In any event, Doc never made any last-minute changes in plans. If changes seemed indicated, he simply dropped the job, either permanently or until a later date. So, since he had said there would be a signal…

Carol started the car. She took a gun out of the glove compartment, shoved it into the waistband of her slacks and pulled her sweater over it. Then she drove on-_fast!_

Doc McCoy's breakfast had cooled before he could get rid of Charlie, the night clerk. But he ate it with an enjoyment which may or may not have been as real as was apparent. It was hard to tell with Doc; to know whether he actually did like something or someone as well as he seemed to. Nor is it likely that Doc himself knew. Agreeability was his stock in trade. He had soaked up so much of it that everything he touched seemed roseately transformed.

Doc's beaming good nature and the compelling personality that was its outgrowth were largely owing to his father, the widowed sheriff of a small down-south county. To compensate for the loss of his wife, the elder McCoy kept his house filled with company. Liking his job-and knowing that he would never get another half as good-he made sure of keeping it. He had never been known to say no, even to a mob's request for a prisoner. He was ready at all times to fiddle for a wedding or weep at a wake. No poker session, cockfight or stag party was considered complete without his presence; yet he was a steadfast church communicant and the ever-present guest at the most genteel social gatherings. Inevitably, he came to be the best-liked man in the county, the one man whom everyone honestly regarded as a friend. He also was the grossest incompetent and the most costly ornament in the county's body politic. But the only person who had ever faulted him-an opposition candidate-had barely escaped a wrathful lynching party.

Doc, then, was born popular; into a world where he was instantly liked and constantly reassured of his welcome. Everyone smiled, everyone was friendly, everyone was anxious to please him. Without being spoiled-his father's strictly male household took care of that-he acquired an unshakable belief in his own merit; a conviction that he not only would be but should be liked wherever he went. And holding such a conviction, he inevitably acquired the pleasant traits and personality to justify it.

Rudy Torrento planned to kill Doc, but he was resentfully drawn to him.

Doc intended to kill Rudy, but he by no means disliked Torrento. He only liked him less than he did certain other people.

His breakfast finished, Doc stacked the dishes neatly on the tray and set it outside his door. The maid was vacuuming the hall, and Doc told her of his impending departure ("for a few days") and that she need not bother with his room until he had left. He inquired into the health of her rheumatic husband, complimented her on her new shoes, gave her a fivedollar tip, and smilingly closed the door.

He bathed, shaved and began to dress.

He was five feet, ten and one-half inches tall, and he weighed roughly one hundred and seventy pounds. His face was a little long, his mouth wide and a trifle thin-lipped, his eyes gray and wideset. His graying, sand-colored hair was very thin on top. In one of his sloping, unostentatiously powerful shoulders were two bullet scars. Aside from that, there was nothing to distinguish him from any number of forty-year-old men.

The stock and barrel of a rifle were slung on loops inside his topcoat. Doc took them out, hung the coat back in the closet, and began to assemble them. The stock was from an ordinary twenty-two rifle. The barrel, as well as the rest of the gun proper, had either been made or made over by Doc. Its most distinctive feature was a welded-on cylinder, fitted at one end with a plunger. It looked like, and was, a small air pump.

Doc slid a twenty-two slug into the breech, closed and locked it and rocked the slug into place. He began to pump, pumping harder as the resistance inside the air chamber grew. When he could no longer depress the plunger, he gave it several quick turns, sealing the end of the cylinder.

He smoked a cigarette and scanned the morning newspaper which Charlie had brought with his breakfast, pausing now and then to pick idly at an incipient hangnail. He reweighed his decision to dispose of Rudy, and could see no reason to change it. No reason, at least, of sufficient importance.

When they reached the West coast, they would need to hole up temporarily; to reconnoiter, switch cars and break trail generally, before jumping into Mexico. It was wise to do that at any rate, even though it might not be absolutely necessary. And Rudy had lined up a place where they could take temporary sanctuary. It was a small tourist court, owned by some distant relatives of his. They were naturalized citizens, an almost painfully honest, elderly couple. But they had an unreasoning fear of the police, brought with them from the old country, and they were even more terrified of Rudy. So, reluctantly, they had submitted to his demands, on this occasion and several others.

Doc was confident that he could handle them quite well without Rudy. He was confident that they would be even more rather than less cooperative if they knew that he had disposed of their fearsome kinsman.

Glancing at his watch, Doc lighted another cigarette and picked up the rifle. Standing back in the concealing shadows of the room, he took aim through the window, one eye squinted against the smoke from the dangling cigarette. The bank guard was due any minute now. He…

There was a knock on the door. Doc hesitated for a split second, then crossed the room in two long strides and opened the door a few inches. The maid thrust a handful of towels at him.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Kramer. Thought you might be needin' these."

"Why, that's very thoughtful of you," Doc said. "Just a moment and I'll…"

"Now, that's all right, Mr. Kramer. You given me too much already."

"But I insist," Doc said pleasantly. "You wait right here, Rosie."

Leaving the door ajar, he wheeled back across the room and raised the rifle, sighting it as he moved. Mack Wingate was just stepping across the bank's threshold, had almost disappeared into its dark interior. Doc triggered the gun and there was a sharp, sighing sound, like the sudden emission of breath.

He didn't wait to see the guard fall; when Doc shot at something he hit it. With a more powerful rifle his aim would have been just as accurate at five hundred yards as it had been at fifty.

He gave the maid a dollar bill, again thanking her for her courtesy. Closing and relocking the door, he got the clerk on the phone.

"Charlie, does that train into the city leave at ninetwenty or nine-thirty? Fine, that's what I thought. No, no cab, thanks. I can use a little walk."

He hung up the phone, reloaded the rifle, and again pumped up the pressure. He unfastened the stock, locked it up in his briefcase, and put the rest back in the loops of the topcoat.

He lifted the coat out, draped it loosely over one arm. He walked back and forth with it for a moment, then nodded with satisfaction and hung it back in the closet. Rudy wouldn't expect him to have the rifle. It would come as a complete surprise to him. But just in case it didn't…

I'll think of something, Doc assured himself. And went to work on a more immediate problem.

His luggage contained an unusual number of toiletries: bath salts, hair tonics and the like. More accurately, it contained the containers of these items, which were filled not with what their labels indicated but such oddly assorted things as naphtha, crude oil, a gauze-wrapped quarter-stick of dynamite, and the movements from two watches.

They formed the ingredients of two incendiary smoke bombs. Doc began to assemble them, first spreading the newspaper out on the bed to protect its coverings. A few fine beads of sweat formed on his forehead. The movements of his fingers were sure, but extremely delicate.