"What?"

"I told them I gave it all away."

Her eyes were suddenly too round for squinting. "But,that's, "

Suddenly she began to giggle. He would not have thought her capable of any sound so girlish. Then she began to guffaw. He laughed with her. Her hoots and shouts of laughter became wilder, and the tears were running down her small face, and suddenly he realized her laughter had turned into great sobs, great wrenching spasms of grief and pain.

He went to her, sat with her. She lunged gratefully into his arms, ramming her head into the side of his throat, snorting, snuffling, bellowing, her narrow body making little spasmed leapings with her sobs, and he could make out a few words here and there. "Sorry, so alone, ashamed, didn't mean, "

He held her and patted her and said, "There, there, there."

At last she began to quiet down. He became conscious of the fresh clean smell of her hair, and of the soft warmth of her against him, and of a hint of pleasant contour under the dreary robe. She gave a single great hiccup from time to time. Abruptly, she stiffened in his arms, thrust herself away and scrambled to the far end of the couch.

"Don't come near me! Don't touch me, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"Wilma!"

"I know all about you. Maybe the rest of them roll right over on their back, but you better not get the idea I'm going to."

"What the h.e.l.l!"

"Hah! A wonderful imitation of innocence, Kirby Winter. I'm glad you're loyal to your uncle, but that doesn't mean I have to respect the other things you stand for.

"I knew what you had in mind, setting up those little conferences in that sordid hotel room. We both knew what you were after, didn't we? That's why I was on guard every single moment. I knew that if I gave you the slightest opportunity, you would have been after me like a madman."

"What?"

"I was on guard every single minute. I had no intention of becoming your Miami plaything, Mr. Winter. You got enough of that, all over the world. I used to go to that room in absolute terror. I knew how you looked at me. And I thanked G.o.d, Mr. Winter, I thanked G.o.d for being so plain you weren't likely to, lose control of yourself. And I made myself plainer when I came to that room. Now that it's all over, I can tell you another thing too, something that makes me sick with shame. Sometimes, Mr. Winter, in all my fear and all my contempt, I found myself wanting you to hurl yourself at me."

"Hurl myself!"

"It was the devil in my heart, Mr. Winter. It was a sickness of the flesh, a crazy need to degrade myself. But I never gave way to it. I never gave you the slightest hint."

"All we did was sit in that room and go over the reports and, "

"That's what it looked like, yes. Ah, but how about the things unsaid, Mr. Winter, the turmoil and the tension underneath. What about that, Mr. Winter?"

He raised his right hand. "Miss Farnham, I swear before G.o.d that I never, for the slightest moment, felt the smallest twinge of desire for, "

He stopped abruptly. He saw anew the neat sterility of the apartment, the plain girl, the look on her face of sudden realization, hinting at the horrible blow to her pride that would soon be evident. And he knew that even if she was slightly mad, he could not do that to her.

He dropped his hand abruptly and gave her a wicked wink. "I guess I can't get away with that, can I?"

"Beg pardon?"

He winked again. "h.e.l.l, baby, I used to see you walking, swinging that little round can one sweet inch from side to side and I used to think, uh, if I could just get you out of those gla.s.ses and those old-lady clothes and muss your hair up a little and get a drink into you, you'd be a pistol."

"Y-you filthy animal!"

He shrugged. "But, like you said, cutie, you never gave me an opening. You never made the slightest move."

She seemed to cover the distance from the couch to a doorway across the room in a single bound. She whirled and stared at him. Her face was pale. Her mouth worked. "Th-then," she whispered, "if I didn't, why in G.o.d's name didn't you?"

In the trembling silence he reached for the right response, but all he could find was his own terrible moment of truth. He felt impelled to meet it. "Because, I'm scared of women. I try to hide it. Women terrify me."

She wore an expression of absolute incredulity. She took a half-step toward him. "But you're so, so suave and so, "

"I'm a lousy fake, Wilma. I run like a rabbit, all the time."

She bit her lip. "I, haven't had many chances to run. But I always have. Like a rabbit. But you!"

"You're the first person I've ever told."

Suddenly she began to laugh again, but he could not laugh with her. He heard the laughter climbing toward hysteria.

"No," he said. ''Not again! Please."

She whooped, whirled, bounded through the doorway and slammed the door. He could hear her in there, sounding like a small stampede heading through swamp country. He slowly paced back and forth until the sound diminished and finally died away. He sat in a chair, his back toward the bedroom door.

"Wilma!" he called.

"In a minute," she answered, her voice husky from weeping.

He took the gold watch out. He looked cautiously through the little telescope and shivered. He was studying the intricate monogram on the back of the watch when the bedroom door opened.

"He always carried that," she said. "Always."

"I guess I will. I'll have to wear a vest or get some kind of a belt clip arrangement."

She was behind him, looking over his shoulder. Suddenly he was inundated by an almost strangling cloud of perfume.

"Sometimes he'd look through that little telescope and then he'd chuckle."

"I bet."

"I asked him about it once. He wouldn't let me look through it. He said I didn't speak the language. I didn't understand. Will you let me look through it?"

"I, uh, maybe when, uh, *"

She came around the chair. She made a wide circle around it and stood where he could see her for the first time, some eight feet away. He tried to swallow but could manage only half the process. "Bought it two years ago," she said in a grave whisper. "Tried it on once."

She had brushed the brown hair until it gleamed, and for the first time he saw the reddish highlights in it. She was facing him squarely, but she had her face turned away from him. She stood like a recruit who had just been chewed out for bad posture. She was not trembling. Rather she seemed to be vibrating in some galvanic cycle too fast for the eye to perceive. He had the feeling that if he snapped his fingers all the circuits would overload and she'd disappear in a crackle of blue flame and a hot smell of insulation. He slowly began to strangle on the half-completed swallow. She wore a single garment. He could not guess at what possible utility it might have. There was an inch-wide ruffle of black lace around her throat. There were similar visible ruffles around her wrists. There was a third circling her hips, apparently floating in air several inches away from the pale and slender thighs. The three visible bands of black seemed joined together by some incredible substance as intangible as a fine layer of city soot, on a windshield. Miraculously affixed to this evanescence, and perfectly umbilically centered, was the pink, bloated, leering face, on some st.u.r.dier fabric, of the most degenerate looking rabbit he had ever seen.

He completed the swallow with such an effort, it felt as if he were swallowing a handful of carpet tacks. For a tenth of a second he marveled at the uncanny insight of one Hoover Hess, and with a sobbing sound of guilt, inadequacy and despair, he roared out of the apartment and down the corridor toward the stairs. He heard a howl of frustration, and a long, hoa.r.s.e, broken cry of, "Oh you baaaaaaas-taaaarddd!" As he clumped down the stairs the corridor fire door swung slowly shut, and he heard those hoots of laughter again, heard them begin to soar upward, and then the door closed and he could hear no more.

Two blocks from the apartment building he suddenly heard himself saying, "For G.o.d's sake, Wilma!" and realized he had been saying the same thing over and over for some time. The gold watch was still clutched in his hand. Two old ladies were staring at him with strange expressions. He slowed his headlong stride, put the watch in his pocket and gave them an ingratiating smile. One old lady smiled back. The other one tilted her chin at the sky, braced herself, and with a volume that made every car in that block give a startled swerve, screamed, "Stop thief!"

It panicked him into a dead run, but as soon as he was around the next corner he slowed down, his legs trembling. He stood staring blindly into a bookstore window until his breathing was normal. He oriented himself and discovered he was seven or eight blocks from the Hotel Birdline. Suddenly, for the first time since telling it, he remembered the lie about Uncle Omar's personal records. He remembered how crafty he had felt when telling it. Sober, he knew it was a blundering stupidity.