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just in case anyone should happen to inquire. I don't say anyone would--" He threw that in just to make it sound more plausible. "But just in case they should. You don't know my whereabouts, you haven't got any record of them, see?"
     
    She wasn't curious enough to ask any questions. "I understand, Frank. You can rely on it. I'll tell Gert the same thing. We're the only two that know where to look for it in the files, anyway. Wait a minute, I'll make a note of it just to make sure." He could tell by a change in her voice that she was jotting down something as she spoke. "In future don't give out Townsend's address if you are asked for it."
     
    Something like a cold spray buffeted him for a second. He didn't like that -in future-. "No one's asked -already-, have they?" he said, gripping the receiver.
     
    She was blithely unaware of the catastrophe implicit in her answer. "Yeah, there -was- somebody in here yesterday afternoon, a little before closing time, but I'II make sure that from now on--"
     
    The world--and the booth with it--went plunging into darkness, as though it were on a train passing through a tunnel.
     
    She was saying, "Wait a minute, here's Gert now, I'll ask her.- She was the one at the board at the time." A period of indistinct offside murmuring took place. Then her voice was centered forward again. "He came in at the very last moment, we were all getting ready to go home, and she couldn't lay her hands on it at the moment; you know five o'clock down here. So she gave it to him from memory; she doesn't know whether she got it right or not."
     
    A shaft of silver pierced the leaden pall around him. Very slender, very fragile, but struggling through. "Find out if she remembers now just what it was."
     
    He could hear a clicking sound made by cogitating gum, in the background at the other end of the line, as the nonparticipating Gert brought her head down within range. His vis-à-vis resumed with a laugh: "She can't even remember that much now. You know Gert."
     
    "Well, look it up and ask her if it's the same as the one she gave out."
     
    "Wait'll I find it," she said. "It's around here some place." It took quite some finding, apparently, judging by the length of time he was kept waiting.
     
    Then she came back again. "I've got it, Frank. Here it is here. Eight-twenty Rutherford Street, North. Is that right?"
     
    His old address. The place Virginia had moved from during his absence. Through an oversight they'd never changed it when he came back to work again. He was safe; he was out of reach. Relief shot through him in an exquisite flood.
     
    Meanwhile, a shriek of delighted contrition sounded in his ears as they compared notes at the other end. "That wasn't the one she gave him at all! She gave him Tom Ewing's by mistake, got it mixed with yours, sent him all the way out to-- He'll have a fit when he gets out there! Who was he anyway?"
     
    He said, with utter truthfulness, "I haven't any idea."
     
    "Have we the right one down, Frank?" she went on, trying to be helpful. "Because they'll probably be sending you out a pay check for a half week on Sat'day and you want to make sure of getting it."
     
    "Yes," he said firmly, "it's right." He'd stop by and pick it up at their old place. Mrs. Fromm would hold it and turn it over to him.
     
    As he hung up the receiver he felt free, for the first time since he'd begun his flight from the menacing stranger.
     
    An unfastened shoelace had saved him the first time. A pack of cigarettes had saved him the second time. A gum-chewing, addle-pated switchboard girl in a hurry to get home had saved him the third time.
     
    He went back to the park again. A different bench, a different path, but the same peaceful, sun gilded panorama around him. All he had to do was eye the distant skyline of serried building tops peering above the trees on three sides of him and his sense of immunity immediately contracted by that much It extended only as far as the green oasis of