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I let hts because there were other thoughts I wanted to avoid, but after half an hour I turned off the shower and toweled myself off and picked up the phone and told them to hold my calls, and to put me down for a wake-up call at one sharp

Not that I expected to need the call, because I kneasn't going to be able to sleep All I could do was stretch out on the bed and close er and how I had ren was dead and I had killed him, had broken his neck, and it did not botherpossible to earn that death And Beverly Ethridge was being grilled by the police, and it was very possible that they would wind up with enough on her to put her away for a couple of years It was also possible that she would beat it, because there probably wasn't all that much of a case, but either way it didn't eance She could forget about her e and her social position and cocktails at the Pierre She could forget about most of her life, and that didn't bothershe didn't deserve

But Henry Prager had never killed anybody, and I had pressured hih to make him blow his brains out, and there was really no way I could justify that It had bothered uilty of murder Now I kneas innocent, and it bothered me infinitely more

Oh, there ays to rationalize it Evidently his business had turned sour Evidently he had ainst several different kinds of walls, and evidently he had been a inal manic-depressive with suicidal tendencies, and that was all well and good, but I had put extra pressure on a man as in no position to handle it and that had been the last straw, and there was no rationalizing my way out of that one, because it was more than coincidence that he had picked un in his er

I lay there with my eyes closed and I wanted a drink I wanted a drink very badly

But not yet Not until I keptpederast that he didn't have to pay me a hundred thousand dollars, and that if he could just fool enough of the people enough of the tiovernor

BY the tiht not overnor at that He must have realized the minute I sat down across the desk froe to listen to what I had to say without interrupting What I had to say must have come as a co absorbed, listening intently, nodding fro my sentences for me I told him that he was off the hook, that he had never really been on it, that it had all been a device designed to trap a killer without washing other people's dirty laundry in public I took et it all said on the first try

When I was done, he leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling Then he turned his eyes to meet mine and said his first word

"Extraordinary"

"I had to pressure you the same as I had to pressure everyone else," I said "I didn't like it, but it hat I had to do"

"Oh, I wasn't even feeling all that nized that you were a reasonable sort ofthe money, a task which did not seem by any means impossible" He folded his hands on the desk top "It's hard for est all of this at once You were quite the perfect blackmailer, you know And now it seems you were never a blackulled And the, uh, photographs-"

"They've all been destroyed"

"I'm to take your word for that, I take it But isn't that a silly objection? I' of you as a blackmailer, and that's absurd If you were a blackmailer, I'd still have to take your word that you hadn't retained copies of the pictures, it would always come to that in the end, but since you haven't extorted in with, I can hardly worry that you will do so in the future, can I?"

"I thought of bringing you the pictures I also figured I et hit by a bus on the way over here, or leave the envelope in a cab" Spinner, I thought, had worried about getting hit by a bus "It seemed simpler to burn them"

"I assure you, I had no desire to see thee that they cease to exist, that's all I need to feel very s" His eyes probed mine "You took an awful chance, didn't you? You could have been killed"

"I almost was Twice"

"I can't understand why you put yourself on the spot like that"

"I' a favor for a friend"

"A friend?"

"Spinner Jablon"

"An odd sort of person for you to select as a friend, don't you think?"

I shrugged

"Well, I don't suppose your motives matter very much You certainly succeeded adested that you raphs of me, you couched a blackmail demand in terms of a reward Rather a nice touch, actually" He smiled "I do think you deserve a reward, however Perhaps not a hundred thousand dollars, but so substantial, I should say I don't have much cash on me at the moment-"

"A check will be fine"

"Oh?" He looked at me for a moe sort with three checks to the page He uncapped a pen, filled in the date, and looked up at est an amount?"

"Ten thousand dollars," I said

"It didn't take you long to think of a figure"

"It's a tenth of what you were prepared to pay a blackure"

"Not unreasonable, and a bargain from my point of view Shall I make it out to cash or to you personally?"

"Neither"