Richard Deming

This Game of Murder

Chapter I

As always when he ran into her unexpectedly, Kirk Marshall’s heart did a little flip when he spotted Betty Case alone at a table in the country-club bar. He learned to repress any emotional reaction when he knew in advance he would encounter her at some social function, but even after eleven years of her being another man’s wife, an accidental encounter still threw him.

She glanced up to see who had stopped so abruptly in the doorway, and flushed slightly when she recognized his tall figure. Her flush caused his heart to flip again, for it seemed to indicate she, too, still reacted to their unexpected encounters.

He moved over toward her table, a tall, lean man dressed in rumpled cotton slacks and an open-necked sport shirt. He said casually, “Hello, Betty. Where’s the lord and master?”

“Out on the lake fishing with Doc Derring,” she said in an equally casual tone. “Bud and I got bored spending Sunday afternoon at home alone, and decided to visit the club. Bud’s down on the beach.”

Bud, whose real name was Bruce, Jr., was her ten-year-old son.

Standing the golf bag he was carrying in the corner behind her table, Marshall folded his lanky frame into a chair across from her. He glanced at her nearly empty glass.

“Tom Collins?” he asked.

When she nodded, he called to the club steward, “A beer for me, Al, and a Tom Collins for Mrs. Case.”

It would have been rude not to sit with her, since she was the only other person in the bar aside from the steward, he told himself. He wasn’t going to carry his practice of avoiding her to the point of acting like a juvenile.

While awaiting the drinks, Marshall examined Betty Case critically. At thirty she seemed as lovely to him as when she had been his teen-age sweetheart. She was tall and shapely, with a bust still as firm and a stomach as flat as it had been in high school. Her hair was the same strawberry-blond and her golden tan skin still as creamily smooth.

A good deal of the latter was visible at the moment, for she was dressed in the standard summer afternoon garb of the younger female members of the country club: very short shorts and a halter.

Suddenly glancing up, she caught his gaze on her. “Are you admiring or disapproving?” she asked sardonically.

“Admiring,” he said with a grin. “You always had the prettiest legs in Runyon City.”

“Thank you, sir. If I were standing, I’d curtsy.”

Al brought over the drinks and Marshall paid for them. Glancing around at the empty barroom, he said, “Where’s your clientele today, Al?”

“Those that aren’t out on the beach are on the golf course,” the steward said. “Wait till about five and the place will be packed.”

When Al moved back behind the bar, Betty said, “Where’s Lydia today? I keep hearing you’ve become inseparable.”

“She’ll be along. We have a date for golf at two.” He glanced at the clock over the bar, which said one forty-five. “I’m a little early.”

Betty took a sip of her fresh drink. “Set the date yet?”

“Why’s everyone so eager for us to get married?” he inquired. “We both like the status quo.”

“Both?” she said with raised brows. “She’s an unusual woman if she really means it. It’s been about two years, hasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “She doesn’t have your belief in whirlwind courtships.”

She looked at him reproachfully and he flushed. “Sorry. That was a teen-age comment. I didn’t mean to sound bitter after all these years.”

She made no reply, and they silently sipped their drinks for a few moments. The bar phone rang.

“For you, Kirk,” Al called.

“Excuse me,” Marshall said, going over to the bar and taking the phone from the steward’s hand.

After a short conversation he returned to the table.

“Lydia,” he said ruefully. “An aunt and uncle from Buffalo drove down unexpectedly, so our golf date is off.”

“That’s too bad,” Betty said. Then she cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m at loose ends. Would it hurt your pride to play a round with a woman who can beat you?”

“That’ll be the day,” he said. “Bring your clubs?”

“No, but I can be home and back in five minutes. It’s only four blocks. You could be locating Bud on the beach while I’m gone to tell him where I’ll be the next couple of hours.”

Finishing her drink, she rose to her feet. Marshall got up also.

“Think he’ll be all right down there that long?” he asked.

“He’d be in the water all afternoon whether I’m sitting here or am on the golf course. There’s a lifeguard. See you in five minutes.”

She walked out the door leading to the main lounge; Marshall turned the other way and left by the door facing the lake.

The Rexford Bay Country Club was right on the shore of Lake Erie, and the beach was only fifty feet from the clubhouse. About two dozen people were sunning on the sand, and another two dozen were in the water. Ten-year-old Bruce Case, Jr. was among the latter. Marshall spotted him in the act of ducking another boy about his own age. The lifeguard spotted him, too, and his whistle blasted.

Both boys looked shoreward. Marshall made a beckoning motion and called, “Bud!”

The boy waded ashore with an abashed expression on his face. He was a wiry, well-built youngster with strawberry-bond hair, the color of his mother’s, and his father’s solidly handsome face.

“Hi, Mr. Marshall,” he said.

“Don’t look so guilty,” Marshall said with a grin. “I didn’t call you in for ducking that kid. I’m just delivering a message from your mother.”

“Oh,” Bud said in a relieved voice.

“We’re going to play a round of golf, so you won’t find her in the clubhouse for a while.”

“Okay,” the youngster said cheerfully. “That all?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bud turned and dashed back into the water.

As Marshall and Betty pushed their golf carts toward the first tee, he wondered without much concern if their game together would incite any clubhouse gossip. In all probability most people had forgotten by now that they were once childhood sweethearts, he thought. There were probably numerous married women in the club who in their teens had gone with male members now married to someone else, and with whom they were still casually friendly.

As though she read his thoughts, Betty said, “Do you suppose we’ll cause a scandal?”

“Why should we?” he asked.

She gave him a sidelong look. “Bruce has always been a little jealous of you, you know.”

Marshall was honestly surprised because he certainly had never given Bruce Case any cause for jealousy. As a matter of fact he had tended to avoid the Cases ever since their marriage, and had merely been impersonally polite when he was unavoidably thrown into their company.

“If you’re worried about his reaction, why’d you suggest a game?” he asked.

“Who’s worried? I’m not very concerned about Bruce’s reactions to anything at the moment.”

That sounded as though they were having trouble, he thought. Maybe the predictions of the town gossips that the marriage would never last were finally working out after all these years.

As Betty teed up, Marshall thought back with a twinge of pain to the days when she had been his girl. Though there had never been a formal announcement of their engagement, it had been tacitly accepted by both of them from the time she was a high-school freshman and he was a sophomore that someday they would marry. Insofar as he was concerned there had been no change in their future plans when he went off to the University of Buffalo and she went to Byrn Mawr. It had been a total shock to him when, in her sophomore year, she suddenly eloped with a twenty-five-year-old Philadelphia law clerk.

When Betty quit school and brought her new husband home to live with her parents, the local gossips had a field day. Since Bruce Case’s Philadelphia antecedents were never mentioned either by him or his in-laws, it was automatically assumed that he came from a moneyless and socially unknown family, which in turn led to the automatic conclusion that he had married Betty Runyon for her money.

Of course this would have been the automatic conclusion if any outsider who wasn’t known to be a millionaire had married her, for the Runyons were not only the oldest, but the richest family in Runyon City. Betty was the great-granddaughter of old Cyrus Runyon, who had founded the city in 1850 and had made a fortune in real estate. The tradition-conscious community felt the same vested interest in her that it felt in the Memorial Park her grandfather had donated to the city. It was generally felt that she had no business marrying outside one of the other old families.

The gossip that Bruce Case was nothing but a fortune hunter had been reinforced when Betty’s father, Arthur Runyon, had bought his new son-in-law a junior partnership in a local law firm. The local I-told-you-so group drew some satisfaction from the fact that he had never developed more than a mediocre practice which couldn’t begin to pay for the scale on which the couple lived.

The gossips had also done the inevitable counting they always do after a runaway marriage. They were extremely pleased when the bride gave birth to a son just eight months after the marriage.

Actually this lessened the hurt Kirk Marshall felt. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that there had been a more compelling motive than mere fickleness which caused Betty to marry another man so suddenly.

Because Marshall’s handicap was four strokes less than Betty’s, he spotted her four. She was in good form though, and at the end of the eighth hole he had made up only one stroke. On the ninth, a dogleg, Betty topped her drive and dropped her ball at the edge of the fairway, only fifty yards from the tee. Marshall drove his a hundred and twenty-five yards to the exact center of the fairway, right at the turn.

He stopped with Betty when they reached her ball, and watched as she chose a brassie.

“Don’t you think a midiron would be better?” he suggested.

“I’m taking the short route,” she said. “Right over the trees onto the green.”

The ninth hole was at the end of the club grounds, the course backtracking upon itself from there on. Just beyond the ninth green was heavily underbrushed woods, where it was almost impossible to find a lost ball. For this reason golfers seldom tried to loft above the trees, as overplaying the green even a dozen yards could be disastrous.

Marshall said, “Better let me get down to the turn so I can spot your ball.”

She waited until he had reached his own lie and signaled back to her. Even from where he was he could tell she had hit the ball nicely, with a beautiful follow-through. He watched it loft over the treetops and, for a moment, thought it was going to land directly on the green. But it hit ten yards beyond, bounced mightily and disappeared into the woods.

Mentally he marked the spot where it had gone in, then addressed his own ball and laid it ten feet from the cup. He played it safe by taking two putts and was in with a par four.

Betty dragged up her cart as he sank the ball and gave him an inquiring look.

“It went into the woods just this side of that small pine,” he said, pointing. “By the height of the bounce, I’d say it’s at least twenty-five feet in.”

Making a face, she chose an iron and headed toward the indicated pine. Marshall pushed both carts over to the next tee and waited.

About five minutes passed with no sign of either Betty or her ball. A foursome came along and Marshall told them to play through, as his opponent was hunting a lost ball.

When the foursome moved on, he went over to the edge of the woods and called, “Betty!”

“Still hunting,” she called back from perhaps twenty yards in.

He moved toward the voice, crouching to avoid being scratched by low boughs. He found her in a small, grassy clearing on hands and knees, peering into the surrounding bushes.

“Why don’t you give up, sacrifice a stroke and play it from where it went in?” he said.

“And let you take the hole? I can still make par if I can find the blasted ball.”

Shrugging, he seated himself on the grass with his back against a tree.

Chapter II

After a few moments Betty rose to her feet, glanced at him petulantly, and came over to sink next to him, laying her iron beside her.

“Five-minute break,” she said. “Give me a cigarette.”

He lighted two and handed her one. After taking a drag, she grinned.

“If we were worried about just our playing together causing scandal, wonder what would happen if someone saw us here.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s mentioned scandal.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly the sort of place for a married woman to be tête-à-tête with an ex-boy friend.”

She had a point. Though they were no more than thirty yards from the ninth green, no one could possibly have seen them from there. Or from anywhere more than five yards away, for that matter, for the little clearing was entirely surrounded by bushes.

Her nearness and their isolation began to have a strange effect on him. A trifle self-consciously he crushed out his cigarette after two puffs.

“Maybe it would be more decorous if I waited for you at the tenth tee,” he said, making no move to rise.

Carefully she stepped out her own cigarette. “Maybe I’d better start hunting again.” She made no move to rise either.

For a long moment they stared at each other. She was seated half turned toward him, her left shoulder nearly touching his right. Slowly she reached out to lightly touch his cheek with her fingers.

The next moment she was in his arms and he was crushing her to him savagely. Her lips were against his and he felt her tongue thrust into his mouth.

He was not conscious of undoing the snaps, but suddenly her halter was lying on the ground. Her back was arched across his lap and her plump breasts, snow white in comparison to her suntanned shoulders and stomach, thrust upward inches from his face. Burying his head between them, he ran his palm across one nipple, then the other, feeling them harden beneath his touch. She emitted a little moan.

He was conscious of removing her shorts, for it seemed to take him forever to find the side zipper. When he finally found it and pulled it down, she slid from his lap to lie full-length on the grass.

“Don’t,” she said in a hoarse whisper, at the same time raising her hips to make it easier for him to pull off the shorts.

She was wearing open-toed sandals instead of golf shoes. They came off with the shorts, leaving her stark naked.

She lay motionless, staring up at him glassily as he removed only the essential part of his own clothing. Then they were in each other’s arms, their bodies working together and their breaths coming faster and faster until both their bodies stiffened in an excruciating spasm, then together went limp.

When they were both dressed, she avoided his gaze. “I don’t think I’m up to the second nine,” she said. “Let’s go back to the clubhouse.”

“Are you ashamed of yourself?” he inquired with raised brows.

She glanced at him briefly, then away again. Picking up her club she began to work her way to the edge of the woods. He followed.

They both stopped behind the screen of bushes edging the woods when they saw two men on the tenth tee. The men glanced curiously at the two golf carts and one made some comment. Both looked around, seeking the owners of the carts, then shrugged and played through.

They waited until the two men were out of sight before venturing out into the open.

As they started to push their carts back toward the clubhouse, Marshall said, “Are you by any chance angry with me?”

“Of course not,” she said, still not looking at him. “It was more my fault than yours. I’m simply embarrassed.”

“Why?” he asked. “It isn’t as though it were the first time between us.”

This brought a quick glance from her. “It’s the first time since my marriage,” she said dryly. “Do you have to remind me of the follies of our youth?”

They walked on in silence for a time. He finally broke the silence. “You said embarrassed, not ashamed. Does that have some significance?”

It was a few moments before she answered. Then she said, “I’m not ashamed of breaking my marriage vows. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

“You mean Bruce has done some straying?”

“I would rather not talk about it,” she said.

“All right,” he said agreeably. “We’ll drop that subject. But why are you embarrassed?”

She stopped short and looked him full in the face for the first time since she had rolled from his arms in the woods. “Do you really insist on knowing?”

“I think I’m entitled to.”

“All right,” she said, producing a golf ball from the single little side pocket of her shorts. “Because I found my ball almost as soon as I entered the woods.”

After staring at her for a moment, he burst out laughing. She turned a deep red. She dropped the ball back in her pocket.

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “You can stop feeling embarrassed. I think you’re cute.”

“I think you have a perverted sense of humor,” she said, putting her nose in the air and moving on.

But a moment later she glanced sidewise with a little smile on her face. When he grinned at her, she reached out quickly and gave his hand a small squeeze.

“Still friends?” she asked.

“At the very least, friends,” he assured her.

At the clubhouse side entrance, which led to the locker rooms, they met Chief of Police Barney Meister coming out with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. The chief was a burly, moon-faced man of forty with a perpetually benign expression which concealed a remarkably shrewd mind.

“Hi, Barney,” Marshall greeted him. “Anything new on the cat burglar?”

Meister gave Betty a polite nod before saying, “This is my day off, Kirk. Can’t you newspaper guys stay off a man’s back just one day a week?”

“I’m not asking for a press conference,” Marshall said reasonably. “I just asked a simple question.”

The chief sighed. “I’ll give you a simple answer. No.”

As the man moved on, Marshall said to Betty, “Barney’s a little sensitive on that subject, I guess.”

“He should be. I think it’s ridiculous that the police can’t catch this man.”

The “cat burglar,” as he had come to be called by the general public, had gotten his designation from a news story written by Kirk Marshall after his third break-in. For the past two months he had been terrorizing the residents of the Rexford Bay area by breaking into homes while the inhabitants were sleeping. Recently, when surprised by a woman who awakened to find him in her bedroom, he had struck at her with some kind of weapon which inflicted a deep shoulder gash. As the room was dark, she had been unable to describe either her attacker or the weapon, but the wound suggested that the burglar carried either a hatchet or short-handled axe.

The burglaries had so far been confined exclusively to the Rexford Bay area, Runyon City’s wealthiest section, where the beach-front homes of the rich were strung along the shore of Lake Erie on both sides of the country club. Since the victims included some of the most influential people in town, the pressure on the police department to catch the culprit posthaste had been rather overwhelming.

Marshall said, “They’re doing all they can. I happen to know Barney has an extra police car patrolling this area all night long.”

They moved indoors and stopped again in the hallway in front of the women’s locker room. Betty said, “I’d hate to depend on our local cops for protection. I’ve been sleeping with a gun under my pillow ever since the attack on Mrs. Ferris.”

“Oh? What’s Bruce think of that?”

“He doesn’t know it. We haven’t been sleeping together for some time.”

The marriage must be breaking up, he thought. They not only had separate rooms, but apparently little conversation.

He said, “Hurry with your shower and I’ll buy you a day-cap.”

“All right,” she agreed, and disappeared into the women’s locker room.

The men’s locker room was only a few feet up the hall. Marshall had a quick shower and put on fresh clothing from the supply he kept in his locker. The soiled laundry he simply stuffed into his golf bag.

Betty appeared from the women’s locker room at the same moment he stepped into the hall. She was wearing fresh shorts and halter and, in addition to her golf bag, carried a small zippered case which presumably contained the other shorts and halter.

“That’s timing it nicely,” she said with a smile.

They entered the barroom together and stacked their golf bags side-by-side against the wall. There were now a number of people in the room, and it wasn’t until they approached the bar that Marshall realized one of them was Betty’s husband.

Bruce Case was thirty-six, with a wiry, well-muscled body and a darkly handsome face. He sat on a bar stool next to Doctor Emmett Derring, a thin, reedy man of about the same age who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Both had on old clothing and fishing hats.

Young Bruce Case, Jr., sat at a table near the bar sipping a bottle of orange pop through a straw.

A trifle coldly Betty said to her husband, “I didn’t expect to see you until dark.”

“Apparently,” Case said with a glance at Marshall. “They weren’t hitting, so we beached the boat and came in for a drink.”

Marshall said, “Hello, Bruce. How are you, Doc?”

“Pretty good,” the doctor said. “Buy you a drink?”

Bruce Case ignored the greeting.

“I’ll have a beer,” Marshall said, seating himself next to the doctor.

Betty sat next to her husband. Al the steward drew a beer and placed it before Marshall, then looked inquiringly at Betty.

Before she could order, Case said to her, “I found Bud unattended down on the beach while you were off with your old boy friend.”

Marshall turned on his stool to stare past Dr. Derring at the man. Betty flushed.

“He was hardly unattended,” she said. “There’s a lifeguard.”

“I don’t mind you catting around with your ex-lovers,” Case said, “but I don’t expect you to neglect your child to do it.”

Other conversation in the bar died as everyone stopped to listen.

Marshall said, “Just a minute, Case.”

Betty got up from her stool and said to her son, “Come on, Bud. We’re going home.”

“I haven’t finished my pop,” he said.

Taking the bottle from his hand, she set it on the table and drew him to his feet. She didn’t exactly drag him across the room, but he had to hurry to keep up. Slinging the strap of her golf bag over her shoulder, she picked up the zippered case with her left hand without releasing her hold on her son’s hand. A moment later she was gone.

Marshall got up, too. He said, “If you have anything to say to me or about me, Case, we’ll go somewhere private. Unless you prefer to get knocked off that stool.”

Bruce Case turned to stare at him. When he saw Marshall’s set expression, his own belligerence died and he smiled a bit weakly.

“I was mad at her, not you,” he said. “Sorry I made a damn fool of myself. Forget it and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“No, thanks,” Marshall said curtly. “I’ll forget it, but Doc’s already bought me a drink.”

Returning to his stool, he drained his beer glass in two long gulps, politely thanked the doctor, got up to collect his golf bag and left.

Chapter III

When Marshall got home, he found his father reading the Sunday paper in the big front room. Jonas Marshall was an older version of his son, with a long, lean figure, still well-muscled at sixty, and a full head of iron-gray hair. As owner, publisher and editor of the Runyon City News, the town’s only newspaper, he was Kirk Marshall’s employer as well as his parent.

Their father-son relationship was more congenial than their editor-reporter relationship. Jonas Marshall had definite ideas on what made a good newspaperman and he was a strict taskmaster. Someday he expected to turn the paper over to his son, and he wanted to be sure Kirk understood it from the ground up. Since he had gotten out of school nine years earlier, Kirk Marshall had worked at every job from copy boy to editorial writer. For the past five years he had operated as a roving reporter, and was considered the paper’s ace by everyone on the staff except his father. Jonas never seemed quite satisfied with his son’s efforts. As they were equally strong-minded, they often clashed on matters of policy.

However, outside of the newspaper office, they had a quite cordial relationship.

“Lydia called,” his father greeted Marshall. “She wants you to phone back. Your mother announced that dinner will be in twenty minutes, so if you plan to make cocktails, you’d better hurry your dressing for dinner.”

It was Kirk Marshall’s chore to mix before-dinner cocktails, and it had become such a ritual that Jonas Marshall wouldn’t have thought of taking over merely because his son arrived home a little late. It was typical that he had simply sat and waited for the family bartender to show up.

Marshall carried his golf bag up to his room, fished the dirty laundry from it and dropped it into the bathroom hamper. His dressing for dinner consisted only of changing his rumpled cotton golf slacks for a pair of dress slacks, and changing his shoes. He was back downstairs within three minutes.

His mother was standing before the stove when he entered the kitchen. Sylvia Marshall was a plump, matronly woman five years her husband’s junior. She was almost universally liked, because she was unable to find fault in anyone at all, but she was also universally regarded as a trifle addled, in a nice sort of way. She had vast trouble remembering faces, even occasionally regarding her husband and son with a puzzled expression.

Marshall bent to kiss the back of her neck and said, “Hi, Mom.”

Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled vaguely. “Oh, it’s you. I think your father is waiting for you to mix a cocktail.”

“He usually is,” Marshall said, getting a tray of ice from the refrigerator.

He mixed only two martinis, as his mother didn’t drink. He carried one in to his father, then carried the other into the den and dialed Lydia Harrison’s number.

When her clear voice answered the phone, he said, “Dad told me you called.”

“Yes,” she said. “I just wanted you to know Uncle George and Aunt Ruth drove back to Buffalo, in case you have any plans for me tonight.”

He took a sip of his cocktail. “What do you feel like?”

“Umm...”

He laughed. “There’s a good show on at the State.”

“You must not have heard me,” she said. “I said Umm...”

“I’ll be over at eight p.m.,” he told her. “Shall I dress, in case you decide you want to go out later?”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m just going to be wearing perfume.”

Back in the front room Jonas Marshall laid aside his paper and raised his glass in a silent toast.

When both had sipped their drinks, the father said, “Read today’s paper?” He referred to the Buffalo paper, as the Runyon City News didn’t publish on Sunday.

“Glanced at it,” Marshall said.

“There’s a feature article on the cat burglar. Seems he’s attracting the attention of the big-city papers. Barney Meister isn’t going to like it.”

“Why?”

“The story isn’t very kind to the local police. Implies they’re a bunch of Keystone Kops whom the cat burglar has been running circles around.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Marshall said. “Personally I think Barney is a pretty good chief. He’ll net this man before long.”

“He’d better, before somebody gets killed. The man must be a psycho, carrying that axe or whatever it is around with him. What’s the score to date? About ten burglaries?”

“Nine. But only eight losses. He didn’t get anything from the Ferris home. Left his pillowcase full of loot when he swiped at Mrs. Ferris with his weapon and ran.”

Sylvia Marshall called from the dining room, “Dinnertime.”

After dinner Marshall decided to take Lydia at her word and not dress. He drove over to her place wearing the same sport shirt he had donned after his shower at the country club.

Lydia Harrison was originally from Buffalo and had no relatives in Runyon City. She had come there two years before, fresh out of college, to take a job in the advertising department of the Runyon City News. She lived alone in a three-room downtown apartment only a block from the newspaper office.

She answered the door barefoot and wearing a quilted housecoat. She was a smaller woman than Betty Case, being only about five feet three and possessing a smaller bone structure. There was nothing delicate about her, though. She had a full, rounded figure and quite a robust chest. Her hair, eyes and complexion were all dark and her face rather plain. But she had such dancing eyes and such a vivacious expression, she gave the effect of being quite pretty until you took close inventory of her features.

Closing the door behind him, Marshall said, “I thought you were going to wear just perfume.”

“I couldn’t answer the door that way, silly,” she said. “Suppost it hadn’t been you?”

She put her arms about his neck and kissed him on the lips. Then she released him and padded across the front room to the bedroom door, casually slipping off her housecoat en route. There was nothing beneath it but Lydia. At the doorway she smiled back over her shoulder and gave her round little bottom an inviting wiggle.

One of the many things he liked about Lydia Harrison was her absolute lack of pretense. She had a healthy, uninhibited liking for sex and she made no attempt to shield her desires from him. In the early days of their relationship she had somewhat startled him, for she gave the impression in public of being rather demure. She still behaved quite conventionally in front of other people, but when they were alone she could be pretty earthy. When she had the urge to be loved, she seldom wasted time with preliminaries. She usually matter-of-factly announced her desire, sometimes in rather down-to-earth terms, then took off her clothes.

When he reached the bedroom door she had tossed her housecoat over a chair and was lying on the bed. She assumed a rather lascivious posture and grinned at him.

“Hurry up,” she said. “I’ve been panting ever since we talked on the phone.”

He deliberately took his time undressing, getting some kind of mildly sadistic pleasure from her increasing impatience. He carefully hung his slacks and sport shirt on hangers in the closet, then neatly placed his shoes side-by-side on the floor and dropped his socks into them. Her expression became pleading when he slowly folded his undershirt and shorts before laying them on the dresser.

When he finally approached the bed, she raised to a seated position, threw her arms about his neck and fell back again, forcibly pulling him down across her body. Her mouth, wide open, fastened on his, but first she whispered two short, earthy words.

He obeyed her request...

Later, lying with her head on his shoulder, he considered their relationship. Though she had gone with no other man during the two years they had known each other, and he had gone with no other woman, there was no formal commitment between them. She never spoke wistfully of marriage, or even inquired if he loved her. The word “love” had never been mentioned between them.

There had been other women in his life since Betty, but never for this long a period. He always backed skittishly away the moment they began to hint at marriage, which sometimes was on the first date; and never, except in Lydia’s case, had it been more than three months after the first date. Because Lydia didn’t try to hem him in, he felt as though he were a free agent, even though they had become nearly constant companions.

Sometimes he wondered if he was in love with her but, while he liked her tremendously, he didn’t feel the same overwhelming yearning for her he had once felt for Betty, and which he still occasionally felt in a much lesser degree when he thought back to their youthful romance. He told himself that he had outgrown such teen-age emotions and that it probably wasn’t fair to Lydia to expect her to arouse the same feelings in him at thirty-one that Betty had aroused when he was a teen-ager. Still the shadow of that overpowering passion hung over him, preventing him from surrendering himself completely to any other woman.

The affair of that afternoon in the woods further complicated things. It not only completely changed the formal relationship of the past ten years between Betty and him, it made it seem probable that she would be a free woman before long. He knew Betty was a believer in conventional morality, and he was reasonably sure she would never have allowed him to touch her if she expected to stay with her husband.

He wondered what he would do if she left Bruce. His heart pounded at the thought of again having her to himself, yet he couldn’t quite imagine completely giving up Lydia.

Maybe he ought to see a psychiatrist, he thought. It couldn’t be normal to be in love with two women at the same time.

They spent the whole evening alternately making love and dozing in each other’s arms. Marshall had planned to go home about midnight, but they both fell asleep with the light on. The phone awakened them.

The phone was in the front room. Lydia stumbled to it, still half asleep, and Marshall could hear her say, “Hello.”

Glancing at his watch, he was startled to see it was three a.m. He bounced up fully awake and went to the doorway.

“For you,” Lydia said in an abashed voice. “It’s your dad.”

Even before he took the phone Marshall knew it must be something important, for his father wouldn’t have called merely to find out why he wasn’t home yet. He was beyond the age where his father would think of attempting to exercise any parental authority.

“Yes, Dad?”

Jonas Marshall growled, “It was very enterprising of you to arrange with the police desk to phone you at any time of the day or night when a story broke. It would have been even more enterprising to let them know where the hell to reach you, so your hard-working father could get some sleep.”

“The police called?” Marshall asked.

“Yeah. Pat Sullivan’s on the desk. There’s been a shooting out at the old Runyon place.”

Marshall felt a chill move along his spine. That was Betty and Bruce Case’s home. Though both Betty’s parents were dead and the family home was now hers, no one in Runyon City ever referred to the landmark as the Case home. It was still “the old Runyon place,” and probably would remain that as long as it stood, no matter who occupied it.

“Not Betty?” he said a trifle unsteadily.

“The only information Pat had was that there had been a shooting. Better get out there.”

“All right, Dad. Thanks for relaying the message.”

Hanging up, he moved past Lydia into the bedroom and quickly began to dress. She watched him from the bedroom doorway.

“A news story?” she asked.

“There’s been a shooting out at the old Runyon place,” he said in no particular tone.

Lydia was aware that Betty Case had been a teen-age romance of Marshall’s, because he had once casually mentioned that they had been high-school sweethearts. He had volunteered no information other than that, however, and she had never questioned him about it. She must have suspected that Betty was still somewhat special to him, though, for on the rare occasions he and Lydia encountered the Cases socially, Lydia invariably examined Betty in the estimating manner of a woman studying a rival, and he had caught a similar look in Betty’s eyes when she examined Lydia.

“Betty?” Lydia asked.

“Dad didn’t know. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you at the office in the morning.”

He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and hurried across the front room to the door.

Chapter IV

The old Runyon place was a huge, two-story building dating back to the Civil War. It had always been well kept up, though, and was in as solidly good condition as the day it was built.

All the lights on the lower floor were burning when Marshall drove through the driveway gate, and a few lights were burning on the second floor. There was a police car parked where the driveway circled past the front porch.

A young uniformed policeman named Nat Thorpe opened the door to Marshall’s ring.

“Oh, hello, Kirk,” he said. “News sure travels fast in this town.”

“I have an arrangement with the police desk you must not know about,” Marshall said, moving past him through the entry hall to the door of the front room.

Relief washed over him when he saw Betty seated in a chair at the far end of the huge room. She was wearing a robe over her nightgown. Standing before her was the burly figure of Chief Barney Meister.

The chief glanced over his shoulder as Marshall approached and said without surprise, “Hello, Kirk.”

Betty, her face pale, merely looked up and gave him a weak smile.

“What’s the story?” Marshall asked.

“A shooting,” Meister said. “Doc Derring’s upstairs with him now, if you want to take a look.”

Marshall looked at Betty and the chief said, “I’ve only gotten the bare details from her so far. I’m waiting for her to quiet down. You’ll have time to go upstairs before I start detailed questioning.”

Retracing his way to the wide staircase, which was off the entry hall, Marshall climbed to the second floor. The hall light was on here, and light also streamed from the open door of a bedroom at the far end of the hall. The body of a man lay face-down in the doorway, his legs in the hall and his head inside the room.

Moving to the doorway, Marshall saw Dr. Emmett Derring inside the room, bending over the body. Apparently the doctor had dressed hurriedly, for beneath his suit coat he wore pajama tops instead of a shirt. He lived only two doors away, Marshall knew, so if he still hadn’t completed his examination of the shooting victim, the shooting couldn’t have happened too long ago.

The prone man’s head was turned sidewise so that Marshall could see his profile. It was Bruce Case. He was fully dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. In one outstretched hand was gripped a meat cleaver.

Dr. Derring closed his medical bag and rose to his feet just as Marshall appeared in the doorway.

“Hi, Kirk,” he said. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? We were fishing together just this afternoon.”

“What happened?”

“Betty mistook him for the cat burglar. I guess they both heard him on the roof. Bruce must have gotten that meat cleaver from the kitchen to go hunting for him. When he opened Betty’s door, she thought it was the burglar and shot him. All these lights weren’t on then. All she could see was a shadowy figure with what looked like an axe in his hand.”

“My God!” Marshall said. “No wonder she’s in shock.”

Derring raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t noticed. I thought she’s been holding up rather well.” He moved out into the hall. “He must have died instantly, because there’s hardly any bleeding. We may as well go downstairs.”

“What about Bud?” Marshall asked.

Derring pointed to a closed door across the hall. “Slept through it all. I looked in on him and he’s all right. No point in waking him.”

Patrolman Nat Thorpe appeared at the head of the stairs and moved toward them. He had a flash camera in his hand.

“All right to take pictures now?” he asked Derring.

“Go ahead. I’m finished.”

They went downstairs together, leaving the policeman alone with the body. When they entered the front room, Meister gave the doctor an inquiring look.

“He died instantly,” Derring said. “Nothing could have been done for him even if I’d been called earlier.”

The added comment seemed to have been directed at Betty rather than the chief, for Derring was looking at her when he said it.

In a low voice she said, “I just wasn’t thinking, Emmet. I was so appalled at what I’d done, all I could think of was to call the police.”

“It wouldn’t have helped to call Dr. Derring first,” Meister said soothingly. “Nobody’s blaming you. Are you settled down enough now to tell us exactly what happened?”

Betty closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I’ve already told you I thought it was the cat burglar. I shot him. That’s all there is to it.”

Meister gave his head a mild shake. “Not quite. I’ll have to know step-by-step everything that happened just before the shooting.”

She took a deep breath. “All right. It was just two-thirty, because I glanced at the luminous dial of my bedside clock when a noise on the roof awakened me. It sounded like someone walking around up there. Instantly, I thought of the cat burglar, because he always starts on the roof, doesn’t he?”

Meister said, “His M.O. generally has been to climb a drainpipe to the roof, then lower himself by rope to a second-story window. At least we think he uses a rope. We can’t see how else he’d manage. So what did you do?”

“I sat up in bed, took the gun from beneath my pillow and listened. I thought I heard a peculiar rasping sound from the direction of the window at the far end of the hall. Then I heard stealthy footsteps and my bedroom door eased open. A dark figure stood there with a glittering blade of some kind in his hand. I was absolutely sure it was the cat burglar, so I fired. When he dropped, I turned on the light and saw it was my husband.”

“You and your husband had separate rooms, huh?”

There was a long pause before Betty said, “He’d been sleeping in the downstairs study, just off the kitchen. I suppose he, too, heard the noises, went to the kitchen to arm himself with the meat cleaver, then came upstairs to investigate. He must have opened my door to see if I was all right, and so as not to awaken me he didn’t turn on the hall light first.”

Meister opened his mouth to ask another question, changed his mind and closed it again. Marshall suspected he had been about to ask why her husband had been sleeping in the downstairs study when there were several bedrooms upstairs.

Instead he asked, “Why do you suppose your husband was fully dressed? He even had on shoes and socks. Seems if he was awakened from sleep he would just throw on a robe, like you did.”

“He may have just come in,” Betty said. “He was out this evening, and I went to bed while he was still gone. I have no idea when he got home.”

“I see. Incidentally, I checked that hall window upstairs — the one you thought you heard rasping noises coming from. It wasn’t your imagination. The screen’s been cut out.”

“Then the cat burglar actually was trying to get in!”

“Looks like it. The window was still closed but unlocked. Probably he was frightened off before he could push up the window — by your husband upstairs.”

“He had pushed it up!” Betty said. “He may actually have been in the house. I closed the window after phoning the police because there was a draft. I didn’t notice the cut screen, though.”

“It’s cut right out of the frame. Probably he just dropped it on the ground and we’ll find it outside.”

Nat Thorpe came into the room carrying his camera in one hand and the meat cleaver in the other. Hefting the cleaver, he asked, ‘Will we want this, Chief?”

“Sure,” Meister said. “It’s evidence. You get the gun?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tag them both and put them in the safe when you get back to headquarters. Have you finished everything else I told you to do?”

“Yes, sir. I took four pictures and I checked all the rooms. There’s a kid sleeping in one, but I took a good look anyway. He didn’t wake up. I couldn’t find any evidence of anything being disturbed anywhere in the house except for that cut screen. At any rate the guy’s not hiding here.”

The chief said, “We’ll see what we can find outside after it turns daylight. Meantime, Mrs. Case, don’t let anyone touch that window or screen. I’ll want a fingerprint man to go over both in the morning.”

“There’s no one here but Bud and me,” she said. “I’ll keep him away from it.”

That was the extent of the preliminary investigation. Meister told Betty he would be back about eight a.m. and that meantime she could have an undertaker come for the body. He and Nat Thorpe departed.

There was no such thing as a public morgue in Runyon City. Dr. Derring asked Betty what undertaker she preferred and she said the Joyce Funeral Home. The doctor phoned Joyce to send someone for the body.

When he hung up, he said to Betty, “Want me to send Virginia over to stay with you the rest of the night?” Virginia was his wife.

Betty shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll be all right.” She glanced at Marshall. “You’ll stay until they come for the body, won’t you, Kirk?”

“Of course,” he said.

“The doctor studied her contemplatively. “Like a sedative before I go home?”

She shook her head again. “I’ll be all right, Emmet. Don’t worry about me.”

Remembering the doctor’s comment upstairs that he thought Betty was holding up well, Marshall almost wished she had expressed a need for a sedative. Aside from her paleness, she didn’t seem very emotionally upset over having shot her husband. Perhaps she was merely forcing herself to be calm, but it struck him that she was succeeding remarkably well.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “If you need me, call or run over.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m sure I won’t.”

When the doctor had left, Betty gave Marshall a pale smile. “Do you suppose I’m in a state of shock, Kirk? I don’t think it’s quite registered on me what I’ve done.”

The question had the effect of relieving him. Quite possibly she hadn’t yet realized fully what had happened and emotional upset would come later.

“It was an accident,” he said. “Don’t brood about it.”

“But I can’t seem to feel anything. I’m not going to pretend to you I still loved Bruce. After this afternoon you know I didn’t. I was planning to divorce him. But I ought to feel something after killing a man I lived with for eleven years. All I feel is sort of dazed. Of course I regret it, but I can’t induce any feeling of guilt.”

“It was an accident,” he repeated. “Regret is all you should feel, not guilt.”

He had seated himself on a sofa near her chair. Getting up, she came over to sit next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Hold me for a minute,” she said. “Please don’t kiss me. Just hold me.”

Putting his arm about her, he drew her against him and gently stroked her hair. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. After a time she sighed.

“Have you always hated me for what I did to you?” she asked.

“Of course not. I was hurt at the time, but time heals all wounds, they say.”

“You never married. And I always sensed that you still felt something for me when we ran into each other over the years. Didn’t you stay away from marriage because of me?”

“I suppose I was a little gun shy,” he admitted.

“You must know why I married Bruce so suddenly. I imagine the whole town was counting.”

He shifted a trifle uncomfortably.

“I don’t know if I was in love with him or not,” she said. “We met at a Bryn Mawr dance and he gave me a rush. I was flattered because he was the only older man who had ever shown me attention. I was only nineteen, remember, and he was twenty-five. It wasn’t just a shotgun marriage. He had asked me to marry him and I was considering it before I learned I was pregnant. That seemed to take the decision out of my hands, so we eloped.”

He felt a momentary resurgence of the old bitterness. “How long had you been sleeping with him?” he asked a trifle roughly. “I was still getting love letters up to the day I heard of your elopement.”

“Please,” she said against his chest. “I was still in love with you. Don’t you think it’s possible to love two people at the same time?”

That stopped him, since he had experienced a guilt feeling over the same question earlier that night. Before he could frame any reply the doorbell rang. Hurriedly she pulled away from him. He rose to answer.

It was the men from the mortician.

Chapter V

The sun was rising when Marshall got home. As he plodded tiredly up the stairs his parents’ bedroom door opened and his father peered out.

“What was the trouble?” Jonas asked.

“Betty Case accidentally shot her husband,” Marshall said.

He moved on to his own room, but left the door open. Jonas, barefoot and in pajamas, quietly closed his and his wife’s bedroom door so as not to disturb his wife and trailed his son across the hall.

“Is he dead?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” Briefly Marshall explained to his father what had happened.

When he finished, Jonas frowned. “The poor girl shouldn’t be left alone at a time like this. She doesn’t have a living relative left in town since her parents died, does she? What’s the matter with Emmet Derring? He should have insisted on sending his wife over.”

“Betty says she’ll be all right,” Marshall said.

“Nonsense,” Jonas said in his crispest executive-editor tone. “I’ll get your mother up and you can run her out there.”

When he used that tone there was no point in arguing with Jonas. Deciding he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, Marshall showered and shaved while his father went to rout his mother out of bed.

Sylvia Marshall was dressed and all ready to go when he came downstairs. However, she didn’t quite seem to understand who it was that she was expected to offer solace to.

“Elizabeth Case, dear,” Jonas said with enormous patience. “You know the Cases. Bruce was in law partnership with Henry Quillan.”

When Sylvia continued to look puzzled, her son offered, “Betty Runyon, Mom.”

“Oh,” Sylvia said with an enlightened expression on her face. “She married that nice young lawyer with no family background.”

“Now you have her identified,” Jonas said approvingly. “That same nice young lawyer is the one she accidentally shot.”

“How awful,” Sylvia said with compassion. “Betty Runyon is such a sweet girl. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

It was six thirty a.m. and quite light by the time Marshall and his mother got to the old Runyon place. But the big houses at Rexford Bay were all set well back from the road and were screened by trees so that the houses couldn’t be seen from the road. Therefore Marshall and his mother couldn’t see what was occurring on the roof until they drove down the long driveway, parked in front of the porch and got out of the car.

Sylvia looked upward and said, “Whoever is that on the roof?”

Peering in the direction of his mother’s gaze, Marshall saw Betty, in slacks and a sweater, kneeling on the front slope of the roof, examining the metal pipe of an air vent.

Betty saw them, too. Waving to them, she walked up to the roof peak and disappeared down the rear slope.

“Who do you suppose that was?” Sylvia asked.

“It was Betty, Mom.”

“Betty Runyon? Why is she climbing around on roofs?”

“Let’s go see,” Marshall said, taking his mother’s elbow and steering her around the side of the house to the rear.

Betty was climbing down a ladder when they reached the back of the house. Lightly dropping the last few feet to the ground, she brushed her hands together and smiled at her visitors.

“You didn’t have to come back, Kirk,” she said. “Hello, Mrs. Marshall.”

Sylvia took her by the shoulders and kissed her. “I’m so sorry about your trouble, dear. I’m going to stay right here with you until things are organized again.”

“Thanks, but it’s really not necessary. You’re welcome, of course.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sylvia said. “I have to stay. Jonas said to.”

Despite herself Betty couldn’t avoid an amused smile. “We wouldn’t dare disobey Mr. Marshall. Of course you’ll stay.”

“Whatever were you doing on the roof?” Sylvia asked.

“Looking for more evidence that the cat burglar was actually here last night. I found it.”

“What was it?” Marshall asked.

“There’s a short length of rope tied to an air vent directly over the hall window where the screen was cut. The shot must have put him into such a hurry to escape that he cut the rope instead of taking time to untie it.”

Marshall wondered why she couldn’t have waited for the police to discover the rope. Perhaps, despite her earlier complaint that she was unable to feel guilt over the accident, she was now beginning to develop some guilty feeling and had found it necessary to convince herself beyond any doubt that the cat burglar had actually been there.

He said, “Does Bud know what happened yet?”

Betty’s expression turned worried. “He’s still asleep. I’ve been mulling over what to tell him. I suppose the kindest thing is to tell him the truth at once, instead of letting him eventually hear it from some playmate.”

“Who’s Bud?” Sylvia asked.

“Her son, Mom. Bruce Case, Jr. You know him.” He turned back to Betty. “Are you up to telling him?”

“I don’t want anyone else to. Don’t you think I ought to tell him at once exactly what happened, Kirk? I mean, instead of just vaguely talking about an accident and having him find out later that I shot his father?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of courage.”

“He might not forgive me if he learned what happened from someone else. He may not anyway, but I think there’s a better chance if I’m frank with him right from the start.”

“I’m sure he won’t blame you,” Sylvia said, giving Betty a pat on the arm. “As I remembered him, he’s an awfully nice boy.”

“Suppose we go inside and let Mom drum up some breakfast,” Marshall suggested.

“All right,” Betty agreed. “Bud will be waking up any time now.”

Inside, Betty directed Sylvia to the kitchen and oriented her on the locations of cooking utensils and supplies. Despite her poor memory for faces, there was nothing vague about Sylvia when it came to cooking. She was perfectly at home in any kitchen. When Betty left her alone to go upstairs she was mixing a coffee-cake batter before Betty got as far as the entry hall.

Betty was gone a full half-hour. When she finally came back downstairs she had young Bud by the hand. The boy was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. His face was expressionless, but his red-rimmed eyes showed that he had just stopped crying.

“Hello, Mr. Marshall,” he said formally.

“Morning, Bud.” He gave Betty an inquiring look.

“I explained exactly what happened,” she said. “He understands that it was just an unfortunate accident.”

Marshall said, “We’re all sorry about your father, Bud.”

“Thank you,” the boy said in the same formal tone.

Marshall’s heart went out to the youngster. It must have been a tremendous shock for a ten-year-old to be awakened with the news that his father was dead. After the first flood of grief, the boy obviously was attempting to prove he was a man by exhibiting no emotion whatever.

He wasn’t quite succeeding, despite his poker face, though. He was clinging so tightly to his mother’s hand, Marshall wondered if the grip was hurting her.

At least he seemed not to blame his mother for the accident. By the relieved look on Betty’s face Marshall realized she had dreaded that he would. It must have taken considerable courage to face him and frankly tell him everything.

Sylvia came from the direction of the dining room and said, “I’m all ready for everyone. We’ll just use the kitchen table.” She looked curiously at Bud. “Hello, young man.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Marshall,” Bud said.

Sylvia’s memory seemed to be working better than usual at the moment. After only momentary puzzlement at how the young man knew her, she said, “You’re Bud, Betty’s son, aren’t you? I’m sorry about your father.”

“Thank you,” Bud said.

Sylvia, who was a marvelous cook, had managed to turn out a delicious coffee cake during the half-hour Betty was upstairs. She offered to cook bacon and eggs also, but no one wanted any. Bud, who probably ate a substantial breakfast ordinarily, if he had a typical ten-year-old’s appetite, merely picked at a piece of coffee cake and drank a glass of milk. Marshall managed to eat two pieces and Sylvia had one, but Betty had only coffee.

By eight a.m. the breakfast dishes were done and they were all seated in the front room when the doorbell rang. Marshall went to answer it.

It was Chief Meister and a tall, unsmiling man in civilian clothes who carried a large square box by its handle. Beyond them, in front of the porch, Marshall could see a uniformed policeman seated behind the wheel of a squad car.

The chief introduced the unsmiling civilian as Harold Farroway of the state police crime lab. Inviting them in, Marshall re-introduced Farroway to everyone in the front room. When this formality was completed, the chief asked Betty’s permission to show Farroway around upstairs.

“Of course,” she said. “Want me to go with you?”

“I know the way around,” Meister said.

He left the lab man upstairs and returned alone.

“We’ll want to take a look at your roof,” he said to Betty. “Got a ladder around here?”

“There’s one already in place at the back of the house,” she said. “I’ve already been up there this morning. There’s a piece of rope tied to an air-vent pipe right over the window where the screen was cut.”

Meister frowned, apparently not appreciating amateur investigation in advance of police investigation, but he made no comment. Excusing himself, he went outside.

Marshall trailed after him, and after a moment Betty and Bud came outdoors, too. The boy was again gripping his mother’s hand tightly.

Marshall recognized the stocky, red-haired man behind the wheel of the squad car as a patrolman named Charles Graves. Chief Meister was leaning in the window of the car talking to him, and Graves was nodding his head understandingly.

The man climbed from the car just as Marshall reached the bottom of the porch steps and Betty and Bud came out the door.

“Hi, Kirk,” he said. “ ‘Morning, Mrs. Chase.”

He went around the side of the house to the rear.

Chapter VI

The chief retreated to the far edge of the drive, from where he could see upward to the front slope of the roof. Marshall waited for Betty and Bud to reach him, then walked with them over to stand next to the chief.

After a few minutes Charles Graves appeared on the peak of the roof and worked his way cautiously downward to the air vent. He bent over it for a considerable length of time, finally straightened with a length of rope in his his hand. Climbing back to the peak, he disappeared over it.

When the policeman came back around to the front of the house, he handed the rope to Chief Meister. It was about a two-foot section of half-inch hemp, a type of line commonly used in the area both as anchor line and for small-boat mooring.

“It was tied in a fisherman’s knot,” Graves said. “It had been pulled so tight I couldn’t slip it and had to pick the knot loose. No wonder he cut it, if he was in a hurry.”

Meister examined the cut end of the rope. “I guess this cinches it that the cat burglar was on the roof last night. This couldn’t have been tied there earlier than last night.”

“Why not?” Marshall inquired.

“Because it rained from ten to eleven last night. The rope would still be damp if it had been there before eleven p.m.”

Marshall, in bed at Lydia’s apartment, hadn’t even been aware that it had rained. He doubted that he would have made such a quick deduction even if he had known it, though. His respect for Barney Meister’s investigative ability climbed a notch.

They all went back inside except for Officer Graves, who climbed back into the radio car. As they entered, Harold Farroway came down the stairs carrying his laboratory kit in one hand and an empty screen frame in the other.

“I got a couple of good sets of prints from the window,” he said to Meister. “I’ll need the prints of all household members so we can eliminate their prints.”

“That will be just Bud and me,” Betty said. “Any time you’re ready, just set up your equipment.” She looked curiously at the empty screen frame. “Are you taking that with you?”

“Uh-huh. It’ll be returned.” The lab man leaned it against the wall next to the front door.

Farroway set up his fingerprinting equipment on the dining-room table and took Betty’s and Bud’s prints. Then he asked Betty what funeral parlor she had called, presumably because he planned to fingerprint the corpse.

“The Joyce Funeral Home,” she said.

“Anybody else you know who might have touched the window at some time or other?”

“Chief Meister did last night.”

“I used a handkerchief,” Meister said dryly. He turned to Farroway. “You have everything you need?”

“I think so.”

“Then I guess we’ll be running along,” the chief said to Betty. “Thanks for your co-operation. There’ll be an inquest, but I imagine it’ll just be a formality and you may not even have to appear. I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” Betty said. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Farroway.”

“Same to you,” he said unsmilingly. “Good-by, Mrs. Marshall.”

“Good-by, Mr. — ah...” Sylvia said, and let it trail off.

Farroway nodded to Marshall and Bud, went over to the door and picked up the screen frame. Chief Meister held the door for him. Marshall followed them both out to the police car.

“Just routine,” Farroway said laconically. He laid it against the back of the front seat and climbed in the back of the car.

“How about the cut-out portion?” Marshall persisted. “Did you look for that?”

“He already has it,” the chief said. “We picked it up from the ground beneath the window on the way out last night.” He got into the front seat.

Placing his hands on the window frame, Marshall said, “What do you think, Barney? It all check out?”

“Seems to so far. I’m kind of glad.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, there’s always a possibility in a case like this that it was rigged as an accident. I didn’t like that bit last night about her husband sleeping in the downstairs study. Seemed to indicate they’ve been having a little marital trouble. And she didn’t impress me as being very grief-striken. Frankly I had some suspicion when I first arrived last night that she’d deliberately killed her husband, placed the meat cleaver in his hand afterward, and made up the cat-burglar story.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marshall said.

“Seems to be now,” the chief agreed. “Unless there’s some unexpected development, looks like she’s in the clear. I hope so. I always kind of liked Mrs. Case. Never knew her well, but she was always friendly when we met.”

“She’s a pretty nice gal,” Marshall said.

When the police car had driven off, Marshall went back inside and found his mother alone in the front room.

“Betty and Bud are washing the ink off their hands,” Sylvia explained.

In a few minutes Bud came downstairs alone.

“Mom’s changing clothes,” he said. “She’ll be down in a minute.”

It was about fifteen minutes before Betty re-appeared. She had changed her slacks and sweater for a dark blue street dress and she also wore a tiny hat.

“Are you planning to drive to the paper soon, Kirk?” she asked.

“I’m supposed to be there at nine. It’s getting close to that.”

“Then could you drop me and Bud off at the funeral parlor? I don’t really feel up to driving.”

“Of course.”

“Leave Bud here with me,” Sylvia said. “The reason I came was to help you.”

Betty glanced at Bud. “I don’t like to impose.”

“You just go ahead and don’t worry about a thing. If you’re not back by noon, I’ll give Bud his lunch. We’ll be fine, won’t we, Bud?”

“Yes, ma’am. Go ahead, Mom. I don’t want to go to the old funeral parlor anyway.”

Betty looked a little surprised. Obviously she had thought her son wouldn’t want to be parted from her even for a short period while his grief was still fresh. But apparently his reluctance to visit the funeral parlor counterbalanced his need for his mother’s comforting presence. Marshall suspected from the boy’s expression that he thought the purpose of the visit would be to look at his dead father, and was appalled by the idea. Actually, of course, Betty merely intended to make funeral arrangements.

“All right,” Betty said. “You be a good boy and mind Mrs. Marshall, Bud.”

When he dropped her in front of the Joyce Funeral Home, Marshall suggested that Betty phone him at the paper when she was ready to go back home.

“Of course I won’t,” she said. “I’ll call a taxi. I’m not going to interrupt your work.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

“I do. But you might drop by this evening if you have nothing to do. I suspect I’m going to be lonely. Do you know if your mother plans to spend the night?”

“Probably. Dad thinks you shouldn’t be alone, and she agrees with everything Dad says.”

“Then you can have the excuse of bringing her a nightgown and toothbrush. She didn’t bring anything along, did she?”

“Not unless it’s in her handbag. I’ll stop out there for lunch and find out what she wants. Don’t expect me very early tonight, though. I’m going to have to get some sleep during the first part of the evening.”

“It’s later on that I’m going to need company,” Betty said. “I know I’m going to dread going to bed, and will probably sit up until all hours.”

He drove on to the newspaper office, getting there just at nine a.m.

Lydia Harrison’s job was to handle classified ads, and her desk was beyond a counter just inside the front door. She was therefore the first staff member Marshall saw each morning.

“Hi,” she said, rising and coming over to the counter. “I’ve already heard about the shooting. It was all over Ward’s Restaurant when I had breakfast there. We hardly need a newspaper in this town. Wasn’t that a terrible thing?”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Mom’s out there now, staying with the kid. I just dropped Betty at the funeral parlor.”

“Oh. That was certainly nice of your mother. I suppose Betty’s all shook up.”

“As a matter of fact she’s taking it pretty well. I plan to run out there again at noon and see how things are.”

“Oh,” Lydia said. “I won’t wait for you then.”

He and Lydia customarily had lunch together. There was no suggestion of disappointment in her tone, though. She seemed to accept matter-of-factly that at the moment his attention was on Betty Case in her hour of trouble, and was gracefully willing to step into the background. As he moved on to the stairs leading to the newsrooms, he thought again that Lydia was certainly an undemanding woman. He wondered a little uncomfortably if before long he was going to have to make a choice between her and Betty.

Then another thought occurred to him. Lydia had mentioned nothing about anyone at Ward’s Restaurant suggesting that the shooting might not have been an accident. And surely she would have if she had heard such a suggestion. Apparently the townspeople in general lacked Chief Meister’s suspicious mind, for Marshall was sure that if such a thought had occurred to anyone, the rumor would have spread over the town like wildfire.

Upstairs he dropped into his father’s office for a few moments to brief him on developments, then went to the city room to write up the story. Because of the local social prominence of the Cases, it was going to be a page-one story, but in deference to Betty he made it a bare factual account, avoiding any hint of sensationalism.

When he pulled the copy from his machine, he called a copy boy and told him to rush it into his father’s office.

At noon he drove back out to Rexford Bay and had lunch with Betty, Bud and his mother. Betty said the funeral was arranged for Wednesday afternoon. She also said she had phoned her Aunt Audrey and Uncle George in Rochester, and they would arrive the next morning to stay with her until after the funeral. Therefore Sylvia would be relieved of the necessity of keeping her company and could go home the next day.

“Aunt Audrey is my last living relative,” she said. “She’s Dad’s sister, you know. I think you met her years back, Kirk.”

“I vaguely remember,” he said. “They visited your parents back when we were in high school. Isn’t he a banker or something?”

“President of the Reed Trust Company. That’s Uncle George’s last name: Reed.”

Before Marshall left to return to work, his mother gave him a list of items to pack in an overnight bag and bring back that evening.

“Don’t plan on me much before bedtime,” he told her. “I didn’t get any sleep last night so I plan to hit the sack for a couple of hours after dinner.”

“That’s all right,” Sylvia said. “I won’t need any of it until I go to bed.”

Chapter VII

Marshall and his father had a restaurant dinner together that evening; afterward Marshall went home and slept until nine o’clock. It was about a quarter of ten when he arrived at Betty’s house with his mother’s overnight bag.

Bud was already in bed and Sylvia announced that she was retiring, too. She left Betty and Marshall alone in the front room and went upstairs.

As soon as the older woman was out of sight Betty went over to where Marshall was seated on the sofa and slid into his arms.

“Know why I wanted to see you so badly tonight?” she breathed against his lips.

“Why?” he asked, gently kissing her.

“Because it’s going to be a long time before we can be together again. To satisfy the conventions, I’ll have to act the grieving widow for perhaps months. I can’t start having gentlemen callers immediately after the funeral.”

“I suppose the neighbors might talk,” he agreed.

“It’s going to be hard, Kirk, because I’m not a grieving widow. I’m as sorry as can be for what happened, but we both know I no longer loved him and meant to leave him. Do you think I’m callous for wanting you when my husband isn’t even buried yet?”

“Just what do you mean, wanting me?” he asked cautiously.

“Just what it sounds like. I want you to take me. Right now.”

Her lips moved against his and he felt her tongue press urgently against his teeth. When he parted his jaws slightly, it thrust deeply into his mouth. Her hand groped for his and pressed it to her breast.

After a time he raised his head and said in a low voice, “We can’t here. Suppose my mother or Bud came downstairs?”

Jumping to her feet, she took his hand and drew him erect. Leading him to the entry hall, she drew him down it past the staircase to the door of the den and pulled him inside. Flicking on the overhead light, she closed and locked the door, then crossed to the single window and drew the drapes.

“Is this safe enough for you?” she asked.

He glanced around. In addition to a desk, bookcases and a couple of overstuffed chairs, there was a day bed against one wall. This room, he remembered, was where Bruce Case had been sleeping after being ousted from his wife’s bed.

“I suppose it’s safer than the woods beyond the ninth hole,” he said grudgingly. “I give in.”

“What an avid lover you are,” she said. “Don’t do me any favors.”

Grinning at her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. After a time she pulled free, switched on the desk lamp and turned off the overhead light. This still left the room well-lighted, but at least it subdued the glare. She gave him an inquiring look.

“Leave it on,” he said. “I like to see what I’m doing.”

Kicking off her shoes, she turned her back to him. “Unzip, please.”

He pulled the zipper down to her waist. With her back still to him, she slipped out of the arms, loosened a side zipper and stepped out of the dress. She tossed it onto a chair.

He took off his shirt and tossed it onto the other chair. As she laid her slip on top of her dress, he threw his undershirt on top of his sport shirt. Then he reached out to unsnap her brassiere. She stood quietly as he fumbled with the clasp, finally got it undone and let the garment slide down her arms. Tossing it onto the chair, she leaned back against him.

His arms went around her from the rear and he cupped both plump breasts, gently rolling the nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. He could feel them swell and harden beneath his touch. Her body began to squirm against his.

After a time she pulled away, turned to face him and pulled off her panties. This left her clad in nothing but a thin garter belt and stockings.

He managed to complete stripping while she was removing the stockings and garter belt. When he reached for her, she took his hands, threw herself prone on the day bed and drew him down alongside. Her arms went about his neck and she pressed her naked body tightly against his.

“Do it just like in the woods,” she whispered against his lips. “I don’t care if you never stop, but I want you to start right now...”

It must have been twenty minutes before he released her. When he rose to his feet, she lay motionless with her arms and legs sprawled and her breasts heaving with exhaustion. She stared up at him, totally spent.

“I should be able to sleep now,” she finally managed to say. “I don’t even feel like moving from here to go upstairs.”

After a time she did rouse herself enough to get up. By then he was fully dressed. The only garment she put back on was her dress, bundling up the rest of her clothing and carrying it and her shoes to the foot of the stairs, where she left them until she was ready to go upstairs.

At the door she put her arms about his neck to kiss him good-night.

“Why did I ever let you go?” she said. “I think I’m falling in love with you all over again.”

“I’ve never been completely out of love with you,” he told her.

During the drive home he decided he was going to have to resolve things one way or the other before long. He couldn’t continue to alternate between two women. Besides being unfair to both of them, he was beginning to feel constitutionally incapable of keeping up the pace.

The next morning Sylvia arrived home at eight a.m. in time to cook breakfast for her husband and son. George Reed, Betty’s uncle by marriage, drove her home.

The banker was an affable, gray-haired man of fifty-five with a double chin and a substantial paunch. He said that he and his wife had started to drive from Rochester, which was less than a hundred miles away, at six that morning and had just arrived. He refused an offer of breakfast.

“My wife’s making breakfast at Betty’s for all of us,” he said. “I promised I’d be right back. Thanks a lot for staying with Betty last night, Mrs. Marshall.”

“I was glad to,” Sylvia said. “Anything else she needs, just tell her to call me.”

When Reed had left, she said, “Isn’t he a nice man?”

“Seems to be,” her husband said. “But you would think Jack the Ripper was nice. I’ll have just one egg this morning.”

After checking into the city room long enough to read his mail, Marshall drove over to police headquarters in the basement of the City Hall. He found Chief Meister in his office.

“Anything new?” he asked, taking a seat in front of the chief’s desk.

“A little,” Meister said. “I just phoned the paper to ask if you’d like to run out to see Mrs. Case with me, but you’d already left. You’re an old friend of hers, aren’t you?”

“I’ve known her all my life.”

“I thought it might be best to take along somebody who knew her well when I ask to look around the place.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Farroway sent over his lab report this morning. Incidentally, one set of prints he lifted from the window were left there by the dead man. Mrs. Case left the other one.”

“That’s too bad,” Marshall said. “I’d hoped the cat burglar had finally left a clue.”

“Seems the cat burglar may not have been there at all,” Meister said slowly. “Farroway’s report says the screen was cut from the inside.”

“What!”

“There isn’t any doubt about it, Kirk. He put it under a microscope. The individual wires are bent outward where they’re cut. That’s why I need another talk with Mrs. Case. Want to come along?”

“I certainly do,” Marshall assured him.

Before they left, the chief took the two-foot length of rope from his desk drawer, coiled it and put it in his pocket. Marshall didn’t ask him why he was taking it along, because he knew. The chief obviously hoped to find the coil it came from somewhere about the old Runyon place.

They drove out in Marshall’s car. En route Marshall kept turning over in his mind the bombshell Meister had dropped. The more he thought about it, the sicker he got. He kept remembering Betty’s controlled emotions immediately after the shooting, and also her climb to the roof. He wondered if she would ever have mentioned being on the roof if he and his mother hadn’t unexpectedly arrived while she was up there. Was it possible that instead of looking for evidence, as she had claimed, she had been in the act of planting some?

He recalled that Patrolman Graves had said the fragment of rope was tied to the air-vent pipe by a fisherman’s knot. This was an odd knot to use on half-inch rope, as primarily it was used to tie flies to a nylon leader. Of course there was no reason it wouldn’t hold as effectively with rope as it would with a delicate leader, but it seemed to indicate that the person who tied the rope to the air vent knew something of fishing. And Betty was as accomplished an angler as her husband had been. In their youth Marshall had many times seen Betty tie a fisherman’s knot. As a matter of fact, he had taught it to her.

Then, after working himself up over the evidence of her guilt, he angrily began to berate himself for having so little faith in her. Of course she couldn’t have deliberately murdered her husband, he told himself. Not only was she incapable of such a crime, it would have been ridiculous fo her to commit it when divorce was so easy these days. Inasmuch as she had all the money in the family anyway, there would be no financial advantage. Even the house was hers. All she would have had to do to get rid of him was to put him out of the house and fly to Reno for six weeks.

He began to feel a little better.

Chapter VIII

George Reed answered the door to their ring. Marshall introduced the chief, they were invited in, and found Betty and Audrey Reed in the big front room. Betty’s last surviving blood relative was a slim, still-shapely woman in her early fifties with smartly styled gray hair and the chronic assurance of the typical club woman. Both she and Betty wore conservative street dresses suitable for women in mourning.

Reed introduced his wife to the chief, then said, “You remember Kirk Marshall, don’t you, dear?”

“Of course,” she said, giving Marshall a smile of cultivated charm. “It’s been a lot of years, though, hasn’t it, Kirk? You were just a boy last time we met. It was lovely of your mother to take over here until we arrived.”

“She enjoyed it,” Marshall assured her.

Barney Meister had waited patiently for the social amenities to be gotten over. Now he said, “A little something has come up, Mrs. Case. Mind if we look around the place a bit?”

Betty looked surprised. “You’ve already gone through every room in the house.”

“I mean outside.”

“The grounds? Why certainly. Look anywhere you please.”

Meister and Marshall excused themselves and went back outside. George Reed trailed along to see what they were up to.

The driveway which curved past the front of the house made a loop past the wide door of a three-car garage set at right angles to the house. The door was counterbalanced to swing upward and fold against the ceiling when it was opened. The chief heaved it up.

All three stalls were occupied. In one was the station wagon Bruce Case used to drive, in the second was Betty’s little sports car, and in the third was Bruce’s fourteen-foot fiberglas boat on a trailer. The boat was powered by an outboard motor.

The chief walked into the garage and peered into the boat. Both the anchor line and the mooring rope were the same type of half-inch hemp which had been tied to the roof air-vent pipe. Neither had been recently cut, however, and were much darker in color from countless immersions in lake water than the fragment found on the roof.

At the rear of the garage were some narrow shelves containing tools and various kinds of hardware. One shelf was devoted to fishing equipment, and lying in its center was the remains of an unused coil of half-inch hemp.

Pulling the two-foot segment from his pocket, the chief matched its cut end to the cut end of the coil. Standing next to him, Marshall could see even without the aid of any magnification that the ends matched. He felt a queasiness form in his stomach.

George Reed was standing on the chief’s opposite side. He said, “You got a match there. What’s it mean?”

“This was tied to the roof vent the night your brother-in-law was shot,” Meister said, indicating the two-foot length.

The banker mulled this over. “You mean this so-called cat burglar stole the rope he used right here from the garage?”

The burly chief shook his head. “Since the coil’s still here, this two-foot section must have been cut off in the garage, but not by the cat burglar. Why would he take only a two-foot length of rope when it must be fifteen feet from the air vent to the second-floor hall window?”

It took several moments for Reed to digest this. When he finally had, he frowned. “Are you implying there was no burglar here that night, but somebody arranged things to make it seem there had been?”

“Implying, no,” the chief said. “I’m saying it right out.”

He strode out of the garage and mounted the porch steps with Marshall right behind him. The plump banker scurried to keep up.

With a policeman’s caution about entering private premises without invitation, the chief didn’t barge right in, even though his previous invitation presumably would have covered the situation. He paused in front of the door until Reed got there and courteously waited for the banker to open it and precede him inside.

As they all entered the front room together, the flustered banker said, “I think the chief is going to make some kind of accusation, Betty. Don’t say anything at all.”

Both his wife and Betty looked at him in astonishment. Audrey said, “Whatever are you talking about, dear?”

Barney Meister cleared his throat. “Mrs. Case, we’ve uncovered evidence that the items indicating the presence of the cat burglar the other night were deliberately planted. I’ll have to ask you to come downtown with me.”

Betty merely stared at him.

George Reed said loudly, “Wait a minute, Chief. How do you explain the cut screen?”

“That only makes the case stronger, Mr. Reed. Microscopic examination showed it was cut from the inside.”

The banker’s mouth opened and closed several times like that of a fish kissing the side of a bowl. Eventually he abandoned whatever it was he had intended to say and turned toward Betty.

“What’s the name of that fellow who was Bruce’s law partner?” he asked.

“You mean Henry Quillan?”

“That’s it. You remember Bruce’s office number?”

“Of course. Miller 4-3200.”

“Miller 4-3200,” Reed repeated, fixing the number in his mind. “I’ll have Quillan down at headquarters before you get there. Meantime, don’t say a word.”

“This is ridiculous,” Betty said. “Chief Meister, are you accusing me of murder?”

“I’m arresting you on suspicion of homicide, Mrs. Case. Your uncle is right that you don’t have to say anything without legal counsel, but you do have to come along with me.”

Audrey Reed said, “You must be mad, Chief. My niece is no murderess.” She turned to her husband. “Never mind Henry Quillan, George. Get on the phone to our own lawyer in Rochester and ask him to arrange for the best criminal lawyer in the state.”

Rising to her feet, Betty said with a strained smile, “If you don’t mind, I prefer Henry Quillan. Will I need to pack a bag, Chief?”

Marshall said huskily, “If they hold you, I’ll bring you what you need. Where’s Bud?”

“Over at a neighbor boy’s. He’ll be all right. Aunt Audrey and Uncle George will be here. I’m quite ready to go.”

Picking up her handbag from an end table, she moved toward the front door. Marshall reached it first to hold it open for her. He let the chief go out immediately after her. As he pulled the door closed from outside, he could hear the sound of George Reed dialing the phone.

Outdoors, Chief Meister had Marshall wait in the car with Betty while he returned to the garage for the coil of rope.

Tossing it in the back seat of the car, he said laconically, “Evidence.”

As Henry Quillan’s law office was only half a block from police headquarters, the lawyer was already there when Meister, Marshall and Betty arrived. He was a tall, bony man of about fifty with a gaunt, Lincolnesque face and a rather dignified manner. He listened quietly to the chief’s explanation of Betty’s arrest.

“Any objection to my speaking to my client in private before you book her?” he asked.

A felony suspect had no legal right to confer with anyone without a police officer being present before even being booked, but the Runyon City police force inclined to be informal about such matters.

“All right with me,” the chief said with a shrug. “You can use my office.”

“May Kirk sit in with us?” Betty asked the lawyer.

He also shrugged. “If you want it that way.”

Inside the office Henry Quillan seated his bony frame on a corner of the desk and waved Betty and Marshall to chairs.

When they were seated, he said, “Now — first I have to know how you want to plead to this charge, Betty. Innocent or guilty?”

Marshall said indignantly, “She’s innocent, of course.”

Quillan gave him a brief glance. “Suppose we let her answer.”

“Innocent, Henry,” she said in a steady voice.

“All right. Now — that rope hasn’t yet been examined by the state police crime lab, and it may well turn out that the cuts don’t match after all. You can’t accurately judge a thing like that with the naked eye. But I know Harold Farroway’s work, and if he says that screen was cut from the inside, it was and he’ll be able to prove it in court. Do you have any theory as to how and why it was cut from inside?”

Betty gave her head a bewildered shake.

Marshall said, “Maybe the cat burglar got in some other way and only used the second-floor hall window as an escape route.”

Betty smiled at him. “I appreciate your faith, Kirk, but he could have unlocked it from inside. All you have to do is release a hook and swing it outward.”

Quillan said, “Frankly, it looks bad for you, Betty. And it’s going to look worse if Farroway establishes the fact that the rope fragment actually did come from the coil in the garage. We’d be better off with no evidence that the cat burglar attempted to break in that night. Just your word that you heard noises on the roof probably would be enough to establish reasonable doubt. But a jury is going to accept this apparently rigged evidence as an indication that you tried to cover up deliberate murder.”

“Don’t you want to defend me?” she asked quietly.

“Don’t turn temperamental,” he said with a touch of impatience. “As a lawyer I have to accept your word that you’re innocent. As a friend, I believe you are. But I have to convince a jury of it. I have no intention of sparing your feelings by avoiding unpleasant questions, because I’m going to have to furnish a jury with the answers. We have to find some reasonable explanation for that rope and screen.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “But I’m afraid I have no reasonable explanation. I did hear someone on the roof that night. I did hear a rasping noise from the direction of the hall window. I was convinced it was the cat burglar who eased open my bedroom door. What more can I say?”

“There’s the matter of motive,” Marshall put in. “How’s the state going to establish one? If she wanted to get rid of Bruce it would have been much simpler to divorce him.”

Quillan pursed his lips. “You have a point there. What was the financial setup between you and Bruce, Betty?”

“I’m afraid I controlled the purse strings. Bruce had his income from the law firm, of course, but he spent it pretty much as he pleased. The house and Dad and Mother’s estates were in my name. You might say I supported the family and Bruce’s income was his personal pocket money.”

The lawyer hiked his eyebrows. “As his law partner, I happen to know he took around seven thousand a year from the firm. That isn’t much as established lawyers’ incomes go, because he really didn’t work any harder than he had to. But it’s a considerable amount of pocket money. That’s beside the point, however. You retained everything you inherited in your own name? You hadn’t signed anything over to him or established joint bank accounts?”

Betty shook her head. “Everything was in my own name.”

“Hmm. New York has no community property law, and it wouldn’t apply here anyway, because only property increases subsequent to the marriage are involved in community property settlements. He couldn’t have had any legal claim against you if you had decided to divorce him. It could be a telling point if we show the jury that divorce would have caused you no financial disadvantage.”

“I was going to divorce him,” she said.

The lawyer gave her a sharp look.

“You’re not supposed to conceal anything at all from your lawyer, are you?” she asked. “Bruce and I were through. We hadn’t been sleeping together for weeks. I don’t suppose the reasons are important now, but I had definitely made up my mind. To divorce him, not to kill him. As Kirk pointed out, there was no reason to kill him even if the thought had occurred to me.”

Quillan said, “I suggest we keep your divorce plans between the three of us for the moment. They wouldn’t gain you any sympathy from the jury. I also suggest you refuse to make a statement of any sort to the police, except through me. Okay?”

“I’ll do whatever you say, Henry.”

The lawyer came to his feet. “Then let’s go out and get the ordeal over with. I’ll try to get you released on bail, but don’t count on it. If they plan to charge first-degree, you can’t be released on bail.”

Chapter IX

Outside, at the complaint desk, they discovered that District Attorney Arnold Ross had just arrived. The D.A. was a round, pleasant-looking man with a little button nose and the smooth, pink skin of a baby. He was talking to Chief Meister, but he looked up as the chief’s door opened and threw an affable smile to include all three of the people emerging from the office.

“I’m sorry about all this, Betty,” he said with cordial regret. “But I have no choice but to take the proper action. How are you, Hank? Hello, Kirk.”

The county had too little crime to require a full-time prosecutor, and district attorney was only a part-time job. Arnold Ross was also a practicing attorney and therefore made a point of being pleasant even to those charged with crimes. You could never tell when someone he had to prosecute might become a potential client.

Quillan said, “What are your plans about this, Arn?”

“What choice do I have in the face of the evidence?” Ross asked, giving Betty an apologetic look. “I have to charge premeditation.”

“Oh, come on,” Qullan said. “Even if she was guilty — which she isn’t — you couldn’t expect to prove worse than manslaughter.”

“You don’t really believe that, Hank. I think we have enough to prove first-degree.”

The horse trading between opposing attorneys prior to trial had always fascinated Marshall. Quillan’s first maneuver obviously was to attempt to get as low a charge as possible for his client. If Betty’s liberty, and perhaps her life, hadn’t been at stake, he would have enjoyed the jockeying.

Quillan said, “In that case I guess I’ll get a writ of habeas corpus and we’ll have a preliminary hearing in city court right now.”

Marshall recognized this as an attempt to lever some kind of concession out of the district attorney. As a writ of habeas corpus required the police either to grant an immediate hearing or release the prisoner, its issuance would mean that Arnold Ross would have to go into court right away. And obviously he wasn’t ready.

The district attorney looked pained. “You know the state crime lab hasn’t examined that rope yet.”

“Tough,” Quillan said unfeelingly. “I guess you’ll have to go into court without all your evidence.” He turned to Betty. “Wait here. I’m going upstairs and have the city judge issue a writ.”

“Now wait a minute, Hank,” the D.A. said. “Let’s not have a hassle about this. For cripe’s sake, you think I like prosecuting Betty? I’ve known her all her life. Let’s be reasonable.”

“What do you suggest?” Quillan asked.

“I don’t think she’ll run away. I’m willing to hold off placing any charge at all until we get the lab report on that rope. Providing, that is, if you’ll be responsible for her appearance at a preliminary hearing when and if one is set.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Quillan agreed. “I accept the responsibility.”

Ross looked relieved. “Then you’re free for the moment,” he said to Betty. “You won’t be able to leave the county without permission from my office, but otherwise you can go where you please.” He turned to the chief of police. “Just list the case as still under investigation, Barney, and you’ll be covered.”

Marshall began to feel that Betty was in good hands. He knew Henry Quillan hadn’t had much criminal practice and that most of his business was in estates and contracts. But so far the man had performed as adroitly as any TV lawyer. It was something of a feat to get a murder suspect released from jail without even posting bond, even if it was only a temporary arrangement.

He said to Betty, “I guess that’s that. I’ll drive you back home.”

“I’d rather do that, if you don’t mind,” Quillan said. “I want to talk to her some more.”

Marshall looked at Betty.

“I guess I’d better do as my lawyer tells me,” she said. “Thanks for standing by, Kirk.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll phone you later.”

“I’ll be at the funeral parlor all afternoon and evening.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot that. Maybe I’ll stop by there this evening to pay my respects.”

That should be pleasant for her, he thought. By this evening it would be all over town that Betty was suspected of shooting her husband deliberately. Yet she would have to stand there, accepting the condolences of those who visited the funeral parlor, knowing that most of them were wondering if they were commiserating with a bereaved widow or a murderess.

When Betty and Quillan had left, Marshall said to the district attorney, “Any statement for the press, Arn?”

The plump attorney examined him contemplatively for a moment before saying, “I don’t know if I should discuss the case with a material witness, Kirk.”

“Material witness?”

“Uh-huh. You may be our motive for the shooting.”

Marshall looked at him blankly. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“The old love triangle. Haven’t you and Betty been getting kind of friendly again lately?”

Marshall felt his face begin to redden. “If you’re trying to be obnoxious, you’re succeeding, Arn.”

“Why’s everyone want to give me a hard time today?” Ross asked plaintively. “First Hank gets nasty, now you. You asked me a question and I answered it.”

“I didn’t like the answer.”

“Look, Kirk,” the D.A. said with an air of patience, “everybody in town knows of the run-in between you and Bruce Case at the country club only a few hours before he was shot. Did you think the town gossips would lose any time getting a thing like that on the telephone wires? He accused the two of you of carrying on behind his back; she flounced out and you threatened to knock Bruce off his stool. I get all the gossip.”

“Then did you also hear that he apologized for making an ass of himself?” Marshall inquired heatedly. “He blew off because Betty and I played a few holes of golf together. Before Sunday afternoon I’d hardly spoken to her in ten years.”

“Yeah, I know. At least in public. But all of a sudden you’re by her side like a knight defending a damsel in distress. I hear you stuck around her place half the night after she shot Bruce, trying to cheer her up, and moved your mother in to stay with her the next day. Seems to show kind of a personal interest if she’s just a casual acquaintance.”

Marshall was so angry he was speechless.

“Look at it from my point of view,” Ross went on. “A man publicly accuses his wife of catting around, she takes off in a huff and that night she accidentally shoots him. Makes you wonder how accidental it was, even without all the evidence we have.”

“You’re a blithering idiot,” Marshall said, and stalked out of headquarters.

Without even discussing it with his father, Marshall decided to sit on the story of Betty’s arrest. Since there had as yet been no formal charge placed, he felt it wasn’t exactly suppressing news. Nevertheless his newspaper sense made him feel a little guilty, for he suspected he would have written the story if anyone but Betty had been involved.

The hell with it, he decided. She was going to have a bad enough time getting through the funeral in the face of the rumors he was sure would begin to circulate. He wasn’t going to aggravate the situation by verifying the rumors in print. That hoary old adage about a newspaper’s responsibility to keep the public fully informed had as often been used as an excuse for sensationalism as it had in the public interest.

The Runyon City News deadline was one thirty p.m. At three he was called into his father’s office.

“I just talked to Barney Meister on the phone,” Jonas said. “He tells me that Betty was arrested at ten o’clock this morning. I didn’t see any story on it.”

“No formal charges were placed. She was released pending further investigation.”

“I know all the details from Barney. Including the fact that you observed the entire performance. You sat on the story.”

“I suppose you could say that. Or that I decided it wasn’t newsworthy.”

Up to now Jonas had spoken rather quietly. Now he inquired in a bellow which shook the room, “You’ve decided to take over the editorial duties of this newspaper, have you?”

Marshall’s face reddened. “She’s over at the funeral parlor right now, accepting condolences. She’ll be there again tonight and at the funeral tomorrow. Did you want me to crucify her in front of the whole town?”

Jonas slapped a palm on the desk. “That isn’t the point! I happen to be fond of the girl, too. The point is that I edit this paper and you’re just a reporter — a minor reporter at that. I decide which stories are printed and which aren’t. Not you.”

Marshall leaned both hands on the desk. His face was now beet red. “Shall we put out a special edition, or will tomorrow’s run be soon enough? We can run the story of the funeral right next to it.”

“Now you want to take over the duties of the make-up department, too,” Jonas growled.

Marshall straightened up. “The story will be on your desk at nine in the morning.”

“Never mind,” his father said in a suddenly calm voice. “We’ll hold it until there’s a formal charge.”

Marshall stared at his father for a long time. Finally he asked coldly, “Is that all you wanted?”

“Uh-huh.”

As the reporter reached the door, Jonas said in an entirely pleasant tone, “By the way, your mother says we’re out of vermouth. Better pick up a bottle on the way home.”

“Okay,” Marshall said with equal pleasantness.

At five p.m. he went down the stairs just as Lydia came from behind her counter. She fell into step with him and they walked out together. They stood alongside his car.

“Ride home?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It’s only a block and I have to stop at the store. What was your father bawling you out about? One of the copy boys told me they could hear it clear in the city room.”

He grinned sourly. “Betty Case was arrested this morning, then released. I sat on the story.”

“I heard that. I thought perhaps it was just a rumor.”

“I guess Dad wouldn’t have printed it anyway, but he resented the usurpation of his editorial prerogative.”

“Why’d they arrest her?” Lydia asked.

“It turned out the rope on the roof was from her garage and the screen had been cut from inside.”

Lydia’s eyes widened.

“She’s only temporarily released,” Marshall said. “Henry Quillan guaranteed her appearance at a preliminary hearing. Arn Ross intends to charge her with first-degree murder.”

She gazed at him for several moments. “She didn’t do it, did she?” she said finally.

He looked surprised. “I don’t think so, but why did you jump to that conclusion? You hardly know her.”

“If you think she’s innocent, I’m sure she is. I have faith in your judgment. You’re still rather fond of her, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

She smiled with a touch of ruefulness. “Then I hope she beats the rap.”

“You sound like a gun moll,” he said, suddenly grinning. “Where’d you pick up that expression?”

“From television.”

On sudden impulse he said, “I have to drop by the funeral parlor tonight, but I should get away by eight. Going to be home?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll drop by then. I feel the need to talk this thing over with somebody understanding.”

“My shoulder is always available,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you.”

Chapter X

Marshall arrived at the funeral home at a quarter of eight. He was directed by a soft-voiced attendant to the room on the right.

The casket was at one end of the room, banked by flowers, and there was a row of chairs along the wall opposite the archway by which Marshall had entered. Betty and Audrey Reed were seated in the two center chairs. There was no sign of George Reed. Marshall assumed he was at home supervising Bud.

People were stopping to speak to Betty, then moving on to file past the casket. She sat with shoulders squared and her face expressionless, quietly thanking each person for coming as the line moved past her.

She knew what they were thinking, he realized, and was infinitely proud of the brave manner in which she faced the ordeal.

He waited until there was a momentary lull in visitors and the two women were alone. Then he went over.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Betty gave him a wan smile. “Some are here honestly to pay their respects, I suppose. Others came for the same reason people visit side shows.”

Audrey Reed said, “You can tell the ones who came out of morbid curiosity by the way they look at her. I stare right in their faces so they know they aren’t fooling me.”

“It’s a small town,” he said. “Other people’s business is the main recreation. You’ll just have to bear it.”

“Oh, I’ll get through it,” Betty said. “At least so far all they’ve heard is rumors. Henry says he thinks he can talk Arn Ross into holding off my arrest until after the funeral.”

Mention of the district attorney brought a resurgence of the anger he had felt that morning. But there was no point in adding to Betty’s discomfort by relating what Arnold Ross had said.

He told her to keep her head up, moved on past the casket and then back through the archway. He signed the visitors’ book on the way out.

Lydia was fully dressed when she answered the door this time, if you could call a skirt and a sweater under which there was obviously no brassiere fully dressed. From previous experience he supposed she wore no panties either. When they had no plans for going out, she liked to be prepared for quick action just in case he happened to be in the mood.

She was perceptive enough to sense the instant he walked in that he wasn’t in that sort of mood at this precise moment, however. She gave him a mere peck of greeting and remained standing when he seated himself on the sofa.

“Drink?” she asked.

“Maybe a beer. I don’t feel like any whisky.”

Going into the kitchen, she returned with two glasses and two opened bottles of beer. She set his on the cocktail table before him and seated herself in the chair directly opposite him. Both silently went through the ritual of pouring beer and sampling it.

Then she asked, “How is she standing up?”

“All right. She isn’t going to let it throw her.”

“Was it pretty awful?”

“Well, you know how the town is. It isn’t easy for her, but she’s facing them down. It’s going to get worse, but I didn’t tell her. I figured she had enough troubles.”

“How do you mean?”

“Arn Ross is planning to use me as the motive for the shooting.”

“You!”

“I played golf with Betty last Sunday when you broke out date. Bruce was in the bar with Doc Derring when we got back. He made some snide remarks about her catting around with me; Betty walked out and I offered to knock Bruce off his stool. He ended up apologizing, but it was quite a scene and the bar was pretty well populated. It got back to Arn and he has it all figured out that Betty knocked off her husband to make herself free for me.”

“Oh boy!” Lydia said. “The gossips will have a field day with that.”

For a few moments they sipped their beer in silence. Presently he said, “Just what do you think of me, Lydia?”

She cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “You ought to know by now, by the way I tumble into bed at your least hint.”

He made a dismissing gesture. “Sex isn’t everything. We’ve never discussed what emotions, if any, we feel for each other, or where we’re going from here.”

A waiting expression formed on her face. “You mean you want to talk about it?”

“I want to clear the air. I don’t want to act like a heel and do things behind your back.”

“Oh,” she said. “This sounds like the beginning of a gentle letdown.”

“It isn’t anything of the sort. I’m just all mixed up. I thought we were close enough so that I could discuss it with you frankly.”

“All right,” she said agreeably. “I’ll listen.”

“You know I used to go with Betty years back, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“We were sweethearts all through high school. We planned to be married as soon as we were both through college. I don’t suppose you’ve been here long enough to have heard what happened.”

She shook her head. “No one ever mentioned it to me.”

“It was quite a scandal at the time, but it was nine years old by the time you moved to town. And gossip doesn’t live that long, even in this town. Unfortunately we went to different schools. When Betty was a sophomore at Bryn Mawr, she met Bruce and got pregnant. So they had a runaway marriage. It threw me for a loop.”

“And you’ve never quite recovered?”

“Oh, I recovered. You can’t go on pining for another man’s wife forever. But it left me a little wary of women in general. I carried a torch for a long time.”

“I see. And now the fire has rekindled?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because she’s in trouble and I feel the need to protect her. When she’s out of this jam I may decide that warmed-over love isn’t any more appetizing than warmed-over pancakes. Or it may turn out to be the real thing. The trouble is that all the while I’m stewing about Betty, I’m still as fond of you as I ever was. I told you I was all mixed up.”

Lydia shifted her legs and he caught a momentary glimpse of white thigh. “What do you want me to tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing. I didn’t come here for advice. I just want you to know exactly how things stand because I think you deserve to know. After all, we’ve been going together for two years.”

“Yes,” she said wryly.

“At times I’ve wondered if I was in love with you. Sometimes I’ve been sure of it. I’ve even thought about asking you to marry me. But I’ve been so damned gun shy ever since the jolt Betty gave me eleven years ago, I couldn’t quite bring myself to the point. Now if you want, you can tell me to go soak my head.” He drained his beer glass.

“I won’t do that,” she said. “I appreciate your honesty in letting me know the exact situation. But I have no intention of meekly stepping aside.”

“How do you mean, stepping aside?”

“As you say, we’ve never discussed our emotional feelings for each other. You never brought the subject up, and I was raised to believe the man should make the first move. But since you have brought it up now, we may as well clear the air completely. I’ve been nuts about you practically since the day we met. I’d marry you in a minute, any time you asked me.”

He smiled with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to start feeling hemmed in,” she said dryly. “I wouldn’t even want you unless you really wanted me. It’s not a case of hoping to snare you by any means, fair or foul. That’s why I’ve never pushed. I don’t think, as many women do, that you develop a vested interest in a man simply because he’s taken up a certain amount of your time. I wouldn’t ever marry you if I thought your sole reason for asking me was that you felt obligated because you’ve used up two years of my life. I’ve enjoyed the two years as much as you have. And I was aware from the beginning that you were shy of marriage.”

“You’re a rather unusual woman,” he said. “I’ve had women resent my not proposing because I took up two weeks of their time.”

“I know I’m unusual. I’d be quite a catch. But it would have to be entirely your idea, because you’ll never get a prod from me. On the other hand I’m not a meek little mouse who instantly gives up when faced by competition. The minute you tell me Betty is your choice, you’ll be rid of me without a bit of trouble. But so long as I’m still in the running, I’ll fight to keep you every way I know how.”

“Now you’re sounding a little more feminine.”

“I am feminine. I’m just not feline. If you think I’m not jealous of Betty, you’re wrong. But I don’t hate her. I don’t even blame her for wanting you. Most any woman would. I have no intention of fighting with her. I’ll fight by trying to offer you more than she can. And I think I have at least one advantage there.”

“What’s that?”

“I doubt very much that she’s as good in bed as I am.” He laughed.

“Well,” she said, “you have to admit I’m pretty talented.”

“You were a rank amateur when we met,” he said. “I taught you everything you know. Even in the beginning you were pretty enthusiastic, as I remember, though.”

“Would you like to refresh your memory?” she asked, shifting her legs again.

He caught another flash of white inner thigh, this time all the way up. As he had suspected, she wasn’t wearing any panties.

“I guess the air is pretty well cleared,” he said with a grin.

Instantly she was on her feet and had pulled her sweater off over her head. She gave her head a shake to cause her tousled dark hair to fall back in place and arched her back provocatively. Her breasts were even larger than Betty’s, but as firm and upright as a young girl’s. Merely his gazing at them caused their dark tips to begin to swell and harden.

Kicking off her shoes, she stepped out of her skirt and dropped it across the chair she had been sitting in. She had been wearing no stockings, so she was now completely naked. Trotting to the bedroom door, she reached around the corner to switch on the overhead light and looked back at him.

“Last one in is a pussy-cat,” she said, turning to disappear into the room.

He left his clothing in the front room. She was waiting for him on the bed when he entered the bedroom. Her arms were about his neck before he was fully settled alongside of her and her lips were moistly pressed against his.

Without preliminaries their bodies joined together in a savage embrace which went on and on in mounting fury until both reached such a peak of agonizing ecstasy that they strove wildly for release. It came to them simultaneously just short of their limit to endure such excruciating rapture without their passing beyond the limit into unconsciousness.

They lay limply in each other arms, unmoving, for a long time.

Finally she said against his lips, “What happened? That was the best ever.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just happened.”

“I think I know,” she said dreamily.

“What?”

“I finally told you I love you. It must have released some last bit of inhibition that prevented me ever before from completely surrendering to you.”

“My God!” he said in mock alarm. “You mean it’s always going to be that frenzied from now on?”

“You loved it,” she said, gently kissing his lips. “I told you I was going to fight. This is the best way I know how.”

Drawing her head onto his shoulder, he said, “Just don’t fight so hard that you kill me in the process.”

She snuggled against him. “Maybe I ought to add something to that long dissertation of mine.”

“What’s that?”

“When I said that as so long as I’m still in the running, I’ll continue to fight, I meant within limits. I don’t perpetually expect to remain one of your harem. Within a reasonable length of time you’re going to have to make up your mind one way or the other.”

“I know it,” he said, kissing the end of her nose. “Betty wouldn’t put up with a harem either, I’m sure. Will you give me a month?”

“I’ll give you two, if it takes that long. Even three. But as long as we’re being completely frank, I just want you to know there’s a limit to even my patience.”

Neither of them mentioned the possibility that Betty might soon be permanently out of the running by receiving a life sentence or the electric chair. He was sure the thought must have occurred to her, and he appreciated her sense of fair play in keeping it to herself. As for him, he refused to imagine any outcome but Betty’s eventual vindication.

Later that night, in his own bed, he thought back over the evening. He felt better for having brought everything out in the open with Lydia, but it hadn’t resolved his basic problem. He no longer had a sense of guilt, but he was even more mixed up about which woman he was in love with.

Chapter XI

On Wednesday morning Marshall stopped by to see Chief Meister. The state police crime lab had reported that the rope fragment found on the roof had definitely come from the coil in the garage, the chief said, and the district attorney was ready to move. He showed Marshall a warrant for Betty’s arrest on a charge of first-degree homicide and told him it would be served immediately after the funeral.

A preliminary hearing was set for nine o’clock the next morning.

Marshall contemplated phoning Betty to warn her what was in store for her, then decided against it. A warning would accomplish nothing, but it would upset her during the funeral, and as long as the arrest was inevitable anyway, he saw no point in making her brood about it before it took place. Instead, when he left police headquarters, he dropped in at Henry Quillan’s law office. He found the lawyer alone.

“Did you know Betty is going to be arrested right after the funeral?” he asked Quillan.

The lawyer nodded. “Arn Ross told me. He’s really quite co-operative until he gets into court.”

“Does Betty know?”

Quillan shook his head. “I see no point in informing her. There’s nothing she could do about it except worry. I’ll be at the funeral, of course, so I’ll be present at the arrest. Everything’s under control.”

Marshall felt a little better.

Returning to the newspaper, he went into conference with his father. For once they agreed on a matter of policy.

“I don’t see how we can avoid printing the story now,” Marshall said. “It’s going to be a matter of public record.”

“We’d be criticized for suppressing news in order to protect an influential person,” Jonas agreed. “There’s no point in letting the Buffalo papers scoop us either. What time’s the funeral?”

“One p.m.”

“Then it should be over by two. Write up the story in advance so we can lock the forms at deadline time. Then we’ll hold the run of the front page until the arrest is actually made. You can phone in the minute it’s definite and we’ll be on the street a half-hour later.”

As the reporter started to leave the office, his father said, “Son.”

Marshall turned at the doorway. “Yes?”

“Never mind,” Jonas said. “I was going to tell you to make it as easy on her as possible, but I guess you will without instructions.”

By noon Marshall had the story on his father’s desk. He made it a straightforward account, with no suggestion of bias either toward Betty’s guilt or innocence. It began:

Mrs. Elizabeth Case, 30, of Rexford Bay, was arrested at Memorial Park Cemetery at about two p.m. today, immediately after the funeral of her late husband, Bruce Case. The warrant charged first-degree murder of the above mentioned husband.

Early last Monday morning police were called to the Case home by Mrs. Case. Bruce Case was dead of a gunshot wound and Mrs. Case explained that she had shot him in the darkness when she mistakenly took him for the notorious cat burglar who has recently been terrorizing the Rexford Bay area. Police initially listed the affair as a probable accidental shooting.

Subsequent examination of certain evidence by the state police crime lab led to a reversal of this conclusion and to the suspect’s arrest today. A preliminary hearing will take place in City Court tomorrow morning, according to Police Chief Bernard Meister.

From there the story tapered off to a biographical sketch of Betty, including her locally prominent ancestry. It concluded with a brief mention that she and Bruce had been married eleven years and had a ten-year-old son.

The story covered everything the reading public would expect, he felt, yet avoided any hint of sensationalism. It was one of the hardest things he ever wrote, simple as it was, but he was satisfied with it when he finished. He knew it wouldn’t help Betty’s case, but he was sure it wouldn’t hurt her either.

He got to the funeral parlor a little before one p.m. and took a seat in the rear. Betty was already seated in the front row between the Reeds, and Henry Quillan sat next to George Reed.

There was no sign of young Bruce, Jr., Marshall was glad to note. Apparently Betty felt as he did about children being dragged to funerals, even the funeral of a parent. In this case it would have been additionally cruel to make the boy witness the arrest of his mother.

Chief Barney Meister was also in the audience.

When the ceremony was over, Betty came up the aisle on the arm of George Reed. She wasn’t collapsed against him in the manner most new widows leave a funeral. Her fingers only lightly clasped his elbow, her back was erect and her chin up. Her face was pale, but the clearness of her eyes showed that she had not allowed herself the hypocrisy of tears. She swept by with the air of a princess ignoring the hostile glares of a rebellious peasantry.

Marshall slipped out immediately behind Henry Quillan and Audrey Reed, reaching the porch in time to see George Reed help Betty into the rear seat of the first car parked behind the hearse. Reed rounded the car to slide beneath the wheel as Quillan helped Audrey into the rear next to Betty, then climbed in front himself.

Marshall didn’t go to the cemetery in the funeral cortege; instead he drove there in his own car and parked outside the gate. When the last of the funeral procession had passed through the gate, he saw that Barney Meister hadn’t ridden in one of the cars either. He came along in a police car driven by a uniformed officer. It turned into the cemetery grounds.

The ceremony here was very brief. Fifteen minutes after the funeral procession drove in, cars began to leave. Glancing at his watch, Marshall saw it was only five of two.

When the family car in which Betty had ridden appeared, only the Reeds were in it. Both looked upset. The car turned in the direction of town.

The police car came out last. Henry Quillan sat next to the uniformed driver and Betty was in back with Barney Meister.

Marshall followed the car to police headquarters and waited until the occupants had gone inside. Then he pulled into a filling station across the street to use the phone.

It wasn’t that he had expected anything to happen which would void the story he had written, such as a break attempt by Betty. But a good newspaperman doesn’t allow a story to go to press until he’s sure that what he has written has actually occurred. There could have been a collision on the way to headquarters. Betty might have collapsed and had to be rushed to a hospital. When you write a story in advance based on a presumption of what is going to happen, you have to follow up to make sure it has happened the way you wrote it.

He dropped a coin, dialed the newspaper and asked for his father’s office.

When Jonas answered, he said, “You can let it roll.”

It was just two fifteen p.m., forty-five minutes after deadline. But everything but the front page had been printed, Marshall knew. The issue wouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes late.

The Runyon City News deliberately withheld the story of Betty’s arrest from the wire services. But big-city papers customarily subscribed to all nearby local papers because smaller-town papers sometimes miss the newsworthiness of big stories. Buffalo was the closest big city, and Erie, Pennsylvania, was the next closest in the opposite direction. Both Buffalo papers and the one in Erie subscribed to the Runyon City News, so all three were aware of the arrest by that evening.

As the case had promise of developing into a sensational murder trial, with a beautiful, wealthy and socially prominent woman as the defendant, all three papers sent reporters to cover the hearing. News coverage from that point on was now beyond the control of the local paper.

City Judge Homer Gandy, a lean, bald-headed man of only about thirty-five presided. Betty, in a dark, conservative street dress, sat at the defense table with Henry Quillan. Arnold Ross was alone at the prosecution table.

Though this was only a preliminary hearing, the court room was so jammed with spectators that there were standees at the rear. Marshall spotted George and Audrey Reed in the center of the room and wondered who was taking care of Bud. He moved forward to take his usual seat in the press section.

At a preliminary hearing many of the usual courtroom formalities are waived, since it is not a trial. It’s purpose is merely to establish whether or not there is sufficient evidence to hold an accused person for the grand jury. There is no jury, and what it amounts to is that the prosecution attempts to convince the judge that there is sufficient evidence to warrant grand jury consideration of the charge; the defense attempts to convince him there isn’t and get the charge dismissed.

The first witness for the prosecution was Barney Meister. After being sworn in and establishing that he was Runyon City’s chief of police, he testified that about two-thirty a.m. the previous Monday morning he had been awakened at home by a call from police headquarters informing him that there had been a shooting at the old Runyon place at Rexford Bay. He explained that he had left standing instructions with the desk to inform him of important police matters, no matter what time it was.

“The desk man didn’t have any details,” he added. “He didn’t know who was shot and how bad, only that a woman had phoned in the report. I guess he assumed the matter should be classified as important more because of the address than the occurrence.”

Marshall didn’t consider the comment very funny, but there was a titter from the audience. Judge Gandy rapped his gavel.

The chief went on to explain that a police car had come by his home a few minutes later to drive him to the scene. There he had found Bruce Case lying dead of a gunshot wound, half in and half out of his wife’s bedroom door. He related what Betty had told him to how the shooting occurred.

There was no objection from Henry Quillan to this as hearsay. Marshall guessed that the lawyer was glad to have it in the record, as it might save him from putting Betty on the stand at all, in case he decided not to.

Meister continued by describing his examination of the premises, with the help of Patrolman Nat Thorpe, his taking of the cut-out portion of the screen and his later visit after daylight to find the fragment of rope tied to the air-vent pipe on the roof. He went on to tell of receiving the crime lab report the next day that the screen had been cut from the inside.

“Objection,” Quillan said. “Hearsay.”

The district attorney said, “Your Honor, we intend to put Harold Farroway of the state police crime lab on the stand later, at which time the contents of this report will be verified by the man who made it. We can temporarily dismiss this witness and put Farroway on now, if you wish, but to save time I’d like to continue with the stipulation that we’ll establish the report later.”

The judge glanced at Quillan, who said, “All right, Your Honor, exception in the event the prosecution fails to establish it.”

“Go ahead,” the judge said to Ross.

“Continue your story, Chief,” Ross said.

Meister had little left to tell. He described his return to Betty’s home after reading the lab report and his finding of the coil of rope in the garage.

“A later lab examination showed the fragment found on the roof had been cut from this coil,” he concluded.

“Same exception, Your Honor,” Quillan said.

Arnold Ross turned the witness over for cross-examination.

Rising to his feet, the defense attorney approached the witness stand. “Chief Meister, did you make any attempt to establish the ownership of the coil of rope you found in the garage?”

Meister looked puzzled. “It was in the Case garage. It must have belonged to Mr. Case.”

“I’m not asking for an assumption. Did you trace down where it had been sold and to whom?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“Then you really don’t know if it belonged to anyone living in the Case home, do you?”

“I know it was in their garage.”

“But you have no idea who put it there, or when. Is that right?”

“I suppose.”

Quillan said, “You have testified that you searched the inside of the house and the garage. Did you also make a search of the grounds at any time?”

Meister looked puzzled. “For what?”

“For clues. Did you, for example, look behind any of the shrubbery which hugs all four sides of the house?”

“No.”

“Then isn’t it quite possible that a length of rope dropped from the roof might have fallen behind some of that shrubbery and have been lying there all day Monday?”

“Objection,” Arnold Ross said. “He’s asking witness for a conclusion.”

“I withdraw the question,” Quillan said before the judge could rule. “Did you ask anyone in the Case household if they had found a length of rope behind some shrubbery, coiled it up and put it in the garage?”

“Objection!” Ross called.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked. “It seems a reasonable enough question to me.”

Ross subsided and Quillan repeated the question. “No,” Barney Meister said.

“That’s all,” the defense attorney said. “You may step down.”

Chapter XII

The next witness was Harold Farroway of the state police crime lab. When Arnold Ross started to ask him questions designed to establish him as an expert, Henry Quillan interrupted.

“I know Mr. Farroway’s work well, Your Honor. To save time, the defense will stipulate that he is expert in his field.”

Farroway had blown-up microscopic photographs with him. He used them to demonstrate that the screen had been cut from inside and that the rope fragment from the roof came from the coil of rope found in the garage. The photographs, plus his explanations of them, were very convincing.

When the district attorney turned him over for cross-examination, Quillan rose to his feet again.

“Mr. Farroway,” he said. “Were you able to establish by laboratory examination who cut this screen and who tied the rope to the air vent?”

“Of course not,” Farroway said.

“It might, then, have been anyone?”

“Insofar as I know.”

“Even the cat burglar?”

“I object,” the D.A. said. “Counsel is asking for a conclusion.”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“That’s all,” Quillan told the witness.

The prosecution never wants to discharge all its ammunition at a preliminary hearing. Normally it presents only as much evidence as it thinks necessary to convince the judge the accused should be held for the grand jury; if that doesn’t work, it reluctantly unlimbers more guns. Arnold Ross decided to try on the basis of what he had shown so far.

“I have no more witnesses at this time,” he announced.

“Does the defense wish to present any witnesses?” Judge Gandy asked.

“Not at this moment, Your Honor,” Quillan said. “But I would like to present some arguments to the court.”

“All right,” the judge said. “Will both counsels please step forward?”

Gandy, like most judges, preferred to conduct hearings informally, his main purpose being to get both sides’ stories as quickly as possible. A three-way conference between the judge and the two attorneys often eliminated the necessity for much long-winded testimony.

Since all three spoke in conversational tones, they couldn’t be heard by most people in the courtroom. The press section was right next to the rail, though, only a dozen feet from the bench. Marshall could hear the entire exchange clearly.

The district attorney said, “Your Honor, we’ve shown beyond any doubt that the evidence of a prowler being at the Case home the night of the shooting was deliberately planted. This could have been done for no other purpose than to cover up deliberate murder.”

Henry Quillan said, “Counsel’s interpretation of the evidence is just one man’s opinion. Nobody knows just how this cat burglar operates, because he doesn’t leave many clues. He has cut screens before. Have any of them been examined by the state police lab to see from which side they were cut?”

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” the D.A. said.

“Why? You’ve interpreted the evidence your way. Now let me interpret it my way. I suggest that the cat burglar prepares for alternate escape routes before he enters a house. In this case, I suggest he hung a rope before that hall window, just in case he had to use it in an emergency, then entered the house by some other means. I suggest that when the shot alarmed him, he ran to this window, cut the screen in order to get out, not in, and scurried up the rope to the roof. In his haste he cut the rope, meaning to take it with him, but it slipped from his fingers and slid to the ground behind the shrubbery in front of the house. Mrs. Case has a ten-year-old son. It’s quite conceivable that he found the rope the next morning, coiled it up and put it in the garage.”

The judge said, “If you’re prepared to establish that this happened, put the boy on the stand.”

“I haven’t discussed it with him, Your Honor. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thought. The point is that the police didn’t interview him either — or anyone else on that subject. There are neighbor children around there all the time. Perhaps one of them found the rope and put it in the garage. Or perhaps the cat burglar himself had stolen it from the garage and for some odd reason decided to put it back when he was through with it. He’s probably a nut, so you wouldn’t necessarily expect him to behave rationally. What I’m trying to point out is that there are numerous alternate interpretations of the evidence, and the prosecution has fastened on just one.”

“Yours don’t impress me as being very convincing,” Judge Gandy said. “So far the prosecution’s seems most probable.”

“But the alternate possibilities establish reasonable doubt,” Quillan insisted.

“This isn’t a jury trial,” the judge said. “If we applied the principle of reasonable doubt to hearings, no one would ever be remanded for grand jury action. I have to base my decision on the most likely interpretation of evidence.”

“Then let’s touch on another point,” Quillan said. “The prosecution hadn’t even suggested a motive for murder. There has been no evidence presented that this couple wasn’t happily married. Even if there had been, the defendant happens to be a wealthy woman with everything, including all property which was jointly enjoyed by both herself and her husband, in her own name. Bruce Case had nothing but the income from his law practice as a junior partner in my firm. I’m prepared to establish all this through witnesses, if I have to. There would have been no financial disadvantage whatever to my client if she had divorced her husband. Why would she bother to kill him?”

The judge looked at Arnold Ross. “That’s a strong point.”

“We have a motive, Your Honor,” the D.A. said. “In view of the strength of the evidence we’ve already presented, I didn’t think it would be necessary to prolong the hearing.”

“The court isn’t in that much of a hurry,” Judge Gandy said. “I suggest you go ahead and establish your motive.”

The two attorneys returned to their tables. Marshall had a sinking feeling in his stomach, certain that Arnold Ross was going to call him as the next witness. He was surprised when the D.A. called for a Gail Thomas.

There was a stir in the courtroom as an attractive blonde in her early twenties rose from her seat and came forward. She wore a tight summer dress which hugged a slim, shapely body and emphasized a bosom which really didn’t need emphasizing. The skirt was a bit shorter than was customary in Runyon City and she wore a bit more make-up than the average local woman did, but she didn’t look cheap. She gave a rather glamorous show-business effect.

Marshall recognized her as a girl he had seen on the streets a couple of times in recent weeks, for in a town of only twelve thousand you are eventually bound to see every resident on the streets at some time or other, but he had no idea who she was.

When she was sworn in and had given her name as Gail Thomas, Arnold Ross said, “Is that Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss,” the blonde said. “I’m not married.” She threw a strangely vindictive look at Betty as she said it, as though somehow the fact that she wasn’t married were Betty’s fault.

Betty was examining the girl without expression.

The D.A. asked, “Where do you live, Miss Thomas?”

“At 126 Howard. I have a two-room apartment.”

“Where do you work?”

“I’m a beautician at Dell’s Beauty Parlor.”

“How long have you been a resident of Runyon City?”

“About four weeks. Before that I lived in Buffalo.”

“Were you acquainted with the deceased Bruce Case?”

“Yes?”

“What was the nature of your relationship?”

“I’ve been his mistress for the past two years,” Gail Thomas said. “We were going to be married as soon as he divorced that woman over there.”

There was such a reaction of whispering in the courtroom that the judge had to pound his gavel. Marshall looked at Betty. She had taken her eyes from the witness and was staring straight ahead.

Arnold Ross said, “Are you also acquainted with the defendant, Mrs. Elizabeth Case?”

“I met her once. I had seen her around town a couple of times before that, and somebody told me who she was.”

“What were the circumstances of this single meeting? First, when did it occur?”

“About a week ago. Last Friday at around five-thirty p.m. Just two days before she shot Bruce.”

The D.A. said, “Please describe the meeting.”

“She was waiting in front of my apartment in her sports car when I got home from work. I knew who she was, because as I told you, somebody had pointed her out to me downtown. When I walked into the building she got out of the car and followed me. She came up behind me as I was putting the key in my door and said, ‘Are you Gail Thomas?’

“I said yes, she told me who she was, though I already knew, and she asked to talk to me. I suspected what was coming, but there wasn’t much I could do, so I invited her in.

“Inside she refused a seat and just looked me up and down. She had a real icy stare. Finally she said, ‘So you’re the woman my husband has been sleeping with. I don’t want anything in particular. I merely wanted a look at you so I could decide what to do.’ The way she said it, I knew she had already decided what to do, and it wasn’t divorce.”

Henry Quillan’s roared, “Objection!” drowned out the murmur in the courtroom.

The judge said to the clerk, “Strike that last sentence from the record.”

Arnold Ross said, “Your witness,” and sat down.

Chapter XIII

Henry Quillan had a prolonged whispered conference with Betty before rising to approach the witness stand.

“You didn’t finish your story, Miss Thomas,” he said. “What happened after the remark you allege the defendant made?”

“Nothing. She turned around and walked out.”

“She made no threats?”

“Just with her eyes. If looks could kill, I’d be dead. I warned Bruce she was going to do something—”

“Confine yourself to answering my questions,” Quillan snapped. “Did the defendant at any time say anything to you which you haven’t already repeated?”

“No, sir.”

The defense lawyer stood with a brooding expression on his gaunt, Lincolnesque face for a moment before saying, “You mentioned that you were Bruce Case’s mistress for two years, yet you’ve only lived here four weeks. Will you explain that?”

“Sure. We met in Buffalo two years ago and he always came there to see me. It’s only thirty miles. He wanted me to move here so it would be more convenient. So I came down and got a job and rented an apartment.”

Quillan said, “You may step down,” and went back to his table.

The district attorney said, “We have no more witnesses to present at this time, Your Honor.”

“Does the defense now wish to present any witnesses?” the judge asked.

“Just a moment, if the court pleases?” Quillan said, and went into another conference with Betty. After a few minutes he said, “I wish to place the defendant on the stand, Your Honor.”

It seemed obvious that Quillan had hoped not to have to subject Betty to the prosecution’s cross-examination, but had decided the only hope of counteracting Gail Thomas’ damaging testimony was to get Betty’s version of the meeting into the record.

He asked no questions at all about the night of the shooting. Marshall recognized this as a maneuver to restrict her cross-examination to events preceding that night. Since the D.A. could cross-examine only on subjects brought out in direct examination, he was automatically barred from asking her anything about the shooting. Presumably Quillan felt that Chief Meister’s testimony had brought out her excuse for shooting her husband well enough, and preferred to leave it at that.

“How did you discover your husband was having an affair with Miss Thomas?” the lawyer asked.

Betty’s face was pale, but her head was erect and her voice entirely calm. “I had suspected another woman for some time because he so frequently had out-of-town business trips. There were also the usual signs. Lipstick on handkerchiefs, match folders from Buffalo night clubs when he had made no mention of being in Buffalo. Then a couple of months ago a friend told me she had seen him at a buffalo night club with a blonde on a night he was supposed to be in Albany. He was very discreet, I later learned. Even after his mistress moved to town, he never saw her anywhere but in Buffalo, except when he visited her apartment.”

Quillan asked, “Did you confront your husband with your knowledge?”

“Yes. He flatly denied it. My friend was certain she had made no mistake, so I knew he was lying. I also knew he was continuing to see the woman, because he was almost never home nights and I was always finding lipstick on his clothing. In recent weeks I even suspected she had moved to town, because sometimes he came home late at night wearing different clothing than he had left in. The only explanation for that was that he kept some clothing at her apartment.”

“How did you finally discover that this woman was Gail Thomas?”

“On last Thursday, the day before I visited Miss Thomas, the same friend called me to say she had gone to Dell’s Beauty Parlor for an appointment. She had never been there before, but because she was unable to get an appointment with her regular hairdresser and had to go to a banquet that night, she was forced to have her hair done elsewhere. She recognized one of the operators as the girl she had seen with my husband in Buffalo a couple of months before and inquired who she was. When my friend gave me her name, I looked in the phone book, but it wasn’t listed. Thinking perhaps she might have a phone anyway, but hadn’t been here long enough to be listed in the book, I called information. She did have a phone and I was able to get her address from information.”

“I see,” Quillan said. “What was the purpose of your visit to Miss Thomas?”

“Just feminine curiosity. I wanted to see what she looked like. She imagined my icy stare. I was really quite courteous to her, though perhaps a bit formal.”

“Did you mention this visit to your husband?”

“Yes. And this time he didn’t bother to deny it, because he knew it was useless. I told him I wanted a divorce and he agreed to give me one.”

“Were actual plans under way for this divorce?”

“Yes. Bruce said he would arrange everything so that all I’d have to do was sign papers.”

“Your witness,” Quillan said to Ross.

The district attorney rose and gave Betty a pleasant smile. “Mrs. Case, you said you learned that even after Miss Thomas moved to town he never met her anywhere but in Buffalo, except when he visited her apartment. How did you learn this?”

“He told me,” Betty said. “He seemed rather proud that he had been able to keep the affair secret in a town this size for two full years.”

“Did this admission anger you?”

“Not enough to kill him,” Betty said quietly. “It made me more eager for a divorce.”

“I see. Now your visit to Miss Thomas was last Friday, two days before he died. When did you tell him you had seen Miss Thomas?”

“As soon as I got home. He had just come from his office.”

“Did all this discussion about a divorce take place then?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” the D.A. said. “Your husband amiably agreed to this and said he’d take care of everything. All you had to do was sign papers. Is that right?”

“I don’t know that he agreed to it amiably, but he agreed to it. I told him that if he didn’t, I would drag his mistress into court as corespondent and divorce him. He didn’t want that, therefore he agreed to arrange things so that I could have an uncontested divorce.”

Ross smiled benignly. “Mrs. Case, are you familiar with the divorce laws of New York State?”

“Somewhat. I know the only ground is adultery.”

“Exactly. In order to divorce your husband, you were going to have to prove adultery. You have already stated that he didn’t want his mistress involved. How were you going to prove it?”

Betty said, “Bruce agreed to arrange everything. I suppose he was going to hire some woman to act the part of Miss X, and furnish me the evidence. I understand that’s done all the time.”

“Not legally,” Ross said. “Another thing. Do you know there is an interlocutory period in this state?”

“Yes. One year.”

“In other words, you were aware that even if the divorce went through you would be legally tied to this man for a full year after the initial decree, and that it might be some months before that was even issued.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have to live with him during that period.”

“Did you ever see any of these papers your husband was to prepare for your signature?”

“We discussed it Friday evening,” Betty said. “His law office isn’t open on Saturday; he died Sunday night. He hardly had time to start drawing them up.”

“That’s all,” the district attorney said. “You may step down.”

There was another three-way conference between the two lawyers and the judge. This time it was very brief. When the two attorneys returned to their tables, Arnold Ross had a smile on his face and Henry Quillan was frowning. Marshall knew the decision even before the judge spoke.

He ordered Betty held for grand jury action and remanded her to the women’s section of the county jail without bond.

The report on the preliminary hearing made the wire services and went to all parts of the country. As the pending trial had all the elements which appeal to tabloid readers, reporters began to converge on the town. Here was an alleged jealousy murder involving wealth, beauty and social position on one hand, sex and a love nest with a beautiful blonde in it on the other. On such things are newspaper circulations built, and the major newspapers in the country wanted to be in on the ground floor.

It would be two weeks before the next session of the grand jury, so there was little on the actual development of the case which could be reported. To satisfy the avid reading public, visiting newsmen began digging into every facet of the principals’ lives. Reams of material about Betty Case’s and Gail Thomas’ backgrounds began pouring over the wires from coast to coast.

Gail Thomas made particularly good copy; she was willing to grant interviews at any time of the day or night and would pose for photographs at the drop of a flashbulb. She tried and convicted Betty in the press three times over, in the meantime getting herself nationwide publicity, much of it via cheescake photographs.

She had visions of a Hollywood career, Marshall thought sourly, and was playing the publicity bit for all it was worth.

The argument between Bruce Case and Kirk Marshall at the country club only hours before the shooting inevitably came to light and the tabloids made the most of it. When it was discovered that Marshall and Betty had been sweethearts all through school and up to the moment she suddenly married Case, the yellower journals immediately made a love rectangle out of the affair, where up until then it had been only a triangle. There was some speculation in print that Kirk Marshall might have been a factor in Betty’s desire to free herself of her husband without having to wait out an interlocutory decree.

Meantime Marshall visited Betty daily at the women’s section of the county jail, twenty miles south of Runyon City. She continued to appear calm, but already he saw that she had lost weight and her lovely face was faintly drawn.

George Reed had found it necessary to return to his Rochester bank, but his wife had stayed on to care for Bud. Each morning Marshall phoned Audrey for a report on the boy’s welfare so that he could relay it to his mother.

Betty refused to see any reporters other than Marshall. As a result, Marshall found himself nearly mobbed by out-of-town reporters when he left the jail after his first couple of visits. But his curt refusals to answer any questions whatever about how she was taking it and what she had said soon discouraged them. Thereafter they merely regarded him silently as he came down the jail steps and climbed into his car.

He saw little of Lydia during this period, except at the newspaper office. He had lunch with her a couple of times just after the hearing, but when the story linking him with Betty broke, he decided that for Lydia’s own protection he ought to stay away from her for a while.

“They’ve already built it up from a love triangle to a rectangle,” he said bitterly. “Let’s not give them grounds for making it a pentagram.”

“But everyone in town knows we’ve been going together for two years,” she protested.

“Apparently the visiting gentlemen of the press haven’t yet run across that item,” he told her. “It won’t be long. As soon as the grand jury acts on Betty’s case, they’ll forget all these side issues and it won’t matter who sees us together. But I don’t want your name splashed from coast to coast. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

Chapter XIV

A week after the hearing Jonas Marshall called his son into his office for a conference. “We’re going to have a change of policy,” he announced abruptly.

Marshall cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

“So far in this thing we’ve stuck conservatively to factual accounts of events,” the editor of the News said. “Meantime every other newspaper in the country has been playing the case to the hilt. We’re on the inside and you have a personal relationship with everyone involved except this Thomas woman. You’re the only reporter Betty will see and you’re a personal friend of the D.A., the defense attorney and the chief of police. It’s a little ridiculous that with all this advantage, we’re letting the whole country scoop us.”

His son stared at him. “You mean you’re going to start crucifying Betty, too?”

“Of course not,” Jonas said impatiently. “Anyway, she’s already been stripped bare for the whole nation to see. It would be a little silly at this point to start rehashing everything that’s already been said, even if we practiced that yellow sort of journalism. What I have in mind may actually help her.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

“My idea is a series of articles stressing the tragic aspects of the case and tending to be sympathetic to Betty. Chief Meister, Arn Ross and Hank Quillan are so tired of reporters by now that their standard answer to everything is, ‘No comment.’ But they’ll talk to you. And all three have known Betty since she was a child. For example, your slant for the story on the chief could be that he always regarded Betty as a particularly fine woman, and it was a shattering experience for him to have to arrest her. Arn’s could follow a similar vein. With Quillan you could show his dedicated belief in her innocence and his confidence of an acquittal. It’s exactly the reverse of what everyone else has been doing to her, you see.”

Marshall was staring at his father coldly.

“Then we could cap it with an article on Betty, playing up the pathos of her situation,” Jonas went on, oblivious to his son’s expression. “Here’s a woman used to everything money can buy, whose whole world has suddenly tumbled about her. You could contrast the drab surroundings of the county jail with her big home at Rexford Bay. Describe how her usual vivaciousness had deteriorated into listless despair. You can touch on the tragic effect on young Bud, who has already lost one parent and now may lose the other. What do you think?”

“I think it stinks,” his son said.

Jonas reddened slightly. “A good news reporter can’t let personalities affect his reporting.”

“This isn’t reporting. It’s sob-sister stuff. I wouldn’t write that kind of drivel even if it was Gail Thomas in the can instead of Betty.”

“You’ll write what I tell you to!” Jonas yelled.

Marshall leaned both palms on the desk. “I’ll write news stories. By definition, news stories are reports of events, not tabloid regurgitations disguised as information. If you want to fill the paper with sob-sister feature articles, write ‘em yourself.”

Turning on his heel, he strode to the door.

“Come back here!” Jonas roared.

The reporter turned with his hand on the knob. Jonas glared at him and Marshall glared back. There was a long period of silence. Finally the older man made a dismissing gesture.

“Eventually you’ll take over this job,” he growled. “I hope the hell when you do, you have a son exactly as pigheaded as you.”

Marshall smiled at him. “I won’t be as crotchety an editor.”

He went out and closed the door behind him. Ten minutes later his father sent word to the city room that he wanted to see him again.

When the reporter entered the editor’s private office for the second time, Jonas said, “I’ve got another idea, and this one’s straight reporting.”

“What?” Marshall asked.

“Everybody in this case has been turned inside out except the victim. About all that’s been printed about Bruce Case is that he was Betty’s husband, was a local lawyer, and came here eleven years ago from Philadelphia. His origins and antecedents haven’t been touched on, because nobody knows what they are. Eventually some reporter is going to dig, though. Maybe his life before he came here was as dull as carrot pie, but maybe again there’s something in it that would make news. Do you consider that straight reporting?”

“I guess,” Marshall admitted.

“Then, for once, let’s not get scooped. I want you to run down to Philadelphia and find out everything you can about him.”

“Okay,” his son said agreeably.

Jonas looked a bit surprised. “Check the airline schedule out of Buffalo and catch the next flight.”

“I have to run down to the county jail first. Betty’s expecting me at eleven.”

“I knew it was too much to expect instant obedience just for once,” Jonas exploded. “Send a message that you can’t make it.”

“The logical place to start on Bruce is to get as much information as I can from his widow,” Marshall said reasonably. “I’m not going to rush blindly into Philadelphia with nothing but a name.”

His father subsided. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyway, get there as fast as you can, before some other reporter beats you to it.”

Marshall started out, paused at the door and asked, “Who’s going to mix your martinis while I’m gone?”

Jonas merely grinned at him.

Back in the city room Marshall made his usual morning phone call to Audrey Reed and learned that Bud was fine. He arrived at the county jail just at eleven.

The women’s section was not built for maximum security, so it wasn’t necessary to talk through a screen of meshed wire. The visitors’ room was large and plain with small, individual tables having a chair on either side of them. There were two other men seated at tables when Marshall was let in. He took the table farthest from them. A few moments later a matron escorted Betty and two other female prisoners in through the opposite door.

All three were dressed in the same drab, sacklike prison dresses. But even in this unattractive garment Betty managed to look shapely. She could wear a flour sack with a stylish flair, Marshall thought.

The matron remained in the doorway, out of earshot, but where she could watch everything going on. Seating him self across from Marshall, Betty reached out to give his hand a squeeze.

“Old faithful,” she said. “I don’t know how I’d hold up without you. How’s Bud?”

“Fine, according to Audrey.” He studied her face. “You’re still losing weight.”

“It isn’t just despondency,” she said dryly. “The food here isn’t exactly from the Ritz.”

“Maybe you’ll be out in a week,” he said. “Maybe the grand jury won’t return a true bill.”

She gave him a pale smile. “I’ve already stopped hoping that. Henry has no hope of it, and he should know. He says that after the indictment the trial probably won’t be set for months, so I’ll be here for a long time even in the unlikely event that I’m finally acquitted.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said roughly. “You’ll be acquitted. You’re innocent.”

“Only five people in the world aside from me seem to think so,” she said, still smiling. “Aunt Audrey and Uncle George, Bud, Henry Quillan and you.”

“You can add Mom and Dad to the list. Lydia, too.”

“Lydia’s on my side?” she said with raised brows. “Of her own accord or because of you?”

“Mainly, I suppose, because she has faith in my judgment,” he admitted.

“I suppose you still see a lot of her,” she said wryly.

“Not at the moment.” Then he added with honesty, “I’ve been avoiding her because I don’t want the visiting newsmen to get any ideas about us and splash her name in papers all over the country.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You’re a remarkably honest person, Kirk.”

“I try to be. I won’t be here tomorrow, incidentally.”

“Oh?”

“I’m flying to Philadelphia. Dad wants me to look into Bruce’s background.

She looked surprised. “Whatever for?”

“We run a newspaper. Everything you and Gail Thomas ever did has been reported in other papers. Dad wants a scoop on Bruce. Don’t worry. We won’t print anything sensational. We wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, any more than you already have been.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she said, but he noticed a suddenly withdrawn look in her eyes.

“You could make it easier for me by giving me a brief biographical rundown,” he said.

“All right,” she said, smiling again. “He graduated from Cornell Law School when he was twenty-four and had been a law clerk in Philadelphia for a year when we met. His parents both died about the time he graduated, so I never knew them. Now you shouldn’t have to go to Philadelphia.”

“I can hardly spread that to two columns,” he said. “Who were his parents?”

“His father’s name was Harlan and his mother’s Martha. He was a contractor of some kind.”

“Well, that gives me something to start on. What was the name of the law firm where he was a clerk?”

“I’ve forgotten,” she said, and he got the odd impression that she was lying. She reached across to press his hand again. “Is it so important to do a story on Bruce, Kirk? Or if it is, can’t you get all you need from me and Henry Quillan? We were the two who knew him best.”

“During the past eleven years, yes. But you don’t seem to know a devil of a lot about him before that. Didn’t he ever talk about himself?”

She shook her head. “That’s one bad habit he lacked. I was never quite sure whether it was modesty or secretiveness.”

“Nobody’s that modest,” he said. “The average man probably eventually tells his wife everything he’s done since birth — that he’s not ashamed of. I have a hunch I’m going to find a story in Philadelphia.”

Her hand squeezed his. “Don’t go, Kirk. Please.”

“Why not?” he asked in surprise.

Pulling her hand back, she put it in her lap. “I look forward to your visits so.”

That was a cover-up, he knew by her manner. There was something in Philadelphia she dreaded he would learn. It didn’t deter him any, because he had no intention of using anything he found if he thought it would hurt her in any way.

He said, “I’ve already had one argument with Dad today. If I refused to go to Philadelphia I would probably get there without even taking a plane. He would throw me all the way.”

She gave him a resigned smile. “That was selfish of me. I don’t want to interfere with your work. I’ll see you when you get back.”

The matron announced, “Visiting time is up, folks.”

Back in town Marshall dropped in on Henry Quillan to find out what he knew about Bruce Case’s background before the man came to Runyon City. He wasn’t greatly surprised to learn that the lawyer knew practically nothing about his former law partner’s antecedents.

“I suppose you know that old Arthur Runyon bought him a junior partnership here after he married his daughter,” Quillan said. “Naturally I made some investigation before agreeing to the deal, but it covered only his academic record and his work for his former employer. He was in the upper third of his class at Cornell. Wesson, Wesson and Masters of Philadelphia, the law firm he worked for there, gave him a pretty good recommendation, particularly commending him for his brief work. As it turned out, he wasn’t as conscientious a worker once he got himself set in a law partnership as he had been as a mere clerk. With a wealthy wife, he didn’t need the money, of course, so he did just about what he had to. He was an able enough lawyer when he put his mind to it, but that was only sporadically.”

“It doesn’t sound as though he was a great asset to the firm,” Marshall said.

“Oh, I have no kicks. There wasn’t so much work that it left me snowed under. And, of course, our division of profits was based on the cases we each handled. There’s really some advantage to having a junior partner willing to take all the routine cases and leave the interesting ones to you. Besides, Betty’s father paid enough for his share of the firm so that I would have been ahead if Bruce had never showed up at the office at all.”

By the time Marshall left the law office, his opinion of Bruce Case had been solidified. The man obviously had been a fortune hunter, and the minute he’d acquired a rich wife, he had relaxed in his new-found luxury and had devoted only enough time to making a living to keep up the appearance of being gainfully employed.

Chapter XV

Marshall arrived in Philadelphia on Friday morning. He had no trouble finding the law firm of Wesson, Wesson and Masters, which was situated in an old but ultra-respectable office building downtown. He had a little difficulty getting in to see a member of the firm, though.

There was a surprisingly youthful and pretty receptionist. She greeted him quite cordially, but when she discovered he was a reporter instead of a potential client, her cordiality evaporated. She was firmly certain that no member of the firm would care to be interviewed by a reporter.

Marshall explained that he had just flown five hundred miles to see some member of the firm and that, furthermore, he was not just a reporter, but a personal acquaintance of a former employee of Wesson, Wesson and Masters. His business concerned that former employee, he said, and he suggested she relay his message on to higher authority.

A trifle reluctantly she explained to someone over an intercom system that an out-of-town reporter named Mr. Kirk Marshall was there concerning some former employee of the law firm. She seemed a little surprised when a voice from the speaker said, “Send him in.”

“Mr. Wesson will see you,” she said, and rose to escort Marshall to one of two closed doors to private offices.

“Is that the first Wesson or the last?” he couldn’t resist asking.

“The senior Mr. Wesson has been dead for twenty-five years,” the receptionist, who was about that age herself, said with dignity. “I never knew him.”

Opening the door, she said, “Mr. Kirk Marshall, Mr. Wesson,” let Marshall pass into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

The man who arose from behind the desk was about seventy, with an abundance of snow-white hair and a lined, intelligent face. He thrust a lean hand across the desk and gave Marshall a firm handclasp.

“Sit down, Mr. Marshall,” he said in a mellow voice. “Sorry you were kept waiting. Our receptionist is relatively new here and takes her duties a trifle too seriously. Unfortunately most young women newly in a job of that sort have trouble getting it through their heads that a receptionist’s function is to get people in to see her employer, not block them out. Of course we expect her to weed out necktie salesmen and obvious crackpots, but it has been my experience that other people seldom call to see me unless they have some reasonable business. We’ll get her trained, though.”

Marshall liked the man instantly, and his mild resentment at being treated like a peasant requesting an audience with the king as instantly evaporated.

Seating himself in a chair before the desk, he said, “I’m sure she had the best interests of the firm at heart, Mr. Wesson.”

Leaning back in his chair, the elderly lawyer placed the tips of his fingers together. “What can I do for you, Mr. Marshall?”

“I’m here concerning a man you employed as a law clerk some eleven years ago,” Marshall said. “Bruce Case.”

Wesson elevated snow-white eyebrows. “We’ve been reading about poor Bruce. Are you from Runyon City?”

“Yes, sir. I’m with the Runyon City News. I also knew Bruce and am a particular friend of his widow. I’m here in a sort of dual capacity: to get material for a story and also, if possible, to help Mrs. Case. Some of us who know her don’t believe she’s guilty.”

The lawyer showed no indication of surprise. “The newspapers leave little doubt of her guilt, but over the years I’ve seen many innocent people convicted in the press for no other reason than that they made good copy. I’ve learned to believe almost nothing I read and very little of what I see and hear.”

“What I’m after is some background information about Bruce Case,” Marshall said. “No one, including his widow, seems to know much about him before he moved to Runyon City.”

“Well, he was a graduate of Cornell. He came to us right after graduation and was here about a year. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was a conscientious worker, particularly good on briefs, and probably would eventually have been taken into the firm if he had stayed.”

So Bruce Case had been able to devote himself to his work when he had to depend on himself for financial support, Marshall thought. It was too bad he hadn’t married a poor girl. He might have developed into a high-bracket lawyer.

“I already know that much,” the reporter said. “What I was after was a little more personal detail. Who his parents were, what kind of childhood he had, previous women in his life. Things such as that.”

Wesson gave him a strange look. “You don’t know about his parents?”

“Only that his father’s name was Harlan and his mother’s Martha.”

“Amazing that he could have kept a thing like that secret from his adopted town for all these years,” Wesson said. “Of course it wasn’t nearly as sensational a case as the one you currently have in Runyon City. Maybe it didn’t even make the wire services. As a matter of fact, I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have.”

“What was all this?”

“His father murdered his mother and then committed suicide. It happened just a week after young Case came to work for us.”

“Good God!” Marshall said. “No wonder he was so reticent about his family background.”

“It might have been a sensational murder case if the whole thing hadn’t been over so quickly. But there was no trial because the murderer was dead by the time the public knew of the murder. The whole incident transpired in about four hours and only made the inner pages of the newspapers for one day.” The elderly lawyer smiled. “In a city of this size, murder is more commonplace than in your home town, Mr. Marshall. It takes a pretty bizarre killing to make the front page.”

“What were the circumstances?” Marshall asked.

“Harlan Case was a building contractor, as I remember it. He wasn’t wealthy, but he had a fairly good income — enough to send his son through law school, though there wasn’t much in his estate when it was settled. I remember young Bruce making a rather bitter comment that his father had spent his money as fast as he earned it.”

“Bruce didn’t need any inheritance,” Marshall said dryly. “He married more money than he could spend in a lifetime.”

“Yes, I see by the papers that she’s quite wealthy. That’s one of the reasons she’s already been convicted in the public mind, of course. People sometimes excuse murder, but they never excuse wealth.”

Marshall grinned at him, beginning to enjoy the old man’s amiable but somewhat cynical philosophy.

“Anyway,” Wesson went on, “Harlan Case became involved with a young woman and fell violently in love at the age of fifty. Apparently he asked his wife for a divorce, she agreed, but her demands for alimony plus a lump-sum settlement was so high it would practically have pauperized him. I suppose he was realist enough to know the young woman wouldn’t be so interested in him as a pauper, so he decided to kill his wife. He botched the job horribly.”

“Amateurs usually do,” Marshall commented.

“Yes. Which is one of the reasons criminal law is so lucrative. We don’t handle criminal cases ourselves, though I’ve often regretted it. There’s a certain excitement in criminal law which is missing in corporation law. Anyway, Harlan Case planned what was supposed to be a perfect crime. He built himself an alibi by pretending to go to New York over one weekend. He even bought a round-trip train ticket, which was later found, unused, in his pocket. Then he broke into his own house, strangled his wife and ransacked the place. He filled a sack with various items of value, probably with the intention of dumping them into the Delaware River. The crime was committed about eleven o’clock at night, when ordinarily everyone in his quiet neighborhood was indoors with the shades drawn. Unfortunately, he had neglected to take television into consideration.”

“Television?” Marshall repeated.

“It was still a relative novelty then. Remember this was twelve years ago and people still watched it. Martha Case, thinking her husband was out of town, had invited a number of woman friends over to watch the late show. When Case opened the front door to leave, the sack slung over his shoulder, he was confronted by four women, all of whom knew him well. He dropped the sack in panic and ran.”

“Good grief! How unlucky can you get?”

“Apparently he drove around the streets for some hours, probably attempting to figure a way out. Meantime the police had been called, of course, and a wanted bulletin had gone out on him along with the license number and description of his car. A cruising squad car spotted him and sounded its siren in command to pull over. Instead, he made a wild run for it. He was in the middle of the Delaware River Bridge, heading for Camden, when the police car finally pulled alongside and forced him over. As he brought his car to a halt, he slipped out the right-hand door and leaped over the railing. It isn’t certain that he meant to commit suicide. There was some speculation that he may have thought he could somehow survive the fall and escape by swimming to shore, for he was known to be an excellent swimmer. But a boat was passing under the bridge and he landed smack on its deck. He was killed instantly.”

“It makes a fascinating story,” Marshall said. “I’m surprised it didn’t make the wire services.”

“Probably it’s my talent as a storyteller,” Wesson said with a smile. “Actually it was a pretty drab affair which was covered locally by about a quarter column on the inside pages. As I said, it might have developed into a sensational case if there had been a long-drawn-out trial, but it was over too fast. It was just another of the hundred or so homicides a year we have in this city.”

“This probably seems like an anticlimatic question,” Marshall said. “But can you tell me any more about Bruce Case’s background?”

The white-haired man laughed. “I don’t know of any women in his life before he married, though I suppose he he must have had girls in high school and college. And I can’t describe his childhood because I never met him until he came to work here. I never met his parents, incidentally. I only read about them in the paper.”

“How did he take his parents’ deaths?” Marshall asked.

“Surprisingly well. I don’t think he was very close to them and he wasn’t living at home at the time. He had a small bachelor apartment. It struck me that he was more concerned about the effect of the incident on his job here than he was grief-stricken. I think he expected to be fired. It was hardly any fault of his though, so he had no cause to worry. We’re not such an old-fashioned firm that we insist on even our employees’ ancestors being untouched by scandal.”

They chatted a few moments more, than Marshall rose to leave. He thanked the elderly lawyer for his time and sincerely meant it, for he had found him extremely charming.

On the way out he even bade the overzealous receptionist a pleasant good-by.

Chapter XVI

From the law office Marshall went to a local newspaper morgue and dug up the story. There was little in it which added to Wesson’s account except the date of the occurrence. He copied this in his notebook along with the names of the investigating officers who were quoted.

He took a lunch break then, afterward had a taxi take him to the Board of Education office. He found it open, as summer school was in session, and managed to talk a clerk into looking up Bruce Case’s public school record. He copied down the names of the grammar school and high school Case had attended, noting that he had earned a fairly good scholastic record at both.

He considered visiting both schools to see if he could find teachers who had known Case as a youth and might fill him in on his childhood and teen-age life. Then he decided he had already collected the important factors for a good news story, and that trivia about his childhood girl friends would be mere window dressing.

He caught an afternoon plane back to Buffalo, picked up his car from the airport parking lot, had dinner in Buffalo, and started back to Runyon City in the early evening. He walked into the house at nine p.m. to find both his parents sitting in the front room.

Sylvia smiled at him vaguely and said, “Hello, dear. How was Pittsburgh?”

“He went to Philadelphia, honey,” her husband said. “Good trip, son?”

“Smooth both ways.”

“You must be famished,” Sylvia said, getting up from her chair.

“I ate in Buffalo, Mom.”

“You did?” she said, surprised. “That was silly. I would have been glad to cook you dinner.” She sat down again.

“Get anything?” Jonas asked.

“Uh-huh. Quite a lot.”

“Better drop into my office first thing in the morning, then,” Jonas said. There was an iron-clad rule at the Marshall home that newspaper business was never discussed there.

Marshall had been up since five o’clock that morning. Going upstairs, he took a shower and went to bed.

The next morning he entered his father’s office at a quarter after nine. Jonas listened in silence as his son related the history of Bruce Case’s parentage.

When he finished, the older man said, “It’s a pretty sensational story. Not in itself, of course, but in relation to our local shooting. Can you imagine how some of the tabloids would handle it? ‘Victim of alleged murder discovered to be the son of a murderer. Does some strange curse hang over the Case family name which brings murder in each new generation?’ ”

“The News isn’t a tabloid,” Marshall said.

“I wasn’t suggesting you use that approach. How do you plan to handle it?”

“I’m not sure I’ll write it at all. I want to talk to Betty first and see how she feels about it. I don’t see how it could hurt her, since it all happened before she met Bruce, but I’m not going to let her read it in the news without at least knowing in advance it’s going to be there.”

Surprisingly, Jonas didn’t give him any argument. “You’re usually back by noon when you visit Betty,” he said. “If you only take a half-hour for lunch, you’ll still have time to make the deadline.”

“Suppose I decide not to write it?”

“Then we’ll have another conference. We have enough disagreement about how to run this paper without jumping the gun on something which may never come up.”

“Okay,” Marshall said. “I’ll see you about noon.”

At ten o’clock he made his usual phone call to Audrey Reed and got the message to relay to Betty that her son had just earned his beginner’s Red Cross swimming certificate. It struck him that the resilience of youngsters was remarkable. Here, less than two weeks after the boy’s father had been killed, only slightly over a week after his mother had been arrested for his father’s murder — and he hadn’t seen her since — he was able to go about his usual boyish activities as though everything in his life were normal.

It was probably better that children adjusted so easily, he thought. If it weren’t for that faculty, probably everyone would grow up with neuroses.

At eleven he walked into the visitors’ room of the county jail. When Betty seated herself across from him, she for once asked another question before inquiring about Bud.

“Did you go to Philadelphia?” she said.

“Uh-huh. Audrey said to tell you Bud passed his beginner’s swim test for Red Cross.”

“Oh?” She was pleased, but not distracted from the original subject. “Did you find out anything about Bruce?”

Examining her, he realized she was controlling extreme tension. He said slowly, “You know what I found out, don’t you? You could have told me yourself.”

Her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh. “I’ve dreaded this moment ever since the stories about me started to appear. I knew eventually some reporter would dig up that old scandal. Why did it have to be you?”

“How can it hurt you?” he asked, puzzled by her strong reaction. “It might even help. It suggests that Bruce came from a kind of nutty family. If the jury thought your husband was a little freakish, it might gain you some sympathy.”

“I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about Bud.”

He looked at her quizzically.

She said, “I’ve reconciled myself to the probability that I’m going to be convicted, Kirk. That’s going to be enough of a cross for poor little Bud to bear. You know how cruel children can be. When his schoolmates become angry with him, they’ll taunt him, ‘Your mother shot your father and is in prison.’ Why should they have the additional ammunition handed to them that there was murder on his father’s side of the family, too? At least leave him a father he can remember without shame.”

“In the first place, you’re not going to be convicted,” he said firmly. “In the second place, Bud’s father wasn’t a murderer, his grandfather was. People may be little enough to condemn you for what your parents do, but they don’t go clear back to your grandparents. My grandfather was once jailed for horsewhipping a preacher who called him a Godless man from the pulpit after Grandpa published an editorial calling the preacher an ignorant bigot who had never read any book but the Bible in his life. I suppose Dad was taunted by the kids for that, but none of my childhood friends ever mentioned it.”

“It isn’t the same thing,” she said. “That has been forgotten. My grandparents must have known your grandparents, but I never before heard the story mentioned. If it had been revived when you were ten, you would have suffered.”

“I doubt it,” he said with a grin. “I was always secretly proud of the old man for his outrageous act. I’ve had the urge to horsewhip a few people myself. In any event, if publishing the story can possibly help you, even in convincing just one juror that you must have had a hard married life, Bud can stand a few taunts.”

“No. Please don’t print it.”

He studied her pleading expression curiously. He hadn’t realized she was so protective of her son that she would risk life imprisonment, or even death, to prevent his being hurt. It struck him as such an exaggerated sort of protectiveness that an incredible thought suddenly occurred to him.

Bud’s room at home was directly across the hall from hers. The blast of the pistol shot indoors must have made a terrific noise. Why hadn’t the boy awakened? Also, why hadn’t Betty immediately called Dr. Derring, who lived only two doors away, instead of merely phoning the police and leaving the cryptic message that someone had been shot? Could it have been to give her time to set the scene, not to cover herself, but to cover young Bud?

If that was what had actually happened, it would explain every perplexing angle of the case: the planted evidence of the cat burglar’s presence, Bud’s strange lack of resentment toward his mother for killing his father. Thinking back to the way Bud had clung to his mother the next day, he wondered if the boy hadn’t been seeking protection rather than solace.

He tried to visualize how it might have happened. According to Betty’s testimony at the preliminary hearing, she had known of Bruce’s infidelity for months, so the boy must have known there was trouble between his parents. Perhaps, siding with his mother, he had gradually developed hate for his father. Suppose the boy had been awakened by a loud argument that night and looked out of his room to see his father berating his mother — perhaps even threatening her with violence.

No, he thought, bringing himself up short, the gun was under Betty’s pillow. She had told him she was keeping one there, hours before the shooting. But the boy could have been sleeping with his mother. In fact, if she had been worried enough about the cat burglar to keep a gun under her pillow, it was unlikely that she would leave Bud alone in his room. He could almost imagine the scene: Bruce coming to the bedroom door, flicking on the light and starting to berate his wife; Betty sitting up in bed, requesting him to leave so that Bud wouldn’t be subjected to the spectacle of his parents fighting; Bud, snaking his hand beneath his mother’s pillow, where he knew she kept the gun, bringing it out and firing before either Betty or Bruce knew what was happening.

He said quietly, “I know you’re innocent of murder, Betty. But is there something in this affair you’re covering up?”

Her eyes widened and her already pale face whitened even more. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She did know, he thought. Perhaps his wild guess wasn’t the answer, but she had held something back about the events of that night and was terrified that someone would discover it.

He said, “Are you in some way trying to protect Bud by not telling the complete story of how Bruce was shot?”

He expected her expression to tell him he had struck home, but she had gained full control of herself again. In a tone of puzzlement he was almost certain was assumed, she said, “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re trying to get at, Kirk.”

He saw that even if he had guessed right, nothing was ever going to make her admit it. He had no intention of allowing her to sacrifice herself to protect her son, though. There wasn’t the slightest possibility that at his age Bud would be punished for murder, particularly if he thought he was protecting his mother. If that was the answer, he intended to bring it to light, even if it caused Betty to reject him forever. He resolved to have a heart-to-heart talk with young Bud.

Meantime, there was no point in making her uncomfortable by pursuing the subject.

He said, “Getting back to Bruce — if it’s really that important to you I’ll sit on the story, for the moment at least. But I’m not going to be scooped on it. I think I can arrange to find out the moment any other reporter gets hold of it, and if that happens, I’m going to print it. If the story hits print, it will be in the News, but we’ll only break it just before it would have been printed anyway.”

“That’s fair enough,” she said in a tone of relief. “We’ll hope no other reporter gets hold of it.”

He got back to the newspaper at five of twelve. Just as he started into the city room his father emerged from his office. Marshall paused and the editor gave him an inquiring look.

“I have to make a phone call, Dad,” the reporter said. “I want to try to catch my party before he goes to lunch. Can you wait a minute?”

“Sure,” Jonas said.

Marshall continued on to his desk. The editor followed along and stood waiting as his son dialed the operator.

“I want a person-to-person call to Mr. Wesson of the Wesson, Wesson and Masters law firm in Philadelphia,” Marshall said into the phone. “I don’t know the number.”

He heard the operator call Philadelphia information and get the number. A few moments later he was connected with the elderly lawyer.

“This is Kirk Marshall, Mr. Wesson,” he said. “I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”

“Why certainly, if I can, Mr. Marshall,” Wesson said courteously.

“For certain ethical reasons we’ve decided to sit on the story you gave me. But we would hate to be scooped on it by some other paper. Eventually some other reporter may get to you. I’m not going to ask you not to reveal the story to anyone else, because that would be presumptuous. But I would appreciate it if you would phone me collect in the event another reporter interviews you on the subject.”

“I see. If I called you, you’d have a chance to release the story first. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That seems fair, since you got it first. I’ll be glad to go along, Mr. Marshall. What’s your number?”

When Marshall had given it to him and had hung up, he looked up at his father.

“I guess that takes care of the conference I suggested,” Jonas growled. “What’s your reason?”

“Betty thinks it would hurt young Bud. She practically begged me not to print it. I finally promised her I’d handle it this way.”

Jonas glowered down at him for a moment, then said, “All right. A promise is a promise. But if we get scooped on this, I’ll dock you a week’s pay. You going to lunch with Lydia?”

“Not today.”

“Then you can take me. I forgot to bring any money with me this morning.”

Marshall grinned at him. “I’ll stand you up to the eighty-five-cent special at Ward’s. Anything over that you can sign a tab for. They know you there.”

Chapter XVII

After lunch Marshall drove out to Rexford Bay. But to his disappointment, Bruce Case, Jr. was off on a weekend camping trip with the Cub Scouts.

“Max Lischer, Bud’s troop master, phoned just after you did this morning,” Audrey Reed said. “He called to check if Bud was going to the Scout camp at Bear Lake with the troop. It was the first I had heard of it, but when I checked with Bud, he nearly had a conniption fit. Seems this was something planned a month ago and for which he had Betty’s permission. He’d forgotten all about it, and of course she’s had too much on her mind to think about such things. I had one hour to get him packed, into his Cub Scout uniform, and downtown to the chartered bus.”

“When will he be back?” Marshall asked.

“Not until late Sunday night.”

“He’ll probably be pretty sleepy then,” he said. “I’ll drop by to see him Monday morning.”

As he drove back to the office, he thought again that children certainly recovered fast from tragedy. He was sure that Bud loved his mother, and probably missed her, but he obviously wasn’t allowing worry over her predicament to interfere with his social activity.

At two o’clock the following morning the phone blasted Marshall out of a sound sleep. Quickly he picked up his bedside extension after the first ring in order not to disturb his parents. His father purposely had never had an extension put in the master bedroom, so that he and his wife wouldn’t be awakened by middle-of-the-night calls for their son. There was an upper hall extension they could hear, and which usually awakened Jonas if it rang long enough, but ordinarily they weren’t disturbed by his occasional late calls.

“Hello,” he said sleepily.

“Kirk?” a male voice asked. He recognized the voice of night-desk Sergeant Pat Sullivan and came fully awake. “Yeah, Pat. What’s up?”

“Thought you like to know that we just caught the cat burglar. I called the chief just before I phoned you and he’s on his way down to question him. Want to sit in?”

“I certainly do,” Marshall said. “Who is the guy?”

“Hold your hat,” Sullivan said. “It’s Herman Potts.”

“Herman!” the reporter said incredulously. “You’re kidding.”

Herman Potts was a local mental defective who spent most of his time seated on the bench in front of City Hall, amiably smiling at passers-by and engaging anyone who would listen in conversation. He was generally regarded as harmless, an obviously mistaken label if he was the cat burglar, for there was nothing harmless about a burglar who prowled through occupied houses carrying an axe, prepared to use it on anyone who surprised him.

“That was my first reaction when Nat Thorpe brought him in,” Sullivan said. “But there don’t seem much doubt he’s our boy. Nat caught him red-handed pulling a job.”

“I’ll be right down,” Marshall said.

Chief Barney Meister was already at headquarters when he arrived. Herman Potts was seated on the long bench stretching the full length of the booking and complaint room along the wall directly opposite the desk. He was a tall, slender man of about twenty-eight, not unhandsome, but with the vacuous expression of the mentally retarded. Marshall had known him all his life, but he had never before taken a really close look at him. He realized now with some surprise that the man had an unusually muscular and wiry build.

The burly chief was standing before the man, and Patrolman Nat Thorpe stood next to the chief. The grizzled desk sergeant leaned his elbows on the complaint counter, listening to what was going on.

“‘Morning, Pat,” Marshall greeted the desk sergeant. “Hello, Nat. You really think you’ve got the right man, Barney?”

Meister gave his head a slow but definite nod. “Nat caught him hanging from a rope in front of a second-story window at the Clark place out at Rexford Bay. Nat’s been pulling right into the driveways out there when he makes his rounds, and he caught Herman square in his headlights. Before Herman could climb back up the rope, Nat jumped out of the car and ordered him to come down or he’d shoot. The rope only reached a little below the window sill, but Herman let loose and dropped fifteen feet. Didn’t seem to hurt him.”

“He landed like a cat,” Thorpe said. “I never saw anything like it. Didn’t even jolt him.”

Herman Potts smiled. “I can jump clear from a roof onto grass,” he said modestly. “I land on my feet and roll. I wouldn’t try it unless there was grass to land on, though. Hello, Mr. Marshall.”

“Hello, Herman,” the reporter said. “You’ve been kind of a bad boy, haven’t you?”

“He had a Boy Scout hand axe stuck in his belt,” Thorpe said. “Show it to him, Pat.”

Pat Sullivan reached under the counter and held up a short-handled axe. The blade had been ground down to such thinness that it looked as sharp as a razor.

“This is what he whacked poor Mrs. Ferris with,” the desk sergeant said. “He’s got it ground so you could shave with it. I imagine it’s what he used to cut screens with, too, because there wasn’t another blade on him. How do you like that? Using an axe to cut wire screens.”

The chief said, “He’s been cheerfully admitting every job we’ve asked him about so far. Including chopping Mrs. Ferris.” His tone became a trifle aggrieved. “I think he would have confessed any time we asked him, even if Nat hadn’t caught him cold. Here the guy’s been sitting on the bench right in front of this building day after day. All some cop would have had to do was walk out and ask him if he was the cat burglar. Herman would have admitted it.”

“I’ll point that out in my news story,” Marshall said.

Meister gave him a sharp look, then realized he was kidding and grinned a little sheepishly.

“Have you asked him about being out at the Cases’ that night?” Marshall asked.

“I was waiting until you got here so you’d know it wasn’t rigged.” The chief turned to the suspect. “Now, Herman, you’ve admitted to entering nine different places out at Rexford Bay. Are there any more we haven’t covered?”

Herman Potts corrugated his brow in thought. “I guess that’s all there is,” he said apologetically.

Marshall said, “Were there any places you started to enter, but were scared off for some reason or other?”

Herman considered this for some time before saying, “Well, there were places I watched for a while, but the people never got around to going to bed, so I got tired of waiting and went home.”

“I don’t mean that,” Marshall said. “Did you ever get up on the roof of a house, then hear some noise inside that frightened you and made you decide not to break in?”

Herman shook his head. “I never climbed up on no roof until I figured everybody was asleep. And nobody ever heard me. I don’t make a sound when I walk. I got these. See?” He held up one foot to show the crepe sole of his shoe.

Marshall had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Thinking back over the various burglaries, he couldn’t recall a single victim ever reporting hearing a sound made by the burglar. Even Mrs. Ferris had heard no noises on the roof or in the house. According to her story, she had awakened more because she sensed another presence in her bedroom than because she heard anything.

But Betty’s story was that she had heard noises on the roof, and later from the direction of the hall window. If she had, she was the only person who had ever heard the cat burglar make any noise.

Chief Meister said, “Let’s pin it right down. Benny, do you know the old Runyon place?”

“Sure. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Case live. Old Man Runyon and his wife used to live there, too, but they’re both dead. He drowned a couple of years back and she had a heart attack a while later.”

“I guess you know the place,” the chief said. “Did you ever try to break in there?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that. Mrs. Case was always real nice to me. He’s all right, too, I guess, but I don’t like him as much as her.”

Marshall’s discouragement at the reply was mixed with surprise at his reference to Bruce Case. “What do you mean, you don’t like him as well as her? Don’t you know he’s dead?”

“Is he?” Herman asked with raised brows. “Nobody told me.”

Marshall looked at Meister and the burly chief said, “He can’t read, so he wouldn’t have seen it in the paper. He doesn’t even have first-grade intelligence. And nobody talks to him about anything serious. His folks don’t talk to him at all, except to give him orders, mostly to stay out of the way.”

Marshall tried once again, more out of desperation than hope. “Think hard, Herman. One Sunday night, or early Monday morning, a couple of weeks ago, weren’t you on the roof of the old Runyon place?”

Herman gave his head a definite shake. “No, sir, Mr. Marshall. Like I told you, I like Mrs. Case. I wouldn’t rob her.”

In a last-ditch effort, Marshall said, “Are you just saying that because you wouldn’t want her to know and think bad of you, Herman? Because if you are, she wouldn’t get mad. As a matter of fact it would help her if we could prove you were on her roof that night.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to help Mrs. Case,” Herman said. “She’s a nice lady. But I know she wouldn’t want me to lie. Once when she stopped to talk to me out front I was telling her about Mr. Koontz the hardware man saying he heard I was going to be drafted. She said it was a lie and it was very cruel of Mr. Koontz to lie like that. So I know she doesn’t like lies.”

The reporter let his shoulders sag wearily. That should tie up the prosecution’s case, he thought. Herman Potts would be absolutely convincing on the witness stand. All you had to do was look at his vacantly smiling face when he spoke and you knew he was no more capable of lying than a three-year-old child.

Chapter XVIII

It was nearly three a.m. when Marshall left police headquarters. In his despondency at the devastating effect he knew Herman Potts’ testimony would have on Betty’s defense, he was in no mood for sleep. Instead of turning toward home, he drove down Center Street in the direction of the dock, intending to park there and gaze over the water while he tried to think of some way to counteract Herman Potts’ story.

As he passed the newspaper office he had a sudden whim and turned left at the next corner to drive past Lydia’s apartment building. He had no intention of stopping, meaning only to drive by and glance at her darkened windows. But to his surprise, there was a light burning in her front room.

All at once he had an overwhelming desire to see her. At that time of night there were no news-hungry reporters around to observe whom he was visiting, he told himself, pulling over to the curb. He entered the building, mounted the stairs and softly rapped on her door.

A little time passed before Lydia’s voice whispered from the other side of the door, “Who is it?”

“Kirk,” he said, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t be heard by other tenants.

He heard the lock turn and the door opened. Lydia was wearing a filmy black nightgown which showed the outline of her white body beneath it. She looked at him in surprise.

“I just happened to drive by and saw your light,” he said. “What are you doing up?”

She closed and locked the door behind him. “Having some warm milk. I thought it might make me sleep. What are you doing up?”

She didn’t offer him his customary peck of hello, he noted, wondering if she was a bit resentful about his recent avoidance of her.

He said, “I was called down to the police station.”

Slipping off his suit coat, he draped it over a chair and sat on the sofa. There was a nearly empty glass of milk on the cocktail table before the sofa.

“Has something happened?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. They caught the cat burglar tonight.”

Lydia came over to sit next to him, seating herself on the edge of the sofa, half facing him, her hands folded in her lap. “Who was it?”

“Herman Potts.”

She looked at him in astonishment. “That silly fellow who’s always sitting in front of City Hall?”

“Uh-huh. He made a complete confession. He wasn’t on Betty’s roof the night Bruce was shot.”

Lydia searched his face. “You think he was lying?”

“No. He wasn’t there.”

She was silent for a time. Presently she said, “You’re not beginning to think she actually is guilty, are you?”

“Are you?” he countered.

“No. Even if she is my rival, I can’t see her deliberately planning murder. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

He gave her an amused smile. “You’re jumping the gun. I haven’t lost faith in her. I just have an entirely new theory of what happened that night.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I don’t want to talk about it until after I’ve seen somebody Monday, because if I’m wrong, my theory would make me look like a damn fool.”

“Then let’s hope you’re right,” she said. “Would you like a drink?”

He merely shook his head. Conversation temporarily lapsed as he gazed at her moodily, his mind on other things so that he was only half aware of her presence. Then it gradually registered on him that under the glare of the floor lamp immediately behind the sofa, her nightgown was almost completely transparent. He ran his gaze over the white swell of her breasts beneath the gauzy material until she flushed.

“You’ve seen them before,” she said. “Do you want me to put on a robe?”

“I was admiring, not disapproving,” he said, reaching out both hands to cup one firm cone in each.

Her hands raised from her lap in an instinctively protective gesture, then dropped back again. “The way you’ve been avoiding me, I thought perhaps you’d found some new toys to play with.”

“You know why I’ve been staying away. There aren’t any toys in town as pretty as these.” He rubbed his palms over her nipples.

She continued to sit stiff-backed, looking straight into his face, her hands still folded in her lap. He could feel the tips of her breasts begin to enlarge beneath the cloth as he continued his gentle massage. After a moment she leaned slightly forward to increase the pressure and an oddly strained expression appeared on her face.

She said, “I was going to make you beg when you finally came back after deserting me for over a week.”

“You were? Just for that I think I’ll make you beg.”

His massage became a trifle less gentle. She still sat unmoving, her body stiffly erect, but now her lips parted and the strain in her face became acute.

“Aren’t you going to do anything else?” she asked in a whisper.

“You can have anything you beg for,” he said.

“That’s not fair,” she protested. “I was going to make you do the begging.”

Grinning, he continued his rhythmic massage. Suddenly she emitted a little despairing cry, grabbed his wrists to spread his arms apart and threw herself against him. Her arms snaked about his neck and her lips searched for his. He drew his head back.

“Beg,” he said.

“Oh, God, take me,” she moaned. “Please, Kirk. I can’t stand it another second.”

“Beg a little harder.”

“I’ll do anything you say,” she said. “But take me. Please!”

Putting his arms about her waist, he drew her against him and fastened his lips over hers. As their tongues touched, her body stiffened, she emitted a little gasp and she alternately went limp and stiffened several times in a spasmlike manner.

“See what you did?” she said against his neck in a reproachful voice. “It’s been too long, and then you teased me too much. The reason I couldn’t sleep is because I was thinking about you. Why didn’t you grab me the minute you walked in the door?”

“You’ll be ready again before I get your nightgown off,” he told her, slipping one arm beneath her knees and coming to his feet with her cradled against his chest.

Carrying her into the bedroom, he flicked on the light switch with one elbow, unceremoniously tossed her into the corner of the bed and began to strip off his clothing. She lay still, gazing at him until he came over to stand looking down at her.

“You intend to keep on that nightgown?” he asked.

“You said you’d take it off,” she said in a whisper.

A moment later the garment was rolled into a ball and he had tossed it across the room. She pressed her bare body against his.

“Please don’t tease me any more,” she begged.

It happened several times more, but not because he was teasing her. When the final simultaneous spasm occurred, she continued to hold him tightly against her.

“Every time it’s like a brand-new experience,” she said dreamily. “Do you think people ever get tired of this?”

He kissed the end of her nose. “The day I get tired, I’ll enter a Trappist monastery. The hell with the out-of-town reporters.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not staying away to protect your good name any longer. If they make a thing of it, let them. I’m not designed for a celibate life.”

“Me either,” she said, rubbing herself against him. “Why don’t you stay the rest of the night?”

He did stay until six-thirty a.m. He got home while his parents were still sleeping and fell into his own bed. As it was Sunday and he didn’t have to get up, he slept until noon.

After dinner Marshall sat on the front porch with his father while he described what had occurred at police headquarters in the middle of the night. It was obvious to both of them that the cat burglar’s capture would have to be run as a front-page story the next day. Typically, Jonas made no mention of how he thought it should be handled. That would wait until Monday morning in his office.

“What do you suppose they’ll do with the poor devil now?” Jonas asked. “Try him or salt him away in the state mental hospital?’

“I don’t see how they could try him,” his son said. “He fits the definition of legal insanity. He doesn’t know right from wrong and he certainly doesn’t realize the nature of his acts.”

“Well, he’ll probably be as well off at Gowanda as he was in front of the City Hall. He’ll find people to talk to there. This certainly isn’t going to help Betty’s case. Do you think she still has a chance?”

Marshall looked at him. “Are you beginning to suspect she’s guilty?”

It was a few moments before his father answered. Finally he said, “If she were a total stranger I’m afraid I would have to believe she was. But loyalty is as marked a trait in the Marshall family as their notorious pig-headedness. And I’ve always been particularly fond of Betty. Are you still a bit in love with her after all these years?”

“I wish it were that simple. I can’t decide whether I’m in love with her or Lydia.”

Jonas raised his eyebrows. “You do have a problem,” he said, but he offered no advice.

They lapsed into silence, Marshall brooding over what he could do to improve Betty’s situation in some way, the older man also occupied with his own thoughts. Presently Marshall stirred restlessly and rose from his chair.

“I think I’ll take a wild stab by going to see Gail Thomas,” he announced.

Jonas looked up at him. “What do you think that will accomplish?”

“Nothing, probably. But I feel impelled to do something to try to help Betty. I have a sort of cockeyed theory I intend to follow up tomorrow, but meantime I can’t just sit. I’ll see you at dinnertime.”

He was dressed in just a sport shirt and slacks, but he didn’t bother to go inside for a jacket. Summer dress in Runyon City was informal even on Sunday afternoons, and you seldom saw a suit coat before nightfall in warm weather. He descended the porch steps, walked up the driveway to the double garage, swung the door upward and climbed into his car.

As he backed out of the driveway, his father called, “Will you be back in time for cocktails?”

“I wouldn’t let you die of thirst,” Marshall called back. “And I wouldn’t want you to strain your back lifting those heavy bottles yourself.”

Chapter XIX

The apartment at 126 Howard Street was only two blocks from where Lydia lived, but in a place the size of Runyon City two blocks can make a vast difference. Lydia’s neighborhood was a middle-income residential section where the only building on the street which wasn’t a residence was a church. Howard Street was dotted with second-rate taverns and small businesses. Gail Thomas lived in one of several flats above a laundry.

Marshall climbed the stairs alongside the laundry and examined name plates along the hallway until he found one reading: Gail Thomas. There was no bell, so he knocked.

“In a jiffy,” a feminine voice called.

About a minute passed before the door opened. The blonde was wearing a polka-dot Bikini with about as much material in it as in two neckties. She had a hip-length beach robe over it, but the robe was wide-open.

“You caught me—” she started to say, then halted and stared at him. “I thought you were my date.”

“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve never met, but I suppose you know who I am. May I talk to you for a minute?”

She regarded him dubiously, then shrugged. “If it won’t be too long. One of the photographers from a New York paper is taking me to the beach to shoot some pictures. He should be along pretty quick. Come on in.”

He followed her into a small combination living room-bedroom which had a sofa-bed against one wall, at the moment serving its role as a sofa. Off to one side an open door led to a kitchenette.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Marshall,” she said. “I was just changing into my suit and I was bare naked.”

She was still nearly naked, he thought, glancing at the slim strip of cloth across her bust, which covered little more than her nipples. The lower part of the suit was no wider, barely concealing her pubic area and dwindling to shoelace width at the sides of her hips.

He felt automatic dislike for the girl, not only because of her part in Betty’s troubles, but because of the vindictiveness she had shown Betty at the hearing. But he had to admit she was well-endowed physically. She had a slim, small-boned frame, but her bust must have measured forty inches and must have required a D-plus cup. It was the more remarkable because her breasts thrust straight out without the least suggestion of sag, despite their considerable weight.

She must have been proud of them, for she made no attempt to close her beach robe. She didn’t ask him to sit, merely standing in front of him and waiting for him to state his business.

“I’m not sure just why I’m here,” he said. “Except that I believe Mrs. Case innocent and am doing everything I can to prove it.”

She emitted an indulgent little laugh. “Naturally, you being her boy friend. I read all about you and her in some of the out-of-town papers.”

“I’ve read a lot about you, too,” he said. “But I doubt that more than half of it was true. What do you think everything you read about my relationship with Mrs. Case was?”

She stopped to think this over, then said grudgingly, “They made up a lot of stuff about me all right. But you are her boy friend, aren’t you?”

“I’m quite fond of her, but we weren’t carrying on an affair behind her husband’s back at the same time he was carrying on one with you behind hers. Up to the golf game I had with her a few hours before Bruce was shot, and which the yellow journals made so much of, I hadn’t even spoken to her in private since the day she was married. We used to meet at social affairs occasionally and say hello, but that was the extent of our intimacy.”

“This on the up-and-up?” she asked with surprise.

“Why should I lie to you?” You don’t mean anything to me.”

“Then why are you trying to get her out of this?”

“For a number of reasons. I am fond of her. We were engaged years back, before she married Bruce, and while I wasn’t what you called her ‘boy friend’ while she was married to him, maybe I am again now that he’s dead. But the main reason is that I think she’s innocent.”

“How could she be?” Gail Thomas said fiercely. “She admits she shot him, and all that evidence about the cat burglar being there was proved to be rigged. I’ll bet when they finally catch that burglar, he’ll say he was never there that night.”

Wait until she saw the next day’s papers, he thought. He said, “Why do you hate her so much? You were the other woman, not she. You moved in on her man, not vice versa.”

“Because she murdered him! She could have let him have a divorce to marry me, but if she couldn’t keep him, she didn’t want me to have him either.”

“That’s a little ridiculous,” he said. “She was not only willing to give him a divorce, it was her idea.”

“That’s what she said in court,” the blonde agreed. “But I happen to know different.”

“I suppose Bruce told you she wouldn’t let him go,” he said with a touch of indulgence. “It’s a standard dodge used by married men who cheat on their wives but don’t want to upset the status quo. Bruce earned less from his law practice than the average skilled laborer earns over at the local steel plant. He could have earned more, but he didn’t like to work. Believe me, he had no intention of giving up his luxurious life at Rexford Bay for love in a furnished flat.”

She stalked furiously over to a small writing desk against one wall and jerked open a drawer. Pulling out a string-bound package of letters, she slipped off the string, laid the stack on the desk and began thumbing through it. There seemed to be about two dozen envelopes, and she must have known them all by heart because she picked out the one she wanted by its postmark date.

Handing it to him, she said, “Read that.”

Glancing at the envelope, he saw that it was addressed by typewriter to Miss Gail Thomas at a Buffalo address. It was postmarked Runyon City and the postmark date was nearly a year old. There was no return address.

He pulled out the single typewritten sheet and unfolded it. A quick glance told him it was a love letter. Bruce Case had found one regular use for his law office anyway, he thought cynically. He had typed love letters to his mistress there.

The letter read:

Dearest: I talked to her again last night, and she still won’t give me my release so that I can marry you. I’m afraid that for the moment all we can do is wait, for I know she will make it miserable for me if I try any legal action she hasn’t agreed to. And I can’t stand a scandal. If my practice were ruined how would we live, even if we were able to marry?

I want you to know that I love you very much and will continue to try to make her see the light. Perhaps eventually she will come around.

I will be in Thursday night about the usual time and can stay until Saturday morning, as I told her I have business in Albany. If you wear that new nightgown with the transparent bosom, I’ll give you concrete evidence of how much I love you.

It was signed simply, ‘Your lover,’ and even that was typed.

Handing the letter and envelope back to the girl, Marshall asked, “What’s that supposed to prove?”

“That he’d been trying to get her to agree to a divorce as long as a year ago. I’m not saying he told her about being in love with me. He didn’t tell her he wanted a divorce because of another woman, because he knew she’d raise hell with me if she found out, maybe even drag me into court for alienation of affections. He just told her that since they couldn’t get along, he wanted out. She didn’t know about me until just before she killed him. But she did know he wanted a divorce.”

“You’re a very gullible young girl,” Marshall said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“So you were twenty when you met this married man, or at least when you became his mistress, and he was thirty-four. It’s easy for any man to make promises. But don’t you see how careful he was? The letter, even the signature, is typed so that no one could identify his handwriting. He doesn’t mention his wife by name and identifies himself merely as ‘Your lover.’ He doesn’t even call you by name, only by an endearment. There’s no return address on the envelope. He was making very sure that if you got too impatient about the marriage he was promising you, you couldn’t make any trouble. You couldn’t prove in a million years that those love letters came from Bruce Case. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even used a rented typewriter instead of one that could be traced to him.”

“That was just because he was a lawyer,” she said. “It wasn’t because he was handing me a line, or thought I would be a problem even if he was. He knew I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him even if I found out he was a rat. But he wasn’t. He wanted a divorce and she wouldn’t let him go. Then when she saw me, she knew she couldn’t possibly hold him any more, so she killed him.”

He looked at her curiously. “You mean she realized she was no competition for you?”

She arched her back, thrusting out her remarkable bosom. “Do you think she was? Why, she must be past thirty.”

“Just thirty,” he said, amused. “But at the risk of hurting your feelings, I’d rather have her for a wife than you. The relative attractiveness of women depends on a little more than age difference and bust measurement.”

“Can you see anywhere else she has me beat?” she demanded, slipping off her beach jacket and tossing it onto the sofa-bed.

Pulling in her already flat stomach, she marched past him with a beauty-contest walk, her hands, palms down, slightly out from her sides. She turned slowly to give him a rear view, then walked over to the sofa and put the beach robe back on.

He had to concede that she had a beautiful body. Her hips were softly rounded, neither too plump nor too slim; her legs were long and perfectly tapered; her skin was a creamy white and without a blemish to mar its perfection.

“You have everything to make a man want to crawl in bed with you,” he said with a sudden unreasonable desire to hurt her. “But what have you to offer for the other twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes of the day?”

She gazed at him with such a hurt expression on her face that he immediately felt ashamed of himself. All at once he realized she was one of those women whose sole interest in life was men, yet was slightly in awe of all men. If a woman had said to her what he had, probably she wouldn’t have hesitated to scratch the detractor’s eyes out. But she was no more capable of lashing back at male criticism than a child could lash back at a father.

She was probably what psychologists called a child-woman, he thought, one who needed a lover and protector and father-image all rolled into one. The very fact that she had picked a lover fourteen years older indicated this. Probably she wouldn’t make a bad wife provided she drew a dominating enough husband, because she not only would be amenable to bossing, but would need and expect it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a lousy thing to say. My only excuse is that sometimes I can’t help being a boor.”

“That’s all right,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I know what you mean. I guess I haven’t got all Mrs. Case’s fine ways. I never went to Bryn Mawr. I didn’t even finish high school.”

“I’m sure you’ll make some man an excellent wife,” he said, eager to amend the hurt. “Just because I’m upset about another woman being in jail is no excuse to take it out on you. Thanks for your time.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

She walked with him to the door. As he stepped into the hall, she said, “Mr. Marshall.”

He turned to look back at her in the doorway.

“Were you just saying that to make up for being mean, or do you think someday I could be a good wife for someone?”

“I meant it,” he said. “You possess one quality which has nothing to do with physical measurements or age. I’m sure you would never screech at your husband.”

After considering this, she nodded solemnly. “I don’t like to fight. When Bruce ever got mad at me I just shut up and was nice to him until he got over it. I was able to make him happy in other ways than just in bed. Honest, he wasn’t bored the other twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes when we were together.”

“I’m sure no man would be,” he said with a smile. “Please forget my uncalled-for crack.”

“I already have,” she said. “Can’t we be friends even if I am a prosecution witness against Mrs. Case? I’m only going to tell the truth in court. I have to do that.”

He said slowly, “We could be friends if you did exactly that, with no embellishment of the truth just because you have a grudge against her — I mean such as you did at the preliminary hearing when you answered questions which weren’t asked in a deliberate attempt to hurt her.”

She thought about this before saying, “Maybe I did. I was so furious at her, I thought she ought to be convicted right then and there. I still hate her, but I promise I’ll be fair. I’ll just tell what happened and let the jury decide what it means.”

They were getting along so swimmingly he decided to push it further. “Would you mind if I saw the rest of those letters sometime?”

At that moment footsteps sounded on the stairway and a thin bald head came into sight. Then the rest of the man appeared: a tall, skinny man of about forty with a camera hanging from his shoulder by a strap.

“Here comes my date,” she said. “Why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight and we’ll talk about it?”

As Marshall went down the stairs he realized that his opinion of Gail Thomas had totally changed in the short time he had talked to her. He had arrived with the preconceived notion that he would dislike her intensely; he came away feeling a little sorry for her and tending to like her. He could even understand her hate for Betty, now that he realized she had actually been in love with Bruce Case, for it would take a remarkably broad-minded woman to forgive another woman who had just killed the man she loved.

Chapter XX

Announcement of the apprehension of the cat burglar hadn’t appeared in any of the Buffalo or Erie Sunday papers for the simple reason that the local police hadn’t released the news to any reporter other than Marshall.

So the story he wrote for the Monday afternoon edition of the News was a scoop, even though it was thirty-six hours old by the time it reached print.

After some thought he decided to include in the story Herman Potts’ denial of attempting to break into the Case home the night of the shooting. He knew the moment the story broke, other reporters would descend on Chief Meister with precisely that question, and it was inevitable that the answer would be blasted from coast to coast. He therefore decided to let the News print it first, but he phrased it in a manner to do the least damage to Betty’s case.

He wrote: “Up to press time the alleged cat burglar had not admitted the break-in attempt at the Case home claimed by Mrs. Elizabeth Case in defense of the accusation of murder against her.”

When Jonas Marshall read the story, he approved it without comment and gave it a front-page position.

There were no visiting hours on Mondays at the County Jail, so Marshall was unable to see Betty that day. Instead, he drove out to Rexford Bay at eleven a.m.

Audrey Reed answered the door and said that Bud was playing on the beach just behind the house.

A hundred feet behind the house there was a six-foot drop-off to the narrow stretch of sand and shale beach. A brick wall which ran behind all the homes had been built flush against the drop-off and extended three feet above it in order to protect the homes from the lashing waves of winter storms, which sometimes threw spray even over the nine-foot wall. There was a break in the wall’s center, with stone stairs leading down to the beach.

Marshall found Bud, dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt, building a sand castle.

The boy looked up and said, “Hi, Mr. Marshall.”

“Hello, Bud.” He sat on a slight outcropping of shale which extended above the sand about a foot and examined the castle. “That isn’t bad. Maybe you’ll grow up to be an architect.”

“I’m gonna be a lifeguard,” the boy said. “Trouble is, I’m not allowed in swimming without adult supervision.” He looked out over the calm lake broodingly.

“Won’t your aunt come down and supervise you?” Marshall asked.

“Aw, Aunt Audrey don’t even know how to swim. She’s scared I’ll drown if some expert swimmer isn’t around. Gee whiz, I’ve got my beginner’s certificate and I’m working on my junior certificate.”

The boy gave a final pat to the castle, got to his feet and brushed off his knees. After studying the structure critically, he casually kicked it apart.

“You going to see my mother again today?” he asked.

“They don’t let you in on Mondays,” Marshall said. “Would you like to help your mother, Bud?”

The youngster looked at him. “Of course.”

“Then I’d like to ask you a few questions about that night. I know your dad’s death must still be a painful subject to you, but if you’ll bear in mind that your answers might help bring your mother home, maybe you can bear up. Okay?”

Bud momentarily assumed a sad expression. “I don’t mind anything that’ll help get Mom home.”

“Okay. These questions are going to be a little personal. They may embarrass you. But I’m not just prying out of curiosity. I want to get your mother out of jail. So will you try to answer them truthfully?”

“Sure, Mr. Marshall. I know you’re on Mom’s side.”

“All right. Here’s the first one. How had your parents been getting along in the weeks before that night?”

The boy looked thoughtful. “Not too good, I guess. They didn’t fight or anything in front of me, but they hardly talked to each other. Dad moved downstairs to the study.”

“I know. How’d you feel about this trouble?”

“Well, I wished they’d get over it.”

“Whose side were you on?”

“It was Dad’s fault, whatever it was,” Bud said without hesitation. “‘Cause Mom never did anything wrong. I think maybe it was because he was always out at night. If he’d stayed home more, maybe Mom would have made up.”

Marshall said, “How’d you feel about your father, Bud? Did you love him?”

The boy looked at him in surprise. “Everybody loves their father.”

“I mean after he and your mother started having trouble. Did you still love him then?”

Bud thoughtfully dug his toe into the sand. “I wished he’d stop being mean to Mom. But I didn’t hate him.”

This wasn’t getting anywhere, Marshall thought. He said, “Now about that night? Were you sleeping in your own room all night?”

“Sure,” Bud said in a tone suggesting he didn’t consider this a very bright question.

“There had been all this scare about the cat burglar,” Marshall said explanatorily. “I thought perhaps your mother wouldn’t want you sleeping alone and had brought you in with her.”

“Oh, she did that for a while after Mrs. Ferris got cut, but I guess she finally decided he wouldn’t break in our house, so she put me back in my own room.”

“Oh,” Marshall said, disappointed. “How long before that night?”

“Just that night. She had me sleep in her bed the night before.”

The reporter felt a little tingle move along his spine. Had his mother rehearsed him to say that, he wondered? Why would she pick that particular night to put him back in his room? She had discussed the cat burglar with Marshall only that afternoon, and was still concerned enough about him to keep a gun under her pillow.

He said, “Listen carefully now, Bud. I suspect your mother has told you to say certain things. Kids should obey their mothers, but if you thought it might get her out of jail, would you tell me the truth even if she told you to say something else?”

The boy looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Marshall. Mom didn’t tell me to say anything or not say anything.”

“Not even about sleeping with her that night? Weren’t you really in her bed instead of your own?”

Bud gave his head a definite shake. “Why would she want me to lie about that?”

Marshall gave up. He doubted that any ten-year-old could be such a convincing liar. He watched his wonderful theory evaporate away to nothingness.

“She did tell me not to mention about the wire to anyone,” Bud said suddenly. “But you’re just talking about that night, aren’t you?”

“What wire was that?”

“That was Saturday morning,” the boy said. “I don’t know how that could help her.”

“Suppose you tell me anyway. Who was the wire from?”

Bud gazed at him for a moment, then collapsed on the sand in helpless glee. He laughed so hard, he had to hold his stomach.

Marshall patiently waited until he had recovered, then asked, “Want to let me in on the joke?”

“It wasn’t that kind of wire,” Bud said, barely managing to suppress a final giggle. “It was wire like you wind an armature with.”

Now there’s a graphic symbol of what a technological age they were in, Marshall thought. At ten he wouldn’t have known what an armature was.

He asked, “Where was this wire?”

“Stretched across the top of the stairs.” Then Bud’s broad grin faded and he said uncertainly, “Mom told me not to dare tell anybody about it.”

Marshall began to feel a tinge of excitement. “That was before what happened took place, wasn’t it? We’re trying to get her out of jail, remember.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Bud said slowly.

“Suppose you tell me all about this wire. If it isn’t going to help your mother in some way, we’ll just forget you told me and I’ll never mention it to anyone. Is that fair?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, his face clearing. “That’s fair.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Well, it was Saturday morning, the day before — before it happened. I found this wire stretched across the top of the stairs. I actually tripped over it.” He stopped, seemingly at the end of his story.

Marshall said, “Let’s do it this way, Bud. You begin with when you got up that morning and tell me every last detail of what happened. All right?”

“Sure, Mr. Marshall,” the boy said agreeably. “I got up at seven and brushed my teeth and dressed and wandered around the house awhile. Mom got up at seven-thirty and fixed my breakfast and then went back upstairs. Dad came out from the study while I was eating and made himself a cup of coffee. By then it was about eight, so I went down to the gate by the road to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Marshall asked.

“Mrs. Curtis. Eddie Curtis and me — I mean I — go to Red Cross swimming class at Civic Beach together. One day Mom used to take us, the next day Eddie’s mother. This was Mrs. Curtis’ day. She wasn’t supposed to pick me up until eight-thirty, but I didn’t have anything else to do so I went down to the gate to watch for boats going by on trailers.”

“I see. Did Mrs. Curtis get there on time?”

“Sure. But that was later. While I was horsing around waiting for her and Eddie, I remembered I didn’t have my towel. I had my trunks on under my pants, but you’re supposed to bring a towel. It was pretty close to eight-thirty by then, so I ran back to the house real fast, ducked in and ran up the stairs. Mom was coming down the upstairs hall from her room, all dressed, when I got to the top of the stairs. She smiled at me and said something I didn’t hear, because just then I hit the wire and fell flat on my face in the upper hall. She rushed over to pick me up and ask if I was hurt. I wasn’t, but I was sure shook up.”

The boy stopped again. After a moment of silence, Marshall said, “Surely that isn’t the end of the story.”

“I thought you just wanted me to go up to where I found the wire,” Bud said. “When Mom found out I wasn’t hurt she started to scold me for being clumsy. So I said I’d tripped over something and we both bent down to look. She looked real funny when she saw the wire. It was real hard to see because it was so thin, but it must’ve been real strong wire because it didn’t break when I tripped over it. It was wound around a stair post on either side, about six inches above the top step. Mom unwound it and put it in her pocket. Then she went to get me a towel, and when she gave it to me, she put her hands on my shoulders and talked to me for a minute.”

“About what?” Marshall asked.

“The wire. She said as a favor to her she didn’t want me to mention it being there to anyone, and particularly not to Dad. I promised. Is this breaking my promise, Mr. Marshall?”

The reporter’s mind was whirling with thoughts, but he managed a smile. “Obviously it was your dad she didn’t want to hear about it. And he can’t now.”

After thinking this over, Bud nodded. “I guess you’re right. She probably thought if I told anybody at all it might get back to Dad. Why do you think she didn’t want him to know about it, Mr. Marshall?”

“We won’t worry about that now, Bud. I think you’ve helped your mother tremendously by telling me this.”

“I have? You think she’ll be coming home?”

“I can almost guarantee it,” Marshall said.

“Gee, that’s swell, Mr. Marshall. Then I went back downstairs and out to the gate, and Mrs. Curtis’ car was already—”

“Whoa!” Marshall said. “You’ve covered everything I need to know.”

“Oh. I thought you wanted me to tell everything that happened that day.”

The reporter came to his feet and playfully tousled the boy’s strawberry-blond hair. “I’d be listening until midnight with your total recall. Want to keep a secret?”

Bud’s face lighted up. “Sure. What?”

“Let’s not tell your Aunt Audrey or anybody else what we’ve been talking about just yet. Just in case something went wrong, we wouldn’t want her to build false hopes.”

The boy’s face fell. “You mean you might not be able to get Mom out of jail after all?”

“No. That was a dumb thing for me to say. I’ll be frank with you. If you mention anything to your aunt, she’ll be on the phone by the time I get back to the office, wanting to know all about it. I’m going to get your mother out of jail, but I don’t want to get involved in a lot of long explanations to your Aunt Audrey. We’ll let your mother explain things when she gets home. Okay?”

“Okay, sir,” Bud said, brightening again. “Are you going to get her out right now?”

“It may be a few days, but believe me, she’ll come home to you. Just be patient.”

“All right,” Bud said. “I’ll try.”

Chapter XXI

As he drove back toward the newspaper office, Marshall visualized what would have happened if Betty, starting downstairs, had tripped over the wire. Going up, young Bud had suffered only a jolting fall to hands and knees, but a headlong pitch down those steep stairs would almost certainly have broken some bones, and might even have killed her. At best it would have left her helpless enough to be finished off with a final blow, which could be assumed by investigating officers to have also resulted from the fall.

There wasn’t the least doubt that it had been a murder attempt. And it would have worked if Bud hadn’t forgotten his towel. Marshall could imagine Bruce Case’s consternation when, from the kitchen or wherever he was at the time, he heard his son slam into the house and rush up the stairs. There would, of course, have been no time to head him off. Ten-year-old boys normally move at upsetting speed even when they aren’t in a hurry. Young Bud, on what to him was an urgent mission, probably had resembled a small tornado. He must have been tripping over the wire at the top of the stairs before it fully registered on his father that he had returned to the house.

Marshall couldn’t understand how he could have been so dense that the true explanation of what had happened that night hadn’t occurred to him long ago. His only consolation was that it obviously hadn’t occurred to anyone else either.

But now it seemed so simple. When Bruce Case’s first murder attempt failed, he had made another the next night. It was Bruce who had planted the rope and cut the screen. And the meat cleaver hadn’t been picked out at random as a convenient weapon because he thought he heard a prowler in the house. He had chosen it because it would leave a wound similar to one inflicted by the cat burglar’s axe. He had meant to kill Betty and let the cat burglar take the blame.

His theory clarified a motive, too. If you discounted the jealousy motive the prosecution hoped to establish against Betty, there wasn’t a reason in the world for her to kill her husband. But there would have been a vast advantage for Bruce if Betty died. A divorce would have left him with nothing but his mediocre law-practice income; her death would have left him a wealthy widower. And she had just delivered an ultimatum that he would either arrange a quiet divorce or she would arrange it herself and drag his mistress into court as corespondent.

Then another thought struck him. Betty, knowing of the first murder attempt, must have realized the instant she turned on the light and saw that she had shot Bruce instead of the cat burglar that this had been a second attempt. He could understand her remaining silent before her arrest, for she probably thought that if it could be passed off as an accident it would be better for Bud not ever to know his father was a would-be murderer. But once she was charged with murder herself, why on earth hadn’t she spoken?

Another odd thing was that Bruce had still been sleeping in the study after his first attempt. It hardly seemed conceivable that Betty would have allowed him to remain in the house after he had attempted to kill her.

He decided he had better have a conference with Betty to get loose ends tied up before going to either the district attorney or the chief of police. And that meant waiting until visiting hours at the County Jail the next morning.

There was time, he thought. Her case wasn’t scheduled to come up before the grand jury until Friday, and the next day was only Tuesday.

Meantime he thought he might as well turn up all the evidence he could to support the premise that Bruce, not Betty, had planned murder. And there just might be something in Bruce’s love letters to Gail Thomas to support the premise.

He decided to accept her invitation to drop by that evening.

Promptly at eight o’clock that night he parked in front of the laundry at 126 Howard Street. Climbing the stairs, he rapped on the door of Gail Thomas’ flat. This time there was no delay. It opened instantly.

He was a little startled by the girl’s garb. She wore a tight red skirt which came to an inch above her knees, white sandals with straps running between the first and second toes, and a white, off-the-shoulder blouse whose elastic top formed a horizontal line across her spectacular bosom, no more than an inch above the nipples.

“You’re right on time,” she said, smiling at him. “Come on in.”

As he moved past her he caught a whiff of Intimate perfume and simultaneously realized she wasn’t wearing a brassiere. She moved aside only slightly to let him pass, at the same time turning sideways so that he had to squeeze by within an inch of the protruding part of her anatomy. He would have been less than human if he hadn’t glanced down. Her bosom pushed out the elastic top of the blouse so far that he could see down the cleft between her breasts dear to her navel. There was nothing at all beneath the blouse.

He felt a touch of alarm. Her provocative garb seemed the sort of thing a woman would wear when expecting a male caller only if she expected the evening to develop into something cozy. And he had no intention of complicating his already tangled love life.

Even if he had, Gail Thomas would have been his last choice. Not because she didn’t attract him, for under other circumstances he would have been delighted to cuddle with such a delectable blonde. But he shuddered to think what Betty’s reaction would be if she ever suspected he had succumbed to the same woman who had stolen her husband. He suspected that, this time, she might be inclined to commit murder in earnest.

He was a little reassured to see that the sofa-bed was still made up as a sofa. He moved to a chair but didn’t sit, because after closing the door, the blonde merely moved to the center of the room and smiled at him again. Her overabundent breasts jiggled up and down engagingly when she moved.

“What do you drink?” she asked.

“Nothing, thanks. I really only came to get a look at those letters.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I thought maybe you’d stay awhile. I have the whole evening free.”

He hoped fervently she hadn’t done something like breaking another date for him, for it was his intention to get out of there as soon as he could, within the bounds of common courtesy and after seeing the letters.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that when she asked if they couldn’t be friends, she had meant other than platonic friendship. It probably should have, for while he wasn’t conceited enough to think every woman he met was prepared to throw herself at him, this wasn’t the first time a new female acquaintance had shown rather eager interest. He wasn’t wealthy, but his family was well-to-do and he was single. He was cynically aware that locally he was regarded as an eligible bachelor who would be a prize catch. Gail Thomas was fresh out of a lover, and being the sort of woman who needed a man to tell her what to do, she naturally wouldn’t overlook the first eligible male who hove into view.

He probably was the first, too, he thought. She had been squired around by out-of-town reporters and photographers for a week and a half now, but probably every one of them had a wife back home.

Because essentially he was a kindly man, he didn’t want to rebuff her bluntly after all her preparations. He said, “After we go through the letters, I’ll have some beer, if you have any.”

“Oh, my,” she said, distressed. “I thought you’d be the type who drank Scotch or bourbon. I have practically everything but beer.”

She looked so upset, he felt sorry for her. Apparently she had especially stocked up for him.

He said, “I like Scotch. But first can I see the letters?”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll fix a drink while you’re looking at them. Why are you so interested in them, anyway? Are you going to write about them in your paper?”

Her tone suggested that she wouldn’t mind. Some out-of-town newsman had missed a mighty chance for a scoop, he thought. Probably she would have agreeably handed the whole stack to the first reporter who asked her for them, if it had occurred to anyone to inquire of her if Bruce Case had ever written her any love letters. Syndicated and published a few at a time, they could have titillated the reading public from coast to coast for a week.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not interested in them as much as a reporter as I am as an amateur detective. I just like to see everything that has any bearing on the case.”

She looked puzzled, but she didn’t press it. Going over to the writing desk, she pulled open the drawer containing the letters. He sat down.

She carried the stack of envelopes over to the sofa-bed, sat down and laid it on the low cocktail table in front of the sofa. Untying the string, she looked over at him.

“Come over here and we’ll go through them together.”

There was nothing he could do but comply. Rising, he walked over and sat about two feet away from her. She leaned forward to pick up the top envelope, the movement causing the top of her blouse to fall forward so that he glimpsed one rosebud nipple, oddly tiny in the center of its vast white mound.

“They’re all in order,” she said, handing him the envelope. “This is the first one, written about three months after we met. He didn’t write real often, because I had phones both at home and at the beauty shop where I worked, so usually he called if he just wanted me to know he was coming in. He only dropped me a line about once a mouth.”

“I see,” Marshall said, pulling the sheet from the envelope.

She continued to lean forward, her elbows on her knees, and he was conscious of that rosebud in the corner of his vision. Then, to his relief, she not only sat up, but got up as he started to read.

“I’ll fix us a couple of drinks while you’re looking at that,” she said. “We can sip as we go through them.”

“Fine,” he said, finally able to concentrate on the letter.

“On the rocks will be okay.”

She moved on into the kitchen.

Chapter XXII

Like the letter Gail had shown him on Sunday, this one was typed. From its text no one could have told who it was from, who it was to, or where either lived. It was short, merely expressing a few corny sentiments about how much the writer missed the addressee, then mentioning that he would meet her at the usual place on Wednesday night. The letter was addressed to “Honey,” and was signed, “Love from me.” Even the signature was typed.

Gail returned with two old-fashioned glasses, each containing two ice cubes and loaded to the brim with Scotch. She sat down two feet closer to him than before, which placed her thigh right against his.

Glancing at the glasses, he wondered if the woman hoped to get him drunk — or get both of them drunk, since hers was equally full. There must have been four ounces of Scotch in each.

Lifting her glass, she said, “Cheers.”

He raised his, clinked it against hers and took a bare sip. She took a good-sized gulp. When she leaned forward to set down her glass, her left breast pressed into his arm.

“You hardly drank any at all,” she said reproachfully, examining the level of his glass.

“I like to sip my Scotch,” he said.

“Is that the way you’re supposed to drink it? I really don’t know much about drinking. Bruce drank vodka, and I can’t stand the stuff. I got drunk on it the night we met and haven’t been able to face it since. Mostly I just drank ginger ale with him.”

“Let’s look at the rest of the letters,” he suggested.

She insisted on handing him each one individually, since it gave her an excuse to lean forward each time. And each one she urged him to take another sip of his drink. By the time they were halfway through the stack, she had managed to badger him into emptying his glass.

Hers was empty, too, by then. She rose to fix two more.

The early letters merely expressed vague sentiments somewhat short of protestations of love. They were full of such phrases as “I miss you,” and “I want you,” but they carefully avoided the word “love.” That started to appear after about the sixth letter, and thereafter there were constant assurances of his love. In the tenth there was the expressed wish that he were single so that he could proudly show her off to all his friends. The twelfth was the one she had previously shown him, reporting that his wife refused to discuss divorce.

Marshall could almost visualize the gradual pressure Gail Thomas must have exerted to bring about the increasingly passionate avowals. She struck him as the sort of woman who, even though she regarded men as superior creatures and would willingly bow to the will of her man of the moment, would, at the same time, want to envelop him. He imagined her starting, early in the romance, by insisting that if Bruce didn’t love her, they had better part. Not yet ready for that, Marshall supposed he had fallen into the trap and had admitted his love in order to keep her as a bed partner for a while longer. The next step would have been for her to decide to end the affair because “there was no future in it.” Eventually her panting lover, making one small concession after another each time she decided to end the affair, had gotten himself into the position of having promised to divorce his wife and marry her.

Marshall knew the route, because he had once been subjected to this sort of inexorable campaign when he was a senior in college, the year after Betty had left him. He hadn’t had a wife to get rid of, but otherwise the process had been much the same as he imagined Bruce Case had gone through with Gail. One day he had awakened to the realization that the girl he had been chasing solely for the use of her soft white body seemed to consider them engaged. When he tried to back away, she pinned him down with exact quotes of the things he had whispered in her ear under threat of the withdrawal of her favors. He had finally gotten out of it by being blunter than he had ever been before or since.

Bruce hadn’t seemed to mind the envelopment, though. Maybe, in his case, he had actually been in love.

When the blonde returned with fresh drinks of the same caliber as before, she sat so close to him their bodies pressed together all the way from knee to shoulder.

Immediately she insisted on his sampling the new drink. They clinked glasses again, and when she set her glass down, the elastic top of her blouse slipped a little. When she straightened, both rosebud nipples were peeping out above it.

She seemed totally unconscious of the exposed, but he suspected she had stretched the elastic a bit while in the kitchen in order to cause just this effect. He also noted that her short skirt had hiked up halfway to her hips.

He ignored both views to concentrate on the letter.

The second half of the stack was full of vows of undying love and promises of eventual marriage, as soon as the writer could get rid of his burdensome wife. There was nothing, however, to suggest any murderous intent until he got to the last letter. He found it so interesting, he unconsciously lifted his glass and drained it as he read.

From the corner of his vision he was conscious of the blonde’s pleased expression at his sudden bibulousness. She immediately downed her own drink to keep up.

The letter read:

My darling:

I’ve learned that Dell’s Beauty Shop here has a vacancy for a girl, and if you catch the bus here Friday, I’m sure you can get the job. The flat I told you about is still vacant, so you should be able to complete all arrangements the same day. I’d see to it myself, in your name, but in a town this size there would be bound to be talk, so I think I’d better stay out of it altogether. I can hardly wait until you’re so close we can be together for at least a short time every night.

It’s not going to be much longer now, so please stop being impatient. I promise I’ll be in a position to marry within six months. And then it won’t be sneaking into furnished flats any more. I’ll be carrying you over the threshold of our own home at Rexford Bay.

Love forever,

Your man

The letter convinced Marshall of two things: Bruce Case’s murder attempts on Betty hadn’t stemmed merely from spur-of-the-moment desperation to hang onto his luxurious life; and he actually had been enough in love with Gail Thomas to marry her. Perhaps Betty’s insistence on an immediate divorce had brought things to a head, but he had planned to kill her even before he moved his mistress to Runyon City.

The evidence was right here in black and white. For there was no way in the world Bruce could have ever carried a new bride over the threshold of the old Runyon place if he had planned merely to divorce Betty. It could have been his if he were a widower and had inherited it.

Turning toward the blonde, he started to say, “Do you mind if I take this letter—?” and stopped abruptly.

She must have deliberately pulled the wide top of her off-the-shoulder blouse down even more, for its sides were halfway down to her elbows. Her large breasts, totally bared, bulged toward him, thrusting their pink tips within kissing distance. Her knees had fallen apart and her skirt had worked up clear to her hips. She smiled at him blearily, obviously drunker than a kitten full of catnip.

He couldn’t decide whether to be amused or exasperated. Though he happened to be a sparing drinker, he had an enormous tolerance for alcohol, and the eight ounces of Scotch he had consumed had merely put a warm glow in his stomach. But apparently Gail Thomas’ capacity was as low as his was high.

No wonder she had gotten drunk the first time she was with Bruce Case, he thought. She looked on the verge of passing out from two drinks.

“You should have stuck to ginger ale,” he said. “You shouldn’t try to get other people drunk until you learn how to drink yourself. Did you ever drink Scotch before?”

She moved her head slowly from side to side, continuing to smile at him. She seemed to have difficulty keeping her face in focus.

Rising from the sofa, he took both her hands and pulled her to her feet. Staggering against him, she threw her arms about his neck, pressing her naked bosom against his chest.

Disengaging himself, he gently forced her over to the wall and leaned her against it. “Stay right there,” he commanded.

“Okay,” she said cheerily.

He drew the cocktail table out of the way and examined the sofa-bed. It was the type where you merely pulled the seat forward, the back flattened out level with the seat, and you had a double bed. As he made it into a bed, she regarded the operation with alcoholic interest.

“Where do you keep your sheets and blankets?” he asked.

“Unnerneath.”

He assumed she meant underneath the bed. Investigating, he discovered that the front of the sofa opened downward to disclose a space behind it, but it was empty and had no bottom. After contemplating it, he came to the conclusion that you had to remove the bedclothes before making the contraption into a bed. He pushed it back to its sofa position, looked again and was pleased to learn he was right. Beneath the seat was a storage chamber running the width of the sofa.

He drew out folded sheets, two pillows and a blanket, pulled the contrivance out into a bed again and efficiently made it up.

When he straightened from this endeavor and glanced over his shoulder to where he had left the girl, there was nothing there but a skirt and blouse lying on the floor. Swinging the other way, he found her swaying on her feet in the center of the room, stark naked except for her toeless sandals.

She lifted one foot to remove a sandal, lost her balance and started to topple on her face. He made a dash and caught her beneath the arms, just in time to prevent her crashing to the floor. Heaving her erect, he led her over to the bed and made her sit.

In that position she managed to get the sandals off without falling off the bed. She gave him a vacant smile and leaned her head back on one of the pillows, her legs still dangling over the sides and her feet on the floor. He lifted them up onto the bed and drew the top sheet and blanket up over her.

Momentarily her eyes closed, then opened again. “Will you be long?”

He saw no point in telling her he had no intention of joining her, since he suspected that within a few minutes she wouldn’t know whether anyone was in bed with her or not.

“I want to wash up,” he said.

“Okay,” she said sleepily. “I’ll be here.”

He found the bathroom off the kitchenette and waited for five minutes, smoking a cigarette. When he came out, she was sound asleep.

He put the last letter Bruce Case had written her into his pocket, rebound the others with the piece of string and put them back in the desk drawer. Then he turned out the lights, set the spring lock and quietly let himself out.

Checking his watch, he saw it was only nine-thirty. She had managed to knock herself out in an hour and a half.

Chapter XXIII

At eleven o’clock the next morning he sat across from Betty in the visitor’s room. “How’s Bud?” she asked as usual.

“The same,” he said. “He went to camp with the Cub Scouts over the weekend.”

“Oh, my!” she said. “I forgot all about that. I never even mentioned it to Aunt Audrey.”

“Max Lischer phoned an hour before the bus left, and she managed to get him there in time. It worked out okay.” He added casually, “Bud told me about the wire across the top of the stairs.”

Her color gradually faded.

“I don’t understand you,” he said. “You’ve known all along that Bruce came to your room to kill you that night. Why did you keep silent?”

“He can’t ever know his father was a would-be murderer,” she whispered. “His grandfather a murderer and his father a murderer. What girl would ever marry a boy with a family background like that? She would lie next to him at night in terror of her life.”

“You don’t inherit a proclivity for murder, Betty.”

“I’m not saying you do. All I’m saying is that it would wreck Bud’s chances. I don’t think for a minute that Bud will grow up to become a murderer just because he comes from killer stock. But other people would wonder. If you had a daughter, would you let her marry him?”

“If he grows up as nice as he is now. I certainly wouldn’t object to the marriage on his father’s and grandfather’s account.”

“That’s because you know him and are fond of him. Would you let your daughter marry some young man you didn’t know as well, if you found out he came from a family of murderers?”

The question made him pause. After a moment he said honestly, “I probably wouldn’t. But I’m not going to let you go to prison for life in order to assure a pick of girls for your son ten or fifteen years from now.”

“Please let me handle it my way, Kirk. I’m willing to take my chances.”

There was something he didn’t understand. He could grasp her concern over what it might do to Bud if it became widely known that both his father and grandfather were wife killers. It would place the boy at a decided social disadvantage, and undoubtedly parents would steer their daughters clear of him. But her willingness to risk life imprisonment, or even the electric chair, in order to protect him from this disadvantage seemed all out of proportion to the possible gain.

“You don’t have any chances, your way,” he said. “Look, Betty, we may be able to handle this thing quietly, without releasing the whole story to the press. All we have to do is convince Arn Ross you’re innocent in order to get charges dropped. We don’t have to convince the general public.”

“You know better than that, Kirk. He’ll have to give some explanation to the papers. If he didn’t, the public would howl for his impeachment.”

“I suppose,” he admitted. “But at least we might be able to suppress the story about Bud’s grandfather. I’m going to show Arn the evidence I have that Bruce meant to kill you.”

“You mean make Bud be a witness against his own father?” she asked indignantly.

“I think Arn will accept my word about the wire without dragging Bud in for questioning, because I have some even more convincing evidence than that. I have a letter Bruce wrote to Gail Thomas before she ever moved to town, indicating he planned to kill you.”

“You mean she was in on it?”

He shook his head. “She’s just a dumb blonde who badly wants a man so that she can be ordered around. She wouldn’t have realized the significance of what he said in the letter. Here, see for yourself.”

He withdrew the envelope from his pocket, showed her the postmark date and took out the single sheet of paper. Handing it to her, he waited quietly until she had read it.

When she handed it back, her gaze was turned inward. She said, almost to herself, “I knew it the moment I saw that wire. He wasn’t just a would-be murderer — he actually was one.”

He paused in the act of replacing the envelope in his pocket. “What do you mean by that?”

“Think about it,” she said with a bitter smile. “How did my dad die?”

The memory of that was still fresh in his mind, for it had happened less than two years before, and he had written the story. “He and Bruce overturned in a boat when they were out fish—” He came to an abrupt halt as the implications of that tragedy hit him in view of his new insight into Bruce Case’s homicidal bent.

“See?” she said. “You think other people aren’t going to reconsider what happened that day once it becomes known he planned to kill me? If Dad’s death hadn’t given mother a heart attack, I’m sure he would have killed her, too. He meant to eliminate us one by one until he got his hands on the Runyon money. How would you like your daughter to marry the son of a monster like that?”

When he made no immediate answer, she said, “Let me put it another way. If Bruce were your son, would you want him burdened with coast-to-coast publicity about the type of father and grandfather he had?”

He said slowly, “If Bruce were my son, I wouldn’t want his innocent mother to go to prison just to save him some discomfort.”

“Discomfort! It would ruin his life.”

“Do you think it will help him to have people believe his mother a murderess?”

She made a dismissing gesture. “It isn’t the same thing. I’m supposed to have committed a crime of passion, which is considerably different from cold-blooded murder for profit. Besides, for some reason people don’t hold a mother’s crimes against children as much as a father’s. They seem to think evil traits are inherited only from the male side of the family. On top of everything else, I haven’t been convicted yet.”

“You will be if you don’t tell the whole truth,” he prophesied.

“Let’s not talk about this any more,” she said. “Or at least table the subject for a time. Pick another subject.”

“I’m not going to forget it,” he said. “It’s going to be settled before I walk out of here. But we’ll table it temporarily, if you like. There are a couple of loose ends I’d like cleared up anyway.”

“What?”

“First, what did you do about finding that wire after Bud left the house? Bruce must have known he’d been found out.”

“I went to my room and used my bedroom extension to phone Virginia Derring. I asked her to step over to see my new parlor drapes. She only lives two doors away, you know.”

Marshall stared at her in wonderment.

“Oh, I wasn’t just being feminine,” Betty assured him. “I was putting into effect a cold-blooded plan. I meant to go downstairs and confront Bruce with my knowledge of his murder attempt. But we were alone in the house, and for all I knew his reaction might be to kill me by throwing me down the cellar steps. Virginia was simply insurance. I waited until I heard the bell and heard Bruce let her in. Then I went downstairs, asked Virginia if she minded waiting for a few moments, as I had something important to show Bruce in the study. I led my dear husband in there and told him what was what.”

“What did you tell him?” Marshall asked, fascinated.

“I said I was aware he had tried to kill me. I said he was welcome to try again right then, if he thought he could get away with it while a witness sat in the front room. I said I wanted a completely drawn-up set of divorce papers in my hands for signature by noon Monday, in which he granted me full custody of Bud and waived all claims to any of my property. If he didn’t comply, I’d have his mistress served a subpoena as corespondent in a divorce action by noon Tuesday. I told him I would accept no plea that this didn’t give him time to set up faked evidence of his own adultery, because he had better get it set up, even if he had to hire witnesses to lie. Meantime, he could pack up and be out of the house in thirty minutes. I added that he could walk as far as the country club and call a taxi from there, as I had no intention of giving him the station wagon. He used to drive it, but it was in my name.”

“What did he say?” Marshall asked, still fascinated.

“Not one word — yes, he did, too. He remarked that he wouldn’t have to pack, as he had sufficient clothing somewhere else and he would send for the rest of his things later. I suppose he meant he had things at that woman’s apartment. But he made no denial of the murder attempt. I suppose he saw it was useless. I went back into the front room and was serving Virginia coffee when he came out, wished both of us polite good-bye and walked out.”

“Then he wasn’t even sleeping in the downstairs study the next night,” Marshall said. “No wonder he was fully dressed. He’d come in from outside.”

She smiled ruefully. “Unfortunately I underestimated him. It never occurred to me he’d try again after being caught once. And I simply didn’t think of the fact that he had a key to the house.”

“So you actually did hear all those noises. Only it was Bruce instead of the cat burglar.”

“Yes. He must have been terribly surprised at the moment he died. He didn’t even know I had bought a gun.”

Marshall suddenly had another thought. “Why did you sit next to him at the country-club bar the next day after kicking him out of the house? I should think you wouldn’t have wanted to be within a mile of him.”

“I’m a woman,” she said. “There were people in the bar. What did you expect me to do? Walk past him without speaking and start everyone gossiping?”

It seemed to Marshall that the moment the divorce action had become public, gossip would have started anyway. But perhaps women liked to avoid any talk until the last possible minute. It was probably one of those feminine bits of reasoning beyond male comprehension.

“I guess that takes care of the loose ends,” he said. “Now to get back to the previous subjects. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take the choice out of your hands.”

“If you hurt Bud I’ll never forgive you,” she said, gazing at him steadily.

“If you go to prison, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Let me try it my way first,” she pleaded. “If I am convicted, we can ask for an appeal on the grounds of new evidence.”

“You don’t make sense,” he said. “Is there something involved here beside your worry over the possible effect on Bud?”

“Of course not.”

“I think there must be. You can’t be so protective that you would risk your life, or at least your freedom, just to save the boy some discomfort.”

“Don’t keep referring to it as merely discomfort,” she said crossly. “You know as well as I do it would ruin his life. Let me stand trial on my present defense.”

“You don’t have any present defense. You admitted as much yourself the other day. I refuse to risk it.”

The matron called, “Visiting time’s up, folks.”

“Please promise me you’ll do nothing until we talk again tomorrow,” Betty said hurriedly.

Rising, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Betty. I’m not going to let you spend another single day here. I’m going to see Barney Meister and Arn Ross this afternoon.”

She had risen also. “You’ll lose me if you do,” she said quietly.

“I’ll lose you if I don’t. And I’d rather lose you this way than to prison.”

Abruptly he turned and stalked out.

Chapter XXIV

The next day, Wednesday, the Runyon City News published an exclusive story announcing the release from jail and dropping of all charges against Mrs. Elizabeth Case. The story explained that new evidence uncovered by Police Chief Barney Meister proved beyond any doubt that Bruce Case, not his widow, had set the scene to make it appear that the cat burglar had entered the home, and had been hoist by his own petard. There was no mention of the wire-across-the-stairs incident or of the twelve-year-old murder-suicide of Bruce’s parents.

The story was picked up by the wire services on Thursday and published all over the country. That same day a Detroit doctor and his beautiful nurse-receptionist were arrested for conspiring to murder the doctor’s wife.

By Friday the doctor and his mistress were in headlines from coast to coast and the Runyon City shooting was a dead issue.

Marshall wasn’t around when Betty was released from jail. Immediately after filing his story on Wednesday, he left on a Canadian fishing trip and didn’t get back until early Sunday evening. He phoned Betty at eight p.m.

“Still mad at me?” he inquired.

“I never was angry, Kirk. I was deeply disappointed when you took things into your own hands against my express wishes. But the publicity hasn’t been as bad as I expected it to be.”

“There won’t be any more digging,” he said. “You’re yesterday’s news. No one need ever know about Bud’s grandfather. It’s out that his father was a killer, or at least that he wanted to be, but that won’t hurt him any more than people thinking his mother was a murderess.”

“I suppose not,” she said. “I probably was exaggerating the whole thing. But I kept visualizing what would happen to his life if the whole appalling mess came to light. I just couldn’t stand to do that to him.”

Marshall said, “At the jail you told me I’d lose you if I went to Meister and Ross. Does that still stand?”

There was a period of silence before she said, “As it turned out, I guess you did the best thing. I thought I’d hear from you before this.”

“I wanted to give you time to settle down. I’ve been fishing up in Canada.”

“Oh?” she said. Then, after a pause, “Are you tired from the trip?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then why don’t you drop over?” she asked softly.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he told her.

Young Bud let him in when he rang the doorbell. The boy led him into the front room and said, “Mom’s upstairs getting herself all fixed up. I’m supposed to entertain you until she comes down.”

Taking a seat, Marshall grinned at him. “How do you propose to go about it?”

Momentarily Bud didn’t know what to make of this question, then realized he was being teased and smiled. “Just talk, I guess.” He sat on the couch across from Marshall’s chair.

“Where’s your Aunt Audrey?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, she went back to Rochester Friday. We didn’t need her any more. There’s just Mom and me now.”

Glancing about the room, Marshall spotted a wooden screen frame leaning against one side of the empty fireplace. “Why do you keep that there?” he inquired, pointing toward it.

“It’s gotta have new wire in it. A man from the crime lab just brought it back yesterday. They’d been keeping it for evidence, you know. That’s the screen from upstairs that Dad cut the wire out of.”

Apparently the youngster knew of his father’s murder attempt, if he was aware that it was his father who had cut the screen. Marshall was a little surprised. He had assumed that Betty would attempt to shield her son from knowledge that his father had tried to kill her. Of course it was inevitable that some other boy would tell him eventually, but he had thought Betty would want to delay his finding out as long as possible. It could be that Bud had read it in the newspaper. Few ten-year-olds read anything except the funnies, but Bud was an intelligent boy for his age.

“Did you read about him cutting it in the newspaper?” Marshall asked.

Bud looked at him without comprehension. “Why would something like that be in the newspaper?”

“Well, how do you know he cut it?”

“We saw him.”

“Come again?” Marshall said.

“Mom and me — I mean I. That same evening when everything happened. Only a lot earlier.”

A considerable period passed before Marshall said anything. Finally he said, “Just what happened, Bud?”

“That’s all. We saw him cut out the screen.”

From previous experience Marshall had learned the best way to get a story out of the boy. He said, “Remember that game we played on the beach, Bud? Where you told me everything that happened up until you tripped over the wire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s play it again. You start with when you and your mother left the country club that day and carry it right through.”

“Okay,” the boy agreed. “That must of been about four. Mom drove us home and made me take a bath, even after I’d been in the lake all afternoon, and we both got all dressed up because we were going out to dinner. About five we drove over to the Rexford Bay Inn and Mom sat at a table for a while having a cocktail while I played the shuffleboard. That’s like bowling, you know, only there’s a flat metal thing instead of a ball, and you have to put a dime in.”

“I know,” Marshall said, wondering if he shouldn’t have asked the boy to start ten minutes before the screen was cut. With his total recall, he might not get to the point before his mother appeared.

“Then we had supper — I mean dinner — and came back here about six-thirty,” Bud said. “Mom put the car away and closed the garage door. She wanted to go over to the Derrings’ for a while, so we walked across the Pierce lawn next door, over to the Derrings’ house. I played out back with Jim Derring for about an hour while Mom was inside visiting with Mrs. Derring. Then she called me and we started back home across the Pierce lawn. I guess that was about seven-thirty. It was still real light.”

Marshall said, “It doesn’t get dark until about nine this time of year.”

“Just as we reached those big bushes between our house and the Pierces”, I said, ‘Hey, look what somebody’s doing.’ We both stopped and Mom looked where I pointed. You couldn’t see who it was behind the screen, but you could see the knife sticking out and cutting across the top. Mom pulled me behind one of the bushes and we watched. The knife went all around the four sides, then Dad leaned out the window and dropped the cut-out piece to the ground behind the bushes next to the house.”

When the boy stopped, Marshall said, “Keep going, Bud. You aren’t finished.”

“Oh. I thought you just wanted to know about us seeing him cut the screen. Mom held my arm and told me to be quiet. Dad closed the window from inside, and a couple of minutes later we heard the back door open and close. Mom pulled me along behind the bushes until you could see the place in the wall where you go down to the beach. Dad was just going down the steps. We moved closer to the wall until we could see over it. Dad was walking along the beach behind the Pierce house and the Derring house. He kept going to where the road comes down to the water. past the country-club grounds and cut across that. I guess he was walking over to the clubhouse. Across country like that instead of taking the streets it’s only about three blocks.”

There was the sound of feet tripping lightly down the stairs. Marshall said quickly, “I guess that’s enough, Bud.”

Betty entered the room with a smile on her face. With her strawberry-blond hair drawn into an upsweep, she was beautiful in a white, form-fitting dress. Marshall rose from his chair.

“Hello, Kirk,” she said. “Time for your bath, Bud. When you’re in your pajamas, give a yell and I’ll come kiss you good night.”

“Okay,” Bud said, getting up from the sofa. “Good night, Mr. Marshall.”

“ ‘Night, Bud.”

When the boy had gone upstairs, Betty came over, placed her hands on Marshall’s shoulders and offered her lips for a kiss. He touched them very gently with his own.

“Your passion overwhelms me,” she said, cocking an eyebrow at him. “After all this time I thought I’d have to fight you off.”

He smiled a trifle weakly. “Maybe I’m tireder from the trip than I thought.”

“Would a drink perk you up?”

“All right,” he agreed, more to get her out of the room for a minute so that he could think than because he was thirsty.

She moved on through the dining room toward the kitchen. Marshall sank heavily back into his chair.

What Bud had told him changed the whole picture of what had happened that night. Betty had known what Bruce planned. That explained her puzzling transfer of Bud back to his own bedroom, when she had been having him sleep in her room ever since the attack on Mrs. Ferris. She had never for a moment thought it was the cat burglar opening her bedroom door. She had known it was Bruce, and had been calmly waiting for him in the dark with a gun in her hand.

It still wasn’t murder. He knew no jury in the country would convict her, even if the whole truth came out, for it was patently a case of self-defense. But her cold-blooded handling of the situation appalled him. Any normal woman would simply have asked for police protection.

He understood what her thoughts must have been. By then she had realized that her father’s drowning had been no accident and that she was marked as the killer’s next victim. She must have hated Bruce to the core of her soul.

Perhaps there was some moral justification in what she had done. But he knew beyond any doubt that he didn’t want a woman who took such matters into her own hands.

All at once he felt a sense of relief. The shackles which had kept him bound to a memory for so many years dissolved.

There was no point in letting her know he was aware of her cold-blooded act, he decided. The burden of her own guilt was enough for her to bear. For he was sure she felt the burden. Now he understood her strange insistence on being tried. Guilt must have been the deciding factor in her decision to stand trial instead of telling the partial truth. Concern over her son’s future had been only part of it. She must have felt the need to stand trial because she knew in her heart that she had deliberately killed her husband, even though the killing could be legally justified.

Betty came back into the room with a tray containing a highball, a bottle of beer and an empty glass. She set it on the coffee table before the sofa.

“Come on over here,” she invited.

Moving over to the sofa next to her, he poured beer, waited for the foam to settle and liften his glass. He might as well get it over with fast and clean, he thought.

“I can’t think of any appropriate toast,” he said. “Unless you want to make it to friendship. This’ll probably be our last drink together in such cozy surroundings.”

She looked at him strangely. “What do you mean?”

“Lydia and I are getting married.”

Momentarily her face registered shock, but she recovered immediately and assumed a bright smile. Her eyes failed to join her lips in the smile. They suddenly grew opaque and expressionless.

“Congratulations,” she said, touching her glass to his. “When?”

“We haven’t set a date. I suppose she’ll want enough time to get in a few bridal showers. Probably in the fall.”

“Im sure you’ll be very happy.” She drained half her drink, a few moments later drained the other half.

He left fifteen minutes later. As she walked him to the door, Bud called from the top of the stairs, “Mom! I’m ready.”

“The voice of the master of the house,” she said, offering her hand in a formal handclasp. “Good luck, Kirk.”

“The same to you,” he said.

The door closed gently behind him and he heard the bolt click home.

He was still only nine-fifteen when he parked in front of Lydia’s apartment house. There was light in her front windows.

She answered the door in her quilted housecoat and with a towel wrapped about her head.

“I just stepped out of the shower,” she said, smiling at him. “Come on in.”

As she closed and locked the door behind him, he said abruptly, “How’d you like to get married?”

Her eyes widened. “To you?”

He burst out laughing. “I’m not running a marriage brokerage.”

“I guess it was a silly question,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure I heard right. Do you mind repeating what you said?”

Taking her by the shoulders, he drew her against him. “Will you marry me? I love you. Would you prefer it on my knees?”

“I accept,” she said, throwing her arms about his neck. Never mind your knees. When?”

“I think the bride is supposed to fix the wedding date. That’s up to you.”

“Labor Day,” she said. “Then you’ll be able to remember our anniversary. But let’s start the honeymoon right now.”

Obligingly he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

Content

Richard Deming
This Game of Murder

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV