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is the kind where it doesn’t matter how much you spend for whatever you want because you need it or don’t need it. The one kind of rich is the kind where you can spend the rest of your life trying to get rid of all your money without succeeding. That’s the kind of rich I am.”
    There was only one thing I could think of to say to that. I said: “Congratulations.”
    He didn’t look self-satisfied, though. He didn’t even look happy. He sighed and said, “Thank you for coming. Miss Champion will give you a five-hundred-dollar check in payment for the envelope. Good-bye.”
    â€œI don’t have it with me.”
    â€œWhy come here if you don’t have it?”
    â€œTo look for a reaction.”
    â€œDid you get any?” He was amused.
    â€œNo. You offered me five hundred bucks, but you’d probably offer me the same to shut the window if there was a draft.”
    â€œPity, isn’t it?” he said, for no reason that I could see.
    â€œThe envelope came from the Russian Embassy,” I said.
    His eyes widened. He sat up higher in the water. He had wide shoulders and the sagging pectoral muscles of a middle-aged man who’d been solidly built in his youth. “Say that again,” he said.
    Before I could, his face twisted. Nose and mouth drawn to one side, lips parted wide. He made a sound in his throat. His arms and legs thrashed the water, sloshing some of it over the sides of the step-down tub.
    â€œâ€¦ amp …” he said. His eyes showed white around the irises. “Call … Miss Champion.…”
    I called her. He went on thrashing in the tub. His head slipped under the water. I knelt and held him up by his shoulders. Miss Champion rushed into the room with a hypodermic needle. Hike Rodin lay naked in the Marienbad water, thrashing violently.
    â€œHold him,” Miss Champion said.
    I leaned over and pinned his shoulders. He was slippery. His eyes showed only white now. The pupils had rolled back. Patiently, Miss Champion waited for her moment, then swiftly jabbed the needle into Mike Rodin’s upper arm. He sighed. His chest shuddered. I kept holding his shoulders so he wouldn’t go under. But his body was relaxing, the spasms becoming less violent. Pretty soon the butler came in. I helped him get Mike Rodin out of the tub. The butler threw a robe over him and we carried him through the door and across a hall to his bedroom.
    Miss Champion came outside with me.
    â€œYou didn’t see anything,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with him?”
    â€œMike Rodin Enterprises is built on a name and a legend and a reputation. It would fall apart if.… You didn’t see anything. For five hundred dollars, Mr. Drum?”
    That was the same sum Rodin had offered me for a pig in a poke.
    I shook my head. “I don’t want his money. Even if he has too much of it. I didn’t do anything to earn it.”
    â€œYou’re a strange man.”
    â€œCompared to Mike Rodin, I’m a shadow on the wall.”
    â€œYes,” she said wistfully. “Aren’t they all?”
    She went with me to the front door. Shotgun was waiting on the portico. I walked down the red brick path with him a few steps behind me.
    The gate clanged shut. I drove back through suburban Wheaton and Silver Spring to Washington.

Chapter Four
    A hot Saturday afternoon in June.
    When the congressmen in their air-conditioned offices are beginning to put in week-end work so that they can recess by the Fourth of July.
    When the government girls in their sun-backed dresses perform the ritual of the coffee break out of doors and without coffee.
    When a sky like brass and the snarling, carbon-monoxide-spewing traffic makes you think wistfully of a cabin in the Maine woods.
    When a private eye named Chet Drum walks, eyes wide open, into a sandbagging.
    I entered the Farrell Building a little after three o’clock, picked up