Chapter Three

When, swinging the car off Taconic State Parkway to hit Route 100, my dash clock said only 2.40,1 decided to make a little detour. It would be only a couple of miles out of my way. So at Pines Bridge I turned right, instead of left across the bridge. It wouldn't serve my purpose to make for the entrance to the estate where EASTCREST was carved on the great stone pillar, since all I would see there was a driveway curving up through the woods, and I turned off a mile short of that to climb a bumpy road up a hill. At the top the road went straight for a stretch between meadows, and I eased the car off on to the grass, stopped, and took the binoculars and aimed them at the summit of the next hill, somewhat higher than the one I was on, where the roof and upper walls of a stone mansion showed above the trees. Now, in early April, with no leaves yet, and with the binoculars, I could see most of the mansion and even something of the surrounding grounds, and a couple of men moving about.

That was Eastcrest, the legal residence of the illegal Arnold Zeck-but of course there are many ways of being illegal. One is to drive through a red light.

Another is to break laws by proxy only, for money only, get your cut so it can't be traced, and never try to buy a man too cheap. That was what Zeck had been doing for more than twenty years-and there was Eastcrest.

All I was after was to take a look, just case it from a hilltop. I had never seen Zeck, and as far as I knew Wolfe hadn't either. Now that we were headed at him for the third time, and this time it might be for keeps, I thought I should at least see Ws roof and count his chimneys. That was all. He had been too damn' remote and mysterious. Now I knew he had four chimneys, and that the one on the south wing had two loose bricks.