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'Shooter?'

Silence.

'Shooter, are you still there?'

More silence. He was gone.

Mort let the telephone sag away from his ear. He was returning it to the cradle when Shooter's voice, tinny and distant and almost lost, said:

. . now?'

Mort put the phone back to his ear. It seemed to weigh eight hundred pounds. 'What?' he asked. 'I thought you were gone.'

'You have it? You have this so-called magazine? Now?' He thought Shooter sounded upset for the first time. Upset and unsure.

'No,' Mort said.

'Well, there!' Shooter said, sounding relieved. 'I think you might finally be ready to talk turk -'

'It's coming Federal Express,' Mort interrupted. 'It will be at the post office by ten tomorrow.'

'What will be?' Shooter asked. 'Some fuzzy old thing that's supposed to be a copy?'

'No,' Mort said. The feeling that he had rocked the man, that he had actually gotten past his defenses and hit him hard enough to make it hurt, was strong and undeniable. For a moment or two Shooter had sounded almost afraid, and Mort was angrily glad. 'The magazine. The actual magazine.'

There was another long pause, but this time Mort kept the telephone screwed tightly against his ear. Shooter was there. And suddenly the story was the central issue again, the story and the accusation of plagiarism; Shooter treating him like he was a goddam college kid was the issue, and maybe the man was on the run at last.

Once, in the same parochial school where Mort had learned the trick of swallowing crooked, he had seen a boy stick a pin in a beetle which had been trundling across his desk. The beetle had been caught - pinned, wriggling, and dying. At the time, Mort had been sad and horrified. Now he understood. Now he only wanted to do the same thing to this man. This crazy man.

'There can't be any magazine,' Shooter said finally. 'Not with that story in it. That story is mine!'

Mort could hear anguish in the man's voice. Real anguish. It made him glad. The pin was in Shooter. He was wriggling around on it.

'It'll be here at ten tomorrow,' Mort said, 'or as soon after as FedEx drops the Tashmore stuff. I'll be happy to meet you there. You can take a look. As long a look as you want, you goddamned maniac.'

'Not there,' Shooter said after another pause. 'At your house.'

'Forget it. When I show you that issue of Ellery Queen, I want to be someplace where I can yell for help if you go apeshit.'

'You'll do it my way,' Shooter said. He sounded a little more in control ... but Mort did not believe Shooter had even half the control he'd had previously. 'If you don't, I'll see you in the Maine State Prison for murder.'

'Don't make me laugh.' But Mort felt his bowels begin to knot up again.

'I hooked you to those two men in more ways than you know,' Shooter said, 'and you have told a right smart of lies. If I just disappear, Mr Rainey, you are going to find yourself standing with your head in a noose and your feet in Crisco.'

'You don't scare me.'

'Yeah, I do,' Shooter said. He spoke almost gently. 'The only thing is. you're startin to scare me a little, too. I can't quite figure you out.'

Mort was silent.

'It'd be funny,' Shooter said in a strange, ruminating tone. 'if we had come by the same story in two different places, at two different times.'

'The thought had occurred to me.'

'Did it?'

'I dismissed it,' Mort said. 'Too much of a coincidence. If it was just the same plot, that would be one thing. But the same language? The same goddam diction?'

'Uh-huh,' Shooter said. 'I thought the same thing, pilgrim. It's just too much. Coincidence is out. You stole it from me, all right, but I'm goddamned if I can figure out how or when.'

'Oh, quit it!' Mort burst out. 'I have the magazine! I have proof! Don't you understand that? It's over! Whether it was some nutty game on your part or just a delusion, it is over! I have the magazine!'

After a long silence, Shooter said: 'Not yet, you don't.'

'How true,' Mort said. He felt a sudden