“Now what?” asked Bobby. They were back again in his father’s quarters, demoralized. “Who could know that the law would be on his side?”

“Not the law, Bobby, just the police chief. There’s an important difference that is basic to our form of government.” He shook his head. “All the same, it is discouraging. I’ve despised the Finches all my life, but they’re local yokels. I would never have thought the likes of Chuck would have a connection with them. At least he’s civilized.”

Bobby’s mother snorted, and his father added, irritably, “You know what I mean: he eats with a knife and fork, et cetera.”

Lydia was frowning. Bobby disliked seeing that vertical line appear between her eyebrows. She asked, “These people who run the everyday affairs of the island, they hate you?”

Bobby’s mother shrugged. “Well,” said she. “You know how it goes.”

“No,” Lydia said stubbornly. “Don’t people like you furnish their livelihood?”

Bobby suddenly got the point, but it seemed that Lydia did not.

“The fact is,” said Bobby’s father, “we now have to arrange a new strategy. We can’t expect much help from the usual agency to which a citizen applies in a crisis.”

Bobby’s mother said, “I have always respected Mrs. Finch. I can’t say I have ever been actually fond of her, as one is sometimes fond of people who work for you, but then why should that always be the case? Common decency would seem to be all that’s called for, and she certainly got that from me. I haven’t ever lorded it over her, for heaven’s sake.” She sighed. “I am aware that she’s from the same family, but it’s not necessary that she be part of this thing.”

Bobby said, “Mother’s idea of burning the house down begins to make sense.”

“Oh, come on,” said his father.

“Well, didn’t you hear Chuck say he has decided to stay here forever? And we couldn’t even get rid of him before we knew he was related to the police chief.”

“If they are all in it together,” said his mother, who was essentially talking to herself, “then tomorrow will get worse. Mrs. Finch plus the cleaning crew.”

Lydia spoke sternly. “Then we have to handle it as soon as possible. How much more that fat cop can drink without falling in his face is in doubt. I think we could take them in the kitchen. Chuck’s the more dangerous. Luckily he’s seated with his back to the outside door. I’m willing to go out and around the house to that door, and on a prearranged signal I’ll burst in and slug him with something, a good solid hit this time, while you, Doug, and Bobby come in through the butler’s pantry and take the chief from behind.”

Bobby’s father asked irritably, “And then what do we do with them?” She made a fist, “We have to get everything settled before we start anything, including every eventuality that could possibly occur, such as what happens if Lyman’s not as drunk as we think or even, if so, can still handle himself effectively. He’s awfully fat, remember, and that means he can hold more alcohol than most.” He made his voice gentle and said to Lydia, “With all respect, do you really have the nerve to hit Chuck hard enough to knock him out?”

For an instant she looked as though she might flare up in anger, but she said slowly, “You’re right. Look what happened last time.”

The idea came to Bobby from nowhere. “The drapes and blinds and all,” said he. “All those cords.” He pointed at the window that now was a framed view of the black of night woods. Its Venetian blind was in a tight furl, and therefore most of the cord hung free.

“All right,” said his father. “We take them by surprise and we tie them up. So far so good. Then what?”

Lydia groaned. “It keeps coming back to the same question, which nobody can answer. And now you can’t haul Chuck somewhere out on the highway and abandon him, because what can be done with Lyman?”

“Actually, that idea came from what the rangers do with troublesome bears in the national parks,” said Bobby’s father. “It probably wouldn’t work with human beings, anyway.” His eyes widened. “The state police! There’s a barracks on the mainland, about a mile from the ferry pier. They’d be free of the Finch connection.”

Lydia’s face was showing the effects of her ordeal. Bobby’s wife had been in the forefront of all the action of the day. She was that kind of person. He was pleased with himself for having found her, though it had actually been the other way around: she had first spoken to him, in the university library, offering her help when he displayed his understandable confusion in filling out the call slip for a certain reference book. He had all too seldom done that sort of thing in three years of college. He was no scholar and never pretended to be. What he was, was a good fellow. He had no malice in him, which meant he was at a terrible disadvantage when dealing with a man like Chuck. His mind simply didn’t work that way.

Therefore when he spoke now, it was in the spirit of make-believe. “I just can’t see any way to deal with Chuck except to do him in. It keeps coming back to that. Because even if we were able to reach the state police, what could we get them to do? What would we charge Chuck with? We know he’s a criminal, but it would be hard to explain to anyone else.”

“Carrying a concealed lethal weapon,” said his father. “At least. And that’s a felony… . Of course, if he’s Lyman’s cousin he probably already has a license to carry a gun on the island, or if he hasn’t now, Lyman could easily fix him up with one, make him a deputy. Maybe he’s already been deputized. That would account for his arrogance.” He stared at his wife. “Do you realize what this is beginning to sound like? That the Finches are making their big move. After all these years! For example, Lyman said the phone service is off all over the island, not just here. Maybe there’s a Chuck in everybody’s house: we all use the Finches for everything.”

Lydia protested to Bobby. “You just can’t speak of Chuck now as if dealing with him alone will solve anything. Whether or not your father’s right in seeing this as some sort of peasant uprising—”

His father snorted. “Some peasants! They own a lot more than I do. They might be clods, but old Ronnie Finch, Lyman’s uncle, who must be eighty but still does all the local landscaping, pays cash for the heavy machinery he buys. They could buy and sell me, that’s certain.”

“All right,” said Lydia, “but my point remains: with Lyman’s appearance Chuck has got at least a temporary reprieve from anything really extreme, though I’ll admit that anything less probably wouldn’t be effective.”

“There you are,” said Bobby.

His father was still occupied with the Finches’ holdings. “Do you realize they own miles of undeveloped shoreline property? It’s not for sale either, at least not at the moment. But when the time comes, and the price is right, they’ll sell it to the most vulgar entrepreneur. We’ll have condominiums and marinas and shopping malls full of overweight teenagers and gaudily dressed people wearing eyeglasses. Supermarkets and soft-drink machines and discount drugstores. Not just Chuck—if only we could exterminate the whole tribe!”

The passion of this speech brought Bobby back to reality for the moment. It was likely that Lydia had relatives, perhaps even immediate, to whom such a commercial vision would have been very attractive. After all, such a complex would produce many tons of rubbish and thus much potential profit for a business like her father’s. And had there not been money in private refuse collection, she could not have afforded to attend the university at which Bobby had met her. He was acquiring a new awareness of the interconnectedness of things, so perhaps not all this ongoing episode was deplorable, and then there was the growing, and unprecedented, solidarity within the family. During the last few hours he had spent more time in his father’s company than he could remember having done previously in all his life. Furthermore, the man had listened with respect to several of his ideas on how to vanquish their common enemy.

“How about tampering with the brakes or the steering on Lyman’s jeep?” he asked now. “You know that big curve just before you get to the village? If he lost control there, especially drunk as he is, it would be quite a fall, and it’s all granite boulders below.”

Lydia gave him a searching look. “You’ve got a bloodthirsty side I’ve never seen before.”

His father asked, “Does any of us have enough technical knowledge to do something like that so it would definitely work—and then not be detected later? I doubt it.” He assumed a judicious expression. “You see, not only do we have to extricate ourselves from this predicament, but we must do it so that it is brought to an absolute end, with no subsequent repercussions. We must not only keep our noses clean legally, but we must be extremely careful not to incur the vengeance of the remaining Finches.”

“But,” wailed Bobby’s mother, “we seem to be suffering from that as it is.”

“Exactly, and we must not make it worse—and here our work is cut out for us—we must not only rid ourselves of Chuck but dissipate the existing resentment that can be detected in Lyman, which surely must be shared by the other members of the tribe.”

Bobby’s mother said, “I still insist that Mrs. Finch and I have never exchanged a harsh word.”

“That sullen old bitch,” said his father. “She’s cheated on the household accounts for years.”

This was an old theory of his father’s, and in the past the occasion for many angry words between his parents, but Bobby now was relieved to hear his mother say, “Maybe you’re right. Everything is changing so rapidly.”

His father returned the favor and replied inoffensively. “Or maybe it’s always been what we only now are recognizing since Chuck has revealed his true colors.”

A gunshot was heard at that moment, a sound that had to travel around and through many obstructions, and yet it reached them, as a scream or bellow could not have done if produced in the faraway kitchen.

Lydia’s brief expression of alarm was replaced by one of hope. “Could that possibly mean that one of them has shot the other?”

Before she could be answered came the sounds of two volleys of gunfire.

Bobby’s mother spoke with her eyes closed. “They’re shooting up the house: that’s what they are doing.”

Bobby could not have anticipated the fear that claimed him at the sound of this distant fire, so different from that heard in movie and TV battles, so flat, literal, undemonstrative. As it continued, it seemed ever so gradually to be coming closer.

With an effort, he rose above what might otherwise have become stark terror, and said, already in motion, “We’d better fortify this place before they get here.”

Bobby had taken the initiative. Doug had to grant him that; perhaps he was finally arriving at manhood. Doug followed his son into the bedroom, and together they tore away what was necessary to get to the naked mattress, lifted it off the frame, and carried it to lean vertically against the outer door of the study, where Lydia and Audrey held it in place while the men pushed pieces of heavy furniture against it, the upended sofa and, back of that, Doug’s desk, which remained horizontal, offering a surface onto which the bedclothes and sofa cushions were piled.

“Not bad,” Doug said when the barrier had been completed, standing back like a general, hands on hips, a posture for which his only training had been in military school so many years before. Of that time his principal memory was of the tormenting of an effeminate boy till he fled the Regiment (calling it “school” could get you ostracized interminably) and went home to Mother. Doug might well have been obliged to be of the company that, carrying out a traditional ritual by which a weakling was shamed, sodomized the lad had not the screaming response to the first attacker alerted the Officer of the Day.

In short, he had had no serious preparation for war, which was clearly what he was faced with now. With an effort of will he avoided dwelling on the fact that the battle had hardly been recognized as such when it was already at the stage of a Thermopylae.

But leave it to Audrey to make the point aloud. “Now our backs are really to the wall,” said she, staring disconsolately at the barrier. “But what could we do once the guns started?”

Even Lydia had lost some of her earlier spunk. “Do we just cower in here till they eventually run out of ammunition?”

“I’ll be happy to hear suggestions,” Doug said reprovingly.

Bobby had a hand to his ear. “They’ve stopped, haven’t they?”

While everybody strained to listen, a voice came from outside the door. Owing to the intervening padding, it was somewhat muffled. “Let me in!” Though slightly distorted, it sounded as though produced by Chuck, but Doug certainly made no answer.

Unnecessarily, Bobby whispered, “It’s a trick.”

“Doug? It’s Chuck. Lyman’s out of control. He’s gunning for me now!” Chuck was a good actor. His terror would have seemed real enough to someone without experience of him. Doug knew that any response whatever would undoubtedly evoke an impassioned bogus argument and therefore stayed silent.

“It’s the alcohol sets him off,” Chuck cried. “A chemical reaction. I forgot about that. Maybe I never quite believed it. But now he’s turned homicidal. For the love of God, let me in before he finds his way back here!”

Lydia came close to Doug and spoke in an undertone. “Could he just be telling the truth?”

“No,” Doug whispered with intensity.

She repeated, “Could he?”

It annoyed him to have to explain. “I’ve known Lyman for years. Drunk or sober, he’s not dangerous on his own. If he is now, it’s because Chuck is manipulating him. Didn’t you notice how he pulled in his horns as soon as Audrey denounced him? And he was then already full of alcohol. He’s a moron and a coward.”

Chuck now shouted, “No, Lyman, don’t do it!” A loud shot was heard, followed by more anguished pleading from the houseguest. “Now, that came close enough! Put that pistol down before you do something you’ll regret to the end of your life.”

Another shot was heard. The gunfire was no longer without reverberation, at such close range and contained within the low-ceilinged hallway. Nothing could have been louder. The mattress-and-furniture barrier looked pitiful now.

There was one last supplication from Chuck, followed by three shots in quick succession. Against his will, Doug listened for the sound of a body striking the uncarpeted floor, but of course heard nothing. Chuck was too arrogant to give the hoax the kind of detail it required.

Bobby said, in a voice of more than normal volume, pain in his pale eyes, “Maybe he was telling—”

Doug cut him off. “Can’t you see it’s fake? Don’t go weak on me now. You’ve just been doing such a good job… .”

Bobby’s eyes changed. “Do you mean it?” He seemed to be genuinely moved.

“Yes, I do, son. You ought to know that.” Doug suppressed an urge to say, “In case we don’t come out of this.” Sentimentality could serve only the enemy.

“But what can we do now, Dad?” Bobby asked plaintively.

“Absolutely nothing. I know that’s hardest to manage, but you see, doing something’s what’s got us in so deep with Chuck.”

Bobby’s nose was wrinkled. “I thought it was just the reverse: that we didn’t do enough when he was moving into a position of power, that we could have stopped him in his tracks if we had got him when he was first starting out.”

Doug shook his head. “On the contrary! We paid too much attention to him, flattered him too much. He couldn’t have got anywhere if he had been ignored.”

Bobby made a stubborn nose. “But what about him installing himself as a proper houseguest without an invitation from anybody? Without even knowing any of us! The fantastic nerve! But it worked.”

“The last chapter hasn’t been written yet,” Doug said, with a narrowing of eyes. “Who can say what the end will be? Lots of things give the illusion of success at the outset, but that’s all it is, an illusion. Oh, I’m not saying we’re in what would seem a powerful position, barricaded here and unarmed, with not one but two adversaries frothing at the mouth to get to us, both armed to the teeth. I’m not saying this is the ground on which I’d fight by choice. But they haven’t got us, have they? And aren’t we in a better situation now than if we were still in the kitchen?”

Bobby nodded but suddenly he seemed to be thinking of something else. In a moment he said, “I’ve got an idea.”

Doug was not pleased to have his principle defied no sooner than it had been enunciated. “I thought I was just saying that we should sit tight, do nothing at all?”

Bobby hypocritically nodded agreement, but proceeded to suggest a course of action. “Now here’s how it goes: we pour a puddle of water here, just in front of the door. Then we cut off the cord of the desk lamp, cut if off at the lamp end, leaving the plug end intact. We scrape off the insulation, baring the two wires. We plug one end in the wall socket, and we put the two bare wires into the puddle of water. We take away the barrier and let Chuck in. He steps into the water, and boom, he gets the juice.”

“If Chuck is wearing rubber-soled shoes,” said Doug, “it wouldn’t work.”

Bobby stretched his lower lip halfway to his nose. “What do you think, Lyd?”

They both turned to her, Doug wryly: every time he began to approve of Bobby, he soon had reason to feel otherwise. Even in an extreme situation, the boy could rarely rise above his fundamental tendency towards fecklessness.

But Lydia was not to be seen. Nor, for that matter, was Audrey. Hearing a sound from the bathroom, Doug and Bobby went together to its open door.

Facing them, knees inside, Lydia sat on the frame of the high small window in the alcove—that from which Doug had seen her in the afternoon: she was slender enough to do that. Audrey had apparently helped her gain the height and was at the moment holding the little white stool on which she had climbed.

Audrey spoke to Doug in what he heard as a self-righteous tone. “Lydia’s going to take the attack to them.”

With a cursory wave, his daughter-in-law lifted her arms over her head, hands out the window, grasped something above, swung her legs up and out, and dropped from sight. This was done as if by a veteran gymnast, so deftly as to convert any negative feelings that Doug might have had to honest admiration.

He went to the window and looked out, but could not see her. Near the house it was always very dark back there at night, and the segment of the pool area could be distinguished only when the moon was more assertive than it was at the moment.

“She pushed the screen out,” Audrey said. “She knew how to do that.”

Lydia moved along the wall by touch. She could see nothing, but had no fear of stepping on a loose rake or kicking a lost football. She was not at home; the Graveses hired people who came regularly to tend the grounds, more Finches presumably. Her father on the other hand hired men pretentiously called gardeners (and they did plant special trees and gaudy bushes, all of which usually soon died), but were easily recognized as being the same guys who did freelance masonry, housepainting, and roofing, and on Friday nights played cards with their employer. They were the Santinis, more or less, comprising relatives and friends: another version of the Finches, except that there was not so much, if any, separation between them and their clients. Her brothers were supposed to help with outdoor work, and their habitual failure to do so was the occasion for much clamor and threats of mayhem by her father, yet she could not remember a time when such vengeance was actually wreaked. Whereas as a young female person she had now and again been denied certain privileges when she failed to discharge her kitchen duties to the letter: table-clearing, dish-scraping, loading the dishwasher in a way that would not result in broken glassware. Had she been the daughter of an earlier era, according to her mother, she would have had to assist in the washing of dishes by hand and perhaps clean bathrooms as well. But she was punished worse for using foul language, and worst of all for getting slightly tipsy on apricot brandy at the age of thirteen: the birthday party was canceled at the last minute, and it was left to her to explain to her favorite boy. But when her brother, under one influence or another, totaled the Continental, so great was her parents’ relief with his escape from personal injury that he was not even grounded for a day.

Lydia did not nurse a real grudge, but the fact remained that the kitchen was the room for which she had least preference in any house. In the apartment they had shared at college, she and Bobby lived on big bags of apples and takeout from the nearest restaurant, which happened to be Korean.

This house might be amusing when one was indoors, but circumnavigating it in the darkness did not bring affection for the architect. How she longed to be back with the good old banal rectilinear, unnatural though it might be amongst foliage and granite outcroppings. More than once she had to leave a cul-de-sac or backtrack from an impasse, but eventually she blundered upon the rank of lighted casement windows that distinguished the kitchen.

An empty kitchen—which could have been expected if Lyman was truly stalking Chuck through the labyrinthine house. But the deserted table, with its horizontaled, dead-soldier gin bottle, would also make sense if Chuck was playing his possum game in that back hallway long after the police chief had driven off into the night, a much more likely state of affairs given the absence of Lyman’s jeep from the parking area, where she next took her investigation.

The two vehicles belonging to the Graveses stood alone once again. Her now established night vision could see that and in fact more: the tires of both station wagon and compact sedan were flat and, as she confirmed by touch, permanently ruined. All eight had been slashed.

Now that was definitely Lyman’s work, but was it mere impulsive spite or rather part of Chuck’s master plan? For that matter, had the chief made his appearance for the reason he had named or had his arrival too been according to the grand design?

She returned to the house and entered the kitchen via the screen door, to the upper panel of which numerous insects adhered, seeing which she was retroactively aware that she had been bitten by multitudinous mosquitoes while traveling around the outer wall of the house; and with a significant fall of temperature at sunset, characteristic of the shore, the night was cool for her thin shirt. But some natural economy of being had kept these uncomfortable facts from her attention while she was outdoors and admitted them only now when she was safe inside.

She had expected the situation to be much worse: namely, that Lyman would still be on the premises, pistol in hand. If Chuck was once again on his own, what could be done to deal with him that had not already been tested and failed? In a sense the coming of Lyman had opened up new possibilities, which were now nullified by his departure.

While Lydia was dealing with such reflections, Chuck himself sidled furtively into the kitchen. Each was startled by the other.

“Lyman’s gone?”

“You’re asking me?” she said with disdain. “He’s your partner.”

The houseguest showed her an uneasy smile. “I won’t question how you happen to be at large while the rest of them are barricaded in their cowardly fashion back there, but I congratulate you on finally coming to your senses. Now let’s get going before he comes back with the whole carload.” He was moving towards the screen door.

“What do you mean?”

“He went to fetch the others. Sunday nights, they all drink in the back room of the grocery store. … . Do I have to get more explicit?”

“I don’t care what you get,” said Lydia, “except lost. Unfortunately, however, now that you’ve finally decided to leave, you can’t—unless this is another trick.”

Chuck winced as though genuinely hurt. “Look, I just risked my life again for your sake. Lyman wanted to go for you. When I stopped him, he pulled his gun on me!”

Lydia stared at him for a moment, then used, uncharacteristically, a scatological term.

“All right,” Chuck cried, “call it bullshit, but let’s just get out of here before he comes back with that bunch. I’m related to them, but I tell you frankly they’re animals when they’re full of beer. And they’ve got nothing to fear: Lyman’s the law on this island.”

Lydia felt a chill, but she was nevertheless pleased to frustrate Chuck even though she herself would share in his disadvantage. “Didn’t you hear me? Nobody can leave now. All the tires have been slashed.”

Chuck pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t smile if I were you. You’re facing a gang-bang, unless I can stop them somehow.”

She resisted fright with anger. “It’s because of you we’re in this mess. And they’re your people!”

“Maybe I’m being contrite,” he said sadly. “Maybe it’s no longer just a matter of pulling a malicious joke on those to whom it would be of no permanent consequence.”

“Oh, really? I want you to know that I think you’re garbage.”

“That’s too bad,” said Chuck. “Because maybe I care for you. Can’t you ever put your self-righteousness aside and consider that possibility?” For an instant he had succeeded in getting her attention, but then squandered his chance by adding, “Can’t you ever be more than the little smart-ass opportunist?”

“You scum,” she said. “What are you? A Finch?”

She had found the effective term. His face colored. “Just wait till that carload of drunks gets here, kiddo: you’ll be begging your Uncle Chuck to save your skin. Some of my country cousins never get a woman year in, year out: they just bugger one another. Imagine what they will do to a little girl like you.”

“Stop calling me little!” she cried. “I’m as big as you.”

He started towards her. “I’ll show you who’s big.”

The large chef’s knife was on the counter: the kitchen police had not got around to it before being interrupted by Lyman’s arrival. Lydia now snatched up this formidable blade and pointed it at her enemy.

“Just a minute,” said Chuck. “You’re no knife-fighter.” But he halted his advance.

“Now, just give me that gun you carry.” She gestured towards his lower leg.

“Gun?”

“The pistol you carry in the ankle holster.”

He jerked his chin in what would seem a silent laugh. He simultaneously pulled up both legs of the trousers: above his low socks only pale skin could be seen on either limb.

This single fact could be devastating. Was the gun altogether a fantasy of Doug’s? If so, then Chuck was not dangerous, and indeed not guilty of anything but entering her bed under false pretenses—if even that charge could be sustained. After all, he had not worn a disguise.

Lydia waved the knife at him. “Sit down.” He took the chair that had been occupied by Doug at that wretched dinner. “I want to ask you something.” But it was not as easy as that. “Look … earlier, in the bedroom, uh, did you think I knew who you were?”

Chuck frowned. For the first time she noticed that his mouth looked not quite fully formed: no doubt that accounted for the boyishness of his appearance, but so did the flat hair with its neat parting.

At last he said, “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

“I’m trying to find out some information which might have an effect on this whole business.”

He produced a cynical smile. “Yes, it might be nice to know just how it happened that I was transformed from an honored guest into the whipping boy of this household, and why I have been the target of several attacks, mostly by you, on whom I’ve never laid a hand except in love.”

She was angry again. “Oh, is that what you call it?”

He shrugged. “Now I suppose you’re going to knife me for saying that? What the hell is wrong with you, woman?”

She would never discover the truth if she continued to be deflected by emotion. “All I want to know,” she told him now, “is just what you thought you were doing when you simply opened the door and came in and got in bed with me?”

He smiled as if at an imaginary personage at her side. “God Almighty. I’ve never been asked a question like that before.” He sighed. “What do you think I thought?” He sighed again. “Bobby told me to go back and see you, said you wanted to thank me for saving your life. So when I knocked at the door and you invited me in, and there you were, naked and in bed …”

“I never invited you to come in,” said Lydia, with quiet vehemence. “And I’m even giving you the benefit of the doubt about your so-called knocking: if you did, I didn’t hear it. I was asleep.”

He extended his forefinger. “Wait a minute.” He was grinning in disbelief. “You’re not saying you were sleeping? That stuff you were saying was mere sleep-talk!”

“What stuff?”

“The dirty stuff.” He looked from side to side in apparent exasperation.

She shouted, waving the knife, “I’ve never talked dirty in my life, in or out of bed.”

He sneered. “All right, so while I’ve got it in you, some other girl is bending over with her mouth in my ear, yelling, ‘Oh, give it to me, baby!’”

And she had actually been wondering whether he might have had some small argument, however flawed, to justify his actions! He was a hyena, and she might well have attacked him with the big knife, even though he was unarmed, had not Doug, followed by Bobby, rushed in from the butler’s pantry. The father seized Chuck and held him to the chair while the son tied him snugly at wrists and ankles with what looked like venetian-blind cord.

“There we are!” said Doug with great satisfaction, as he stood back and inspected the houseguest-in-bondage.

“I didn’t say anything of the sort!” Lydia protested, fearing her husband and father-in-law had heard Chuck’s most recent and most outlandish lies.

Neither acknowledged the plea. Doug looked at her and said, “Well, that’s done.”

“Go ahead, Lyd,” Bobby urged, ebulliently. “Take your revenge. He can’t do anything. Carve your initials in his forehead if you want.”

Chuck was expressionless. He certainly showed no fear.

Lydia returned the knife to the counter. “I don’t want that kind of revenge.”

“He did it to you when you were helpless!” Bobby cried.

Doug spoke soberly. “I assure you, Lydia, this is no place for civilized scruples, We’ve been invaded by the barbarians. They don’t understand decency, and they take mercy for weakness. Unless we act decisively now that we have the chance, this menace will get worse and worse.” Without warning, he turned and violently swatted Chuck across the side of the head. “This little turd, if you’ll pardon my language, must be terminated.”

Lydia winced. “Oh, please! Is that necessary? By the way, he isn’t armed.”

Doug knelt and in turn roughly raised each of Chuck’s trouser cuffs. He rose and slapped the houseguest again, this time across the left cheek. “Where is it, you little shit?”

“Stop that!” Lydia said. “We don’t need that.”

“But it’s so satisfying,” Doug said, with a grim smile. “Where’s the pistol?” Chuck shrugged within his bonds. Doug struck him again.

“Dammit!” Lydia said. “I don’t like this.”

Doug sneered at her. “Just don’t say it brings us down to his level.”

“Well, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does,” said Bobby. “But that’s where we should be. Why expect us to be saints? We’re only human.” He too slapped the helpless Chuck.

Lydia was nauseated by this behavior. “I don’t want you to strike this man again!”

“All right, then,” said Doug. “Let’s try him, find him guilty, and carry out the death sentence.”

“Don’t joke like that.”

“If you think I’m joking, Lydia, then just watch.” Doug sat down and, taking up the empty gin bottle, banged its bottom against the surface of the table. “The jury will here and now assemble.” Bobby took a chair across from his father. Chuck was between them. Doug pointed at Lydia. “Take your place.”

At that moment Audrey came into the kitchen. “You’ll be happy to know I haven’t been able to find any breakage anywhere. I don’t know what those shots were fired at, but they didn’t seem to hit anything of ours.” She avoided looking at Chuck. “Where is that horrible police chief?”

“He left when the bottle was empty,” said Doug. “That’s obvious. He can be disregarded: he’s just a hick cop. We’ve got no reason to fear him or anybody else from these trash. Remove this thorn from our side, and our troubles will be over. And we must do it in a way that will cow all the other Finches once and for good.”

Lydia was trying to fight off a moral dizziness. For that reason alone she sat down in the chair indicated by her father-in-law.

“You, too,” he said to Audrey, “and be quick about it. This thing has gone on too long as it is.” He addressed Chuck. “All right, there you have it, a jury of your peers. You’re getting a lot more justice than you would give to anyone in your power.” He banged the table again with the gin bottle. “The court will come to order. The defendant is charged with criminal trespass, carrying a concealed firearm, grand theft, assault and battery, and rape. I’m entering a plea of nolo contendere in your behalf, so you can’t say you’ve been railroaded.”

“No!” Lydia said, rising though her head was by no means clear. “He has counsel to represent him. … . We plead not guilty on all counts.”

“Are you demented?” Doug asked. “You’re a witness for the prosecution!”

“I won’t be a party to a burlesque of justice.”

Bobby spoke to his father. “She’s showing the strain of her ordeal.” To his wife he said, “Calm yourself, Lyd. Take your time, and you will come to understand that there’s no other way to deal with this matter. It isn’t as if anyone likes the job. It simply has to be done.”

“I don’t agree,” she said. “I’ll never agree.”

“You tell ’em, kid,” Chuck said, grinning.

“I wouldn’t joke about this if I were you,” she told him. “Can’t you see they mean it?”

“Sure we do!” Doug said. “We’re dead serious, and we’re all one in this. Am I right, Audrey?”

His wife performed a slow sad nod.

“Audrey!” Lydia asked. “Do you understand what they’re threatening to do?”

Her mother-in-law shrugged, but as if she were physically chilled rather than morally indifferent. “I’ve always made it my policy never to interfere with Doug when he’s convinced about something. There are times when you have to fall in line.”

“We’re talking about killing a helpless man!”

“Mind you, I don’t relish the thought,” said Audrey. “But still …”

“Lydia.” Bobby spoke sternly. “I don’t believe you understand that this is just as much my idea as Dad’s.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Adrenaline was an effective force against vertigo. Lydia had regained her balance. She strode to a position near the refrigerator. “Look, I agree with you that Chuck has acted badly. Undoubtedly he should be made to leave, but—”

“He’ll just come back,” said Doug. “You know that.”

“He’s right!” Chuck cackled triumphantly. “That’s what I’ll do.”

Lydia shouted at him. “Will you shut up! Are you trying to put the noose around your neck?”

Chuck laughed. “I can’t see the purpose in dissembling at this point. I maintained my mask while it was useful, but whom could I fool now by pretending to be the kind of fellow who tries to do the right thing by the standards of these people?”

“This has nothing to do with standards!” Lydia said, but was immediately aware that she had not said precisely what she meant.

Doug snorted. “Well, I’ll give the devil his due on that score: if you can’t see a fundamental difference in principles here, then you’re really not qualified to render a judgment. Look, this man has abused our hospitality! Can there be a greater crime? Think of what that means to the whole matter of civilization.”

“On the other side you have my charge,” said Chuck. “That these people are worthless parasites. If I were as pompous as this useless human being, I might ask you to think of how that reflects on the culture. You’re going to have to make a choice sooner or later, Lydia.”

Instead she asked, “What’s your own use, Chuck? So far as I can see, you’re the most useless person here, and furthermore you’re a charlatan.”

He finally lost his good humor. “I wasn’t born to privilege,” he snarled. “Nor did I marry into it. I had to hack my own way up out of the swamp, with damn little help from anybody. I don’t mind saying I’m proud of what I made of myself. I could have been just another Lyman.”

“Do you really think you’re better off?” She found self-righteousness the most contemptible of his traits.

Doug pounded the table with the gin bottle. “I’ve heard quite enough. The defendant is found guilty on all counts. I therefore sentence him to be put to death by water.”

Lydia shrieked, “Stop this! Stop it right now!”

But Doug and Bobby each took one of Chuck’s arms and raised him from the chair.

“We’ll do it in the pool,” Doug said. “It’ll be neat and clean, and easily explained as a swimming accident, probably the result of falling in while drunk. The autopsy will support that: he’s got alcohol in his system.”

“They’ve worked it all out, Lydia,” Chuck said tauntingly. “Going to drown me like a kitten in a bag.”

“No,” said Bobby. “Like a rat!”

Lydia blocked their route to the screen door. “I warn you,” she said, “I’ll have to tell the authorities.”

“But there aren’t any,” said Doug. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Sagging between his captors, Chuck jeered, “Maybe your own days are numbered, Lydia. You’ll be next.”

“Shut up, you rat!” ordered Bobby, jerking Chuck at the armpit. “You don’t know anything about the way decent people act!”