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“What’s that for?” I whispered to Hackleman.

“Sending for final instructions from God,” said Hackleman.

“What’d he get sent to prison for?”

“Ran the numbers in town for a while, and had about twenty people killed so he could keep his franchise. So they put him away for five years for not paying his income taxes.”

“Lights ready?” bawled Gribbon, standing on a porch, his arms upraised, commanding a miracle.

“Lights ready,” said a voice in the shrubbery.

“Sound ready?”

“Sound ready, sir.”

“Balloon ready?”

“Balloon aloft, sir.”

“Let ’er go!” cried Gribbon.

Demons shrieked from the treetops.

Suns exploded.

Hackleman and I cowered, instinctively threw our arms across our faces.

We uncovered our eyes slowly, fearfully, and saw stretching before us, in blinding, garish light, a life-sized nativity scene. Loudspeakers on every side blared earsplitting carols. Plaster cattle and sheep were everywhere, wagging their heads, while shepherds raised and lowered their right arms like railroad-crossing gates, jerkily pointing into the sky.

The Virgin Mary and Joseph looked down sweetly on the child in the manger, while mechanical angels flapped their wings and mechanical wise men bobbed up and down like pistons.

“Look!” cried Hackleman above the din, pointing where the shepherds pointed, where the balloon had disappeared into the sky.

There, over the salmon-pink palace of Mad Dog Gribbon, hung in the Christmas heavens from a bag of gas, shone an imitation of the star of Bethlehem.

Suddenly, all was black and still again. My mind was numb. Hackleman stared blankly at the place where the star had been, speechless.

Gribbon trotted toward us. “Anything else in town that can touch it?” he panted proudly.

“Nope,” said Hackleman bleakly.

“Think it’ll win?”

“Yup,” murmured Hackleman. “Unless somebody’s got an atomic explosion in the form of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.”

“People will come from miles around to see it,” said Gribbon. “Just tell ’em in the newspaper story to follow the star.”

“Listen, Gribbon,” said Hackleman, “you know there isn’t any money that goes with the first prize, don’t you? Nothing but a lousy little scroll worth maybe a buck.”

Gribbon looked offended. “Of course,” he said. “This is a public service, Hackleman.”

Hackleman grunted. “Come on, kid, let’s call it a night, eh?”

It was a real break, our finding the certain winner of the contest a week before the judging was to take place. It meant that the judges and assistants like myself could spend most of Christmas Eve with our families, instead of riding around town for hours, trying to decide which was the best of twenty or so equally good entries. All we had to do now was to drive to Gribbon’s mansion, be blinded and deafened, shake his hand and give him his scroll, and return home in time to trim the tree, fill the stocking, and put away several rounds of eggnog.

As thoughts of Christmas made Hackleman’s neurotic staff gentle and sentimental, and the preposterous rumor that he had a heart of gold gained wide circulation, Hackleman behaved in typical holiday fashion, declaring that heads were going to roll because Mad Dog Gribbon had been out of prison and back in town for a year without a single reporter’s finding out about it.

“By God,” he said, “I’m going to have to go out on the street again, or the paper’ll fold up for want of news.” And, during the next two days, the paper would have done just that, if it hadn’t been for news from the wire services, because Hackleman sent out almost everybody to find out what Gribbon was up to.

Desperate as Hackleman made us, we couldn’t find a hint of skulduggery in Gribbon’s life since he’d left prison. The only conclusion to draw was that crime paid so well that Gribbon could retire in his early forties, and live luxuriously and lawfully for the rest of his days.

“His money really does come from stocks and bonds,” I told Hackleman wearily at the end of the second day. “And he pays his taxes like a good boy,