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confusing. He finally found his repainted coupe. She got in. He started the motor. A slow, gear-gnashing, bumper-banging defile moved indignantly toward the street. He drove to Collins and turned south.

    "I'm sorry about the raid," she said.

    He looked at her buoyantly. "On my account? I wouldn't have missed it for anything! Though I regret winning. However! It was a risk I chose to take. I'm most grateful to you!"

    "You don't owe me--or the Club--anything!" She said it in a peculiar tone. If he knew what was in his pockets . . . ! He would never know--she thought.

    "Where do you live?"

    "On Di Lido Island. That's one of the Venetian Islands. . . ."

    "I know."

    "The raid," she said, "was just window dressing. We ought to be open again in a day or two."

    He was surprised. The car swerved a little--and he braked. He looked in his mirror to be sure he was not endangering traffic. "You mean those weren't police?"

    "Oh--they were police, all right. What I mean is, we have raids early in the season and late in the season--before the big money arrives in Miami and after it goes--to satisfy the reform element." She explained the technique of the South Florida gambling raid--a gesture greatly satisfying to right-thinking citizens and of little hardship to casino operators.

    Professor Burke listened while he turned right on Forty-First Street, went over the high, picturesque bridge and turned left on Pine Tree Drive.

    Then he said, "I don't know whether it means anything or not, but there is a large sedan following us. It's been behind us ever since we started down Collins." He looked away, then, from the tunnel his headlights made between the Australian pines. She had not replied.

    Miss Maxson appeared to be sick. She glanced back. She drew a couple of shaky breaths. She tried to light a cigarette--and used three matches. And at last she said, very earnestly, "Gee, Professor, I'm sorry I got you in this one! Those are--hijackers."

Chapter V
    Most men who found themselves in Professor Burke's situation would have been alarmed. Miami Beach, through the center of which he was driving, advertises to the world its attractions and its distractions. It is more quiet about its civic detractions. Not the least of these is the boldness and the frequency of its robberies. Holdups of bejeweled, home-bound revelers, burglaries, and daylight stick-ups of cash-carrying citizens are almost a part of the local climate.

    It was of this that Professor Burke somewhat anxiously thought. "Don't be so perturbed," he said. "At the end of this street is a fire station. Suppose I simply turn in there?"

    "That would be the last thing to do! Although--"

    "I suppose," he mused, glancing at his mirror, "they saw me make that big haul-and followed us . . ."

    She said something. He murmured, "I beg your pardon?"

    "I just swore, that was all. Don't you realize why we're being followed? The envelopes--the ones I gave you!"

    He touched a pocket. "Those letters?"

    "Letters! Ye gods, Professor! Letters! The police staged the raid an hour early.
    Surprised us. They were after the operating capital of the Club Egret. . . ."

    The car lurched a little. "You mean to say--in those envelopes--?"

    "--are two unopened packets of thousands, and one partly gone. Something like two hundred and sixty or seventy thousand dollars. Look out! You'll ram a tree!"

    His voice squeaked. "You mean to say I've got a quarter of a million dollars right here in my pockets?"

    "I mean you have."

    "Then who. . . ?" he glanced at the mirror again--and now he was afraid.
    Chillingly afraid.

    The girl said, "If you turn in, the firemen will call the cops--and they'll get it, after all."

    "Corrupt police," he murmured bitterly.

    "Corrupt police, nothing! They were just carrying out orders. It's somebody bigger than cops, who would get that money--or a piece of it."

    For a moment, he merely drove. He had started at a careful thirty. He had notched it up to thirty-five, from