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So naturally the strange quiet in the household these last two days had worried him. People were quiet only when they were sick or dying, or sometimes when they were leaving on a trip. He could always tell when they were going away. He didn’t know exactly how, but there was a different rhythm in the household.

He completed drying the ear and treaded lightly toward the front door, which he seldom used, principally because no one was usually about to provide doorman service. Tonight, though, Ingrid anticipated his wish, opened the door on cue, and even switched off the porch light. He stalked warily forth and sat on the top step, scouting the area. Slowly the night air revived him. The bedroom had been intolerably stuffy, partly due to that jerk who sneezed incessantly. He wondered how much longer he would have to put up with him. If the fellow stayed, he would move back in with Ingrid.

A couple of cars passed, and a girl hurrying home, and an old man rocking along on a cane. Satisfied, D.C. set forth, shopping once to sniff at a yellow rose that had burst into bloom only that day. He stepped gently around a snail since they messed up your feet when you squashed them, and skirted a wet spot on the grass where a leaky sprinkler dripped. After that he moved along an old trail he had blazed as a kitten, one that led mostly through two– and three-foot-high timber country.

From Patti’s bedroom window Zeke watched the front en­trance, and when D.C. appeared, Zeke notified all units. The temperature stood at sixty-eight degrees, and the likelihood of rain was zero. A fog, however, was expected to roll in around midnight.

Zeke hurried to the front door, which he opened a slit to watch D.C. sitting quietly on the top step. Terribly worried, Ingrid said above the television, “Please, Mr. Kelso, don’t let anything happen to him. If there’s any shooting

.”

Zeke nodded, afraid if he spoke he might alert D.C., who always reacted, and usually unfavorably, to the sound of Zeke’s voice, Mike sought to reassure Ingrid. “Don’t worry, Inky, old D.C. can get out of any kind of a scrape. There may be bodies all over the street but old D.C. will be up a tree looking down on the slaughter.”

“Mike!” Patti said in reprimand. She added softly to Zeke, “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, “flowers cost a lot of money these days. Last time we sent a funeral bouquet, cost us ten dollars, and Dad said – “

“Mike!”

“What’d I do?” Mike looked around in mystification. “What’d I say?”

Zeke motioned good-by and slipped out the door. He whis­pered hoarsely into the transistor microphone, “All units. Informant leaving house heading west toward unit sixteen. Come in sixteen when you sight informant.”

Throughout the area every agent tensed, ready to go into action – the men in the radio cars, the sound cone experts, and the scopers. At street intersections in a radius about the Ran­dall home, agents at roadblocks stopped cars entering the neighborhood to ask the drivers to hold their speed to twenty-five miles an hour, and anyone walking a dog was turned back. At a briefing session that afternoon, the SAC had said, “We learned last night that all we need to wreck this operation is one fast car or one dog. We’ve got to control every circumstance we possibly can.”

A sound cone unit reported. “Sixteen in. We’ve got him okay. He’s moving slowly. Now stopping.”

A scope unit reported, “Fourteen in. Informant parked under shrub.”

Following the movement of the white-tipped tail, Zeke paced slowly down the sidewalk and came to a halt some fifty feet from D.C. who hovered under a rosebush, his eyes bright in the reflection of a street light. Zeke lit a cigarette and glanced about anxiously. He knew from experience that if he stopped too long in one spot someone would notice him and think he was a prowler. There was always somebody looking out of a window – a little boy who had been put to bed for the night, a nice old lady whose eyesight was too weak for reading or television, a weary laborer sipping a can of beer in a dark room.

Zeke resumed walking when a young couple approached, and then turned back to retrace his steps. He never took his eyes from” the white tail that was so still, indicating that D.C. was at peace with the world. At the briefing session, the SAC had said, “According to the best information we have, a cat moves its tail when it is disturbed or angered. Hence, watch the informant’s tail carefully, and if there is excessive gesticulation, attempt to determine the cause, such as a dog, and remove the cause quickly so the informant will feel free to continue on his round of calls.”

The tail moved and unexpectedly became a streak, weav­ing in and out of the shrubbery. Alarmed, Zeke spoke rapidly into the mike, “Informant continuing due west at accelerated speed. Unit seventeen, attempt a fix.”