“Duff! I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”

He grinned. “Would you mind if I transferred your carpets to the line behind the barn?”

Once there, she asked abruptly, “Duff, has anything happened?”

He shook his head. “Everything’s stopped happening. I saw Higgins a while ago. The FBI checked Harry’s story about platinum. So I guess I made one really sour bunch of mistakes.” He told her the situation.

She dropped the carpet beater. “Only — you don’t believe you did. Do you?”

“No.”

Her look was thoughtful, measuring. “But you aren’t absolutely positive?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been chivvied around so much that I don’t know. The tests I ran seem okay, on review. I thought that hunk of platinum didn’t look exactly like the thing I sandpapered the first time. After all, though, it would be crazy. Us. Harry. A house like this.

Mixed up in anything of that kind.”

“Maybe not too crazy. Look at the facts that have come out of the samples swiped.