Why don’t you go ahead and build a fence around the place to keep people from finding out you’ve got cars in here? They keep sneaking in.”

“So you sell three cars, and now you’re going to tell me how to run the place?”

“I don’t care what you do with it,” I said, and walked out of the office. I had to relax. At this rate I’d blow my top before noon. A Negro boy came in and stood around with his hands in his pockets looking at the cars the way they always do. You get the impression they’re waiting for something, but you don’t know what—maybe for prices to come down or cotton to go up.

Suppose I lost my head? I thought.

I went over and gave him sales talk you’d use on an oil man looking for Cadillacs for three of his girl friends. Or at least I think it was all right. He seemed to like it. I didn’t hear a word I was saying.

You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you.

“How much the down payment?” he asked. That was all they ever wanted to know. You could sell Fords for eight thousand dollars if you’d let them go for five dollars down.

Somehow ten o’clock came and went. I walked over to the restaurant and had a cup of coffee. It was hard to sit still now, or stand still, or think straight about anything. At 11:45 Gulick went to get his lunch. Suppose he didn’t get back in time? Harshaw would leave anyway. It would look funny if I ran off and left the place completely unattended. I prowled around the lot, trying not to look at my watch. At 12:20 he came back and Harshaw left. Then it was 12:25. I stood behind a car, looking at the watch, waiting. It was 12:30.

And nothing happened. There was no noise, no siren, nothing. The streets were as quiet as any weekday noon. It was 12:35, 12:40. It hadn’t gone off. Somebody had found it. The whole thing had failed. And I couldn’t try it again, if somebody had found that one. Was I glad, now that the pressure was off? I didn’t know.

Then it came. The siren tore its way up through the noonday hush, growing louder and higher, screaming.