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wouldn’t if you approached ’em one at a time. Meow.”
    “What a way to talk about the Ladies!”
    “They’re a bunch of dears.”
    I put my glass on the coffee table and walked over to the front window to look out through the venetian blind. The house across the street was a little further up and you couldn’t see it from here.
    “Which one of ’em lives over there?” I asked.
    “Mrs. Gross. She’s the one with fourteen eyes and party-line ears.”
    She put her glass down and walked over and stood close to me. “Well, what do you think of the view?”
    I turned, and we were staring at each other again. “It’s better all the time.”
    “Oh, I meant to ask you. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
    “No,” I said. “I could find it in the dark.”
    “Are you sure?” she asked.
    I put a hand behind her neck and then brought it up in back of the ash-blonde curls, holding it there and pulling her face against mine, hard, as I kissed her. Her mouth was soft and moist, and she came to me like a dachshund jumping into your lap. In a minute she turned her face aside and pushed back.
    “You’d better get out.”
    “Like hell.”
    “I thought you told me you’d lived in a small town.”
    “What of it?”
    “Don’t you think that old witch over there watched you drive in here? And she’s watching right now, waiting for you to leave.”
    I tried to take hold of her again, but she moved back, pushing at my arms. “Harry, get out!”
    I could see she meant it, and somehow I had sense enough to realize she was right. There was no use asking for trouble.
    “All right,” I said. “But don’t think you can tease me. I’ll be back.”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “Well?”
    Her face was sullen. “Well?” she said.
    I picked up my car at the lot and drove over to the rooming house. After standing under the shower a long time, I changed into slacks and T-shirt and drove down to Main. It was dusk now, with heat lying motionless and sticky in the streets, and bugs danced through the beams of weaving headlights. It was hard finding a parking place, but I finally beat two other cars to one in front of the bank and sat there for a while trying to push the sultry weights of Dolores Harshaw off my mind. She was dangerous in a town like this. The hell with her; I wouldn’t go back. But wouldn’t I? What about later on? Keeping the thought of her out of that bleak hotbox of a room was going to be like trying to dam a river with a tennis racket.
    I shook my head irritably, and stared at the bank. A light was burning over the vault in the rear, and I could see the layout of the whole room through the glass doors in front of me. The over-all depth would be about fifty feet, and the side door which came in off the cross street was well back, not over twenty feet this side of the vault and the door which probably led into a washroom or closet of some kind. I turned my head and tried to picture about where the old Taylor building would be from here. Down one block, I thought, and two to the right, which would put it diagonally in front of the bank. That was about right. About right for what? I cursed and threw away the cigarette I was smoking and got out to stand on the sidewalk.
    I was too restless and irritable to think of eating, so I started walking aimlessly up the sidewalk through the crowd. Up in the next block I went past the drugstore and as I glanced in through the window I saw Gloria Harper in front of the magazine racks. Without stopping to wonder why, I opened the screen door and went in.
    She was still absorbed in the magazines and didn’t see me.
    “Hello,” I said.
    She glanced up abruptly. “Oh, hello, Mr. Madox.” She didn’t smile, but there was nothing unfriendly in the way she looked at me.
    “How about a soda?”
    She considered it thoughtfully. “Why, yes. Thank you.”
    She paid the clerk for the magazine and we went back to one of the booths across from the