Ferguson went. And Douglas casually closed the office door, as if he were about to discuss a minor business matter in private. Though he was looking down at Parnelli, he spoke to Hook.

“So you think you know the whole story?”

“All I need to know.”

“For what?”

“To nail you. All of you.”

Parnelli was beginning to pull himself to his feet. His eyes had cleared and he was staring at Hook in a leaden trance of rage. Watching him, seeing what was to come, Hook felt his mouth go dry. But Douglas stepped in between them and picked up a tomahawk-head paperweight from Mrs. Rubin’s desk.

“Back off,” he told Parnelli. “I mean it, Bo. You touch him and I’ll use this.”

Parnelli did not seem to understand. In bewilderment he looked from Hook to Douglas to the paperweight, all the while holding his coat sleeve up to his nose to blot the blood streaming from it.

“No more muscle,” Douglas said.

“Just let him get away with it?” Bo asked.

“That’s right.”

“But you heard him! You heard what he said.”

Douglas looked at Hook. “I heard. But I don’t know what it means yet. I don’t know what he plans to do. What he can do.”

The door opened again and Ferguson came back in. Beyond him Hook could see the receptionist’s abandoned desk, the locked front door, the darkened room. And it vaguely crossed his mind that he could be in danger, here alone with four persons who would probably wind up in prison because of him. Yet he felt not fear so much as excitement, the heightened sensibility of the hunter finally come upon his quarry.

“I can do enough,” he told him. “And I will. I promise you that. But it’d be easier if you did it yourselves. If you went to the police now, voluntarily.”

Mrs. Rubin told him not to hold his breath.

“I’ll give you tomorrow,” he went on. “I’ll give you all day tomorrow to make up your minds and go to the police. If you don’t, then I’ll do it for you—say by ten the next morning. That means you’ve got forty hours. If you haven’t turned yourselves in by then, I will start with Sergeant Rider. I will tell him the whole thing. I’ll take a polygraph if he’ll let me. I’ll hound him into holding an inquest. And I’ll take the story to the newspapers, in Los Angeles as well as here. And to the bars, every bar in this city. I’ll tell the same story in each of them. A week from now I figure this town will know the truth about my son’s death. And about you. All of you.”

Douglas made no response for a time, just stood there searching the faces of his colleagues. Then, grinning cryptically, he replaced the tomahawk head on the desk and turned to Hook. “I’ve got this sudden urge to have a drink,” he said. “You join me?”