“Well, Ray?” said Manning.
Fischer shrugged. There was no animosity in his eyes as he replied, “You never believe me anyway.” He stared away, but his young wife, screaming, pulled at Manning. “Why don’t you leave us alone?”
“Elaine!” Julia Worden said sharply behind Manning. He turned. She wore a gray suit that wasn’t at all masculine.
Fischer’s wife sobbed. “I–I tried to call you. There was no answer.”
Manning stared at Julia Worden. How did she know then? What was she doing here? There was no friendliness in her gaze.
“I want to speak to you, Marshal, privately.”
Sims jeered. “Why don’t you be a good sport, Miss Worden?”
Her eyes flashed at him, then back to Manning.
“Will my car do?” he asked.
She nodded.
It wasn’t just night chill that Manning felt, following her. She turned suddenly on the curb, making him pause in the gutter. A bystander edged near in the darkness.
“Beat it!” Manning snapped, then faced Julia Worden.
“I keep vigils too, Marshal,” she said. “I kept one tonight to see that my case got in by nine thirty. I saw him start to obey my rule, then move toward the fire — which your man set!"
Manning started. “Sims?” he exclaimed in a shallow whisper.
“I’d like to believe, Marshal, that you didn’t order it. That is why I waited until you arrived. But that’s personal. What is more important — what are you going to do about it?”
Manning stared, stunned beyond belief. Julia Worden didn’t wait. She spread it all out for him to choose.
“It’s my word, one woman, one person — his wife wouldn’t be believed anyway — against two of your men, Marshal, against your own obsession about Ray Fischer.”
Manning felt the impact of her anger. His face burned, yet coldness clamped his chest, freezing any possible words. Turning, getting a flashlight from his car, he beckoned Sims to follow between houses to the rear alley. His sweeping light revealed sodden, blackened rubbish near a garage, close enough to have touched the garage off once the blaze got going, but the structure was scarcely scorched. He raised the light full into Sims’s face.
“Did you frame him?”
“Ed,” Sims began, “we all got separated when he left the drive-in during the pizza break. Stinnard took one route looking for him, and got here just as I was nabbing Fischer.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
Sims tried to see through the glaring light. “What’s got into you, Ed? The dame knocking you off-center?”
“I’m dead-centered on that question, Chick. Answer it.”
Manning lowered the light. Sims swore bitterly.
“All right, Ed. But use your head. Fischer was going to do it sooner or later. So why shouldn’t we get him when there are no lives in danger?”
“For the same reason,” Manning snapped, “the department didn’t give you the boot before you got out of line.” He strode out to the police sedan. “Release the prisoner.”
He couldn’t look at Julia Worden. She went in the house with the Fischers. When she came out she didn’t glance toward Manning’s car.
In the morning, to protect the department, he had to tell the Old Man.
“Too bad,” the Old Man said gravely. “I’ll have to suspend him. On past performance he’s earned a pension. I don’t want to jeopardize it, charging him before a trial board, unless the Fischers sue or the parole office complains. What do you think Julia Worden will do?”
Manning sighed. “I wouldn’t risk asking. She might try to rig a deal for Fischer. And that wouldn’t be good either.”
A curved edge of moon cut through the dark sky again, grew into the first quarter, then bulged toward the full. Manning, really short-handed now with Sims on suspension, put in extra tricks, personally dogging Fischer’s movements as unobtrusively as possible.
He didn’t encounter Julia Worden, nor did anything come from her office regarding Sims. The uncertainty — about Fischer, about Sims, about Julia — made Manning irritable. When Mrs. Ackerman, the P.T.A. president, phones a request for him to speak to the women’s auxiliary on the eve of full moon, he curtly refused.
And then Fischer, that very afternoon, led him to Grammar School Six after lunch hour. The cafeteria tile linoleum was a tripping menace for little feet — it had buckled where the flood from the sprinkler had worked down in the seams. Mrs. Ackerman spotted Manning first. Her smile scarcely came through the make-up.
“How nice you managed to come after being so positive you couldn’t, Marshal. But we’ve arranged for an oldtime movie. I do hope you’re not planning a fire drill in the midst of it.”
Manning bowed slightly. His embarrassment became worse when he saw Julia Worden approaching in the corridor. Mrs. Ackerman moved on, head high. Julia Worden glanced into the cafeteria, side to side, then came on, frowning.
“At least you're not breathing over his shoulder,” she remarked coolly. “So I suppose I’ve got no cause to complain.”
“You had plenty of cause,” said Manning, thinking of Sims. “Why didn’t you?”
The sudden tinge of color was beautiful on her. “You gave my man a break, Marshall. It took courage to make that decision. It made me — well, re-evaluate some of my attitudes.” She hesitated, then went on quickly. “I haven’t come to any decisions as yet.”
“It’s pretty tough sometimes,” Manning agreed, and then Mrs. Ackerman came back into the corridor.
“Marshal,” she called, very upset. “Did that linoleum man come by here with reels of film? He must have picked them up by mistake when he removed his materials from our meeting room.”
Manning started to shake his head, then jumped to the cafeteria doors. Ray Fischer was nowhere in sight!
"He wasn’t there,” Julia Worden exclaimed, “when I glanced in. I just thought—”
Manning raced past tables with chairs upturned on them and thrust through swinging doors into the kitchen. At the far end two women, hanging up gleaming copper pots, turned curiously.
Manning barked. “Where’d he go? The linoleum man!”
One woman pointed. “Out there with some round cans.”
Manning lunged out to a deserted courtyard, then spotted another door with a warning sign, STAY OUT. Oh, no, he prayed, not in there, the school’s service plant, furnace, incinerator, air conditioning. Mrs. Ackerman had said the film was an oldtimer. That meant it was highly flammable. If its acrid, suffocating smoke got into the school’s ventilation ducts there would be a lot of choking, asphyxiating kids and teachers.
“Find an alarm box,” Manning snapped to Julia Worden behind him. “Pull it. Get them out.”
But she was already inside the door with him. Clattering metal jerked his gaze to the right. It was the cover of a film can flopping on the floor as Ray Fischer spun around, his feet in a tangle of film beside the papers of an overturned rubbish container. And worse, the pyro was beside the air conditioner with an inspection door wide open. The fumes would be drawn in, distributed throughout the school, into every classroom.
“Don’t move, Fischer!” Manning commanded.
Fischer flung himself behind the unit, trailing film. Manning charged around the other side. He didn’t intercept Fischer. Barging on around, he stopped short. The canny pyro had doubled back to seize Julia Worden just as she reached for an alarm box. Holding her, he poised the hooked knife by her white throat.
“Now you stand still, Marshall,” he warned.
Manning obeyed, trying to watch him, not Julia Worden’s terror. Fischer’s eyes gleamed. His free hand fumbled in a pocket and brought out wooden matches.