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"Gee, time sure does fly, don't it?"

"Sure does. Well, Ben, what's on your mind?"

"Who's the new chief?"

"Search me."

"O.K., stand up."

"...What?"

"I say come over here and back up. I might be able to find a card or a letter or something with the name of Cantrell on it."

Mr. Cantrell smiled the smile of one who wants to be polite in the presence of the feeble-minded. "No, Ben, sometime your number's up and sometime it's not. For the next four years I imagine I got outside position."

"Suppose they disqualified the winner, the place horse, the show horse, and the horse that was trailing them, and you saw your number going up to the top—what then?"

"They don't often do that."

"Not in a straight race."

"I figure this one's not fixed—for me, anyway."

"Suppose you're wrong."

"It's too hot for supposing. What you want, Ben?"

"Take your feet off that desk."

"...Says who?"

"You think I came in here to crack jokes?"

There was quite a change in Ben's manner since the last time Mr. Cantrell had seen him. Then he had been a face in the shadows of Sol's big room, grinning appreciation of barbers, blondes, and cops; now he was callous, calm, and cold. How much of this was real, how much was an imitation of Caspar, and how much was play-acting, to bring Cantrell to heel, it would be hard to say. Possibly it involved all three, and yet it wasn't all bluff. Ben evidently felt a great sense of power, an intoxicating sense of power. He lit a cigarette, walked over, dropped it into the constabular ashtray, and stood looking at Mr. Cantrell's feet, as though they were almost more than his patience could endure.

Mr. Cantrell stared for some time, then said: "If my feet bother you, Ben, I can take them down. I can treat you with courtesy, or hope I can. But I don't take them down, for you or anybody, or any such say-so as that."

"If you don't mind, Joe. I ought to have said that."

"That's a whole lot better."

"You ready to suppose?"

"That all depends, and I got to know a lot more about it first. But you can get this straight, right now: I don't take anything, off you or anybody. I didn't even take it off Caspar. You did, Ben, but I didn't."

At this reminder of the lowly role he had played, Ben's eyes flickered. Obviously he would have liked to let the thing rest there, to let Mr. Cantrell have his dignity, to get on with the deal. It would be less trouble that way, and he hated trouble. But something must have told him this was really a test of strength, that if he weakened now, he couldn't handle this man, even if he bagged him. He smiled pityingly. "So you never took it off Caspar, hey? It's a good thing he's not here to hear you say that. Now you know and I know and we all know that if you stuck around Caspar you took it or you didn't stick. I notice you were there, right up to the last whistle blow, and that means you took it. So that's what you're doing now."

His big halfback's paw hit Mr. Cantrell's feet, which were still on the desk, and Mr. Cantrell's feet hit the deck. Mr. Cantrell came up standing, then walked around the desk, and the two men faced each other malevolently. Then Mr. Cantrell's face wrinkled into a grin, and he nudged Ben in the ribs. "Hey, Ben, you forgot something."

"Yeah, and what's that?"

"It's not the heat makes me like this, it's—"

"The humidity?"

"Right!"

Both roared at this sally, in a room-shaking, tension-easing laugh, and Mr. Cantrell felt in Ben's pockets for a cigarette. "Were we supposing, Ben?"

"That's it, copper."

"Go on, tell me some more."

"If you want to be Chief, I might swing it."

"You in person?"

"Yeah, me."

"You and Jansen; I didn't know you were that thick."

"We're not."

"O.K., just getting it straight."

"Just the same, I can swing it."

"Keep right on."

"Of course, you got to sell him. You got to convince him that you, or any cop, can clean this town up in twenty-four hours, providing one thing."

"Which is?"

"You get a free hand."

"And then?"

"Surprise, copper, surprise! Then you clean it."

"A clean tooth don't grow much fat."

"You follow the chickens?"