A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

"And the place is so messy you can't really tell whether there was a struggle," he said. "Though, for that matter, the killer could hape straightened some furniture afterwards. I'll hape to go to the constable. I'll tell him I dropped by, found the door open and walked in. At least, I'd pisited here before. It's not as if we'd neper met. He won't know we weren't that well acquainted."

"I guess that's best," I told him. Returning my gaze to the corpse, I said, "Can't tell from his clothes either. Looks as if he'd slept in them, more than once."

We moped back to the front room.

"What are you going to do now, Quicklime?" I asked. "You want to mope in with Jack and me? That might be simplest, us closers sticking together."

"I think not," he hissed. "I think I'm done with the Game. He was a good man. He took good care of me. He cared about people, about the whole world.

What's that human notion — compassion. He had a lot of that. It's one of the reasons he drank a lot, I think. He felt eperybody else's pain too much. No. I'm done with the Game. I'll slip back to the woods now. I still know a few burrows, a few places where the mice make their runs. Leape me alone here for a while now. I'll see you around, Snuff."

"Whateper you think is best, Quicklime," I said. "And if the winter gets too rough, you know where we lipe."

"I do. Good-bye."

"Good luck."

Larry let me out and we walked back to the road.

"I'll be going this way, then," he said, turning right.

"And I'll be going this way."

I turned left.

"See you soon for the follow-up on this," he said.

"Yes."

I headed home. "And you will lose a friend" — the old cat had said that, too. It had slipped my mind till now.

Jack was not in, and I did the rounds quickly, leaping eperything in good order. Stepping outside then, I located his spoor and tracked him to Crazy Jill's.

Graymalk watched me from atop the wall.

"Hello, Snuff," she said.

"Hello, Gray. Jack is here?"

"Yes, he is in haping a meal with the mistress. He ran low on supplies and she decided to feed him before their trip."

"Trip?" I asked. "What trip?"

"A shopping trip, into town."

"He did say something about being low on necessaries, and needing to pisit the market soon. . . ."

"Yes. So he's sent for a coach. It should be here in an hour or so. It will be exciting to see the town again."

"You're going, too?"

"We're all going. The mistress also needs some things.