He was stalling, she saw. She looked up at him. The heavy, sweating face was like a mask hung in the sky above her, denying her, shutting her away from escape.

She tried to think of some way to convince him he should take her, to force some hint of invitation and knowingness into her eyes so that he might be attracted to her, but she was too inexpert and too unsophisticated to bring it off. She could not summon any coaxing remarks. She looked up at him mutely.

“You really got to go?” he asked softly.

She nodded.

His hand dropped to the door latch, and the wide door swung out and for a moment she saw the wide padded leather seat and his thick legs and his booted foot on the brake pedal. “Get in,” he said.

She took a single step on the gravelly shoulder of the road, and then wordlessly she turned and, running, almost falling, she went headlong back the way she had come.

Skip awoke and looked around the hotel room. He felt good, in spite of the long hours at the crap tables the night before, plus the drinking he had done after midnight in order to stay awake. He rolled over, took the phone off the cradle, asked the desk for the time. It was a quarter past ten. Skip asked to be transferred to room service, requested a shot of Scotch, coffee, and tomato juice sent up at once.

He crawled out of bed, inspected the roll in his pants pocket. He had over seven hundred in tens, twenties, and fifties. The remainder of the money he’d found in the Havermann house was still intact. After some thought he took an envelope and paper from the writing desk across the room, wrapped the Havermann money into the writing sheet and sealed it in the envelope, wrote his name across the envelope; and when the boy came with the whiskey, coffee, and juice, Skip tipped him two dollars and asked that he turn the envelope over to the desk with instructions to lock it in the safe.

Skip then lay in bed and enjoyed his breakfast.

He made plans for the day. Blackjack first. He used to be pretty good at it. An old con in the road camp had showed him a trick or two. But while Skip was dressing he became displeased with his clothes. Hell, they were rags. He postponed the gambling until he had bought a new suit, shirt, shoes, and tie. Then he hit the blackjack tables, three clubs one after the other, and by ten minutes to two he was broke. He went back to the hotel and requested his envelope from the safe.

He thought that the clerk handed it over with a glance of cynical amusement, knowing what was inside, thinking of the sucker being peeled of his money, and inwardly Skip cursed and raged.