as silently as I could, pulling the gun from my pocket, when I heard her gasp. I could see him quite plainly, silhouetted against his own light. I raised the gun and swung.

“All right, Mrs. Butler,” he said. “Stand right where you are. You’re under ar—”

He grunted, and his arms jerked. The light fell out of his hand as he buckled back against me and then slid to the grass. I lunged for it and snapped it off. Night closed around us again, black as the bottom of a coal mine.

I was scared as I felt for him. Maybe I’d hit him too hard. I located an arm and fumbled at his wrist, trying to feel the pulse, but my hands were shaky and numb and I couldn’t tell. I put a hand on his chest. He was breathing normally. The fright began to leave me.

She was leaning over me in the darkness. “I thought it was you,” she whispered.

I didn’t answer. I was too busy thinking. What did we do with him? He was merely knocked out, and might come around at any time. To go on in the house and leave him lying here would be suicide. She’d have to go alone; I could stay here and watch him. But suppose there was another one inside?

We didn’t have all night. Every minute we stayed here made it more dangerous. I had to do something, and fast.

I reached down, took the gun out of his holster, and threw it over into the oleanders. As I did so I heard something rattle. It was metallic, something fastened to his belt. I had the answer then. Running a hand along the belt, I located them and took them off. They were handcuffs.

“Stay where you are,” I whispered to her.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, I dragged him across the grass into the deeper shadows under the hedge. I rolled him up against the bottom of a clump of oleanders, pulled his hands behind him, and shackled them together around a couple of the big stems. Then I took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wadded it into his mouth, took off his tie, and made it fast around his head to hold the handkerchief in. He was still out, as limp as a wet shirt. I knelt and listened to his breathing. He was all right.

I hurried back. Leaning close to her, I whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here fast. You won’t have time to change. So just throw some clothes in a bag when we get inside.”

She nodded.

I led the way to the window where I’d gone in before. Pulling the screen back, I raised the sash and dropped in; then I helped her. We stood in darkness in the basement, listening. There was no sound except that of our own breathing in the hot, dead air.

“Where are those keys?” I whispered.

“In the kitchen.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

I flicked on the small flashlight and we went up the stairs. I was tense again, and wanting to get out. I felt like a wild animal reaching for the bait in a trap. We stepped into the kitchen. I cut the light, and we listened. There was dead silence. I tiptoed over to the other door and stared through the darkness of the dining room toward the front of the house. I could see only more empty blackness.

I switched on the light again. “Where?” I whispered.

She took my hand and directed the beam. It splashed against one of the white cupboards at the end of the sink, moved slightly again, and came to rest on the end of it. I saw it then. A big ring hung from a nail driven into the wood, a ring filled with a dozen or more of the old, unmarked, and useless keys that a house accumulates in its lifetime—extra car keys, cellar-door keys, trunk keys, front-door keys, and keys to nothing at all. While I stared, she lifted it down.

I held the light for her while she snapped the ring open, slid off three of the keys, and put the others back on the nail. She held the three in the palm of her hand for a moment, looked up at me in the reflected glow of the light with that cool, serene smile of hers, and dropped them into her handbag. I thought of $120,000 hanging there in plain sight among a bunch of discarded and useless junk. She was a smart baby.

The urge