Kintyre felt, obscurely, that it depended on him to ease the girl. He said: "Please, Miss Lombardi. We don't mean that. But what can we do? We'd only get in the way of the police." "I know, I know." She got it out between her teeth, while she looked at the floor. "Let George do it. Isn't that the motto of this whole civilization? Someday George isn't going to be around to do it, and we'll have gotten too flabby to help ourselves." It paralleled some of his own thinking so closely that he was startled. But he said, "Well, you can't declare a vendetta, can you?" "Oh, be quiet!" She looked up at him with a smoldering under her brows. "Of course I don't mean that. But I know who must have done it, and I know he'll have some kind of story, and no one will look past that story, because he seems like such a pathetic case. And he isn't! I know Gene and Peter Michaelis. They got what was coming to them!" "Too much!" roared Lombardi. "Now you be still!" She ignored him. Her eyes would not release Kintyre's. "Well?" she said after a moment. He wondered if it was only her misery which clawed at him, or if she was always such a harpy. He said with great care: "Well, in theory any of us could be guilty. I might have done it because Bruce was--going around with a girl I used to know. Or Guido here--jealousy? A quarrel? I assume we have merely his word he was out of town on Saturday and Sunday. Shall we also ask the police to check every minute of his weekend?" The man in the doorway flushed. "Dig that," he said slowly. "So you're going to--" "Nothing of the sort," rapped Kintyre. "I was trying to show how a private suspicion is no grounds for--" Guido took a long drag on his cigarette, snuffed it in a horrible souvenir ashtray, and left without a word. They heard his footfalls go down the stairs. "I am _so_ sorry, Mister Professor," faltered Lombardi. "_Niente affatto, signor._" Kintyre stood up. "All of you are worn out." He essayed a smile at Corinna. "You were echoing some of my own principles. We pessimists ought to stick together." She did not even turn her face toward him. But her profile was one he could imagine on Nike of Samothrace, the Victory which strides in the wind. "I've always thought principles should be acted on," she told him sullenly. "Corinna!" said Maria. Her daughter paid no attention. Kintyre took his leave in a confusion of apologies. When he stood alone on the dusky street, he whistled. That had been no fun. But now it was over with. He could let things cool down for a week or so, then deliver Bruce's possessions, and say farewell with an insincere promise to "look you up soon, when I get the chance." And there would be an end of that. But he had thought for a heartbeat she was Morna come home to him. His fingers were wooden, hunting for a cigarette; he dropped the pack on the sidewalk before getting one out. He could feel the first onset of the horror, moving up along the channels of his brain.