Joe struggled to meet Deasey's sleepy Torquemada stare. Of course he knew that the bomb threat had been made by Carl Ebling, in direct retaliation for his attack on the headquarters of the AAL two weeks before. Clearly, Ebling had been casing the Empire offices, tracking the move from the Kramler Building, observing the comings and goings of the employees, preparing his big red comic book bomb. Such fixity of purpose ought to have been, in spite of the harmlessness of today's reprisal, cause for alarm. Joe really ought to have told the police about Carl Ebling right away, and had the man arrested and jailed. And the prospect of the man's imprisonment, by rights, ought to have given him satisfaction. But why, instead, did it feel like surrender? It seemed to Joe that Ebling could have just as easily reported him, for breaking and entering, destruction of property, even assault, but instead had pursued his solitary and furtive course, engaging Joe-all right, the man was under the false impression that his antagonist was Sam Clay, Joe was somehow going to have to set him straight about that-in a private battle, a concours a deux. And Joe had known, somehow, from the moment Anapol's secretary took the call, with an illusionist's instinct for hooey, that the threat was a sham, the bomb a fiction. Ebling wanted to frighten Joe, to threaten him into calling off the comic book war that he found so offensive to the dignity of the Third Reich and the person of Adolf Hitler, and yet, at the same time, he was unwilling actually to annihilate the source of a pleasure that in his lonely verbitterte life must be all too rare. If the bomb had been real, Joe thought, I would naturally turn him in. It did not occur to him that if the bomb had been real he would now, quite possibly, be dead; that the next blow in their battle, if it were struck not by the impersonal force of the law but by Joe himself, might well reify the conflict in Ebling's unbalanced mind; and least of all, that he had begun to lose himself in a labyrinth of fantastical revenge whose bone-littered center lay ten thousand miles and three years away.

"Completely," Joe said. "I don't even know the guy."

"What guy is that?"

"What I said. I don't know him."

"I can smell it," Deasey said dubiously. "But I just can't figure it out."

"Mr. Deasey," Sammy said. "What did you want us for?"

"Yes. I wanted- God help me, I wanted to warn you."

Like a wreck being winched from the sea bottom, Deasey lumbered to his feet. He had been drinking since before lunch and, as he got himself upright, nearly fell over again. He went over to the window. The desk, a scarred, tiger-oak behemoth with fifty-two pigeonholes and twenty-four drawers, had followed him from his old office in the Kramler, its drawers stocked with fresh ribbons, blue pencils, pints of rye, black twists of Virginia shag, clean sheets of foolscap, aspirin, Sen-Sen, and sal hepatica. Deasey kept both it and his office spotless, uncluttered, and free of dust. This was the first time in his entire career that he had ever had an office all to himself. This-these fifty square feet of new carpet, blank paper, and inky black ribbons-was the mark and clear summation of what he had attained. He sighed. He slipped two fingers between the slats of the Venetian blinds and let a wan slice of autumn light into the room.

"When they did the Gray Goblin on the DuMont network," he said. "You remember that, Mr. Clay?"

"Sure," Sammy said. "I used to listen sometimes."

"What about Crack Carter! Remember that one?"

"With the bullwhip?"

"Fighting evil amid the tumbleweeds. Sharpe of the Mounties?"

"Sure, absolutely. They all started in the pulps, is that it?"

"They have their common origin in a far more exclusive and decrepit locale than that," Deasey said.

Sammy and Joe looked at each other uncertainly. Deasey tapped his forehead with the tip of the toothpick.

"You were Sharpe of the Mounties?" Sammy asked.

Deasey nodded. "He started out in Racy Adventure."

"And Whiskey, the husky dog with whom he shares an almost uncanny bond?"

"That one ran for five years on NBC Blue," Deasey said. "I never made a dime." He turned from the window. "Now, boys, it's your turn in the barrel."

"They have to pay us something," Sammy said. "After all. I mean, it may not be in the contract-"

"It isn't"

"But Anapol isn't a thief. He's an honorable person."

Deasey pressed his lips together tightly and hoisted the corners. It took Joe a moment to realize that he was smiling.

"It's my experience that honorable people live by the contracts they sign," Deasey said at last. "And not a tittle more."

Sammy looked at Joe. "He isn't cheering me up," he said. "Is he cheering you up?"

The question of a radio program, indeed the entire exchange that had taken place with the slim, silver-haired man wearing the eager expression, had largely escaped Joe. He was still far less proficient in English than he pretended to be, particularly when the subject ran to sports, politics, or business. He had no idea how socks or barrels figured into the discussion.

"That man wants to make a show on the radio about the Escapist," Joe said, slowly, feeling slow, thick-witted, and obscurely abused by inscrutable men.

"He seemed at least to be interested in having his flacks explore the possibility," Deasey said.

"And if they do, you are saying that they will not have to pay us for it."

"I'm saying that."

"But of course they must."

"Not a dime."

"I want a look at that contract," Sammy said.

"Look all you want," Deasey said. "Look it up and down. Hire a lawyer and have him nose around in it. All the rights-radio, movies, books, tin whistles, Cracker Jack prizes-they all belong to Anapol and Ashkenazy. One hundred percent."

"I thought you said you wanted to warn us." Sammy looked annoyed. "It seems to me the time for a warning would have been about a year ago, when we put our names to that piece-of-shit-excuse-my-language contract."

Deasey nodded. "Fair enough," he said. He went to a glass-fronted lawyer's bookcase, stocked with a copy of every pulp magazine in which one of his novels had appeared, each bound in fine morocco and stamped soberly in gold characters racy policeman or racy ace, with the issue number and date of publication and, beneath these, the uniform legend complete works of george deasey. [5] He stepped back and studied the books with, it seemed to Joe, a certain air of regret, though for what, exactly, Joe could not have said. "For what it's worth, here's the warning now. Or call it advice, if you like. You boys were powerless when you signed that contract last year. You aren't quite so powerless anymore. You've had a good run. You've come up with some good ideas that have sold well. You've begun to make a name for yourselves. Now, we could debate the merits of making a name for yourselves in a third-rate industry by cranking out nonsense for numbskulls, but what isn't in doubt is that there's money to be found in this game right now, and you two have shown a knack for dowsing it. Anapol knows it. He knows that, if you wanted to, you could probably walk over to Donenfeld or Arnold or Goodman and write yourself a much better deal to dream up nonsense over there. So that's my warning: stop handing this crap over to Anapol as if you owed it to him."

"Make him pay for it from now on. Make him give us a piece," Sammy said.

"You didn't hear it from me."

"But in the meantime-"

"You are screwed, gentlemen." He consulted his pocket watch. "Now get out. I have duds of my own to secrete about the premises before I-" He broke off and looked at Joe, then stared down at his watch as if trying to make up his mind about something. When he looked up again, his face had twisted in a false, almost sickeningly cheery, rictus. "The hell with it," he said. "I need a drink. Mr. Clay-"