“Why? she cried out. “Why are you doing this to me?”

I nodded, and went on listening. The soft and whispered laugh was like something crawling across your bare flesh in a swamp. “Because we’ve got a secret, honey. We know you killed him, don’t we?”

I frowned. That wasn’t part of the usual pattern. The whisper continued. “We know, don’t we, honey? I like that. I like to think about just the two of us—” He repeated some of the things he liked to think. He had a great imagination, with things crawling in it. Then, suddenly, there was a brief punctuation mark of some other kind of sound in the background, and the line abruptly went dead. He had hung up. But maybe not soon enough, I thought.

I replaced the receiver and looked down at the bowed head. “It’s all right,” I said. “They’re usually harmless.”

She raised her face then, but uttered no sound.

“How long has he been doing it?” I asked.

“A long—” she whispered raggedly. “Long—” She collapsed.

I whirled round the end of the desk and caught her. Carrying her out, I placed her gently on the floor on one of the rugs. She was very light, far too light for a girl as tall as she was. I stood up and called out “Josie!” and then looked back down at her, at the extreme pallor of the slender face and the darkness of the lashes against it, and wondered how long she had been running along the ragged edge of a breakdown.

Josie pushed through the curtains and looked questioningly at me.

“Have you got any whisky?” I asked.

“Whisky? No, sir, we ain’t got none—” She had taken another step nearer the desk, and now she could see Mrs. Langston on the floor. “Oh, good Lawd in Heaven—”

“Shut up,” I said. “Bring me a glass. And a damp cloth.”

I hurried out and brought in the two-suiter bag from the station wagon. There was a bottle in it. Josie came waddling back through the curtains. I poured some whisky into the glass, and knelt beside Mrs. Langston to bathe her face with the wet wash-cloth.

“You reckon she goin’ to be all right?” Josie asked anxiously.

“Of course,” I said. “She’s just fainted.” I felt her pulse. It was steady enough.

“Ain’t you goin” to give her the whisky?”

“Not till she can swallow it,” I said impatiently. “You want to strangle her? Where’s her husband?”

“Husband?”

“Mr.