They moved toward the door.

"I don't like to say it and mean it," said Denton, "but good luck. Not for your sake, though."

"Yeah, I know."

Denton opened the door, and, "Turn him loose," he said. "He's driving."

The officer with the pistol handed it to the man who had given Tanner the cigarettes, and he fished in his pockets for the key. When he found it, he unlocked the cuffs, stepped back, and hung them at his belt; and, "I'll come with you," said Denton. "The motor pool is downstairs."

They left the office, and Mrs. Fiske opened her purse and took a rosary into her hands and bowed her head. She prayed for Boston, and she prayed for the soul of its departed messenger. She even threw in a couple for Hell Tanner.

The bell was ringing. Its one note, relentless, interminable, filled the square. In the distance, there were other bell notes, and together they formed a demon symphony that had been going on since the dawn of time, or at least seemed as if it had.

Franklin Harbershire, President of Boston, swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee and relit his cigar. For the sixth time he picked up the fatality report, read the latest figures, threw it down agath.

His desk was covered with papers covered with figures covered with ashes, and it was no good.

After seventy-six hours without sleep, nothing seemed to make sense. Least of all the attempt to quantify the death rate.

He leaned back in his leather chair, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. From the inside they had been like wounds, red, swimming red.

He was aware that the figures were by now obsolete. They had also been inaccurate in the first place, for there bad to be many undiscovered dead, he knew.

The bells told him that his nation was sinking slowly into the blackness that always lies a half-inch below life, waiting for the crust to weaken.