“All right, I’ll tell you. It’s more than just pulling the oars. It’s sorta like pumping the machinery. Up here,” and he pointed to his head. “The faster I move that boat, the better I can think,” Grogan said. “I mean real thinking. With real thinking it’s just the brain that’s talking, there ain’t no interference from the muscles and the glands and the nerves. Or what they call the feelings.”

“You mean when you’re rowing you don’t feel nothing?”

“That about tells it,” Grogan said. “When it comes to real thinking, it’s gotta be arithmetic and nothing else. If the feelings interfere, it ain’t thinking no more; it’s just worriment and the blues and a lotta confusion. You follow that?”

Corey nodded slowly.

Grogan said, “I’m rowing on that river, the numbers start to add, and sooner or later I get the total. Like today.”

The car pulled over to the side of the highway. Grogan switched off the engine. He looked at Corey Bradford in silence. Then Grogan murmured, “I’m waiting, Corey.”

“For what? I told you everything.”

“You sure?”

“All right, let’s check it. I told you about City Hall. And the party I had with Macy and Lattimore. And that’s it. That’s the full report.”

“For last night only,” Grogan said. He let a pause drift in. And then, “What about today?”

“Whaddya mean, today?”

“In my house. While I was upstairs. And you were downstairs. With her.”

There was a long pause.

Grogan said, “Here’s how it adds. I come downstairs and she’s sitting on the sofa. You’re on the other side of the room. In the armchair. Now back to her again. She’s got something in her lap. It’s a picture magazine. It didn’t hit me then, but when I’m rowing on the river I get to thinking about it.”

Corey’s eyebrows went up slightly. He wondered if he looked relaxed. He was trying very hard to appear relaxed.

“I get to thinking she’s a fussy reader,” Grogan said. “She don’t go in for picture magazines. Always complains when I bring one home. Says it’s just a lotta trash.”

“So?”

“So the magazine was in her lap and it was open. That means she was reading it. But she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses.”

Corey grimaced, puzzled.

Grogan said, “She never reads without her reading glasses.”

“So what?” Corey mumbled. “What are you giving me here?”

“I’m telling you what you already know,” Grogan said. “She was bluffing. She wasn’t reading no picture magazine while I was upstairs. And while I was upstairs there wasn’t no twelve feet of carpet between you and her.”

Corey gazed past Grogan and smiled lazily. He said, “You putting me on the grill?”

“Without grease. Now let’s have it.”