As I neared the break in the shadowy mass of the oleander hedge where the gate was, I could just make out the little blur of white at her feet. She was moving. She was coming slowly toward the house. I turned a little to meet her, watching the small bits of white fur move across the formless darkness of the lawn. Then they disappeared. They winked off, like a light going out.

I stopped, feeling my heart pound in my throat. She had passed behind something. But there wasn’t anything there. There couldn’t be. Now I could see them again. She had stopped too. I strained my eyes into the night. I could see nothing at all. Then the blur of white at her feet winked off again. Something was between us, and it was moving.

There was no way to warn her. I wanted to cry out to her to run, but I knew the stupidity of it. The man knew she was there; he could see her feet. But he didn’t know I was behind him. I was tense. My mouth was dry.

I could run. I could circle them, get behind them, and make it to the gate and the car.

I didn’t run. I couldn’t quit now. I started moving toward them, keyed up and scarcely breathing.

Then it happened. She had seen him, or heard him, or somehow sensed that he was there, and thought I was coming back. She whispered, “Here I am.” It was like a shout.

Light burst over her face and the upper part of her body. She wasn’t twelve feet away, exposed in the glare of the man’s flashlight like a floodlighted statue. I was coming up behind him, very fast and