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vessel that had just gone down, taking a lifelong dream with it. It seemed a large personal sacrifice for him to have made on the altar of his official duty. I couldn’t help thinking that he could have achieved the same result in a less costly way; but then Doug Barnett had always gone in for elaborate and meticulous operations with props and costumes and characters all as authentic as he could make them. Here he’d used a real boat, his boat, and he’d also employed an almost-genuine pot-smoking villain; he could have dispensed with both with a little finagling. I remembered that it had driven him crazy to work with me, since my style is just the opposite: I like to barge in heedlessly and just shake the tree hard to scare the monkeys out.
    But still, he’d made a bigger and more expensive—to himself—deal of it than seemed absolutely necessary; and I reminded myself not to overlook the possibility that Doug Barnett had something driving him here in addition to duty that helped him resign himself to the loss of his boat. Furthermore, I warned myself, it seemed a hell of a fancy charade to put on for just one young girl…
    I said, “A personal question,
amigo.
Since we’re going to be working together, I think I’m entitled to know what shape you’re really in. Should I carry along a few nice books in Braille to keep you entertained if things go bad?”
    “We’ll be working on the same project, but if things develop as I expect we won’t be working together, thank God,” Doug said stiffly. Then he grinned. “It’s a legitimate question, I guess. Fifty percent loss of vision left eye, right normal. Occasional headaches that are real bastards. But no progressive deterioration has been noted as yet; if anything, my condition has improved over the past year. Okay?”
    “So your airplane accident, if you want to call it an accident, wasn’t faked?”
    “No, that was for real, dammit, but I was originally scheduled to go back on limited duty after I got on my feet again; only something came up that made it advisable for me to announce my retirement.”
    “And when that didn’t convince somebody that you were harmless, it was decided to have you commit suicide.”
    “Something like that. Now it’s my turn. How did you know it was a setup?”
    “Know?” I said. “Who the hell
knows
anything in this racket?”
    “You had a couple of syndicate thugs standing by.”
    “There were a some loose ends, false notes, whatever you want to call them. Things didn’t quite jell, I figured if I squeezed that lemon hard enough—Ernest Love, for God’s sake!—I might get some useful juice out of him; and if I didn’t, then I could relax and figure it was just my suspicious nature acting up.”
    Doug laughed. “You know why our mutual friend, just departed,
really
made that plane trip clear from Washington, don’t you? He had to bring us together for the job, and he knew that you’d be sore when you learned how you’d been used. He also knew that we aren’t true bosom buddies in spite of what you said out there when you thought I was dead, for which I thank you. He came because he wanted to be present when we met, so he could prevent a killing.”
    It was the same thought I’d had earlier. I studied him for a moment. “Whose killing? Which way was he betting?”
    Doug grinned. “It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it? Who’s the toughest boy on the block around here? Who’s the fastest gun in town? Kid stuff. And it wouldn’t get the job done.”
    “Anyway, I don’t pick on senile, half-blind old men,” I said without expression. “And you were perfectly right. I did put on a better act because I didn’t know I was acting. So tell me about the job. And the girl. She seemed like a nice enough kid to me. Why is it important to have her think she’s fatherless as well as motherless?”
    “They all seem like nice kids to you. That’s why you’re so eminently suitable for part of this