'The mouse is fine,' I said. My heart was thumping hard in my chest but I made my voice come out mild, almost disinterested. 'Just fine. Running and squeaking and chasing its spool again. You're no better at mouse-killing than you are at most of the other things you do around here.'

He was looking at me, amazed and disbelieving. 'You expect me to believe that? The goddam thing crunched! I heard it! So you can just—'

'Shut up.'

He stared at me, his eyes wide. 'What? What did you say to me?'

I took a step closer to him. I could feel a vein throbbing in the middle of my forehead. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so angry. 'Aren't you glad Mr. Jingles is okay? After all the talks we've had about how our job is to keep the prisoners calm, especially when it gets near the end for them, I thought you'd be glad. Relieved. With Del having to take the walk tomorrow, and all.'

Percy looked from me to Brutal, his studied calmness dissolving into uncertainty. 'What the hell game do you boys think you're playing?' he asked.

'None of this is a game, my friend,' Brutal said. 'You thinking it is... well, that's just one of the reasons you can't be trusted. You want to know the absolute truth? I think you're a pretty sad case.'

'You want to watch it,' Percy said. Now there was a rawness in his voice. Fear creeping back in, after all—fear of what we might want with him, fear of what we might be up to. I was glad to hear it. It would make him easier to deal with. 'I know people. Important people.'

'So you say, but you're such a dreamer,' Brutal said. He sounded as if he was on the verge of laughter.

Percy dropped the polishing rag onto the seat of the chair with the clamps attached to the arms and legs. 'I killed that mouse,' he said in a voice that was not quite steady.

'Go on and check for yourself,' I said. 'It's a free country.'

'I will,' he said. 'I will.'

He stalked past us, mouth set, small hands (Wharton was right, they were pretty) fiddling with his comb. He went up the steps and ducked through into my office. Brutal and I stood by Old Sparky, waiting for him to come back and not talking. I don't know about Brutal, but I couldn't think of a thing to say. I didn't even know how to think about what we had just seen.

Three minutes passed. Brutal picked up Percy's rag and began to polish the thick back-slats of the electric chair. He had time to finish one and start another before Percy came back. He stumbled and almost fell coming down the steps from the office to the storageroom floor, and when he crossed to us he came at an uneven strut. His face was shocked and unbelieving.

'You switched them,' he said in a shrill, accusatory voice. 'You switched mice somehow, you bastards. You're playing with me, and you're going to be goddam sorry if you don't stop! I'll see you on the goddam breadlines if you don't stop! Who do you think you are?'

He quit, panting for breath, his hands clenched.

'I'll tell you who we are,' I said. 'We're the people you work with, Percy... but not for very much longer.' I reached out and clamped my hands on his shoulders. Not real hard; but it was a clamp, all right. Yes it was.

Percy reached up to break it. 'Take your—'

Brutal grabbed his right hand—the whole thing, small and soft and white, disappeared into Brutal's tanned fist. 'Shut up your cakehole, sonny. If you know what's good for you, you'll take this one last opportunity to dig the wax out of your ears.'

I turned him around, lifted him onto the platform, then backed him up until the backs of his knees struck the seat of the electric chair and he had to sit down. His calm was gone; the meanness and the arrogance, too. Those things were real enough, but you have to remember that Percy was very young. At his age they were still only a thin veneer, like an ugly shade of enamel paint. You could still chip through. And I judged that Percy was now ready to listen.

'I want your word,' I said.

'My word about what?' His mouth was still trying to sneer, but his eyes were terrified. The power in the switch room was locked off, but Old Sparky's wooden seat had its own power, and right then I judged that Percy was feeling it.

'Your word that if we put you out front for it tomorrow night, you'll really go on to Briar Ridge and leave us alone,' Brutal said, speaking with a vehemence I had never heard from him before. 'That you'll put in for a transfer the very next day.'

'And if I won't? If I should just call up certain people and tell them you're harassing me and threatening me? Bullying me?'

'We might get the bum's rush if your connections are as good as you seem to think they are,' I said, 'but we'd make sure you left your fair share of blood on the floor, too, Percy.'

'About that mouse? Huh! You think anyone is going to care that I stepped on a condemned murderer's pet mouse? Outside of this looneybin, that is?'

'No. But three men saw you just standing there with your thumb up your ass while Wild Bill Wharton was trying to strangle Dean Stanton with his wrist-chains. About that people will care, Percy, I promise you. About that even your offsides uncle the governor is going to care.'

Percy's cheeks and brow flushed a patchy red. 'You think they'd believe you?' he asked, but his voice had lost a lot of its angry force. Clearly he thought someone might believe us. And Percy didn't like being in trouble. Breaking the rules was okay. Getting caught breaking them was not.

'Well, I've got some photos of Dean's neck before the bruising went down,' Brutal said—I had no idea if this was true or not, but it certainly sounded good. 'You know what those pix say? That Wharton got a pretty good shot at it before anyone pulled him off, although you were right there, and on Wharton's blind side. You'd have some hard questions to answer, wouldn't you? And a thing like that could follow a man for quite a spell. Chances are it'd still be there long after his relatives were out of the state capital and back home drinking mint juleps on the front porch. A man's work-record can be a mighty interesting thing, and a lot of people get a chance to look at it over the course of a lifetime.'

Percy's eyes flicked back and forth mistrustfully between us. His left hand went to his hair and smoothed it. He said nothing, but I thought we almost had him.

'Come on, let's quit this,' I said. 'You don't want to be here any more than we want you here, isn't that so?'

'I hate it here!' he burst out. 'I hate the way you treat me, the way you never gave me a chance!'

That last was far from true, but I judged this wasn't the time to argue the matter.

'But I don't like to be pushed around, either. My Daddy taught me that once you start down that road you most likely end up letting people push you around your whole life.' His eyes, not as pretty as his hands but almost, flashed. 'I especially don't like being pushed around by big apes like this guy.' He glanced at my old friend and grunted. 'Brutal—you got the right nickname, at least.'

'You have to understand something, Percy,' I said. 'The way we look at it, you've been pushing us around. We keep telling you the way we do things around here and you keep doing things your own way, then hiding behind your political connections when things turn out wrong. Stepping on Delacroix's mouse—' Brutal caught my eye and I backtracked in a hurry. 'Trying to step on Delacroix's mouse is just a case in point. You push and push and push; we're finally pushing back, that's all. But listen, if you do right, you'll come out of this looking good—like a young man on his way up—and smelling like a rose. Nobody'll ever know about this little talk we're having. So what do you say? Act like a grownup. Promise you'll leave after Del.'

He thought it over. And after a moment or two, a look came into his eyes, the sort of look a fellow gets when he's just had a good idea. I didn't like it much, because any idea which seemed good to Percy wouldn't seem good to us.