The truck rolled off. Twenty minutes before, a December storm in the southland had broken with a freezing wind and an icy deluge. Using a stick he had cut in the woods as an emergency cane, the captain stepped out swiftly toward the smell of the diner, strong on the breeze through the pouring rain.

He was miserable, and strung as taut as an overtuned wire. A long-distance call from Philip Barstow, the state’s attorney, had brought the captain without Schnucke, his Seeing-Eye dog, from New York to Red Platte that morning by plane. They’d driven thirty miles out to Barstow’s one-room hunting cabin, and hunted quail all day. Barstow was one of the captain’s oldest friends, and he was never surprised at Maclain’s ability to knock down three out of five singles, shooting merely at the sound.

There had been trouble and graft in the State Police, according to Phil Barstow, and the Crime Commission had started a probe on four recent unsolved shootings and on the unrestrained gambling in the vicinity. Colonel William Yerkes, in charge of the State Police, had finally asked Barstow to call in Duncan Maclain. A blind man interested in criminology, looking over the workings of the department, could accomplish more than any sighted investigator, in Yerkes’s estimation.

Then, sitting over highballs after dinner in the hunting camp, Phil Barstow had toppled out of his chair, seized with a sudden heart attack just as he started to explain. He had given the captain Yerkes’s private telephone number, 3-2111, and that was about all.

It was the start of a vivid grueling nightmare for Duncan Maclain. He had made Phil Barstow as comfortable as he could, and then left the camp in a panic. Working with his braille hunting-case compass, and following the sand woods-road with a foot in one six-inch deep rut, he had by some miracle of direction made the state road, 17-E, by 11:30.

His cigarettes, holder, and lighter were on the table when Barstow fell. His wallet, with identification card and money, was in a pocket of his hunting jacket hanging on the cabin wall. A search of his hunting pants and the pockets of the ancient woollen shirt he wore rewarded him with a badly rumpled handkerchief and a single dime. That, at least, was a break, for when he reached a phone he could make his call.

Exactly ninety-six steps from the truck his improvised cane struck an artificial hedge in front of the diner. The captain found an opening a little to his right, took two steps up, and briefly stood listening before he went in.