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Just then the doorbell sounded, and Greg stood there. He spoke very calmly. “I don’t like to mention this, Miss Ran­dall, but your cat paid me a social call and on his way out – absent-mindedly, I’m sure – picked up the most beautiful bluegill note 14 you ever laid your orbs on. I stood all day in a drenching rain

“

Patti simply stared. Mike asked, “You sick or some­thing?” Ingrid exclaimed, “What an image, Greg. I knew you could do it.” She looked at Patti. “Isn’t he just wonderful?”

“Thank you,” Greg said, handing her a new five-dollar bill. “By the way, you’d better get yourself a new cricket. I just heard over the radio, it’s only seventy-eight.”

Patti plopped the fish into Greg’s hand. “He’s a klepto­maniac, and we might as well face it. But can’t we keep it just between the two of us since he is a hero to a hundred million people?”

He nodded. “You know, I was thinking, well, maybe he could be rehabilitated – with the right man.”

She smiled. “That’s the sweetest proposal I ever had

only

” She simply didn’t feel up to remaking a man. Not this one anyway. He could be fun, and exciting, but let’s face it, she told herself, he was an emotional staircase, and that little man inside would be pounding up and down for evermore. And she had no intention of spending the rest of her life listening to his frantic footsteps.

Ingrid sighed deeply and returned the five dollars. “You can’t win ‘em all,” she said.

He brushed it off with a laugh. He would give Patti twenty-four hours to think it over. Fish in hand, he left, passing Zeke coming back up the walk. Zeke rolled a little, as if he had just climbed out of the saddle, and he had aboyish dare-me spread across his features.

His voice spoke to Ingrid, his eyes to Patti.“about that steak – would tonight be too soon?” He had that kind of pe­culiar look which foreshadowed coming events, and as Patti correctly interpreted those coming events, everything inside her quickened. She flounced her hair, and laughed, and took him closely by the arm, and walked him down the sidewalk out of earshot of Ingrid and absently into earshot of Mrs. Macdougall. But the world had taken on anew sheen, even mrs. macdougall.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.

She nodded. “Somewhere. I’ve been wanting to go there for a long time.”

He smiled down at her in that easy way of his, and it was as if he had been a part of her always, and always would be.

As for D.C., he couldn’t have cared less at this moment about coming events. He was skirting along the shrubbery, tailing Greg. He always went where the action was.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The Gordons, a husband-wife team, began their writ­ing careers on newspapers and magazines. Gordon Gordon was a roving correspondent for the Hearst newspapers, editor of the Tucson ( Arizona ) Daily Citizen, and publicity writer at 20th Century-Fox. Mildred, a native of Kansas , wrote for United Press and was editor of Arizona magazine. Both are gradu­ates of the University of Arizona .

Gordon worked for several years with the FBI Bureau in Washington, D. C. and Chicago. During World War II, while Gordon was involved in counter­espionage cases, Mildred decided to show her husband that women are just as good detectives as men – by writing a suspense novel. In 1950 they began their literary collaboration. Since then they have produced twelve suspense novels, many of which have been con­verted into motion pictures. The Gordons are avid travelers; they use only first-hand information about their locales in their books. Their home is in Encino , California .