Maybe I was sort of feverish already but this puzzle turned it into a kind of strange delirium.

All the rest of that day I lay there with my eyes fearfully on the door. I expected two deadly IRS men to slither through the crack at the bottom or a snake to call me via the U.S. Army Signal Corps before I could check out. An uncomfortable frame of mind. It got worse when dark came. I knew what the reaction of Miss Pinch would be when there was no ring at her front door. The tension would mount to an explosion syndrome! She would be more than slightly peeved! Her reactions would become more and more unprintable.

As the night wore on, every time a curtain stirred, I knew it would be Lombar's unknown assailant, magically transported by magic carpet from Turkey with a communication from the Widow Tayl informing me that she, too, had called IRS. It didn't even do any good to sleep.

That brought nightmares and prominent in them was Candy pleading with Lombar and the assassin pilots to make me scream harder!

And through it all, echoing in the room, were the first words Heller had ever spoken to me: "From your accent, you're an Academy officer, aren't you? What sad route brought you to the 'drunks'?"

It was very confusing. How had he known about Bury?

The hours and the fog dispersed.

Voices. Real voices!

It was the resident doctor. Winter sunlight was coming in the hotel penthouse terrace doors. Morning had come once more. It was D-day! "He seems to have had a fever. It's broken now. If he drops off to sleep and begins the screaming again, just give him one of these aspirin." He closed up his bag and left.

Utanc! She was standing over by the mirror. She was dressed in a silk lounging robe and primping at her hair. She must have felt my eyes on her. "You kept screaming and I couldn't hear my radio well so when the doctor came, I let him in."

Dear Utanc! She was all I had. How thoughtful of her! How tender.

I said, "They're after me!"

"I shouldn't wonder," she said, putting a strand of her hair in place under a diamond clip.

"No, no! They really are after me! The Feds are liable to send the U.S. Army here with snakes any minute!"

She whirled. Ah, I had her attention. She did care for me after all! "The wallet!" she said. "The wallet with blood on it! The man you had killed!"

I was too weak to argue. "Yes. Yes, that's it. If I get good news this morning we have to flee! Although we've got to delay, we can't. We must get out of New York!"

Her face went white! She said, "There's a plane at four. I will pack at once!" Practical, efficient girl. She was gone like a shot!

I was too wobbly and hoarse to call her back. If I didn't get the good news, I would only be going home to my death.

With two bandaged hands I managed to get room service on the phone. This was going to be a near thing. The U.S. Army Signal Corps was liable to bring the snakes covered with IRS red pepper any minute.

I told room service, "Send me two scrambled newspapers, overdone."

I waited in mental and physical stress. The waiter came and finding stacks of newspapers at the door, brought those in, too, and dumped them on the bed: the movement sent waves of agony through me but newspapers always do.

I opened one with shaking hands.

Was this victory or death?

Ye Gods! Headlines!

WHIZ KID BRIBED TO THROW RACE!

And the story with its titles:

WHIZ KID FUEL DIDN'T FAIL

The famous investigative reporter, Bob Hoodward, the Nixon Nailer, has ferreted out the facts. The famous Spreeport Race was thrown by the Whiz Kid for payola!

FUEL VALID

Earlier belief that the race was lost due to defective fuel has now been exposed as false.

MOB FIGURE

The Whiz Kid had the honor to be bribed by the most famous Mafia mob mogul on the planet, no less than Faustino "The Noose" Narcotici, capo di tutti capi.

CONFESSION

In an exclusive interview with Hoodward, Wister confessed. "I thought I would not have money enough to develop my fuel, so I did it the American Way: for cash, I threw the race."

I gaped! I had never realized the extent imagination played in PR!

But how convincing!

And here was the photo, front page, three columns wide! A smiling Faustino was handing a grinning Whiz Kid the most huge wad of filthy lucre anybody would ever care to have. And the Whiz Kid was obviously lifting his helmet in salute to his benefactor. No matter that a tenth of a second later, Faustino had been running like an electric rabbit on a greyhound track! Those photographers had gotten it in the nick of time! What experts!

The caption under the photo said:

Secret candid shot proving the bribe: In the chair once used by Boss Tweed, the Bribe Baron of New York in the '90s, the Whiz Kid, Gerry Wister, receives his payoff from capo di tutti capi Faustino "The Noose" Narcotici, Crime Czar of the world.

I was stunned! What virtuosity PR had! I had never realized the headlines of this world were the product of overheated imaginations, staged events and tons of nothing! It took my breath away.

And how cunningly they had linked it up with NAMES! Nixon, Narcotici, Boss Tweed. The Whiz Kid was now positioned with criminals! How convincing! Who could doubt it?

The other papers were the same. This story would be bouncing coast to coast and even around the world. TV would be carrying that photo as a still. Radio would be spot-newsing it every hour. What coverage! An avalanche!

And, my Gods, it was also all over the sports pages! They were running still shot reviews of the race! That meant TV sports programs would be running the moving color footage!

All was revealed! So this was how news was made! Madison was right. I had not really been a professional PR.

But wait a minute, how was Heller taking this?

I got the viewer on.

Heller was driving the old cab down the Jersey side of the river. He had a stack of the newspapers on the floor under the meter and was glancing at them from time to time.

He was PERTURBED!

I turned back the strips. Yes, Heller had been summoned by Geovani when he had reached the office. Geovani had simply said, "You better get over here, kid, but I advise you not to come." That voice was very tense.

Heller was in trouble!

Ah, PR, PR, what a beautiful tool for trouble. I realized now that nobody was safe from such a weapon. It might strike anywhere at anyone. There was no predicting it at all! One minute he had been happily going about his business and then, bang, through no action of his own, he was shot by PR. And he didn't even have any inkling it was a shot. Maybe he thought it was just how the world ran: that newspapers were unreliable or made mistakes or simply catered to the public taste for sensationalism.

An expert in hand-to-hand combat, a Fleet combat engineer that could blow up fortresses and bases without a single scratch, Heller was a leaf in the wind before the mighty hurricane of PR, just a chip to be exploded at will by a master like Madison. And Heller not only didn't know, there was absolutely no one he could fight, nothing whatever he could do about it! Madison had reduced him, with a few paragraphs, to a helpless pawn!

All Heller knew was that he was in trouble. He drove that way. He had even ignored a disguise when he left New York.

Just a pile of paper. A pile that could be burned with a single match. But that pile of paper was on its way to wrecking Heller!

I could tell it just from Geovani's voice.

At Babe's he parked the cab.

Geovani met him in the elevator. "Kid, I wouldn't go in."

Heller handed Georgio a tan, leather trench coat and cap but Georgio wouldn't take it. It fell to the floor.