The telephone on the desk rang. Startled, Keeton squeezed the Colt’s trigger. There was a dry snap. If the gun had been loaded, he would have put a bullet spang through the study door.

He scooped the phone up. “Can’t you people leave me alone for even a little while?” he shouted angrily.

The quiet voice which replied silenced him at once. It was the voice of Mr. Gaunt, and it poured over Keeton’s blistered soul like soothing balm.

?”

“What luck did you have with the toy I sold you, Mr. Keeton “It worked!” Keeton said. His voice was jubilant. He forgot, at least for the moment, that he was planning a strenuous morning of murder and suicide. “I collected on every race, by God!”

“Well, that’s fine,” Mr. Gaunt said warmly.

Keeton’s face clouded again. His voice dropped to what was almost a whisper. “Then… yesterday… when I got home…” He found he could not go on. A moment later he discovered-to his great amazement and even greater delight-that he didn’t have to.

“You discovered They had been in your house?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

“Yes! Yes! How did you know?”

“They are everywhere in this town,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“I told you that when last we met, did I not?”

"Yes! And-” Keeton broke off suddenly. His face twisted in alarm. “They could have this line tapped, do you realize that, Mr. Gaunt? They could be listening in on our conversation right now!”

Mr. Gaunt remained calm. “They could, but They’re not. Please don’t think I am naive, Mr. Keeton. I have encountered Them before. Many times.”

“I’m sure you have,” Keeton said. He was discovering that the wild joy he had taken in Winning Ticket was little or nothing compared to this; to finding, after what felt like centuries of struggle and darkness, a kindred soul.

“I have a small electronic device attached to my line,” Mr. Gaunt went on in his calm and mellow voice. “If the line is tapped, a small light goes on. I am looking at that light now, Mr. Keeton, and it is dark. As dark as some of the hearts in this town.”

“You do know, don’t you?” Danforth Keeton said in a fervent, trembling voice. He felt as if he might weep.

“Yes. And I called to tell you that you mustn’t do anything rash, Mr. Keeton.” The voice was soft, lulling. As he listened to it, Keeton felt his mind begin to drift away like a child’s helium-filled balloon.

“That would make things far too easy for Them. Why, do you realize what would happen if you were to die?”

“No,” Keeton murmured. He was looking out the window. His eyes were blank and dreamy.

“They would have a party!” Mr. Gaunt cried softly. “They would get liquored up in Sheriff Pangborn’s office! They would go out to Homeland Cemetery and urinate on your grave!”

“Sheriff Pangborn?” Keeton said uncertainly.

“You don’t really believe a drone like Deputy Ridgewick is allowed to operate in a case like this without orders from his higherups, do you?”

“No, of course not.” He was beginning to see more clearly now.

They; it had always been They, a tormenting dark cloud around him, and when you snatched at that cloud, you came away with nothing. Now he at last began to understand that They had faces and names. They might even be vulnerable. Knowing this was a tremendous relief.

“Pangborn, Fullerton, Samuels, the Williams woman, your own wife.

They are all part of it, Mr. Keeton, but I suspect-yes, and rather strongly-that Sheriff Pangborn is the ringleader. If so, he would love it if you killed one or two of his underlings and then put yourself out of the way. Why, I suspect that is exactly what he has been aiming for all along. But you’re going to fool him, Mr.

Keeton, aren’t you?”

“Yessss!” Keeton whispered fiercely. “What should I do?”

“Nothing today. Go about your business as usual. Go to the races tonight, if you like, and enjoy your new purchase. If you appear the same as always to Them, it will throw Them off balance.

It will sow confusion and uncertainty amidst the enemy.”

“Confusion and uncertainty.” Keeton spoke the words slowly, tasting them.

“Yes. I’m laying my own plans, and when the time comes, I’ll let you know.”

“Do you promise?”

“Oh yes indeed, Mr. Keeton. You are quite important to me.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I could not do without you.”

Mr. Gaunt rang off. Keeton put his pistol and the gun-cleaning kit away. Then he went upstairs, dumped his soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, showered, and dressed. When he came down, Myrtle shrank away from him at first, but Keeton spoke kindly to her and kissed her cheek. Myrtle began to relax. Whatever the crisis had been, it seemed to have passed.

Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork… which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother’s ancestors had sprung. He had been Ray Van Allen’s P.A. for four years, ever since he’d gotten out of the Navy.

He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett’s diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor-who would be in shortlycould examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.

Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.

Besides, there was the pipe.

Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaum, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor’s office but because he didn’t like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.

Also, some of them might covet it.

He put the stem between his teeth, marvelling again at how perfectly right it felt there, how perfectly in its place. He tilted down the rearview mirror for a moment so he could see himself, and approved completely of what he saw. He thought the pipe made him look older, wiser, handsomer. And when he had the pipe clenched between his teeth, the bowl pointed up a bit at just the right debonair angle, he felt older, wiser, handsomer.

He drove down Main Street, meaning to cross the Tin Bridge between the town and the country, and then slowed as he approached Needful Things. The green awning tugged at him like a fishhook. It suddenly seemed very important-imperative, in factthat he stop.

He pulled in, started to get out of the car, then remembered that the pipe was still clenched between his teeth. He took it out (feeling a small pang of regret as he did so) and locked it in the glove compartment again. This time he actually reached the sidewalk before returning to the Plymouth to lock all four doors. With a nice pipe like that, it didn’t do to take chances. Anybody might be tempted to steal a nice pipe like that. Anybody at all. He approached the shop and then stopped, feeling disappointed. A sign hung in the window.

it read. Everett was about to turn away when the door opened. Mr. Gaunt stood there, looking resplendent and quite debonair himself in a fawn-colored jacket with elbow patches and charcoal-gray pants. “Come in, Mr. Frankel,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”