Hook told him he was not the only one who had made plans. “Mine, for instance, was to work with my sons. Make our farm grow. Turn it over to them someday.”

Douglas nodded ruefully. “Of course. That’s life. The best laid plans and all that.”

“And all that.” As Hook muttered this, he began to feel the alcohol. He decided to slow down.

“But there is one difference,” Douglas was saying. “One crucial little difference. Your plans went awry by accident. Mine—well, mine are being bent out of shape pretty much on purpose, wouldn’t you say? Deliberately. By one man. With malice aforethought.”

“Not malice,” Hook amended. “Justice. All I want is justice. And my son’s good name back. That’s all I want.”

And suddenly Douglas had broken. Tears had formed in his eyes and his hands were shaking. Finally he got them together, as if he were clasping them in prayer. “If I got down on my knees, Hook,” he got out. “If I begged. Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ. Please, man. Please.”

Hook was more surprised than moved. “Let’s get it over with. Let’s go see Rider. Now.”

Douglas did not answer. For a time he sat there staring down at his glass. He got control of himself. He picked up the bottle of Cutty Sark and refilled his glass and drank again, set it down again. “What was it you said we had? Forty hours. Or thirty-nine now? Thirty-eight? Well, I’m going to use it, every blessed minute of it. Maybe you’ll change your mind. Or better yet—maybe God will strike you dead.”

“You believe in God, do you.”

Douglas grinned crookedly. “I would then. I certainly would then.”

“Well, I guess that about covers the subject,” Hook said. “So I think I’ll be leaving. You take your thirty-eight hours. Use them. You got a lot to think about.”

He pushed back his chair, preparing to get up, but Douglas reached across the table and took hold of his arm. “Come on, you’re not going anywhere,” he said. “You got nothing better to do. Anyway, I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to think, Hook. Not yet anyway. All I want to do is drink—which ought to fit right in with your plans. You know—truth in booze and all that. So you might as well stick. Who knows? I just might spill my guts right here in front of everybody. Wouldn’t that be peachy? I can just see it in the paper. Local politico arrested for drunk and disorderly. Tells all… manslaughter … conspiracy. For a show like that, you might as well stick around, right?”

Hook remained in his chair.

Smiling now, Douglas filled their glasses again.

“A couple more out of this, and we can move on,” he said. “We can paint this old town red. Blood red.”

In the next hour Hook held to his decision to slow down and not let himself lose control. Douglas, however, kept working on the bottle of scotch as if he could not get drunk fast enough to suit him, and in time it was apparent that he was reaching his objective, for he began to slur his words and to smile in secret amusement as he talked—gossiped, actually—about the locals filling the bar now in the after-five “cocktail hour.” Most of them stopped at the table to exchange words of greeting with Douglas, who had reached the point where he was introducing Hook as his millionaire mortician cousin from Peoria.