So it was true, then. “Yes,” I said. “But maybe she didn’t make the matter sufficiently clear. It’s quite an emergency. I was hoping—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Foster. We’re undergoing a bit of an emergency ourselves. Nothing too serious, of course—we stand to profit by it considerably—but money is going to be tight a little while. If your business venture could wait, say, three or four weeks—”

“No,” I said, in a dead voice. “I guess it can’t wait. Thanks, Berril. Do the same for you some day.”

I hung up.

That was the way it stood. I had maybe a thousand dollars in my private savings account, no more than that; Helen had always been good for cash when I needed it, so I hadn’t bothered to put much away. Only now Helen wasn’t good for cash.

And I needed twenty grand in six days.

Five days. Four.

Harrison called with three days to go—this time, at the office again. The guy seemed to take a sadistic delight in shattering my nerves.

“Well, Foster? How much cash do you have raised so far?”

“Not a hell of a lot. Go crawl into your hole and leave me alone, Harrison.”

“In three more days,” he said smoothly. “The deadline’s midnight Thursday. When my watch says 12:01, that bundle goes into the mail addressed to the police—and you can take it from there.”

“I’ve got three days. Don’t bother me till then.”

* * *

But the days passed, one, two, three. Time was streaming through my fingertips and I couldn’t hold it back.

Twenty thousand bucks. Helen’s No was final, and Berril backed her up. I thought of all sorts of impossible schemes— forging a check, borrowing the money from a bank, stealing it—but I scrapped them all. There wasn’t one method among them that wouldn’t eventually bring the law down on me, and I didn’t want that.

Then the idea came, and I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it long before. There was one way of solving the problem, simply, cleanly.

I would kill Harrison.

It was logical. If I got to him in time I’d be able to destroy all the evidence, and I’d be home free. If I got caught—well, they can only execute you once. Harrison’s evidence already had me frying for Peggy’s murder; I had nothing to lose and a lot to gain by taking him along with me.

Maybe. There were a million maybes.

On the deadline day I called home and told Helen I wouldn’t be home for dinner.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “Stu came over, and he’s going to be eating with us tonight.”

“Well, the two of you have a grand time,” I told her. “I’ll be home late.”