Sara called and, when she hung up, Mike Karr looked across his desk at Willy and grinned at him. He indicated the memo he'd made on his "Assistant District Attorney" stationery. The memo said: Yellow pears, the sweet and juicy kind. Mike beamed. "It's pears this time, Willy."

Willy grunted, but Mike couldn't suppress his enthusiasm as he went on: "Do you know, Willy, you've made a mistake in not getting married?"

Willy-- Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, III-- did not answer. Mike felt that life was very good, nowadays. He and Sara'd had bad times, of course. Only a couple of months ago, things had looked rough. Sara was insisting on being a working wife, and Mike had been absorbed in his work, and they weren't getting along too well. But now he felt good all over.

Willy would usually share his mood. He not only worked under Mike, as an investigator on the District Attorney's staff, but he liked Mike. He dourly worshipped Sara. Now, though, he didn't smile. "Something on your mind?" asked Mike. "What?"

Willy scowled at his fingers. In his own particular line of work, he was a perfectionist. Nobody would ever demand of him one-half of what he demanded of himself, when something was to be investigated. Mike had especially asked for him when he himself was assigned to cooperate with the Citizen's Crime Commission in a campaign against the black market in babies. Willy'd been gathering background material. Now his expression was deadpan-- too deadpan.

"I hit on something," said Willy, at last. "I don't like it."

Mike leaned back in his chair. As Assistant District Attorney, one looked at things from a special viewpoint. One wasn't angry because people committed crimes. One couldn't be. One had to take people as they came. Some pretty bad. When Willy said he didn't like something, it didn't mean indignation-- not necessarily.

"I think it's a black-market baby affair," said Willy, "and you wouldn't believe it." He scowled at the wall. "I was down in the City Hall looking up some records. Births and deaths and so on. The thing I was working on called for it."

"Well?" said Mike.

"I saw the death record of a baby. Ten years back."

"Well?" said Mike again.

"I know the kid," said Willy vexedly. "He's ten years old and plays a good game of baseball, for a kid. But his death's on record."

Mike frowned in his turn, watching Willy. "It smells a little," he observed. You think it's black-market?"

"Not the dead baby," said Willy. "The death certificate's okay. It's signed by the same doctor who delivered the baby. I'd like to ask him, but he died six years ago. It looks like the baby died and somebody switched another, without anybody finding it out. What do I do?"

Mike understood. Willy had found a case he was reluctant to follow because it might hurt somebody. But he couldn't let it alone.

You've got discretion," said Mike. "Use it. If nobody's been hurt, if there's been no injustice-- we don't take cases to court just to broadcast family secrets. But if there's something wrong. . ."

Willy nodded. "I'll check. I don't like it, though. I'd never suspect a thing but I can make a guess why it was done. But how? And how bad was the how ? It could be pretty bad indeed."

He stood up abruptly. Mike folded the memo he'd made, and Willy said, "Watch that memo! Sara wants yellow pears-- I think I know a place. I'll see. But you don't want to forget."

He went out of the office. Mike turned back to his work. It wasn't all pleasant, the job of an Assistant District Attorney. In this black-market business, now. There'd been heartbreaking cases involving advantages taken of girls who were ashamed, threats of scandal, blackmail threats to claim a baby back when it had wound itself into the heartstrings of the people who'd gotten it. There isn't anything much lower than a racketeer who'll batten on the love of adults for children.

When Mike went home that evening, he carried a box of pears. Each one was separatley wrapped in tissue paper. Sara bit into one instantly and beamed gratefully at him. "Oh, but it's good!" she said happily." "Am I a nuisance, Mike?"

"Willy got them," Mike confessed. "It was his idea to have them gift-wrapped." Hanging up his coat, he asked, "What's news?"

"I had company," she told him. "Mary Harper came over for a while. Roger's a lot better. Mike, I'm wonderfully lucky! When Mary was going to have little Billy, Roger was in the veteran's hospital with a heart attack, and she expected to hear any minute he'd simply stopped living! Instead of being useless and happy, like me. . ." She bit again into the pear and nodded at it. "This is perfect! But the doctor says Roger is really coming along. If he takes things easy, and doesn't get emotionally wrought up, he may live as long as anybody else. Isn't that wonderful? Roger said he's been counting up to ten times when he feels he's getting angry. He asked the doctor if he could cut it down to nine!"

Mike had more reason to be happy than most, and more reason than he knew. At that very instant, for example, Mary Harper had reason to feel less than blissful. She'd visited Sara during the afternoon. It was an honest visit. She was very fond of Sara and Mike. But the visit to Sara also was a cover-up for being out, while she went to another place-- a nursing home-- and very politely paid a not-small, not-excessive sum of money to one Clayton Pike. He and his wife ran the nursing home, and he'd been collecting that money from Mary for a good many years. His wife pretended to know nothing about it, but she'd arranged it all.

Mary paid the blackmail quite composedly. There was no use getting upset. Her husband Roger was coming along nicely now, but he had to be shielded from things that might cause violent emotion. He tried hard, but his temperament was hardly calm. And he had to be calm. So Mary paid blackmail. If he ever found out why, she'd be a widow and little Billy would be worse than fatherless.

When Mary left the office of the nursing home, however, the subject came up immediately. Clayton Pike closed the door behind her. He crossed the office and opened another door. "That was Mary Harper," he said. "You were listening..."

The girl behind the door smiled blandly. "Naturally!" She entered the office, lithe and consciously attractive, even with Clayton Pike as the only man around-- and he was not a prize. But though she looked at him steadily enough, her eyes were restless. "She adopted this brat you tell me about-- the brat I'm to weep over and claim is my own. Let me see your file again."

Clayton Pike produced a file envelope from a desk drawer. He took other envelopes out of it, large and small, some of official size and some quite small. The girl inspected them with a singular cold detachment, as if already familar with them but looking for flaws in what they said. She looke up. "The really important one isn't here."

Pike brought out a new, larger envelope with a British stamp on it. He handed it over. The girl read its contents. It was not like an American business letter. It used the stately phrasing of someone who would call himself a solicitor instead of a lawyer. It was addressed to a Mrs. Bayard Smythe. The firm of solicitors informed her that a reversion in interest having matured in favor of her late husband, it was their duty to inquire if Mr. Smythe had left issue-- children. If so, a very considerable sum awaited them. If there had been children, now deceased, the sum would be due Mrs. Smythe. They were addressing her at her last known address, and they remained her most obedient servants...

"How much?" she said crisply. He told her. He'd checked on the whole matter, privately.

"You've seen Mary Harper," said Pike exuberantly. "You know you can handle her! You see what I've got-- marriage certificate, letters, even a snapshot of the boy's father and when and where he died. You're Mrs. Smythe. With the boy-- everything regular, there!-- you're a rich woman. And I'm a rich man! Smart?"

"I'd guess," said the woman acidly, "that you were lucky. How'd you happen to be set up for a break like this?"

"The woman died here," he said zestfully. "And, in this business, sometimes a ready-made new identity can be sold for a nice price. So I kept her papers and trinkets. She had no friends. Nobody to even claim her body for burial! So I simply changed the records here from Smythe to Jones, and I could supply an inquirer with a name and a past and a marriage certificate and a conveniently dead husband on request. As it turns out, I can even supply the heir these Englishmen are so anxious to find!

The girl smiled without mirth. "But it's going to be tricky. Children know I don't like them, usually. The boy won't be pleased. And you explained that this Mary Harper wanted the baby so her husband wouldn't die of a heart stoppage when he learned he wasn't a father anymore. You say he's still not too healthy. And I'm here to take the boy away. Maybe she likes the brat. Certainy she's been paying to keep her husband from finding out he isn't the father he believes. When we demand the boy back, she's going to be desperate! And a desperate woman---"

Clayton Pike had an answer for that. Mary Harper would know she had no case. She'd never adopted the boy legally. She'd lived a lie. She wouldn't dare fight..."

The girl who was to impersonate a child's dead mother looked at him with unenchanted eyes. Her name was really Irene Eagan, and there was not much that enchanted her. She'd had a strange life, that Mary Harper couldn't imagine. There'd been trouble over men in her life. There'd been thefts that didn't get her what she wanted. She was hard and selfish. Honesty was a weakness to her.

"When do we start?" she asked coldly.

And he did put things in motion at noon next day, with a call to Mary Harper. His manner was agitated. He said that something very upsetting had happened. He begged Mrs. Harper to come immedaitely to the nursing home. It was of the utmost importance. It was a matter of life and death.

She couldn't imagine what had happened. Roger was improving, and Billy was thriving, nowadays. She did not look for better fortune than only to have her husband and her son-- he was her son, now, by every tie but that of being born to her-- and she couldn't see any motive that could move even Clayton Pike to harm her. Anything he did would lose him the money he'd been collecting so long...

Mike was deep in the paper work that is so great a part of an organized investigation. When Willy came in, Mike looked up and then turned. Willy looked pleased. "I checked out the case I told you about yesterday," he said with the crustiness with which he expressed pleasure. "It's all right."

Mike put down his papers to give full attention.

"I won't tell you the name," said Willy with dignity. "But there was a woman who had a baby. Her husband was ill, and he'd set his heart on having a son. He got it. It was a tonic to him, when he heard his son was born. What would happen if the baby died? You figure what his wife thought. The kid did die, only two weeks old. But his wife couldn't let him know. He'd die, too! So she got another baby. That's all. No case for the office here. And," he said proudly, "nobody knows that story but me and the woman. I got it in scraps and pieces here and there. It fits. It's right."

Where'd she get the baby?" he asked Mike.

"That fits, too. Baby born right in town here, a day before the other. Two weeks later, his mother died. A mother without a baby, and a baby without a mother. Hold on!" Willy held up his hand. "The baby's mother hadn't a friend in the world. No one even claimed her body. The city buried her. It's all in the records down at City Hall. I don't know what records say anywhere else, but there they're right! Is there any reason to go into that?"

"Besides," said Willy crossly, "the kid plays a good game of baseball, for a kid. He might make the big leagues some day. It'd be a dirty trick to take away the name he's got, and make him go back to the one he was born with. Can you imagine a big-league player named Smythe? S-m-y-t-h-e? It's ridiculous!"

Mike shrugged. Mike was incorruptible. There are some things an Assistant District Attorney can legitimately fail to inquire into. "I never heard a word," said Mike, dryly. "You never mentioned it. If I'm an accessory. . . "

"Don't tell your wife," Willy added. Women try to guess things out."

"She'd take your word, anyhow," said Mike. "She wouldn't believe you'd do anything wrong. Those pears you got her just hit the spot!"

Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan III stood up with an air of indifference. "Women'd get along better," he said crustily, "if they just listened to the District Attorney's office. Your wife, now-- she wanted pears and I knew where to find 'em. A lot of women would be better off if they just came here!"

Mike could hardly guess, then, how good an idea that might have been for Mary Harper. At that very moment, she stood, ashen-faced, confronting the girl who said she was Billy's mother.

"I'm sorry for you, Mrs. Harper," said Irene Eagan coldly, "but I want my baby! I was desperate when I let him go. I thought it was best for him. If Mr. Pike let you think I had died, that is not my affair. I'm alive. I want my baby! I can do more for him now than you can, since he's come into his inheritance. And, Mrs. Harper, I'm going to have my baby!"

Mary Harper said in an anguished whisper, "We-- love him. And-- if he goes away, Roger's heart will stop. . ." Her voice faltered into silence.

It did not seem that the District Attorney's office could help her then. Mike would want to, of course. But-- if Roger heard of such an attempt to take Billy away, even though it was defeated..."

Mary Harper clenched her hands. She felt herself growing more and more desperate as the cruelty of the trap became more clear. A trap which must inexorably close upon those she held most dear... her son... he was her son!... her husband... and even those good friends from which she had withheld her lonely secret...