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"So?"

"He's taking steps."

"Where is Delany?"

"He's in Chicago, but he'll come back."

"If coaxed?"

"On proper inducements, he'll come."

"Where's Rossi?"

"I don't exactly know."

Lefty stared vacantly at the hat stand across the room, laid the toothpick in an ashtray. "So it'll be an O.K. war, if that's getting us anywheres, and Solly, of course, he'll be nice and happy. Just the same, it's not Delany."

"Then who is it?"

"I figured it might be you."

As Lefty turned his cold, vacant stare full on Ben's face, Ben lit a cigarette. He let the match burn for a moment, and from the interested way he looked at it, one might wonder if he was testing, to know if his hand was trembling. When there was not the slightest flicker, he blew the match out, and asked languidly: "You tell Sol that?"

"Yeah."

"What'd he say?"

"He didn't believe it."

"But you, my old pal, you believe it, don't you?"

"Listen, Ben, I'm your pal, but this ain't the candy business. In this racket you can't take chances, and if you're crossing us, the pal stuff is out. Couple of things look pretty funny to me. If there was a couple of sharpshooters with Jansen the other night, both pals of Delany, why didn't you know it? Seemed a little off the groove that Solly had to find that out. And why would Delany start something? He's sitting pretty. On the bookies he gets his cut and it's not hay. He's got a nice daily double and he don't even have to stay here and watch it. Why would he bust it up?"

"And that leaves me, hey?"

"It could."

"Nuts."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Lefty, you're playing it safe, you got to do that. You got to

feed me a lead and watch my face, just like I'd do for you, just like all pals got to do to each other in this swell business we're in. But you don't really think it's me. If you did you'd just rub me out and that would be that. Even if you halfway thought it was me, you'd have fed me a phoney just now, on where you're keeping Arch Rossi, and then if I ran to her with it you'd have me. When you didn't do at least that much I know you're not really bearing down."

"O.K., Ben. But it's somebody, and I'm worried."

"I'm a little worried myself."

"Then we're both worried."

"Pals?"

"Two beers, and they're on you."

Around nine, when Ben went back to his hotel, the day clerk said a lady had called, twice. He went to his room and dialed June, getting no answer. In five minutes his house phone rang, and when June spoke he gave her the number of his outside phone. Only when she had called him on this did he let her go ahead. "Something's happened, Ben."

"O.K., give."

"It's the boy that took Rossi out of the Globe."

"And what about him?"

"He showed up at Jansen's about an hour ago, and Jansen called me. I wouldn't let them come to my apartment, but I met them outside, and—I don't know what to do with him. He's been wandering around all night, and he's afraid to go home, for fear he'll be killed, and he can't go to the police, because they're hand-in-glove with Caspar, and—"

"Where are you now?"

"In a drug store, and he and Jansen are outside—"

"Don't say who I am, but get him to the phone."

In a few moments the boy was on the line, and Ben talked with the stern tone of a Governor, or at the very least of a prosecuting attorney. "What's your name?"

"Herndon, sir. Bob Herndon."

"And what's this about Arch Rossi?"

"Nothing, sir. I swear I never knew he was mixed up in the Castleton robbery. Me and Arch, we went to school together, and we was buddies. Then I didn't see him for a while, and then yesterday he called me, over at the Jardine stables, where I work for Mr. Delany."

"Bill Delany or Dick Delany?"

"Mr. Bill, sir."

"What do you do for him?"

"I take care of his horses, sir, all six of his polo ponies and his two thoroughbred mares. Of course I got to get help exercising them, but—"

"O.K., so Arch Rossi called you?"

"Yes sir, he said he'd been hurt in a car accident, and he was in Room 38 at the Globe, and would I call a taxi and come