He used the hand rail to help himself up the steps of the Trask porch.

Lee answered the door, a dish towel tied around his middle. “He’s not home,” he said.

“Well, he’s on his way. I called the draft board. I’ll wait for him.”

Lee moved aside and let him in and seated him in the living room. “You like a nice cup of hot coffee?” he asked.

“I don’t mind if I do.”

“Fresh made,” said Lee and went into the kitchen.

Quinn looked around the comfortable sitting room. He felt that he didn’t want his office much longer. He remembered hearing a doctor say, “I love to deliver a baby, because if I do my work well, there’s joy at the end of it.” The sheriff had thought often of that remark. It seemed to him that if he did his work well there was sorrow at the end of it for somebody. The fact that it was necessary was losing its weight with him. He would be retiring soon whether he wanted to or not.

Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do—makes the journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read. For many years the sheriff dreamed of spending the shining time hunting and fishing—wandering in the Santa Lucia range, camping by half-remembered streams. And now that it was almost time he knew he didn’t want to do it. Sleeping on the ground would make his leg ache. He remembered how heavy a deer is and how hard it is to carry the dangling limp body from the place of the kill. And, frankly, he didn’t care for venison anyway. Madame Reynaud could soak it in wine and lace it with spice but, hell, an old shoe would taste good with that treatment.

Lee had bought a percolator. Quinn could hear the water spluttering against the glass dome, and his long-trained mind made the suggestion that Lee hadn’t told the truth about having fresh-made coffee.

It was a good mind the old man had—sharpened in its work. He could bring up whole faces in his mind and inspect them, and also scenes and conversations. He could play them over like a record or a film. Thinking of venison, his mind had gone about cataloguing the sitting room and his mind nudged him, saying, “Hey, there’s something wrong here—something strange.”

The sheriff heeded the voice and looked at the room—flowered chintz, lace curtains, white drawn-work table cover, cushions on the couch covered with a bright and impudent print. It was a feminine room in a house where only men lived.

He thought of his own sitting room. Mrs. Quinn had chosen, bought, cleaned, every single thing in it except a pipestand. Come to think of it, she had bought the pipestand for him. There was a woman’s room too. But this was a fake. It was too feminine—a woman’s room designed by a man—and overdone, too feminine. That would be Lee. Adam wouldn’t even see it, let alone put it together—no—Lee trying to make a home, and Adam not even seeing it.

Horace Quinn remembered questioning Adam so very long ago, remembered him as a man in agony. He could still see Adam’s haunted and horrified eyes. He had thought then of Adam as a man of such honesty that he couldn’t conceive anything else. And in the years he had seen much of Adam. They both belonged to the Masonic Order. They went through the chairs together. Horace followed Adam as Master of the Lodge and both of them wore their Past Master’s pins. And Adam had been set apart—an invisible wall cut him off from the world. You couldn’t get into him—he couldn’t get out to you. But in that old agony there had been no wall.

In his wife Adam had touched the living world. Horace thought of her now, gray and washed, the needles in her throat and the rubber formalin tubes hanging down from the ceiling.

Adam could do no dishonesty. He didn’t want anything. You had to crave something to be dishonest. The sheriff wondered what went on behind the wall, what pressures, what pleasures and achings.

He shifted his behind to ease the pressure on his leg. The house was still except for the bouncing coffee. Adam was long coming from the draft board. The amused thought came to the sheriff, I’m getting old, and I kind of like it.

Then he heard Adam at the front door. Lee heard him too and darted into the hall. “The sheriff’s here,” said Lee, to warn him perhaps.

Adam came in smiling and held out his hand. “Hello, Horace—have you got a warrant?” It was a damn good try at a joke.

“Howdy,” Quinn said. “Your man is going to give me a cup of coffee.”

Lee went to the kitchen and rattled dishes.

Adam said, “Anything wrong, Horace?”

“Everything’s always wrong in my business. I’ll wait till the coffee comes.”

“Don’t mind Lee. He listens anyway. He can hear through a closed door. I don’t keep anything from him because I can’t.”

Lee came in with a tray. He was smiling remotely to himself, and when he had poured the coffee and gone out Adam asked again, “Is there anything wrong, Horace?”

“No, I don’t think so. Adam, was that woman still married to you?”

Adam became rigid. “Yes,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“She killed herself last night.”

Adam’s face contorted and his eyes swelled and glistened with tears. He fought his mouth and then he gave up and put his face down in his hands and wept. “Oh, my poor darling!” he said.

Quinn sat quietly and let him have it out, and after a time Adam’s control came back and he raised his head. “Excuse me, Horace,” he said.