He started to take out cigarettes and matches, and then with a muttered “Oh, what the hell,” went to the foot of the bed and flipped up the other end of the mattress and for a moment felt a great leaping shock of joy. There was a white-wrapped bundle there, not big; it could be a part of the money. Skip dropped the cigarette in his fingers. His hands were shaking. But then the moment he touched the wrapped object he knew it wasn’t bills.

He undid the white cloth, which turned out to be a pillow slip. Inside was a gun. It was quite small and flat with an extremely short barrel. It looked like a toy. Skip had trouble breaking the cartridge clip loose. But when he had it out, it proved to be full of neat little bullets.

For a moment he was so taken with the tiny, deadly-looking gun that he almost forgot the money. He lined up the sights, squinting at himself in Stolz’s mirror across the room.

“Neat,” he said, examining the weapon. “Real neat.”

He put it into his pocket and then couldn’t leave it there. He took it out again and kept it in his hand while he looked over the rest of the room. He found nothing, and everywhere he searched, he and Karen and Eddie had searched before.

He stood in the middle of the floor, thinking. He couldn’t understand why Big Tom and his friends hadn’t shown up, and then he remembered the way the house had looked, all lit up, when they had seen it across the vacant lots. To Big Tom and his friends the effect would have been the same as if the place had been on fire. Skip grinned to himself. Well, leaving the lights on had been smart . . . for a time. But now it was better to turn them out. Somebody besides Big Tom might take notice. Skip clicked off Stolz’s light as he went out, circled back to the kitchen, doused the lights there, then clicked off all but one in the lower hall. He darkened the rooms where Eddie had searched and then went softly up the stairs.

He felt funny about going up here, so near the dead woman, but he wanted one more glance around. He had the gun in his hand; he liked the feel of it, the compact deadly weight of it, like a pair of brass knucks that spit fire. He passed close to Mrs. Havermann’s door, and then from within the room he heard a slight noise.

The dog? Skip froze to listen. No, the dog was still down the hall, yapping and bumping around, nowhere near Mrs. Havermann’s bedroom.

Mrs. Havermann . . . Hell, she wasn’t dead then! She’d revived somehow. What was she doing in there?