"Not at all," said Oscar. What, after all, was a loaded revolver between friends?

"I was pretty well steamed up at the time," said Grigsby. "Reckon I owe you an apology. Anyways, like I say, you're in the clear."

The man seemed guileless; surely this was no trick? Oscar asked him, "And how did you make this determination?"

Grigsby gave him a small smile. "Your feet."

"My feet?"

Grigsby nodded. "They're too big."

"Too big," Oscar said, "for what?"

"To belong to the killer. He left some tracks at Molly Woods' place. His feet are average size. Couldn't help but notice, when I took a look, that yours are a little on the largish side."

The waiter was hovering at the table. "Howdy do, Marshal," he grinned. "Get you a drink?"

"Howdy, Edward. Not today, thanks. Cup of coffee?"

"Yes sir, coming right up.

"I've always thought of my feet," saidOscar, "as rather nicely sized in proportion to my height."

Grigsby smiled again. "Never said they weren't. They fit you just fine. They just don't fit the killer."

"I see. Well, thank you for telling me." Still rather nettled: his feet were, in his opinion, one of his finest features. "Have you also examined the feet of the rest of the men on the tour?"

A nod. "Took a look or two. Average size, all of 'em."

"Marshal," said the Countess, putting her hand briefly atop Grigsby's arm, "Oscair has, like yourself, been trying to discover the ident.i.ty of the killer."

Grigsby turned back to Oscar. A small smile. Amus.e.m.e.nt? "That right?"

Oscar shrugged. "A few questions here and there. Nothing terribly elaborate. A sort of intellectual exercise, really."

"Yes, but Oscair, you did learn something about the poor dead prost.i.tute."

Why on earth was she pursuing this?

Grigsby said, "What's that?"

Oscar shook his head. "Nothing, really. Only that she had red hair."

Grigsby nodded, his face unchanged, and said nothing.

But by rights he should have belittled the information; laughed at it; after all, it was useless. Unless ...

"Which of course," said Oscar, "would be significant only if the other murdered women also had red hair."

His face still unchanged, Grigsby still said nothing.

"Here you go, Marshal," said the grinning black waiter.

"'Predate it, Edward." Grigsby looked at the Countess, looked back at Oscar.

Oscar said, "They did, didn't they?"

Grigsby sipped at his coffee, set the cup carefully back down on its saucer, looked back at Oscar. "You can keep your mouth shut?"

"I can be," said Oscar, "and often am, the soul of discretion."

"I want your word on it. That you won't go gabbin' about any of this to the others."

"That goes without saying."

"My experience, things that go without sayin', they go better when they're said."

"You have my word. But by now it's obvious, isn't it. They did have red hair."

Grigsby nodded.

"All four of them?" asked the Countess.

Grigsby turned to her. "All five of 'em. There was another one. Just got a telegram this mornin'."

"Where?" Oscar asked him.

"San Jose, California."

The Countess turned to Oscar. "We were in San Jose, were we not?"

"At the beginning of February."

"February the sixth," said Grigsby.

"When was she killed?" Oscar asked, already knowing the answer.

"That night."

Oscar felt the breath leave his lungs. Its departure weakened him, and he sat back.

The Countess said to no one in particular, "Then there is no doubt at all. It is one of us."

Grigsby nodded. "Looks like."

Listlessly, Oscar said, "What about Dr. Holliday?" Not really believing in the possibility, and feeling curiously disloyal even for suggesting it. After all, the man had saved his life, and Elizabeth's. "He might've been in San Jose that night."

"Prob'ly was. Doc's a gambler. He's been followin' your tour. Been settin' up poker games with the high rollers who come in to see ya."

"He told you this?"

Grigsby nodded. "And I got no reason. to disbelieve him."

Yes. It could be. And perhaps, too, this explained why the gunman seemed so concerned with Oscar's welfare, why he had saved him twice from possible-no, admit it, from certain disaster. He had been protecting the farmer who gathered the geese who laid the golden eggs.

For some reason this notion-that Holliday had all along, and without Oscar's knowledge, been using him-disturbed him nearly as much as learning about the additional murder. He felt rather as though he had been betrayed yet again, not by a friend or a lover, which one might expect, but by a stranger, gratuitously.

But why should this bother him? Elephants grew tusks ...

"What will you do now?" the Countess was asking Grigsby.

He shrugged. "What I been doin' all along. Keep watchin'. Keep waitin' for someone to make a move on a prost.i.tute."

"They've all been prost.i.tutes?" asked Oscar, more out of politeness now than out of any real interest. He felt flat, exhausted, defeated.

"All but one," Grigsby said. "And maybe that one was workin' on the side. Or maybe this fella just figured she was. I got the feelin', readin' about her, that maybe she was a little loose. Maybe that was enough for him."

Oscar nodded. He wanted to lie down in a bed and pull the covers over his head. He wanted, failing that, to complain some more about his heartache, which he could hardly do in front of Grigsby. Grigsby, a man as sensitive as a piano bench, would never understand. "Countess," he said, "shall we go?"

She leaned forward. "Oscair, would you mind very much if I spoke to Marshal Greegsby for a few minutes longer?" She smiled at Grigsby. "If, Marshal, you do not mind my company?"

"No, ma'am, be a pleasure."

"Of course not," said Oscar. Still another betrayal. It was an epidemic. He stood. "Marshal. Countess."

As he entered the first-cla.s.s carriage, Oscar realized that he did not want to sit with the others. Not only because one of them was probably a murderer. (And now, with the news of an additional killing in still another town where they had stayed, this seemed an absolutely certainty.) But also because what he most wanted in the world at the moment was solitude.

He sat in the empty seat at the back of the carriage and stared out at the deranged trees leaning over the blue blanket of snow.

MY DEAR MRS. DOE,.

Would you please be so kind as to meet with me this evening at the Ice Palace? I will proceed directly there after my lecture in the hope of finding you. The lecture will end at ten o'clock. I have something of great weight and pointedness to share with you. I think it would be best if you discussed this meeting with no one. I very much look forward to your coming.

Sincerely, O. Wilde He reread the letter.

He giggled.

Truly, it was perfect. Perfect.

He especially liked something of great weight and pointedness. The s.l.u.t would think that this was a sly s.e.xual allusion, and she would never suspect that it might refer just as well-no, better-, to a sacramental knife.

Yes, the letter was perfect. It was certain to lure the b.i.t.c.h from the safety of her lair, out into the darkness where he could act, where he could show her, could become with her, the Light that flared at the center of the cosmos.

(The splitting of taut pink flesh, the rush of red saps, the bright iridescent shimmer of meat.) From the train, he had seen the huge castle of ice, its slick translucent sides stained orange by the slanting light of the setting sun. Sprawling on a broad promontory to the west of town, it had appeared, at first glance, like something from a child's fairy tale. A wide portcullis yawned between two lofty crystal towers; the ma.s.sive crystal walls, topped with delicate crystal parapets, rose dizzily skyward from the bright orange field of snow. It had seemed at once dreamlike and substantial, fanciful and concrete; something that had been imagined rather than constructed, but something that, having been created by an impossible feat of magic, would endure, magically, until the end of time.

But when you looked more closely, you saw that one of the huge towers was listing very slightly toward the other; that the parapet here and there showed gaps, like missing teeth, where sections had toppled to the ground. The entire structure was melting now, crumbling beneath the weight of time and temperature. In a few days, in a week at most, it would collapse upon itself, become a tumble of shattered, splintered blocks; and in another few weeks it would be gone entirely, leaving behind nothing but a small rill or two of turbid water gurgling over the black mud.

Well, in point of fact, there would be a little something else remaining. A delightful little surprise for the good people of Leadville. Damp fragments, choice thawing segments, lovely strips and chunks of what had been the wicked s.l.u.t, the vile strumpet Elizabeth McCourt Doe.

(Threads of scarlet streaking the brown melt.w.a.ter.) He giggled again. He had spoken with some of them this evening, with some of the good people of Leadville. (Fools, fools! Not a one of them had guessed!) He had learned this: that because of the danger posed by the rotting ice, no one entered the Palace now. During the day, a few visitors to the town might wander up to marvel at the vast frozen construction, perhaps to frown at the futility, the enormous effort wasted on a thing so ephemeral, so fugitive. But at night, in the cold, in the darkness, no one went there.

Except the sort of creature driven by her own vile l.u.s.ts, by her need to spread corruption and depravity.

She would come, yes. She would come to offer her rank, stinking, poisonous body to Wilde.

And, oh, she would suffer, this one. She would pay. This one he would keep alive for as long as possible. This one would know exactly what was happening, this one would see it happening, hear it happening. The glide and whisper of the knife, the pluck and prod of knowing fingers.

She would scream, oh my yes, she would beg for mercy.

Let her. Yes, let her. No one would hear her.

Her hair. Her red red hair. He would slice it off, skin and all, tear it in one piece from her skull as the wild Indians did, and then, oh yes, and then he would wear it for her. What a fine joke that would be! What a magnificent jest! And then, with it damp against his head, draped and dripping from his shoulders, he would dance for her, round and round in the silvered moonlight, holding the knife high so she might see it, so she might know that soon she would taste it again.

A shudder of pleasure ran through him.

It was too much, almost, to contemplate. A faint glow, a promise of the Flame to come, pulsed along the sides of his vision. And then ...

... for a moment, for only a moment, the darkness overtook him, rushed over him with the roar of a typhoon, and he was back once again in the attic, listening to the footfall of the Preacher rising up the stairs ...

... and then once again he was back in the endless empty field, watching the sky split apart and send entrails spilling to the parched earth ...

But then he was back in his room at the Clarendon. He was all right. He was in absolute control.

He was in absolute, utter, control. Of his destiny. Of the unthinkable, unstoppable force that throbbed within him.

Tonight he would have her. Tonight she would be his. No one would, no one could, stop him.

And if someone should come, if some interloper should enter the Palace tonight, he was ready.

He picked up the revolver from the bed and turned it over, admiring its solidity, its clean forceful lines.

How easy it had been to obtain. You merely walked into a store, made your selection, paid your money, took your gun and your ammunition, and you left. As easily as purchasing a box of chocolates.

In the light of the oil lamp the blued steel gave off a soft, lovely glow.

Yes. He was ready.

He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. Wilde would be starting his lecture.

Time to go. Time to find room 303 and slip the note beneath her door.

He picked up the note, reread it once more.

He giggled.

HENRY, COMING DOWN WITH a cold, coughing and wheezing, had asked for the evening off; and so Oscar was alone in he dressing room as he sat slumped in the red plush chair and watched himself smoke a cigarette in the mirror.

The lecture had gone well: the miners, in their simple, good-natured way, had roared with merry laughter at his wit. This had been rather a surprise, for Oscar's heart had not been in his performance.