ransvestia

"No one's left, Sheriff," said the trooper who had opened the gate. Gantsby gave a grunt and charged on into the camp.

And what a camp it was. The dense foliage gave way after about a hundred yards of narrow track onto a picturesque village of mainly wooden chalets. There was a wide square in the center of the chalets, with a bright cafe-restaurant with outside tables and bright red and white sunshades over every table. Gantsby seemed to be heading for the restaurant. Behind the shady street which ran away from the garden tables, Hamilton could see tree-lined tennis courts and a sandy beach. There were sailboats drawn up on the beach, but everywhere he noticed, there were no people. The village, sunlit still in the late afternoon, was empty of all life, the windows of the houses curtained or shuttered as if in mourning.

Gantsby swung through the white picket fence around the tables in front of the cafe, and stomped up several wide, wooden steps into a long barroom. There were three men sitting at a small table, looking through a bay window towards the beach. Two were obviously police- men. They sat stolidly, finishing off cups of coffee. The third person was decidedly nervous. It was hard for Hamilton to tell his age at first, but his hair was jet-black and styled after the fashion of the early fifties. He flicked anxiously at his cigarette as Gantsby barged across the room to the table. The two plain-clothesmen stood up as the Sheriff approached.

"This is Hamilton," said Gantsby, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "He'll be in charge from now on."

Something like relief passed over the faces of both detectives. But Bud Hamilton had been startled. In charge! He hadn't expected that, and the more he looked at the black-haired nervous guy, the more he didn't like what he saw, why he was getting into this affair, or even why he'd probably been recommended for the job in the first place. The long nails and slender fingers that gripped the coffee cup. the shaped eyebrows and the general mien of the figure, told him what the job would be all about and Gantsby soon confirmed it.

"Seven years ago," the sheriff said bitterly, much too bitterly, to Hamilton, though now looked at the man whom Hamilton judged to be in his forties, "my predecessor in Allen County did what he thought was a bright thing at the time. The whole county was pretty

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