There was a long silence after his words. The lie detector expected her to hang up. But he heard her cough through the telephone.

"Are you there?"

"Yes."

"I thought you would hang up."

There was laughter through the telephone, a lax, spangled, spiraling laughter. "But you don't practice your profession over the telephone!"

"It's true. Yet you wouldn't have called me if you were innocent. Guilt is the one burden human beings can't bear alone. As soon as a crime is committed, there is a telephone call, or a confession to strangers."

"There was no crime."

"There is only one relief: to confess, to be caught, tried, punished. That's the ideal of every criminal. But it's not quite so simple. Only half of the self wants to atone, to be freed of the torments of guilt. The other half of man wants to continue to be free. So only half of the self surrenders, calling out 'catch me,' while the other half creates obstacles, difficulties; seeks to escape. It's a flirtation with justice. If justice is nimble, it will follow the clue with the criminal's help. If not, the criminal will take care of his own atonement."

"Is that worse?"

"I think so. I think we are more severe judges of our own acts than professional judges. We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts."

She hung up.

The lie detector called up the operator, gave orders to have the call traced. It came from a bar. Half an hour later, he was sitting there.

He did not allow his eyes to roam or examine. He wanted his ears alone to be attentive, that he might recognize the voice.

When she ordered a drink, he lifted his eyes from his newspaper.

Dressed in red and silver, she evoked the sounds and imagery of fire engines as they tore through the streets of New York, alarming the heart with the violent gong of catastrophe; all dressed in red and silver, the tearing red and silver cutting a pathway through the flesh. The first time he looked at her he felt: everything will burn!

Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, "Climb!"

As she appeared, the orderly alignment of the city gave way before this ladder one was invited to climb, standing straight in space like the ladder of Baron Münchhausen which led to the sky.

Only her ladder led to fire.

He looked at her again with a professional frown.