He sat on the bunk in the cell and absorbed the experience, relishing, in order, the faraway sounds of conversation (muffled, as though coming from midgets and dwarfs), the metal smells and dirt smells and the stale, leftover, unidentifiable smells; the gray door and green walls and actual real-life bars; relishing the role of the revolutionary jailed for his patriotic fervor. Thus it had been (exactly!) with De Valera and Paine and, yes, Dostoevski and Seneca . . .

They also had sat in tiny cryptlike rooms, trapped by the unjust many, punished for their courage and their wisdom.

Yes!

Of course, it hadn’t been difficult to read the poor sheriff. Any one of a dozen possible approaches would have sufficed, probably the best being a shocked reaction followed by a nicely humble statement of his whereabouts at the time of the blast (“I was watching a mystery on television, sir. Mrs. Pearl Lambert and I do that quite a lot. She was with me. You can ask her, if you’d like. But—gosh, I just can’t believe what you say!”) and a sincere expression of faith in the sheriff’s ability to round up the culprit.

Instead, he’d called him a strutting martinet with a power complex and warned him that if he didn’t get out of the room in a hurry, he’d have a lot to answer for.

The alibi stuck, but Rudy Parkhouse had had his pride wounded; so he’d booked Cramer on the charge of inciting to riot.

Which was fine.

Adam dropped the cigarette and squashed it with his heel. He prepared to lie down on the bunk when the heavy steel door opened.

“All right, Rudy. You can leave us alone.”

“Ten minutes,” the sheriff said. “That’s the limit.”

“All right, Rudy.”

Verne Shipman waited until the door was locked again; then he walked over and sat down on the bunk.

Adam smiled. “How are you, Verne?” he said, putting out his hand.

Shipman avoided it. “I might as well tell you right off the bat,” he said, “that I don’t cotton to any of this. I figured you were smart. I strung along with you because that’s what I figured. Now I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Oh?”

Shipman gestured about the cell. “Smart people don’t end up here,” he said.

Adam got up from the bunk and walked to a corner of the cell. He looked outside and smiled even more broadly. “But I’m not ‘ending up’ here, Verne. This is only a little visit.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. The way you smarted off to Rudy, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. He told me what you said. With an alibi like that Lambert woman, you could have kept out of here easy!”

“I know that.”

Shipman stared.

“Look, Verne,” Adam said, “it’s a little difficult to explain, but this is actually a vital part of the operation. It’s a big step forward.”

“Getting tossed in jail is a step forward?”