He had hair, two eyes and a mouth, with a nose in the middle a face-shaped face. He was nobody I had seen before or, if I had, I had not noticed him. He was my most forgettable character.

"Good morning, Mr. Mangan. I hope you had a quiet night and slept well."

English not American, I thought. I said, "Where's my wife?"

"First things first." He gestured sideways.

"This man is armed with an automatic shotgun loaded with buckshot. Anything that will kill a deer will kill a man men die more easily. At ten feet he couldn't miss; he could put five rounds into you in five seconds. I think you'd be chopped in half."

"Two seconds," said the shot gunner flatly and objectively.

I was wrong about him being English; at the back of those perfectly modulated tones was the flavour of something I could not pin down. I repeated, "Where's my wife?"

"She's quite safe," he said reassuringly.

"Where? Here?"

He shrugged.

"No harm in you knowing. Yes, she's here."

"Prove it. I want to see her."

He laughed.

"My dear Mr. Mangan, you are in no position to make demands. Although…" He was pensive for a moment.

"Yes, my dear chap, that might be a good idea. You shall see her as soon as we have finished our initial conversation. I trust you are fit and well. No ill effects from the curious treatment we were forced to administer?"

"I'm all right," I said shortly.

He produced a small cylinder from his pocket and held it up; it looked like a shotgun cartridge.

"It was one of these that did the trick. Issued to NATO soldiers for use in nerve-gas attacks. You put one end against the arm or leg so and push. A spring-loaded plunger forces a hypodermic needle right through the clothing and into the flesh, then injects atropine. I admit that the needle going through clothing is not hygienic; there's a small risk of tetanus but that is preferable to heart failure from nerve gas, so the risk is acceptable. I don't think you even felt the prick of the needle."

"I didn't."

"Of course we used something other than atropine," he said.

"A muscle relaxant derived from curare, I believe; used when giving electric shock therapy. You're lucky I wasn't a Middle Eastern guerilla; they use something totally lethal. Very useful for street assassinations."

"Very interesting," I said.

"But I can do without the technical lecture."

"It has a point," he said, and laughed.

"Just like the needle. It's to tell you we're most efficient. Remember that efficiency, Mr. Mangan, should you be thinking of trying anything foolish."

"Who are you?"

"Does it matter?" He waved his hand.

"Very well, if you must call me something call me… Robinson."

"Okay, Robinson. Tell me why."

"Why you're here? Rest assured I shall do so, but in my own time." He looked at a point over my head.

"I was about to begin your interrogation immediately, but I have changed my mind. Don't you think it is a mark of efficiency to be flexible?"

He had a formal, almost pedantic, way of speech which fitted well with the tone of the ransom letters, and could very well have typed 'headlamps' instead of' headlights I said, "I couldn't give a damn.

I want to see my wife. "

His gaze returned to me.

"And so you shall, my dear chap. What is more, you shall have the privilege of seeing her alone so that you may talk freely. I am sure she will be able to tell you many things of which you are, as yet, unaware. And vice versa. It will make my later interrogation so much easier for both of us."

"Robinson, quit waffling and get her."

He studied me and smiled.

"Quite a one for making demands, aren't you? And in the vernacular, too. But I shall accede toer… shall we call it your request?"

He put his hand behind him, opened the door, and backed out. The man with the shotgun went out, gun last, and the door closed. I heard it lock.

I thought about it. The man with the shotgun was local, a Texan. He had spoken only a total of five words but the accent was unmistakeable. Robinson was something else Those cultured tones, those rolling cadences, were the product of a fairly long residence in England, and at a fairly high social level.

And yet.. and yet.. there was something else. As a Bahamian, class differences, as betrayed by accent, had been a matter of indifference to me, but my time in England had taught me that the English take it seriously, so I had learned the nuances. It is something hard to explain to our American cousins. But Robinson did not ring a true sound there was a flaw in him.

I looked with greater interest at my prison. The walls were of concrete blocks set in hard mortar and whitewashed. There was no ceiling so I could look up into the roof which was pitched steeply and built of rough timbers logs with the bark still on and covered with corrugated iron. The only door was in a gable end.

From the point of view of escape the wall was impossible. I had no metal to scrape the mortar from between the blocks, not even a belt buckle; and they had carefully not put a knife on the tray with which to spread the butter, just a flat piece of wood. As Robinson had said -efficiency. A careful examination of the furniture told me that I was probably in a rural area. The whole lot had not a single nail in them, but were held together by wooden pegs.

Not that I was intending to escape not then. But I was looking at the roof speculatively when I heard someone at the door. I sat on the bed and waited, and the door opened and Debbie was pushed in, then it slammed behind her quickly.

She staggered, regained her balance, then looked at me unbelievingly. " Tom\ Oh, Tom!" The next moment she was in my arms, dampening the front of my Houston Cougars' tee- shirt.

It took some time to get her settled down. She was incoherent with a mixture of relief, remorse, passion and, when she understood that I, too, was a prisoner, amazement, consternation and confusion.

"But how did you get here?" she demanded.

"To Texas, I mean. And why?"

"I was drawn into it by bait," I said.

"You were the bait. We were all fooled."

"The family," she said.

"How are they?"

"Bearing up under the strain." There were a few things I was not going to tell Debbie. One was that her father had just suffered a heart attack. Others would doubtless occur to me.

"How were you snatched?"

"I don't know. One minute I was looking in the window of a store on Main Street, then I was here."

Probably Robinson had used his NATO gadget; but it did not matter.

"And where is here? You're the local expert."

She shook her head.

"I don't know. Somewhere on the coast, I think."

I disentangled myself, stood up, and turned to look at her. The dress she was wearing certainly had not come from a plushy Main Street store -it was more reminiscent of Al Capp's Dogpatch and went along with my jeans and tee'49 shirt. From where I stood it seemed to be the only thing she was wearing.

"All right, Daisy-Mae, has anyone told you why you were kidnapped?"

"Daisy-M…?" She caught on and looked down at herself, then involuntarily put a hand to her breast.

"They took my clothes away."

"Mine, too."

"I must look terrible."

"A sight for sore eyes." She looked up at me and flushed, and we were both silent for a moment. Then we both started to talk at the same time, and both stopped simultaneously.

"I've been a damned fool, Tom," she said.

"This is not the time nor place to discuss our marital problems," I said.

"There are better things to do. Do you know why you were kidnapped?"

"Not really. He's been asking all sorts of questions about you."

"What sort of questions?"

"About what you were doing. Where you'd been. Things like that. I told him I didn't know that I'd left you. He didn't believe me. He kept going on and on about you." She shivered suddenly.