McLeod made an appointment to see Jack Lantrel, the Gunman Chief of the _Star-Times_, Saturday morning. He spent the remainder of Friday pondering and drinking a little too much. The combination yielded a hangover, but not even tentative conclusions. While Tracy Kent had become an unexpected enigma, he couldn't spend too much time on it. Wainwright's proposal nagged at all his thoughts, but he kept telling himself he couldn't trust the _World_ reporter. And for the first time he found he didn't like the feeling of power inherent in a newspaperman's position. Having the power of life and death over nameless, faceless people was one thing, but playing the role of the Greek hag who snipped the thread of life with a pair of indifferent scissors for Crippens was quite another. Lantrel met McLeod in the Gunman's office, greeted him and said, "Dragging me down on Saturday, this better be important." Jack Lantrel was a harried-looking little man. You always expected a great, bosomy wife to come charging in to henpeck him, although, like McLeod, Lantrel was a bachelor. He straightened the thinkwriter and the other items of office equipment on his desk with mechanical efficiency. He was an old fuddy-duddy, thought McLeod, but he had signed the death warrants for hundreds of people. "It's a job," said McLeod. "Well, that's what I draw my check for. But we work on a rigid schedule, Darius." "Then call it a priority job. Mayor Spurgess." Lantrel looked up from where he'd been drumming his fingers idly on the desk. "Motive is none of my business," he admitted. "But did you say you want to have Mayor Spurgess gunned?" McLeod sighed. "Yeah." "I'm glad my particular job is comparatively simple. You just elected the guy." "And now we want him killed. Overman would sleep easier and so would I if you did it by tomorrow night." Lantrel grunted something, prodded the intercom button on his desk and demanded in his high-pitched voice, "Will you please get me the habit file on Mayor Spurgess?" He turned to McLeod. "Sunday night, eh? That doesn't give us much time." McLeod shrugged and watched a secretary bring in a bulging plastic file envelope which Lantrel flipped through expertly. "Here we are. Subject generally dines late Sunday night, reviews his Monday morning schedule, smokes a pipe and plays with the TV set until he's convinced there's nothing to interest him, then ... oh! here we are ... takes a walk around twenty-two hundred hours, alone, without his wife." "Sounds simple," McLeod said. "An assassination-accident," Lantrel informed him with surprising enthusiasm, "is never simple. Despite the statistical expectancy of success, there are too many random factors you have to contend with. If the weather's bad, perhaps subject won't take his evening constitutional. Perhaps subject's wife will break the pattern with some company for dinner. Subject might conceivably take a friend along with him. You see what I'm driving at?"