Passing through the backyard, he saw how weeds choked the back garden and a discarded rake lay in the middle of the grass and shook his head. The Fereman, Srs., did seem to be a rather untidy lot. No doubt, the street would look much better once someone else moved in.

At the back door, he tucked the gas can under his arm and bent to examine the lock. It was pathetic, really, not even a decent dead-bolt. He took the rectangle of thin flexible metal out of his hip pocket and worked it in between the door and the frame until the latch slipped back, then turned the doorknob and let himself in, easing the door closed behind him.

A small dog of indeterminately shaggy origin burst immediately into the kitchen and growled at him just out of reach. Unperturbed, Adler fished a piece of doctored meat from his pocket and tossed it to the scruffy little beast. Still snarling, the dog bolted it down. Within seconds, it began to run down like some sort of windup toy, its head slumping reluctantly to the worn vinyl floor in mid-growl.

"Good dog," Adler whispered as he stepped over the tiny prone form. Now, where to begin? The sink, he supposed, would be as good as a place as any. Stopping it up, he filled it with gasoline. Then he set the open gasoline can on the cabinet next to the natural gas stove. Next, he examined the narrow hall where he removed the batteries from both smoke detectors and replaced them with exhausted batteries from his pocket. For the final touch, he found the bathroom and sorted through the dirty clothes hamper until he found a pair of Fereman, Sr.'s grass-stained jeans.

He returned to the small kitchen with its quaint roosters-and-hens wallpaper and laid the soiled trousers in the gas-filled sink as though they were being soaked to remove the stain. In the middle of the floor, the small dog twitched as he stepped over it again.

He opened the door to the hot water heater and smiled. Natural gas as well. Lovely. This place would go up like a straw house. He could already smell the volatile hydrocarbons beginning to permeate the air. Taking one more look around the kitchen, he decided all that remained was for him to leave.

He slipped out the back door and crossed the street to his long black car. Driving without lights down the darkened streets, he turned randomly at each corner, moving at a bare crawl until he was out of the neighborhood.

After a respectable three days, just long enough for the Feremans to stumble through the funeral and let the cold gray facts present themselves, Adler assumed his best sorrowful face and called on the grieving Fereman home an hour after sundown.

The doorbell rang, sharp and harsh, then the door opened slightly and a dull-haired woman peered through the crack at him, her mouth set at an undecided angle. "Yes?"

Adler removed his gray hat. "I'm a friend of your husband's. May I come in?"

Her lips twitched and he sensed suddenly that she was going to say it wasn't convenient. Reaching out, he took her fingers into his own, letting his calm sink into her. "So sorry to hear about the untimely death of your in-laws," he murmured.

She nodded mutely, never taking her gaze from the sight of his hand pressed over hers, then he swept past her into the dim recesses of the claustrophobic entrance hall. Closing the door behind him, she looked at the first room on the right where Fereman sat before a gas-log fireplace, shuffling through a shoe box of faded-yellow documents. Glancing up at Adler, an expression of shock flashed across his sunken face. "Mr.--Mr.--"

"Zachariah Adler, Horizon Surety, at your service." He reached for Fereman's limp hand. "Mr. Fereman," he said in a low, but hearty voice, "I can't tell you how sorry I was to hear about your terrible loss."

The pallid little man watched his hand being shaken as though it had nothing to do with him. "I--I don't need--"

Stopping in midshake, Adler smiled sadly. "The policy? I understand perfectly. You have decided against it. Think nothing of it, sir. I have come to you merely as one man to another in your moment of need. Just tell me what I can do to make this time easier. Is there some service I can perform? A legal problem that needs untangling? Some difficulty perhaps with your parents' insurance?"

The adams-apple bobbed convulsively in Fereman's throat. "They didn't--have insurance." His eyes dropped to the battered shoe box that smelled of smoke.

"No insurance?" Adler flavored his tone with just the right mixture of shock and indignation. "In this day and age?"

"That is--" Fereman set the box aside. "They did--but they let it expire."

"I don't know what to say." Settling in the adjacent easy chair, Adler rested his hands on his bony knees.

"They--were always so--careful--really conservative about things like that." Fereman buried his face in his hands. "The land and what's left of the house--" his muffled voice continued, "--will have to go to pay their debts and--the funeral. It--still won't be enough."

"I don't like to speak ill of the dead . . ." Adler ran his fingers around the felt rim of his hat. "But it was selfish of them to burden you with a mess of this sort. They ought to have thought of someone besides themselves."

"I--don't know what happened." Fereman's voice was barely audible. "I--just don't--know."

"Yes." Adler stood up and replaced the hat upon his head. "We never know, do we?"