“You know, Gus, I’ll always be glad I let Little Fuzzy smoke my pipe when he wanted to, that night out at camp.”

The way he was feeling, he wouldn’t have cared less if the case was going to be tried by a panel of three zaragoats.

Ben Rainsford, his two Fuzzies, and George Lunt, Ahmed Khadra and the other constabulary witnesses and their family, arrived shortly before noon on Saturday.  The Fuzzies were quartered in the stripped-out banquet room, and quickly made friends with the four already there, and with Baby.  Each family bedded down apart, but they ate together and played with each others’ toys and sat in a clump to watch the viewscreen.  At first, the Ferny Creek family showed jealousy when too much attention was paid to their kitten, until they decided that nobody was trying to steal it.

It would have been a lot of fun, eleven Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a black-and-white kitten, if Jack hadn’t kept seeing his own family, six quiet little ghosts watching but unable to join the frolicking.

* * * * *

Max Fane brightened when he saw who was on his screen.

“Well, Colonel Ferguson, glad to see you.”

“Marshal,” Ferguson was smiling broadly.  “You’ll be even gladder in a minute.  A couple of my men, from Post Eight, picked up Woller and that desk sergeant, Fuentes.”

“Ha!” He started feeling warm inside, as though he had just downed a slug of Baldur honey-rum.  “How?”

“Well, you know Nick Emmert has a hunting lodge down there.  Post Eight keeps an eye on it for him.  This afternoon, one of Lieutenant Obefemi’s cars was passing over it, and they picked up some radiation and infrared on their detectors, as though the power was on inside.  When they went down to investigate, they found Woller and Fuentes making themselves at home.  They brought them in, and both of them admitted under veridication that Emmert had given them the keys and sent them down there to hide out till after the trial.

“They denied that Emmert had originated the frameup.  That had been one of Woller’s own flashes of genius, but Emmert knew what the score was and went right along with it.  They’re being brought up here the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Well, that’s swell, Colonel!  Has it gotten out to the news services yet?”

“No.  We would like to have them both questioned here in Mallorysport, and their confessions recorded, before we let the story out.  Otherwise, somebody might try to take steps to shut them up for good.”

That had been what he had been thinking of.  He said so, and Ferguson nodded.  Then he hesitated for a moment, and said: 

“Max, do you like the situation here in Mallorysport?  Be damned if I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are too many strangers in town,” Ian Ferguson said.  “All the same kind of strangers—­husky-looking young men, twenty to thirty, going around in pairs and small groups.  I’ve been noticing it since day before last, and there seem to be more of them every time I look around.”