The little black dog on my desk wanted to play, but with a corpse sitting in the corner and a murderer on the way up to my office on the elevator I just wasn’t in the mood. I patted his head, tried not to smell his breath, and said, “Maybe later.”
This didn’t please him. The Scottie lay down, covering the letter telling me where I was to pick up my sugar ration stamp book, put his head on his front paws, and looked up at me sadly. I checked my .38 automatic to be sure it was loaded, aimed it tentatively at the door to my office and hoped that I wouldn’t have to use it, and, if I did, that it would work. It had never proved particularly reliable in the past.
