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Ingrid returned the phone to the night table. “Well, you didn’t want me to tell him the truth, did you? Eddie’s all right, I guess, if you want to run around with an encyclopedia, but I don’t want to go with him to the prom, unless nobody else asks me.”

“And I’m the villain, if you need one?”

Ingrid turned. “You don’t mind, do you, sis?” She displayed her most ingratiating smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re so sweet to me.”

“Horse-radish!”

As Ingrid started for the door, Zeke called to her, “Miss Randall.” At the “Miss,” her eyes lighted. At last, here was someone who knew and respected her age. And he was smil­ing. He was a living doll. She would write’ Mr. Hoover when this was over and tell him.

Zeke said, “As a special favor, would you keep your phone conversations brief? We’re running our own phone in here later but right now we have to depend on this one.”

“Why, of course, Mr. Kelso. I’ll do anything you want me to. Anything.”

“And no dates here tonight, please. No boy friends.”

She shot Patti a glance. I’m not permitted boy friends on a Tuesday night due to certain customs in this family that date back to medieval times. The thinking in this family – ” She never finished. An explosion shook the room, set the pictures on the wall to trembling and. the cosmetics on the make-up table to clinking. Zeke tensed as his thoughts scram­bled to place and identify the sound. Ingrid did it for him. “It’s nothing. Mike set off another rocket. He’s going to blow up the whole neighborhood someday but we must make sacri­fices for science.”

“I want to speak to him,” Zeke said sharply. “Call him in, will you?”

Ingrid disappeared the same moment that the front door­bell buzzed. “Excuse me,” Patti said.

Zeke followed her silently down the hall, keeping out of sight as she opened the front door. He relaxed when the con­versation between the two identified the caller as a tree man. “It’s dead, Miss Randall. No life in it at all. Nothing to do but take it out.” Zeke couldn’t hear what she said but the man answered, “I don’t know. Might have been. But these apricots, they get old like the rest of us and die.”

Mike came in then, trailed by Ingrid. Zeke asked his co­operation. Would he mind foregoing rocket research tonight? “I don’t want D.C.‘s nerves shattered,” Zeke explained, re­turning to the bedroom. He noted that for some inexplicable reason D.C. did not seem particularly disturbed. He was still washing away on that tail. He should have taken to the sub­terranean depths when the rocket went off. But he hadn’t. He had just sat there calmly and washed that long tail. This laundry bit, pursued over an extended period, was begin­ning to bother Zeke.

Zeke continued, “It’s important that we don’t do anything to upset his nerves tonight.”

“He hasn’t got any,” Mike countered.

Ingrid nodded. “You don’t get that kind for two dollars at the SPCA note 6 ôàêòîð VII (ñâåðòûâàþùåé ñèñòåìû êðîâè) , àíòèôèáðèíîëèçèí, ïðîêîíâåðòèí].”

Mike continued, “I’ve got one more rocket to go. He doesn’t mind, do you, you old skunk.” He roughed up D.C., and D.C. was pleased no end. He never missed a lick, transferring his tongue action from his tail to his boy. He shot a mis­chievous glance at Mike and grabbed his hand with his two front paws, sheathing the claws so he wouldn’t hurt him, and then seized a finger and gently tightened his teeth.

“Oh, so you want to get rough, huh?” Mike fell to the bed and began wrestling with D.C.

“Please,” Zeke shouted, the sweat breaking out on him. “You’re getting him all upset.”

Ingrid yelled, “Michael!” and Mike quit, much to D.C.‘s displeasure. He crawled along the bed after Mike, shooting out a paw, trying to pull him back.

Mike straightened. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Kelso, old D.C. will take you straight to those guys tonight. He’s braver than most anybody. He wouldn’t be scared to walk right into gun­fire. We’ve got this police dog down the street, the biggest police dog you ever saw, but he doesn’t come up around here since D.C. ran him out a year ago.”

Mike added, “I’ll wait until tomorrow to fire the other rocket.”

He left, and Ingrid followed. She stopped as she passed Zeke, standing quite close to him. “You’re so masterful,” she said. “I wish the boys at school were, but let’s face it, they don’t measure up. They absolutely don’t.”

When she was gone he sat down again in the robin’s-egg-blue chair, and ran his long, bony fingers along the heavy cording. D.C. paused in his ablutions to glare at him, and Zeke glared back. “It’s mutual, chum. It’s mutual.”

Two hours to go.

In the kitchen Ingrid mixed up a batch of scrabble. “He hates me. He just hates me. And it hurts so. I was only trying to help the FBI with the fingerprinting and all. But he thinks I helped the enemy, and he’s never going to sleep on my bed again. He went straight to your room after it happened. Acted like I wasn’t on earth. When I tried to make up, he moved away, like I wasn’t there, and – “