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count four.” Len doubled his fist. “Wait a minute, I can use diplomacy. Which pocket is it in, Dol?”
    “His righthand coat pocket.”
    “Good. You get away a yard or so. Don’t move, Ranth.” With his right fist doubled, Len reached with his other hand into the coat pocket indicated. Ranth stood motionless. Len fumbled a little, then his hand emerged with a paper between the fingers. He extended the hand off to his side without turning his head and asked, “Is that it?”
    Dol took it. She needed only a glance. “Yes. Thanks, Len. I’m glad you—very neat.”
    Ranth spoke, and for the first time his voice had undertones. “That paper is my property, Miss Bonner. It was taken from my person, and has been constantly in my possession. If you say you saw me pick it up here you will be lying.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Len growled. “How about it if two of us lie? God knows I can lie if Miss Bonner can. I saw you pick it up too. How does that sound?”
    Dol shook her head. “You won’t need to do that, Len. Thanks all the same. It will be all right—Oh! They’re coming.”
    She stood listening. Ranth moved a couple of paces and stopped. Len opened his mouth and closed it again. The sound of men talking steadily approached, with strangers’ voices and the only familiar one Belden’s. Belden, as they got nearer, sounded out of breath and exasperated. They came brushing through the leaves of the low-hanging branches with no respect for delicate dogwood twigs, three of them in the uniform of the state police, with big hats, cartridge belts and guns. Belden had been in front, and his gasp of horror was probably the first uncultured sound he had uttered in the presence of his superiors for thirty years. One of the police took him by the arm:
    “Stand back a little. Don’t go closer.” He addressed his colleagues: “Hell, it’s nearly dark in here.”
    “There’s a lady there.”
    “Oh. Excuse me, ma’am.”
    The trio stood with their eyes focused on the hanging corpse. For a while, without comment. Then one of them demanded, “Murder? Who said it was murder?”
    Another said, “Don’t go closer. If it’s murder it won’t be our job, except to take orders. There might be footprints, only it’s grass. If we’d had any sense we’d have brought the lights. Go get ’em, Jake, make it snappy.” One of them went, trotting. The speaker turned to Len: “What’s your name?”
    Len told him.
    “What do you know about this?”
    “Nothing at all. I was playing tennis and drinking.”
    He turned to Ranth. “What’s your name?”
    “George Leo Ranth. I have a complaint, officer, that I would like you to attend to. This man has just taken my property, a paper that belonged to me, by force. From my pocket, where—”
    “What? What man?”
    “Leonard Chisholm. He took it—”
    “Oh, forget it. We’ll get your paper later.”
    “But I tell you he took it, and this woman lied—”
    The trooper demanded of Len, “Have you got his paper?”
    “No. He picked it up—”
    “Forget it.” The trooper looked disgusted. “You folks fighting about a paper with a dead man hanging here on a wire? You will all please go up to the house and stay there. I don’t know how long, not very long maybe. Belden, you go with them.”
    Ranth began, “But—”
    “Listen, mister. I like to be polite, but you beat it.”
    Ranth hesitated, then turned and went without any glance at his adversaries. Belden had already backed off, and now left the nook at Ranth’s heels. Len took Dol’s elbow, but she moved away and preceded him, and he followed her to the edge of the dogwoods and into the lightof the open sky. At the far side of the fish pool she suddenly stopped and turned on him:
    “You go ahead, Len. I want to give that man that paper.”
    He looked sourly down at her. “You come with me. You can give it to him later. Come along.”
    “No, I’m going back.”
    “Yeah? Okay. Me too.”
    “No. I have something to tell