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through.”
    “Is it dangerous?”
    “If it blows out you’re a dead man.”
    “What can be done about it?”
    “Surgery can be performed and a chunk of plastic tubing put in place of the weakened section of the artery.”
    “An operation? How soon would I need to do it?”
    “Right away.”
    “But next week is Wimbledon.”
    “Alan, listen to me. Whether you have the operation or not, you’re going to have to forget about competitive tennis.”
    “You’re not serious?”
    “Never more so. In any strenuous activity the body tissues need more oxygen. To supply that need the heart pumps the blood all the faster, putting more of a strain on the arterial walls. Once you’ve had the operation you’ll be able to live a normal enough life and be as active as any thirty-eight-year-old man, but extreme exercise will be out of the quesiton.”
    “Doc, I’ve been playing tennis since I was fifteen years old. It was tennis got me out of the mines where my old man died and where my three brothers are living dead right now. The game hasn’t made me a lot of money, but it’s given me a far better life than I could ever have had without it. Right now I’m playing the best tennis of my life, and for the first time I’ve got an honest shot at Wimbledon. Do you have any idea what a win at Wimbledon could do for me, Doc?”
    “It could kill you, that’s what it could do.”
    Alan went on as though the doctor hadn’t spoken. “A Wimbledon champion can get a lifetime job with a sporting goods firm, and never have to worry again about the rentman or the greengrocer. And all you have to do is travel about to schools and the like, signing your autograph and showing the kids how to hold a racket. Your company’s racket, of course. Doc, you just don’t know what that kind of security could mean to me and Hazel.”
    “I understand your situation, Alan, and I do sympathize. But that doesn’t change the facts. I can’t order you to have an immediate operation. I can only emphasize that if you don’t have it, and if you continue to play tennis, you will surely die. Quite possibly at Wimbledon.”
    “And if I quit now, what would I do? Go back to the mines? I doubt they’d even have me now. I have no trade, no skills except hitting a tennis ball with a racket.”
    “Of course, the decision is yours,” said the doctor, “but if it were me I know what I’d do.”
    Alan had looked around the doctor’s office at the richly paneled walls, the leaded windows, the Oriental carpet. “It’s not quite the same thing, is it?”
    • • •
    Now Hazel Doughty reached out and touched her husband lightly on the shoulder. “Are you all right, love? Would you like me to massage your legs?”
    Alan pulled his mind back to the present. He grinned at his wife and said, “You can if you’d like, woman, but you’ll risk driving me into a passion.”
    “Go along with you,” she smiled. “I’ve lived with you long enough, Alan Doughty, to know there’ll be no bedtime frolics until after the tournament when you can loosen up again. Perhaps you’d fancy a beer. There’s a couple of pints left.”
    Alan rose and took hold of his wife’s hands. He drew her up gently to stand facing him. “Damn the beer,” he said. “And damn the tournament. What I want right now is you.” He smiled at her. “Besides, I’ll likely play better than ever afterwards, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
    Hazel circled his lean body with her arms and pressed close against him. “I love you, tennis player, do you know that?”
    “I suspected as much,” he said. “Now, are you coming to bed with me or do I have to see what I can pick up down at the local?”
    Laughing softly, Hazel walked with her husband into the small, neat bedroom. Alan kept his face turned away so she would not see the tears.

CHAPTER 5
    Mike Wilder opened the door and stepped out to look up and down the hallway. He thought he had heard someone moving out there, but the hall was