Howell breathed in deeply and sucked back Linton's attention. "Now you've probably got old Snead into trouble."

"Snead's dead," Linton said.

"Oh, well, 'dead,'" Howell replied.

"What do you say it like that for?" Linton demanded angrily. "The man's dead. Plain dead. He's not Sherlock Holmes or the Frankenstein Monster—there's no doubt or semantic leeway to the thing."

"You know how it is," Howell said.

Linton had thought he had known how death was. He had buried his wife, or rather he had watched the two workmen scoop and shove dirt in on the sawdust-fresh pine box that held the coffin. He had known what he sincerely felt to be a genuine affection for Greta. Even after they had let him out of the asylum as cured, he still secretly believed he had known a genuine affection for her. But it didn't seem he knew about death at all.

Linton felt that his silence was asking Howell by this time.

"I don't know, mind you," Howell said, puffing out tobacco smoke, "but I suppose he might have been resurrected."

"Who by?" Linton asked, thinking: God?

"The Mafia, I guess. Who knows who runs it?"

"You mean, somebody has invented a way to bring dead people back to life?" Linton said.

He knew, of course, that Howell did not mean that. Howell meant that some people had a system of making it appear that a person had died in order to gain some illegal advantage. But by saying something so patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to the surface immediately.

"An invention? I guess that's how it is," Howell agreed. "I don't know much about people like that. I'm an honest businessman."

"But it's wonderful," Linton said, thinking his immediate thoughts. "Wonderful! Why should a thing like that be illegal? Why don't I know about it?"

"Sh-h," Howell said uneasily. "This is a public place."

"I don't understand," Linton said helplessly.

"Look, Frank, you can't legalize a thing like resurrection," Howell said with feigned patience. "There are strong religious 

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