As a matter of course Spode went equipped with screwdriver and malleable wire and a small variety of burglar’s tools, not excluding a few celluloid credit cards which were enough to break into most homes in five seconds. Sometimes it was necessary to open a door chain with a thumbtack and a rubber band and sometimes a lock actually had to be picked, but usually that was the extent of the difficulty. But in Trumble’s case the burglar alarm was connected to every door and to strips of metallic tape around every windowpane. Undoubtedly there was some kind of auxiliary battery system indoors so that if the house current were cut off the auxiliary would take over immediately. In the past Spode had overcome such systems by going in with a glass cutter—making a hole in the center of a window rather than at the edges where he would interrupt the alarm tape. But here he couldn’t afford to leave evidence that he had broken in.

There was still a way. But it had been tedious. Like most ranch-style houses in Tucson, Trumble’s had a slightly peaked roof shingled with asbestos. The low attic contained ceiling insulation and aluminum ductwork systems that fed air-conditioned and heated air into wall vents in all the rooms. The ducts were less than a foot square in cross-section but the attics through which they ran had to be designed big enough for servicemen to crawl in alongside the ducts. There was a large metal grating at one end of the house under the eaved roofpeak, giving access to the electric exhaust fan that ventilated the attic space, and at the other end was another grating which provided a place for air to come in so it could circulate through the exhaust fan. Spode had tackled the second grating. He had had Jill’s help; she had stood on his shoulders and unscrewed the grating and then jumped down and given him a boost. He had crawled in, twisting his shoulders to fit through, and found himself buried in an itching mess of excelsior-style insulation. He’d found the service crawlway and climbed up on it and spent quite a while picking insulation out of his hair and clothes because he couldn’t very well leave a spoor of the stuff all over the house. Then he’d crawled from rafter to rafter with the pencil flashlight and eventually found the plywood trapdoor that gave access to the house below. He’d spent a good while examining it for magnetic leads but so far as he could tell it wasn’t wired. It was sunk in the ceiling of a clothes closet. When he opened it he climbed down onto the hat shelf and then dropped to the floor through a thick row of Trumble’s jackets and coats; the closet had the vaguely decaying smell of dried sweat.

This time he had to jump to reach the grating. He chinned himself inside. He knew the route now so this second intrusion was easier. He pried the trapdoor up and went down into the house and walked through it looking for the attaché case.

The black case wasn’t wired with explosives, though it wouldn’t have surprised him. He picked the locks and set up his camera on a C-clamp mounting which he screwed to the lid of the toilet. He put the documents on the tile floor to make the pictures; he had chosen the bathroom because it had no window, only an exhaust fan, and the neighbors wouldn’t see the light. When he had what he had come for he put the papers back in the case, locked the case and put it back on the living-room desk where he’d found it. He wiped everything for fingerprints and looked at his watch, and because there was plenty of time he took the little voice-activated bugs out of his pockets and began planting them in various places around the house, particularly near the three extension telephones. They were button-sized micro-transmitters with a maximum range of about three hundred yards but that was more than sufficient for Spode’s purposes. He pasted them under the telephone stand and under a lamp base and behind the bed’s headboard and under the frame of the living-room couch.

Traffic was a faint distant mutter in the room. He had one bug left and he was trying to decide where to put it when he heard a car stop just outside, a door thud shut, shoes come up the walk with authoritative stride. Spode’s hair rose.

He waited for the doorbell to ring because if it rang then this wasn’t Trumble coming home. But it didn’t ring and when he heard the key go into the lock he wheeled and went back through the house.

Before he reached the closet he heard the front door open. Footsteps came inside and he knew he couldn’t climb up into the attic without making noise. He would have to sneak out after Trumble went to bed. He spoke a silent oath and darted across the hall into the guest bathroom; closed the door and flicked the pencil torch around to orient himself so he wouldn’t go banging into anything. When his eyes had memorized the room he switched off the light and stood breathing shallowly through his mouth, listening.

Footfalls moved around but there was something odd here. The feet went from room to room, pausing now and then but never settling down. Somebody was searching the house and it wasn’t Trumble because Trumble would have turned lights on.

Spode felt the stir of his blood. If the man was armed and surprised him here it could be trouble.

He wrinkled his brain trying to remember whether he’d seen anything here that might make a weapon. A faucet dripped relentlessly.

Somebody—one of Trumble’s endless string of women—had left a jar of cold cream on the shelf above the sink. Spode wrapped it in a guest towel and twisted the towel ends to make a handle.

The intruder was looking for something big because he wasn’t opening drawers and cabinets. Maybe he had been keeping surveillance on the house, had seen Spode and was now searching for him. But Spode had been trained to spot that kind of thing and there hadn’t been any sign of watchers on the street or in the shrubbery. A neighbor from another house? But he’d arrived in a car.

Shoes came down the hall and stopped. Spode tensed, knowing the man was just beyond the door and listening with the same taut apprehension.

He heard the doorknob turn. A crack of light appeared—a pencil torch like his own, masked and reddened by fingers. The door came open a little wider and Spode saw the hard black oily gleam of an automatic pistol with a perforated silencer screwed to the barrel.

He brought the wadded jar down on the gun wrist hard enough to paralyze the tensor muscles which otherwise would have pulled the trigger involuntarily.

The gun dropped and clattered but the man had presence of mind to yank the door shut. The gun got caught on the floor between the door and jamb and the door bounced open again. One certainty: it wasn’t a chance burglar. Sneak thieves seldom carried guns and never stayed to fight. But this one did: came in and slammed the door back hard enough to shatter the mottled glass of the shower stall. A shard cut the back of Spode’s hand but Spode was in motion. The penlight made an arc and there was enought light: he smashed the blade of his hand into the man’s larynx.

The intruder had only one good hand now. It brought the penlight up to the injured throat and Spode went for the solar plexus with board-stiff fingertips. He folded the man but the wild-swinging right hand smashed against the side of Spode’s jaw. It was going to hurt to chew for a day or two. Spode cracked him across the back of the neck and the man went down.

The first thing Spode went for was the automatic pistol. He checked the safety as he turned. The penlight was on the floor under the sink, still burning, rolling slowly. The man was blinking. Spode switched on the ceiling light and had a look at him.

Now Spode recognized him—the man he’d seen drive past the house slowly a little while ago. An ordinary round face, brown hair, unexceptional eyes. Middle-aged and on the burly side. He looked like a civil servant, a faceless assistant to an assistant. But the side-vented brown suit had been tailored to accommodate the belt holster.