fence with me, and waved as I got into my car.
I wasn't coming back any more. I didn't want to see Gannet again. He was such a nice little guy. But next noon saw me knocking for admittance a third time, summoned by a call from Nick.
"Got an exclusive for you, if you want it," he said. "An escape. I don't know that it's very important to you, but we've never had one before. That might make it worth a couple of inches."
"Escape?" I said.
"Yeah. Your man, Gannet."
"So he did it! But how?"
Nick grunted. "Suppose you tell me."
"In the night?" I asked.
He shook his head. "A little while ago, in broad daylight. He was seen in his cell at ten. An hour later the room was empty. He was gone."
"But he couldn't have simply walked out of the place in broad daylight."
"No," said Nick, "he couldn't."
"Was his door unlocked?"
"It was not. It was locked, from the outside, when we came to investigate the report that he was gone. His window bars are all right, too."
"You've searched the grounds?"
"Of course. He isn't in them. He isn't in any of the buildings. Nobody saw him after eleven o'clock. He's just gone, with his cell still locked so even a monkey couldn't slip out."
"You must have some idea how he got away."
"No idea. Because it can't be done. Only, it was."
"How am I going to get a story out of that?" I asked.
"How in thunder would I know? That's your worry."
I put a cigarette between my lips unlit because smoking wasn't permitted here.
"What in the world do you suppose he . . . thought he was building?" I mused.
Nick snorted. "I don't suppose anything about it. If I did, I'd be as crazy as he was. Well, there's your exclusive, if you know what to do with it."
I didn't know what to do with it, so I finally handed it in as it stands now. This very story, in fact. And the little man with the big vizor at the editor's desk promptly handed it back. Not that I blame him.
Nobody ever saw Gannet again. Nobody ever thought of him again, I guess. Except me. I had a rush of curiosity to the head a few days later, and went to his cell armed with a level and a steel rule.
The floor of the barred cubicle Gannet once occupied is three thirty-seconds of an inch off level. Now how do you suppose he could have determined that without tools of any kind to aid the naked eye?
