This was the real thing this time. Could they know about him and his daughter? Perhaps, but doubtful. More likely, they knew about McCarthy as a murder victim. Yet, where were the legions of men in shined shoes and clean shirts and schoolboy honest complexions? There would certainly be all that for a full crackdown.

Well, perhaps not. Maybe this Remo Pelham person was the best they had. It was strange that he had somehow evaded the men who met him on the ferryboat. Dr. Hans Frichtmann would have to deal with him. The sooner the better.

He waited until everyone had left the hall, then went to Ratchett's home. Ratchett had been the first to leave, huffing out indignantly.

He walked awhile with his daughter, up the tree-graced lane and over the sweetly-whistling brook to Ratchett's house, that white plastered obscenity shaped like an egg, that new design that only an American could call art. Only an American or a Frenchman. How wise it had been on everyone's part to put it behind a knoll, invisible to sensitive eyes.

"He would make a fantastic lay," said the daughter.

"My dear, for you anything is a fantastic lay," he said wearily.

"Not anything."

"What is excluded? Please let me know. I will buy one."

"I wouldn't screw a black."

"A black man, that is? A black dog or black horse is different?"

"It's not the same."

"No, it is not the same. What makes you this way?"

"Watching people herded into ovens and having one's home lit with lampshades of human skin might be contributed to some deviation in a little girl."

"Yes. That. Well, it was the times."

"And I have my times, father."

"Yes, I suppose you do."