I went back to the rooming house, took another drink, and lay down on the bed, feeling the tension go out of me. I was in. The money was buried, and I hadn’t left a track behind me.

The next day was Saturday, but there wasn’t much business transacted. They might as well have closed the whole town except that there wouldn’t have been any places for people to congregate and rehash the robbery. The place was full of cops. The white-haired Sheriff from the county seat was in town with two of his deputies besides the one who lived here, and there were some more with plainclothes cop written all over them, probably from the detective agency or insurance company. Everybody was wild to get at the remains of the fire and start pawing through it for evidence, but a lot of it was still smouldering and too hot. Special deputies had been sworn in to keep people away from the place. I had a hunch the Sheriff and the detectives had already junked the out-of-town gang idea and were playing it cagey, going through the motions of looking for the getaway car while they waited for somebody to stick his head up or make a slip. That much money would be burning somebody’s pockets and he’d have to start throwing it around. All right, I thought; go ahead. I know about that one too.

All I had to do was keep playing it down the middle. I stuck around the lot and talked robbery with anybody who drifted in. And then Harshaw pulled a funny one on me. Around noon he called me into the office. He was chewing a cold cigar and oiling a big salt-water reel on his desk.

“Sit down,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

I perched on the side of a desk, wondering what was coming. “What’s up?” I asked, as casually as I could.

“I want you to take charge here for a while. My wife and I are going to Galveston for a week.”

“What’s the matter with Gulick?” I asked.

“There’s nothing the matter with Gulick,” he said impatiently. “Except that he’s a little slow and he won’t take responsibility. You can use your own judgment about trades. Do you want it, or don’t you?”

“O.K. with me,” I said. For once I couldn’t start an argument.

“You can run an ad if you want to,” he said. “The paper comes out early in the week.”

“What’ll I use for money? My own?”

He sighed and shook his head. “You’re a tough nut to get along with, Madox. Why in hell would I ask you to pay for the ad out of your pocket? They can send the bill to Miss Harper. Or tell her to give it to you out of petty cash.”

“O.K.,” I said. At least he was taking that over-ripe bundle of sex with him this time.

He finished cleaning the reel and put it in a flannel bag with a drawstring. “Well, if you can’t think of anything else to bitch about, I’ll leave it with you,” he said, starting out the door.

“What are you going after?” I asked.