“Yes, Mr. Reich…I will.”

“What? An honest peeper! How about that? Come on. Let’s jet.”

Reich stumbled out of the esplanade with a horrible gait. Chervil followed, overwhelmed by the fury in the man that drove him through injury, through fever, through agony to police headquarters. There, Reich hulled and roared past clerks and guards until the mud-streaked blood-smeared figure burst into Commissioner Crabbe’s elaborate ebony and silver office.

“My God, Reich!” Crabbe was aghast. “It is you, isn’t it? Ben Reich?”

“Sit down, Chervil,” Reich said. He turned to Crabbe. “It’s me. Get a full perspective. I’m half a corpse, Crabbe. The red stuff is blood. The rest is slime. I’ve had a great day… a glorious day… and I want to know where the hell the police have been? Where’s your God Almighty Prefect Powell? Where’s your—”

“Half a corpse? What are you telling me, Ben?”

“I’m telling you that I was almost murdered three times today. This boy…” Reich pointed to Chervil. “This boy just found me in the Inlet Esplanade more dead than alive. Look at me, for Christ’s sake. Look at me!”

“Murdered!” Crabbe thumped his desk emphatically. “Of course. That Powell is a fool. I should never have listened to him. The man who killed D’Courtney is trying to kill you.”

Behind his back, Reich motioned savagely to Chervil.

“I told Powell you were innocent. He wouldn’t listen to me,” Crabbe said. “Even when that infernal adding machine in the District Attorney’s office told him you were innocent, he wouldn’t listen.”

“The machine said I was innocent?”

“Of course it did. There’s no case against you. There never was a case against you. And by the sacred Bill of Rights, you’ll have the protection from the murderer that any honest law-abiding citizen deserves. I’ll see to that at once,” Crabbe strode to the door. “And I think this is all I’ll need to settle Mr. Powell’s hash for good! Don’t go, Ben. I want to talk to you about your support for the Solar Senatorship…”

The door opened and slammed. Reich reeled and fought his way back to the world. He looked at three Chervils. “Well?” he muttered. “Well?”

“He’s telling the truth, Mr. Reich.”

“About me? About Powell?”

“Well…” Chervil paused judiciously, weighing the truth.

“Jet, you bastard,” Reich groaned. “How long do you think I can keep my fuses from blowing.”

“He’s telling the truth about you,” Chervil said quickly. “The Prosecution Computer has declined to authorize any action against you for the D’Courtney murder. Mr. Powell has been forced to abandon the case and… well… his career is very much in jeopardy.”

“Is that true!” Reich staggered to the boy and seized his shoulders. “Is that true, Chervil? I’ve been cleared? I can go about my business? No one’s going to bother me?”

“You’ve been dropped, Mr. Reich. You can go about your business. No one’s going to bother you.”

Reich burst into a roar of triumphant laughter. The pain of his bruised and broken body made him groan as he laughed, and his eyes smarted with tears. He pulled himself up, brushed past Chervil and left the Commissioner’s office. He was more a Neanderthal vestige as he paraded down headquarters’ corridors streaked with blood and mud, laughing and groaning, bearing himself with limping arrogance. He needed a stag’s carcass on his shoulders or a cave bear borne in triumph behind him to complete the picture.