The old man stood poised between rooms. “You gonna want to send me to that meeting tonight?” he said. “Or what?”

“Meeting?”

“Yeah, you know, that fella—he’s holding some kind of a thing in front of the courthouse, seven o’clock. Don’t know what it’s about.”

Tom reached for his cigarette. He stubbed it out against the side of the metal wastebasket, took a breath.

“Well,” he said, slowly, “it probably won’t amount to a damn thing. But I don’t have much to do tonight. I’ll cover it myself.”

10

10

When the bell in the steeple rang to mark the half hour that had passed since six p.m., Caxton wore the same tired face that it always wore in the summer. The heat of the afternoon throbbed on. Cars moved up and down George Street like painted turtles, and the people moved slowly, too: all afraid of the motion that would send the perspiration coursing, the heart flying.

Adam Cramer sat in the far booth at Joan’s Cafe, feeling grateful for the heat, trying to eat the soggy ham sandwich he had ordered. He knew the effect of heat on the emotions of people: Summer had a magic to it, a magic way of frying the nerve ends, boiling the blood, drying the brain. Perhaps it made no sense logically but it was true, nonetheless. Crimes of violence occurred with far greater frequency in hot climates than in cold. You would find more murders, more robberies, more kidnapings, more unrest in the summer than at any other time.

It was the season of mischief, the season of slow movements and sudden explosions, the season of violence.

Adam looked out at the street, then at the thermometer that hung behind the cash register. He could see the line of red reaching almost to the top.

How would The Man on Horseback have fared, he wondered, if it had been twenty below zero?

How would Gerald L. K. go over in Alaska?

He pulled his sweat-stained shirt away from his body and smiled. Even the weather was helping him!

He forced the last of the sandwich down, slid a quarter beneath the plate, and paid for his meal; then he went outside.

It was a furnace.

A dark, quiet furnace.

He started for the courthouse, regretting only that Max Blake could not be here. Seeing his old teacher in the crowd, those dark eyes snapping with angry pleasure, that cynical mouth twitching at the edges—damn!

Well, I’ll write you about it, he thought. That’ll be almost as good.

The picture of the man who had set his mind free blurred and vanished and Adam walked faster.