“You ever walk around alone much?” said Heller.

“I don’t get a chance to, Wister. There are always students. Please leave me alone, Wister. I am going to have my walk in spite of you or anybody else. Go away somewhere and play with your atom bombs!”

A train roared up, the doors opened. She turned her back upon him pointedly and entered a car.

Wister trotted down the train a few cars and, steadying an automatic door before it could close, got aboard. The train sped along.

I was trying to figure out what his angle was. He lived only a couple blocks away from the station they had just left. She was definitely in his road on his way to a diploma. It would be greatly to his benefit if she were disposed of. The Apparatus textbook handling would be to do just that. Had I found a real ally only to lose her?

The shuttle train pulled into Grand Central. Heller had his eye on Miss Simmons, seen through intervening car doors. She got out of the train.

Heller also went out of the door.

Miss Simmons probably did not see him. She was following directions which took her to the Lexington Avenue line. Heller followed at a distance.

She got to the Lexington Avenue IRT uptown platform. Then she walked way on up the platform to where the front end of the train would stop.

She stood there, leaning on her cane, waiting for the next express.

A young man in a red beret walked toward her. Heller started to move forward and then stopped. The young man was a clean-looking youth. He had on a white T-shirt and it said Volunteer Guard Patrol on it.

He spoke to Miss Simmons. “Miss,” he said politely, “you shouldn’t be riding the front cars or the back cars of a train, especially on Sunday. Ride in the center where there are more people. The gangs and muggers are out real heavy today.”

Miss Simmons turned her back on him. “Leave me alone!”

The volunteer guard drifted down the platform. He must have sensed Heller had seen the interplay. He said to Heller as he passed, “Rapes by the trainful and they never learn.”

An express roared in and came to a hissing halt with a roar and clang of doors opening. Miss Simmons got into the first car. Heller stepped in to the middle of the train. The doors slammed shut and they roared away, lurching and banging at high speed.

A tough-looking drunk sized up Heller. Heller took his engineer gloves out of his haversack and put them on. It was an effective gesture. The tough one promptly staggered down the swaying train to the next car back.

White tiles of stations flashed by, one after another. They rode and rode and rode, all at very high speed through the dark tunnels, the sound a pounding roar. At each infrequent stop, Heller would half rise to see if Miss Simmons was alighting, would see that she was not and would then sink back.

After a very long time, the signs on the tunnel poles said:

Miss Simmons got out. Heller waited until the last moment and then got out. Miss Simmons had vanished up a stairs.

Shortly, Heller emerged into daylight. Miss Simmons was striding along northward. He waited a bit. He looked at the sky. It was overcast. Wind was whipping stray bits of paper along roadways.

It was then I realized what he must be doing: he had probably read one of the G-2 manuals, the one about how to tail a Russian spy. He was simply practicing. He had not read any Apparatus manuals and so he would not be well enough trained to know that he should simply murder Miss Simmons. Having accounted for his actions, I felt much easier. Miss Simmons would be quite safe after all and I still had an ally.

Several picnickers were evidently going home, their hair blown about by the wind. Otherwise there was no traffic.

At least two hundred yards behind Miss Simmons, Heller followed along.

She went some distance. A sign pointed:

She turned in that direction, striding along in her heavy laced boots, swinging her cane, the perfect picture of a fashionable hiker in the European style.

She made some more turns. They were well into a kind of wilderness interlaced with infrequent bridle paths.

The wind was rising and trees were bowing. Some belated picnickers fled toward civilization. After that it was a deserted expanse of thickets and trees.

Heller was closer to her now but still thirty yards or more behind. Due to the twists and turns of the trail, he was usually masked from her. She was not looking back.

Ahead was a vale. The path went down into a long hollow and then turned up at the far end. It was a totally hidden area, surrounded by large trees.

Miss Simmons got a third of the way up the far slope. Heller stepped forward to go down the path.

Abruptly, from the undergrowth around her, six men sprang up!

One leaped agilely into the trail in front of her, a ragged white youth.

A black jumped into the trail behind her!

Two Hispanics and two more whites blocked her way to right and left!

Heller started to go down the trail toward them.

A harsh, cold voice said, “Hold it, sonny!”

Heller looked back to his left.

Emerged from a tree but still behind it stood an old gray-faced, unshaven bum. He was holding a double-barrelled shotgun trained on Heller. He was twenty feet away.

Another voice! “Just stop right there, kid!”

Heller looked back and to his right. Another man, a black, was standing there with a revolver pointed at him, thirty feet away. “We been waitin’ all afternoon for a setup like this, kid, so don’t make any sudden moves.”

The man with the shotgun said, “This is one time, sonny, when you don’t get a piece all to yourself. You can have some later, if there’s any left.”

Excited laughter was coming from the men around Miss Simmons. They were jumping up and down.

She struck at them with her stick!

A black grabbed it and yanked it out of her hand!

The others screeched with laughter and the one with the stick started to dance with it, waving it. The others started to dance around Miss Simmons.

Heller shouted in a strong voice, “Please don’t do this!”

The man with the shotgun said, “Take it easy, sonny. It’s just a gang rape. Some fun for a Sunday. Me and Joe is a little too (bleeped) out to do more than watch, so you just get smart and be like us and maybe we won’t have to kill you.”

“What kind of beasts are you on this planet?” shouted Heller.

“You got any money?” said the man with the revolver. “The big H comes high these days.”

The crowd around Miss Simmons was dashing in at her and dancing back. They were herding her into a flatter place more masked by trees. She was shouting at them to leave her alone.

Heller reached toward his haversack. “Hold it, sonny. Keep your hands in sight. This is a twelve-gauge and both barrels loaded in front of hair triggers. We can get his money later, Joe. Jesus,” he said indulgently, “look at those young devils.”

“Only the raving insane do things like that!” said Heller.

“What do you mean, insane?” challenged the man with the revolver. “Pete there taught ’em himself. He really knows his psychology. And every one of those kids got Grade A in psychology. How could they be insane? Jesus, would you look at how hard their (bleepers) are! Great stuff, hey, Pete?”

“Jesus, look at ’em,” chortled Pete.

Heller was backing up, I suddenly realized. Inch by slow inch he had been backing up. He was going to use a standard solution. He was going to run away! He was smarter than I thought.

The half-dozen whooping young men, getting wilder and wilder with excitement, had herded Miss Simmons into the flatter area. A Hispanic leaped in and grabbed off her hat!