"We'll take him to the funeral parlor," Dawes said, breathing hard. "Weighs a ton, don't he?" "What killed him?" Sol said. "Heart attack." The fat man chuckled. The tableau was grisly. Sol looked away, towards the comfortingly mundane atmosphere of the barber shop. But even the sight of the thick-padded chairs, the shaving mugs on the wall, the neat rows of cutting instruments, seemed grotesque and morbid. "Listen," Sol said, as they went through the doorway. "About my car--" The Sheriff turned and regarded him lugubriously. "Your _car_? Young man, ain't you got no _respect_?" Sol swallowed hard and fell silent. He went outside with them, the woman slamming the barber-shop door behind him. He waited in front of the building while the men toted away the corpse to some new destination. * * * * * He took a walk. The town was just coming to life. People were strolling out of their houses, commenting on the weather, chuckling amiably about local affairs. Kids on bicycles were beginning to appear, jangling the little bells and hooting to each other. A woman, hanging wash in the back yard, called out to him, thinking he was somebody else. He found a little park, no more than twenty yards in circumference, centered around a weatherbeaten monument of some unrecognizable military figure. Three old men took their places on the bench that circled the General, and leaned on their canes. Sol was a civil engineer. But he made like a reporter. "Pardon me, sir." The old man, leathery-faced, with a fine yellow moustache, looked at him dumbly. "Have you ever heard of Armagon?" "You a stranger?" "Yes." "Thought so." Sol repeated the question. "Course I did. Been goin' there ever since I was a kid. Night-times, that is." "How--I mean, what kind of place is it?" "Said you're a stranger?" "Yes." "Then 'tain't your business." That was that. He left the park, and wandered into a thriving luncheonette. He tried questioning the man behind the counter, who merely snickered and said: "You stayin' with the Dawes, ain't you? Better ask Willie, then. He knows the place better than anybody." He asked about the execution, and the man stiffened. "Don't think I can talk about that. Fella broke one of the Laws; that's about it. Don't see where you come into it." At eleven o'clock, he returned to the Dawes residence, and found Mom in the kitchen, surrounded by the warm nostalgic odor of home-baked bread. She told him that her husband had left a message for the stranger, informing him that the State Police would be around to get his story. He waited in the house, gloomily turning the pages of the local newspaper, searching for references to Armagon. He found nothing. At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced State Trooper came to call, and Sol told his story. He was promised nothing, and told to stay in town until he was contacted again by the authorities.