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former mental patients. Do you know anything about the halfway house concept?” I didn’t, so he said, “Halfway houses are places for people returning to society but unable or unwilling to make the plunge all at once. There are halfway houses for ex-drug addicts, former convicts, I understand there’s even one in Florida for ex-priests. The concept is that the inhabitants of a halfway house are free to come and go as they please, but are still in a semi-protected environment, and living among other people with similar problems and a shared understanding.” He took a pipe from his side jacket pocket, but didn’t light it. He just sat there with his hand cupped around the bowl. “The idea does work,” he said.
    He went on to tell me further details about The Midway, economic and social and psychiatric. It turned out he was the founder and guiding spirit of the place. He was proud of his brainchild, as he probably had every right to be, and it showed. I could see he’d be willing to go on telling me about the place all afternoon, so I finally broke in to ask, “And what’s happening there to cause the trouble?”
    He frowned, not liking to be reminded of the snake in his Eden. “Someone,” he said heavily, “is injuring our residents.”
    I said, “They’re doing what?”
    “Causing accidents,” he said, and went on to tell me about the four accidents, the discovery of the sawn-through ladder rung and the corroboration of the tampered-with terrace.
    When he was done I asked him if he’d gotten in touch with the local police, and he shook his head, saying, “No, we did not. We would prefer not to have to, which is why I’ve come to you.”
    “The police would be better,” I said. At that time I still thought there might be a way to avoid this job.
    There wasn’t. “The Midway,” Doctor Cameron explained, “is not in New York. We’re in a small town upstate called Kendrick. The local people disapprove of us under the best of circumstances, and the local police are not the best-trained or most modern police officers in the world. Mr. Tobin, the people at The Midway are convalescents, they’re walking wounded. Many of them are still only tentatively on the road to health. To be given the rough treatment, the suspicion and open hostility they would be bound to receive at the hands of the local police if I were to report what’s going on would be detrimental to all of them, and perhaps critically so for some.”
    “As critical as a broken leg?”
    “Much more so,” he said. “Bones knit much more readily than minds.”
    There was no answer to that. I said, “Do they know what’s going on?”
    “The residents? No, only Bob Gale and myself.” Bob Gale was the young resident who’d discovered the ladder rung and brought it to Doctor Cameron’s attention. “The atmosphere of suspicion and fear I would create if I did tell them,” the doctor said, “would once again be much worse than the possibility of a broken bone.”
    I said, “You’re taking an awful chance, Doctor Cameron.”
    “I’m aware of that,” he said. “That’s why I want this situation cleared up just as quickly as possible. Bob Gale brought me the ladder rung the day before yesterday. I’ve been trying to decide how best to handle the problem, and it seems to me what I need is a professional. Someone who can come to The Midway, move in as though he were simply a new resident, and try to find out who is doing all this.”
    “Move in,” I repeated. “You want me to come live there.”
    “For a while, yes,” he said. He didn’t seem to be hiding any secondary motives. He said, “If we’re to keep the situation a secret from the residents, there’s no other way I can think of to handle it.”
    I asked him a few more questions after that, nothing significant, and then told him I would think it over and let him know. He said something about there being some urgency in hearing my answer, and I promised not to think it