The robe lay, a dark clod under the bush.

They drove into the park. Along the lake the cars stood, each with its mingled shape of lovers. Judd circled the old World’s Fair building. Behind the building was a little bridge over the lagoon. They parked the car, and walked out together, Judd carrying the typewriter. Not a soul around. No lovebirds, even.

They stood on the little bridge. He could feel Artie leaning beside him. In daylight you could see the bottom through the shallow water. “Hell, it’ll sink in the mud,” Artie said. He took the machine from Judd and was about to drop it.

“It’ll splash,” Judd warned. Suppose some damn cop happened to be attracted by the sound.

“Drowning kittens, sir,” Artie said. “This is where I always drown my kittens.” He let the machine fall. The plop was small.

They were almost free now of every thread to the thing. There was only the robe. It might float. Best to burn it somewhere, drive out where there’d be nobody around. Maybe the dunes.

Going south, they passed the marker where they should have caught the ransom only that afternoon. The building loomed vague in the mist. Artie slumped in his seat, subdued. Judd came to a turn: leftward led to the lake; right, to the Hegewisch swamp. And he felt Artie beside him blaming him, and he felt it was true, something in himself had betrayed them. Why had he insisted so on the swamp, when Artie would have chosen the lake? Why had it had to be that one place, the cistern under the tracks?

He drove on a side road the short distance to the lake. The mist has lifted a little; you could see a few stars, and the flame licks from the steel-mill furnaces.

There was a stretch of crummy beach here, littered with cinders and junk. They were in luck: the area was deserted. Artie lugged the robe, a huge dark wad under his arm. Judd gathered some pieces of wood and tried to build a fire.

“You’re a hell of a Boy Scout,” Artie said, and arranged the sticks in tepee form, so they would burn. Then they put the robe into the fire. Smudge and smoke arose; the flames were almost smothered “Hell, we should have brought some kerosene. This’ll take all night,” Artie said.

If the fire would only burn off the blood, they could leave the charred rag. Artie lay down on the cindery sand, limp, as though suddenly pooped of everything, the way he was sometimes, limp, passive. Momentarily Judd felt the stronger, felt better about everything.

Now at last everything was in the clear. The robe was burning, and even if found, who should ever imagine the boy’s body had been held in it? To all things material, he was superior. He was a mind. Why had he wept and been scared yesterday at the moment of the blow? Judd wanted now to say something to Artie, to say he hadn’t really been himself, to say he was recovered now, was beyond that kind of weakness.

“Hey, Mac,” Artie murmured. “All we need is some wieners, huh, and we could have a wienie roast.”

“Yah, Charley,” Judd said. He never was sure with Artie. Even after a couple of years. He lay down alongside, his face toward the fire.

Now and now was the culmination, the completion of their deed, the fulfilment of the compact. Now, now he felt released of fear. He would never be caught, for he was strength itself. The lake, the blackened sand, the stars, the long close body of his friend, the fire-tipped chimneys, and the power in himself – the dark power growing toward release, eruption, the bad stuff, the dark evil clot in him pushing like a ball of fire in the huge tall chimney, wildly flaming out.

I had two morning classes, and all through them I kept trying to think of some way to stay on the big story. But when I made my routine call, Reese said it himself. “See if Tom needs you over at the inquest.” A reward for my work of yesterday. From the morning papers I learned the inquest would be held at two o’clock, and I started for the frat house, to lunch there. It was raining, I was half running, soaked, and just as I reached the house Tom Daly called to me, coming up the street. He’d come looking for me, any place to get in out of the rain. The story was up against a stone wall. He had been to the Kesslers, to the police – hell, a man couldn’t even get a drink around here in the morning.

I said I could probably find him a drink in the house. We had not even shaken the rain from our hats before Artie Straus was up from a chair, holding an early Globe. “Anything new on the story?” he asked me. “Did you give them all that stuff about Steger? I gave you lots of stuff they haven’t got in here.”

I introduced him to Tom, and he became even more excited. Sure, he’d rustle up a drink. What about going out on the story with us? “Listen, I bet I can get you another scoop!” Artie said.

“Artie, the Boy Detective!” Milt Lewis kidded. “Now’s your chance.”

Hell, Artie said, just from the papers he could see there were lots of things that hadn’t been tried. There was the drugstore on 63rd Street, where the father was supposed to go with the ransom, only he forgot the address. How about tracking down that drugstore?

“You think the killer is still standing there waiting?” Milt jeered.

“The killers would never have been there!” Artie said excitedly. “That shows how much you know. The way they’d do it, it would be a relay. The father would get another call in the store, to relay him to the next spot-”

“Well then what use would it be to find the store?” Milt asked.

“For crissake, you never know; it could be a clue.”

“Jesus, it’s raining cats and dogs,” Tom complained.

“Come on. I’ve got a car. I bet we find it!” Artie said. “All we have to do is check drugstores on 63rd Street. Ask them if anybody phoned yesterday for Mr. Kessler.”

Tom and I followed him out to his car. Artie drove along 63rd, talking about the crime the whole time.

Tom asked, “You knew this kid pretty well?”

“Sure. Like my own kid brother.”

“What was he like?”

“A cocky little bastard,” Artie said. “Christ, if you were looking for a kid to kidnap, that’s just the kind of cocky little sonofabitch you’d pick.”

We were both struck dumb. Artie resumed. “I mean, why crap around, that’s the straight dope. It might help you to find the murderer.”

Tom pursued it. Who, for instance? Did his little brother have any ideas? Who could be sore enough at a kid to do a thing like that!

“I’ll ask Billy,” Artie promised.

As 63rd Street was miles long, it seemed a crazy chase, but Artie said he bet the criminal would have chosen a store in the busiest part of the street, somewhere east of Cottage. He parked in the middle of a block; there was a drugstore on each end. “Let’s divvy up,” he said.

Tom and I ran for one of the stores, and Artie toward the other. We told the druggist we were from the Globe on the kidnapping murder. He kept shaking his head. As we left the store, Artie came hurrying from the other end of the block. “Nothing doing,” he said. “Let’s try some more.”

That way we worked up the street. After a dozen stores, Tom said the hell with it – even if we found the store it would be meaningless. “Hell of a newspaperman you are!” Artie laughed. “Persistence is the only way in a case of this kind.”

“Fine,” Tom said, “that’s the spirit.” Artie and I could persist and he would wait in the car. We parked again, at Blackstone. There was only one store, and Artie and I made the dash. A Negro was behind the fountain. Artie headed for him while I approached the druggist. As soon as I uttered the name Kessler, the druggist’s face broke into a gasp. “Why, yes, yes, I never made the connection in my mind-”

At the same moment Artie was yelling triumphantly, “It’s here!”

Later on, we could ask ourselves whether it was a compulsion to bring down punishment on himself that drove Artie to reach closer and closer to the fire; for if Judd had been the one to leave a trail of clues during the crime, it was Artie who persisted in the days immediately afterward in taunting fate, pushing in among us, the reporters, and even among the police, like some perversely teasing, transgressing child, being bad and being bad until he brings the slap of anger down upon himself.