nervous." He turned back to his chair and sat down. His face became very sad again, and the lines about his mouth and eyes seemed deeper.

The woman laughed lightly. "You don't want to pay any attention to Charles when he's this way," she said to Caine. "It's just that this means so much to him, finding the Screece gem. It's worth the wealth of the System, they say, and so Charles has to have it, Mr. Caine. Because he hasn't got any more money."

"For heaven's sake, Janet," the man pleaded.

"Are you ashamed of being poor?" she asked with false concern. She stood up and began pacing back and forth, and Caine noticed the easy way she moved, her hips swaying, the muscles of her long legs rippling. "No, he's not ashamed of being poor," she said, looking at Caine. "He's afraid of it, aren't you, Charles?"

Fairchild tipped his glass to his lips, and when he brought it down, Caine could see that it was empty again.

The man refilled the glass and held it in front of him, looking into it, as though he might find another world there, a peaceful world, where there weren't any cats or beautiful women with reddish hair, a world where there might be peace and no fear. He raised the glass, trying to taste of that world. His eyes were getting filmy.

"I'll tell you why he's afraid of being poor, Mr. Caine," the woman went on. "It's because not only is Charles a yellow punk when it comes to cats, but he's frightened of losing his wife, aren't you, Charles?"

Caine felt himself tensing under the cutting lilt of the woman's voice. He was observing something, he knew, that should have been contained in the seal of marital privacy. But here he was, caught in the middle of it, while the woman swung back and forth, and the man seemed to crumple further into his chair, hanging on to the glass of Scotch, as though that were all he had left to hang on to.

And tomorrow they had ten miles of grith country to span on foot. Sweet, Caine repeated to himself, really sweet.

II

"Charles, you see," the woman said, stopping and turning to Caine, "thinks the only way he can hold me is with money. And now he's put every penny he had left into this hunt so that he can find the Screece gem and keep his lovely wife. And do you know what, Mr. Caine?" She placed her hands gently on her hips, and Caine could see the faintest 

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