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Ernie’s office. Mitch marched in and silenced the newscaster with a twist of the wrist. “This can wait,” he said. “If you put on a new mouth and combed your hair you might have a date.”
    “Really, Mr. Gorman!”
    “Yes, really, Mrs. Wales. And I know how you feel about newspapermen, but I’ll take you to dinner anyway.”
    Mitch turned around to find Norma glaring at him, and that was good. Anything to bring the color back to her pale face and light up the fires in her dark eyes. Her husband might be as guilty as sin, but this was no time to play Camille.
    “Look at it this way,” he argued. “You think your husband is being accused of somebody else’s crime, but isn’t that what you’re doing to me?”
    “It’s your newspaper!” she blazed.
    “Not quite. I only work for wages like the rest of the peasants. You’d be amazed at how unimportant I am. But even if it were my newspaper, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let me hear your side of the story? I’m neutral you know. I only want to print the truth.”
    She was weakening. He could tell by the way she’d started picking at one of the buttons on her pin-checked suit.
    “Maybe there’s a good reason why your husband made that trip to see Virginia. Maybe she asked him—”
    Just a word of encouragement and Norma Wales forgot all about how much she didn’t like Mitch Gorman. “Did you know her?” she asked eagerly.
    “Well, I’ve seen her around,” he admitted.
    “She was beautiful, wasn’t she? And young?”
    The last question sounded a bit strange coming from a woman who must have been playing jacks and getting acquainted with long division when Virginia became the first Mrs. Frank Wales. Norma almost smiled. “She seemed young, I mean,” she added. “Younger than she was. That’s what Frank always said. She was just a kid who never grew up, and he couldn’t get over feeling responsible for her.”
    “Even after the divorce?” Mitch asked.
    “They were married for twelve years. It’s hard to forget something that lasted that long.” Norma’s eyes were grave again until she saw how they were being watched. “If she’d been in trouble and asked him to come, he would have come. That must be what happened. Can’t you see?”
    Mitch could see. He couldn’t help feeling that he could see even more than he was supposed to; but he still had a sale to complete.
    “After dinner,” he reminded. “My vision always improves after dinner.”
    What Norma Wales wanted was a quiet, semidark restaurant where no curious eyes could peek at her from behind the menu cards—or maybe even a drive-in at the edge of town where the highway touched Main Street and then went on its way. But Mitch had his own idea of therapy for a worried wife of a hunted husband. He didn’t stop at the highway. He took it on out to a corner where a string of neons put the starlight out of business and an attendant in a white jacket welcomed all comers to the parking-lot of the Club Serape. A blast of trumpets met them at the doorway, along with a headwaiter in a tight tuxedo. Valley City wasn’t without its touch of night life even if you did have to leave the city limits to find it. The Club Serape had a dining-room, a dance floor, a cellar-dark bar, and other attractions not advertised along with the floor show. But Mitch wasn’t on an inspection tour for the vice-and-gambling detail; he was just a guy buying dinner for a girl. When she shied at the entrance to the dining-room he veered off and tagged a booth in the bar. Quiet and intimate, and crowded enough for everybody to be alone.
    “Name your vice,” he said, after a soft-footed waiter had taken their order. “We can dance, get drunk, or try our luck at the tables in the back room. All the conveniences of the big city, Mrs. Wales. Nothing provincial about us.”
    This was just so much conversation to get her talking but it almost backfired. Norma appraised the scene with a disapproving stare.
    “You