“Oh? Is it loaded?”

“Oh yes indeed. It’s loaded. Five lovely cartridges.” Church cackled again. “A gift for Gus.” He touched a cam. A cylinder snapped out of the side of the gun displaying five chambers filled with brass cartridges. He looked from the cartridges to Reich. “Five serpent’s teeth to give to Gus.”

“I told you this was innocent,” Reich said in a hard voice. “We’ll have to pull those teeth.”

Church stared at him in astonishment, then he trotted down the aisle and returned with two small tools. Quickly he wrenched each of the bullets from the cartridges. He slid the harmless cartridge cases back into the chambers, snapped the cylinder home and then placed the gun alongside the money.

“All safe,” he said brightly. “Safe for dear little Gus.” He looked at Reich expectantly. Reich extended both hands. With one he pushed the money toward Church. With the other he drew the gun toward himself. At that instant, Church changed again. The air of chirpy madness left him. He grasped Reich’s wrists with iron claws and bent across the counter with blazing intensity.

“No, Ben,” he said, using the name for the first time. “That isn’t the price. You know it. Despite that crazy song in your head, I know you know it.”

“All right, Jerry,” Reich said steadily, never relaxing his hold on the gun. “What is the price? How much?”

“I want to be reinstated,” the peeper said. “I want to get back into the Guild. I want to be alive again. That’s the price.”

“What can I do? I’m not a peeper. I don’t belong to the Guild.”

“You’re not helpless, Ben. You’ve got ways and means. You could get to the Guild. You could have me reinstated.”

“Impossible.”

“You can bribe, blackmail, intimidate… bless, dazzle, fascinate. You can do it, Ben. You can do it for me. Help me, Ben. I helped you, once.”

“I paid through the nose for that help.”

“And I? What did I pay?” the peeper screamed. “I paid with my life!”

“You paid with your stupidity.”

“For God’s sake, Ben. Help me. Help me or kill me. I’m dead already. I just haven’t the guts to commit suicide.”

After a pause, Reich said brutally: “I think the best thing for you, Jerry, would be suicide.”

The peeper flung himself back as though he had been branded. In his bruised face his eyes stared glassily at Reich.

“Now tell me the price,” Reich said.

Quite deliberately, Church spat on the money, then levelled a glance of hurtling hatred at Reich. “There will be no charge,” he said, and turned and disappeared into the shadows of the cellar.

4

UNTIL IT WAS DESTROYED for reasons lost in the misty confusion of the late XX^th Century, the Pennsylvania Station in New York City was, unknown to millions of travellers, a link in time. The interior of the giant terminal was a replica of the mighty Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome. So also was the sprawling mansion of Madame Maria Beaumont, known to her thousand most intimate enemies as The Gilt Corpse.