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“Exactly”

“And I thought,” sighed Cru to be happy that you came back into my life”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, dammit” He softened his voice “Yeah, hell But I sure wish you’d left that pile of horse manure outside”

He squinted at the rising ot me curious” And added: “Smells like blackmail!”

“Blackmail!?”

“Why go to all the trouble of writing notes, provoking innocents like you and Roy, propping fakes up on ladders, getting you to reproduce a Creature, if it didn’t lead somewhere? What’s the use of a panic if you don’t cash in on it There ht?”

“I saw none”

“Yeah, but you were the tool, the s stirred You didn’t spill the beans Someone else did I bet there’s a blackht, says: ‘Two hundred thousand in unmarked fifties will buy you no more reborn corpses on walls’ So … tell me about the studio,” Crumley said, at last

“Maximus? Most successful studio in history Still is Variety headlined their profit last month Forty million net No other studio near”

“Those honest figures?”

“Deduct five ot a studio rich as hell”

“Any big problems, recently, ruckuses, upheavals, troubles? You know, any other people fired, films canceled?”

“It’s been steady on and quiet for months”

“Then thatnice and easy and then so happens, doesn’t look like much, scares everybody Sohborhood! Got to be so buried—” Cruht Arbuthnot? You think so up some old really dirty scandal that nobody ever even heard of, and is threatening the studio, not very subtly, with releasing the dirt?”