seemed to find most comfort, and put it up to her cheek. "What's the difference?" she asked. "So long as there's money in it?"

"Broker's commission," he said. "No more or less."

"You've been getting so much of that, lately?"

"N-no."

"Okay, then. Stop fighting it. What do you care what kind of English they use? Or whether they used sign language. The buck, kid, the buck."

"Deena," Muldoon said gravely, "you have the grubbing soul of a pawnbroker. Or real estate broker," he added. He bent his head and kissed her lips.

Her lips opened to his with that familiar warmth, a hunger for him which never failed to thrill. This time she did not remove his hand when it returned.

"... Kevie, baby—darling ... oh, my darling," she whispered.

Strange, he thought, that at a moment like this, I should be thinking of those fat twins....

Muldoon hated the pirate prices of midtown parking lots, and so was late. It had taken him ten minutes to find parking space for the Plymouth. As he started to open the door of room 657 he heard the voice of one of the twins. The words or sounds were in a language completely foreign to him. He thought to knock, but changed his mind. To knock would have made it obvious he had been listening. He barged right in.

The twins were in the anteroom. Muldoon got the impression they knew he had heard them, and an even stronger impression, that the fact was of no importance. That bothered him, for some reason.

"Ah, there you are," the twin to the left said. "Evin was wondering whether you would show up, but I told him he was putting himself to useless aggravation."

That damned mixed-up phrasing again, Muldoon thought. "Took a little time to find parking space," he said.

"Shall we be off, then?" Robert asked.

"All right with me," Muldoon replied. There was another odd thing. Evin Reeger seemed to have so very little to say.

Their destination was a place halfway down the Island. Muldoon's brow had lifted when they gave him the area. So far as he knew there hadn't been any development in the area. It was just a bit too far off the highways and rail lines for housing developments, and even more badly located for industrial requirements. He wondered what the devil they had in mind out there.

Traffic was light and the drive took little more than an hour and a half on the main highway, and another fifteen minutes of blacktop side road before Evin told him to "Turn left here," onto a rutted path off the blacktop. The path led through some scrub growth that ended on the edge of an acre or so of dump heap. Rusted heaps of broken cars were scattered about. A foul odor came from the left as though garbage, too, had been dumped and left to rot. There was a flat one-storied wooden shack close by to which Evin directed him to drive up to.

Evin produced a key and opened the door to the shack. There was a partition separating the place neatly into two sections. There were a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs and a leather sofa in the near room. The door to the other room was closed.

"Sit down, Muldoon," Robert Reeger said. He waited for Muldoon to make himself comfortable on the sofa, then continued: "First time we've ever been out here during the day. But Evin's sense of direction is unfailing." He shook his head, smiled brightly. "Ah, well, we must each have some factor to make for validity of existence, eh?"

"I don't follow," Muldoon said.

"No matter. Now, to the business at hand. I wanted you to see the area involved. Evin, the plot plan, please."

To Muldoon's surprise Evin Reeger went into the next room and returned after a moment with a plot plan of the lower third of the Island. He gave it to Muldoon who spread it at his feet.

"That red-pencilled area I've marked off," Robert Reeger said, "is what we'll be concerned with. As you notice, the dump and this shack are at the approximate center. What I have in mind to do is buy all the land in the marked-off