"Got him right through the heart," Doc told Carol. "One of those very rare instances where a man actually died laughing."

"Just so he died." Carol grimaced. "That's one character! could never feel easy around. I always had a feeling that he was just about ready to jump at me from the one side I wasn't watching."

"Alas, poor Rudy," Doc murmured. "But how have you been, my dear-to move from the ridiculous to the sublime?"

"We-el-" Carol slanted a sultry glance at him. "I think I'll be a lot better tomorrow. You know. After I get a good night's sleep."

"Tut, tut," said Doc. "I see you're still a very wicked young woman."

They had driven through Beacon City, commenting wonderingly on the smoke, looking curiously at the milling throngs; and now they were far down the highway on the other side of town. Doc was driving, since Carol had driven all night. She sat sidewise in the seat, facing him, her legs curled under her.

Their eyes kept meeting. They kept smiling at each other. Doc patted one of her small round flanks, and she held his hand for a moment, gripping it almost fiercely.

"What are you worried about, Doc?"

"Worried?"

"I can always tell. Is it Golie's? You think that if Rudy isn't with us…"

Doc shook his head. "No trouble there. I wouldn't say I was worried about anything. Just puzzled in a troubled sort of way about our friend Beynon."

"Oh," said Carol. "Oh, yeah."

Beynon was an attorney, the chairman of the pardon and parole board. Doc's pardon had been bought from him, and there was still fifteen thousand dollars due on the purchase price. He owned a tiny ranch up in the far corner of the state. A bachelor, he lived on it when he was not occupied with some legal case or his official duties. They were going there now.

"Doc-" Carol was staring through the windshield. "Let's make a switch. Head right into Mexico from here."

"We couldn't do it, baby. It's too obvious. We're too close."

"But you haven't been connected with the job. With any kind of break at all, it'll be days before you are."

"That doesn't help much. Not when the job's this big and this close to the border. They'll have road blocks up fifty miles this side of El Paso. Everyone'll get a shakedown. Anyone trying to cross over had better be strictly clean and able to prove it, or he's in the soup."

"Well-but the other way, Doc. Beynon is miles off of our route, and if you think he may be up to something, why-why…"

"Skip him?" Doc gave her a thoughtful look. "Is that what you were going to suggest, Carol?"

"Why not? What could he do about it?"

Doc smiled wryly, almost irritated with her. Leave Beynon holding the sack for his fifteen thousand? A man with his connections who knew as much about them as he did? It was too preposterous to discuss. They were due at his ranch just as quickly as they could get there from Beacon City, and they had damned well better not daily along the way.

"What could he do?" Carol repeated stubbornly. "Why pay him off, if he's going to make trouble anyway?"

"I don't know that he is. If he's planning to, however, and if I can't talk him out of it-" Doc left the sentence unfinished, his shrewd eyes thoughtful behind the obscuring sunglasses.

Beynon hadn't run according to form. What he had done was completely out of character, and having acted in such a way, he must have a motive which did not appear on the surface.

Doc stroked his jaw, shook his head absently.

"How did he add up to you, Carol?" he asked. "I mean, aside from the fact that he's an ambitious man with plenty of uses for money. Did he do or say anything that would indicate why he would go for a deal like this one?"

Carol didn't answer him. Doc was about to repeat the question when he saw that she was asleep.

Doc went to New York the spring that he graduated from high school, a few weeks after his father's death. He was too young to hold political office, and there were no worthwhile jobs in the town. On the other hand, he was convinced,as were his countless friends, that he would be virtually able to pick and choose from the many opportunities available in a large city.

Things didn't work out that way. He had no difficulty in getting jobs, even in those times of economic depression. But he held none of them more than a few weeks. He was a disrupting influence, throwing any establishment he went into out of kilter. Other employees tended to gather around him, leaving their work undone. Minor supervisors coddled and favored him, to the detriment of morale. As an upper-echelon executive, he would have been invaluable to any company. But he qualified neither in years nor experience for anything but the lowliest jobs. And in that capacity he was simply a nuisance.

Working briefly and rarely, he lived largely on credit and small loans. He worried about these obligations (you did not let down your friends, his father had taught him), and he readily acquiesced when a bar owner-creditor offered to wipe the slate clean, and even gift him with a small bonus, in return for a "little favor."

The favor was done; the barkeep collected on his burglary insurance. A few days later he introduced Doc to the proprietor of a floating crap game-a man who needed big money in a hurry and could not depend on gambling to get it. Doc was glad to cooperate with him. He stuck up the game, with some subtle assistance from the proprietor, and they split the proceeds.

Later on, the gambler having introduced him to some «right» boys, Doc stuck up one of his games again, without prearrangement and without splitting. Nor did this in any way violate his father's code about friendship. On the contrary, the elder McCoy had believed that a man's best friend is himself, that a non-friend was anyone who ceased to be useful, and that it was more or less a moral obligation to cash in any persons in this category, whenever it could be done safely and with no chance of a kickback.

Doc was made for crime, the truly big operations which he rapidly moved into. No one could get on the inside of a job as easily as he, no one could plan so shrewdly, no one was so imperturbable and coolheaded.

He liked his work. Beginning a stiff prison sentence at age twenty-five, he still remained loyally committed to it. His take for the last five years had been more than a hundred thousand a year. For that kind of money, a man could afford to sit it out for a while. He could use his enforced leisure to relax, make new contacts, improve his criminal knowledge and plan new jobs.

Doc's ensuing eight years behind bars were entirely comfortable and often highly enjoyable. After all, a prison cannot function without the cooperation of its inmates; it cannot do so satisfactorily at least, or for very long. So a man who can lead his fellow prisoners, who can deliver their cooperation or withhold it, can get almost anything he asks for. And about the only deprivation Doc suffered was the loss of his income.

Given the same circumstances, he could have taken his second and last prison sentence as lightly as he had the first. But the circumstances differed crucially. He was married-and to a woman almost fourteen years his junior. And he was thirty-six years old.

Doc didn't fret about the situation. He never missed a meal, nor a night's sleep, nor spent a moment in futile regret. He had just one problem-to get out before getting out became pointless. Very well then, if that was what had to be done, he would do it.

He had left sixty thousand dollars on the outside with Carol. With that, and a topflight criminal lawyer, he managed to get his twenty-year sentence reduced to ten. It was a long step on the road to freedom; barring upsets, he would qualify for parole in approximately seven years. But that wasn't good enough for Doc. The seven years might as well be seventy as he saw it. And he wanted no more paroles. Trying to operate while on parole was what had put him where he was.