He squinted up into the oversized face of the big one, Rene.

"Look at some good knots, buddy," Rene said jovially.

Kirby was sitting in an armchair. He looked down. There was a single strand of clothesline lashing both arms together, just above the elbows, pulling his elbows tightly together, making him hunch his back awkwardly. His hands, slightly numbed, were not restrained, but the arc of their movement was limited. A second strand lashed his knees together, just above the knees. Both lines were fastened with a single, competent square knot.

"Learn something every day, buddy. Never tie wrists. Never tie ankles. See them knots? You can't get anywhere near either of them with your fingers or your teeth, and you got no way to wiggle out. You don't know a thing about knots."

"I guess you got loose," Kirby said dispiritedly.

"And got Raoul loose. He was nearly loose anyway. So I got by the door and pow!"

"Yes indeed," Kirby said. "Pow." He looked around the empty room. "Where's Miss Beaumont? And Miss Farnham?"

"Beaumont? That was the blonde, huh? She decided not to hang around." Rene looked and sounded annoyed. He had a makeshift bandage on his wrist and long deep scratches on his throat. "When we tried to grab her, she went off like a bomb. Bit h.e.l.l out of me. Scratched like a tiger. Kicked Raoul good, belted him one in the eye and went out the back, through the door you busted all to h.e.l.l."

Kirby struggled to force his mind into paths of logic. Rene sat on the couch. He seemed perfectly relaxed.

"Aren't you afraid Miss Beaumont might summon the police?"

"Her? Nah. She won't. She run right into the boss and a couple boys he picked up local. One good thump on top of the head settled her right down."

Kirby moved his arms and was able to see his wrist watch. It was twenty minutes of five. "What's going to happen now?"

Rene shrugged. "We just wait. The boss is figuring some kind of deal to get you and Wilma onto the Glorianna. Maybe they'll take off with all the right clearances, then anchor off someplace, and we'll get out to her in a small boat."

"Oh."

"It made the boss real happy to see you, Winter. I guess you're the jackpot in this thing. The boss thinks everything is going to work out just fine from here in. It got pretty messed up for a while. Too much publicity. The boss hates publicity on a business deal. If, like they say, you got twenty-seven million hidden away someplace, I guess you're worth a lot of effort."

"Where would they take Miss Beaumont?"

"I don't know. I don't know if too many people are still interested in the boat. They'd have to take her someplace else, and if the boss has gotten some more help lined up, maybe there's another place lined up too. How about that twenty-seven million, Winter?"

"What about it?"

"That's what the boss is after, hah?"

"I wouldn't have any idea."

"Anybody steals that much, they're a pigeon for the first people that can get to him. Money like that isn't any good unless you can keep it a secret."

"I'm happy to have the benefit of your expert advice."

Rene came slowly to his feet, walked over, leaned, reached and with calloused thumb and finger gave the end of Kirby's nose a forceful quarter turn. It was contemptuous, degrading and astonishingly painful. The tears ran down Kirby's cheeks.

"Talk nicer when you talk to me," Rene said. "We got a long wait. You can make it easy and you can make it rough."

Rene went back and sat down and began to pare his ridged nails with a pocket knife. After a few minutes had pa.s.sed, Kirby said, "Excuse me, but did Joseph say when we might be taken away from here?"

"Who?"

"Mr. Locordolos."

"I ain't seen him. Just the boss was here. Mrs. O'Rourke."

"Oh."

Rene shook his head sadly. "And that Wilma got very snotty with the boss. That wasn't so smart. The boss gave her a shot. A Syrette thing like out of an aid kit. Thirty seconds and she was snoring like a bugle."

Raoul came wandering in from the direction of the kitchen. His left eye was puffed. He was spooning something into his mouth out of a can held in a big brown fist.

"What you got now?" Rene asked disgustedly.

"Beans."

"More beans for G.o.d's sake?"

"Good."

Raoul sat in a chair and finished the beans. He set the can aside, wiped his mouth on his forearm, stared blandly at Kirby for a few moments, then turned to Rene and began to speak in a language Kirby was able to identify after a few moments as the vulgar French of North Africa, larded with Spanish, Italian and Arabic words. Though he could follow it very imperfectly, he suddenly realized Raoul was suggesting to Rene that he be permitted to go into the bedroom and cure his boredom by amusing himself with the scrawny little sleeping chicken. Raoul accompanied this request with winkings so convulsive they distorted half his face.

To Kirby's horror, Rene did not react with appropriate violence. In fact, he seemed bored. He asked some casual question Kirby did not catch. Raoul said something about who was to find out, in any case. And what harm could it do? It would pa.s.s the time.

As it seemed that Rene would shrug and nod approval, there was a curiously muscular convulsion in Kirby's mind, like a gagging in the throat. The fat watch, the golden edge , had pulled reality too thin, had made it too easy to think of the submissive world as a stage for low comedy, for tricky effects, for narrow triumphs of virtue over the brute. The watch had dislocated the world, had made temptingly feasible all the traditions of fantasy, but here would be no slender triumph of virtue. Here, for Wilma Farnham, all the games could end, and he would he powerless to stop these two. For Kirby Winter the world settled suddenly back into its ancient grind of blood and pain, of small lonely disasters in the hearts of men.

He caught the sense of Rene's next remark, something about waiting, something about how, if they had to stay here the whole night, then, orders or no orders, they would share the chicken, wait until she wakened and could be suitably instructed in obedience, and then cut cards for her.

Raoul shrugged and yawned and said that inasmuch as he had already lost money at cards, maybe now they could play again and this time make the chicken part of the stakes. For later.

Kirby's eyes had finally stopped watering. The end of his nose felt as big as a biscuit.

The two men moved over to the coffee table. As Rene shuffled the pack he stared at Kirby and said, "How'd you put us out and tie us up?"

"I had help," Kirby said.

"That figures. Did you use some kind of a gas, maybe?"

"Something like that."

"The boss wondered. Sh.e.l.l want you to tell her all about it. Anything she can use, she wants to know about."

"Deal," said Raoul.

The cards made small flapping sounds in the humid silence of the room. From all evidences, Kirby felt that it was a reasonably good guess that the watch might still be in the right hand pocket of the borrowed slacks. He bent his cramped back further, shoved his lashed elbows down beside his right thigh and ran his left elbow along his thigh. He felt the round bulk of the watch and thought he heard a link of the heavy chain against the case.

"Don't get smart," Rene said, suddenly alert.

"Just trying to work a cramp out of my shoulder," Kirby said humbly.