KARL HESPER ---------------------

RANDOM KILLER

A novel of about 54000 words

Contents

Chapter Page I. A treasure to be found underground………………………….. 3 II. A shortcut to wealth and health……………………………….. 10 III. To snobbery its fashions and styles……………………………. 16

IV. A crime that does pay…………………………………………. 21V. Makeshift grave for random victim…………………………… 28VI Dressed to kill………………………………………………….. 36VII Undress the kill while she is ill………………………………... 44VIII Forced confession and final perdition…………………………. 48 IX Perfunctory visit melts in crocodile tears………………………58X Street walker in housekeeper’s clothing………………………..64XI Pimp and whore in league for intrigue……………………… 73XII Failed andblackmailed………………………………………….85XIII All but dead in victim’s

bbed…………………………………….94 XIV Alice’s search for justice dashes her hopes…………………… 103

XV A union well-assorted and not to be aborted…………………..11111

XVI Daydream or nightmare…Lady-killer unaware……………… 120

XVII Only the King of Hell can tell………………………………….124

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Chapter I A TREASURE TO BE FOUND UNDERGROUND.

Other days, other worries. Today Matilda Bailon did not feel as fine as she ought to be. Most old women do not, most of the time, but all the same, to day it was not quite the same for old Matilda. That headache, which had accompanied her for weeks now, was out of the ordinary. It came grueling, excruciating, splitting her skull in two as it were. To crown all this her lips were numb, as though under the effect of local anaesthetic, a handicap she had never experienced before. What’s got so unusually wrong? she wondered, distraught and sat up in her bed.

To set her mind at rest, on this side of the double problem at least, she tried to ask the question again, speaking to herself aloud, the way mentally disturbed people sometimes do. But the words she managed to pronounce were distorted, garbled to the point of incomprehension by any listener, she realized with a pang. And yet she had been up and doing no later than yesterday, as usual, almost as early as the sun itself, after going to bed on the previous night shortly after its setting. That was the excellent habit she had acquired while still a child in obedience to her father’s precepts and sound advice. However, contrary to what was generally believed such a way of life did not make her either wealthier or healthier in the long run. Only wiser perhaps. What little wisdom she had gained in the process was noticed and admired by none except herself: actually, with the lapse of the years, there grew, in her innermost being, some pride in it. Still more: she was never tired of lavishing it on her son as soon as he reached his teens. She did it obstinately, repeatedly when he came of age, to no avail.

That dear son was her only child. She had conceived him out of wedlock down there behind the opacity of her walls, inside her cottage and in the unfathomable gloom of a moonless night. His father, a drunkard and a tough, was a source of shame for her, but she knew how to hide him from public eye so long as she needed his ‘cooperation’, and when the son he gave her was born, she hid him, too, for a time after christening him under her own surname, thus completely disowning the ‘donor’ although she had continued to receive him in her house during the first months of her pregnancy, but only under the veil of night, and when she was sure nobody was seeing them together. She had even occasionally gone so far as to let him make love to her : once or twice in a while, and that in spite of her being a paragon of virtue as she had often claimed. At bottom it was only when he promised he

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was soon to die and leave her alone for eternity that she allowed him to touch her at all. Probably in a feeling of deep, Christian compassion after he talked at length about a cirrhosis that was to kill him in a month or two at most in accordance with the prediction of his unerring doctor. But (that did not prevent him from being six months late)he was six months late before fulfilling his long awaited promise. What finally brought his life and her shame to an end was not cirrhosis but a sudden heart failure. It struck him quicker and harder than the effect of alcohol on his liver and precipitated his death in the twinkling of an eye. So he ended up leaving her alone four months later than forcast. That’s an essential thing to happen, she thought, relieved and relaxed at long last. Better late than never.

The posthumous child this man had deposited in her womb shortly before clearing out of her way, was the source of her secret delight and that in spite of the corrupt seed it came from. She hid the welcome baby for a time, and that for the sake of her good name but, when it finally had to be shown to her friends, who, for the most, were no better than backbiting gossips, she pretended, that she had been united to his father by marriage: a (match) (marriage) concluded in utter secrecy but nonetheless authorized and even blessed by the Holy Hogarist Church, as she had more than once asserted without anybody to give her the lie to her face, not even the most cynical among her friends, to say nothing of her enemies who were not few. It must be acknowledged that good, well-bred Matilda had always made a point of keeping within the narrow bounds of propriety and respectability. She would at any price avoid coming down in the world.

Like father like son, as is generally believed. Little Razdag—Raz for short: that was the first name Matilda gave her newborn offspring—had grown indeed to be a wastrel and a no-good in his turn. Perfectly a chip of the old block, although Matilda hated to regard him as such. He lived with her in that same cottage where she first saw the light and which she had inherited from her father. That petted darling of a son she had run the risk of generating at the expense of her own reputation was no better than a spoilt child, partly through her own fault. Slowly, gradually he became a past-master in the art of whiling away the time. He usually had nothing better than twiddling his thumbs when there was nothing worse to do. As for the money he needed for his nights out, he pumped it straight from her, whenever possible, down to the last penny he suspected her to have at the bottom of her purse, more especially on paydays, when she was ‘rolling in cash’ as he suspected and vehemently reclaimed, purposely forgetting that this brave woman was earned her bread and his by the sweat of her brow. She was indeed employed as a worker at Lamance and Pog ltd, in one of

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their cotton mills. All this to satisfy his cravings for spirits—and also marijuana wherever and whenever available, apart from women for hire along the pavements of downtown Pranberg, all done with threats and sometimes blackmail whenever it proved necessary.

Whatever this dear son did or said, he remained the apple of his mother’s eye and she went on spoiling and humouring him to his and her satisfaction, down to the last minutes of her life. On the other hand, the shrewd woman in her, who was all the same careful of her hard-earned money, remained set in her habit of putting out of his sight, down under piles of her clothes in a drawer, any number, big or small, of the pennies she managed to spare. Just for a rainy day, as she liked to tell herself from time to time in answer to the qualms of her conscience.

With this and more, dear Matilda never renounced her plan to put this prodigal son in ‘the right path’, urging him every now and then to find himself a job after he had played truant from school and from any other useful occupation afterwards.

Back to her present ordeal which definitely seemed unlike any in the near or remote past. Still in bed on that ominous day. No other choice with a headache like that and the inability to speak. What could she say, how could she work at Lamance in a condition like that? Just nothing, she bitterly regretted and reached for the telephone on the table beside her. A short word for Dr Plenrose to come and help her. Razdag, on his part, unmindful of her unusual comportment, stepped into the bedroom where she was so sharply aching, and, in cool, firm tones, asked for ‘some pocket money’ he badly needed as he said. She could not but answer his demand. At the same time, she entrusted him with the task of calling up Lamance and offering them apologies for her present, involuntary defection.

Dr. Plenrose, who came on the wings of speed when he heard what had befallen the poor woman, was none too happy at her symptoms. Without thinking twice, he sent her posthaste to Santa Loretta’s hospital for a closer check-up, insisting on a brain scan in the first instance.

As a result of the test the bad news came rushing and clear as daylight. Sad, sorrowful it sounded without any gleam of hope in the offing: brain cancer and nothing else, she was made to understand. By means of another terminology, of course, for attenuation and with regard to her sinking morale. What they talked about at length was ‘a sort of malignant tumour’ that was deeply embedded in her brain and whose eradication was impossible without much harm and even permanent damage. Matilda, on her part, was no such a fool as to misunderstand the real meaning of the words. From that instant she sank into black despair, realizing that her days

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were numbered. All the same she made a show of meeting her lot with stoical dignity, but, once left on her own in the ward, she burst into a sob.

Razdag, at once informed by telephone, was now quite aware of her plight and the tragedy ahead. But that did not seem to worry him overmuch. Still himself, what was more important for him was his own personal leisure and ever-demanding pleasure to the exclusion of anything else. What he thought he urgently needed right now was some more ‘ready cash’ to tide him over the ‘present difficulties’. That was about how he expressed his new, ‘urgent needs’ when he entered the room where poor Matilda was lying half-dead, in goggle-eyed terror after her sob.

He got the money good and proper in spite of the low spirits in which she was. He got even better than money into the bargain, in truth the last and least he would have desired. At that hour more than any other time: same old questions and exhortations. Quite unpleasant they were, although they had lost their sting by now. Anyway he already knew them by heart and there was no need for poor Matilda to repeat herself. Warped and cracked as they came on the sick woman’s stiffened lips, they were nonetheless comprehensible word for word. To him at least.

Raz, wh—when haa—ve you done aski—ing for pocket monn—ney—ney and allow—allowances and thin—gs like that at your age?” she asked, gathering herself together as well as her failing energy could permit. “Why—oh, why the dev—vil don’t you find yours—elf a job at long last?”

“I applied for one, Mother.,” he answered, fed up but forcing himself into more patience for once. “It was no later than last week,” he went on. “Berg and Betson: ever heard of this corporation?”

“Y—es, and how did they a—ans--wer your application?” They sent for me on the spot and then put me to the test. All they were

able to say as a conclusion to their silly talk and useless questions was that I was not up to their standards! Which standards, please? Who do they take themselves for?”

“You just forget th—them and show your abili—t—ies --ies som—m—somewhere else if you have any!” advised Matilda. Wherr—ever and whenever you can. “soonerr bet than la—ter ,” she warned, shaking a forefinger. “un—unless—less you prefer poverty and starvation in the very near future!”

“Why do you say that, Mum? Does that mean that you have made up your mind not to help me from now on?”

“I d—didn’t say that, darr—ling, but with a tt—tumour like mine one …may pass away any time, and in the twink--lingg of an eye, you know! Wh—wherr—ere then can you get this p—pocket mon—ey you arr so eag—

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gerly after? Where in th—the world once I am no longer at your ss—side to help you, as you say?”

“I’ll sell the cottage and live in an almshouse! Is that what you want?” he asked, not without a note of blackmail in his tones.

“That’ll be the m—most idiotic th—ing you can do, my poor boy! Time and aggin I told you there’s a trr—treasure hidden somewhere under the floor of that mod—dest dwel—dwelling of ours! Precisely under its secret little base—er—sement if—“

“Gosh, an old wives’ tale all this! As old as the world, if you ask me!” he answered without meaning it, but just to tease her a little and get what he ‘urgently needed’ without delay.

“Yes, that’s what yourr ev—ever—everlasting laziness keeps on tell—lin—ling you in spite of my rec—curring—ring advice for you to go ah—head and pry deep into the d—dirt underneath! That pig-head—ded reluctance to take pains a—and g—go dow-wn there in the gr—round oow—won’t get you far, my boy. So much the worr—se if you preff—err starvation after my death!”

“Save if I unbury your treasure,” scoffed Razdag at the warning. “Who the hell told you there’s gold in the mud under the basement of this worthless hut of yours?” he asked, putting on an air of scornful indifference.

“Yes, Go--lld, sol—id prr—ecious bul—lion and coins!” she asserted, perfectly convinced of what she said.

At bottom Matilda’s son, who used to laugh at her each time she talked about that hidden treasure, sort of shared her belief, although he had never admitted it. He wished with all his heart that the “old wive’s tale” were tangible reality. That would at least solve his ever-recurring financial problems, down to the last minute of his life, he was sure. Consequently, his mind never tired of planning out a thorough search for the gold that could well have been buried by some unknown hand under the modest cottage he lived in. At bottom, dear Razdag was of one mind with his mother about this hidden treasure. What had up till now prevented him from digging it out was his chronic sloth and the procrastinating habits he had acquired therewith.

“Yes, A trr—easure, my s—son , believe it or not!” pursued Matilda in

spite of her climaxing headache. “Thousands—I daresay mill—lions of gold coins in a case, and hh—hidden only a couple of yards und—der the floor of the b—bbasement! Enough to turn you into a mil—Whatt do I ssay? a bill—ii--onaire overnight, my lad!”

Enough to make you build more castles in the air,” teased Razdag. Once more let me ask you that simple question, Mom. I know your answer but I’d

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like to hear it again. Won’t you tell me frankly who’s the cranky myth-maker who told you this wonderful story about a hidden treasure?”

“It—er it’s my own f—father andd none else who—!” “Aha, I see! That old dotard you were so fond of and whose vivid

imagination was never tired of spinning yarn after yarn about hidden money and like rubbish under the presently all—covering rubbish! so l—“

“My late father was n—not spinningg yarns when he t—tipped me off ab—bout—th—this, I’mm sure! I’ll haf you know he w—w—was an upright, God-fearr—ing man who never told a lie in his lo—ong life there in the cottage wherrr—we’re now!”

“How, the deuce, could he guess there was a treasure hidden under his house?”

“It’s his ow—wn father who—“ “Ah, yes, I see! And then it’s the father of your father who got it from

his own father, and so on and so forth until the very first father of humankind at the beginning of time!” Razdag laughed more heartily still, although he was still more impressed by his grandfather’s tips, notwithstanding his mother’s extreme sufferings and imminent death.

“You’d b—b better stop this rowdy mockery,” she snubbed, “and listen a litt-tle more to wh—whatt I say unless—“

“Sorry I can’t help laughing! Now just this more: beats me why you yourself never practiced what you have never been tired of preaching. What, for example, could have prevented you from digging with your own hands this bloody case out of its hiding place and availing yourself of its fabulous contents instead of slaving away in that hellish cotton-mill day in day out?”

“I—I a—mm a weak wom—aann. No muscles, no st—stamina. Wh—while you, a y—young man att—at the peak of h—health and strr—ength—er…”

“Quite so, then why didn’t you hire a sturdy labourer to pluck up the boards of this basement and do the digging and the search for you?”

“A labour—err? Say rather a would-bbee squealer ann—dd bla—aacmailer who’s apt to inf—form the income tax men, who—“

“Yes, I see what you mean. To set your mind at rest, Mummy, I’ll try myself to find out this wonderful treasure without any help from the outside. Isn’t that what you really want?”

Matilda nodded, apparently satisfied as her son got to his feet and turned his back after wheedling her into giving him more ‘pocket money’. Back home and then…a wonderful night ahead at some bar or brothel in the arms of a whore...

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It was a week or so later that this badly ailing and desperately struggling woman breathed her last. However, very shortly before her death she very lovingly and in spite of her agony talked to that cherished son about another, nearer but much smaller treasure, the product of her unwonted doings behind his back. It was that fairly thick wad of banknotes she had accumulated and carefully hidden from his sight and out of his reach, under a stack of her underclothes in the chest of drawers near her bed. That was the product of her foresight, she boasted. The notes had been put by, one by one, for years at a stretch and carefully preserved for a rainy day.

That day, the last of her life, was the rainiest of all in her mind. She seemed quite unaware that it was the fairest for her son.

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CHAPTER II

A SHORTCUT TO WEALTH AND HEALTH

Matilda gone, her son heaved a long sigh. Whether of relief or pain he did not know. What he knew was that he was in a hurry to pick the fruit of her departure. His well-being, his rounds of pleasure first thing, and then come what may, be it the crack of doom for all he cared. That was about what went through his head the moment he was driving off less than an hour after he saw her on her deathbed in the hospital ward.

Wine, women and an occasional smoke of marijuana from under the counter of some shady joint. Somewhere known to him and only a ‘selected few’ in the red-light quarters of the old city. His for the asking now, once the money in the drawer was found and grabbed... On top of this an upper-class, expensive brothel he had spotted once and had to bypass as a luxury he could not afford. No more like frustrations from now on, everything easily obtainable—until further notice, of course—thanks to that extra-thick wad of banknotes his mother had so stealthily—and so kindly!—hidden under a much thicker pile of her underclothes. Smart of her so long as she lived—and thrived without his knowing!

But—but that woman might have gone mad and talked rot while going to her last sleep, he feared all of a sudden as he steered back home after that last visit to her.

There was however no cause for fear: the discovery of the money indeed proved easy as ABC, and rewarding past his wildest hopes: just in proportion to the unusual thickness of the wad: enough to see him through the rest of the year and even the whole of the next in his hasty, giddy calculations. The search extended to other drawers. No money found but there, under another stack of linen, lay a small pistol complete with a handful of ammunition scattered around it as well as other necessary paraphernalia.

Looked more like a toy than a firearm, but was well worth a try. Together with two or three shells, he picked up the small bauble and went out to the backyard behind the cottage. There, aiming at a target he picked up haphazardly from under his feet, he pulled the trigger. Everything in order, he decided. The miniature gun might come in handy were there was a brawl with someone any time, anywhere. He pocketed it without hesitation and, from that day, never parted company with it each time he went out or turned in for the night. Again, and while he was testing the weapon’s suitability on the lee side of the cottage, he admired his mother’s foresight: not every

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person of her age and sex could so wisely make provision at home for an attack from the outside, he thought.

With rough handlings and wasteful spendings the thick wad of banknotes wore thin very soon, much sooner than Bailon had predicted. That was what he realized with deep concern one morning while helping himself to the self-allotted, over-generous, amount necessary for his daily expenditures. Another month or two at this rate: enough to make it vanish altogether out of its cache in that damned chest of drawers, he warned himself. In the meantime, some other source of income had to be found by hook or by crook for those spending sprees to which he had so foolishly accustomed himself of late, ever since the moment of the old woman’s death. Shrinkproof this time, if any. No delay; no postponements permitted unless—unless he let himself slide into the hell of starvation and slow death. To the point of no-return this time! Unthinkable!

In spite of his apparent mockery and loud sarcasm at his mother’s advice and silly recommendations while she was awaiting death in her sickbed, Bailon made up his mind again to be just as credulous as she was, which he knew he actually was at heart. For once at least, he resolved, and just for a try, however difficult and unprofitable it seemed at first go.

Prompted by the idea, he went to the tool corner of the house and chose himself among other implements a hammer and a pick. Thus armed, he came back and shifted the little strip of rug that hid the ultra-secret manhole in front of the kitchen door, laying bare the lid and lifting it out of its position. He then avidly peered in but failed to see anything through the pitch dark down there. No good, he told himself in utter disgust, but saw no sufficient reason to throw up the self-imposed game as yet. Instead, he went to the bedroom and came back with an electric torch that was lost among a hundred odds and ends on the dresser at the foot of his bed. Through the manhole he flashed a beam of light and gingerly scaled down the ladder whose bottom rung he found buried under a profusion of junk: suitcases and straps of every make and age, ropes of every size and length beside a number of old-world lamps. This apart from countless boxes and tins, all empty of their original contents and smothered in their turn by another mound of trash, unidentifiable for the most part.

So far, so good, but the rub was that this load of garbage was covering the whole floor, leaving not so much as a square inch to set foot in.

No matter, he told himself and sturdily, determinedly, waded in the sea of litter down to the nearest corner of the room. There, clearing a little portion of plank, he started hammering at the floor. With might and main, he broke his way down to the earth underneath. Was there really a treasure

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hidden under that barren crust his torch indicated? He thrust his pick in and went about dinting and denting blindly under the surface he could reach. Deep as went the hole under the strokes, it showed no gold, no sign of metal, precious or base, only what looked like dirt all the way down to the bottom. Deeper and deeper he dug, with still no better results. At last, tired and fed up with his own ‘stupidity’ he rose to his feet and retraced his steps. Back to the ladder and the lid he had so strenuously displaced, fuming and cursing for having made of himself a fool, just like old Matilda if not a little more…But he would try again, notwithstanding these considerations. Some other day in some other corner of the black room. More thoroughly if need be.

Now how to cope with the present situation? He could really not afford to wait indefinitely for the ‘miracle’ to work while that thick wad of banknotes was so rapidly thinning day after day.

Still at a loss for a likelier and steadier source of income, he sat at the breakfast table, almost forgetting to eat, and buried his face in the palms of his hands in a vain search for what used to be called the philosopher’s stone. Harder and harder he thought when he walked out, not knowing where to go, afraid to spend on his favourite amusements what little money was left in his wallet from yesterday’s generous scoop in the parental drawer.

The random stroll on the pavement of the thoroughfare did not last long. It was interrupted by a slap on Bailon’s shoulder from behind. He turned about and saw a young man laughing breezily. Same height, same age as himself or thereabouts, but chubbier and his cheeks were sagging on either side of his double chin. Bailon did not know who he was at first sight but, on closer scrutiny of the eyes and the rest of the lineaments of the face, he ended up recognizing him to be Henry Mikop, a playmate in and out of school during the years of his boyhood.

“Bailon, old man, what’s become of you? It’s ages since I saw you last. We were then playing together. Truant and worse, remember? We were mere children then!”

“Bailon remembered all right, however, without so much as a smile of joy at the pleasantness of the encounter. “Henry Mikop, ah, it’s you?” he managed to say, heavy as he was with the problems that were still oppressing his mind. “We were worthless dunces, yes, I see: playing sometimes hide-and-seek and sometimes truant from school.”

Mikop laughed with still more jollity in his tones despite Bailon’s relatively cold response.

“We were no better than mere animals then,” he pursued, “ but so happy, so carefree. It was the good old time, wasn’t it?”

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Bailon said it was, but unenthusiastically, without any show of homesickness in his answers.

“What are you doing nowadays to keep the pot boiling, if I may ask?” Mikop inquired with what looked like interest.

“Nothing: no jobs, no hope for any, I am left in the lurch, so to speak,” replied Bailon with red-eyed sadness.

“Oh, so sorry, old pal! I myself am busy as a bee nowadays. Not collecting, but wasting honey,” Mikop laughed again. “No cause for worry in spite of all this,” he went on, laughing harder still.

“What makes you so merry, so confident in the future?” asked Bailon, somewhat intrigued at last.

“Fact is I married my way into riches, if you care to know. My wife, who is crazy about me, is the heiress of a millionaire. Better still: she believes in me and her confidence in my business acumen is past words! I prompted her to invest and speculate in accordance with my own point of view as a way of increasing her millions, and, by Gad, she did! She’s even ended up appointing me as her expert adviser and broker for good and all, imagine!”

“ Your advice must have won her more millions, no doubt,” commented Bailon vaguely.

“On the contrary! she has lost a whacking big sum through my own fault! I must admit I’ve almost always urged her to buy the wrong stocks. Last week my estimate of the market made her go short: several foreign currencies and commodities at once while just the opposite was the right thing to do in order to reap the profits I expected for her and me. As an outcome of this glaring error of mine she lost a hundred thousand and is still on her way to lose even more, and very soon! But she’s such a rich woman and so much in love with me. She won’t mind throwing her money away for my sake, I’m sure!”

“To be frank, all this jargon sounds like double Dutch in my ears, my good friend! What I can say is that you’re lucky to be the husband of a rich woman. At least you’re not threatened with starvation and premature death like I am!”

“What can prevent you from marrying a rich girl like I did?”“Huh, there are not so many available, are there? And then—“ “Minute! I’ve struck upon a bright idea: my sister-in-law is just as much

of a millionaire as my wife herself if not more! She’s 19 or twenty and single, and most probably on the lookout for some young man like yourself to suit her plans. How about introducing you to her some day or other, old boy?”

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“Fine, wonderful, but I’m afraid such a girl won’t accept to marry a waster and a rotter like me. Will she if—“

“Why not if she falls for you? Love is blind as the saying goes. All it takes to make such a dream come true is a little introduction and—and, what we may call ‘amorous advances’ on your part, if you know what I mean. That’s how I myself went about it with her sister and, by Gad, it worked fine and I didn’t regret what I did ever since.”

“Not so simple as you make out. First, how to meet this girl and then—““Simpler still! She’s coming to our house for tea on Monday next. You

just make it seem as if you’ve dropped in at five o’clock on that day. We’ll pretend it was for some important business talk with me. She’ll be there at that moment, gossiping at leisure with her sister who’s my wife as they used to do each time they met. Some sort of introduction between you two will do the trick, I’m sure. Anyway it’ll be a must under the circumstances and then—then I’m confident everything will go on wheels, the easy, natural way, provided it—now what’s that? Wait a little, please.” Mikop rummaged in his side pocket and fished out a very small cell phone.

“Hello, morning… What did you say…Meltz and Coiler plummeting? Oh, too bad I so strongly overrated these two stock, but... never mind… No, not now. I won’t stop my losses; I know trends have a tendency to go into reverse sooner or later…Okay, I’ll see to that in time.” Mykop hastily closed the communication and replaced the instrument in his pocket. He turned his attention to Bailon again.

“What a pity I strongly advised my wife to enter these damned trades!” he said without seeming to be disturbed overmuch. “That’s going to cost her another hundred thousand, I’m afraid. Maybe a little more, but—but it’d be of no consequence in the end: I’m certain she’ll once more weather the storm with her millions at the ready. Much as usual, my good friend.”

Still at sea as to his friend’s meaning in this business rigmarole, Bailon asked more questions about the millionaire girl whom he was going to meet and—marry perhaps. Where she lived and how she acquired those millions at her age, and much more.

“She lives in a luxurious, superbly furnished flat on Octabena avenue, know where? The house was her father’s present for her eighteenth birthday some two months before he died. This man was known to be a multimillionaire. He has struck it rich in Africa while he was still young, but what was the good? He came back with a poor health to the fatherland ,

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and only to die twenty-five years later, not long after his wife’s death. They said it was a stroke which killed him prematurely, long before he could fully enjoy the enormous fortune he has brought home. The money he has left was of course inherited by his two children, that is by this girl and her sister, who was to become my own wife shortly afterwards, you understand now?”

Bailon said he did understand at last. Mikop handed him a visiting card in response to his acceptance of the suggestion and the invitation that had been so opportunely made. Bailon thanked him and, opening his wallet, he inserted the richly embossed address beside what little money he was carrying for the day’s expenses. He then took leave of his old playmate and went his way, almost dancing with joy as he walked. By now indeed he was almost certain he had hit the jackpot and would be very soon rolling in cash.

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Chapter III TO SNOBBERY ITS FASHIONS AND STYLESLate in the afternoon of the appointed day Bailon stood bolt upright at

Mikop’s front door and cast a glance at his watch: five o’clock or thereabouts. On time for the golden opportunity—or was that cheap time-piece on his wrist right for once? The chimes of a neighbouring clock told him it was. A date with fortune, he fancied, a miracle awaiting him behind that very thin wall which stood between him and the promised millions, nothing short of a windfall due to crash slapbang on his head in next to no time and dazzle him with its light. It was only a matter of hours, minutes perhaps, before the daydream came true: fine, wonderful past credence…

He tensed a tiny bit as he raised his hand and pushed the button on the golden plate. There was heard a pattering of steps before the door flew open to admit him. From behind it Mikop’s face beamed warmly at his arrival. In a gesture of welcome he waved him in.

“The two ladies are now talking their heads off,” he mumbled disapprovingly. “Tattling and tittering woman-wise, you know!”

“Which ladies? What do you mean by—“ . “Pamela, my wife, and her sister who’ll soon be yours, I expect,”

answered Mykop and led the way to the living-room. “No end to that half-whispered drivel and so we’ve got to wait for the introductions, I’m afraid. Not before they have finished their chit-chat and their endless giggles!

“It’s always like that with them,” he concluded miserably, but nonetheless tolerantly.

In fact the two sisters went on gabbling between themselves, not minding in the least the presence of a stranger in the room, and that until Mikop, losing patience at long last, tried to bring their silly talk to an end.

“This is my friend Razdag Bailon,” he said and had to repeat himself louder: once, twice and more before they so much as took notice to his words.

“Razdag is a bosom friend of mine,’ he went on. “We’ve been together for years at the same school. Ever since we were children. He’s now coming in quite unexpectedly for a business talk with me and I’ve asked him to stay with us for tea.”

Mikop would have invented still more justifications to Bailon’s apparently ‘sudden presence’ in the house were it not for the dissuading

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attitude of the two ladies who seemed to lose interest in the lengthy explanation. They indeed resumed their humdrum cackle and wearisome chuckle, much to his protest, however dumb it was.

Better put a damper on those bad manners of theirs, he thought. Some way or other: by coming to the point at once, perhaps…He did.

“This is Pamela, my wife,” he said, addressing both her and his friend. Bailon extended an arm and got a flabby handshake in return.Flabbier was Rita’s response to the introductions. Still worse: Pamela’s

sister withdrew her hand at once and raised it to her mouth in an effort to suppress an amusement that was fast building inside her. It looked as though the sight of the newcomer had tickled her into a merrier mood; which was construed by him as a mark of flagrant disrespect. He felt slighted, thwarted, hurt to the core. In an aside to his more hospitable friend he did not fail to express his displeasure and his pain, but the latter did not seem to make much of his complaints.

“I beg you, please, take no offence,” he said. “As I told you, this is the way of women nowadays. We’ve got to accept them as they are.”

“All the same this girl Rita is the limit! What’s the meaning of those grimaces and her laughing at the mere pronunciation of my name? Is she all that ill-bred as to—“

“I bet you’ll see another Rita at the tea table,” interrupted Mikop. “There you’ll have to address her in person in order to break the ice between you two. It’s then and only then that you can see the difference, my good friend, you may depend on it!”

At the tea table, and in spite of Mikop’s cocksure prognostication things did not seem to fare any better between the would-be husband and the girl he so eagerly wanted for a wife. To the numerous questions he asked her she answered in vague monosyllables if at all, and seemed much more in a hurry to resume her half-whispered gossip with her sister. All this not without pulling a face at him and grimacing again: the way he had so much grumbled about.

In another aside with his old crony after the meal he aired his grievance again. More emphatically this time. “Complete disrespect and scorn,” he stressed, alluding to Rita’s attitude. “Is this what Pamela has shown when you two first met?” he asked.

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“Oh, no, not that, far from it,” answered Mikop with self-sufficient pride. “But we must not overlook the fact that Pamela’s got Cupid’s sting the very first minute she saw my face, if you know what I mean. That’s the coup de foudre, as the French say. It’s a great pity this did not happen to Rita the moment she saw you. No, not yet, but don’t bother, old boy: that’ll come in due course, I’m sure! Meanwhile I strongly advise that you should try to narrow the distance between you and her by some means or other. D’you know what? I’d pay her a surprise visit in her own house if I were you! I’d ask her then point-blank to marry me! What do you say to this damned efficient strategy, old man?”

“It’s no use. What will come of another insult and more humility if I go there and do what you say?”

“You’ll see it’ll be not like that, my good friend. You may have my word for it!” Without waiting for an acceptance of his master plan Mikop grabbed at Bailon’s sleeve and lugged him toward what he called his own office in the flat. There, in an almost illegible handwriting, he hastily scribbled two or three lines and then, tearing the sheet off the pad, he tendered it to his friend across the desk.

“Take this,” he said. “It’s her address. She lives on her own in the luxurious apartment her father has given her as a birthday present. It’s on the fiftieth floor of Gullman Tower. Ever heard of such an erection? It’s the tallest residential unit ever built in uptown Pranberg and maybe in the whole world, my good friend! Very expensive: made only for the selected few who can pay the high cost of such a luxurious abode as that, mind you?”

“Fine, superb! But all this what for? It’s one more reason why she’ll reject me outright as an unworthy suitor. Sure as death, don’t you find?”

“False! I bet she’ll be simply delighted to have a man calling on her and openly proposing marriage. She’s once complained of loneliness in that flat, if I remember well.”

Very reluctantly Bailon said he would take his friend’s advice. It was his very last chance toward fortune and comfort as he imagined.

“I’m glad to hear this,” said Mikop, his smile reaching far on either side of his face as an unmistakable sign of satisfaction. “But—but look here, Bailon,” he added warningly, shaking a forefinger at his unenlightened friend, “you’ll have to bring yourself up-to-date in accordance with the latest fashion, both in your appearance and clothes, if you mean to please her and earn her favour on the spot. It’s like that with this girl, my dear boy.”

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Bailon looked himself up and down. “Blast her!” he exclaimed. “As you can see, my suit is of a rather obsolete cut and I have no money to buy a new one these days in order to please a snobbish girl of that turn of mind, if this is what you mean!”

“So much the better, my friend! The mode for men at present is shabbiness rather than elegance. Tatters and rags instead of brand new, expensively tailored things as of old. You’ll have to undo this necktie and store it away in the first instance before you set foot in her luxurious flat. You’ll be welcome if your hair is ruffled, tousled—I daresay completely disheveled. Naturally, your face should be unshaven—I’d say more: the growing beard must look like a jungle of bristles. All this and even better: you’ll have to wear old, very old trousers. Make sure they are tired-looking and patchy, and falling in threads and shreds at the knees—and a tiny bit soiled all over, why not if you want her admiration? What else? Ah, yes: your shirt should be frayed at the collar and badly in need of a wash and some ironing if—“

“Yes, I see. You may be right, old man: hundreds of fashionable young men today wear nothing but old trash. Now what if—“

Mikop cut him short. “No need to doubt a single word of what I say,” he stressed in his self-confident way. “I bet you’ll be amazed and quite delighted by her reception and her reaction to your new aspect. That is if you follow what I’m recommending to the letter,” he added. “D’you understand?”

As usual, Bailon answered by saying he did understand what at bottom was the height of absurdity in his eyes. He then took leave of his over clever friend and walked out of his house, carefully avoiding the two shamelessly gibing sisters in the lounge. No need for further humiliation and another slap in the face from such pert, brainless young women, he told himself as he strolled along the corridor and then down to the crowded pavement on his way back home. By now his head was full of another hope and quite the opposite of his first expectations: just what was suggested him about the ‘new fashion’ in the realm of the rich and their idea of attraction between the sexes. Snobbery nonetheless, but in its inverted form.

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Chapter IV

A CRIME THAT DOES PAY

For days and even weeks Bailon abstained from shaving or even washing his face now that he had set his mind on being verily ‘up-to-date’. The fancy took him even to overlay his cheeks with sodden blobs of mud. That was in his present belief and in accordance with Mikop’s latest teachings the sine qua non of membership in the club of millionaires and in the hearts of the girls who belonged there.

Somewhere on a shelf near her kitchen, long gone Matilda used to pile up old shirts and trousers and every kind of other superannuated wear, he now recollected as in an illumination from heaven. Matilda who was useful to him in her lifetime ought to remain so after her death, he told himself and went straight to the stacked, moth-eaten clothes she called ‘rags’ and spurned as no longer fit to be used by any self-respecting people in her opinion—or even by a grimy litter bug like his own description of himself…

After a careful search his choice fell on a horribly stained shirt Matilda had once cast aside as too dirty and worn out and no longer repairable or even machine-washable. On top of these impossibilities he saw it was frayed at the cuffs and all around the collar: just the goods for his purposes of the moment. To go with it he picked a pair of trousers from the heap and tried them on himself. They fitted ideally and reached to his ankles or even slightly further down, just as of old, maybe a little less on account of the shrinkage they had undergone through years of use and constant wash. Still better: they were bereft of their original colour and conspicuously threadbare at the knees. Not to Matilda’s liking anyway, of course, he remembered, but did that matter? The old fogy had scornfully declined to patch them up some way or other, he reminded himself, and that for the simple reason that she had never been abreast of the times, being totally blind to the new mode! Very well, he would bridge the gap himself, in his own way and in faithful compliance with Mikop’s directions.

Cutting and shortening the trousers with scissors proved a child’s play. So was the sticking of cloth on the front surface of the legs and making it look as though they had been sewn up by a professional hand. As for the production of threads and shreds that ought to be dangling from the knees, those Mikop had so eagerly recommended as the key to success with upper

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class girls, they demanded perhaps more skill to look natural and not mere imitation, but, all in all, they were no great trouble, and he went about the job of rending and mending with enthusiasm. Pretty enough to hit the mark and turn him overnight into a fine lady-killer apt to move in the best circles—in a word a millionaire-to-be, in conformity with his friend’s powerful knowledge and superhuman foresight.

Thus fitted, he stood in his bedroom, excitedly admiring himself, bristling face hairs and worn-out garments and all, in front of the tall wardrobe mirror. He then slipped his hand under his pillow and, extracting the little pistol he had inherited from his mother, thrust it into the hip pocket of the ‘new’ old trousers. This he did almost mechanically and from sheer force of habit. It had become part of his second nature in the long run and an essential element of his everyday routine. What more to do before wooing Rita he did not know exactly. What he knew for sure was that he was on his way to Gullman Tower and its fiftieth floor.

At the girl’s front door he stood, waiting for her to answer the bell. She did but after a rather long wait and in quite another mind than he and his friend had expected.

“Who are you? What do you want?” she asked with staring, unsmiling eyes. Then she went about sizing him up from top to toe.

“Huh, I see you don’t recognize me—or rather remember me, do you?” he asked, smiling all the same, as though to mitigate the severity of her look. “We’ve met the other day in Henry Mikop’s house,” he added, flaunting the shabbiness he had so masterfully achieved on himself. “I am a close friend of his since—“

“What do you want?” she harshly cut in, her scowl deepening, her eyebrows knit into an expression of definite unwelcome.

Was that the reception his all-knowing friend had promised and for which he himself had toiled so meticulously for hours on end? Was Mikop likely to have gone all that wrong in his prediction and advice? For a moment or two these and other similar questions played havoc in Bailon’s mind and he was at a loss for an answer to them…

Suddenly Rita brought his perplexity to an abrupt end by slamming the door in his face. He stepped back, his nose all but knocked off by the luxuriously gilt panel that adorned the outer side of the door. Under such treatment his vain endeavours gave way to anger. Very well: he would teach the ever disrespectful minx a hard lesson, he resolved and pushed the button

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on the golden plate anew. This he did, however, without much hope to see her again and get his own back while the iron was still red-hot.

Almost to his surprise, the girl reappeared, and in next to no time. “Go away,” she yowled and tried to slam the door for the second time on him. But his foot was quicker this time: it went inside the house, preventing the door from falling shut.

“I’ve come to tell you something very important,” he said. Won’t you listen instead of yapping and yelping like a mad bitch?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t care who you are or what you say,” came Rita’s answer. This together with another attempt to close the door, but Bailon’s foot was still obstinately planted on the other side of the threshold, making it impossible for her to get rid of him as easily as she imagined.

“I’ll raise the hell in your house if you don’t listen and give me your answer on the spot, d’you hear?” he asked, louder still, bracing himself for a showdown. No response but he waited, firm as a rock, keeping his foot in its new, uncomfortable position inside the richly decorated entrance of the flat. It was only the sight of another man coming from the other end of the doorway that made him withdraw it.

“Very well, you’ll hear from me very soon,” he threatened and flounced out on his way to the lift.

Down in the street and all along the crowded pavement it looked as though that same man he had perceived in the murk of Rita’s interior was constantly dogging him. Rather odd, he thought and the unpleasantness of the situation invited more than one question in his head. Better step into a bus to put an end to the discomfort caused by what looked like a hunt. He did, but the stranger did the same, giving him still more worry. What on earth did Rita’s friend want with him? That lover who apparently lived with her and whose existence Mikop didn’t so much as suspect in spite of his boundless knowledge of persons and things. No matter: he would deal properly with his pursuer if things got rough between them, he thought and felt for the gun through the thin fabric of the pocket on his hip…

Still there the strange man, even when Bailon reached home, even when he let himself in! He was following close in his wake, hard upon his heels. At the front door of the cottage he went so far as to thrust his foot in and prevent him from shutting it, just the way he himself had done when Rita tried to eject him out of her sight. Coming from so far, what really did that

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swanking cad want with him? Bailon stood firm in the doorway and put him the straight question.

“Let me introduce myself first thing,” said the man in cold blood. “I am barrister-at-law Richard Greidam, Rita Albor’s friend and advocate.

Bailon’s eyes appraised the intruder with furious interest: well spruced up, clean-shaven, impeccably dressed but his breath was reeking with spirits. Now what about that expensive-looking suit? Did it really matter in the eyes of a snobbish girl? From Mikop’s point of view it didn’t, he remembered. Still better: it was just the opposite of what his knowing friend had said, poles apart from the prevailing mode in his estimate. Shabbiness and neglect: a much more effective means to win a female’s affections nowadays. Such was Mikop’s opinion in which Bailon still firmly believed but—but no time for such considerations right now. That reckless gatecrasher ought to be put in his place. He had to be dispatched straightway to where he belonged, first and foremost.

“Glad to meet you, Greidam,” he managed to say while meaning just the opposite. He did more: he forced a large smile that opened and stretched his mouth and, somewhat menacingly, bared the hideous blackness of his teeth. “What’s the object of your visit?” he went on. “What the hell do you want with me, coming from so far?”

“I’ve come just to tell you that you’ll be soon arrested and sued and jailed for what you did this morning. I’ll see to that myself in person and make you pay dear for the offence—I daresay the crime—you’ve had the boldness to commit at this lady’s front door. Trying to push your way into her flat: hum… In order to rape her, no doubt, or kill her, or steal her jewels. More than enough to convict you and send you to prison for a long term, much longer than you think in the eyes of the law. You, poor ignorant dimwit!“

What are you talking about? Is that the effect of the alcohol your smell tells me about or—“

“I am sober as a judge and I know what I’m talking about. I can say even more: putting one’s foot inside somebody’s house is the equivalent of attempting on his or her life in—“

“Like what you’re doing now, for example, eh?” interrupted bailon in red-hot anger.

“I have a right to do so while you yourself—“

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“You’d better stop talking rot and clear away at once, otherwise…” Bailon’s hand flew out and then came to rest on the bulge of his pocket.

Suspecting the presence of a firearm there, Greidam flinched back and then, when he saw the muzzle of a gun pointed at him, counter-attacked at once in a desperate attempt to wrest the weapon from his aggressor’s hand and avoid its deadly, immediate action. What followed was a long and fierce battle a yard or two inside the house. It could well end up with a draw and an arrangement between the two fighters were it not for a bullet that crossed Greidam’s chest and travelled through his heart. More than enough to send him twirling to the floor and take his life.

On seeing his enemy fall Bailon’s heart fell in its turn. Dead without the ghost of a doubt, he inferred, observing the suddenly discoloured face at his feet. Without giving himself time for a second thought he reached out and pulled the front door of his cottage shut, preventing passers-by from thrusting their noses in and seeing the body. That would simply mean a report to the local police and then an arrest, prior to an inquest and a trial and an immediate condemnation to death—or would it be an imprisonment for life? Not much a better lot.

Frightful the prospect! Mind-boggling in the extreme the sight of what happened by leaps and bounds,almost without Bailon’s knowing it. No fun having a dead man at home, right at one’s feet: Bailon was learning that at his own expense now, as he observed with horror his enemy sprawling motionless on the floor, staining it with what looked like a red-black fluid, dumbly charging him with a ‘murder’ he did not mean to commit.

Stunned by the enormity of his own, almost involuntary deed as he was, he dropped senseless in a chair nearby. Then, gradually coming to from his daze, he started racking his brains for a solution to the impossible situation he, almost unawares, had put himself in. That idiot’s nonsense about a trial and like rubbish bound to become tangible reality in next to no time, he realized, unless—unless something were done about it on the spot. First of all that dead man had to be hidden somewhere or other before any eventual visit to the house by the police. Putting it in the boot of the car and dumping it into a scrap heap somewhere perhaps, among dead cars and rusting metal on the outskirts of the city…Yes, possible, but not in broad daylight as now, not before the pitch-dark of the moonless night to come…

Bailon was still wandering in the bumpy field of his cogitations when the shrills of a police car jolted him out of his mind and his seat. The crazy jeep was roaring and speeding down the road, right into his front door as

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his imagination showed it at that moment. He paled and shivered at the growing stridency of the approaching vehicle. Come for an arrest and the inevitable inquest, he dreaded, trembling more and more. His heart sank further still in his chest, then leapt up, missing a beat or two at the mere idea of what he was in for, but he eased off a little bit when the devilish juggernaut shot past and its sinister boom got lost in the space ahead.

That did not however give him all the peace of mind he needed. So he went on dithering and quivering: another police arrival, sent by this girl Rita this time! An incursion into his house any moment today, tomorrow, who could tell? Anyhow, there was no escaping it sooner or later. Much more desirable not to let them see that awful carcass in the middle of the room just in case they visited the house for an inspection, but where the deuce to hide it from their eyes right now, before it was too late, while waiting for the night to come for protection from public eye and immediate denunciation during the ride to some remote place or other?

Simple enough, said Bailon to himself as he struck upon a bright idea at last: he would, for the time being, drop the ugly mass into the basement of the house, amidst the rubbish that had accumulated there through the years. Nobody from the outside had ever seen that invisible and yet essential part of this house. None had even had the shadow of a notion about its mere existence under the cottage.

Without any more hesitation he got to his feet and, grabbing the dead man by the hand, started lugging him up to the manhole in front of the kitchen door. There, lifting the rug and the lid, he pushed him a yard or so toward the hole.

While straining and paining he suddenly struck upon another, still brighter idea of his. Ah, true, he told himself: this fellow must have some money on him. Better get it now before being forestalled by the worms…

No sooner thought than done, Bailon’s hand went deep into the inside of Greidam’s jacket, and came out with a leather wallet: it was still moist with the victim’s blood on its outer surface but bone dry from within. Still better: it was stuffed with new crackly banknotes when he opened it, together with a few documents and visiting cards bearing the name and the title of the owner. No matter: what was important was the money he found, much as he had guessed.

Very contentedly and no less hastily, he emptied part of the wallet flat into his own. It was his reward for the crime he had just perpetrated and the

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object of another kind of reflection in his head: who says crime doesn’t pay? It does, and generously at that!

This done, Bailon dropped Greidam’s half-stuffed wallet in the hole, unmindful of its destination amidst a thousand odds and ends that lay untouched there, for a century and even more, no doubt. He then followed up by sending Greidam himself there, pushing as hard as was in the power of his tired muscles to do. It was a matter of seconds before the worthy barrister-at-law went rolling down the ladder, right into the mound of junk that buried its lower rungs.

Back to the scene of the fight, Bailon swept clean the floor there, doing away with every telltale stain of his victim’s blood. He then let himself fall into an armchair again: to rest his tired limbs and mind this time. Safer and better he felt now and ready to receive the police without so much fear as before in case they took it into their heads to visit the house and ask questions. Too many perhaps, as was their wont, but he didn’t care a whit.

And they did pay the expected visit, unannounced by any siren or any other sign of their approach for once, taking him by surprise, but not to the point of frightening him out of his wits and making him foolishly own up as he had originally feared. Too late to do such a thing on their part: over three hours by his watch. What luck he had sent this body tumbling down the ladder long enough before they set foot in his house. Such a good idea of his it was that he now felt quite at ease and ready to cope with their silly tricks. He congratulated himself on his foresight and his quick action: all done in time, in the nick of time. How very clever the dodge, he appreciated in self-admiration and warmly thanked God for endowing his brain with those priceless ‘gifts’ he had so suddenly discovered in himself in the most critical moment of his life, and which were essential for his safety.

The police, of course, had not such an excellent opinion of Bailon as he had of himself. They had, upon Rita’s complaint, as he easily guessed, suspected him of being at the root of her lover’s disappearance. She had sent them after him on the spot after generously greasing their palms, no doubt, he surmised, and there they were now doing their bit to deserve the fat money they had already pocketed from her, searching the house inch by inch, asking him a number of questions, irrelevant for the most, all about Greidam’s moves.

He lied as best as was in his power to do, saying he had never seen this man, never heard of such a name. No use sending the police to his house, he protested. Just for the sake of making a shambles of his tidily arranged

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things: foul work in sum, undoubtedly the work of that louse Rita, he suspected more and more. Very well: she would pay for it through her nose, he swore. The sooner the better: he would do his very best for it.

Back to his armchair, the same he had used for his first attempt at relaxation. Now that he was relieved of his burden, he felt light as a feather and ready for a sleep, but not before enjoying the spoils of his victory. He opened his wallet for this purpose and counted the money that came from Greidam’s: quite a big haul, enough to last him a week and more. Come all in good time. Delighted beyond measure as he was at such a bright achievement, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up the beads of perspiration that were fast gathering on his forehead. No wonder after a day of hard labour, he told himself, realizing all of a sudden that it was the very first money he had ‘earned’ by the sweat of his brow, just in accordance with the precepts of the Holy Writ. Still fascinated by what he regarded as his own merit, he promised himself to ‘earn’ more, much more and very soon.

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Chapter V

MAKESHIFT GRAVE FOR RANDOM VICTIM. While Bailon’s mind was busy shaping a course of action to rid him of

Geidam’s body and planning how to dispose of it without being seen, Rita’s heart was heavy with worry over the same man, wondering why his cell phone did not answer her numerous calls and why he was so late to come back after he had been hard upon Bailon’s heels this morning. Greidam in fact was the very first lover she had ever cared for and accepted as ‘hers for keeps’, in accordance with her own words to herself and him.

In the overdecorated and highly comfortable living room of her luxurious flat there was no end of discomfort for her as she sat and sadly mused. No fun waiting so long on tenterhooks for the beloved one to come back. Where on earth that heaven-sent defender of her rights was now she did not know. Still less she knew what prompted him to go, tearing off like mad, in hot pursuit of her pet aversion. His being jealous of a potential rival, perhaps? Were it so he could never have been so wide of the truth as he was now, and that ever since they met and promised to be faithful to one another for life.

Over and over again Rita glanced at the small gold watch on her wrist. It was one out of a dozen jewels she used to put on herself every day. What made it surpass any other finery in her possession was its versatility: it served both as a jewel and a timepiece at once. Right now it was fulfilling only its second function in the one-way move of the girl’s thinking: it told her flat that her lover was several hours late and ought to be back long before... She panicked as never before at the candid answer and felt like breaking the glossy bauble to pieces. But that did not make the cherished friend come back so soon, she realized, forcing herself into a still more pessimistic view of the naked reality.

Already she had alerted the police about Richard’s mysterious disappearance and, tipping generously every member of their team, sent them probing the region after Dick: anywhere he was likely to have gone, down into the house of the ‘terrorist’ he had trailed. But what was the use of such measures with a blind police who say they had not heard a single compromising word on Bailon’s lips, not found a trace of a clue in the innermost recesses of his cottage.

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Another glance at her watch. She followed up with another ring. Nothing promising on either side. She had never had such fears in her life. What worried her most was the persistent silence of Dick’s mobile phone. Had anything happened to him at the hands of that devilish blackguard? God forbid, but with a hairy, bearded terrorist of that stamp one can never tell!

And yet Dick had never sought to pick a fight with him, she was sure: in her ken it was not like a distinguished gentleman of that standard to abase himself and get embroiled in a quarrel with a filthy hooligan like Bailon. All he wanted, as he himself had said before leaving her, was to threaten him with a trial and a condemnation and a long term of imprisonment. A matter of two or three minutes’quiet talk, at most. Had that swine taken it so ill as to raise his hand and strike back before it was too late? Most probably. She heaved another, longer sigh and then, over and over again, tried to relax…

Nothing doing. Better have another look through that window and see the people on the street below. She did, for the hundredth time today, all in vain: no trace of Dick down there among a thousand scattered pedestrians or in the crowd of passengers filing out of the bus at the stop. Disheartened, she walked back to her seat and slumped down with her face buried in the palms of her hands. To no avail, save perhaps to make things worse! Almost without knowing it, she took her cellphone and dialled her lover’s number again: out of sheer despair, as it were. With a terrorist of this stamp one can never tell, she reminded herself, terrorized as she was by her own surmises…As dreaded and expected, there was no sound of Dick’ voice in answer to her call.

No change in the afternoon either! How very unlike Dick to leave her stranded as he was doing now unless—unless something had happened to him in the meantime, oh, God forbid! It was beyond Rita’s courage to let her imagination stray any further into such a tragedy, the first in her sentimental life. Then—then what to do? Where on earth to find a solution after the useless answer of the police?

Better perhaps call up her sister and, come what may, talk frankly about her lover and the worry he was giving her A way of venting her grief, true, and getting another piece of advice, that is if Pamela did not resent her having been kept out of the great secret for so long. She was unaware as yet of Dick’s, or any man’s, presence in her little sister’s life. Bound to snub her for having been secretive—for not availing herself of Henry’s superhuman wisdom and getting entangled with that grimy rogue, his bosom friend!

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So much the worse. She picked up her phone and, rather hesitantly, dialled Pamela’s number. While going through it, she made up her mind not to utter a word about Richard Greidam as a lover, only as a barrister-at-law with herself being his client of the moment against that lout Bailon, her assailant and the raider of her house.

But Pamela was no fool: she guessed outright the hidden meanings behind the sighs and cries of ‘the naughty girl’, as she jokingly called her sometimes. Actually reading between the lines was one of her strong points, and she did it straightway although she was very busy gulping cup after cup of piping hot drink and stuffing herself with pastry of every kind and shade at the tea-table, side by side with her beloved husband in their dining-room.

“H’m…don’t tell me! I see you’re sweet on him, girl, aren’t you?” she asked maliciously between two very large mouthfuls of sweetmeat and another gulp that proved necessary to wash them down.

“Shhtt,” answered Rita, trying in vain to persuade her sister she was not, asking her, for heaven’s sake, not to tell a word of this to Henry. No need to estrange this man, especially at a moment like that: he had always been kind to her of late, earnestly matchmaking and rendering other unsolicited services and what not…. Better avoid losing his friendship and his valuable suggestions. After all they might come in useful sometimes.

Pamela ignored her sister’s urgent request. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and passed the information, spiced with her own suspicions, to her husband: all done in undertones and together with a chunk of plum-cake to go to his mouth in preparation for the wanted advice. He waved away the delicious morsel on the plea that he had been putting on too much weight during the last few months.

“What frightens her so much about Razdag, and why the hell annoying him with the police?” he asked, almost angrily. “This boy is not so bad as she makes out: I know him from a child!”

Pamela repeated her husband’s words on the telephone.“What am I to do then?” whimpered the spoilt girl?

“Nothing,” said Mikop and tossed down another draught of unsweetened tea. “ Tell her flat that saving a mere stranger’s life is no business of hers, even if the stranger happens to be her advocate—or her lover! Then—then its about time she stopped regarding Razdag as an enemy and tried to speak to him as a gentleman at long last! Why not telephone him on the spot and make up for all the discourtesy she has

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shown toward him? Both here and in her own house, unthinkable! Bailon might well have seen this man while on his way home from that unwelcome visit he paid her this morning, and the information he can supply may prove helpful in the end. I know him to be a most obliging fellow and ready to show her how gallant he can be, and that in spite of what she says and how cruel she has been to him up till now. Instil this into her mind once for all! What I would like to say also is that this hare-brained girl should by all means abstain from giggling the way she does each time she sees Bailon or speaks to him! On the contrary, she must be ladylike and polite in the extreme. That is in case she really wants his help.”

Pamela poured into the telephone receiver, almost word for word, her husband’s priceless remarks. She then, on his own, urgent demand, went, almost running, to what he pleased to call his ‘office’ in the adjacent room, and came back with Bailon’s telephone number for her sister to use on the spot.

Right upon hearing the wise directions and needed instructions Rita entered the urgently necessary figures into a blank page of her address book. By now she sounded as though somewhat convinced and almost ready for a drastic change in her attitude toward the young man she had scorned as a blackguard and a terrorist. After all, while no harm might come from a mere telephone communication like that with him, some clue to the mystery could well peep out through his words, she hoped: a glimmer of the truth that ought to lead to the final solution of her problem. Most likely: Pamela’s hubby, who knew this man from a child as he had often said, was certain the fellow was not half so bad as his appearance might suggest. It was not for nothing that he never fell short of eulogy each time he opened his mouth to sing the praise of this friend he cherished so much as an old playmate.

With an aching head and a thousand little doubts still crossing it pell-mell, Rita picked up the telephone anew. Her forefinger trembled nervously when she started dialling the number Pamela had just given her.

“Hello, is Mr. Bailon there?” she asked in still more nervous tones. “Speaking,” said Bailon, recognizing the caller on the spot and feeling

somewhat uneasy about it. Was that to charge him with killing her lover? Did she—are they intent on visiting the basement of his house before

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tonight? Not that for the world! Not while his victim was still lying there, waiting to be carried away from it and from the house!

“I am Rita Albor, your friend’s sister-in-law.”“Glad to hear you again, Miss Alg—er…Albor after you threw me out

of your house the way you did! Well, what’s up now that—““This is to tell you how sorry I am about what I did and said , Mr.

Bailon, believe me!”“Glad to hear you say this, too. Anything else you want to say?”“Yes, if you don’t mind my wasting your time, do you?”“Not at all. Go ahead: I’m all ears.”“It’s about the mysterious disappearance of barrister-at-law Richard

Greidam.. Did you happen to see him somewhere or other after you left my house this morning?”

Bailon’s heart fell on hearing the name. The question that followed gave him still more apprehensions. “Richard Greidam? Who’s that fellow? Never heard of him,” he said, playing for time.

“But you did see him when he went after you unless you were in such a hurry as not to look over your shoulder or something...”

Again Bailon preferred not to give himself away by some blunder or other and, therefore, he kept mum for a short while, thinking hard: what was that silly girl driving at with her questions and all those honey-sweet words she used as an introduction to her speech? Setting a trap for the man whom she suspected of killing her lover, perhaps? Most probably. Would that be what the police had taught her to do when she resorted to them? Very well, she’ll be hoist with her own petard, he promised himself, seeing as clear as was in his turbid mind to do at that difficult moment of his life.

Suddenly a flash of inspiration crossed his head: no use getting the wind up for trifles like that, he thought, firmly determined as he was by now to cash in on the rare opportunity of the girl’s new attitude toward him instead of fearing it. So, bracing himself for an exploitation of her credulity, he said:

“As a matter of fact I did see him, Miss Albor.” “Ah, did you? Where that?”

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“I caught sight of him from a distance on Dorfey street while he was being hustled into a van by four sturdy hooligans.” “Hooligans? Oh, my God! What are you talking about?”

“Hooligans, yes and how! They bullied him when he tried to resist their attack. They then drove off like mad. Together with him on board, I’m sure.”

“Goodness, how could you know all this from a distance as you say?”“I know these kidnappers one by one! I also know where they live and

thrive! They’ve made it their business to abduct people and extort huge ransoms from their parents or friends in exchange for their safe return home. Now one question and no more: are you prepared to reward those ruffians for their misdeed?”“Of course not!” Rita burst out, indignant in the extreme.“Then—I’m afraid poor Mr. Barrister is finished.”

“God forbid! I’m going to alert the police on the spot! Can they use you as an eye-witness, if need be?”

“Y--yes, they can, on condition they requite me for my trouble. What I know about the police is that they don’t disburse a penny for those who help them, do they?”

“That’s no problem: I’ll pay you myself in case you help them find the kidnappers.”

“Ah, then it’s okay, but let it be said from the start: my fee for such a service is rather high: ten thousand gelbs and it must be paid cash in my house and in my own hand, and if—“

“Pardon: how can I make sure you’ll tell the truth and not perjure yourself as—“

“Simple enough, my dear lady: I Razdag Bailon am a man of my word, and you’ve got to understand me! Most important of all: I’m not such a vile swindler and blackguard as you seem to imagine sometimes, and if—“

“Pardon: how come you know these men and their whereabouts and their profession and—and everything about them? You must have been one of them in the near past to acquire such a complete knowledge, I should think, weren’t you?”

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“On the contrary!” objected Bailon. “I’ve last year been one of their victims and my poor late mother paid enormous sums to get me back home. Almost all her savings gone at one fell swoop! Didn’t you read this story in the papers?”

Rita said she didn’t, but, on the other hand, she accepted Bailon’s claims as worth consideration at least. Together with him she reached an agreement by which she had to go to his house the next morning and pay his fee on the spot in return for a ‘watertight guarantee’ and the written engagement on his part to be an efficient police informer and even a guide in their search for Greidam’s ‘prison’ wherever and whenever necessary. Whether the money to be spent would get her any further ahead in her rescue plan she did not know. What she knew for sure was that she was doing her best to bring her boy friend back to her. Swiftly and safely as she hoped. That was not enough, however, to free her head from the worries that were burdening it now and threatened her with a sleepless night to come. Going to see Bailon the next morning in his house and buying back his friendship as a preliminary to his cooperation in the search for her lover: would that work wonders as Henry seemed to believe? Doubtful, but Henry was never likely to go wrong: that was what Pamela’s tongue never tired of playing back.

Bailon, on his side of the dramatic situation, comfortably ensconced in his armchair as he was, guessed her new fears in a flash. It was mostly on them, anyway, that he, in his present estimate, depended for his bread and butter—and, most important of all, his lustful pursuits for the weeks ahead. He even projected to make them last for months. However long they were going to be, he gloated over the prospect, rubbing his hands joyfully.

But , first and foremost there was a body to dispose of, he reminded himself, and that was enough to add an unpleasant flavour to the taste of his triumph. Even if Mr. Barrister was trampled underfoot, even if he was safely dumped yards underground and completely out of sight, the hardest part of the job had still to be done. Bailon was loath to do it but he had no choice. Not now of course, not before the veil of the night descended to protect him from detection and delation from the outside. Consequently, he waited.

The night came at last, reminding him of the final move. The reminder did not fail to send tremors down his spine. All the same, he forced himself to leave the comfort of his armchair and, walking over to the

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manhole, he lifted its lid. Down there and with the help of his electric torch he could now see Greidam at the foot of the ladder. The dead man was lying down crumpled and curled, much as he had been seen last, waiting to be cleared out of the basement and out of the house, like the tons of rubbish under him. Thank heaven no moonlight to give away his move out to the boot of the car which, purposely, was parked close to the house.

So, armed with a coil of rope he found in the kitchen, Bailon took his courage in both hands and scaled down the ladder. Once level with the body he uncoiled his rope and went about trussing it firmly together, trunk and limbs and all, as a preliminary to hauling it up on its way out of the basement. Back to the mouth of the hole with the free end of the rope in hand, he tugged and lugged with all the might he could muster. The body moved heavily up the ladder and then into the ground floor of the house again, on its way out of it, right into the boot of the car.

Not more than half an hour was needed to dump Greidam into another car, a useless, abandoned one amidst a heap of rusty metal of every make and shape on the outskirts of the city.

The unpleasant task once terminated, Bailon cast a searching look around through the dark. Nobody he could see: which meant evidently that nobody had seen him. Fine, excellent: no trace of any would-be police informer or any human eye to catch him disposing of his victim in the thick of the moonless night: sheer luck, he told himself and heaved a sigh of relief, persuaded as he was now that his ordeal had come to a happy ending.

Home again. He dropped into an armchair for another rest, much better than the first, he decided, now that he was relieved of his burden. Consequently, he felt light as a feather and ready for a sleep, but not before enjoying the spoils of his victory over the daring advocate. He opened his wallet and counted Greidam’s money again: an excellent haul for the day, the best ever collected, he happily realized. Quite enough to last him a week and more. Come all in good time. So it pays to wrestle with a lawyer of that calibre. Elated beyond measure, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up the beads of perspiration that were fast accumulating on his forehead.

No wonder after a day of toilsome effort, he told himself, realizing all of a sudden that it was the very first ‘salary’ he had ‘earned’ by the sweat of his brow, in perfect accordance with the condemnation of humankind

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in the holy books. Still fascinated by what he regarded as his own merit, he promised himself to ‘earn’ more, much more, the same way and very soon, unmolested by the police as he wished with all his heart.

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Chapter VI

DRESSED TO KILL

Nine o’clock. Rita opened her eyes to the morning light after having failed to close them in the dark of night. Due to be in Bailon’s cottage today at ten, she remembered, not without a shudder of apprehension forcing her into complete wakefulness. Face to face with Bailon himself and in his own house at that: not such a pleasurable experience ahead. A blackguard, a downright scoundrel by the look of him: in sum a most undesirable re-encounter awaiting her despite the long, highly promising conversation they had had together yesterday on the telephone...But that was only in obedience to Henry’s advice and warm recommendations. Henry always prizing this worthless lout! But, even with these endless songs of praise, Henry was always right. In Pamela’s opinion, not hers to be sure. Whatever it was, Dick had to be found back at once, and set free from the fetters of those devilish hooligans. At any cost, by hook or by crook, no matter, no indecision, no dillydallying allowed in a case of vital importance like that.

Still hesitant in her apparently firm resolution, Rita yawned and stretched and reached for the telephone on the bedside table. To Pamela again: Pamela, her confidante of all times, especially in difficult moments like this. That would mean a boost in morale at least. Maybe more precious advice into the bargain, even behind Henry’s back. Must be away from home at such an early hour, playing the Far or Middle Eastern markets and then the rest of the world for most of the day. Always busy monitoring the shifts in stocks and bonds and forex and what more? No end to the impossible jargon…

That was nearly what Pamela had so enthusiastically told her sister more than once in gaping admiration for her husband’s ‘rare gifts’. She had even most obligingly proposed Henry’s tips for her to try her luck at trades and turn from the multimillionaire she was into a billionaire overnight: one of the twenty or thirty first billionaires in the world. Wonderful, but no time for such considerations right now: Dick’s security first and foremost! Worth her attention much more than all the money within or beyond her reach. Not a minute to spare for such rigmarole at present. Dick, the man she had been so fortunate to meet and befriend! For keeps, with God’s will and hers. That was a certainty, she thought as she dialled: his fate heavily weighing on her mind after what happened and what was likely to happen during the next few hours.

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“Hullo, Pamela, dear,” she said, yawning into the mouthpiece. “You’ve had a good sleep last night, I hope, eh?”

“Yes, how about you, darling? Anything wrong?”“Not that, but I spent almost the whole of the night tossing wide-eyed

under the sheets. And then it was a nightmare which—““Goodness, why? Why on earth? Say, Rita: did you talk to Razdag

Bailon as Henry has advised?”“I did. Yesterday, right after you gave me his number. Horrible what

he revealed! He told me he saw from a distance four armed hooligans bullying Dick and savagely pushing him into a van!”“Horrible indeed! What did the police say to that?”

“I didn’t contact them after I rang up Bailon. He said he was ready to help me and them find the kidnappers and free Dick if—“

“Oh, how kind of him. See how good and friendly he may be? Just what Henry has said and—“

“Wait! That’s not all. Bailon wants ten thousand gelbs as a price for his service as a police informer and helper. Such a huge sum is to be paid to him personally in banknotes.

“Maybe he is right: Henry says this boy is poor as a church mouth and, to make things worse, hopelessly out of work these days. He lives in dire need and his house looks no better than a shack! Ten thousand: that’s nothing for you and a handsome reward for him, I suppose.”

“Of course, that goes without saying. To set your mind at rest, I’ll have you know I accepted his conditions without so much as haggling a little, imagine!”

“Excellent. That’s what a person of your standing ought to do in a situation like this, don’t you think so?”

“Yes. I’m glad we’re seeing eye to eye in this respect, Pamela, dear. Much as usual and even more!”

“No wonder, my dear. I bet Henry would have been delighted to hear this. Now how do you intend to pay the fee? Is this man to come to your home again and—“

“No. He’s insisted on its being done in his own house. There I’m to go myself in person and hand him the money. This is his condition to set to work at once and help the police, as he said. It’s today at ten, that is

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about half an hour from now, but, to tell you the truth, Pamela, I am kind of afraid to come face to face with this man in his digs after what happened between him and me at the front door of mine yesterday morning, you see?”

“Why that? Do you still distrust him in spite of Henry’s advice and—“ “To be truthful, yes, in a way.”“I see no reason why, after all what Henry has said and recommended.

Are you doubting his friend’s ability to help the police find your boy friend? Doesn’t he know where the kidnappers are hiding him, for example, or—“

“He says he knows everything about them. He himself has fallen a victim to their roguish schemes last year and spent a few days in what they call their ‘prison’ and things like that.”

“Then—then, what are you waiting for? Hurry up, please: time is working against you! ”

“To tell you the truth I’m all the same afraid to come face to face with this man without any protection, and, to crown all, in his own house!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! What on earth can frighten you about him? ““Don’t ask me: it’s quite beyond my ability to control my fears. You

may call this shyness, diffidence or whatever you like, but it’s the plain truth!”

“All right, girl. D’you know what? I’ll drive you there myself, in my own car, what’s better? I’ll wait for you near his house while you yourself get in. Doesn’t that quell your fears a tiny bit and give you what little nerve you need to—to beard the lion in his den, so to speak?” Pamela chuckled as a way of mitigating her sister’s apprehensions.

“Most certainly it does! Oh, how very thoughtful of you!”“That’s nothing if—““That’s everything! You, Pamela, you’re an angel, a godsend, what

you’ve ever been to me, and especially when you were so badly needed at such critical moments of my life as now!”

“Quite natural: after all, you’ve been and will ever remain my little sister. Now, look here, Rita, girl: you’ve got to bear this in mind: as I’ve said, my presence with you will be outside Bailon’s house and not inside it. I’ll not, for the world, let him see me accompanying you on such an

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occasion. That’s bound to nettle him just because it’ll be construed as a sign of distrust on our part, you understand? We should not so foolishly alienate this man and impair your plan to save your boy’s life, my poor girl, you see?”

“You’re right, Pamela. You’ve always been right, darling. A thousand thanks for all you’re doing on my behalf and—and so long: I’ll be waiting for you there at the left corner of Gullman Tower, see where?”

Pamela saw where in a flash without any further explanation: it was the usual meeting place between her and Rita each time they were to go out together.

About half an hour after the telephone call a Bentley coupé drew up at the kerb opposite the indicated corner. Rita stepped in and the two sisters rode leisurely away in the direction of Bailon’s cottage. Pamela’s car was brand new. It was a Christmas present her husband had recently bought her. The money he had spent on such a luxurious gift was her own, of course, but that did not preclude her from overpraising his ‘thoughtful largess’ in her usual way. Henry had always been lavish in his gifts to her, as she said and had often asserted with love and gratitude.

The ride went on with no exchange of words, and that until they came in view of Bailon’s cottage in the near distance behind a row of plane trees.

“There, see where he lives?” Pamela asked, her forefinger pointing to the house through the windscreen. It then shifted and landed on her handbag. “You just cast a glance inside this, Rita,” she blinked with a meaningful smile.

Very obediently Rita unzipped the bag and looked in. As she did a black piece of shiny metal glimmered in her eyes under the golden beams of the sun. “What’s that? A gun, upon my word!” she exclaimed.” What for?” she asked, somewhat impressed and not half so cheered as her sister had intended her to be.

“May come in handy any time, anywhere,” Pamela answered with a smirk. “One more present from dear Henry,” she added without being asked. He taught me how to use it against aggressors when the need arose. See how considerate he is? I hope your boy friend what’s-his- name will be as devoted a husband as Henry is to me!”

It was like rubbing salt in the girl’s wound. “My God,” she sighed, “you talk about our future together while I myself don’t know whether he

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is still alive! Let’s hope this fellow Bailon will be as good as his word once he gets the money. D’you thing he can really help us find him? Saving a kidnapped person and returning him alive and well to his parents and his friends may prove impossible sometimes, you know! What if—“

“Oh, don’t, don’t worry. Henry says Razdag Bailon is—has always been—a clever boy from a child. What more can give you the assurance you need, my dear little child?”

“Okay: Henry may be right, but what if—““Enough!” interrupted Pamela out of sheer impatience as they came

closer to their destination. “What am I to do now?” whimpered Rita.

“Wait a minute until you see me parking the car somewhere nearby. You, yourself then go to this house and ring the doorbell. Once you are in I’ll come back and try my best to eavesdrop from the outside. I’ll follow the course of the visit so as to make sure everything is going on just as predicted.”

“Very good. What if—““Shht! I’m certain nothing wrong will happen. Only you must promise

you’ll try your best to be always very polite while you are with him in his house, you understand? No giggles, no hurtful grimaces and grins like what you did last time! No sly remarks of any kind, eh? Only serious, respectful answers to his questions, if any—unless—well, there may be no time for any chat between you two, I suppose: he may be in a hurry to do his stuff after cashing his fee. I bet he’ll go about it straightway unless—unless you—“

“Quite so. I perfectly understand all what you say.”“Bye and luck, girl!”Pamela parted company with her sister and drove a few dozen yards

away in search of a parking lot. At the same time Rita walked out of sight and half-heartedly made for the front door of the cottage.

What impressed her—rather agreeably for once—in Bailon’s appearance when he let her in was his clean shave and the flawless quality of his outfit on this special day: no tears, no patches, no tatters whatever or threads dangling from the knees of his trousers like yesterday. Looked as though he had carefully spruced himself up and put

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on his Sunday best for this special encounter. Dressed to kill, as they say, but not the ghost of a hope for him to ‘kill’ her with his contrived allurements, however hard he tried. That was what she told herself the minute she saw him so well attired. As sure as death, only one man in the world was attractive in her eyes, only Dick! Were that fellow to help her retrieve him he would get her best thanks on top of the monetary reward he himself had compelled her to pay and which was awaiting him at the bottom of her handbag.

Whatever his intentions and in answer to his warm smile of welcome she wished him good morning. He answered likewise and looked her straight in the eyes, his smile dangerously broadening at her sight.

It was past her power to bear the brunt of the stare. Consequently, she averted her face while following him to his sitting-room. Once there, she came to the point at once.

“Are you really able to help find the kidnapped lawyer?” she asked.“Of course I am. What about you? Are you ready to pay cash the

modest fee I’m charging for such a delicate piece of work?”“Certainly. You’ll be paid down to the last penny if—““Payment should be made before any action on my part. That’s what I

told you on the telephone. Now do sit down please.”Rita sat down. With trembling hands she opened her bag and,

extracting the banknotes, tendered them somewhat hesitantly.Bailon pocketed the thick wad with thanks and resumed his amiably

lecherous smile. Now that his goal had been reached he aimed his eyes at her face again, much to her embarrassment and renewed fears.

“Can you tell me when you are going to give the police the necessary information about the kidnappers you’ve been talking about on the telephone?” she asked both as a reassurance and a diversion.

“At once, at once. I’ll go to the nearest police station in a moment, right after you leave my house. There I’ll tell them where your friend is being locked up right now. I’ll help them bring this most distinguished gentleman back to freedom and safety without fail, isn’t that what I’m required to do?”

“That and only that! Most obliging of you, Mr. Bailon.” She sprang to her feet and tried to walk out as a way of hastening the liberation of

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her lover. “I’ll be waiting somewhere near your house, she added. “ Just for a telephone call and—the good news from you when—“

“No, not so soon as you seem to imagine, my dear young lady,” corrected Bailon, still smiling lecherously. “I’ll have first to search somewhere or other for the documents proving that I have been myself kidnapped by these hooligans last year. Meanwhile you’ll give me great pleasure if you accept here in this house a cup of coffee from my hand. It’ll be like a pledge of my hospitality and my cooperation, you see?”

Rita would have preferred not to waste a minute over a cup of coffee or any other drink, especially from this man whom she still disliked and even distrusted in spite of Pamela’s recurring advice. But she remembered Henry’s recommendations just in time and abstained from rejecting the offer, determined as she was not to hurt the feelings of the only person in the world who seemed likely to help her find back her lover : such a refusal would certainly damp his eagerness to save Dick. “Whatever you like,” she said with a reluctant nod. “Thanks,” she added, her tones cold.

Bailon went to the kitchen without minding the poor quality of her acceptance. There, after he made coffee for two, he reached for a jar of sleeping pills he had bought on the previous day after his telephone conversation with the girl. Very quickly he unscrewed the cap and, in perfect accordance with a premeditated plan, tilted a good number of the highly efficient grains into Rita’s cup. He then stirred until they dissolved completely in the black fluid. More than enough for him to use and abuse her to his lustful satisfaction and heart’s content.

Rita, on her part, did not remain inactive while the coffee was being prepared. Very stealthily she tiptoed to the front door and pulled at the bolt. Then, opening it a narrow crack, she peeked out in search of her sister who ought to be waiting somewhere nearby; but she failed to spot her and had to return posthaste to her seat before Bailon’s reappearance with the coffee tray. However, she had the presence of mind to leave the front door behind her unbolted just in case…

Back in her armchair, she waited for that unwanted coffee in tense agitation. When it came, she dutifully drank it down to the dregs. All in quick, nervous gulps just for the sake of pleasing her ‘helper’ and urging him to get a move on before it was too late to save Dick. None but Dick deserved a ‘sacrifice’ like that on her part, least of all the man who seemed ready to send him back to her. With no complimentary cup of

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coffee this time, she heartily wished as she put her empty cup on the tray.

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Chapter VII UNDRESS THE KILL WHILE SHE IS ILL It was only a few minutes after swallowing the heavily doctored

brew that Rita’s eyelids began to drop. They then fell shut altogether and she all but slipped off her chair were it not for Bailon’s strong arms which lustily, but nonetheless mightily, closed round her breasts like a vice and prevented her from falling further down.

So far so good: it looked as though the first stage of the scheme Bolton had so cleverly hatched was going on without a hitch. Very carefully he lifted the girl from her seat and transferred her to his bedroom. There, on the sheets of his couch he deposited her and raised her dress. Such an easy job it was to pluck at her pants and bare her genitals for his own use now that she was too far gone in her sleep to oppose any resistance. He went about it without compunction, and that until he heard a voice from the outside. He looked through the slightly uncurtained window and saw the muzzle of a gun pointed at him with Pamela’s face half visible behind it. How very stupid of him not to have drawn the curtains fast before starting to enjoy Rita!

“You dirty swine,” Pamela shouted, flaring up, “what are you doing to my sister? Raping her, eh? Murdering her perhaps? There, take this! It’ll show you where you stand!” The threat was followed by a shot that grazed Bailon’s scalp and missed penetrating it by a hair’s breadth. He ducked and dodged as well he could and, without giving himself time to think twice, let his hand fly to the pistol on the hip of his trousers. Too late: Pamela was no longer behind the window. Through another window in the sitting-room he could now see her dashing headlong toward the front door of the cottage.

But she had not to go too far inside Bailon’s house, for his bullet was quicker than her steps: from behind the front door he hit her head and sent her tottering to the floor in next to no time .

What’s that? He asked himself, flabbergasted, dazed by his own deed after a while. Just another unwanted crime at his hand, in his house, only a few yards away from his sitting-room! Another body to dispose of in the thick of the coming night!

Awful past credence, but what to do? The question played havoc in Bailon’s head. He turned about, lost in dizzy thought and, then, suddenly realizing the danger of a like display to the public eye, he ran like mad to

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the front door and slammed it shut: none of the passers-by should see the gory sight and go bruiting it about, down to the headquarters of the police!

That would simply mean the death of me this trip, he reckoned, reproving himself for having been so rash, but, on second thoughts, he wondered whether he would have fared better if he had restrained his hand and waited for Pamela to kill him.

Tired of it all as he was, he slumped into the nearest armchair for a minute’s rest. Disposing of the body, a child’s play: thanks to his experience with Greidam he was an old hand at it by now. No point in hiding this dead woman in the basement of the house in the meantime since nobody was searching for her right now, not even her husband who must be out, busying himself with stocks to buy or sell.

Very well. Bailon threw his head back in the armchair and tried to go to sleep just for a short while, in an effort to forget dead Pamela or even her half-naked sister in his bedroom. Thank heaven there was no police scouring the area and giving him the creeps with the booms of their sirens like last time.

But sleep did not come, not anyway with the ghastly sight of a body lying in front of him. He rose from his seat and, after despoiling the dead woman of the money he found in her handbag, kicked her away into the nearest hiding-place his eyes could perceive: in truth, he was too tired to drag her up to the manhole . An unnecessary move anyway, he deemed in cold reflection. Consequently Pamela went rolling under the settee near his armchair, making it possible in his calculation to go to sleep on it. He tried again, to no avail.

While still trying, the idea of Rita waiting for him half-naked in his own house came back to his mind. Ah, true, he told himself and rose to his feet again. Back to his bedroom where he found her still under the effect of the sleeping pills. There, after drawing the curtain of the window as well as was possible to do, he defiled and abused her much as planned and so earnestly desired, without the least disturbance from the outside. Once fully satiated, he left her in deep slumber and returned to the sitting-room. There, once more, he tried to relax, not ineffectually at long last: he even succeeded in dozing off his new worries, for hours on end.

It was only in the afternoon that Rita’s cries of despair awakened him from his deep sleep. “You murdering beast, why did you kill my sister?”

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she wailed when she saw Pamela’s blood-smeared face protruding from under the back of the settee. “Wait! I’ll go report your crime to the police! I’ll also tell them you murdered my boy friend and stole my money and— and—“

As usual Bailon’s pistol proved very helpful on an occasion like that. Nothing better could extricate him from the new hole he so unexpectedly found himself in. He plied it unstintingly in the face of the new, impending danger. The outcome was another corpse in the house: Rita falling to his feet before she was able to reach the front door, sharing the fate of her too loudly regretted sister. Serve her right, he told himself, remembering her ill-bred manners and scorn, and fully satisfied he had paid off old scores at last. He made no bones about kicking and pushing his new victim away from his sight, hardened now as he was by no less than three crimes committed in no more than two days.

So, very soon, he made Rita join Pamela in the hiding-place under the settee for the rest of the day while waiting for the moonless night to come and enable him to drive her for a reunion with her lover in the old rusty car, a work for which he had cashed a thick wad of banknotes, a sum he could easily increase by rummaging in the girl’s handbag…

Late in the night he took them both for a ride in the boot of his car as planned. Same destination, same grave where Greidam was most probably kept waiting for the younger one. Still there the barrister-at-law, he remarked to himself upon flashing the beams of his electric torch into the abandoned vehicle. Undiscovered and unclaimed by any other people than his sweetheart.

“This is her.” he told him almost audibly. “Finding you in death after failing to do it in life. Thanks to my efforts you’ll be together for eternity.” This said, he carefully put Rita’s body side by side with Greidam’s. He followed up by chucking Pamela anyhow over the two bodies and turned round on his way back home.

While steering out of the scrap heap his eyes fell on a man poring over a cell phone in his hand. What for? Had he seen him disposing of the two bodies? Was it to call the police and cause endless trouble? Bailon’s first impulse was to send the man packing, right into the rusty box where he had left his three victims. Same makeshift grave as for the three while he was on it. But there were other people in the near distance who could

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well hear the shot and take note of his license plate number…Better abstain from such a foolish act. He did.

At home, to put an end to his newborn anxiety, he resorted once more to sleeping pills, the same that helped him rape and kill Rita, but the right dose this time: just what was enough to give him a night’s rest as a preliminary to a new life, rich and happy for months to come.

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Chapter VIII Forced Confession and final PerditionWhile his wife was lying cold under Bailon’s settee, Mikop came

back home, his losses realized and his ‘work’ finished. Tired to the point of exhaustion he felt after a whole day’s vain efforts at the stock exchange. No matter: he was used to all this and more. What he was unused to at that moment was Pamela’s being nowhere in the house: most unlike her to go out at such an hour, he reflected. She was at Rita’s perhaps? A longer visit than usual, for more chatter and titter between them—or had anything happened to any of the two?

Such were the ideas that crossed Mikop’s head and weighed heavily on his mind at Pamela’s rather unusual absence from home at such an hour of the day. They, of course, entailed a thousand questions that wanted immediate answers. To get any he picked up the telephone receiver and started dialling. Pamela’s mobile first and then Rita’s…No response from either. More than enough to give him cause for still more worry.

No good imagining and guessing: a mere waste of the precious time under such odd circumstances. Some drastic measures ought to be resorted to, he felt, and rang up the police on the spot to tell them what happened and what he feared.

In answer to his complaint and his urgent demands the chief constable at the station sent his patrolmen looking into every nook and corner of downtown Pranberg where they might have gone on a shopping spree as they had sometimes done, but the police search yielded no results: no trace of Pamela or her sister anywhere they went, not in the expensive luxury shops, not in any of the casualty departments of the hospitals they contacted and which were not few.

The next day there was best-selling news under huge headlines everywhere in print: all about the mysterious disappearance of the two millionaire sisters. Whether they were alive or dead nobody knew as yet. What became known in next to no time were a good many theories on the subject. All home-spun by local gossips and not worth the breath wasted on them. Some of the wagging tongues, inspired by some papers, very timidly included Richard Greidam in the tragic story, although he himself was not a millionaire and, therefore, not worth sharing the fate of those who were. After all, in spite of Rita’s sentiments toward him, she was regarded as his better and by no means his equal or his girl friend. So was

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Pamela. Consequently no question of his being put together with them, in that strange, and maybe tragic mishap as in anything else.

Late in the day there came no fresher results from the police search in spite of Mikop’s insistence and his promise of a tip. So their redoubled efforts toward solving the mystery remained ineffectual, much to his despair.

It was a mere tramp who found the three bodies at last. Quite by chance he did while scrabbling amidst the mounds of refuse where they had been deposited by their killer. Still unknown, the latter was alluded to as a raving lunatic by some ones, or a sex maniac by others, or a highly dangerous public enemy by almost everyone.

Very soon after falling short of the awful ‘discovery’ and being outdistanced by an unskilled layman, the police set out on a ‘search’ of quite a different kind: what they wanted now was to lay bare the identity and the deeds of the criminal behind such a wholesale assassination, as they said.

To reach their aim they began arresting ‘suspects’, who, in their eyes, were many. At the top of the list in this highly effective investigation came Henry Mikop himself. The reason for such a measure against him was that husbands have a tendency to murder their wives in order to marry other women, or for the sake of inheriting their money if they happen to be rich. Both cases were found to apply splendidly to Mikop and, therefore, his sorrow was regarded as a sham and ought to be completely ignored while justice was making a headway toward his punishment. That did not fail to look funny in the opinion of a few nonconformist minds.

Funnier still was the attitude of the authorities toward Razdag Bailon. For quite a number of days indeed they left him undisturbed, deeming it unnecessary to put him to the test as yet—or ever perhaps.

It was only the unsolicited evidence of a child that turned the tide against him at last. The boy, slightly more than ten years of age, said he had seen him wrestle with another man at the front door of his house. The day he talked about fitted in with the date of Richard Greidam’s disappearance. He added when he was asked, and after a long reflection, that when he walked past the door of the cottage he heard a shot and a slam.

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Such a testimony, although coming from too young an informer who, on top of this, looked like an imp of mischief and fabrication, was taken with the utmost seriousness by the investigators in this affair. They sent for Bailon on the spot and bombarded him with questions, including one about Pamela’s Bentley and her having been found parked only one hundred yards away from his house on the day following the disappearance of her owner.

To all this Bailon answered with hand-washings and lies; but that did not prevent the wary inspector in charge from issuing a warrant for his arrest. Consequently, he spent three or four days in detention, interspersed by a number of hours under the blinding light of a room, face to face with his questioners. He was released only when there came proof that the child who denounced him was subject to mythomania and had a wonderful knack of imagining things.

Once at large Bailon remained under discreet but nonetheless close scrutiny. Almost everywhere he went he felt in his innermost self that he was being trailed by a ‘spy’. Consequently he tensed and fretted most of the time, days and nights alike, always expecting another arrest and a final condemnation. On the other hand, he was eaten by remorse at the memory of shooting Pamela and so depriving his devoted friend of the woman who so lovingly shared her millions with him. But he ended up dismissing the idea altogether from his mind on the plea that it was not his fault and that it was she who started the fatal quarrel which ended with her death. At bottom, what he himself had really wanted was only to kill Rita after robbing her of her money and raping her, just for the sake of vengeance after what she did him the day before at the door of her flat, maybe also because he needed some ready cash. This could be done without the least prejudice to Henry were it not for Pamela’s sudden and most inopportune attack.

No matter: he would make amends to his dear friend, and that with being very careful not to give himself away in the process as Pamela’s killer. He would, somehow, try to help him out of this custody he was so stoically enduring: not much of a life behind those horrid prison bars. At the same time he would work himself out of police control and new arrest by trying to get rid of that police informer or ‘spy’ whom his imagination and his fears showed to be hard upon his heels every now and then and who was turning his everyday heaven into a hell. Two birds with a stone: fine, wonderful, but how to kill them both at one throw—or

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each in turn, at least, he did not know. All the same, he was by now firmly determined to do it some way or other at his earliest opportunity.

It was only by chance, and earlier than expected, that the opportunity presented itself. He saw it all of a sudden while he was trying once more to find a solution to the thorny problem that constantly weighed on his mind in those days of worry and hard thinking . All during one of his nightly strolls after a stop at a bar to quench his thirst for alcohol, and a short visit to a hustler’s bedroom to soothe his libidinous cravings. What made it come so fast to his head was a row whose reverberations reached his ears during his search for still another woman for hire: one better suited to his personal tastes. Their origin seemed to be somewhere beyond a neighbouring graveyard: Saint Masta’s cemetery by the way, the best known and largest in uptown Pranberg.

Bailon advanced along the high wall that bounded the city of the dead and came close to the noisy contestants: loud and sharp they were although not more than two in number: husband and wife by the meaning and the pitch of their voices, but those who were attracted by their exchange of expletives were legion: not every day a juicy squabble like that: a treat to the ears of every busybody who happened to be passing there.

Without giving the matter a second thought, Bailon came to a halt and joined the multitude, his arrival unnoticed by any member of them. He listened with no less interest than the rest of the crowd, eager as he was to know what all that ado was about. Just as anybody. For a better sight and audibility of the squabbling opponents, he threaded his way still further in through the half-circle of ‘onlookers’ and came close to a man he had never known or seen before, but whose strange comportment at that moment deserved to be better known perhaps. He was standing in front of a window of what was obviously his home and where those scores of people were assembled and avidly engrossed in what was being seen and heard. The man was clad in what resembled a nightshirt, but there was not the least sign of drowsiness in his eyes. On the contrary, they were all fire with an air of overheated truculence, busy as he was returning like for like through a window to the woman behind it. Still more, far more: he was holding a gun. So the protagonists in that free show turned out to be a pair of married people indeed. They had fallen foul of one another: that was about what Bailon had kind of guessed when he came nearer to them.

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But who were those nosey spectators of the drama in progress? The answer to that question could not be easily found. Neighbours, he inferred, or random loungers like himself. Women they were for the most, maybe come from the upper floors or the nearby habitations, moved by their neighbourly feelings toward the spouses, or worried about the outcome of the crazy dissention and the possible use of that frightful firearm in the hand of this man to bring it to an unhappy ending. Anyway the tongues of some among those random viewers were vividly active and brimming over with gossip at the expense of other married couples, equally their ‘dear’ friends and neighbours as they were never tired of repeating, in accordance with their own idea of friendship and sisterly love. As convenient in the middle of a scene like that most of the tattle was about unsuccessful marriages, either broken or on the verge of a break. Bailon’s ears caught snatches of it, without much concentration however, his main attention remaining focused on the unsavoury dialogue through the window. What little he heard outside this was not of much concern to him, and yet the open debate was not devoid of zest for others around:

“Nellie and Vart are not the only ones, my dear. I know dozens of other husbands and wives who were at cross purposes all the way with one another and who ended up each going their own way at the—“

“Most certainly, my good friend. You need not go too far to find them. You all know Alice, the wife of Peter Haminshall up there, on the sixth floor?”

All those who heard the question happened to know her and showed readiness to discuss her case. The outcome was a miscellany of stories and opinions that ended in a Babel of distortion and confusion.

“Of course. They say her husband has once tried to kill her.”“No, not all that far. It was rumoured that this black-hearted man

wanted to divorce her just because she is too fond of jewellery and like trinckets, as he says!”

“Not that either. They say she doesn’t earn enough money for his expenditures on other women. Unthinkable!”

Still more! I’ve heard about poor Alice from other, more trustworthy sources. You, folks, have all known her by sight or heard stories about her strange demeanour, haven’t you?”

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“Most certainly. Who hasn’t? Who didn’t see her sleepwalking among the tombstones down there at midnight?”

“Horrible! How that ? What prompted her to pay such visits to the dead?”

“And at such late hours! Isn’t that because she is a tiny bit queer in the head?”

“Not at all. Mentally speaking, she is sound as a bell.” “That remains to be seen.”Whatever the cause, that scoundrel of a man she has chosen herself

for a hubby and with whom she was genuinely in love has lately threatened to discard her from his life unless she gave up the bad habit of roving among the graves! It was in his slow mind like if she was doing it of her free will, but come to think of it—“

“They say she is a witch who on Sabbat nights—““Not at all. She is an ordinary woman like you and me, but, on the

other hand—“ “Not that. Truth is that she herself has wanted this divorce: she’s

charged him with snoring while she is fast asleep and awakening her in the middle of a beautiful dream as she says! What if—“

“Pardon: is that worse than the strange habit she’s got to drag her feet in pitch dark amidst the dead in their graves? Monstrous!”

“Shhh! Here she is, on her way to the cemetery perhaps!”Every pair of eyes focused on the small, middle-aged somnambulist

who sauntered past, but nobody dared awaken her and cut short her noiseless, wraith-like move.

Now that she had turned round the block and completely vanished out of sight the general attention reverted to the quarrelling pair whose howls of invective mounted higher and higher in the eerie silence of the advancing gloom.

“You won’t set foot in this house again! Never, so long as I am alive, d’you hear?” yelled the woman from the other side of the window. “Aiming your gun at me the way you did? The very idea!” She went on, firing at him the best abuse available in her head, sounding like one of

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those Furies nobody had heard or seen, save perhaps those who lived in the so-called mythological era.

The man outside the house, a husband of the hen-pecked breed by the look of him, did not fail to answer back in spite of his too visible fears. He seemed to be tired of it all and intent on showing this woman her limit at long last.

“This house is mine and not yours,“ he yapped. “Look out, you wayward shrew! You’ll be bumped off straightway if you don’t let me in on the spot!” he threatened, but the door remained stubbornly shut in his face. He tried, over and over again, to use the palms of his hands and beat a path for himself through the firmly closed door.

“Me bumped off? By whom?” she scornfully asked. “By a milksop like you, eh?” she scoffed and stamped her foot in her firm determination to keep him out. She then strongly urged him to go away and stop making a sight of himself in front of such a crowd of distinguished and highly respectable neighbours, as she put it.

“By me and none else!” he answered, his rage mounting higher still, up to what sounded like a critical mass. “I’ll make you bite the dust you tread on with this,” he added, flaunting his gun and raising it above his head for everyone to see and fear the worst to come.

“No, not by a softheaded sissy of your make! Scram!”“You’ve got to know me better, you ignorant hag! You’ll then see at

your own expense that I am just the opposite of a sissy!”“Ridiculous the way you advertize yourself! But who is so gullible as

to believe you when you let out your hot air and your fanfaronades?” You’ll speak in another style if you were aware of the fact that I

myself am the killer they’re still searching for! I stand firm as a rock behind that wholesale murder everybody is talking about nowadays!” he bluffed. “Three victims at one go. It’s such an easy job to make you the fourth,” he added in his endeavour to bring her to final submission and respect. But his efforts fell flat.

“Stop talking rot, you lying prater!” She shrilled and then disappeared for a short while. When she reappeared at the window she was carrying a jug. “Off with you!” she blasted out at the top of her voice, but he once more stamped his foot and stood his ground. Nothing doing except perhaps to use what she had brought with her from the inside of the house

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and turn the verbal duel into actual fight. Serve him right and further humiliation in front of all that crowd which had gathered to see and hear him bluster like mad. The woman did: she tossed cold water out of the jug, right into the face of the man, splashing him from top to toe. Now that she felt completely satisfied she turned her back and walked over toward a chair where she settled and switched on the T.V.

In reaction to the new insult the heavily drenched husband swore again. As a way of getting his own back and saving his heavily dripping face in presence of such a number of ‘distinguished’ people who had certainly come to see and admire his reaction, he pointed his gun upwards and fired a shot. He followed up with another bullet he sent through the window. But it went several yards wide of the mark. Purposely on the face of it.

Such a rash and highly dangerous attempt, together with the preposterous declaration that came as a prelude to it, was more than enough to make the surrounding half-circle of sympathizers change their minds and switch their sympathy to the wife.

“So it was this bloodthirsty beast who has murdered the two sisters,” shrilled an old woman with ear-splitting indignation.

“Take hold of him at once,” recommended another with full-throated urgency. “Otherwise we’re all at his mercy!

“Ring up the police on the spot,” advised a third with hardly less exigency than those who forestalled him in their demand. “It’s a matter of life or death, my good friends.We’re all finished so long as this public enemy is on the loose!

A few male spectators tried to snatch him by his sleeves, some even by the scruff of his neck, but he succeeded in working himself free. Once beyond their reach he took to flight, getting himself lost behind the trees of the churchyard on the other side of the street. In spite of everybody’s persistent encouragement to hunt him down there and then nobody had the nerve to be up against such a ‘terrible’ man and play with the fire of the gun he was holding... Clear enough: an attempt like that at helping justice was sheer folly in the opinion of every one present, especially when done by oneself. It would be wiser by far to have it done by someone else, especially when the killer was ready to kill again.

As wisdom prevailed upon bravery and cowardice hindered self-denial, the closely united group fell apart helter-skelter, each member

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safely withdrawing away from the scene of crime and possible bloodshed, back home or anywhere else through the dark. They all counted on the police who were paid to die in the highly risky job of arresting a ‘murderer of that caliber’, as was said.

Amidst those people who vanished out of sight was Razdag Bailon himself. He did not go home, not even anywhere too far from the place of the dispute: only a few dozen yards away. There he lay in wait behind the bole of a plane tree, ever ready to carry out the devilish plan he had in head now that the loony husband of that woman had so idiotically claimed as his own a series of murders he did not commit, and in front of a hundred would-be witnesses at that! An invaluable service he had rendered without his knowning both to him and his friend Mikop whom he would have liked to see free from arrest and prosecution in the name of justice and fair play.

Armed with the quixotic idea, Bailon, craned his neck from his vantage point and stole a glance at the house: still illuminated but no longer besieged by people as before: none to be seen around or see him come over and shoot dead the woman whom her husband’s bullet had missed before he slipped away. Now or never, he told himself and took the plunge.

Once there, he could see the untamed shrew in an armchair under the light of her living-room. Watching T.V. or waiting for the police, he did not know which first made her quiet down after her husband’s foolish attempt on her life. No waste of the precious time in guesses and surmises anyway: he leaned his elbow on the window sill and carefully aimed his pistol at the temple of the woman, leaving her no time to turn her head and see him.

One bullet and then another in quick succession: he saw her crumple and collapse, and bite the dust at her feet, much as promised by the craven man she had so stupidly married and so inhumanly ejected from her view. All but dead, he observed: squirming a little under the blow in a supreme effort to breathe her last. Nothing worth his attention … what he feared more when he fired the shots was the cry of another woman who walked past him and then let out a shriek of horror. It was a small, insignificant female, that same Alice what’s-her-name they were talking about among the gossips of the crowd, probably. She was sleep-walking back home. Must be from her nightly stroll in the graveyard when the two cracks of his pistol awakened her and put her to flight. She

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ran as fast as was in the power of her legs to carry her. Most evidently toward some dark hiding-place he did not know, but could well imagine, much to his despair. Whether she saw his face before running away he could not tell. Anyhow only death was a guarantee of her silence, but where the hell to find her amidst the myriad shades of the thickening night? Bailon wondered and puzzled for a while, and felt unhappy and full of apprehensions at such an unfortunate occurrence.

No good wasting the precious minutes, he told himself at last, convinced now that what happened in the aftermath of his crime could really not be helped. Consequently, he turned about and scurried away: back home for an alibi he wished he would not need...

When the police arrived they realized they had been a few minutes late. To make up for their ‘negligence’ they eagerly ferreted out the surroundings of the house in search of the ‘murdering husband’. They ended up falling on him amidst the tombstones of Saint Masta’s cemetery. Not a word of denial on his part when they put the handcuffs on his wrists. Actually, he began to believe that he had actually killed his wife while he was only trying to frighten her into letting him in. Now what about the other crimes he had ascribed to himself simply to talk big and brag about a virility* he so bitterly wanted? No idea while he was being hustled into the van of the police. Conditions might damn well turn different later in the course of the inquiry. Still more so in the prison where he would have plenty of time and leisure to think things over and come out with a convincing proof of his innocence. What he did not know was Henry Mikop’s presence there right now. Still unjustly locked up in a cell and patiently waiting for the arrest of his wife’s killer and his own release.

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CHAPTER IX Perfunctory visit melts in crocodile tears Fear of being detected and thoroughly inspected prevented Bailon

from setting foot outdoors on the morrow of his latest crime. For more than two weeks now. Anyhow, staying at home and keeping quiet all that long there locked in might corroborate his alibi. Such was his belief at least. During these days he only permitted himself short and very quick moves out, less than a couple of hundred yard away from his cottage, and only when this proved absolutely necessary for the purchase of the daily bread and butter and booze he needed or, still more important, for buying newspapers that told him about the progress of the inquiry with the fellow who tried to kill his wife, and whose name, the papers said, was Vart Iocomo.

That man he had so cleverly and quite anonymously framed, and who was being subjected to a very close examination by the police was now filling his head and weighing on his mind. Heavily sometimes. Accordingly, he fell into the habit of reading about the inquest day after day, with unprecedented tenacity. Not that he had on his conscience what he had done to that old geezer he had never seen before, far from it for sure. On the contrary: he was anxious to hear about a ‘confession of guilt’ on his part so that he himself might be out of suspicion and pursuit once and for all.

The inquiry was conducted by means of ultra-modern ‘devices’. So the papers said. A polygraph and other highly sophisticated lie detecting machines, they asserted. Also through physical and moral torture, they approvingly added. Such highly efficient methods to make him at last admit as his own the crimes he had not committed, Bailon persuaded himself, and that was enough to set his mind at rest. Consequently he rejoiced beyond measure the day Iocomo was said to have ‘ owned up at long last.

What pleased Bailon almost as much in the story he read was the news of Mikop’s liberation from jail, together with other ‘suspects’ in the affair of Pamela’s murder: how could it be otherwise since the ‘real culprit’ was found and kept in hand by the police? All the more cause for jubilation and celebration. Bailon went about it heart and soul. To make up for the ‘time lost’ at home during the last few weeks he visited several ‘joints where marijuana was served under the counter, in addition to alcohol at the bar for all tastes, including his. There he quaffed and

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puffed to his heart’s content for nights on end, largely using the money acquired from his first three victims, not minding at all the illicit acquisition. That was how it felt on hearing about Iocomo’s ‘confession’, he once told himself ecstatically.

Perhaps the only blot on the landscape of his bliss in these days of hectic enjoyment and crazy consumption was the remorse he felt each time he thought of Mikop’s grief at the loss of his wife. Henry, the oldest and closest of his friends! Killing Pamela, depriving him of the goose that used to lay the golden eggs for him whenever he wanted them, a real cause for regret, but how the hell could that be helped? After all was not Pamela herself who started the fight? Most certainly she did, and, if he killed her, it was only in self-defense. Anyhow he had already secretly, but nonetheless generously, atoned for this in his own roundabout sort of way. Such an ultra secret and most clever action through which Iocomo was framed and arrested had set Henry free on the spot, yes, true, but how about his sorrow over the loss of a wife like Pamela who was mad about him and who, on top of her love, was squandering her millions on his amusements just for the asking? A most unfortunate occurrence, to be sure. but not from sorrow, no doubt.

Very well: he would pay a visit to Henry as soon as possible and offer him his condolences. As warmly and amiably as fit between close friends. He would also congratulate him on his new freedom from arrest. First and foremost perhaps. All this with very carefully chosen words, without giving himself away through any slip of the tongue or other, or other: that goes without saying. No brag about his stealthy and highly successful attempt to frame Iocomo, nothing at all in this vein although what he did was much to his credit and that Mikop owed him his freedom for it. Only strong deprecation and utter condemnation of this ‘criminal’s doings. Vart Iocomo, the now well-known wholesale killer and public enemy number one!

With all these ideas crowding his head, Razdag Bailon slipped into the driving seat of his car and was off to Mikop’s house which he reached very soon. That was no later than the evening of the day his ‘dear friend’ returned home after his discharge from the prison where he had been detained for further questioning, and for weeks at a stretch, as suspect number one in the murder of his own wife.

What he found when he arrived there was different from what he used to see. Mikop looked tired, exhausted and much older than his

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years. That slim and pale face struck him as out of its element in a boy of Henry’s health and sturdy build. Those eyes which used to be shining with happiness and laughing it out each time the two old cronies met were now deep in gloom and cry. This apart from the dark streaks that circled them and added to their expression of sad bereavement.”

“Good evening, Henry,” Said Bailon, entering his victim’s house. “I’m glad to know you’ve been cleared of this trumped-up charge at last.”

“Trumped-up, indeed! You’ve said it! What did they want with me? Is it like a paragon of a husband as myself to do his wife in? No, no, only a bloodthirsty murderer of Iocomo’s calibre can perpetrate such a foul crime!”

“Most certainly!“What on earth did that devilish killer want with a respectable lady

like Pamela? As clear as broad daylight she has never crossed his path, never known him from Adam!”

“Quite so, my good friend, but killers of that breed are never at a loss for motives, never tired of spilling innocent blood! They’re always in search of new victims wherever and whenever they find them, don’t you know that?”

“Right. It’s such bad luck he bumped into Pamela and none else on that ill-omened day! The bloody villain, what the hell has he got against her? I’m positive she was gently driving the Bentley I lately gave her as a present. Side by side with her sister, poor Rita! What a pity my wife didn’t use the gun I once bought her to defend herself against such cowardly aggressions! And yet I told her more than once to be always on her guard and never hesitate to shoot an aggressor, whoever he may be! Is that the outcome of my wise tutoring?” Mikop burst into a sob.

At once Bailon tried to soothe him. “Quiet, man,” he urged. “You’ve got to understand that Pamela was in no position to use this gun while she was driving that car you’re talking about. Her attention must have been busy studying the road ahead, and her eyes probing it. Anyway her hands were stuck on the steering wheel at that fatal moment and, therefore, unable to wield a firearm.”

“You may be right,” replied Mikop, mopping up the rivulet of tears that flowed from his eyes and down his cheeks, his face now half-hidden behind a large handkerchief. “In whatever way this happened it’s no use

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lamenting over spilt milk and like tomfooleries,” he went on, his tone calmer. “What’s done is done. To my knowledge, there’s no way to change the past, is there?”

“Not by any means,” answered Bailon in perfect agreement with his friend’s truism. “So absolutely sound your reasoning, old boy,” he added. “Now my advice is that you should try to breathe fresh life into yourself, starting from scratch if need be. It’s good you’re at present the only possessor of Pamela’s millions and may—“

“No more millions, only a few thousands left! I must admit I’ve lost a good chunk of Pamela’s fortune in foolish trades: stocks and bonds: all falling to bits in my—er, in my still inexperienced, clumsy hands! What I gained in the process was experience and nothing else, but that’s not enough to retrieve the money I lost! I am confident I can do it very easily with a few more millions to invest, and that thanks to that recently acquired experience and know-how. In addition to my natural gifts, of course,” added Mykop, tapping his head. “They’re still here, unchanged by sorrow. With these implements in hand I’m positive I can work miracles! Depend on it, man: I can double and even triple a capital much sooner than anyone else in the trade. Provided it’s not less than a few million Gelbs. That was what my deceased wife used to give me, but I lost them almost all. Now where on earth to find such huge sums for a fresh start at a critical moment like that?”

“In the dowry of another rich heiress, of course! Just as before! Why not look for another millionaire girl and marry her at once? You are an old hand at it, Mikop, aren’t you?”

“Yes, true. There are so many single women available at present, including rich heiresses, as you say. You can lay odds a great number of them are on the look-out for a male to take them under his wings. One worth their while like me—or you. But I won’t hear of this for the time being: not while I am still too badly missing Pamela to marry again! ” Mikop heaved another sigh and fell silent as though lost in painful thinking . “By the way, what about you, old crony?” he asked at last, as a diversion from his grief. “I know—er I was told you’ve been rejected by Rita. It’s my fault perhaps: I didn’t know she had already a boy friend when I recommended her to your attention. Otherwise I would never have sent you to her and made you put your foot in it the way you did! But you shouldn’t any longer crave for the fortune that has slipped off your fingers on this account now that she’s in her grave, poor thing!

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Together with that lover she has found herself without my help or even my knowing, mind you? So much the worse for her and him, if you ask me. There are plenty of other rich girls still alive and worth your consideration, I should think. You may try your luck with one of them if—“

“Likely, but where the hell to find her?”“Anywhere, man: in church, in a public garden, in one of those

museums uptown, admiring fashionable works of art in order to buy them—or simply walking somewhere or other—or driving a Rolls Royce. So many possibilities!”

“Most probable what you say, but how to approach a girl of that class without incurring her scorn and even her insults?”

“Simple enough: you may have recourse to what they call ‘the dropped quid stunt’. It consists in throwing a fiver or a tenner at the girl’s feet from behind her back and ask her whether it’s fallen from her handbag or something the like. This method of approach is sometimes very effective. It often helps break the ice between unacquainted boys and girls, I’m sure. Proof is that I myself have resorted several times to it when I was in my teens— only for amusement, of course—and it did the trick more than once, imagine! Won’t you take the plunge and have a go at it? Just for the sake of seeing its effect on the girl, first thing.”

“Yes, maybe, but—but how to tell a rich girl from a poor one and know she’s worth the try before I get acquainted with her?”

“Usually it’s done by trial and error, but sometimes you may guess by the girl’s response, or simply by the garb she’s wrapped herself in, or—or—“.

“Y—es, I see your meaning. I’ll take your advice and do my damnedest to succeed, the way you do, the first time I see a gleam of success on the horizon. I’ll then tell you how it fared and whether the girl looked really interested.”

The promise met with a slight nod of Mikop’s head which, apparently, was turning heavy again, as though he were relapsing into silent grief.

It was an opportunity for Bailon to end the perfunctory visit. He sprang to his feet and took leave of his despondently widowed friend. By now he was quite oblivious of the fact that it was he himself who was the author of such a misery. He seemed to be in a hurry to try his luck with

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‘rich’ girls in accordance with the precious directions and careful instructions he had heard and was afraid to forget.

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CHAPTER X

Street Walker in Housekeeper’s Clothing.

Some three or four hundred yards from the crossroads that led to his house, Bailon stopped his car and watched diligently around. Not too many pedestrians at such a late hour and still less vehicles. At this rate and until tomorrow his search for a ’rich girl’ in conformity with the Mikop’s intelligent teachings proved null and void: among the too small number of females he saw walking along the pavement none was expensively dressed in his estimation, or luxuriously made up, or perched on exaggeratingly high heels. The one Rolls Royce that lumbered past him was driven by a man, a liveried chauffeur by the look of him, with two elderly women in the rear seat. Apart from this there was no question of visiting art exhibitions. Not now at such a late hour, and therefore, no millionaire girls to be ‘discovered’ in such haunts: hardly the time for them to buy modern, fashionable trash at prohibitive prices. All closed down for the night, his dashboard clock told him again. Tomorrow without fail, at another hour. The earlier the better.

With this resolution deeply set in his mind, Bailon turned the ignition on and shot off disgruntled, almost dejected after the vain search, and that until he descried another female in the near distance, under the glare of a lamp-post. A man was speaking to her, but he hurried out of sight at Bailon’s approach. The girl, now alone, raised a hand on seeing him come and waved him to another stop.

A whore begging for the custom of a random passer-by, likely, he surmised… No need to drop a fiver and ask her a silly question. He swerved and braked and skidded to a halt, his side of the car almost grazing her dress, making her wince back a yard or two, but she did not seem to be frightened overmuch by the abrupt move. On the contrary: it seemed as though she were inviting it, putting a brave face on the driver’s quizzical smirk, emboldened, as it were, by the hospitable warmth that was taking shape round his lips.

A hustler rather than a millionaire by the look of her, he deemed after craning out for a better view and sizing her up from top to toe.

To make things worse he found not much to look at while studying her face. No attraction whatever, a plain jane to the marrow of her bones, and that in spite of the rouge that highlighted her

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cheekbones…All the same she might do for a pass, he decided at last.

“What ’s the matter, young lady?” he asked, his smile going breadthways.

She didn’t smile back, on the contrary: she put on an air of utter distress. “I am a homeless girl in search of a shelter for the night,” she wailed.

“Not such an awful lot,” he bantered unfeelingly. “I myself can provide you with bed and breakfast in my own digs. All for free if you’re keen,” he added, determined to use her for want of better, just for the night to come and with a mind to humour his libidinous needs.

She hesitated. “Where d’you live, Mister?” she asked after a few seconds’ reflection.

Less than a mile away. That is if you don’t mind the long ride,” he said with a malicious grin. “Do you?”

She shook her head, as though taking his question seriously.“Then step in,” he bade, his good humour broadening still.

“Quick before anyone sees us together and goes rattling it about,” he laughed.

She didn’t seem to be in such a hurry. “What about your wife, Mister?” she asked. “My hunch tells me she’ll be too annoyed to receive me as a guest in her home.”

“I’ll persuade her not to,” he promised, laughing harder. “Why not if we, all three, can be made to accept peaceful coexistence? One more eternal triangle in this world. Such is life. Now what are you waiting for? Get in, won’t you?”

She didn’t budge. “Quick, please. I’ve got to be home on time. I’m in for a box on

the ear by this terrible wife of mine if I’m so much as a minute late.”No move: it was as though she were rooted to the ground where

she stood.“Won’t you come home with me so that we can have a happy

night together? Same room, same bed. You and me and none else!”“Oh, no, not that. What will your wife say?” she objected with a

sneer.“My wife? I was only joking, old girl. The truth is that I am

single and free as a lone bird.” He stretched a hand and pushed open the front door on the other side of the car.

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In silent indifference to the stale joke, she walked over to the other side of the car and slipped into the front seat, beside him, and off they went, on their way to the happy night he was expecting. At the front door of the cottage she stopped and pondered again as though nagged by a thought.

“What’s wrong, old girl? Anything getting in your way?”“Nothing but are you sure there’ll be nobody in this house apart

from you and me?”“There’ll be my wife, too. Just what I said: the right material to

start an eternal triangle!”“ Where’s she? I just want to wish her good night and bolt away

in peace!“ “Don’t be stupid: She’s just nowhere. I told you I am single,

didn’t you understand?” he chuckled and, rising from the driving seat, he walked over to her side and grabbed her by the hand, as though he were afraid she might slip off his fingers.

“Then what’s this strange story about a third person and an eternal triangle and things like that?” she asked, somewhat at a loss over his meaning.

“It was not more than a pleasantry of mine. Just forget about it, girl. Now how about a cup of tea and a snack?” He proposed and, without waiting for an answer, led the way toward the table of the dining-room.

“Most kind of you, Mister—er—what’s your name, please?” she asked, following in his steps.

“Razdag Bailon, your humble servant,” he said, bowing and extending a hand.

She shook it with the accompaniment of a self-introduction on her part. “Ludmilla at your service,” she said in half-imitation of his words.

“Ludmilla what?”“Call me Ludmilla. That’ll be pretty enough for the time being. “Glad to meet you, Ludmilla.” He extended a hand and pulled a

chair for her at the table. He then walked over to the kitchen. A few minutes later he came back with teapot and cups and a packet of biscuits which was followed by another and a third, the right bellyful for the hungry guest she was.

When it came to sleeping he most lovingly was as good as his word. He drew her to his bed, side by side with him. “While waiting for better,” he said.

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There, warmly together in the common couch, he helped her doff her things. She ‘kindly’ allowed him to have sex with her, making it a condition to be paid a hundred gelbs for her ‘trouble’ if he meant to keep her for the whole night. He bargained as best he could, making it drop down to only fifty payable the next day. This clause of the unwritten contract settled, he went about enjoying her down to his full satiety. It was then and only then that, with the first signs of drowsiness weighing on his eyelids, he ignored her presence in his bed and let himself go to sleep.

But slumber did not come so soon. He opened his eyes again and sent her away from his bed and his room, over to the adjacent one where more comfort was awaiting her, as he said. “Only for an hour or two,” he gently explained. “Just the time for a short nap. Then you’ll be back here, in my bed for more love, eh?”

Lumilla nodded and walked away to the other bedroom of the house.

It was there that Matilda used to doze off the fatigue of her daily work, undisturbed by that troublemaker of a son she had never ceased to idolize in spite of his too visible blemishes.

The couch was unslept in for more than a year now, ever since Matilda’s last ride from home to hospital and her subsequent death. Tired to the point of exhaustion, Ludmilla tumbled onto the sheets and relaxed profoundly. Her eyes closed in next to no time.

One or two hours later, she awoke at the furious barks of a dog against another in the neighbourhood and switched on the lights. Then, tiptoeing to the door of the other room, she peeped in: her host still there, fast asleep, thank heaven. Now or never, she told herself and went about snooping around in search of jewels or any other valuable to take away as one more gift. Self-offered this time, but no cause for worry… She ended up finding a yellow bracelet which seemed lost or hidden in the thick dust of the dressing table amidst a dozen bottles of doubtful fluids. She fished it out and held it up to the light overhead.

The colour of gold, yes, she found, but whether solid or plated she could not tell. Whatever it was, she thrust it in her bag and looked for more womanly, tinselly adornments around. With less luck. She ended up forcing herself to be content with this on top of the fifty gelbs promised by her client and host, and due to be paid in the next morning without fail, as he promised. Twice rewarded for yielding to the lustful cravings of this man, she mused. First with a

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genuine gift, solemnly, though unwillingly, pledged by him, in his bed, and then with another, pinched from behind his back, near another bed in another room of his house. Spurious perhaps, but how the hell could one know? No way to distinguish between false and real without the help of an expert professional. Whatever it was, she deemed the compound acquisition rather enough for what she did, and made ready to go away in quest of a new, hopefully larger haul in the arms of another, more generous client for the night to come.

The front door was locked, preventing any escape next morning. Anyhow, Bailon wanted to keep her in for breakfast—and also perhaps for his unavowed desire to enjoy her again. All this after disgorging as though through his nose, the fifty-gelb note she was impatiently waiting for.

At table, over a steaming cup, she still talked about a farewell after the meal. As best he could, Bailon urged her to stay on.

“Oh, so sorry,” she said without looking it. “Fact is I am pressed for time: I must go find myself a job somewhere or other.”

“A job?” “Yes, I am out of work now,” she answered, leaving him

uncertain whether she was a part or full time prostitute. “Which line of work would you like to be in?” he asked between

two gulps and a mouthful of buttered toast “Menial, for the most part. Once upon a time, I was engaged

somewhere as a housemaid. My employers were a childless couple. They seemed to get on fine together, but, quite unexpectedly the husband divorced his wife. He fired me very soon afterwards on orders by his mistress from behind the scenes, imagine!”

“Too bad,” Bailon deprecated and engulfed another bite of toast together with a draught of hot drink from his cup.

While still munching and crunching a bright idea crossed his head: resplendent it was, as though in a flash of inspiration come straight from heaven; as usual with him, maybe more than usual this time. This girl was far from being the heiress of a millionaire, true: that leapt to his greedy eyes. Actually she was a mere hustler depending on male sexual urge for her living. All the same she could well turn him into a millionaire: simply by accepting to undertake a ‘menial work’ for a number of days. She must be an old hand at it with plenty of experience to make a good start. During which time he would request her to clear out the tons of rubbish that were

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cluttering the basement of his house, a hard labour he himself had never had the patience or endurance to carry through. This once terminated, he would give her the sack for safety’s sake. He would then, once alone, try unhurriedly, at his leisure hours, to wield pick and shovel and go deeper into the very heart of the earth under the planks—and find at last that treasure which must be buried somewhere or other underneath, within the limits of the basement surface. Bound to be buried there, for years, for centuries perhaps, as old Matilda used to say, quoting her father over and over again. He, her son, in his own cheeky way, had sometimes covered her words with ridicule, but only for the sake of laughing a little at her expense. That had never prevented him from secretly believing that she might well be right. Only an elaborate dig and search down under could show whether Matilda and her father were talking sense or not. He remembered having cleared only one corner down there but had to give up very soon. Not his a tedious work like that. The outcome with the other corners, with the rest of the floor, might well turn out differently. Anyhow those cumbersome heaps of rubbish had to be removed first thing. Only this girl Ludmilla, who must have acquired skill in menial work, as she said, was likely to clean the floor of the basement effectually. Likely to finish her work very soon as a well-trained housemaid in the near past.

What a pity he would have to dismiss her once her job was terminated. Sharing the treasure with her, with anybody else, was the last thing he wanted. He and he alone must try to disinter this treasure at long last and fully enjoy the fruit of his efforts. Away from Ludmilla or any other person. He was not such a fool as to let others into the know and invite their blackmail. Gold bullion, gold coins by the millions, all waiting for him under the floor, all pouring into the bank account of a new millionaire: himself! Right upon his bringing them to the light of day! Splendid past words!

Dazzled by his new idea, Bailon turned his gaze to Ludmilla again.

“You won’t have to go too far in order to find the job you’re looking for,” he said. “How about becoming my housekeeper in this dwelling of mine?” he proposed.

“Here?” Ludmilla cast a glance in the room and beyond it. Well, maybe,” she said after a moment’s reflection. “How much are you ready to pay me for such a service?”

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“Not much perhaps, but on top of full board and salary you can eke out your income by responding to my own personal needs from time to time, if you know what I mean,” he blinked and then looked her in the eyes.

“Okay, sir: I’ll be your most obedient servant if that’s what you want.”

“Good girl,” he said and sprang to his feet while she was still eating. “Come this way, Ludmilla, I have to show you something nobody has seen to date. Down there, under this house.”

She left her meal unfinished and followed him along the narrow corridor. There, in front of the kitchen door, he stopped and stooped over the threadbare, faded rug that covered the lid of the manhole.

“Ah, wait a minute,” he asked and ran over to his own bedroom. He came back with a coil of flex and a bulb. After plugging in to the nearest socket on the wall he dangled the glaring lamp down the ladder and followed it into the depths of the rubbish that covered the floor. At a wave of his arm she did the same.

“Once there beside him, the girl did not know what to say, lost as she was in the middle of all that litter. Obviously she preferred to wait for him to speak.

Look here, Ludmilla,” he said, almost in a whisper, “all this has to be moved out in order to turn this room into a good, clean shelter, d’you hear?

“Shelter? What for?” That may come in handy if civil war was to break out anew. So

many politicians predict this nowadays, mind you?” We’ll hide here together, for protection from bombardments. You and me alone, while the rest of the Pranbergan population—poor things, they’ll get knocked on their heads by a shell or a rocket or goodness knows what!”

Ludmilla showed not much interest in the advantage of the enterprise ahead. What impressed her more was the huge amount of hard labour awaiting her in it. “Do you think I can without you or any other help clear all this out today?” she asked. “Too big a task for a weak girl like myself!”

“That’s right,” he conceded. “I’d say even more: what you’re asked to do is what they call a Herculean task, but only at first go. You yourself are not requested to clear all this today, of course. Only a small portion of it, mind you?”

“What’s the good of the unfinished work if—“

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“ That’ll simply make it much easier to resume, you understand? My idea is that you can proceed bit by bit: only two hours or so every day for the next two or three weeks. This way I’m confident the floor will turn spick and span, almost before you know it!”

“Only Two hours here every day, as you say? That’s not what they call a full time job, is it? What else shall I have to do in your house every day once the toilsome work is over?”

“You’ll have some housekeeping duties, of course. Light for the most, mind you? You’ll also be in my arms for some love-making game, that goes without saying!”

Somewhat unenthusiastically Ludmilla nodded acceptance. She even set to work on the spot, supposedly for the two hours to come, anxious as she was to do her bit of the daily drudgery imposed on her by her new boss. Under his vigilant supervision she went straight into the top of the litter mountain, trying to reach a little portion of its foot.

Bailon, who got tired of being with her amidst the garbage, climbed back to the ground floor on his way to a short ride and a shopping tour, as he said. What he wanted to include in his purchases was a cheap, phony brooch for his ‘dear Ludmilla’, as he planned and pledged without any special description. It was meant as a token of love, naturally, as he said; still more, he implied with a blink : an encouragement toward more efforts on her part under his cottage.

Left by herself, Ludmilla cleaned and cleared further still, and that until her hand met with something that looked like leather, both for her eyes and her groping hands. It was unlike anything else in the room, although lost amidst other rubbish around the lower end of the ladder. She picked up the unknown object and saw it was a wallet. Very intrigued at the unexpected find, she examined it under the electric light. It was empty of money, but all the other papers inside it, including a few visiting cards, bore the name of Richard Greidam. It was a name that did not leave her totally indifferent. She had seen or heard it not very long ago. Where and when she did not know until it called to her memory Vart Iocomo’s deeds that had set tongues wagging for weeks on end a year before.

Ah, yes, she remembered now: lawyer Greidam was one of his victims. Together with those two millionaire women! She shuddered at the notion. Then, coming to from the staggering effect the discovery had made on her, she closed the wallet and held it to the

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light again. It was clotted with stains the colour of old blood. Greidam’s blood to be sure.

Without thinking twice, she thrust the wallet into her handbag for further examination and new consideration. Then, fed up with the hard work imposed on her after the strange discovery, she climbed up the ladder: out of the basement and out of the house. Back to her pimp but only in the hope of regaining her freedom from him very soon.

In another area of the metropolis Bailon went on searching. Shops and stalls of trash came under his eyes, but there was nowhere the ‘jewel’ he was looking for to please his girl of the moment: none bad enough to suit both his purpose and his pocket. Anyhow, He did not find the girl herself when he came back home empty-handed. She was nowhere to hear him express his ‘regret’ or promise of further shoppings in her name. Nowhere to be seen either in the basement or in the kitchen of the cottage as was fit for a housekeeper or a housemaid. Still worse: Ludmilla’s cell phone remained deaf to his repeated calls. Why that? What was the meaning of that surprise desertion from work?

Unable to answer his own question, Bailon dropped into an armchair of his living-room and waited for her to come back of her own accord. Sadly, perplexedly he did: one hour, two hours and more. No sign of her anywhere! How very silly of him to take a whore for granted, to depend on her for the most important of his projects, one on which depended his whole future. No matter: that had taught him a lesson never to forget, especially if he was to see her again.

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CHAPTER XI

PIMP AND WHORE IN LEAGUE FOR INTRIGUE Waiting at home after an elaborate and vain hunt… The wait

proved long and trying. As much as the hunt itself if not more. Worst of all: it invited worries of every kind. Enough to tire the head of procurer Abel Grive while he was resting his feet. His nerves were on edge by now, most certainly: not his the patience of a saint. So, he fidgeted and fretted and fumed in his chair, within the narrow bounds of his room. That girl Ludmilla he owned among three or four others, had failed to be back on time after going away with a patron. He himself had failed to retrieve her in spite of his redoubled efforts to this end. What he suspected and feared most of all was her being lost for ever to him: together with the money she used to earn for his ease and comfort! Hour after hour he had been looking for her this morning. Far, along the slummy back streets of the city: where that man who took her in his car seemed to have driven yesterday in the gloomy depths of the prevailing night.

Such a ride with the buyer of a whore’s services and the subsequent pass with him ought not to last more than an hour in Grive’s expert estimation. Two hours at the most if she was to come back on foot. He cast a glance at his sinewy fingers and wondered whether this prominent member of his “team” had not slipped off the firm grip of his hand this time. Most like the slippery snake she was and had always been, he told himself in answer to his own question. Other, even steadier ones, had already turned their backs on other pimps, setting the example! Women: such a fickle, unpredictable lot, especially when they put themselves up for hire! A hire which sometimes turns into a sale!

No wonder Abel Grive was so anxious and so indignant at that dramatic moment of his life. It must be said that his career as a procurer so far had given him no trouble. Actually it had gone like clockwork. All this owing to the fact that he was a really gifted pimp, maybe the best of the bunch operating in downtown Pranberg, anyway a past-master of the trade in accordance with the expression of his colleagues inside the white slave market. This not to belittle the numberless crafts he had plied ever since he had come of age and even before. He, for example, was a top-notch trickster who had

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more than once swindled people out of their money, rich and poor alike, and got away with it most of the time. He had also tried his hand at burgling houses, with fairly satisfactory results, but always in close collaboration with others who used to give him a hand whenever necessary, or worked under his leadership. Still more: for a year and a half he had given a good account of himself as a deft bag-snatcher along the roads. Ladies by dozens and by scores had been relieved of their money, and that thanks to his swift moves behind and before them on a motorcycle he had found and stolen in front of its owner’s house, almost under his eyes. Only once he had been caught and punished for that kind of thefts. It was by the woman’s husband who happened to be a professional wrestler, while Grive himself, delicate and frail, and still a beginner in his teens, was no match for such a sturdy giant, physically speaking at least. Consequently, he was soundly thrashed by him before being handed over to the police. The outcome was a rather short term of imprisonment owing to the fact that the little devil was still under age.

Once free again Grive thought better of it for a while. He ended up drawing the line at pastimes like bag-snatching and like risky ‘hobbies’. He chose to concentrate on other, less dangerous and more profitable occupations, with definitely better results…Once upon a time he had tried his hand at blackmail, carefully looking for game among the rich, highly respectable gentlemen who owed at least part of their fortune to embezzlements and like shady practices. His gains in this field were excellent but rare: it was not every day that a crooked civil servant was caught embezzling exchequer funds or cooking accounts. This was the reason why blackmail ceased to be a regular self-employment for him.

Several years later, at the mature age of thirty, Grive tried to talk a woman-friend of his into giving herself up to a man for money. The woman, who happened to be of easy virtue, accepted the alluring proposal: which meant a fifty percent commission for Grive as a go-between. The process went on with another woman for hire through him and then to still one more, and so on and so forth: a profitable amusement which was enjoyed and repeated several times in a row, and finally became a full time career. It was a highly congenial profession for him as regarded the role of go-between he played, and extremely worth his while in his own calculations. From that happy day he never looked back. On the contrary, he went

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forward in his efforts to draw more women to his net. Consequently, his income grew by leaps and bounds and made it possible for him to live the plenteous, luxurious life of his daydreams. What a pity it was now being perturbed by the defection of this girl Ludmilla! So it seemed to him although she was but only one among other hustlers presently under his thumb and at his beck and call. All the same she was the first to give him cause for annoyance and worry, and her demeanor might well set the bad example to her co-workers in the ‘team’, he feared. Consequently, he went on fretting and wondering where that unruly bitch had gone and whether she had slipped off his fingers for good and all this time.

That mood persisted until he heard a shuffle from the outside. It was followed by a ring of the doorbell. Just what needed to startle him out of his nightmare. Could that be her? Certainly not! He walked over to the front door and, pulling it open, was delighted to see he had gone wrong in his guess. That did not, however, prevent him from venting his fury on the girl.

“Ah, here you are at long last!” he yelled, his eyes boring deep into hers. “Where the hell have you been all this time?”

“With the patron of yesterday evening. Didn’t you see me getting into his car?”

“Only with this man? Not with others after him? Hmm, you wayward slut! Come off it at once, or I’ll wring your neck!”

“Only with him. He wanted me to stay on for the whole night and even obliged me to have breakfast with him today.”

“How much did he pay for such a deal, if I may ask?” he inquired, his eyes boring deeper still into hers.

“Not—er, not more than the usual fee if—““All this for only the usual ten-gelb fee? Admirable!” he

commented, his tone an expression of scathing irony. Of course more, much more, eh?”

“Ten gelbs—er—yes, it—“ “Damned if I believe a word you say,” he burst out. “Oh, don’t

try to deceive me like you did last week!”“I’m—I did not deceive you last week! Never did! It’s—er—

well he made it twenty: just the double, you see? Here is your share of the money he paid.” She twisted her handbag open and went into the motion of handing him what she called his share in the transaction, but he waved away the offer on the grounds that it had to be more, much more, as stressed with ill-humour.

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“What makes you so suspicious to day?” she asked with feigned amazement

“Hm—hmm! When have you done trying to outsmart me, you lying trull!” he snarled and fetched her a sharp slap right across the cheek.

“I swear to God and all his saints,” she blubbered, awed, and cut herself short, as though loath to play tricks on her eternal Maker like she did her everyday exploiter and all time oppressor.

“Perjuring yourself into the bargain, you double-dealing strumpet!”

“You bully, you brute!” she cried and let the ten-gelb note fall from her hand.

He bowed low and, picking it up, thrust the money into his pocket. All this in a flash and without any signs of his being propitiated on his face . He even tried to scare her anew:

“I’ll squeeze the life out of your windpipe,” he said and caught her by the throat. “This is the only means left me to get my rights as your protector and go-between!”

The menace and the gesture did not frighten her as much as he expected.

“Take your filthy hands off me!” she replied and shook herself free. She then stamped her feet angrily telling him flat that what he got was all she had for him and that it was no use puffing and bluffing, and that all this was a waste of his time and breath.

No way of getting his ‘rightful share of the deal’ by some means or other. Anyway, he once more tried to send her another slap. It came flying and lending straight on her other cheek, sounding louder than the first.

Where was the wisdom of facing this savage and enduring his brutality? The girl’s answer to her own question was a swift move beyond the reach of her tormentor. She walked straight into a more secluded corner of the house, a small room where she used to shut herself up and take a rest after ‘work’. It was there that she could enjoy some form of privacy from time to time.

Once inside the safe retreat, she closed the door and walked over to the opposite side of the room where a comfortable settee was awaiting her. She fell on it and, for a minute or two, after burying her wet eyes in a cushion beside her. She then sat up, moping in gloomy silence, not knowing what to do next.

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To Get rid of that foul monster under whose sway she had lived and worked for more than two years now was still her main objective, but how to slip out of his reach and away from the realm of his tyranny? How on earth to retrieve the freedom she had so stupidly renounced for his sake? What was needed for this daydream to come true was dough, she realized in utter despair and wondered where to find it while this swine was eating up most of what she earned as a hustler under his control? Certainly not in making a whore of herself without his help once free, still less in being a drudge in other people’s houses like what she did this morning and found beyond her power to do again.

Instantly, as lightning through a cloud, an image flickered in her mind. It was the memory of that wallet she had found under the house of the stranger with whom she had slept the night before: that blood-smeared wallet she had taken away in spite of its being empty of money. It was all the same a source of income, her instinct told her: the right material for blackmail, undoubtedly.

As fast as could be done, she unzipped her bag wide open and extracted the smaller one she had kept in it for closer scrutiny. Most evidently, it belonged to lawyer Greidam: that could be read on the papers and the visiting cards inside it. Greidam, a victim of murderer Iocomo, she recollected once more. Together with that millionaire woman Pamela Mikop and her sister. All three bodies found inside an abandoned car on the outskirts of Pranberg more than twelve months before, she remembered…

Very carefully she examined the clotted stains on the outer surface of the leather. Greidam’s blood to be sure! Gushed out of his chest the moment he was shot dead, most certainly. Granted all this but what had the defiled leathery surface got to do with Razdag Bailon himself? Why just in the basement of his house? Was it there that Iocomo committed his crime? No mention in the verdict whether Iocomo had shot the lawyer on the spot where his wallet was found or anywhere else. So that discovery today was sufficient proof Greidam was killed there and nowhere else. With Bailon aiding and abetting, of course, since he had gone so far as to lend his house to the murderer and his victim!

All this seemed in order for Ludmilla, an ideal instrument for her dire needs and purposes of the moment. It was indeed a most useful material for some kind of blackmail or other in her belief, and, therefore, the source of the income that might enable her to recover

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the freedom she had lost when she entrusted herself to Grive’s iron clasp. Simple as A,B,C: that fellow Razdag Bailon should be rung up on the spot and given the choice between buying her silence or being arrested as the right murderer—or, at least, the murderer’s right-hand man. But where and when to meet him and get the hush money he was bound to pay, and how much ought to be demanded for her silence or the return of the stained, telltale thing.

In the middle of this and other inner debates Ludmilla’s mind got lost in utter confusion. She remained undecided for minutes on end while still holding the lawyer’s wallet to the light, completely unaware of a human presence behind the door of the room. It was Abel Grive peeping in through a narrow crack between the two leaves of the closed door. He was still anxious to get his share of what in his estimation was the big money she had cashed as a fee for a whole night of whorish work. She still, owed him half of it and not the mere ten-gelb note he had already pocketed, almost without her noticing.

With these ideas haunting his mind, Grive pushed the door open and made his way into the room. Ludmilla was still racking her brains for the best and most profitable blackmail possible when she saw him standing bolt upright in front of her. He stared her in the eyes and said:

“Goddamn… what are you footling here for, you miserable, little cat?”

“None of your business. Leave me alone!” “What’s this in your hand?” She made no answer. “Ah, ah, there you are: caught in your own trap!” he exclaimed,

laughing nastily. It’s certainly for hiding the money you want to withdraw from my sight, isn’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer to his question, he snatched the wallet from her hand. “Huh, yes, I see!” he triumphed and opened it on the spot. His long fingers crept in, searching for the banknotes he was after, but all they could find was a number of visiting cards.

“H’mm, who is this barrister Richard Greidam?” he asked upon reading the embossed name on the glossy cardboard. “I’m dead sure he’s the second or third patron you slept with last night and whose money you’re deceitfully concealing from my view! I dare you deny the plain truth about this treachery of yours, you wily minx!“

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“You’re grossly wrong! As usual,” she replied, her tone emphatic.

“I’ve guessed all right, I’m sure! Otherwise why make such a mystery of it as you’re doing now?”

“I’m afraid you’ve gone still wider of the mark,” she countered with a sour grimace. ”This fellow Greidam is in his grave. He’s been one of Iocomo’s victims. Can’t you remember the story of that mass murder which has been committed last year? It’s been on almost everybody’s lips at the time.”

Willy-nilly, Grive remembered. “ Where did you find this?” he asked, waving the wallet before her eyes.

Rather reluctantly Ludmilla admitted she had picked it up amidst a heap of rubbish under the house of the man with whom she had spent the night.

“And what do you intend to make of it, if I may ask?” he went on, chuckling.

“That’s none of your business!” “Everything you say or do is my business,” he growled, and

cocked his fist.“Really, Abel Grive! Who do you take yourself for?”“I am your tutor and master in this house and out of it and

everywhere!” he thundered. “I admire how you’ve got the knack of forgetting this fundamental truth of late,” he added, his tone an eloquent expression of sarcasm. He then turned the wallet in his hand, observing either side of it with a maximum of attention.

“You’d better not let your fingers disturb these red stains,” warned Ludmilla. “They’re clots of Greidam’s own blood, you know?”

“I know better than that,” he retorted and, opening the wallet, he studied its contents.

“No good,” she warned. “You’ll be wasting your time if you try to find money inside it.”

“Wait! Wait! I prefer not to believe a word you say!” His fingers crept further into the folds of the leather and came back with a number of visiting cards instead of the bank-notes.

“What’s that?” he asked again, disappointed to the point of disgust.

“Didn’t I tell you there’s no money? The trouble with you is that you never want to believe me!” she triumphed sulkily.

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“I’m still convinced you’re lying in order to bilk me of my share in your gains! Now do tell me quick: what’s that you were holding so fast and so near to your heart?”

“it’s none of your business, is it?” “You don’t seem to understand, you wayward girl! I told time

and again that everything you say or do is my business,” he growled, but failed to intimidate her for once.

He thundered again and then, seeing it was no good, submitted the wallet to a closer scrutiny on the outer surface of it.

Ludmilla, on seeing his fingers rubbing the clots, warned anew, louder this time.“I told you not to disturb these stains! They’re Greidam’s own blood, you know?”

“What of it?” he asked with what sounded like total indifference and scorn.

“They’re proof that Greidam has been assassinated in the basement of this man’s house, just where the wallet has been found, and not near the scrap heap where his body was found as has been everyone’s belief.”

“Not the belief of a silly girl like yourself! Whether this fellow Greidam has been bumped off in the basement of this house or that, or anywhere else in the world it’s all one to me, you know? Stop reasoning and drawing conclusions, will you?”

“Then stop badgering me and get out of this room at once! I feel tired and in need of some rest.”

“How could it be otherwise after a full night of hard work with three or four men?” Grive commented, eyeing her still more suspiciously. He then walked away in a huff after dropping the wallet beside her onto the settee. Ludmilla, on seeing the last of him, sprang to her feet and waited until his footsteps were no longer heard. What she heard instead was the telephone bell in the adjoining room. It was followed by his voice answering the call. She, too, wanted a telephone conversation now, but not in his house and under his control.

Quick, before he ended flaring and swearing over the mouthpiece, she slipped out and made straight into the nearest telephone box down the street, at a corner of the next block. Very nervously she leafed through the directory and then dialed in quick, nervous strokes.

“Hello, is Mr. Bailon there?”

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“Speaking,” she heard him say, laying special stress on the word, as though in anger. “Whose’s—“

“This is Lud—““Ah, it’s you? Where are you now? Why the devil did you run

away from my house during my absence? Didn’t you like the job I gave you this morning?”

Ludmilla ignored the questions altogether and came to the point straightway. “Look here, Bailon,” she said, from the tone of her voice rather unfriendly, almost aggressive, “I’ve got a piece of news in close relation to you and your house. It’ll not be quite to your liking, I’m afraid!”

Bailon’s voice rang as though he were unconcerned. “Go on, let me hear it,” he said coolly.

Ludmilla went on, not without some hesitation crossing her head. Anyway, she sounded far more impressed than he himself was by the bad tidings she had in store for him, not knowing whether it was better to tell it flat or in the style of a mitigation. “This morning,” she began and stopped short.

“Go on, what are you waiting for?”“Well, this morning, while I was digging and grubbing among

the litter down there in the basement of your cottage I fell on a wallet.”

“An old wallet perhaps? One sent to the garbage heap by my grandfather, no doubt, a hundred years ago or even more, if—“

“Not at all: it looked new and even—““Granted all this. What of it? Tell it quick: I am in a hurry and

must—““Easy, Bailon, not so fast as that: you’ve got to know that the

wallet I found was soiled from the outside by what looked like blood clots.

“Blood clots? Oh, how very odd. What you’ve seen may well be simply mud blobs. They must have dried so that they can easily be mistaken for blood. Anyway where is this wallet? Where did you put it before leaving my house?”

“Not in your house: it’s here with me, right under my eyes while I—“

“I don’t care a whit, wherever it may be. Stop wasting my time on such trifling matters, d’you hear?”

“Don’t be so eager! This is not the end of the story. I—““Then let’s have the end of this story at long last!”

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“Okay, sir. You just listen well: I opened this wallet and saw it belonged to the late Richard Greidam, the gentleman who’s been murdered last year, remember?”

Bailon remembered all right. Still more: he blanched at the mention of the name. “Richard Greidam,” he managed to say. “What the devil was he doing down there, under my house?”

“Nothing, probably. On the contrary: he was done in after he’s been led there! By you or under your control since you are the owner of the digs. That goes without saying. Whether this or that, I can’t guess, but—“

“By me? What are you talking about, girl?” he howled with counterfeited indignation. “Have you gone off your rocker?”

“Oh, don’t get the wind up? I’m not yet quite certain you yourself are the lawyer’s murderer. You may be the instigator of the crime. Anyway, it’s for the police to decide whether it’s been committed by you or by Iocomo. My duty is to hand them the wallet at the next police-station. Pretty enough to set them after you, my poor Mr. Bailon. That’ll certainly pull the trigger for another inquiry and sooner than your blind eyes can see! With you this time and none else as the main suspect in their investigation, mind you? So you’ve got to look out and not let the grass grow under your feet in the meantime.”

“An excellent piece of advice! come straight from a whore!“ he commented angrily.

“You’d better recollect and reflect instead of insulting others the way you are doing now!”

Bailon took the advice and went deeper in his recollections and reflections: yes, indeed, he had so thoughtlessly dropped the dead barrister’s wallet through the manhole after killing him and appropriating his money: an enormous mistake to be remedied without delay. Otherwise there would be a revision of the case and a retrial which could damn well result in another term of imprisonment. For life this time, and not the ghost of a remission in view, mainly if they go further in their inquest and discover him as also the murderer of the two sisters. All this just because of a negligence on his part! Oh, how very harmful, and only through his own fault! Monstrous!

“Now do tell me,” he said at last : “what the hell does your endless story boil down to? Is it simply to frighten me into believing

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that I’ll be soon caught by the police, and tortured and thrown in jail down to the to the last minute of my life? If so—“

“”You needn’t go through such a terrific ordeal, Mr. Bailon, if you seek my help. I can, for example, give you back this wallet instead of handing it to the police. I’ll then forget all about this dirty murder business for good.. All I ask in return for that invaluable service is to be adequately requited for my trouble, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I see what you mean. Now do tell me: how much is your fee for this ‘invaluable service’, as you say?

“Twenty-five thousand to be paid cash, and no bargaining, please.”

Downright blackmail, thought Bailon with mounting rage. The angry words were on the tip of his tongue but he wisely abstained from venting them out for fear of definitely estranging the girl and sending her straight to the next police station. Anyway twenty-five thousand was a figure he had never reached either in ready money or assets, save on the day when he swindled Rita into paying a reward for his helping find her lover. Now that this ill-acquired money was mostly wasted on drugs and spirits and sex what was left of it was hardly enough to keep the wolf from his door until further cash flow by some crooked means or other. No more hope of digging the “treasure” out of its subterranean hiding-place after this whore’s desertion and threats. Best perhaps was to entice her into coming back with the wallet after promising to pay her the sum she demanded, and then wrench the wallet from her hand and kick her away… Such was the plan that brewed and matured in Bailon’s head at that critical moment of his life.

“Look here, Ludmilla: you must come to my house at once and show me this wallet. I must see it before I can tell you where it came from, you understrand?”

“I can do better still: the blood stained wallet will be yours to keep or destroy, but not before you pay down to the last penny the price of this invaluable service of mine!.

“Okay, girl, I’m at home at present, waiting for you with the money. Will you show up with thes wallet at once so that we can settle accounts between us once and for all?”

“At once, yes, if you will.” she hang up and went into the motion of leaving the box. In doing so she had the unpleasant surprise of bumping into the man she had so carefully tried to evade when she

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left his brothel: Abel Grive waiting and baiting! He had stealthily followed her steps on her way to the public telephone and had listened to every word she had uttered there. He stood now stiff and still, his eyes piercing hers disapprovingly.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her blood visibly stirred by his presence.

“Foolish girl,” he snubbed. “Are you really expecting him to pay you twenty-five thousand gelbs in his own house?”

“He’s bound to pay. That’s how he sounded when he made his promise.”

“Don’t be a sucker!” he remonstrated. “Can’t you see he is simply setting a trap for you? He may easily snatch the wallet from your hand the minute you set foot in his house without paying a dime and then send you packing out of it like an unwanted cur!”

“Yes, maybe,” admitted Ludmilla, slowly opening her eyes to the danger she was in for. “What to do then in a case like that?” she asked the pimp as though he were a worthy counselor and a trustworthy friend.

“You must forget him for a while, and if he himself calls you up, then—then do tell him flat that you prefer to meet him somewhere outside his home. Ours perhaps if—“

“He won’t accept to come here with the money: he is very cautious when—“

“Then—ah, here is a good idea: ask him to meet you again there under the lamp-post at midnight today: just where he has picked you up in his car last night. I’ll go there myself with you and safely keep the wallet in my breast pocket while he’s giving you the money and until we count it. I’ll hide behind the nearest parked car and attentively supervise his actions, and be ready to wring his neck in case he is entertaining the devilish scheme of doing you any harm, or even if he so much as calls you names in retaliation for your having made him pay through his nose the price of his criminal contribution to this foul murdering affair, you understand?”

“Very thoughtful of you, Grive, but—but isn’t all this show of devotion on my behalf rather unlike you? My guess is that it’s your way to get half my gains in the deal with this man the mom—“?

“Not a bit of it, girl,” Grive protested. “You may rest assured I won’t touch a single penny you get from him unless—well, only what you vouchsafe to me once the transaction is successfully carried through,” he meekly added.

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Ludmilla nodded satisfaction and, apparently, full agreement. She walked back home with her pimp, almost hand in hand. He seemed to have talked sense at last in the advice he had bestowed on her and the modest ‘commission’ he had accepted to cash. Enough of this and that to bury the hatchet between her and him. For the time being at least.

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CHAPTER XII

FAILED AND BLACKMAILED

One hour passed and then another. Bailon lost patience and fidgeted restively in his seat. By now his nerves were on edge. No fun waiting on tenterhooks for that bloody harlot to show up as arranged and okayed at both ends of the telephone line. No point in expecting her to be in to the minute and hand that blasted, blood-wrecked wallet, he reflected in a despondent mood. But, after all, if it was only a question of lateness why the devil had it to be all that long after the appointed time?

Better late than never, he told himself at last by way of a solace and went on waiting, anxious as he was to get this wallet back. Sooner better than later, of course, he wistfully estimated, but what to do when one had to bank on the mere promise of a woman? One who, like so many members of her sex, was unable to keep a date! A whore to crown all!

All the same Bailon wanted that wallet. By hook or by crook, no matter… Retrieving it would take a burden off his shoulders: it would definitely save him a second arrest and the ordeal of another inquiry—and trial—and jail! For life, no doubt if things got rough or…

A thousand ’or’s’ and ‘if’s’ scrambled for precedence in Bailon’s turbid head at that moment, and he sincerely called for God’s help. But, on second thoughts, he found it more expedient to get the help of a creature of his, a whore at that! First by trying to deceive her into accepting as legal tender what was only make-believe stuff, using both plain paper and a thick envelope for the purpose. This done, he tried to while away the tedious wait somehow or other, baring his wrist over and over again, often with a desire to break to pieces that small watch which so candidly, so ruthlessly told him the bitter truth.

There were other, better ways perhaps to kill time, especially for one who had already so deftly killed no less than three human beings: in front of him, on a low table of his sitting-room, the large envelope he had filled and hermetically sealed lay idle, ready to be given away in exchange for that accursed wallet he was so nervously anxious to get back. He picked up the flat, snow-white receptacle.

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Once more his nimble fingers groped for its contents through the tough, extra-thick paper of which it was made. His mind appraised the high quality of its texture and its power to cheat the fat-headed wench for whom it was intended. Soapy, slithery smooth from the outside, nothing but folded foolscaps under the seal. Impossible to tell those crackling sheets inserted there from the real banknotes they were supposed to be. Not before opening it and seeing them with one’s own eyes anyway since they were under a cover whose opacity was impervious to the shiniest light. Tearing it open might well take some time. Enough of it for him to snatch the wallet from the hand or the handbag of this loose woman and send her packing outside the house. With a kick in the bottom if necessary. At gun’s point if inevitable. As usual, his pistol was in his pocket, ever ready for any task just in case…Could save him at least the ordeal of a trial and the ensuing imprisonment. Jailed for life: inconceivable!

Haunted by the notion as he was, Bailon cast another glance at his watch and felt still more nervous in his seat. Again he took hold of the large envelope he had so carefully and thoughfully prepared. He placed in front of him. Again his fingers tested its quality: thick and tough and bulging, much as designed. He felt for its contents: impossible to tell those crackling pieces of plain paper from real banknotes. Not before seeing them with one’s own eyes. But they were under seal, and tearing open their cover would take some time: quite enough of it to snatch the wallet from her hand and send her packing, he reassured himself. At gun’s point if necessary, yes, why not? What was then the use of that pistol which lay idle in one of his pockets. Clever of him to have arranged all this. As usual, Bailon congratulated himself on his skill, but that did not allay his fears of not seeing this girl at his door. And yet he had done his utmost to hoodwink her into handing back this wallet at long last! He had worked with caution and care and with a mind to prevent any easy, premature discovery of the stratagem he had been at such infinite pains to devise.

Such were the worries that haunted Bailon’s head when he set his heart on using a trickery like that to fool a mere hustler who, in his opinion, was only an amateur blackmailer.

But what was the use of all this handiwork? It did not look at all as though this louse were to show up and deliver the goods! Bailon’s apprehensions grew higher. He was on the verge of despair but he still waited: one minute more, then two and three ad infinitum… At

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last, tired of his own tiredness, he fished the mobile from his other pocket and rang her up himself.

“Hello…yes, it’s me, Razdag Bailon…Yes, of course waiting! What the hell—“

“I’ve changed my mind. I’ve just found myself unable to meet you in your home. Instead, you may see me tonight out there, under the lamp-post where you stopped your car yesterday and—“

“Fine, wonderful! But why the deuce didn’t you tell me this on the telephone instead of keeping me hanging for hours on end?”

“Oh, so sorry! I—I thought better of it only later today. Now if you’ve changed your mind or didn’t find the right amount of money to pay for this blood-soiled wallet I’ll go straight to a police-station and deposit it there and tell them where I found it, and if—“

“No,” thundered Bailon and checked his tongue, just a fraction of a second before it was too late. He was chary of venting out the red-hot, long pent-up rage within the narrow bounds of his chest for fear of spoiling everything and getting the police after him.

“Then you may come with the money tonight at twelve on the dot,” she proposed. “I’ll be there myself with that blood-caked wallet you’re in such a hurry to get back. You’ll have it on the spot in exchange for the 25000 gelbs we’ve talked about. Agreed?”

Rather reluctantly Bailon accepted the new arrangement. “All right, girl,” he said, since the contrary would have sent her straight to the police. “At midnight sharp under the lamp-post,” he added, “and no defection on your part this time, please, eh? Unless—“

“Are you sure you’ll be there with the money in cash and not—and not er—“

“Not what?” I’m quite sure I’ll be there with the right amount of money, what more? Are you in doubt whether—“

“No, why should I since—““Then let it be tonight at twelve. I’ll be there in my car and hold

the door open for you to get in and give that wallet back and—and get in return the reward I’ve agreed to pay.

“Don’t you ever forget how much: it’ll have to be twenty-five thousand, not a penny less, eh?”

“Be it so: twenty-five thousand. I’ve already tidily packed the banknotes in a neat envelope for you to take away after giving back the wallet and then—“.

The line went dead all of a sudden, leaving him no time for more details or further inducements—or at least a better comprehension

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of the ideas that were cluttering the usually empty head of a trull like this woman, as he scornfully regarded her… Must be preparing for another trick to be played on him perhaps, he feared: a stab in his back, a sell-out to the authorities… How the hell was he to guess her real intentions?

Always like that with her, he decided. And how could it be otherwise when one has to do with such a petty streetwalker who’s taken it into her head to blackmail an intelligent man like himself! One who’s had the kindness to receive her in his house, in his own bed! Who’s allowed her to thrust her nose into the innermost recesses of his dwelling! In sum the fault was entirely his, he mentally acknowledged in self-reproach, hoping, all the same, to s et things r ight with her before the day was out or…

At twelve sharp to night, he resolved anyway, firmly determined to go through fire and water with her in order to recuperate that most compromising object she had found in his house and was ready to use against him. Best perhaps to be there a little before the appointed time for a complete observation of her arrival and her stop under the street light she herself had selected as a spot for business transactions of another kind. Then let it be ten minutes to twelve. Without forgetting the hermetically sealed envelope and the carefully loaded pistol, of course, for both self-protection and attack…

Some ten to fifteen minutes before the appointed time indeed

Bailon left his house and slipped behind the wheel of his car. Down to Ludmilla’s favourite trysting place with a pounding heart. From afar he could now hear the chimes of a church clock. There were so many churches, with or without clocks, in the vicinity of Matilda’s home and grave. Their tinkles and jingles used to make her joy down to the last day of her miserable life…Bailon, on hearing them so long after her death, remembered the good, old woman, however, without so much as a thought of regret: she was part of his first youth, all dead and buried like her. The one he recalled still more and on whose behaviour depended the whole of his future life was younger and naughtier by far, he realized with dread, his eyes focused in the direction of the lamp-post.

There she was, but not alone! Speaking to a man! Bailon’s heart fell at the sight. Who could well be that knave, he wondered with apprehension. The one he still yearned to see was Ludmilla alone,

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handing him that blasted wallet: armed with envelope and pistol as he was, he could feel almost certain of success for once while on his way to meet that whore he so much despised and so badly needed.

Fortunately, the man who was with her vanished away, making it possible for Bailon to speak to that woman and get back the wallet. Accordingly, he steered along with somewhat more self-confidence and hope.

Still a couple of hundred yards short of his destination he drew to a stop. His eyes looked for her anew through the windscreen. No more trace of Ludmilla, nobody over there under the glaring electric light, but he waited, diligently, scanning every newcomer’s face, whether male or female, among the rare pedestrians he could make out.

The process went on, not without the fear of another useless wait returning to his head, and that until he descried Ludmilla’s looming silhouette behind the plane trees. She was emerging from the dark, making for the spot where he had descried her not a minute before, in which she seriously believed she was to make big money without hiring her body to the first bidder in her usual way.

But—then who was that bloke who had so suddenly and so undesirably popped in and out of view? Walking and talking with her at leisure, wasn’t he? Still more cause for worry when Bailon saw him again. He turned off the ignition and waited for the second time.

More distinctly he could see him now from this shorter distance through the lurid luminosity of the electric light. Coming to protect her perhaps from any would-be aggressor? The very idea! A chaperon for a whore, no, not that, rather a prospective buyer of her ‘services’, talking business with her perhaps? Likelier by far: a routine negotiation for a pass, a trite exchange of words for and against a lower ‘fee’, hmm … At a moment when she waited for much bigger money to pour into her hand without even her having to put her body up for sale: no, not that either. Then what else? Bailon was still at a loss. He was quite ignorant of the sad fact that this prostitute, like most of them, was under the control of a pimp who battened on her carnal trade. Whatever it was, he compelled himself to keep quiet until the end of the presupposed ‘negociation’, wishing it would come to naught, otherwise it would simply mean a longer delay for him at best, more probably Ludmilla’s failure to

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show up again. Then farewell to that wallet and the freedom from arrest…

Grive’s talk with his whore turned out to be for another purpose and in quite a different style.

“You’ll have to get the money first and foremost,” he recommended with special stress. “This part of the deal should be cleverly—I daresay cunningly carried out. As for the rest it’s simply downhill work, my girl, you understand?”

“He’ll certainly reclaim his wallet first thing.” “Tell him he’ll have it tomorrow without fail.”“Why not today? What really was the idea behind your locking it

up in that drawer of yours before we left home?”“Simple enough, my girl: we must use this wallet to blackmail

him again: once, twice and more. Why not while we can? You understand now?”

“What if—“ “Shhh! You may tell him after counting and pocketing his

money that we—er—you want first to make sure the banknotes he gave you are genuine and not phony as often happens on such occasions as that.”

“Wouldn’t that be a tiny bit hurtful to him?”“Not at all. It’s the minimum of precaution on your part. It’s also

a way of telling him you are not the sucker he may be taking you for.”

“That can perhaps betray your secret intention of tapping him again for more money. What if he takes this ill and tries to bully me in retaliation? I can’t stand his blows in case he—“

“You won’t have to: I’ll be hiding and listening over there behind this big white car all the time of the talk: see where?” he asked, pointing to a parked station waggon on the other side of the street.

Ludmilla nodded but the expression of her face betokened some worry behind her brow.

I’ll spring up like a tiger and catch him by the throat,” he reassured. “ I’ll wring his neck in case he so much as raise his hand against you! Depend on it, girl: you’ll be heroically defended by me personally. At the risk of my own life if the need arose. After all you’re my responsibility, aren’t you? Quite natural since you’re my ward and my protégée!

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“Huh, that remains to be seen,” she mumbled under her breath. So much devotion, so many honey-sweet words when it is a question of wangling money to which he had no right, she thought. Aloud she asked:

D’you think he is all that rich to stand another blackmail and a third as you seem to be figuring out? What I know about him is that his house is no better than a tumbledown cottage, and then I found nothing worth taking away the moment I searched the rooms behind his back during the night I spent there. Anyhow it’s sheer—“

“Enough!” snapped Grive, somewhat resuming his sharp tones, shutting her up, almost angrily. “I’ll have you know I’ve already inquired about the financial possibilities of this man,” he eagerly went on. “An old neighbour of his told me there’s buried under this so-called miserable shack you’ve talked about a whacking great treasure: enough gold bullion and coins to turn the finder into a billionaire overnight! Sure as two and two are four! He’s bound to unearth it very soon for our benefit if we tighten the screws on him, get me now?”

“Ah, I see your meaning. This is perhaps the reason why he asked me to clear those tons of rubbish which are littering the floor of his basement. But not a hint about this treasure in all what he said. Nothing, not a word, when he entrusted me with the job of sweeping the floor clean down there underground, how come?”

“Quite understandable, my poor little idiot: It’s in his interests to keep mum about it in spite of old neighbours’ small talk, that goes without saying! He won’t for the world let you or anybody else into the secret. That’ll simply compel him to share the trove with you or them sooner or later. It’d be no later than the day when he hits the jackpot, mind you? Now let’s stop all this idle talk about his fortune and wait for the immediate payment of those twenty-five thousand gelbs he’s promised to bring with him tonight: you remain standing under this street lamp while I myself lie unseen behind the white car. Its quite nearby, less than twenty yards from you.”

Grive turned about and stepped over to the hiding-place he had chosen for himself. There he ducked his head and cocked his ears, apparently making ready for any action if the need arose, much as promised. Ludmilla, on her part, propped herself on the lamp-post, ready to cash the large sum of money she was expecting.

On seeing the man walk away from her and disappear behind the parked cars on the other side of the street Bailon turned the key in

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the ignition* and moved ahead, focusing on Ludmilla. Now that the bargain between whore and would-be patron had yielded no fruit and that she was left alone the time had come for the fateful encounter to take place: a face-to face talk and the retrieval of a valuable evidence against himself: much more important than all those libidinous drivels she used to hear every night, assuredly, although frightfully disappointing for her in the end, just as he had planned it to be.

Slowly, gingerly, Bailon steered toward the lamp-post. He could see her now at close quarters: she was standing stiff-erect, obviously waiting for him and none else. Now that he came level with her before another passer-by stopped and usurped her anew he drew to a halt.

Through the windscreen both enemies could eye one another with mutual suspicion and the smouldering hate their hearts had stored on account of this blackmail. Hardly the time to show it now, but no mood for amiable words either. That seemed to be the tacit agreement between the two.

“Get in,” he drily called out, stretching a hand and pushing the other front door open for her. But she declined the invitation altogether.

“I prefer to effect the exchange in the open air,” she said. “You’ll have yourself to come out and do your bit.”

Rather reluctantly and with an air of forced resignation Bailon stepped out of his car. “This is the money,” he said, showing the envelope but keeping it firmly caught between the fingers and the palm of his hand. “Now where is this wallet?” he asked “Let me have it quick before you have the money,” he ordered ill-humouredly.

“ No, not now. Not before I’m sure I’m getting my reward in full,” she answered with stress.

Bailon held the envelope still further out, nearest to her, but without relaxing his grip. He waited for the girl to change her mind. She didn’t. Instead she remembered Grive’s pledge to defend her bravely, at the risk of his own life, as she had heard him say.

Somewhat emboldened by the notion, she stretched a hand and wrenched the envelope from his. His first impulse was to snatch the bag from her in retaliation, but he wisely abstained from such a drastic action when he saw her rummaging in it. Looking for the wallet, he thought, only to be disappointed by the sight of a penknife

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being fished out. Clear as broad daylight: she was intent on ripping the envelope open to examine its contents instead of giving back the wallet first, as he had expected. Consequently, he pulled hard at it. No good: she whipped away from him and took to flight, bag and envelope and all. Straight to the white station waggon behind which Grive was hiding in wait.

One bullet and then another from Bailon’s pistol and there she was, wallowing in her blood, biting the dust a couple of yards from her so-called defender who, on hearing and seeing what happened, crept out of sight some five or six cars away, and then took to flight, not forgetting to pick up the envelope from the red puddle in which his whore’s face was steeped and take it home with him. A thick wad of banknotes cashed, in his belief, and another blackmail brewing in his head.

The body was still writhing and squirming when Bailon ran over to it after he made sure there was nobody around to see him. He stooped and groped for the contents of the handbag. No wallet was found there, much to his despair. Only some paper money for a solace. Almost mechanically he picked it up and, crumpled, jumbled anyhow, thrust it in one of his pocket, together with the still smoking pistol in another. He then reached down again and hastily, thoroughly searched the body. That damned wallet: inserted under the bra or inside the pants perhaps? most likely, but no trace of it anywhere between underclothes and skin. His eyes reverted to the ground where she had fallen. Nothing either but he persisted, and that until he saw in the distance the headlights of a speeding car: apparently making for him. Without the least hesitation he hurried back to his car and drove off. Back home for another alibi and the safety he had so diligently sought and which now seemed to have been lost for ever.

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Chapter XIII

ALL BUT DEAD IN VICTIM’S BED

Like any news of special interest to the common listener or reader, word of Ludmilla’s murder spread far and wide, in and out of the Pranbergan area, as fast as wildfire eating uncontrollably into dead bush. A whore of the street-walking type done in by an unknown killer, on foot or through the window of a moving car: nobody knew, notwithstanding what everybody had already heard and read. What was known for sure was that Lumilla was well a whore, and that was what counted most in the public opinion prevailing in those days. Not that Ludmilla herself enjoyed any degree of notoriety: actually she was a mere woman who had put herself up for sale or chose to do it under the supervision of a pimp. Her likes could be found by the hundreds or even the thousands. They used to be scattered here and there and everywhere in the large city, ever soliciting the custom of any male passer-by who happened to cross their way.

Paradoxically enough, it was just this social status that marked her with the halo of martyrdom in public opinion. Being a member of the ‘honoured sisterhood’ in Pranberg was a merit and not the reverse, harlotry being considered by most Pranbergans in those days a useful and sometimes most necessary trade. Disregarding its being the source of a virus that had caused to date so many deaths, they preferred to ‘appreciate’ it as a ‘help’ to the boys on their way to manhood and a solace to the embittered old men who had lost such a power or, sometimes, to the younger ones who had met with no success with ordinary women although they were still in the prime of youth.

With these and other no less judicious estimations in view it’s no wonder the news of Ludmilla’s murder triggered the pens and tongues of the local newsmongers into immediate action. More particularly those who used to cater for the madding crowd and lived on the coins of the untaught multitude. Consequently, it filled the front pages of the more popular newspapers with enormous, best-selling headlines, and their columns with gory details about the ‘tragic mystery of the year’, a story that sold like hot cakes, outselling any other piece of information present or past, including the wholesale crime with which Iocomo had been charged some twelve months before, and for which he was serving a seemingly eternal prison term.

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Among the deprecators of such a savage action were some whose indignation was loud and noisy. Others, no less indignant, remained quiet, although displeased as much and even more at heart. Only one out of the two million-odd inhabitants of the metropolis was in tears: Abel Grive by name. But his tears were the sort crocodiles are used to shed, as had often been recounted by those who claim to have carefully studied the behaviour of those animals. They crystallized into invisible drops from Grive’s eyes, and were understood, rather than seen, by anyone to whom he spoke either at home or on the telephone. Quite his were the whimpering wails of woe which gradually climbed and firmed to the point of truculence and obscenity.

What ailed Grive during those sad, sorrowful hours that followed on the killing of the goose was not her disappearance as such, but the loss of the golden eggs she was in the excellent habit of laying for him every night from sunset to sunrise, almost without fail. That was the reason why he pulled a long face for hours on end, refusing to address any one, even the other inmates of his own brothel. They were whores like her, true, but older and less attractive by far, and therefore not regular and reliable sources of income.

Something ought to be done in order to fill the deep gap created by Ludmilla’s sudden extinction. Grive thought hard during the sulk he dutifully observed after her death. In front of him on the desk now: Greidam’s wallet, blotched, soiled by the owner’s blood. No longer an instrument fit for straight blackmail as used by Ludmilla during the last days of her life…But—but why not ply it oneself some way or other after the loss of the poor white slave? Together with a threat to bring to light the identity of the murderer who was still enjoying the secrecy of his deed, whom nobody had seen or heard when he shot the girl? Nobody except one person: Grive himself! How about blackmailing that rogue for a huge sum? The fellow could well afford it, being the happy owner of so much gold, all buried under his house! The idea struck Abel Grive as bright. Dazzlingly, exceptionally, so. The price to be exacted, and most probably obtained, for complete silence and oblivion: apt to make up for the loss of a good many golden eggs laid by the goose, were she still alive, no less than a hundred thousand quid in perfect, sterling notes and no more room for another swindle with plain paper inside a perfectly sealed envelope this time! Such was the decision made by Grive after days of useless grief and hard thinking. It made him leave his brothel at an advanced hour of the night and go to a telephone box on the spot. Better not the nearest to the brothel itself..

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“Hello, is this Razdag Bailon?” The tone was sharp, snappish, patently inimical. It jolted the recipient out of the peace of mind he was enjoying as an outcome of the hopes he had nursed that nobody had seen him shoot the whore, not even that driver behind the glaring headlights from afar. And now, what was now flashing in his head instead was the presence of some detective from police headquarters wanting him for an inquiry: just what followed on the mass assassination a year before!

“Yes, this is him,” he answered reluctantly, wishing he could ignore altogether the fatal call.

“Ah, it’s good I’ve been able to speak to you before it was too late. Otherwise I would have been on my way to inspector Bomintag’s office.”

Bomintag: the wicked inspector who had asked Bailon a thousand and one questions, and who kept him locked up for weeks within the four walls of a dingy rat-infested room. Bailon’s heart sank lower still while his memory was reviving the sad moments of the arrest and the detention.

“An inspector, what for?” he asked, trying to drown the gasp that was deep sinking in his chest.

“No good playing the innocent ignoramus! Look here, Bailon: you’ve got to know that I saw you when you shot poor Ludmilla and killed her. What more?”

“Who is Ludmilla? Is that the murdered whore people were talking about today? Then you’re grossly wrong, sir, whoever you are. It’s not Bailon you’ve seen when you saw the murderer: I, myself, was several miles away at that moment. I was at home, warmly wrapped in my pyjamas, ready to go to bed. There are neighbours who’ve seen me through the window if—“

“Your denial won’t get you anywhere: I myself can swear I saw you with my own eyes! What more? Huh, much more, you’ll see!” The voice grew louder and harsher still. Then, suddenly, it switched down to soft, plaintive, almost pathetic sighs: “Poor mite, Ludmilla, my child, not possible she—“

“Oh, do stop lamenting over her and tell me first who you are.” “I am Abel Grive, her guardian who brought her up and saw her

grow into a full-fledged woman, who—““Who turned her into the successful prostitute she’s become when

she reached adulthood, eh?” countered Bailon with a note of scornful

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indignation. “You won’t be congratulated on your achievement in this field, if you ask me!”

“I’m not begging for your congratulations! Prostitutes are the honour and pride of civilized societies like ours nowadays, and, therefore, they can amply dispense with your admiration.”

“What then are you ringing me up for? What’s prompting you to threaten a man who’s never hurt a fly, a man you’ve never known, never seen perhaps, and—“

“No use all this , Bailon. You’d better stop playing the harmless child! I am perfectly aware of your foul activities behind the scenes. I would—“

“Supposing all this cooked-up story of yours is true, what on earth are you up to calling me up the way you do and at such a late hour of the day?

“It’s simply to put you on your guard. Let it be also known to you that I have here present, in front of me on my desk, the wallet you’ve coloured with the blood of another victim of yours. You know his name, don’t you?”

Bailon got the wind up at these revealing words. So this villain knows everything: through Ludmilla of course, who else?

“Which wallet? Which owner?” he asked in another desperate effort to mislead that dangerous threatener who had popped up from goodness knows where, like a jack-in-the-box. “Really I can’t make head or tale of what you are babbling about!” he pretended.

“You can better than anyone else! You sure didn’t forget the crime you committed last year in the basement of your own house, and for which another man is now serving a term of imprisonment for life! This wallet, too, will be given to the police authorities for inspection and revision of Iocomo’s case, unless you stop denying and wisely start talking business with me. Otherwise you’ll be tried and tortured and jailed for the rest of your miserable days! So you’d better look out, wretch! Is that clear enough?”

“Talk business with you, huh, what do you mean by that?” asked Bailon, his face white as a sheet.

“I simply mean that you’ve got to buy my silence. If you accept my conditions I’ll be ready to ignore and completely forget your two victims: Both Ludmilla and barrister Richard Greidam. These together with Vart Iocomo who’s now locked up in a prison cell on your account! No matter: it’s enough for you to pay me for keeping your secret. I’m ready to forget this, man, to wipe it altogether out of my

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memory. Still more: I’ll give you back the blood-coloured wallet poor Ludmilla has found in your basement. That’s everthing you need to free yourself from trial and jail down to the last minute of your life.”

“Aha, I see your aim now. How much are you going to charge, please, for this most obliging service, if I may ask?” Bailon ventured with bated breath. All the same his tone was an eloquent expression of put-up irony on his lips.

“One hundred thousand, man: a nicely round figure, isn’t it?” Grive chuckled nastily. “No tricks, no monkey business this time, eh? Legal tender in banknotes and none of your plain paper inside an envelope, eh? Get this well encrusted in your thick head, otherwise—“

“Let’s be frank, Grive: I just can’t afford to pay such a huge sum. Not a half, not even a quarter of what you’re demanding. What little is left in my pocket at present is barely enough to see me through until the end of this month! After that date there’ll be no more bread and butter—“

“You’ll be given stale, mildewed bread in prison so long as you live if this is what’s worrying you now.”

“That’s hardly a matter for your trite jokes, is it?” said Bailon in utter despair. “You lousy, little blackmailer!” he went on, almost under his breath.

“No jokes, Bailon, I’m in earnest, I assure you. Listen well now: there are people who told me about the existence of an enormous treasure under the floor of the basement where you killed this lawyer. Why not dig it up and give me my due without any more argybargy? That is if you mean to pay for your safety and freedom from arrest, of course.“

For a few seconds Bailon was lost in deep reflection. “You hit the nail on the head, man,” he said at last, feeling for his pistol through the folds of his side pocket. “But—but, look here, Grive: I must admit I’m quite unable to do such an enormous piece of work without someone’s help. There are tons of litter that had to be cleared out of the way before I can break the floor open and disinter this treasure you’re talking about. And then what little ready money I have now isn’t enough to call a labourer for the job. How about your coming yourself to my house and giving me a hand? It won’t be long if there are two hefty blokes like you and me at work, and then you’ll get half this treasure as a reward for your trouble. That means more, much more than the hundred thousand gelbs you’re demanding, This way we’ll easily uncover the

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hidden gold and—well, and then I’m certain we’ll quickly reach an agreement together afterwards about the rest of the bargain.

To all this plausibly reasonable and highly attractive offer Grive answered with a long laugh. When Bailon asked him why he had found it so particularly amusing he said he was not such a fool as to get a bullet in the skull there underground instead of the promised gold and the fulfillment of such alluring promises.

“Then go to hell!” burst out Bailon in a loud, impatient voice and hung up on him.

His blackmailer rejected and sent to hell after having been inanely dispatched there by him, Bailon slumped into an armchair of his living-room and heaved a long sigh, not of relief, but of exhaustion and pain. It was a triumph, yes, but worse than defeat when he cut short the useless dialogue with this blackguard, he realized. Now what next? Only goodness knows. Safer to leave this house on the spot, to get somewhere far away and make oneself scarce. Otherwise it would be a visit by the police and another invitation to the inspector’s room with them for company and in their own car. Not such a pleasant trip and therefore no more waste of the precious minutes: Grive bound to be there right now, his tongue wagging viciously, his forefinger pointing to the blood clots on the lawyer’s wallet!

No sooner thought than done, Bailon sprang to his feet and walked out: quick before the arrival of the cops, straight to the parking lot where he sometimes left his car. There, the needle on the dashboard when he turned on the ignition and the light told him he was rather low in fuel: barely enough to get him out of reach, down through the border behind which there was no risk of extradition and eternal arrest, he knew: a most urgent ride through the thick of the night, the alternative being no less than another inquiry with no end of displeasure and torture and the red-hot taste of the hell where he would have preferred to send his blackmailer instead of himself.

On his way to the ideal asylum Bailon realized, much to his annoyance, that the petrol gauge of his engine had not been so pessimistic as it ought to be, for the car grew restive and unwieldy under his foot, and much sooner than predicted. It finally bobbed to a stop and refused to move an inch further. That happened in the middle of a no-man’s land where he had never set foot before.

What was to do then? Back to Pranberg: there was no other choice. On foot this time, of course, to where hecklers and torturers were awaiting him unless he hid somewhere unseen before the break of

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dawn: among the tombstones of Saint Masta’s Cemetery, for example. But he would be found at once and caught in case the coppers were searching for another Iocomo there …What a pity that pimping lout had not been attracted by the tempting proposal made him. He would have certainly been deposited by now over some scrap heap and enjoying eternal rest like his three precursors of last year! But, on the other hand, there would have been a more hectic search for the murderer everywhere. At any rate, being in the cemetery or in any other purgatory available was better than the hell of an immediate fall in the toils of the police.

As Bailon sped away from the non-responsive car his thoughts raced faster than his feet. His hand felt for the money in his pocket. Very little of it was still there, including Ludmilla’s and the remainder of the large sums he had extorted from his earlier victims, whether alive or dead. Some other, unconsenting donor had to be met somewhere through the dark and relieved of his wallet by the force of arms. After its being stained with his blood perhaps, but that did no longer matter. By now Bailon was a past- master in the high technique of fast assassination, for safety or money alike, but where to find the fifth kill? None he could see at such an hour and in such a place.

While these wild cogitations were scrambling for precedence in Bailon’s mind another number of vague chimes in the distance reminded him that the sun of the next day was not far behind the horizon. Again he panicked: no, not that for the world, he told himself. His eyes roved away amidst the rare houses on the outskirts of the metropolis. One or two more miles of swift walk and then, what then? He would be in the heart of the large city, within easy reach of Mikop’s house, he realized. Why not ask this good friend’s valuable advice and help in such an impossible situation? Mikop: still himself, a friend in need. Ought to be fast asleep at such an hour, most probably, but no harm in awakening him when he was so badly needed.

The idea did not displease Bailon. He even welcomed it as coming in the nick of time. Without a second’s hesitation he fished for his mobile in his side pocket and called up his staunch friend.

“Hello, yes, it’s me. Sorry for the inconvenience, old boy, but I’ve been hard put to it. You must help me at once or I’ll be in the soup, you—“

“Quiet. What’s the trouble? Tell it quick.”“Not now, not on the telephone, only in a moment, when we’ll be

together in your home if you perm—“

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“Okay, old pal, do come at once: I’m waiting for you.”It took Bailon no longer than a few minutes to reach the tall

mansion where his friend lived. Actually he was stepping on it, devouring both time and space. Arriving there out of breath, he was invited by Mikop to take a seat near his bed where he sat up and listened with suppressed yawns.

A hard luck story, yes: he was used to it from Bailon, but the latter’s bad news about himself today sounded strange, definitely out of the ordinary. It related his trouble with a ‘slandering, blackmailing pimp’ in the anonymous description he gave of Abel Grive. That black devil had so unjustly and so dangerously threatened to go slandering him in a police station as the actual murderer of ‘whore Ludmilla about whom everyone was talking nowadays’. All through, the long complaint was interspersed with exclamations protesting the teller’s innocence and expressing his extreme indignation and fears. The naked truth, as he claimed with emphasis, was that he, Razdag Bailon, had never known this harlot, never seen her in his life, and that he was at home in his pyjamas when she was shot dead by some unknown murderer no less than two or three miles away from his cottage.

“Fine, excellent, old man,” drawled Mikop with still another yawn, his interest partly flagging into another bout of sleepiness. “Then I really can’t see why you are so much afraid of meeting the police since you can prove you are one hundred percent innocent in this murder business.”

Bailon told him the story of the blood-stained wallet Ludmilla ‘pretended’ she had found in his own house, where she, in truth, had never set foot, as he put it.

“How did you know all this since you say you never saw her in your life?” inquired Mikop who, by now, was somewhat intrigued by what he heard.

“She spoke to me on the telephone.” “What for since she doesn’t know you from Adam as I understand?”“The sad fact was that she, too, was intent on blackmailing me.

Compelled by that foul pimp under whose thumb she used to work, of course, that leaps to the eyes, doesn’t it?”

It did not leap to Mikop’s drowsy eyes, as expected. Still worse, he was at sea as to his friend’s meaning and real source of trouble, but he advised him not to be afraid of facing the police. “Innocence will speak for itself in the end,” he concluded in his own optimistic way. He then almost fell back asleep.

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“I won’t have the police on my hands again,” whimpered Bailon, awakening him anew. “Much like them to keep me for weeks like they did last year with both you and me, remember?”

Mikop remembered all right in spite of his sleepiness. “What then are you going to do?” he asked his dear friend.

“My plan to cope with such a critical situation is simple enough: I’ll hide somewhere or other. In your own house if my presence here is not much of a nuisance for you, my good, old friend. I’ll keep away from public eye until my complete innocence has been proven. Is that a way of sponging on you all this while and invading your privacy?”

“Not at all, Bailon. On the contrary, your presence here will be a solace to me in my loneliness after the death of poor Pamela. There, take a look at what’s on your left. That’s her bed! It’s never been slept in by anybody since her assassination! Oh, that I can get hold of that bloodthirsty Iocomo! I’ll shoot him outright in retaliation! God damn him and have mercy on her soul!”

Bailon cast a glance aside and saw his victim’s bed. What luck Mikop had never suspected him of being the actual killer of this woman. How comfortable it felt to make Iocomo bear the brunt of the widowed husband’s fierce grudge!

“I see you’re still a tiny bit drowsy, old boy,” he commented, shifting his gaze to Mikop.

“Fact is I am. You, too, must be sleepy now. Go ahead, Bailon: use Pamela’s bed at once and don’t worry overmuch about your future here among us. Believe me, pal: the morrow will take care of itself as our holy Scriptures say.”

Without so much as a word of thanks, Bailon opened the neatly made bed and turned in, confident he was enjoying complete security and freedom from arrest. Tomorrow might well take care of itself. For his own benefit! For good and all, he trusted. What he saw in a dream a few minutes later proved him right.

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Chapter XIV

SEARCH FOR JUSTCE DASHES ALICE’S HOPES

At the breakfast table in his dining-room Joseph Kyrrham picked up the morning paper and read between two gulps. A fairly large title over a still larger picture seemed to draw the whole of his attention at that moment: LUDMILLA’S MURDERER IDENTIFIED BUT NOT FOUND AS YET. POLICE SEARCHING ACTIVELY.

He went on observing the portrait for a moment while feeding himself and then read through and through the story under the caption beside it.

“How very odd,” he told his wife, “but this face reminds me of someone I have already seen. It was last year during my visit to Pranberg, remember? I have even taken his moves there in a video, almost without knowing it in the moonless night.”

“Likely,” agreed Mrs. Kyrrham without being especially intrigued. Something more urgent seemed to be working her up as to the cause of her husband’s inability to see through the pitch dark, as he said.

“Joseph,” she admonished, “how many times I warned you about your bad eyesight? Up till now you’ve ignored my precious advice and neglected to see an ophthalmologist for a check-up and a remedy. What on earth you’re waiting for I just can’t understand!”

“You’re dead right, woman, but, for Heaven’s sake, stop nagging me! You’d better listen to my words and then—“

“Go on,” said Mrs. Kyrrham almost reluctantly.“No moon overhead,” Kyrrham went on, “and there was what

looked like haze around when I went touring the old city late in the night at that date. I stopped the car in some noteworthy places to take pictures with my mobile. My final stop was somewhere on the outskirts of the large city. It was an open space full of old cars. Mostly tyreless they were and so absolutely useless, I suppose. Behind a row of them there was one man: only one, mind you? He was hardly visible but my—“

“No wonder you couldn’t see him with your bad eyesight. Joseph, how many times—“

“That’s beside the point!” snapped Kyrrham. “Won’t you wait a minute and let me finish this horror story?”

“Why d’you call it so? Isn’t it because—“

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“No, no, you just listen!”“Once more Mrs.Kyrrham accepted to stop interrupting her husband

and started listening to his words.“Well,” continued the latter, almost fed up but nonetheless eager to

go on with his ‘horror story’ down to its conclusion. “The camera on my phone could well make up for what you call my bad eyesight, couldn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs.Kyrrham. “With those new-fangled gadgets nowadays one can never see where one stands! My friend Angela the other day—“

“You’ll tell me all about your friend Angela later since this is your pleasure! Now do listen, please! With that built-in camera I was able to photograph the man beside the abandoned cars. “I took the face and its surroundings and then—then, what followed almost totally vanished from my memory. For weeks and even months I forgot to play back the video on the phone. Now with—“

“Quite normal, Joseph, at your age. You do forget that you are now well on in your sixties and not very far from—“

“Wait! Let me finish my sentence at least, won’t you? Well, now, with that portrait in the paper leering at me the way you see, things have taken on a quite different shape. A kind of sudden revival—I daresay resurrection— seems to have come about in my head. Won’t you take a look at the picture in the video and tell me whether it’s the same face as here under those enormous headlines?”

After another critical remark about her husband’s decrepitude and ineptitude the wife accepted to perform the easy task she was asked to do. Kyrrham, without waiting any longer, stood up and left the dining-room at once. Less than a minute later, when he reappeared, he had on the palm of his hand a small, blinking cell phone. “There, see for yourself,” he said, and replayed the whole video.

Mrs. Kyrrham, who, in her own opinion, had a better discernment than most people she had known, applied the full power of her ‘gift’ to scan the two pictures and compare them together. She ended up agreeing it was the same face on both telephone and paper. What interested her more, much more, was the ‘heavy object’ the man was pushing into the old, useless car, as she said. “Oh, look here, Joseph: this is a body!” she exclaimed, horrified and poring closer still. “A dead woman, most probably, can’t you see?”

Kyrrham, in spite of the ‘awfully bad eyesight’ his wife had noticed in him, could see. As anybody else, he saw better still when he put on

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his eyeglasses. “So, this man has killed another woman as well!” he commented, disgusted. There, there, he is trying to dispose of her so as to get away with his crime!”

Without showing so much emotion Mrs. Kyrrham frowned agreement and turned to her husband with a more precious advice. “Then, Joseph, it’s your obligation to submit this video film to the Pranberg police,” she recommended . “Your duty is to help them in this murder affair, isn’t it? They must avail themselves of our—my discovery,” she urged with special emphasis.

“Most certainly! At once.” Kyrrham sprang from his seat and walked over through another door to another room in his house. “I looked up their number in the directory and told them about my video,” he announced on his return to the breakfast table.

“How did they like my remarks?” inquired Mrs. Kyrrham. By now she seemed more interested than before.

“They were eager to see my video and said they’ll send experts on the spot to examine it. They’re bound to be on their way to our house by now.”

“So quick? Ah, then, Joseph you’d better make yourself shipshape at once and then finish your breakfast before their arrival.” As a way of taking her own advice, Mrs. Kyrrham shoved into her husband’s mouth another piece of thickly buttered toast. “Care for more marmelade?” she asked and, without waiting for his answer, stuffed a generous mouthful of the sweet stuff down his throat, almost obstructing his windpipe.

Unable as he was to utter a word of protest with a mouth so full of grub, Kyrrham sent his teeth crunching and grinding the too large bite while his eyes were busy studying the story about Bailon’s crime in its minutest detail on the columns of the paper. He then quickly spruced himself up before even finishing his meal, in accordance with his wife’s intelligent directions, and made ready to receive the group of experts announced by the Pranberg police. They were plain-clothes men for the most, all in a hurry to examine the video he had described on the telephone.

When they left Kyrrham’s house some half hour later they took his mobile away, promising, however, to give it back some day, once the investigation was over. About that time, as they promised unsolicited, they would send for him in their headquarters and hand him the precious little thing. They would also perhaps submit him to another set of questions.

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So, the helper’s reward was to provide more help, and no thanks at all on the part of the beneficiary, Kyrrham realized when he returned to the breakfast table. By now his wife was no longer there to bestow on him more precious advice. She was busy tattling on another telephone with another gossip. Her close friend, Angela or any other, Kyrrham was unable to identify and did not try to. As usual, the telephone conversation was at the expense of a still closer friend by the words he could make out while munching calmly the rest of his meal.

Some twenty miles away from Kyrrham’s digs and not far outside the circle of Pranberg’s centre was another evidence against Bailon’s deeds. It was no smaller than Kyrrham’s despite the smallness of the woman who kept it in her hands. Alice Codhailer was her name and she was in her late forties. Smaller still she looked than her actual size in the poky little room where she dwelt: she had rented it, not by choice, but through lack of the necessary funds to get larger. There, anyway, she could twiddle her thumbs day in day out in complete privacy, as a way of beguiling her sad loneliness after having been repudiated by a ruthless husband some eight months earlier.

But thumb-twiddling was not much of an entertainment in the long run and, therefore, she took to television viewing for a change. Any programme, from any source and in any colours or lack of them, not excluding the tirelessly repeated news bulletins for a start and a conclusion every day and night.

It was thanks to those daily reports on her T.V. screen that she one morning saw a face she thought she had already seen in real life. Where and when she could not tell outright. All she knew was that the sight was unpleasant in the extreme. It called for wild, although vague, memories in her head and invited further scrutiny and harder thinking.

Yes, this is him, she realized at last: the same who had discharged two bullets of his firearm through Iocomo’s window and tried the third on her own person, The shots had awakened her so brutally from a somnambulistic slumber and put her to flight. That she could remember well. Still further efforts of her memory gave her more details about the frightful surprise which sent her bounding away from the man’s deadly chase, right into the safety of a hideout under the staircase of what was her home at the time. Then it was Peter’s harsh rebuke for all solace and his calling her a witch: for the umpteenth time after her stroll among the tombs on that sinister Sabbath night… It was like a prelude to a split-up and a final decision shortly afterwards. What a pity this supposedly

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loving husband was so unfeeling and so inhuman at the bottom of his black heart, Alice bitterly mused. How regrettably superstitious he was! Mistaking her for a witch: inconceivable! A loving and devoted wife like her accused of sorcery and bedevilment: the very idea! And yet she had always been a complying mate, only disobeying him when she went out roving by night in that neighbouring cemetery. What then? Was that her fault? Not by any manner of means since it was done without her knowing and quite against her will!

Still ruminating and mentally reasoning with the man who kicked her away from him, compelling her unawares to be where she was now, Alice turned her eyes again toward the rest of the news bulletin on T.V. Still there the bloodthirsty murderer, but he was now seen from a different angle and with another side of his face. Not the shade of a doubt: it was him and none else! As a comment from the announcer there were story upon story about his ‘foul crime’ against poor Ludmilla. Not a word about the scene she had witnessed, of course, not how she came within the easy reach of such a monster without knowing it, and while she was alone and walking in her sleep at that.

What to do now with such an urgently needed testimony haunting her head? Nothing except to blow the gaff on that blackguard’s other crimes: against Mrs Iocomo and herself. It was a matter of duty, Alice felt, to help straighten out that downright miscarriage of justice which threw poor innocent Mr. Iocomo in prison for life.

Somehow, Alice felt responsible for what, from her point of view, was humanely not feasible and therefore not to be tolerated. To put things right she made up her mind to go to police headquarters at once and tell them what actually happened. That would at least keep her straight and free from any blemish on her conscience, on top of being a diversion from her drab, uneventful life, cooped up in that narrow box where she was compelled to live—and, to cap it all, no ghost of a graveyard in the neighbourhood to sleep-walk in.

At police headquarters she did not meet with the success she deserved and earnestly expected. At least at the gate of the large mansion housing inspector Bomintag and his team. The man in charge there, a tall, uniformed and heavily moustashed custodian, had the looks and the air of a savagely faithful dog, ready to tear to pieces any intruder in his masters’ sacrosanct property, not even sparing a small, harmless woman like Alice Codhailer.

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Her pigmy size and thin voice did not seem to be quite to his liking, and, therefore, he barked his refusal to give her admittance when she asked to see inspector Bomintag.

“He is busy and won’t receive any newcomer, save by appointment,” he rasped ill-humouredly in answer to her whispered words. Not a flimsy, mousy little woman of your breed, his tone seemed to imply.

But Alice was not one to let herself be scared out of her duty by a mere, irresponsible underling, however large his bulk or discordant his yelps. She, therefore insisted, mounting higher in pitch, saying it was about another crime by Razdag Bailon, a horribly guilty act she herself and none else had witnessed and whose victim was another woman, her neighbour.

Apparently called to reason by the revelation and, in spite of the disrespectful expression still lingering in his gaze, the faithful servant turned stiffly about and walked into his lodge near the gate. What for and whether he would return he did not tell, nor did Alice have the possibility or the nerve to ask him the question through the bars of the gate. All the same, she put her foot down and waited obstinately.

When he came back from his noncommittal mission he, willy-nilly, gave her a positive answer from inquirer Jordel who, as he said, was on the staff of Inspector Bomintag.

“He has accepted to hear your story,” said the watchdog, “ on condition it is true and short.” With this he let her in at last and gave her the necessary directions to reach officer Jordel’s room on the first floor of the enormous building. So now Alice could enter the premises unhampered, almost in the teeth of Cerberus’s three muzzles.

She trotted in without looking back, unmindful of his snarls and stares.In the officer’s room the reception was by no means warmer than what

she had already seen, but she didn’t mind: she was by now used to that kind of treatment. All the same Jordel was not half so rude as his watchdog. After all he had accepted to grant Alice the hearing she had so persistently wanted. Apparently, he was ready to listen to every word she said. As a preliminary to his good will he waved her to a seat in front of his desk and invited her to tell her story.

“It should be quick and brief in the extreme,” he warned again, scowling at her. Then, pen in hand and writing pad ready for use he was showing some interest by the look of him. It was the green light Alice was impatiently waiting for.

To ease her conscience she reeled off the ghastly tragedy she had witnessed at the risk of her own life during that unforgettable night, going about it unstintingly in spite of his interdicts, droning pell-mell a stream of

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humdrum, sometimes slightly irrelevant details. With the unassuming expression of her face and the low intonation of her voice she tried her best to impress the man who had accepted to listen to her story or at least smooth out the shrinks on his nose while she was telling it.

Apparently tired of her endless and, in his estimation, her too long babble, Jordel raised his eyes from his still blank page at last and turned them to hers.

“You said that you were sleep-walking, I understand,” he observed, “didn’t you?”

“Yes, officer, that’s my—““Might all this be no more than a dream, my poor lady,” he challenged. “On the contrary, officer,” she objected, “it threw me out of a dream, I’m

sure. I was sleep-walking, yes, when this man’s two shots went off. They awakened me from a deep slumber and gave me the surprise of my life! What rare luck it was when his third bullet missed me and made me run for my life! He—“

Jordel cut her short. “Enough,” he scolded out of sheer impatience. “You have already told me all this, haven’t you? Now how could you be certain it was Razdag Bailon you saw shooting Iocomo’s wife and not Iocomo himself? So many eye-witnesses have at his trial last year asserted under oath in court that they have seen him and none else take a pot shot at Mrs. Iocomo, haven’t they?”

“I myself, officer, can swear by God and all his saints that I saw with my own two eyes that criminal Razdag Bailon do it. I—I—“ Alice’s voice climbed to a higher pitch as an expression of her insistence.

“Soft, lady. You’ve got to know that Iocomo himself has already confessed to this crime! Didn’t you read about it in the papers on that day?”

“I beg your pardon, officer,” countered Alice, unintimidated for once by the inquirer’s severer frown. “Mr. Vart Iocomo was a neighbour of ours, and a nodding acquaintance I used to see almost every day. Impossible for me to take him for someone else. Now if—“

“Wait!” burst out Jordel and sprang to his feet. Without any more comments he walked out of sight. When he reappeared he was carrying a set of pictures in a file. He stretched them all onto his desk and asked Alice to point out Bailon’s face on the spot. She did without the least hesitation. Still more: she recognized Iocomo at a glance in a group: he was lost amidst a dozen wrong-doers in a room.

Outwitted by such self-confident answers on the part of a simple-minded woman, Jordel put down his pen, not knowing what to do next or even what to say. It looked as though he were lost in deep reflection: this mousy,

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shrivelled little female might not be imagining things after all. Ought to be taken more seriously perhaps…

In spite of these considerations, the page in front of Jordel remained blank, desperately so for Alice whose secret, wistful glances at it’s perfectly clean surface told her how uninteresting she was, especially in the opinion of those important men she had come to help.

Suddenly, the inquirer sprang to his feet: it was like a cue for Alice to do likewise. She took the hint and, rising from her seat, walked out with a perfectly clear conscience, although persuaded in her inner self that her visit had fallen short of its purpose to save an innocent man.

The next day, in spite of her ‘contribution to justice’ and her evidence at police headquarters to this end, both the news bulletins and papers remained stubbornly empty of her name. To rub still more salt in her wound they were busy praising to the sky a certain Joseph Kyrrham whom nobody had heard of before and whose only achievement was a video picture on his mobile phone… that made her bitterer still. But what mattered if she had been neglected in such a bare-faced way? What she wanted was justice and nothing else, but justice was to be found nowhere in the world. That was the Truth she had learned and would never forget.

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Chapter XV A UNION WELL-ASSORTED AND NOT TO BE ABORTED.

‘RAZDAG BAILON: THE REAL MURDERER OF MRS. MIKOP AND HER SISTER: that was the main headline of the morning news and the announcement of a long ignored truth. As usual, it travelled far and wide and filled the press with words, both written and spoken. The unexpected revelation rang in everybody’s ears, including Pamela’s own husband who, at that hour, happened to be rambling on the market-place in search of some goodies for the pleasure of his dear friend and gatecrashing guest. He learned about the latter’s deeds from people who were gossiping at leisure while they went shopping like him. Whatever he heard, it did not make him lose a whit of his faith in this old crony who remained high in his esteem. Poor Bailon, he thought: always tarnished, blackened by viperous tongues! Bailon, his closest friend and who was now hiding behind the walls of his own house for protection against another false charge: the murder of another woman, a whore at that! Incredible! Most unlike him to kill. Not the wife of an old pal and present protector at any rate…

Back home from his shopping trip, Mikop switched the wireless on and listened-in while Bailon was busy in the dining-room, gobbling the dainties his host had just bought as a special treat for him.

Same tidings from police sources through the local radio station, but Mikop did not believe his ears. He did, however, believe his eyes when they showed him Pamela’s dead face in a video, while her body was being entered into a rusty, tyreless car by his so-called ‘best friend.’ Still more: the ghastly sight sent him off his head. He ran like mad to the dining-room.

“Son of a bitch,” he howled at the top of his voice, “you murder my wife and take refuge in my—in her own home! eh?”

Following up, he sprang like a hungry beast and took hold of Bailon’s throat, almost squeezing out the nutriment that was slipping down it. But, in the end, he was no match for Bailon who easily worked himself free of the surprise attack and tried to get hold of his assailer in his turn. All in vain: a seemingly drawn battle in the end.

“Wait, wretch!” threatened Mikop, slipping out of his reach, “you’ll soon bite the dust! Over there in my bedroom there’s a gun ready for you! I’ll go fetch it at once!” Mikop sprinted along the corridor and then melted out of sight.

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Very quickly Bailon groped for his pistol on both sides of his blue jeans. Must be there, in one of the hip pockets where he used to put it. Nothing! How very thoughtless of him to have forgetten it under Pamela’s pillow, he realized in utter despair. Getting there to use it against his would-be killer might well turn to disaster, he reckoned. Mikop’s bullets would be quicker by far…No solution except regression and flight. So, turning his back, he opened the front door and hurled himself out.

Waiting for the lift to come up or down would be too long and risky, he hastily calculated. In consequence, he tried to hotfoot it down the stairs, but, at the first landing, Mikop’s first bullet, sent from above, almost grazed his head, missing him by a hair’s breadth. Mikop redoubled his attempt but failed to blow out the brains of Pamela’s assassin as was in his intention to do. Instead, his bullet tore the villain’s ear off his head. That did not prevent him from persisting in his crazy run. Down to the street and away from Mikop’s next shot: all at headlong speed, in spite of the blood that was gushing profusely down one side of his face.

What then? Mikop asked himself the question and made straight for the telephone inside his house. He rang up the police and heard from them that Pamela’s murderer had already been caught and firmly manacled—and sent under control to the Pranberg General Infirmary for first aid and medical care. That last piece of information did not please Mikop overmuch. In point of fact he regarded it as a personal insult. Worse still: he himself got arrested for his foolish act. Striking out of shape a human being’s beauty was an offense punishable by law. That was what they told him while he was under arrest.

Shortly after that fateful day Bailon, in Bomintag’s presence, and under the strict control of an ultra-modern lie-detecting machine, told the truth about his crimes, but not all of it. He purposely omitted to utter a single word of the frame-up he had planned and the murder he had committed through Iocomo’s window, and which had cost the latter a year of freedom up till now. He went on denying and ignoring until inquirer Jordel burst into the room and asked him straightway whether he knew Alice Codhailer.

“Never heard of such a name,” he answered truthfully.“Likely, but you sure have seen this lady and even tried to kill her

after killing Mrs. Iocomo. What do you say to that?”“False!” he howled. “I was not there when Mrs. Iocomo was shot

dead by her husband. “

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“And yet Alice Codhailer claims she has seen you doing it at the risk of her own life. What’s your answer to her testimony?”

“Impossible!” came Bailon’s vehement protest. “She was sleep-walking while you were busy assassinating Mrs.

Iocomo and your shots awakened her. You then aimed you gun at this smallish woman and tried to do her in once you were sure Mrs. Iocomo was dead. Can’t you remember?”

Bailon remembered so well that he collapsed and tottered into a blackout. When he came to from his sudden faint he swore he didn’t kill Alice Codhailer.”

“Then so much the worse for you,” laughed Jordel. “Were she dead we would never have known the truth about Mrs. Iocomo’s murder.”

“There was nobody present when I—er—did—“ Bailon stammered, his mind in total confusion. “I—I didn’t murder Mrs. Iocomo,” he went on, correcting himself.

In a joint effort Bomintag and Polvert tried to show him the inanity of his negations, encouraging him to make a clean breast of his crimes once for all. He did at last and was put on trial without delay.

In the Pranberg criminal court and, in front of a mob of spectators who had come to see and boo him, the one-eared man seemed resigned to his lot by now. With a contrite mien and eyes downcast he stood in the dock in front of an attentive jury and a swarm of inquisitive on-lookers on whose lips he had now become the one-eared mass murderer as they pleased to call him.. That did not prevent his head from being held high, and yet it was thickly dressed over the wound of his missing ear. He pleaded guilty in all conscience , as he said. In answer to a question by Chief Justice Romanet he asked for no more than bed and bread in a prison cell. Stale or mildewed bread: no cause for worry, he added, remembering Grive’s menace. What mattered to him was that he would not have from now on to kill in order to eat as he had found himself compelled to do for months at a stretch. He got it good and proper and went to prison with no hope of getting out of it alive.

Following him there was Henry Mikop, his ex-friend and present arch- enemy. Mikop who was convicted almost at the same time as poor Bailon for tearing this miserable man’s ear off his head went there in blind fury but not for long. On the other hand there was a convict who came back from the same house after a year’s detainment and unfair treatment there. It was Vart Iocomo who had once been mistaken for the murderer of his wife and three of the four other victims who fell

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under Bailon’s pistol. The verdict against him had been revised and reversed thanks to the parrot demand of the mob who had once come to hiss their indignation and snubs in his face and who now switched their anger to the actual murderer.

About time for a revision of the verdict against this innocent prisoner: that was everybody’s wish, just the opposite of what was being cried out a year before. Easy enough, or so it seemed after the real criminal’s confession and Alice Gothailer’s testimony. They granted it after long pleadings, and not without ill-grace.

So much the better for Iocomo at long last, was the common expression. Whatever was being uttered or thought, this man could rejoice and relax after a year and more he had spent in a dingy cell, with rats and so many other pests of various forms and sizes for company. Much better to be in complete solitude after the crimes he had not committed, but his good nature did not rebel overmuch, At heart he tried to ‘understand’ and even thought it his duty to thank his former indictors and present acquitters for the change they brought in his favour. After all Justice had to take its course. Even a distortion and a miscarriage of it remained justice, in the eye of those who produced it, as well as in the opinion of the ignorant masses, as he bitterly realized. How good it was the unfair decision had been set right. But only when the need for such a measure had leapt to everybody’s eyes after Bailon’s condemnation!

Same tribunal and two verdicts, in sum: the second unsaying what the first had said. A condemnation followed by a quiet withdrawal of the charge. Better late than never, wasn’t it? That was about how Vart Iocomo reasoned with himself on his discharge. Enough to give him what little solace he so badly needed.

Whatever turned out in his head, he went back home at once, a doubly free man there, for the first time since his marriage, fully enjoying the absence of a wife who used to wear the trousers and bully him, and throw him out of his own house. Now, thank heaven, she was no longer there to behave this way and turn his life on earth to hell.

All she had left behind after her departure was a stain of her blood on the armchair where she was ensconced when Bailon’s bullets crossed her skull. This, together with a thick layer of dust that covered everything in the house and had to be removed very soon. Iocomo was in no hurry. He was not a man of the dilly-dallying sort either, and, therefore, he sent for a char at his earliest opportunity. She cleaned. the flat and got everything spick and span inside it, to his full satisfaction. It

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was then and only then that he felt at home, the sweet home about which there had been allusions at all times and everywhere. Sweeter the home that had been denied him during the whole of his married life, he felt. So he had to wait all that long after widowhood to enjoy it to the full, he somewhat bitterly mused…

While at home and feeling almost perfectly happy there after the charwoman’s departure, Iocomo’s train of thought shifted to another subject: Razdag Bailon in whom he saw a benefactor and a wrongdoer at once. How obliging indeed was this monster when he did that virago in. He really deserved a thousand thanks in spite of the wicked frame-up he had so carefully and skilfully devised to cover his foul misdeeds. He had a right to still more gratitude for his awkwardness and blindness during the last moments he spent there after the murder. Otherwise his bullets would not have missed that kind woman who bore witness against him later and brought his devilish schemes to naught. Without her evidence before the trial and in the witness box Iocomo was positive he would have been eternally kept in that black cell where rats by dozens and scores were playing fast and loose between his feet. She had once been a neighbour and her name was Mrs. Alice Codhailer, he knew and felt it his duty to tell her how grateful he was.

A godsend of a woman, he definitely admitted to himself and made up his mind to go see her for a word of thanks. But, from other neighbours, he heard that she was no longer one of them and that her husband had divorced her because of a bad habit she had of strolling among the tombstones of Saint Masta’s cemetery by night.

Without letting himself be frightened by her strange ways—to which at bottom he owed his freedom—he carefully searched for her new address. No trace of her name or number in the telephone directory. He ended up finding it, by trial and error: she presently lived somewhere unheard of in a backwater which was miles off the centre of the metropolis. So all there remained for him was to pay the intended visit to the good lady and express his full appreciation of what she had done on his behalf.

Once there what struck Iocomo as unusual and by no means comfortable was the extreme exiguity of the so-called flat where she lived after her ruthless husband ejected her from his house. It was hardly larger than a bathroom. Still worse: half its surface was filled by a bed that hampered free movements even for a woman of dwarfish stature like her.

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“I’m glad to meet you, dear lady,” he began and was interrupeted by her immediate answer.

“Thank you, sir. What did you want to see me for?” “Simply to say how indebted I am for what you did to prove my

innocence.”“I did nothing—er—I mean not more than what was in my duty to

do. My conscience forbade me to keep mum about what I saw when this criminal shot your wife dead and tried to make you pay for his crime. He was afraid of my unexpected presence near him when he murdered her—so afraid that he felt the urge to do away with me as well! My being alive meant that I could blow the gaff on him some day and ruin his plans while you—“

“Yes, I know this. Most like a scrupulous person of your quality, my good lady, to intervene on behalf of a mere stranger like me! What—oh, what a pity you are no longer a neighbour of mine so that I can wish you good morning each time we meet as of old. What—what made you move to this place, if I may ask?”

Alice hesitated before answering the question of her visitor who, after all, and in accordance with his self-description, was a mere stranger in her eyes, but Iocomo wanted to engage in a chat with her somehow or other and, therefore, he pressed her to speak out her mind in all freedom if she felt like it.

“Well, my ex-hubby mistook me for a witch!” she blurted out after her pause. “Can you believe such rubbish?” she asked, almost in a wail.

“Inconceivable,” answered Iocomo. “All I can say is that you don’t look like one. Not a bit of it,” he added still poring over her face, and laughed with a disapproving shake of his head.

“You may be wrong,” she warned, almost playfully. “How could you know I myself am not a witch? Don’t I look like one?” Didn’t you happen to see any?”

“Yes, plenty of them in children’s books! None like you. Quite idiotic of your husband to utter such absurdities, I’m inclined to think!”

“Good to hear this on the lips of a sensible man, but what can be done when you have to do with superstitious people like those you see and hear almost everywhere. I must say my ex-hubby is one of them and even more!”

“Most regrettable! What’s past my understanding is the reason he mistook you for what you are not. A witch and such childish appellations: the very idea! What really made him think—“

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“Well, it’s just because—er… I must admit I’m a somnambulist! I really can’t help it, how can I? It’s nature which made me so, isn’t it?”

“Most certainly, but what does it matter? There are thousands—I daresay millions of women and men like you in the world.”

“I’m delighted to know there are people who think the way I do. Just my answer when he charged me with sorcery for the first time. But the trouble is that he once surprised me roving in Masta’s cemetery on a Saturday night! It wasn’t my fault: I wasn’t even aware of it when he shook me awake out there! So much the worse! Here, within the narrow strip left me in this room there’s not enough space I can use to walk in my sleep, I expect, is there?” she smiled.

“Aha, I see now: my guess is that this is the reason why you wanted your new digs to be so small, isn’t it so?”

“No, not that. I came here simply because I couldn’t afford a larger dwelling. My modest means—the meager pension I get at the end of every month, didn’t allow for better, you understand?”

Iocomo, understanding in a flash, pounced on the opportunity: “How about moving again? To my house this time,” he heard himself say. “It’s too large for me alone. You can get half of it for free.”

“Oh, how very kind of you! No, thanks: that’ll be too much for me.”“Why not? Your being so near will be a boon: it’ll make me enjoy

your company and—“ No, thanks: I don’t want to sponge on you or anyone else for

lodgings: this narrow place is okay for me and—“ “But if—““Pardon, it’s not only that: my presence there may turn into a

stumbling block in the long run. What if some day or other you make up your mind to marry again?”

“Quite an idea,” laughed Iocomo. “How about marrying you then?” he ventured almost without knowing it and stopped short, as though afraid of his own audacity.

“You marrying me? What are you talking about, Mr. Iocomo?” she asked, surprised, but not exceedingly shocked by the suddenness of the proposal. It was like a signal for Iocomo to go on.

“Yes, why not?” he pursued, chuckling amiably. “You’re such an admirable woman!”

“Really, Mr. Iocomo! Is this your idea of a joke?”“No joke about a widow marrying a divorcee, is there?” Then I—I don’t know what to say. You sure are not in earnest, are

you?”

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“In dead earnest, you may depend on it, my good lady.” “It’s no fun marrying a somnambulist who used to stroll by night

among the dead, is it?” “I’ll—I’ll be ready to marry you whoever you are and whatever you

do.” “That’ll be sheer folly on your part, don’t you find? My ex-hubby,

who used to say he married me for love didn’t put up with this most unusual behaviour of mine. He sent me away on the spot the very minute he—“

“I don’t share his views. I’m not like him, am I?”“But living near a cemetery with a sleep-walking wife who used to

go strolling over there by night among the tombs may well make you want to get rid of me in the long run, esp—“

“Not at all: I’m certain I won’t mind your being among the graves while I myself am fast asleep. I’d say even more: I can sometimes join you over there while you are within the walls of that churchyard. That’ll remind me of the night when I hid there while the police mistook me for the murderer of my wife and went searching for me. Now all this belongs to a bleak past, of course, but, all the same, I don’t want to forget it altogether. It’s become a slice of my life, so to speak.”

“Oh, how very odd! What if—““Your Ifs and buts may get us in endless and useless argumentation,

my dear lady. You’d better say straightway whether you accept me as a husband—or simply a companion, if you prefer.

“No companionship without marriage for me, please!”“Quite so simple: that’ll clinch the matter for both you and me. No

more waste of time and breath since you accept—“ “Pardon, I’m afraid you’re going too fast. You must at least give me

time to think… By the way, what made say you yourself have committed Bailon’s crimes? You were certainly lying at your own expense, I should think, weren’t you?”

“There was not a confession from me in this respect: it’s the lye-detecting machine which was lying! The inquirer believed this worthless gadget instead of listening to what I said. Anyway, there were countless witnesses among the neighbours who have sworn they saw me kill my wife and heard me say I killed all those who have been murdered by someone else. At bottom it was only a piece of bluff I used without meaning what I said. It came at a moment of mad rage and only to frighten that mad wife of mine into showing more respect, and things like that, you understand now?”

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Alice understood and tacitly appreciated.“This is the reason why you didn’t commit yourself into living side

by side with me, no doubt. You didn’t want to associate yourself with a murderer, I suppose?”

“Far from me such an idea, but if—““Then no ifs and buts again, please! Look here, Alice Codhailer: I’ll

pay you another visit on Monday next and get your definite answer, does this plan suit you?”

Without waiting for an answer to his question Iocomo rose to his feet and took leave of the woman whom he had liked almost at first sight and whose presence in his house would help wash out the unwanted reputation he had acquired as a hen-pecked husband in the eyes of most. Besides, it would be a reward for her testimony in a biased court since it had saved him endless years of imprisonment and suffering among the pests of the dingy cell where he had been thrown.

Vart Iocomo showed up in the morning of the predetermined day at the door of the woman to whom he had almost impulsively proposed marriage. Unsurprisingly for him he was instantly accepted by her, and that was that: two weak persons allied for life, firmly intent on turning their joint weaknesses into a strength.

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Chapter XVI

DAYDREAM OR NIGHTMARE: LADYKILLER UNAWARE

Iocomo’s choice for his second marriage did not meet with everybody’s approval. For a week and more it set chins wagging, quite a number of them far and near, among his relatives and friends. Some fault-finders ‘regretted’ their advice had not been taken before the conclusion of the contract. That was why, they predicted, this too hasty second marriage would not fare better than the first: it would reduce itself to shouts and rows day in day out. That way of life was by no means a bed of roses for the newlyweds … Other would-be advisers, who used to assign themselves as mentors and beacons to ‘their friends’ whenever they felt needed, went further still in their prognostications: they forecast for ‘that imbecile Vart Iocomo’ an encounter with the devil on a Sabbath night, while riding a goat with that pigmy wife of his. That’s what comes of marrying a witch instead of seeking the help of better-informed people like themselves for a normal union before such a thoughtless leap in the pitch-dark of a dangerous future. A few other birds of ill-omen even went so far as to wonder whether Iocomo’s too hurriedly arranged second marriage would not end up with an attempt at murder like the first or even worse...That sorceress of a woman was apt to tax his patience in the long run after having seduced him into marrying her with her blandishments in the witness box. Were it not for his extreme stupidity, Vart Iocomo would never have accepted to marry a weird enchantress of that kind. Not while there were plenty of matrimonial agencies who, at a moderate fee, could have easily helped him find a ‘normal wife.’

Such were samples of the discordant voices that clanged wide and loud on the morrow of Iocomo’s union with Alice Codhailer, but always beyond the hearing range of the two spouses and behind their backs. Quite away from them were other and fewer sounds on the lips of more sympathetic people: they congratulated Iocomo, without his knowing, on his most ‘apposite choice’. They were certain he had hit the nail on the head in selecting Alice Codhailer among dozens of women at his disposal. Alice, the paragon of a devoted wife, the right spouse to make him forget the tragic flaws of the first. She was made to measure for his personal requirements, so to speak. He really could not

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hope for better, could he? How very clever of him to have re-adjusted his life the way he did at last after having so grossly erred in the near past. Better late than never… And so on and so forth ad infinitum.

Neither of the diametrically opposed groups of opinions squared with Henry Mikop’s point of view. He, too, had heard of that match but only after his discharge from prison and his return home. There, in his letter box he found back issues of the Pranberg Tattler magazine, a fairly thick pile of them. Some were packed with gossip details about Iocomo and his bride, and the impression they had made as husband and wife on those who knew them: exactly what was needed to beguile his loneliness at that time. In consequence, he read story upon story about the couple, mostly sent to the magazine by discontented readers and just-this-once contributors.

What especially intrigued him in that marriage affair was the crazy hurry-scurry in which the two would-be partners found themselves the very moment they met, just as described by some disapproving newsmongers. They were no longer what might be termed as a pair of feather-headed youths to commit such a folly. That was about what had been jingled over and over again on the gossip pages of the magazine. Maybe rightly, he mused, reading on and on. Anyway, he, himself, had never been on speaking terms with either Iocomo or his wife. Actually, he knew them only by sight: he had seen them both in the dock and in the witness box of the criminal court right at the moment when they had seen one another for the first time, and while he himself was being tried for tearing off Bailon’s ear…

Now here they were: not only acquainted but also happily united for life. For better or worse, goodness only could know. All this done in next to no time, yes, how very odd! Setting an example, perhaps, he wondered, for he, too, was intent on marrying again and very soon. However, getting hitched to a woman like Alice Codhailer was the very last thing he wanted. Not that he feared witchcraft and like absurdities. He did not seek devotion in a wife either. What he wanted was money and nothing more: millions of gelbs to meet his urgent needs of the moment and enable him to resume his ‘trades’. Only a rich heiress like poor Pamela was good enough for him, he estimated, not a church—or rather churchyard mouse of Alice’s condition, to be sure.

It was not long before Mikop set about searching for such an ‘ideal’ spouse. Finding the right girl: a child’s play for a young man of lady-killing abilities like him, as seen by himself at least. So, using the methods he recommended to his ex-friend Bailon, he tried the dropped

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quid stunt by way of an introduction to a romance and a marriage in prospect . First with a high-heeled and then a thickly-painted female he saw walking on the pavement in front of him. But none of the supposedly rich heiresses showed any desire to strike up a friendship with him in spite of his efforts to be amiable. He then turned his attention in the direction of art exhibitions and auction rooms. There, plenty of millionaire girls could be seen buying expensive daubs by fashionable dabblers … but none of them showed the semblance of interest in him.

Still nursing his blighted hopes, he sat one morning at the desk of what he used to label as his ‘office’ among the numerous rooms of the luxurious flat his wife had left him. There he tried to solve the thorny problem in his own ‘superior’ way.

The various solutions he found after hours of brain-racking endeavours were worse than the problem itself. Nothing doing, he realized in the end. Pamela dead, only her sister was worth his while were she still alive. There was indeed every quality in ‘poor Rita’ to meet his demands and perfectly fill the bill as regarded the money he wanted. Besides, he was certain she would have been delighted to marry her widowed brother-in-law whom she had always secretly admired, as he believed. What a pity this louse Bailon had gone so far as to send her joining Pamela in the afterworld! Two sisters slaughtered in a batch! an irretrievable loss!

At bottom why did that monster kill Pamela herself? Mikop wondered for the first time since the crime was committed, his train of thoughts now returning to his defunct wife in association with Bailon’s other victims. Rankling was the question, and it kept on recurring disagreeably in his head. Pamela, who had fallen in love with him and then became his faithful wife! Together with the enormous fortune she had brought home for his comfort, and most generously allowed him to waste it on his favourite hobby: playing the stock market. How could that devil murder such an angel from heaven was past his understanding. She had never tried to do Bailon any harm, never crossed his path—or—or—

Ah, then, if so what was she doing in his cottage when he did her in? Hmm…wasn’t she having an ultra-secret love affair with this lout? Most unlike her…. A liaison behind her husband’s back? Hmm… Likely: with women one can never tell! They’re unpredictable as a rule: perfidy incarnate more often than not!

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But could that possibly apply to a woman of Pamela’s quality as well? Rather not, Mikop tried to persuade himself. Were she so stupid as to get so far, she would have been anxious to terminate that illegal relation with this foul daemon in time for a quick return to normal life, side by side with her legitimate husband, in all likelihood. Such a sudden change on her part must well have driven Bailon mad and turned him into a killer after he had been a lover… Another triangle in the history of mankind. Nothing new under the sun!

These, as well as kindred ruminations, were heavily weighing on Mikop’s mind at that moment. He felt as though he had never been so dubious of Pamela’s demeanour, and yet so rsadly missing her.

In an effort to lift this burden off his shoulders he rose from his seat at the desk and shuffled out of the room, visiting other parts of the large house by way of a distraction. For the first time since his discharge from prison he saw that everything was a shambles everywhere he went: Pamela’s bed unmade, unslept in since the day of Bailon’s flight and the loss of his right ear. Under its pillow a small firearm, a plaything by the look of it. But it must have been with the help of this deadly toy that Pamela met her death! Mikop’s rage mounted high at the notion. He quickly turned his eyes and attention away from the ghastly sight and walked past, toward other parts of the flat.

Now where was this housemaid to tidy up the rooms a tiny bit, to work for his comfort and wait on him at table? Nowhere to be seen ever since his return from prison. Must have deserted the house during his forced absence… No matter: something more important was still busying him and burdening his head in spite of the diversion he had so eagerly sought and did not find. What he wanted for the moment was to know why Bailon killed Pamela and nothing else…

To get a definite answer to the burning question that was playing merry hell behind his brow Mykop found no other way than putting it straight to the man who inspired it: Bailon himself and none else, yes, why not now that his seething rage against him had simmered down to cold resentment? So, taking his courage in both hands, h e walked out in a flash on his way to the jail-house where his arch-enemy was locked up for life. He himself knew perfectly the sinister place: he had already been twice put in it and, ever since, had grown to be chronically afraid to be sent there for the third time some day or other. No wonder when you are constantly under the thumb of such despots as those who were ruling the country nowadays! Mikop heaved a sigh that tasted of his bitterness. He then tried to forget his apprehensions altogether. Whether

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he would succeed or not he did not know. Fortune-telling, unlike lady-killing, was not one of his strong points.

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Chapter XVII ONLY THE KING OF HELL CAN TELL

Treading the grounds of the prison, not such a pleasant experience. Already the trudge from home toward the spot was too long and not devoid of snags that beleaguered Mikop’s flustered mind and sometimes urged him to retrace his steps. Now was the first time he set foot in that place of his own free will, he remembered at last and bravely went on. Anyway he hoped he would not have to do it again, not for the world: after all it was not for pleasure that he had come so far, only sheer necessity drew him there. Consequently he advanced, somehow balanced between reluctance and acceptance, within the precincts of the loathed edifice, bracing himself for a face-to-face verbal duel with the killer of his cherished wife: an experiment which had nothing short of an ordeal from his point of view.

Whatever was in store, he would apply for permission to see this brute for a moment through the bars of his prison and listen to another confession by him. Bailon, he surmised, would not be afraid to answer his question frankly now that he was enjoying full protection from revenge behind the thick walls of his cell.

The guardsman there carefully searched him for weapons or explosives before he was allowed to address the hated murderer. He then introduced him to a long, half-dark corridor that ended in a shuttered window.

“You’ll have to wait until they open it before you can see and speak to this convict,” said his ‘guide’ of the moment. “Your visit would have to be short: just a few minutes,” he warned and turned his back.

Mykop walked down to the end of the corridor and stopped at the still closed window. Compulsorily, he waited there, his heart pounding fast on his ribs.

Suddenly the two leaves of the shutters fell apart, revealing a square of thick iron bars and the figure of a man behind them. Hardly recognizable he was save for the missing ear on one side of his head, which Mikop inwardly acknowledged on the spot as the product of his own hand. He came closer still and scrutinized the face: haggard-looking it was, with a hollow stare from blue-circled eyes. The skin was death-pale and the jowls shaggy with unshaven, bristling hairs.

In spite of his plight Bailon could not help a smile of welcome to his old crony. Mikop frowned in response and came to the point at once

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;preferring not to waste the precious minutes in useless introductions with an enemy he loathed and execrated with all his heart.

“Honestly, Bailon, why did you kill my wife?” he asked.“It was not my fault.”“Aha, I’m glad to hear this. Whose fault was it then?”“Hers! She burst into my house and, gun in hand, fired a shot at me.

If my small pistol answered her sudden attack it was only in self-defense. I told all this to the inquirer and publicly in front of the jury in court, but you weren’t there perhaps to hear and understand.”

“Yes, I see,” conceded Mykop, remembering he had once given his wife a revolver. With still more problems gnawing at his heart, he opened his mouth again for more questions.

“Come off it, Bailon,” he urged. “What was Pamela doing in your house or near it when you aimed your pistol at her? Why the hell was she there at all in the first instance? My hunch is telling me there was a love affair between you two. Am I right or wrong in my guess?”

“You’re most certainly wrong, old boy. There was not the ghost of a love affair between your wife and me. In point of fact I’ve never been friends with her: I hardly knew her by sight.”

Rather incredible all this, isn’t it? What then would she be doing down there, near you, in the very heart of that miserable cottage of yours if not—“

“I told you she burst in like mad. Must be when she saw through the window her sister in my living-room. Thought I was raping her or—“

“Ah, it was then Rita who came to your house first. What for if I may ask?”

“She wanted me to help find her boy friend.” “Was that sufficient reason for killing her so savagely the way you

did?”“Oh, no, not that. I—er—I…” stammered Bailon, as though at a loss

for the right words, and even when Mykop prompted him to finish his sentence he kept mum about the rest.

“You just tell me why you killed Rita as well,” insisted Mykop.“I don’t know it’s your business to know all about Rita and me.

After all Rita was not your wife. Only your sister-in-law, wasn’t she?”“Quite so, wretch! But I’ll have you know she would have been

delighted to marry a man like me were she still alive! That would have allowed me to use her millions in my trades! See how harmful this second murder of yours has been to me personally?”

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“Never mind, old man! I myself can make up for this loss you’ve incurred on my account. I can turn you into a millionaire overnight if only you listen to what I say.”

Mykop received the vague promise with a long laugh of disbelief. “You? What are you talking about, old fool? You sure have gone off your rocker in this prison, eh?”

“Not a bit of it, man. You just listen and then—““What on earth can you do in your cell where you’ll spend the rest

of your miserable days?”“Just ask my jailer to give you the key to my house, old boy,” smiled

Bailon. “There, there under what is a miserable cottage in your description, you’ll find a treasure such as never has been found by any human being for a whole century, I’m sure: gold bullion and coin to take your breath, far more than necessary to make you play the market to your heart’s content!”

The renewed promise met with still more ridicule than its first version. “If what you say is true, poor man,” challenged Mykop, “why the hell didn’t you avail yourself of such a fortune within your reach instead of killing people for your bread and butter?”

“It was slightly beyond my reach, man, but a little effort on your part may have it dug up in next to no time, believe me.”

With still more scoffs of disrespect and total indifference showing on his face, Mikop did not find it worth his while to ask for an explanation of his ex-friend’s ‘balderdash’ as he understood it. Instead, he turned his back on his way out.

“Wait!” shouted Bailon through the bars. “I’ll tell you everything about this treasure if you only care to listen. It’s a family secret and nobody alive has heard about it except me, but I’m ready to put you in the know because I’ve meant it to be a compensation for the damage you’ve endured on my account.”

Mykop stopped and, with curiosity prevailing, cocked his ears. It was the green light for Bailon to go on. He told, almost word for word, the old story his mother was never tired of repeating and which was retold by her from her sickbed, very shortly before her death.

“Smacks of an old wives’ tale all this,” derided Mykop, trying to make fun of it.”

“My mother had nothing in common with an old wife, in spite of her old age,” asserted Bailon. “She’s never told a lie and then—“

“Then”, interrupted Mykop, “there must be someone who told her this big lie!”

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“It was her father and nobody else who’s tipped her off about the existence of this treasure under the house. He was an upright, God-fearing man who never—“

The two leaves of the window slammed close together as suddenly as they had separated. Mycop knew what this meant: it was the end of the allowed short visit. He turned about and walked away without looking back. All the same he accepted, somewhat with a sniff, the key promised by his ex-friend. It was the jailer who gave it to him at the other end of the corridor.

“Take this,” said the latter. “The fellow you spoke to through the window said it was yours from now on. You may do with it what you please.”

Very perfunctorily, Mikop dropped the key in one of his pockets and walked out of the premises without the least intention of using it later as directed by his ex-friend. For quite a number of days he totally forgot about its presence on him, busy as he was searching anew for a ‘rich heiress’ to marry and resume his ‘trades’. Now where goodness to find her? None to meet his demands among the girls he saw out in the open air. None to respond to his advances in spite of his being an outstanding lady-killer as he thought, or so much as pay heed to the banknote he dropped in their passage near him. Mykop’s self-confidence almost deserted him. He all but lost the good opinion he had always had of himself as an outstandingly gifted lady-killer.

What then? Better look for the right girl in one of those fashionable beauty parlours, enhancing her looks there at the hands of some expensive beautician or other—or might well be in some art exhibition, buying daubs at prohibitive prices, he reminded himself again. Just where he himself had once looked for them after he strongly urged that black devil Bailon to search there for a millionaire girl to marry and strike it rich. So, for the second time he took his own advice and went searching: one shop after another, but all in vain.

At last, on the verge of despair, he sat one morning at his desk in the room he had assigned himself as an ‘office’ and went about using his grey matter for a still cleverer solution to his problem. Why not, since it was of better quality than any he knew in others? He, therefore, thought harder and harder in the vain hope of discovering some cleverer trick

Suddenly, while groping in one of his pockets for a handkerchief to blow his nose, his hand stumbled on something like metal. Ah, Bailon’s key, he recollected unenthusiastically and fished it out. No harm in

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trying to find this treasure, he decided, after all other means had come to naught. Not such a great damage in case of another failure, which anyway he expected …By now he was sort of used to what were only unpleasant surprises in his blind eyes.

While taking this and even more into consideration, he rose from his seat and strolled out on his way to Bailon’s house. There, he opened the manhole and peeped in through the dark. All he could see was an electric bulb at the end of a flex. It hung within easy reach, quite near the top of the ladder. Without the least hesitation he pulled it up and thrust the plug into the socket he saw on the kitchen wall opposite him. Now that he could mind his step, he climbed down. Gingerly, rung after rung he went until he came level with the junk. Tons of it, he estimated, appalled, and pressed hard with both hands and feet, trying to reach the bottom in order to fathom the depth of the litter that had accumulated there, apparently for years on end.

Something hard stopped his progress downward long before he could reach the floor. The treasure perhaps, he wondered with a throbbing heart and lowered the electric bulb for a better view: but only to see a human skull instead of the gold bullion he expected.

The sight was more than enough to give him a jolt and turn his joy into a blue funk. With trembling fingers he pried further into the other sides of the mass that covered the bones. Deeper and breadthways his hand travelled until he saw a whole human skeleton lying against the floor. The right material to give him another jolt, stronger than the first. So that knave Bailon, he suspected, had played a trick on him in that horrific hiding-place where he must have once deposited another victim of his!

No time for more deductions! What now Mikop wanted first and foremost was to wash his hands of the sinister discovery. Still white with horror, he climbed out of the basement in a hurry and rang up the police through a telephone instrument he found on a table of the living room. They came in helter-skelter and, after seeing the skeleton, asked him a number of questions to which he answered in all frankness by relating the whole story of his visit to Bailon and its aftermath, All the same his nervous narrative sounded like fiction rather than fact. Consequently they arrested him as suspect number one in that filthy murder case. It was, as he was made to understand, like a prelude to an inquiry which threatened to be long and fraught with various and multifarious dangers. This said, he was dispatched posthaste to that prison where he had already been immured twice and whose penetralia

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he had earnestly hoped never to see again. So his chronic apprehensions were now patent reality without his being able to prevent such a disaster. Still worse, much worse, was the moment the inquirer, under the glare of an electric light, talked about the discovery of twelve more skeletons on the floor, under the litter of that same room, asking him in cold blood whether he was the murderer of them all.

“Ask Bailon!” was his red-hot answer. “He is a past-master in the art of killing peope and hiding them from public view!”

Luckily for Mikop, the DNA analysis proved the skeletons, all of them, to be more than a century old. So, it was not Mikop, not Bailon either, but one of Bailon’s ancestors who had killed those people, maybe that upright, God-fearing man Bailon’s mother had talked about and from whom he had, in all likelihood, inherited his propensity for crime. Anyway, Mikop’s young age was accepted as an ‘alibi’ at last, however, not without his insistant demands. He went noiselessly home on his release and kept quiet there for weeks at a stretch.

But this rest cure did not bring his monomania to an end: still obsessed by illusions about his extraordinary gifts as a ‘trader’ he revisited Bailon’s house one morning for a better knowledge of its ultra-secret basement where the treasure was said to be hidden. There, he plugged the electric light in and, dangling the bulb down the ladder, he slowly followed it for a better study of the floor around.

Such was his satisfaction when he saw it clean of all the junk that was so thickly clogging its surface: no more human bones to scare him out of his mind and send him to prison, not the least trace of odds and ends to hamper his moves. The police must have cleared everything out while searching for more skeletons. That made his own search for the treasure easier by far in his belief. With this idea to give him a boost, Mikop returned home on that day, his head giddy with daydreams.

In the small hours of the next morning, armed with a bundle of implements, unnecessary for the most, he stepped into the Bentley that he had once bought with Pamela’s money as a birthday present for her and drove off: straight to Bailon’s cottage for ‘work’. No drudge hired to help in the forced labour awaiting him, no’spies’ to go blabbing about the fabulous gold bullion that was soon to become his, none at all to give him away or have the least share in the trove. Much safer this way even if it meant more tiresome work. Breaking to pieces the wooden floor, with hammer and pickaxe, and laying bare the ground that covered the gold: no easy job, he knew, but he was firmly determined to go ahead.

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For a whole week Mikop concentrated on the floor, endeavouring to chop it out of his way toward wealth and the gold of former, better days. The ground once reached, he started the dig. Inch by inch, using pick and shovel.

What he saw first was only dirt, but that did not dissuade him from going on. Deeper and deeper he went with still no better results. Not a shade of the yellow metal: only brown dirt coming up, and that down to the jaws of Satan at the gates of hell.

The End.

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