the deadly seriousness that is here always. To me it is the rarest and most interesting thing which I have seen for some time. You must write it.”
“All right,” I said. “Sure. Has he any children?”

“No,” he said. “I asked the police. But you must write it and you must call it ‘The Butterfly and the Tank.’ ”
“All right,” I said. “Sure. But I don’t like the title much.”
“The title is very elegant,” the manager said. “It is pure literature.”

“All right,” I said. “Sure. That’s what we’ll call it. ‘The Butterfly and the Tank.’ ”
And I sat there on that bright cheerful morning, the place smelling clean and newly aired and swept, with the manager who was an old friend and who was now very pleased with the literature we were making together and I took a sip of the gin and tonic water and looked out the sandbagged window and thought of the wife kneeling there and saying, “Pedro. Pedro, who has done this to thee, Pedro?” And I thought that the police would never be able to tell her that even if they had the name of the man who pulled the trigger.

The End