"Moses, I want to thank you for your help."

Both men stood up, and as Roy backed out the door, Moses looked beyond him into the shadows of night and said, in a particularly loud voice, "I will punish the ministers, the royal princes and all those who dress themselves in foreign style. On that day I mean to punish all those who are near the throne, those who fill the palace of their lord with violence and deceit.

On that day it is the Lord who speaks a shout shall be raised from the Fish Gate, from the new town, howls, from the hills a great uproar. Men of the Mortar, howl! For the whole brood of Canaan has been destroyed, the weighers of silver are all wiped out."

Moses went back and sat down and opened his Book, and Roy sensed the man was no longer aware of him. As he walked to his car Mrs. Holroyd came out into the night, holding her clenched hands to her chest.

"Mr. Owen? Good heavens, what was that?"

"Sort of like a prayer, I guess."

"He's been praying a lot louder lately. It makes me worry."

"I think he's okay. He's a little bit crazy, and maybe we all are. But I think he's harmless enough."

"I can't remember anybody else staying as long with him as you just did."

"I guess that about all I can say, Mrs. Holroyd, is that this has been one of those strange days. He seems to think everything is part of a plan, and today I was part of it too."

He drove over to the Meadows Center, bought the last Wall Street Journal from the stand in the lobby of the Motor House and ate a solitary dinner in a corner of the dining room. He found a couple of situations which troubled him a steep decline in one issue on what seemed to be extraordinary volume, and an unfriendly takeover situation involving another issue in which they had a heavy investment.

He phoned his executive assistant at home and he said, "Not to worry, Roy. On EGK, they're going to come out with very bad earnings for the last quarter, down nearly fifty percent, and when I heard the first whisper, I moved our stop-loss order up a couple of notches and we were sold out of it at eleven yesterday morning. I'm letting it sit in Continental for a while, okay?"

"Very much okay. And what about that oil takeover?"

"It's moving up on the tender offer and I give it another two and a half or three points and I think that right there we could nail down the profit we've got in it in the options market. But it's your decision, of course."

"Let's stay a while and keep a close watch on it. Find out which way the wind is blowing on arbitrage, and I'll get back to you tomorrow."

"Early tomorrow, because if we're going to move, we better do it before the weekend, Roy. How.. how are things going?"

"Today I had a conversation with a rabbit."

"With a what?"

"A bunny. You know. Hop, hop."

"I guess I'm not following you too well."

Then I had a long talk with a prophet. A prophet like in the Bible. A man who knows what's going to happen next."

"I'd say let's hire him, but I don't know what you're talking about."

"That makes two of us."

"Roy, how is... the other thing going? Are you having any luck at all?"

"Not so far."

"How long will you stay down there?"

"I don't know yet. Good night, Dave."

Back at the County Line Motel, big moths were hurling themselves at the outside floods near the office. Roy Owen parked and walked on back to the office, just to tell Peggy Moon that he had seen Moses and talked to him, and to thank her for helping.

A cheerful, angular man, burned deep brown, was standing on a stepladder, hammering a board into the side of a wooden frame which contained a small shiny air-conditioning unit. An assortment of bugs were inside the office, circling the lights.

He turned and smiled down at Roy.

"Help you, friend?"

"I'm in sixteen. My name is Owen. I just wanted to thank your wife for helping me locate Moses."

The man flailed at a beetle near his ear and said, "Damn things came in when there was a hole here after I took out the old busted one. This is smaller, but I hope it'll do the trick.

Anyway, friend, I never have had one of those."

"One of those what?"

"Wives. Nearly had one once, but when it came right down to it she decided I was on the shiftless side. I'm Fred Moon.

Peggy's my sister. Hold on a minute. I'm about to plug this in and then I'll call her in to help me enjoy it."

He finished the hammering, caulked the crack next to the side of the plastic housing of the air conditioner and then plugged the machine in. It made a chattering roar. He silenced the chattering by moving the vents until it stopped. But the roar didn't stop.

"Noisy little devil, but that's cold air it's putting out." He climbed down, folded the ladder and leaned it against the wall, went behind the counter and opened a door and yelled, "Peggy!

Come see what we got!"

She came trotting in. She looked startled for a moment when she saw Roy, and when she nodded and spoke to him before she focused on the new piece of equipment, it looked to him as though there was a sudden blush under her dark tan.

"It's real loud," Fred said.

"I don't care if it sounds like a marching band. This office collects heat all day long. Wow! Feel that. What have we got left to pay on it, Freddy?"

"Got to reline the brakes on his old Pontiac."

She turned to Roy, and said proudly, "My brother is one of the best shade tree mechanics around. It's been the difference between saving this place and losing it."

"Surely is noisy, though," Fred said. He carried the ladder out into the night. Peggy came up with a spray can and slew most of the indoor bugs.

"Get on okay with Moses?" she asked.

"He kept quoting from that Bible of his, and I couldn't understand much of it. I thought he was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't figure out what. All he could tell me about Lindy was that she was inside the building at the Center a lot less time than she expected to be, and she didn't get to see John Tinker Meadows. I suspect that was who she wanted to talk to."

"I can't believe I'm really going to be comfortable in here the rest of the summer. Now if we can just get us a new ice machine. What happens in this climate, things rust out. They quit and you look on the inside and there's nothing holding them together but rust. You know, it would be crazy to think that Moses had anything to do with your wife disappearing.

Somebody had to drive that car all the way to the city and find some way of getting back, without attracting attention. Moses just couldn't manage that, and he doesn't have any friends who'd help him out on anything like that. Wherever he goes, people remember him."