I'm going to be
able to take it. I'm developing combat fatigue."

"It's snowing," Rand mentioned. "Let's throw them out into the storm."

"I can't. I have to give Nelda and Geraldine a home, as long as
they live," she replied. "Terms of the will. Oh, well, Geraldine'll
drink herself to death in a few years, and Nelda will elope with a
prize-fighter, sometime."

"Why don't you have the house haunted? The Tri-State Agency has an
excellent house-haunting department. Anything you want; poltergeists;
apparitions; cold, clammy hands in the dark; footsteps in the attic;
clanking chains and eldritch screams; banshees. Any three for the price
of two."

"It wouldn't work. Geraldine is so used to polka-dotted dinosaurs and
Little Green Men from Mars that she wouldn't mind an ordinary ghost, and
Nelda'd probably try to drag it into bed with her." She laid down the
pistol and slid off the desk. "Well, pleasant dreams; I'll see you in the
morning."

After she had left the gunroom, Rand looked at his watch. It was a
very precise instrument; a Swiss military watch, with a sweep second
hand, and two timing dials. It had formerly been the property of an
_Obergruppenfuehrer_ of the S.S., and Rand had appropriated it to
replace his own, broken while choking the _Obergruppenfuehrer_ to death
in an alley in Palermo. He zeroed the timing dials and pressed the
start-button. Then he stood for a time over the old cobbler's bench,
mentally reconstructing what had been done after Lane Fleming had
been shot, after which he hurried down the spiral and along the rear hall
to the garage, where he snatched his hat and coat from the car. He threw
the coat over his shoulders like a cloak, and went on outside. He made
his way across the lawn to the orchard, through the orchard to the lawn
of Humphrey Goode's house, and across this to Goode's side door. He stood
there for a few seconds, imagining himself opening the door and going
inside. Then he stopped the timing hands and returned to the Fleming
house, locking the garage doors behind him. In the garage, he looked at
the watch.

It had taken exactly six minutes and twenty-two seconds. He knew that he
could move more rapidly than the dumpy lawyer, but to balance that, he
had been moving over more or less unfamiliar ground. He left his hat and
trench coat in the car and went upstairs.

Undressing, he went into the bathroom in his dressing-gown, spent about
twenty minutes shaving and taking a showe