It happened all the time. You needed only to read the newspapers to know that it did.

Doc had been fearful that the bag would be too heavy for her. She had lifted it, assured him that she could manage it. She had also assured him-and pretty shortly at that-that her nerves were equally up to the job. But that had been then, and somehow everything had changed since then. The sureness which she had felt with him had melted away; and suddenly, with a spur of panic, she knew why.

Not only had she never faced any such responsibililty as this before, she had never faced any that remotely approached it. Nothing of do-or-die importance; nothing without Doc to guide her and work with her. She had thought that she had; Doc had tactfully let her think so. But invariably they had been a team. The one thing she had swung on her own was the Beynon deal; and that obviously, and regardless of the consequences, was something that would have been better left unswung.

Actually, she hadn't been around very much. She was virtually untraveled. Until she met Doc she'd never been out of her hometown. Since then, there'd been considerable travel by car, but she'd made only one train trip in her life.

She wasn't used to railroad stations. Even without the money bag she would have felt some unsureness.

Which I'd damn well better get over, she thought grimly. If Doc caught me acting like this, standing off in a corner by myself…!

He wouldn't like it. Far too much had already happened that he didn't like.

Resolutely, she picked up the bag and started back to the waiting room. The resolution lasted for a few steps, and then she began to slow, to hesitate. If only she could get rid of the thing for a few minutes. Long enough to make sure that she hadn't been spotted; to get a drink, to clean up a little. The drink, particularly, she needed. A good stiff jolt to pull her together again and…

She heard a dull clang of metal against metal; jumped a little, her eyes swerving toward it. But it was only someone slamming the door of a baggage locker. She started to move on toward the waiting room, and then her heart did a little skip-jump of relief, and she swung almost gaily toward the row of lockers on the other side of the wing.

She would be taking no chance in leaving the bag in a private locker. Doc couldn't object to it-in fact, he didn't even need to know about it. She could recover the bag before he showed up at the station.

She crossed the marble-paved foyer, set down the satchel and overnight case. She got a quarter out of her purse and stooped in front of an empty locker. Frowning, she sought in vain for the coin slot. Straightening again, she had started to read the metal instruction plate when a young man sauntered by. A young-oldish man with a small brown mustache and prematurely greying hair.

He was neatly dressed, engaging of manner. He would have been handsome except for the slight sharpness of his features.

"Kind of a Chinese puzzle, isn't it?" he said. "Well, here's how you work it."

Before Carol could object to the intrusion, he had taken the quarter from her hand, inserted it in the elusive slot and swung open the door. "Imagine you want to keep the dressing case with you, right?" he smiled. "Well, in we go with the big boy, then. Now-" he slammed and rattled the door, "we'll just test this to make sure that it's locked; maybe you'd better test it, too."

Carol tested it. He handed her a yellow-flanged locker key, courteously brushed aside her thanks, and sauntered off toward the waiting room.

In the station's bar-and-grill ladies' room, Carol touched up her makeup and allowed her suit to be brushed off by the attendant. Then, going out to the bar, she ordered and drank two double martinis. She wanted a third-not the drink itself so much as the excuse it would provide for remaining there. Just to stay there a little longer, where it was cool and shadowed and quiet, and feel the strength and the confidence spread through her. To feel safe.

But the hands of the cloek pointed forbiddingly. It was barely ten minutes until train time.

Draining the last drop from her glass, she hurried out of the bar. She located her locker, inserted the key and turned it. Or tried to. It wouldn't turn. It didn't fit.

Her stomach cramped convulsively and the two drinks rose up in her throat. Swallowing nauseously, she removed the key and examined it; read the number with bewildered disbelief.

That couldn't be right! She knew that the bag had gone into this locker, the one here on the end. But according to this key…

She located the other locker, the one numbered to correspond with the key. Hands shaking, she opened it, and, of course, it was empty.

A voice boomed and echoed over the public address system: "Last call for the California umtumm-the California something-or-other, departing from Gate Three in exacklum fi'min-utts. Passengers will kinely take their seats on the California…"

_Five minutes!_

Feverishly she returned to the first locker, fought again to unlock it. Again, as on the first occasion, the effort was futile. The drinks struggled upward again. The heat, after the air-conditioned bar, beat and pounded through her brain.

She weaved a little. Foolishly, because there was nothing else to do, she started back toward the second locker, the one the key fitted. And then she stopped dead in her tracks. Up near the entrance, hat pulled low over his eyes, Doc was watching her. Watching and then coming toward her.

A few steps away, he faced up to the locker bank, fumbling in his pocket as though seeking a coin. His terse whisper whipped at her from the corner of his mouth. "Simmer down and talk fast. What happened?"

"I–I don't know, Doc! I put the bag in that locker back there, but I've got the key to…"

"To another locker, one that's empty, right? What did he look like?"

"He? What do you…"

"Will you in the name of all hell hurry! Someone helped you. Put the bag in for you, then switched keys on you. It's one of the oldest con gags in the country."

"But-well, how was I to know?" she lashed out. "You leave me to do everything…"

"Easy, babe, easy. I'm not blaming you." His voice became a purring calm, the intense calm above a raging subterranean storm. "How long since you left the bag? When you first came in, maybe an hour?"

"No. Not more that thirty minutes. But…"

"Good. He'd expect you to leave it longer than that. If he operates on form, he'll try to hit several times before he pulls out." He stepped back from the locker, jerked his head. "Move. Go ahead of me. If you spot him, give me the office."

"But, Doc. You shouldn't…"

"There's a lot of things that shouldn't have been done!" His tone was a whip again. "Now, move!"

She started off at a fast walk, then broke into a faster one as his long stride kept him almost on her heels. At what was almost a trot she reached the waiting room, swept it with an anxious glance. Prodded by an urgent cough from Doc, she made a hasty survey of the adjacent areas.

Then-and now she was really trotting-she headed for the train gates. The jarring of her high heels shot fire up her ankles. A button of her blouse became undone, and she ran clutching at the gap with one hand. Frantically she raced down the corridor, a notorious criminal on the trail of a quarter of a million stolen and restolen dollars, and somewhere within her the child she had been, the child that she was in this baffling and fearful moment, wept with sullen self-pity. It-it wasn't fair! She was tired and sick, and she didn't want to play any more. She'd never wanted to play in the first place!

And it was all so useless. The man would be gone now, no matter what Doc said. He had the money, and he'd keep it. And they, they'd have nothing. The whole nation looking for them, and no means of escape. No money but the relatively little that they were carrying.