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never find him just driving around,” Blossom said. “I think we ought to—” She interrupted herself—then pointed. “Look! That car! The long, black car parked over there! Isn’t that the car that was following us, shooting at us!”
    “It looks like it, all right,” Max said. “There’s somebody in the back seat. I’ll cruise by it, and you look in. It may be Fred. They may be holding him captive!”
    Max drove slowly by the other car.
    “It’s Boris!” Blossom cried.
    “Boris? Boris from Zinzinotti, Alleybama?”
    “Yes . . . it’s him!”
    “Good old Boris!” Max said warmly. “Boris to the rescue again. I’ll bet he saw that car shooting at us and followed it. He’s probably waiting there for the culprits to come back so he can make a citizen’s arrest.”
    “Then, on the other hand,” Blossom said, “maybe he was in the car when it was shooting at us. Maybe he was doing the shooting.”
    “Nonsense! Boris? After all he’s done for us? I think that’s a nasty thing to even think!” He turned the car toward the curb. “I’ll park and we’ll go back there and assist him when he makes the arrest!”
    “I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Blossom fretted.
    “Max Smart doesn’t make mistakes,” Max said. “If I didn’t know what I was doing every second, I wouldn’t last five minutes in this business.”
    They parked and left the car and hurried toward the limousine in which they had seen Boris. When they reached the car, Boris was still there.
    Max opened the rear door and climbed into the back seat, followed by Fang and then Blossom.
    “Boris! Friend!” Max said.
    Boris peered at him, then opened the door on his side, got out, slammed the door, and walked away. At the same instant. Blossom slammed the door closed on the other side.
    “Darn! He didn’t see us!” Max said. “I’ll call him back!”
    He tried to open the car door that Boris had slammed. It would not open.
    “Okay, back out—through the other door,” Max said. “This one is locked from the outside.”
    Blossom tried her door. It, too, was locked. “We’re trapped!” she said.
    “Impossible. Roll down your window.”
    She tried. It wouldn’t roll.
    Max’s window would not roll down either. And neither would the front windows.
    Max rapped on the glass. “Boris! Come back!”
    “He isn’t paying any attention.”
    “He can’t hear us, obviously,” Max said.
    “Look—he’s going into that coffee house!”
    “Taking a coffee break while he waits for the culprits to return,” Max said. “Clever.”
    “Max!” Blossom said. “Toot the horn. That will attract attention and somebody will let us out!”
    “It so happens, I was just going to do that,” Max said.
    He leaned over the front seat and pressed the horn button.
    Silence.
    “The horn doesn’t work,” Max reported. “Those FLAG agents are in real trouble now. There’s an ordinance against driving a car without a working horn.” He sank back into the rear seat. “This is a pretty limousine of fish,” he muttered.
    “What are we going to do?” Blossom whimpered.
    “Rorff!”
    Max looked at Fang thoughtfully, then said, “It might work.” To Blossom, he said, “Give me your lipstick,”
    She pawed in her purse. “What for?”
    “Just watch.”
    Max opened the tube of lipstick that Blossom gave him, then wrote

    HELP!

    on the car window.
    Next, he rapped on the window again, trying to get the attention of a passerby.
    A beatnik stopped, stared for a second at the writing, then applauded. But after that he simply walked on.
    “Didn’t get through to him,” Max said. He knocked with his knuckles on the window again.
    A girl beatnik heard and paused. She squinted at the wording, then moved to the car. But she didn’t open the door. She held a small card up to the window.
    Max read the words on it. “Life is the ultimate psychodrama.”
    Max applauded.
    The girl curtsied, then walked on.
    “This isn’t helping at all,”