As a bachelor, I have not yet gotten into the community living aspects of this gypsy existence. Doubtless it will happen to me one day. A married man seems to have better promotion chances with top management.

I reported to the Warren plant, to Harvey Wills, the plant manager, on a rainy April day thirteen months ago, as the new a.s.sistant production manager. I was flushed with brand new promotion and raise, though apprehensive about the personnel, even though Tory Wylan, my personal spy and friend in the home offices in New York had told me it was a good group.

It turned out to be fine. Ray Walt was a sweetheart. He gave me my head and we worked well together. Ray was transferred in January, and Dodd Raymond came in.

Before Ray left he told me he'd tried to get me promoted to his job, but the home office and Harvey Wills both thought I was a little too green for it. He told me, though he didn't have to, to keep my guard high with Dodd Raymond. He said Raymond was smart and ambitious, and had the reputation of always having a fall guy handy when something went sour. I thanked him.

Harvey Wills called me up to his office the day Dodd arrived, both to meet him and to give him the guided tour.

Dodd shook hands the right way, said the right things, dressed the right way, and let me call him Mr. Raymond just one time. I wondered if Ray had been wrong.

But a week after Dodd reported I had a personal letter from Tory Wylan. He confirmed what Ray had told me.

He filled in the details of some raw situations Dodd had been mixed up in. He'd trampled some good men and he'd come out on top. Tory wrote that Dodd had some of the top management fooled. The proof was in the fact that Dodd had been able to get a transfer to his own home town-a thing that was strictly against C.P.P. policy.

So, had I not been forewarned, maybe I would have thought Dodd a nice guy. He knew the business and stayed out of my hair. I protected myself by starting a work journal, dictating into it all orders he gave me.

After he and his wife got settled he had me to their place for drinks and dinner, with his wife and his mother.

That was the beginning. That's how I started to get mixed up in the lives of Dodd and Nancy Raymond. Were it not for Dodd, and his being a home town boy with a considerable social pedigree, I would never have gotten to meet Mary Olan, much less endure the motel fiasco and later find her body in my closet. Dodd threw me and Mary Olan together, because he needed a cat's paw.

He had spotted me on the beach and he came on over.

In grey suit and necktie he looked far too dressed up for Smith Lake.

"h.e.l.lo, Marilyn, Clint. Certainly is a beautiful day up here. Getting hot as h.e.l.l in town. Clint, can I talk to you a minute?"

It had more of a heavy-boss flavor than I liked, but I excused myself and walked over near the boat house with him.

"What's up?"

"There's nothing new about Mary. I dropped Nancy off at Mother's camp. Clint, I'm really worried about her. This isn't like her. She invited most of these people here."

"They seem to be doing fine."

"Did she act all right when she dropped you off?"

"She was fine and dandy, Dodd. Just like I told the police you sicked on me."

"Don't be like that, boy! h.e.l.l, they asked me. I had to tell them."

"You're pretty jittery."

"Mary is one of my best friends. You know that."

Sure. One of his best friends. And he thought he was pulling the wool over Nancy's eyes in fixing it up so Mary would date me and the four of us could make a nice jolly foursome. But I knew, as he didn't know, that he wasn't fooling Nancy a d.a.m.n bit. Mary, in her own special way, had been making a fool. out of Dodd Raymond. Maybe she actually wanted him. Or maybe she had been merely getting even for his unthinkable disloyalty in marrying a stranger without asking her permission first. I hadn't been able to figure out which it was. I only knew that he wanted Mary Olan and that I had been a handy device to keep her within range. Mary had been seven years younger than Dodd. But they had known each other well before he had moved away from Warren. How well I could only guess.

"How is Nancy taking it?" I asked maliciously.

"She's upset too, naturally. But let's leave my wife out of it for the time being, shall we? You don't seem to give a d.a.m.n about Mary, Clint."

"She'll turn up," I said.

"When you get dressed why don't you drive over to the camp? Mother will be pleased to see you. We can have a few drinks and talk this thing over."

I said I would. It would be pleasant to see Nancy, at least. When the sun had dried me I said goodby to Marilyn, who pouted at me for leaving. There was no need to say goodby to anyone else.

I drove down the lake sh.o.r.e road to the sign which said, in copper and stained wood, RAYMOND. Each year Dodd's mother moved up to the small, comfortable camp at the lake with her nurse as soon as the weather was warm enough, leaving, this summer, the big house in town for Dodd and Nancy rather than closing it up. I imagined that it was a relief to Nancy to have the house to herself. Mrs. Raymond was an imposing, stone-faced, white-haired woman in her sixties, confined by arthritis to a wheelchair. She had positive opinions, and achieved emphasis through repet.i.tion. In her scale of values the fact that I worked for Dodd put me on almost the same social footing as the brawny Irish nurse who lifted her in and out of her wheelchair.

I parked the car in the drive and went around to the front where I knew they'd be. The sh.o.r.eline is steep at that place. There is a patio on the lake side, and steep wooden steps that go down to the shallow beach. Dodd had changed to bright yellow shorts, and he had a can of beer in his hand. Mrs. Raymond sat in her wheelchair in the shade of a big beach umbrella. Nancy was stretched out on a padded chaise longue with wheelbarrow handles and wooden wheels. Her smile was what I had come to see.

"Well, young man," Mrs. Raymond said, "I suppose they're all running around in mad circles up at the Pryors' now that it's too late."

The final two words gave me a jolt.

"Too late, Mrs. Raymond?"

"Of course it's too late. White slavers."

"Please, Mother," Dodd said.

"Can I get you a beer, dint?" I nodded.

"White slavers," Mrs. Raymond said firmly.

"You don't hear much about them. They keep it out of the papers.

You wait and see. Even if they didn't get her this time, they'll get her next time. You wait and see."

Dodd came back out of the kitchen and handed me a cold beer.

"Mother has them crouched behind every bush."

"You can make it sound ridiculous all you want. You can jeer at me. But did they ever find the Cornwall girl?

Did they? Did they ever find the slightest trace of her?

No, and they never will. After what they do to them they're ashamed to come home," she said darkly, "Maybe she just decided to go on a trip or something," Nancy said.

"Ha!" said Mrs. Raymond. Nancy's opinions always got a similar response. I suspected that Mrs. Raymond resented Nancy not only because she had married an only son, but because after some six years of marriage Nancy had yet to come up with a grandchild for her.

Nancy was wearing a figured grey sun suit thing, with a sort of skirt effect. She stretched and said, "Gosh, the sun is making me sleepy. Anybody want to walk on the beach?" Her glance swept across me meaningfully and I rose to the hook.

"I'd just as soon."

"You two go ahead," Dodd said casually. A bit too casually, I thought.

We went down the steep wooden stairs, Nancy first.