"I don't envy your position," Wainwright admitted. "You believe I'm offering you a few months more of life at best. But you're mistaken, McLeod. _It will appear as if we have killed you._ We can do it, working together. But I offer you life. The accident will all but destroy you, although means of identification will remain. Don't you see what I'm driving at? We can substitute some derelict for you, then change your appearance and employ you on the _World_. The _Star-Times_ will never know the difference." * * * * * It was a daring plan. It was just the sort of thing which made the newspaper business in general--and Weaver Wainwright in particular--so omnipotent these days. McLeod did not try to hide his interest. The plan had more than negative virtues, after all. "How do I know I can trust you?" McLeod asked. "I'm afraid you don't. But let it simmer. What it boils down to is this: you're going to have to take a calculated risk either way, McLeod. No doubt, you've devised some scheme to give us a fat wrongo instead of your corpse. It may or may not work. Statistics say it will not. On the other hand, I promise you life. My plan not only could work, it _should_ work. The risk there is that I may not be telling the truth. You'll have to decide ... here comes Miss Kent." "The girl with the crooked face," said Tracy, sitting down. "Unless you tell me it's straight." "As an arrow," said McLeod, hardly hearing his own words. The more he thought of Wainwright's plan, the better he liked it. If Wainwright were telling the truth, he'd be able to get both Cripp and himself off the hook at the same time. "I'll think about it," he told the _World_ reporter, who was smiling and getting up to leave. "Call me," Wainwright said, and was gone. "What did he want?" Tracy asked. "The usual," McLeod told her, realizing a near-truth was often the best lie. "That I join up with the _World_ and get protected." "You wouldn't last a month and you know it. So why did you tell him you'd think about it?" "To let him think I was playing both ends against dead center, I guess. I don't know. I just want to come out of this thing alive, Tracy." "I was thinking. There must be something we could dig up about Weaver Wainwright, something we could hold over his head so he'd rather be guilty of a wrongo than see it revealed." "I doubt it. Anyway, you don't blackmail newspapermen."