Rupe was thin, swarthy, and mean-looking, the one you’d always expect to find at the bottom of it any time there was trouble reported in a bar, but he appeared normal enough otherwise. The other was a big man with thinning red-hair and a rugged slab of a face that could probably be tough but wasn’t vicious or depraved. He wore oil-stained khaki, and had black-rimmed fingernails as if he were a mechanic.

Asking any questions was futile. It had been way over two hours to begin with, and the air of coldness and suspicion the place was saturated with told me I’d get no answers anyway. I pushed back the beer and started to get up.

“I thought you said you was a stranger around here.” It was Rupe. I scooped up my change. “That’s right.”

“You must know somebody. You just made a phone call.”

“So I did.”

“Without looking up the number.”

“You don’t mind?” I asked.

“Where you staying here?”

I turned and looked at him coldly. “Across the street. Why?”

“I thought so.”

Ollie put down the glass he was polishing. “You leaving?” he asked me.

“I’d started to,” I said.

“Maybe you’d better.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Simple economics, friend. He’s a regular customer.”

“Okay,” I said. “But if he’s that valuable, maybe you’d better keep him tied up till I get out.”

Rupe started to slide off his stool, and the big redhead eyed me speculatively. “Knock it off,” Ollie said quietly to the two of them, and then jerked his head at me. I don’t want to have to call the cops.”

“Right,” I said. I dropped the change in my pocket, and went out through the lunch-room. The whole thing was petty and stupid, but I had a feeling it was only a hint of what was submerged here, like the surface uneasiness of water where the big tide-rips ran deep and powerful far below, or the sullen smoldering of a fire that was only waiting to break out. I wondered why the feeling against her was so bitter. They seemed convinced she was involved in the murder of her husband; but if there were any evidence in that direction, why hadn’t she been arrested and tried?

I crossed the highway in the leaden heat of late afternoon, and again was struck by the bleak aspect of the motel grounds as they would appear to the traveler who was considering turning in. The place was going to ruin. Why didn’t she have it landscaped, or sell out? I shrugged. Why didn’t I mind my own business?

She was in the office, making entries in a couple of big ledgers opened on the desk. She looked up at me with a faint smile, and said, “Paper work.” I was conscious of thinking she was prettier than I had considered her at first, that there was something definitely arresting about the contrast of creamy pallor against the rubber-mahogany gleam of her hair. Some faces were like that, I thought; they revealed themselves to you a little at a time rather than springing at you all at once. Her hands were slender and unutterably feminine, moving gracefully through the confusion of papers.

I stopped inside the door and lit a cigarette. “He called from the booth in the Silver King,” I said.

She glanced up, startled, and I realized I had probably only made it worse by telling her he had been that near. “How do you know?” she asked. “I mean, have you been—?”

I nodded. “The fan.