Ellery Queen

The Golden Goose

Cast of characters

THE WILD O’SHEAS — Freeloaders Extraordinaire

PRINCESS — Her unusual pride indicated that she was sired on the wrong side of the royal bedsheet, but her bar sinister faded quickly

UNCLE SLATER — He didn’t come and go as easily as the money he inherited from his wife — the only luck he’d had since he first struck it poor—

AUNT LALLIE — Vague and ill-meaning, she tried to hatch the golden goose eggs prematurely

BROTHER BRADY — The weakest of sisters despite his physique and libido — no one knew what held his body up since the Creator had evidently omitted his backbone

COUSIN PEET — An enchanting exhibitionist who is full of beans, but manages never to spill them

COUSIN TWIG — A warped mind in a warped body, he proves that a tomcat can look at a princess

THE O’SHEAS’ PLAYMATES

MRS. DOLAN — Due to foul play, her dinner and employer turned cold while she watched warmed-over TV

DR. HORACE APPLETON — An elderly curmudgeon who keeps his own eyes open and prefers the eyes of a peaceful corpse closed

COLEY COLLINS — A charming rapscallion who can shake up the Princess quicker than a cocktail

SHERM GRUNDY — A plainclothesman under the sway of the Princess’ sceptre and her uncle’s spectre, he considers the murder a lese majesty

BOATNER — Grundy’s partner, saying nothing and doing nothing, almost, as it were, being nothing

SELWYN FISH — A shyster lawyer who has swum beyond his depth; as far as Aunt Lallie is concerned, it is Fish or cut bait

ORVILLE FREE — A pharmacist whose facial and vocal expressions are measured as meticulously as his prescriptions

WINSTON WHITFIELD — This old-young man-boy charms snakes and snakes-in-the-grass, and that’s about all

1

Princess O’Shea was not really a princess. Her father’s name happened to be Royal, and “Princess” seemed logical. It was also a good joke. Royal O’Shea had had a taste for jokes. It ran in his family.

Prin’s mother died in attempting to continue the dynasty, and her father lived another eighteen years before surrendering to an unregal cirrhosis of the liver. That was when Prin came to live with her father’s brother Slater in his house at the edge of Cibola City, which was not much of a city by any but the most technical definition, although it was a good deal of a house.

Uncle Slater O’Shea had money. He had it by way of his late wife, who had acquired it from her late first husband. She had been a realistic lady of some shrewdness, suspecting rightly that Slater O’Shea had pressed his suit more out of regard for his own future happiness than for hers; but he was also charming and amusing and sometimes exciting, which was all the good lady asked after fifteen years of being married to a man whose idea of a high old time was to go to his safe deposit box and see if his bonds and stock certificates were still there. She cheerfully willed Uncle Slater what was left of what she had had when he started helping her spend it. Uncle Slater being what he was, it was not nearly so much as it might have been; but it did include the big old house at the edge of Cibola City, and enough income from the remains of the safe deposit box to enable him to live in non-working comfort. A life of non-working comfort had been Uncle Slater’s prospector-like dream since he had first struck it poor, which was practically at birth.

Prin liked Uncle Slater fine. With his libido now damped by the dews of time, he roared more quietly; and since he had not worked for his late wife’s earlier husband’s money, he was quite generous with it. He was certainly more fun than Aunt Lallie, Uncle Slater’s sister, and than Cousin Twig and Cousin Peet, the spawn of another brother (not Prin’s father Royal) who had deserted his two motherless chicks and gone off and died interestingly somewhere. As for Brady O’Shea, Prin’s brother, Uncle Slater was a king by comparison, and Princess O’Shea would have been the first to say so; in fact, she was the first to say so.

Aunt Lallie and Cousins Twig and Peet had been living with Uncle Slater when Prin arrived. Prin was the only one who had come by invitation. The others had dropped in for visits and just stayed on, like The Man Who Came to Dinner; and Brother Brady, learning of his sister’s providential haven, got there virtually on her heels. Aunt Lallie, Cousins Twig and Peet, and Brother Brady had not been asked to stay, as Prin had; but on the other hand they had not been asked to leave, so it all came to the same thing.

The reason they had not been asked to leave was that Uncle Slater had a tender feeling for scoundrels and a sense of responsibility toward all O’Sheas in the blood line. In every instance he could think of — Prin excepted — “scoundrel” and “O’Shea” were synonyms; so that at the same time that he felt tenderly toward them, he refrained from turning his back, since he took it for granted that any of the quartet was quite capable of sinking a knife in it, especially if the exertion promised a profit. The price of eternal vigilance being exhaustion, Uncle Slater restored tranquillity to his aging soul by writing a most engaging will. In this will he prorated his worth among the five O’Sheas who lived with him and seventeen other O’Sheas who lived elsewhere.

“Those of you who did not flunk simple arithmetic will therefore see,” said Uncle Slater to the five O’Sheas in residence as he waved the will heartily, like a flag, “that my decease will, automatically and ipso facto, divide my estate into twenty-two equal parts. The advantages to us all must be evident. So long as I remain in a state of animation there is enough to support the six of us under this roof in freedom from reasonable want. Were I to pass on, however, the butchered bits of my estate would scarcely suffice to support any one of you for more than a year or so. I see that you grasp the unpleasant consequences of my demise. Each of you would be reduced to the alternatives of, one, working; two, stealing; three, starving; or four, finding another sucker. I agree in advance that the first of these alternatives is too far fetched to be seriously considered. The third is almost, although not quite, as bad. The second is a possibility, but I would not recommend it. The fourth, I grant, seems the most attractive; however, there are countless parasites for each available host, and I do not think the odds of finding another one are good. I have myself been lucky in this respect, and my natural inclination is to identify with those less fortunate. I was in my time an accomplished freeloader at others’ expense, so I am agreeable to your being likewise at mine. In short, let’s all relax and enjoy the fruits of my dear Millie’s first husband’s labors and take very, very good care of Uncle Slater. Any questions?”

“I don’t have a question,” Princess O’Shea said firmly, “I have an announcement. Which is that I’m working six days a week in a drugstore for pay, Uncle Slater. I know I get that weak gene from my mother’s side, and I apologize; but by the same token I’m no damn freeloader, so don’t lump me with them — those — that are.”

“True,” said Uncle Slater. “Our Princess is a mutation, and in all fairness I should have said so. I’m happy to be able to point out that this ‘pay’ she mentions with such deplorable pride is just about enough to keep her in nylons; however, she is technically correct. As for having inherited the weakness from your mother’s side, Princess, I’m obliged to register a dissent; I knew your mother’s side. To be candid, my dear, in view of this unhealthy streak in you I’m inclined to believe that you may not be an O’Shea at all. There may well have been an interlude in the Royal household, briefly before your nativity, when your poor mother dallied with a commoner.”

This being sheer speculation, Princess O’Shea disdained to defend her legitimacy, morganatic or otherwise; such considerations had never seemed to her of any consequence.

As for the others, they attended Uncle Slater’s genial briefing in their usually divergent styles:

Aunt Lallie sat smiling at someone not visible to anyone else. This effect, which she achieved by staring intently at an uninhabited part of the room, was not one of her more endearing accomplishments; it tended to raise goose pimples on the uninitiated. Nor were the hands in her lap more reassuring. They were large, hard-looking and hairy, whereas the rest of her was small, soft and baby-girlish. To see her as she now occupied a straight chair, hands folded before her, created the astonishing illusion of a big tough man skulking behind her with his arms about her waist. This hyperbole was one of Uncle Slater’s conceits; the power of Lallie’s mind over Lallie’s matter, he liked to say (to Prin privately). But, alas for Aunt Lallie, it was no very satisfactory substitute for the real thing.

Brother Brady O’Shea reacted to the testamentary news as he reacted to almost everything: he strode powerfully over to his uncle’s bar, seized a bottle of his uncle’s choice bourbon, and poured himself an oversized man’s oversized drink — which he manfully proceeded to imbibe. Sister Prin had often supposed (also in conceit, since she considered the incestuous implications of the supposition as unlikely as the supposition itself) that Brother Brady might well have been the big tough man in the Aunt Lallie illusion. He was big enough, and he certainly gave the appearance of toughness; and he was unquestionably a man, at least in the biological sense (there could be no doubt about the gender of his thoughts, considering the way he looked at Cousin Peet). But the conceit ended there. Physique and libido notwithstanding, Brother Brady was the weakest of sisters. As Uncle Slater liked to say, one wondered what held Brady O’Shea’s body beautiful up, since his Creator had left the backbone out. His capacity for mischief could only be guessed at.

And Cousin Peet. Cousin Peet was five-feet-three blonde inches of pure female higher mathematics, all parabolas and lunes and little arcs of young soft moist flesh put together with amazing congruity. The difficulty was that, if you figured her, the answer invariably came out wrong. In Uncle Slater’s earthier, if mixed metaphor: “Our little sultry sexpot is a little frozen fish.”

For Cousin Peet employed her extraordinary nubile equipment as reflexively as she employed her knee when the frequent occasion required it. It was her only stock-in-trade in a rather remarkable business, since she refused to part with any parcel of it. Even so, Cousin Peet might have utilized her window dressing to her profit — as a sales leader, say, to push less desirable merchandise — but for the fact that she had no other goods in inventory. Uncle Slater, always there with a relevant mot, put it this way: “Peet is like a highly successful popover: bite into her and you’d get a great big mouthful of nothing.” This unoccupied interiority, he pointed out fondly, was particularly true of her head.

Consequently, when a situation arose like this one of the will, in which there was no use for her sole asset, Cousin Peet was at a loss. She simply sat there with her secondary sex characteristics going to waste, looking from one to the other of her assembled kin as if groping for a clue to whatever the mystery was.

As for Cousin Twig: Gastronomically speaking, where Cousin Peet made the mouth water, her brother was about as appetizing as a glob of long-spoiled pork. Cousin Twig had no shape; that is, the shape he was in conformed to no esthetic pattern acceptably human. It was fat where it should have been lean, and stringy where it should have had bulk: his thighs were too long and his legs were too short; his torso gave an upside-down effect; and above all — above all loomed his head, most of it beyond his brows in the manner of the original Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster, except that in Cousin Twig’s case no make-up was necessary. In addition to this anatomical slumgullion, nature had thrown into the pot a skin coarsely dark, with the green-broth sheen of an exposed drainage ditch.

Ill-designed containers are often redeemed by their contents. The love of Beauty brought out the handsome prince in the Beast. The Ugly Duckling’s habiliments covered the most gorgeous bird in the pond. The gargoyle breast of Quasimodo harbored the tenderness of angels. Not so with Cousin Twig. The interior Twig was even less favored than its housing. He might well have said with Gloucester that love forswore him in his mother’s womb. For he was as nasty inside as out — a man of cringe and craft, bitter, lecherous, treacherous, capable of kissing the foot that kicked him and biting the hand that fed him, and both for purposes of his own.

So now Cousin Twig, after a moment of silence, put on his look of ruptured dignity, which unfortunately succeeded only in resembling the risus sardonicus of a corpse felled by lockjaw, and said to his Uncle Slater: “Uncle Slater, I will not presume to speak for anyone else present, but for you to suggest that I might have designs on your stocks and bonds and whatever other worldly trifles you have stashed away hits me where I live. For shame, Uncle Slater. I’m humbly happy with the pittance you allow me from your income, and it hurts me deeply that you should think otherwise.”

“Then you’re a fool, Nephew Twig,” said Uncle Slater with a grin, “which I have no intention of believing. You’re all quite welcome to my capital in good time. At the easy rate I’m going, that should be about twenty years from now.”

Uncle Slater miscalculated. The twenty years he looked forward to turned out to be more nearly twenty days.

For the record: It was three weeks and two days later that Slater O’Shea went to his reward, which was what he had been afraid of for a long time.

2

Prin tried to remember later just when it was that she last saw Uncle Slater alive. She finally decided that it must have been about two o’clock that fateful Friday afternoon.

Ordinarily Prin would have been slaving for her nylons behind one of the counters of Free’s Drug Store on Friday afternoon; but on this particular Friday she had screwed up her mutated face — really not a bad face as faces went, she always thought, although of course not an O’Shea face, which at its best ran to Black Irish handsomeness, as in Brother Brady’s case — and put a moan into her voice, the way they did on television commercials, and told Orville Free that she hadn’t wanted to mention it before, since it involved a condition peculiarly female connected with the moon, but the cramps were getting to be too terrible and she’d simply have to take the rest of the day off. The lunar reference was a lie. The truth was that Prin had enough O’Shea in her to get the feeling occasionally that she simply couldn’t stand working another second, and this had been one of those occasions. So that was how she came to be sitting in Uncle Slater’s living room at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon, nuzzling a gin and tonic and listening to Till Eulenspiegel on his hi-fi, when he came home in an obvious glow and waved to her cheerily on his way upstairs to his room. And she had never again seen Uncle Slater breathing, boozily or otherwise.

After a while Till was finished and so was the gin and tonic, so Prin had gone into the kitchen, dropped two ice cubes into her glass, leaned against the sink for a few minutes listening to Mrs. Dolan, the cook, then deserted Mrs. Dolan and returned to the living room and refilled the glass according to Uncle Slater’s recipe, which was equal parts of gin and quinine water. After that she had wandered out to the terrace. On the flagstones lay a sky-blue air mattress, and on the sky-blue air mattress lay Cousin Peet’s little belly, along with the rest of her.

Cousin Peet was wearing the hip sliver of a pink bikini, and nothing else. Even though Cousin Peet was on the small side as girls usually go, in the hip sliver of a pink bikini there seemed to be a great deal of her, all clearly superior. Her self-advertising tended to disconcert strangers, for she was given to lying about almost anywhere in almost nothing; and sometimes, in some places, in nothing absolutely. The only thing that shocked her was the continual rediscovery that practically all members of the male sex construed her innocent displays as invitations to finger the merchandise — that is, after they had got over being disconcerted. They could never seem to understand, as they dragged themselves away clutching their groins, that Cousin Peet’s sex drive was only slightly stronger than a flat-worm’s.

Cousin Peet’s habit of going about casually near-naked never seemed to put any notions into her head that could not have been freely discussed from the rostrum at a D.A.R. meeting. Prin’s own notions in certain circumstances were not so unimpeachable. In her view, poor Peet was a waste; and Prin felt no envy in conceding the quality of what was being wasted, for not only did she possess attributes that were just as good, but she also knew what to do with them, which apparently Cousin Peet did not.

“Hello, you Peet,” Prin said, drifting over to the umbrella-table. “Where’s anybody?”

Peet raised herself on her elbows and twisted from the dimpled gimbals, ignoring the absence of the upper sliver. Her large, light blue eyes seemed not quite focused. This gave them a kind of lovely vacancy reminiscent of Ophelia or some other tragic heroine who had lost her mind, but of course this was an illusion: as Uncle Slater said, she had no mind to lose.

“Well,” Peet said brightly, “here I am, and here you are.”

“Yes,” Prin said, “there’s no doubt about that. And Uncle Slater just went up to his room. But where are Aunt Lallie and Twig and Brady?”

“Aunt Lallie is taking her afternoon siesta. At least she says that’s what she does in her room after lunch, and she always goes upstairs, so I guess it’s true. I saw Twig drifting around a couple of times. And Brady was here a while ago, and then he went around back to hit some golf balls or something, and I’m glad.”

“Why?” asked Prin, knowing perfectly well why.

“Because he kept acting so peculiar, Prin.”

“For instance?” asked Prin unnecessarily, for there was nothing else to do.

“Well, he kept staring and staring at me the way he does. With the most threatening expression. And he sat down, and stood up, and up, and down, and up-and-down till I got most as itchy as he was. What do you suppose can be the matter with Brady?”

“It’s an itchy day. Take my advice, though, Peetie-girl, and don’t let Brady sweet-talk you into a dark corner to explain it.”

“Do you think he might be dangerous?” cried Cousin Peet, two of her attributes bobbing with agitation. “You ought to know, Prin. Your own brother and all.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Prin sighed. “Brady ran away from home when he was fifteen and I was nine. I saw him only once between then and the time he turned up here.”

“Could something be wrong with him, do you suppose?”

“Nothing serious. Just the Peetis fornicatis itch.”

“Well, I hope so.”

“What?” said Prin. “Never mind, Peetie. I think I’ll go on back inside and nibble on another gin and tonic and do some itching of my own.”

Peet nodded as if she understood perfectly. She lowered herself to the blue mattress again with a happy little sigh, and Princess left her. Prin made another drink and went upstairs to her room, having suddenly decided to lie down for a while. Her head was spinning and lying down seemed the sensible preference to falling down, which she kept having the disturbing sensation she was about to do. In her room she kicked off her shoes and sat down on the bed and finished her third gin and tonic. The dizziness unaccountably increased, and she did what she had come up to the bedroom to do: she lay down and closed her eyes. This immediately made her think of Coley Collins, a young man of whom she had recently begun to think itchily.

She was engaged in this pleasant preoccupation when someone knocked on her door and opened it simultaneously. For a horrid moment Prin thought it might be Cousin Twig, against whom privacy could be reasonably assured only by a well-turned key, and she had forgotten to turn it. Her eyes flew open and she jerked her skirt down at the same instant; but then she saw that it was Brother Brady, and Prin murmured, “Thank God,” and shut her eyes again.

Brother Brady, not grasping the nuance of his sister’s piety, was pleased. “Hi, Princess,” he said heartily. “What are you doing home?”

“Lying down, as you see,” said Prin, stretched out like a newly arranged corpse. “And what I’d like to do next, Brady, is drift away with my thoughts into slumberland. So goodbye?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Brother Brady asked, with the virtuous concern of one to whom the phenomenon was of theoretical interest only.

“I got a convenient case of little-girl trouble and Mr. Free said I could go home.”

“Atta sis,” said Brady approvingly. “I don’t see why you waste your time on that crummy job, anyway. It’s so — so—” he groped for le mot juste “—unnecessary.”

“Oh, go away,” murmured Prin.

“You’re an idiot. I wish I had your in with Uncle Slater. Man, would I take him! Here you are, able to get anything you want from him if you’d only try—”

“What I want I already get without trying.”

“You’re a square, do you know that?” said Brother Brady; this time he stalked over and sat down hard on the bed. Prin opened one eye and quickly closed it again. His brief moment of good humor was gone; he had that ugly look again. Most people didn’t see the ugliness, especially women, but Prin could see it even when Brady was being agreeable and charming, and it always gave her a chill. Brother Brady, she was sure, was capable of anything, even murder, and he may have been guilty of that for all she knew — knowing him, after all, so little. Right now, sitting on Prin’s bed, he looked sullen and dangerous, and it meant that he had had some kind of unsettling experience.

“What’s the matter with you?” Prin said. “Has something happened?”

“What makes you think something’s happened?” he growled. “Not a damned thing’s happened.”

“Well, according to what Peet just said—”

Brother Brady’s body beautiful quivered. “What did Peet just say?”

“She said you kept staring at her and acting itchy.”

“How does she expect me to act,” snarled Brady, “when she’s always lying around without any clothes on? That damn Peet is crazy, that’s what she is! She’s the most deceptive female I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“I don’t think she means to be.”

“In my opinion she’s frigid. I’d bet on it,” said Brady excitedly.

“Not with me, brother. You’re surely right, and I don’t have the least doubt you’ve made every effort to prove it. Your own cousin, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“What I can’t understand is why she leads a fellow on,” muttered Brady. “It’s damn confusing.”

“Peet doesn’t lead anyone on. She just likes to go naked.”

“She ought to put some clothes on!”

“Women are showing themselves practically naked in public wherever you look.”

“But does she have to do it in private?” cried Brady. He inhaled his rage and said with formidable quietude, “She better quit is all I’ve got to say. She don’t, she’ll be in for one hell of a surprise one of these days.”

“My advice, Brady,” sighed his sister, “is to start taking cold showers. You might be the surprised one. I can’t give you an authoritative opinion for obvious reasons, but it’s my hunch Peet would turn out to be as exciting a conquest as a cold mashed potato sandwich.”

Kindly and sound as this advice was, Prin could see that Brady was not impressed by it. He lit a cigarette and puffed at it moodily for a while, seeming to be thinking about where to go. To Prin’s relief he finally rose from the bed and left the room. Her head was still spinning, and she thought a nap might help it run down. So she turned over and went to sleep. The nap did in fact stop the spinning, although she felt rather gummy when she awoke — which was, to her surprise, at six o’clock.

It was halfway to seven before she went downstairs. Everyone was in the living room except Mrs. Dolan, who was muttering in the dining room as she set the table, and Uncle Slater, who had not yet made his appearance for a reason still generally unknown. Aunt Lallie, smoking a cigarette in a long onyx holder, was looking prettily regal (if you could ignore her hands) in a severe black gown. Cousin Twig was torturing a tune on the piano with one steel-nailed green-brown finger. Cousin Peet, draped over the sofa, had slipped into skintight red velvet pants and a sheer white silk blouse that suggested with curious effectiveness what she had fully displayed earlier. Brother Brady, slouched tigerishly in a chair, was watching Cousin Peet with an expression at once carnivorous and incredulous.

“Princess, my child,” chirped Aunt Lallie, “where is your Uncle Slater?”

“Search me,” Prin said; and at Cousin Twig’s evil side-glance from the piano she immediately regretted her choice of words. “I thought he’d surely be down by this time.”

“If he’s in the house, child. No one’s seen him since morning. He certainly didn’t show up for lunch.”

“Well, I saw him come home about two o’clock and go upstairs. So he must be in his room, unless he went out again.”

“Uncle Slater this, Uncle Slater that,” said Cousin Twig from the piano. “To hell with Uncle Slater. Why can’t we eat without him?”

“Because it’s his food, and his house,” Prin said. “That’s why. The least we can do is to pay him the courtesy of waiting for him.”

“But Princess,” Aunt Lallie said anxiously, “if he’s in the house, why isn’t he down here? You know how disagreeable Mrs. Dolan becomes if anyone is late to her table.”

“To hell with Mrs. Dolan, too,” said Cousin Twig. He stabbed a sad little B-flat with his claw, and it shrieked in protest. “Anyway, the old shtunk is probably up there sleeping off a toot.”

Prin glared at the back of Cousin Twig’s tall, pale head. She did not think Twig ought to refer to Uncle Slater as a shtunk, not because Uncle Slater hadn’t been one in his time, but because it seemed unfair for an ex-shtunk to be called a shtunk by a practicing one.

“A toot,” frowned Aunt Lallie. “Princess, would you say the condition of your Uncle Slater when he came home at two o’clock justifies Twig’s charge?”

“I only saw him for a few seconds from a distance, Aunt Lallie. But he looked all right to me — maybe a little cheerful — and anyway he didn’t have the least trouble getting up the stairs.”

“That’s not necessarily indicative, child. I’ve known your Uncle Slater to carry a quart of Irish in him without showing it. You know how he is — drinks with both hands the live-long day without a sign and then, whup! down he goes.”

“Well, I’m not very bright or anything like that,” Cousin Peet said, in one of her unexpected exhibitions of intelligence, “but it seems to me that the question of whether Uncle Slater is in his room, drunk or sober, could be settled in a minute by somebody’s going up to see.”

She sat up on the sofa and yawned and stretched. Brother Brady stirred in his chair and muttered something under his breath that no one could hear, which was probably just as well. Aunt Lallie looked at Peet with an expression of surprise and pride.

“Peet darling, that’s clever of you! Prin dear, you’re Slater’s favorite — you’ll run less risk of abuse if he wakes up in a bad humor. Please go upstairs like a good girl and see if he’s in his room.”

“I’ll go with you, if you want me to,” Cousin Twig said suddenly.

“No, thanks,” Prin said. “I don’t want you to.”

She went upstairs to Uncle Slater’s room and knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again. There was still no answer. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, and she pushed softly.

The room was on the dim side, it now being nearly seven o’clock, but Prin saw Uncle Slater immediately — at first glance he appeared to be asleep. But at second glance she noticed a couple of oddities: He was sleeping on his face instead of on his back, and on the floor instead of his bed. Considering the peculiar disposition of his arms and legs, he looked not so much like a man sleeping off a drunk as like a drunk who had had an accident.

It was disturbing, finding Uncle Slater like that, and for a moment Prin stood still in the doorway with a large hot rock in her throat. Her mind continued to function, however, and it told her coldly that Uncle Slater was (A) drunk, or (B) ill, or (C) dead. She tiptoed over to the bed and knelt beside him. It was at once evident that Uncle Slater was neither (A) drunk nor (B) ill, because he was not breathing. That meant he must be (C) dead.

Prin kept kneeling beside her uncle. Her position seemed just right for prayer, so she tried to think a little prayer, but it simply wouldn’t come. Then she tried to cry, with equal lack of success. Uncle Slater was dead, and nothing was going to change that, not the saying of prayers nor the shedding of tears, nor anything. All she could do was go away. So Princess O’Shea left the quiet bedroom on tiptoe, leaving part of herself with Uncle Slater, who looked so all used up on the floor.

The family was still in the living room downstairs, but someone new had been added. Mrs. Dolan was standing there with her club-like forearms jutting out from her prodigious hips. Dinner was getting stony, she was saying, and if anyone thought she was going to wait around half the night to do the dishes they could find themselves another cook, and anyway cooks oughtn’t to have to do dishes. The only thing that kept Mrs. Dolan going was the lure of the TV set in her basement room; everyone knew that the best programs were in the evening, so in Mrs. Dolan’s view any delay was by malice aforethought.

“Well,” sniffed Mrs. Dolan at sight of Prin. “And is himself going to come down for my dinner, or ain’t he?”

Prin said in a voice that she had difficulty recognizing as her own, “No, himself is definitely not coming down for your dinner, Mrs. Dolan.”

“Then the devil take him,” cried Mrs. Dolan, “and the rest of you, too. You can roust your own dinners!” and off she stamped to her own nether region and the television set.

“What did I tell you?” chuckled Cousin Twig. “He’s dead to the world, eh, Prin?”

“That,” said Prin tremulously, “he is.”

“Shut up, Twig,” growled Brother Brady. “Can’t you see something’s wrong? She’s the color of mud. What is it, Prin?”

“Uncle Slater’s dead.”

There was a considerable silence. Everyone seemed to be trying to digest Prin’s statement except Cousin Peet who, while her lips were moistly parted as usual, seemed unable even to swallow it. Cousin Twig swung the short legs hanging from his long shanks around to the room side of the piano bench, and he stared at Prin with a stare that for once had no slaver in it. Brother Brady was frowning preparatory to some powerful action, like striding over to the bar and perhaps drinking a toast to Uncle Slater’s memory. As for little Aunt Lallie, she became so agitated that she actually stopped looking at the wall and gestured at Prin with the smoldering cigarette holder in her big hairy hand.

“Now Prin,” said Aunt Lallie. “It’s in the worst possible taste to make a remark like that. Shame on you!”

“Yes,” snarled Cousin Twig, “there are some things that are just not funny. You know perfectly well I’m depending on Uncle Slater to live forever. So stop making with the dirty jokes.”

“I repeat,” said Prin O’Shea wearily. “Uncle Slater is lying up there dead on the floor of his bedroom, and one of us had better call his doctor to make it official.”

There was another, this time stricken, silence.

“Well,” said Cousin Peet, slithering off the sofa. “Anyone for dinner?”

3

It was Prin, in the end, who called the doctor. It was almost always Prin, in the end, who did the things that needed doing. Uncle Slater’s late wife’s first husband’s family physician was an elderly curmudgeon named Dr. Horace Appleton, and Prin looked up his telephone number in the directory in the hall. Dr. Appleton answered the phone with a kind of yelp, like an incensed terrier, and she told him hurriedly that he must come over at once to see Uncle Slater. It was Dr. Appleton’s opinion, shrilly told, that Uncle Slater could probably wait without serious consequences until tomorrow, at which time he could come to the office. Prin replied that Uncle Slater could wait, all right, but that he couldn’t possibly come to the office, tonight or tomorrow or ever.

“Why can’t he?”

“Because he’s dead.”

“How do you know he’s dead?”

“Because he’s lying on the floor in his room,” Prin said, “and he isn’t breathing.”

“In that case,” Dr. Appleton said, “I’ll come right over.” And he did.

It took him about twenty minutes to get there. In the meantime, Prin went back to the living room and sat quietly with Aunt Lallie and Cousin Twig, who had mixed himself a large dark highball in lieu of solid nourishment and was mumbling obscenities to the memory of his uncle. Then, unexpectedly, Cousin Peet and Brother Brady came back from the dining room, having decided that eating was not something they wanted to do after all, especially since they had to serve themselves in the face of Mrs. Dolan’s defection. Brother Brady headed for the bar.

“Prin,” he scowled, mixing drinks for himself and Peet, “are you absolutely sure Uncle Slater is dead?”

“I suppose an autopsy would establish it beyond question,” said Prin, “but, as a layman, I’m satisfied that he is, yes.”

“I wonder,” said Aunt Lallie to the empty air. “I mean, if the rest of us ought to rely on your judgment, child, in a matter of such importance.”

“Then don’t,” said Prin. “Anyone’s free to go upstairs and form his own judgment.”

“Twig?” said Aunt Lallie. “Brady?”

“Not me, thank you,” said Twig. “I’ve been avoiding dead people all my life. I don’t like dead people.” It was rather like hearing the Giant confide in Jack that he didn’t care for bread made from the bones of Englishmen, Prin thought. “You do it, Brady.”

“Well,” said Brady. Then he brightened. “Sure. I’ll go. If Peet will go with me. What do you say, Peet?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh, no?” said Peet. “Well, I’m not going.” And she took the drink from Brady’s hand and curled up on the sofa again, the velvet of her Capri pants threatening to split. Brady studied them hopefully.

It was apparent to everyone that Uncle Slater, dead or alive, had nothing to do with Peet’s declining Brady’s invitation. Brady, looking sullenly dangerous again, went upstairs alone. He was back in remarkably short order, a little blue around the edges.

“Prin was right,” he said, heading for the bar. “Uncle Slater is completely dead.” He laced his highball powerfully and threw his head back and drank like Thor trying to drain the sea.

“Completely dead?” said Peet. “You mean it’s possible to be incompletely dead?” In Peet’s primitive state of intelligence, she sometimes exercised a disconcerting logic. “I don’t believe you can be incompletely dead.”

“Atta girl, Peet,” her brother Twig sneered. “Any more than you can be slightly pregnant.”

“Please,” Peet said haughtily. “I don’t like people who use risqué language.”

“Yes, Twig,” sniffled Aunt Lallie. Now that Uncle Slater’s veritable decease had been established to her satisfaction, she had her dainty handkerchief in her outsize hand and was punching at her eyes with it. “And your uncle lying up there dead.”

“What am I supposed to do, sob?” snarled her nephew. “It was damn inconsiderate of him to kick off, Aunt Lallie — as if you didn’t know it!”

“Well, it’s true a man Slater’s age ought to have taken better care of himself,” wept Aunt Lallie. “After all, he did have a responsibility to his family.”

“Look,” said Brady. “Dying was his own business. But that will he left — that’s our business.” He added in gloomy afterthought, “Some business!”

“How much am I going to get?” asked Peet with a trace of anxiety.

“Enough to keep you in clothes,” growled Brady, “which, considering how little you need for that purpose, doesn’t comfort me a damn bit.”

“Peet,” said Twig, “do you think you can add five — the five of us — to the seventeen outside O’Sheas? Don’t bother, it’s twenty-two. You heard Uncle Slater. How much of a slice can you expect from a pie cut into twenty-two pieces?”

“That was mean of him,” Peet said angrily.

Aunt Lallie broke off in mid-sniffle. “I just thought. Let’s break the will! It isn’t as if Slater were in his right mind. If he had been, he’d have left his entire estate to me. After all, I’m his sister.”

“I have news for you, Aunt Lallie,” said her nephew Twig with a certain malevolent enjoyment. “I’d rather have one twenty-second of a sane uncle’s estate than nothing of a crazy one’s. So I’m prepared to fight. Right, Brady? You with me?”

“I guess so,” said Brady glumly, “though it would have been a lot simpler if he’d left everything to Prin. Then we could all have stayed on here on the old basis, just as if Uncle Slater hadn’t died at all.”

Prin wondered if that were true, or if she would have thrown them out to shift for themselves. But she supposed that in the end she’d have permitted them to stay, for it was Uncle Slater’s money, and Uncle Slater had observed the family tradition that no O’Shea was expected to work seriously at anything, or to starve as a consequence of not doing so. It would have been a moral obligation. Prin sighed and stirred, ashamed of herself. What was she thinking? She was as bad as the others, speculating over the material considerations while Uncle Slater grew progressively colder and stiffer upstairs, like the dinner he hadn’t been able to come down to eat.

At that moment the doorbell began to ring petulantly. It was automatic for Prin to get up to answer it, since no one else paid the least attention and Mrs. Dolan was in her room deaf to everything but the biff-bang cowboy show she was raptly watching.

The annoyed finger on the bell belonged to Dr. Appleton, who came in carrying a black bag, although what for — under the circumstances — Prin couldn’t imagine. Dr. Appleton looked very much put out, as if Uncle Slater had played the worst trick of all on him. He was at least seventy, but he moved like a young man — or a gnome, Prin thought, for he was short and stocky and quick and sly and his face was full of bristly gray hair.

“Where is Slater, young woman?” Dr. Appleton demanded. He had a voice like a gnome’s, too — high and clear, a piping sort of voice with a snap in it.

“He’s up in his room, Doctor,” said Prin, “as I told you over the phone.”

“So you did,” piped Dr. Appleton nastily, “and it’s awfully queer. Slater’s keeling over like this, I mean. Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Everyone keeps asking me that! Go see for yourself, Dr. Appleton. That’s why I called you. Aunt Lallie and Peet and Twig and my brother Brady are in the living room. Do you want them?”

“Good God, no. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s relatives of dead patients. Who found Slater?”

“I did.”

“Did you touch him?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“The only other one who’s looked at Uncle Slater was my brother, who went upstairs after I came down. And I’m sure Brady didn’t get farther than the doorway. He’s one of those tough, rugged lads who faint at the sight of their own blood.”

“You’d better come along with me.”

Prin dutifully followed Dr. Appleton upstairs to Uncle Slater’s room. Brady had left the door open, and the doctor went briskly in. Prin hesitated; she would much have preferred to stay in the hall. But she supposed Dr. Appleton needed her to answer questions or something, so she followed him into the bedroom. And there was Uncle Slater, lying on the floor exactly as she had left him, which for some reason was rather a shock. Dr. Appleton was just getting down on his knees. He rolled Uncle Slater over, felt the temple where Uncle Slater used to have a pulse, thumbed up Uncle Slater’s eyelids and peered, opened his black bag and took out his stethoscope and listened here and there; finally he got to his feet and stuck the stethoscope in his hip pocket, so that it hung down in a loop under his seat.

“He’s dead, all right.”

“Well,” said Prin. “That’s settled.”

“And,” the doctor went on thoughtfully, “it’s damned odd.”

“Odd?” Prin said. “What’s odd about it, Doctor? People — especially people Uncle Slater’s age — die all the time.”

“Not for no apparent reason.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, Doctor, I’m no doctor and even I know that. His heart stopped.”

“Agreed,” snapped the little old doctor. “I’ve never known a dead man whose heart kept on beating.”

Prin blushed. “What I meant, Dr. Appleton, was that Uncle Slater must have had a heart attack.”

“That,” said Dr. Appleton in a very queer way, “is questionable.”

“But why?” Prin cried, bewildered.

“Because Slater O’Shea has come to my office for regular checkups every six months since he married Millie Quimby. I have a file on him a foot thick, including electrocardiograms. I last examined him no later than a week or ten days ago. He had a heart like a bull and the blood pressure of a young man. There’s never been the slightest indication of a coronary condition, incipient or otherwise.”

“But, but,” said Prin, “couldn’t he have had a heart attack, anyway? Or couldn’t there have been something wrong that you missed?”

“Possible,” said Dr. Appleton frostily, “and no doubt it would be convenient to think so. But I don’t. There wasn’t a thing wrong with your Uncle Slater except a very slight kidney condition from his drinking.”

“But you’ve got to put something down on the death certificate, Doctor. What are you going to do?”

“What I am going to do,” piped the little doctor, “is call the police.”

He motioned her peremptorily to precede him, and Prin did so. She noticed that he removed the key from the room side of the door and moved the little doo-jigger by the knob into the lock position before he shut it. Then he tucked the key away in his vest pocket. Prin frowned. It seemed to her that Dr. Appleton was making a great deal more of Uncle Slater’s death than needed to be made of it. It was her private opinion that Horace Appleton was the kind of doctor who might miss a case of leprosy in a routine check, let alone a leaky valve or a thrombus or something like that. There was nothing to be gained by saying this, however, so she silently went downstairs with him. The family was in conclave, whispering. It immediately became a public hearing as the doughty old physician stalked into the living room.

Little do they know, Prin thought.

“Dr. Appleton,” Aunt Lallie said, addressing a point three feet above his head, “have you examined my brother Slater?”

“I have,” said Dr. Appleton.

“What is your professional opinion?”

“My professional opinion is that he’s dead.”

“Oh, dear,” said Aunt Lallie, as if this was what she had been afraid of all along.

“Did Uncle Slater just die?” asked Peet. “Or did he die of something?”

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Appleton, adding grimly, “yet.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” demanded Twig. “Are you a doctor or aren’t you?”

“I sometimes wonder.”

“What the doctor means,” explained Prin, “is that he won’t be able to tell until there’s an autopsy, so he’s going to call the police.”

“Police!” Brother Brady whirled from the bar as if he already felt the first surge of high voltage. “What do you want to do that for?”

“So he’ll get his name in the papers,” said Twig.

“Maybe me, too,” said his sister, clapping her hands.

“Peet, stop,” said Aunt Lallie. “Doctor, I insist on knowing this very instant what you have in your mind!”

“It’s not so much what I have in my mind,” said the doctor, looking almost as if he were beginning to enjoy himself, “as to what your brother may have in his belly.”

“His belly,” said Brother Brady.

“His belly?” said Cousin Twig.

“His... belly?” echoed Aunt Lallie faintly.

“Please,” said Peet. “Must you use such words?”

“Doctor,” said Prin, looking sick. “Do you mean that Uncle Slater might have died of — of being given something?”

“Might have,” said Dr. Appleton, looking around as if inviting more questions. “Just might have.”

“Ridiculous,” said Brady. He groped for his drink.

“Stupid,” said Twig. “The only thing you’ll find in his belly is bourbon or Irish whisky, or more likely both.”

“Will somebody please tell me what an autopsy is?” asked Peet. “I don’t think I really know.”

“An autopsy,” said Brady, swallowing, “is when they cut somebody open and poke around to see what’s in there.”

“They only do it to dead people,” said Twig, sounding as if he would have felt far happier with a more liberal policy on the part of the authorities.

“How perfectly icky,” said Peet. “I’m against doing a thing like that to Uncle Slater.”

“I’m against it, too,” said Brady quickly. “You, Twig?”

Twig turned a splayed thumb down.

“Well, so am I,” said Aunt Lallie sharply. “As Slater’s next of kin, I definitely will not permit it.”

“Madam,” said little Dr. Appleton, “and ladies and gentlemen, I’m for it; and in this case, I think, none of you will have a damned thing to say about it.”

With which he went out into the hall to the phone. They heard him dial, and then talk, presumably to a policeman. Peet had just said that she didn’t believe she liked Dr. Appleton very much, to which Brady had muttered that he didn’t like Dr. Appleton at all, when the doorbell rang. Everyone looked at Prin. So she went out past Dr. Appleton and opened the front door; she was instantly glad that she was the one who had to do it, for there, across the threshold, stood Coley Collins.

4

Prin did not feel her usual responsible self where Coley Collins was concerned. When she was with him she felt cooperative with, if not dedicated to, his unoriginal designs. This was all the more remarkable because she had been with him, on and off, for only about two weeks — the entire duration of their acquaintanceship. Sometimes, in fairness to herself, she felt she ought to insert in the Cibola City Daily Views a variation of one of those little ads that disclaimed responsibility for someone else’s debts: Miss Princess O’Shea hereby and henceforth will not accept responsibility for any folly she may commit while in the company of Mr. Coley Collins. She did not suppose that such a public announcement of her feelings would exempt her from their consequences, but at least it would be decent warning to the community of how things were between them.

Prin was on the whole a rational young woman. She had tried hard to delve into the possible sources of her curious response to Coley Collins, with a view to coming up with an answer that made sense. She had found herself floundering in the sloughs of “body chemistry” and other such nonexplanatory explanations; and the one hard conclusion she reached — that Coley Collins ought to be someone she could take or leave at will — proved more convincing in theory than in practice. The fact was, she could not leave Coley alone. Since Coley was enjoying the same disease, they had decided to make the best of whatever was ailing them — and the best of it was pretty wonderful. Even the worst of it had its moments.

They had met in the taproom of the Coronado, Cibola City’s only “good” hotel. Nice girls do not appear unaccompanied in hotel taprooms without raising questions about their niceness; however, Princess O’Shea was the sort of nice girl who turned her nice nose up at questions to which she had answers that satisfied her. So it was an inevitable encounter. Because once Prin decided she wanted a daiquiri in the Coronado taproom, she had to meet Coley, Coley being the bartender on duty. They had not met in the Coronado taproom before because Coley had not been the bartender on duty there during Prin’s last solo, having acquired the job in the interim. But on this particular evening there he was, a few minutes past five, dressed in a white mess jacket, the kind that makes almost any young male look like a soldier of fortune who ought to be in Maracaibo or Darjeeling or some place drinking — instead of making — gin slings. Coley was a kind of soldier of fortune, being lost in a way — having knocked about here and there, in the course of which he had acquired odd skills, like bar-keeping, and never having accomplished much; never, indeed, having known what if anything he would like to accomplish. This was a great pity, as Prin came to see it, for Coley had superb equipment for the accomplishment of almost anything, if only he could have made up his mind what it should be.

On this evening, two weeks or so before, Prin had settled her nice little bottom on a stool at the taproom bar — thinking how delicious a cold tart daiquiri was going to taste after her odious afternoon constructing obscene sundaes at the soda counter of Free’s Drug Store — and when she looked up, there Coley was. Nothing was quite the same ever after. He had crisp cropped dark hair and a lean dark disturbing face and dark eyes that always seemed to be laughing, sometimes at and sometimes with, depending on what or whom they were looking at; and now, looking at Prin, it was with, at once, and for good and all.

“Good evening,” Coley said softly. “Your pleasure, Miss?”

“Good evening,” Prin said back, and immediately felt that they had exchanged intimacies. “I believe I’ll have a really frigid daiquiri.”

She watched him as he did things swiftly and expertly. The daiquiri, when she tasted it, met her specifications so perfectly that she felt it only fair to say so.

“This daiquiri is quite superior,” she said.

“A daiquiri, when properly made, merits praise indeed,” he said, leaning over the bar. He had a dark sort of voice that went with his hair and skin and eyes, and it made Prin want to wriggle all over. “It is, in fact, a drinker’s drink, one might say. I have never been able to grasp the greater popularity of, for example, the martini, even in our supposedly cultivated circles. Are you aware that the late Ernest Hemingway drank daiquiris by the gallon? Not all at once, of course.”

Prin was enchanted. “Perhaps that was because he lived in Cuba. A rum country.” She waited for this delightful young bartender to laugh appreciatively at her play on words; but he did not, and she felt somehow that it had been unworthy of her. “I mean, environment and all that.”

“I doubt it,” said Coley indulgently, and she knew he had forgiven her momentary lapse from good taste. It made her feel better. “I consider it much likelier that it was the esthetic instinct. In serious matters like the gustative arts, writers — serious writers, of course — tend to be connoisseurs.”

“You mean that all serious writers drink daiquiris?”

“Well, no, they don’t. I admit it’s an egregious fallacy in my syllogism. Some drink whisky, some gin, some vodka — I’ve heard that the late Bernard Shaw drank carrot juice or some such incredible fluid.”

“Do you always use words like gustative and egregious and syllogism?” Prin said. “If you do, I shan’t be able to talk to you. I’m almost over my depth already.”

“I’m only showing off.” Oh, that grin. “It’s the grown-up substitute for boyhood handsprings when a pretty girl is watching. Please go on talking with me. I promise to use only one-syllable words.”

“It’s not necessary to go to extremes,” Prin retorted, a little nettled, but pleased at the same time by the adjective he had used before the word girl. “Anyway, there are too many one-syllable words that are not quite gentil, if you know what I mean.”

“I do indeed,” said Coley. “I’ll keep everything proper, at least for the nonce. Which reminds me. We haven’t been properly introduced.”

“Since when does propriety require a bartender to be introduced to a customer?” Good grief, Prin thought, I’m being arch.

“Since right now. My name is Coley Collins.”

“I’m Princess O’Shea, and if you say ‘Hello, Your Highness,’ I’ll get off this stool and you’ll never see me again.”

“Hello, Prin.”

“You know my nickname!” Prin said.

“Then you are related to Mr. Slater O’Shea. He’s spoken to me about you in glowing terms. I see now that he didn’t glow brightly enough.”

“If you’ve met Uncle Slater professionally,” said Prin, “you must know he can glow like the working end of a Titan taking off from its pad. Yes, I’m Uncle Slater’s niece. We all live with him — me, Aunt Lallie, my cousins Twig and Peet, and my brother Brady. We’re freeloading, although I’m not doing quite so much of it as the others.”

“Damn it to hell!” said Coley Collins; and then he said, “Don’t go, please. I have to get rid of this goddam customer.”

He sprang away, mixed a drink like Merlin, and was back practically before Prin could think of how to prolong the conversation.

“Where were we?” murmured Coley. “Oh, yes. Your Uncle Slater. Very fine man. Exquisite taste. Bourbon chiefly, and when he does seek contrast, it’s the best Irish whisky, which I definitely approve. He takes his bourbon sometimes straight, sometimes with a dash of water, sometimes — when he feels sentimental — with vermouth and a cherry.”

“Basically, though, with Uncle Slater it’s the whisky that counts.”

“Touché. Your uncle possesses an infallible sense of the intrinsic. But now that we’ve been properly introduced, Miss O’Shea — Princess — Prin — is it permissible to tell you that you are far and away the most gorgeous thing in Coronado County?”

“Of course, although in the interests of record-straightening is it permissible for the most gorgeous thing in Coronado County to point out that a mere minute ago she was a mere pretty girl? It seems to me I’ve been promoted awfully fast, Mr. Collins.”

“Coley — quid pro quo, you know. Fast promoting is one of my numerous talents. But this is not a phony. It is my intention, hereby declared, to tell you over and over again, with gestures, if possible.”

“You’ve progressed a long way in a short time, haven’t you, Mr. Collins? — Coley?”

“I’m really shy,” Coley confided. “But this has been a remarkable experience for me already. Something is flowing between us besides rum — don’t you feel it?”

“I’m beginning to feel the rum,” said Prin evasively.

“After one daiquiri? I like that. May I ask you a personal question?”

“Please don’t.”

“Have you ever considered marriage?”

“Why? Have you ever considered proposing it?”

A customer four stools removed chose that moment to request, in a loud voice, the drawing of one beer. Prin thought it unsporting of him. Apparently Coley thought so, too, because he slithered up to the beer tap like an aroused snake and drew the fastest beer in the Coronado taproom’s history. Alas, he found an accumulation of other services due, and he set about fulfilling them rather sullenly. Meanwhile, Prin sipped the dregs of her perfect daiquiri, feeling that the day had suddenly turned perfect, too. Or at least it was the perfect ending to a day that had been, if not bad, certainly not good, either, since it had consisted largely in the dispensing of ice cream and sodas and egg salad sandwiches and sundries to Cibola City gluttons, young and old, for no reason that now seemed adequate.

The lights in the taproom soothed softly, strings were making a sweet shimmer in the juke box, behind her a few admirable people, male and female, were emitting amorous little noises at the tables, and Prin was warm, happy, elated and fiercely expectant all at once — as an effect of all this background, and no doubt of the rum, and of Coley Collins, too.

She watched his lean figure out of the corner of her eye as he executed his duties, admiring the deftness of his swift, fine hands and the economy of his manipulations, and she wondered the unworthy wonder: Why is such a plainly superior young male no more than a bartender? — as if being a bartender did not call for superiority in all sorts of departments. Well, perhaps he was being a bartender en route to being something more glamorous. This Prin thought she might reserve for later exploration, at the time she was exploring Mr. Coley Collins’s talent for gestures.

But here he was again, almost skidding in his haste to return to her.

“Will you have another daiquiri?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t,” said Prin.

“Ah,” said Coley, and he made her another daiquiri. This one she decided to sip cautiously.

“Very good,” she said. “You are an excellent bartender.”

“All right,” he said, leaning far, far over the bar. “Then marry me.”

“If that’s your standard opening,” said Prin, “what do you do for a finish?”

“I’m not kidding,” Coley Collins said intensely. “Marry me. Tomorrow. Tonight. Right now! Will you?”

“Do you think we know each other well enough? Marry in haste and repent at leisure, you know.”

“You read the wrong authors. Ben Franklin pointed out that a lot of people who marry at leisure repent in haste, and he was a pretty wise old owl. What do you say?”

“I haven’t had much experience repenting,” said Prin, “or marrying either, for that matter. This is a marvelous daiquiri. However, I think it’s just a wee bit too marvelous.” She opened her purse. “How much do I owe you?”

“Owe me! My God!” he said in horror. “Please. Can’t you keep drinking my daiquiris till midnight, when the bar closes and I’m free? Oh, no, not again!” he groaned. “Don’t go way yet. Promise me you won’t go way till I’m through with these swilling swine?” And off he sped, like a harassed Mercury.

Prin was feeling warm. That kidding “I’m-not-kidding” part about marrying and all, of course that was the stale old line, but... then why did it seem to have a just-made taste, like freshly baked bread? And Prin was sure that the warmth she was feeling under her clothes was not entirely the result of the rum.

“Do you have to go?” He was back, a little out of breath.

“Yes.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you tend bar every day?”

“Every other day, from five to midnight. Sometimes I take the lunch shift, too.”

“I’m disappointed in you,” Prin said coldly. She felt cold, too. “Why ask me if I’ll be here tomorrow when you won’t be? You’re pulling my leg.”

“Oh, no,” Coley Collins said urgently. “I will be here tomorrow, because the fellow whose turn it is has to be late for some reason and I’m spelling him.” The coldness melted out of Prin and slunk off. He was sincere. If any proof were needed, her leg-pulling phrase had not evoked from him the traditional response. “I’ll be free at six, and you’ll be here, and maybe something will come of it.”

“You mean, you’re asking me for a date?”

“Yes! Yes?”

“I’ll see,” said Prin with her most dazzling smile, and wriggled her little bottom off the bar stool, paid for her two drinks over his manly protests, and left.

All the way home, through the diminishing light, Prin warmed herself by the little fire the young man had kindled in the Coronado taproom. The air seemed remarkably soft, the scents and sounds of the summer evening remarkably sweet — softer and sweeter than summer air and scents and sounds had ever been in the world before.

Prin wondered if it would be good feminine policy to go to the Coronado tomorrow directly from work, as shortly after five as possible. It would give her an entire extra hour with Coley. Of course, the bar would be between them — a strong argument in favor of the move, since it would put the goodies he apparently found so desirable within reach and yet untouchable. But then Prin decided that this might make things a little difficult for her afterwards. It would be wiser to arrive on the dot of six, when he might be wondering whether she was coming after all.

So the next night she came on the dot of six and found a fuming young bartender who, at the sight of her, ripped off his bartender’s mess jacket, disappeared through a door and was back with the speed of Superman in a neat if slightly threadbare sports coat in which he looked simply black-browed-divine.

Things were a little strained at first. But when Coley stopped fuming they were glorious — and they kept getting more so. Altogether, from first to last, it was an exceptional experience. Nothing happened that had not happened numberless times on any night anyone might designate, summer, fall, winter or spring; but the difference was — and vive la différence! — on any night anyone might designate it had happened to other people.

It was only ten o’clock when Coley escorted her to Uncle Slater’s front steps; because it was only ten o’clock and a velvety night with a crystal of moon showing, they sat down on the steps and talked. Coley talked with gestures, proving that he had not exaggerated his talent one bit.

It came out between gestures that Coley, besides being a bartender every other night at the Hotel Coronado taproom, was a full-time student at Cibola City College, in the School of Business Administration.

“What are you studying?” asked Prin, secretly relieved, although she really had nothing against bartenders.

“Embezzlement,” Coley said sincerely.

“I beg pardon?”

“They’re devious — they call it accounting. You know, you keep financial records and stuff for business firms. The opportunities in this field, as I see it, are simply staggering.”

“Yes?” said Prin doubtfully. She had nothing against accountants, either, but she had committed herself to thinking of Coley Collins in terms of vagabond adventure, and it was hard to fit accountancy into the picaresque life. “I suppose they are.”

Coley’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “You bet they are! What I have in mind is to work myself into some big firm in a position of trust and then divert a horse-choking bankroll into my own pocket and take off. This is all in the future, of course — I’m hardly out of double entries — but you’ll have to be prepared when the time comes to move on a moment’s notice. We’d better go separately, I think. We can meet at the Cannibal Bar in the Bum-Bum in Acapulco.”

That was better, much better; it really topped the evening off.

In their next ten meetings Coley changed their rendezvous ten times. The one Prin liked best was his last choice.

“Papeete’s out,” Coley said positively. “It’s one of the first places they’d come looking for me. You know what, sweet Princess?”

“What?” Prin had mumbled, for they were conversing with their lips in juxtaposition at Coley’s suggestion.

“We’ll meet in the last place they’ll think of looking.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the Coronado taproom.”

That was the way things stood when Uncle Slater took the joy out of living by dying.

5

So there across the threshold stood Coley Collins; and Prin felt instantly better. With Coley there, everything that had looked so much like being wrong would now be surely right.

“Coley! Darling!” Prin cried. “You’ll never know how glad I am to see you.”

“Why not?” said Coley, coming in and shutting the door. “A girl is supposed to be glad to see the man she loves, especially when she has a date with him.”

“Oh, my gosh,” wailed Prin. “I completely forgot you were coming tonight.”

“If so,” said Coley stiffishly, “it would have been more ladylike not to mention it.”

“Oh, Coley, I’m sorry. But when you hear what’s happened, I’m sure you’ll forgive me.”

By this time Dr. Appleton, who had lingered over the phone, had gone back into the living room, glancing suspiciously at Coley on the way. The moment he was out of sight Coley seized Prin and kissed her all over her face — eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, chin — and he was heading for her neck when Prin whispered, “Coley. Don’t. I mean — don’t you want to know what’s happened?”

“All right,” said Coley sulkily. “What?”

“Uncle Slater is dead.”

Coley stood quietly, his head cocked as if he were repeating to himself what Prin had just said. “Did you say Mr. O’Shea is dead?”

“Oh, Coley. I was the one who found him.” And she told him all about Slater O’Shea’s return home at two o’clock, and the rest of it.

“You poor, poor kid,” muttered Coley. “Mr. O’Shea dead... Somehow, I assumed he would be around the Coronado taproom slugging it down to age eighty, at least.”

“We all did. The shock is bad enough, but Dr. Appleton’s making things worse.”

“From all I hear about Dr. Appleton behind my bar, he’s been making things worse in this town for years, especially the life expectancy of his patients. Though I can’t see how he could do much harm to a dead man.”

“No, but he can make a lot of trouble for the rest of us, and he seems determined to do it. He claims there was nothing wrong with Uncle Slater to cause him to die so suddenly. Dr. Appleton is insisting on an autopsy.”

“He can’t get an autopsy done without the consent of the next of kin.”

“He’s making a case out of it, Coley. He just called the police.”

Coley whistled soundlessly. “You mean to tell me old Appleton actually suspects that somebody gave your uncle a nudge?”

“He didn’t say so in so many words, but he certainly can’t think Uncle Slater committed suicide. Nobody who knew Uncle Slater could think that. Besides, he had no reason.”

“Hmm,” said Coley, frowning. He looked around and lowered his voice. “You say you found the body. How did you happen to do that?”

“Mrs. Dolan insists on the family eating dinner promptly, and it was ready, so I went upstairs to see why Uncle Slater hadn’t come down, and there he was, lying dead on the floor.”

“I wonder why Appleton thinks he may have been nudged. Was there anything to indicate it?”

“Not that I could see. But then I’ve never seen a dead person before, so I wouldn’t know. Maybe it’s the way Uncle Slater looked, or something. He looked awful.”

Coley was silent again. Then he said, “Prin. The flics won’t be here for a while yet, if I know Cibola City. Let’s slip upstairs while they’re all in the other room. I’d like to take a look at the scene of the crime.”

Prin whispered, “Coley, no!”

“Look,” Coley said incisively. “Maybe Dr. Appleton has more to go on than he’s telling. If it should turn out that your Uncle Slater is full of rat poison or something, the heat’s going to be turned on the family. That includes you, and anything that threatens you threatens me. Come on, we’re wasting precious time.”

“I don’t know, I...” Prin stopped miserably. Then she said, “Anyway, Dr. Appleton locked the door after he examined Uncle Slater. And he put the key in his pocket.”

“Key to a bedroom door? Then it’s probably one of those ordinary big keys that will unlock any bedroom door. Is it?”

“Well, yes—”

“Is there another key like it in the house?”

“My bedroom door has one.”

“Then let’s get it, Prin. I’m not going to leave you to the mercy of a senile sawbones and some village idiots in blue uniforms!”

Put this way, the proposal became irresistible. So Prin led the way swiftly and softly upstairs and went for her bedroom door key while Coley waited outside Uncle Slater’s door intently listening, as if he expected to hear Uncle Slater moving around inside. There was something darkly thrilling about the whole project.

Prin rejoined him on tiptoe, and Coley slipped her key into the lock and turned it — rather noisily, Prin thought — and the thingumajig inside snicked back. Coley opened the door and there was something darkly thrilling in Uncle Slater’s room, too. For the room itself was dark by this time, and Prin could not see a thing, anything at all, not even Coley, after she shut the door, which was thrilling enough for anybody.

Prin set her back against the door, telling herself that this was the kind of darkly thrilling experience she could live very nicely without. She had to fight her breath to keep it from whooshing. She could hear Coley breathing rather gustily himself a step or two away, and all of a sudden it was a matter of life or death to turn on the light. The trouble was, Prin could not remember exactly where the light switch was, and this was ridiculous. It was a little mercury switch beside the door that made no sound when it was moved, but whether it was on the left side or the right side of the door was blotted out. Then she jumped. But it was only Coley, whispering sharply.

“Damn it, Prin, will you kindly turn on the light?”

“Damn it, Coley,” Prin whispered back, “give me time to remember where the switch is!”

She had no sooner said this than she remembered: it was on the right side. She felt for it and found it and the light came on. Coley was standing there with his back to her, and he seemed to be listening to something again, although there was nothing to hear but the sound of their breathing, which was oddly fainter in the light than it had been in the dark. Uncle Slater was still lying on the floor. Coley went over and looked down at him with concentration, still listening to silence. After a while he scratched his head.

“You’re right,” he said. “No question about it. Your Uncle Slater’s dead.”

“Of course he’s dead,” Prin said. “There’s no sense wasting time investigating that.”

“Well, I couldn’t quite believe it in spite of all the testimony to the contrary. According to what Mr. O’Shea told me, there weren’t many sensations he hadn’t gone after at one time or another, but I’d have laid odds that dying was one he’d have postponed indefinitely. It’s simply out of character.”

“Coley, if you want my advice, you’d better look around fast and see what there is to see before they find us here — and you know who ‘they’ are.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much to see,” Coley said keenly. “Nothing appears to be out of order except your uncle.”

He began to move around the room, not touching anything. He moved and peered and nosed with the same beautiful precision and economy with which he mixed cocktails. It exhilarated Prin just to watch him.

It required only a few minutes for Coley to circumambulate the room, still looking like a master-detective undaunted by temporary failure. He paused at Uncle Slater’s bedside table and studied it enigmatically. On it stood a clock, a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a glass. Prin could see nothing out of the ordinary in these items, but Coley appeared to find them of peculiar interest, for he said, “Ah!” and stood looking at them as if the case were solved.

“Yes?” Prin whispered tensely.

Coley turned to her. “And no,” he said. “It’s really quite elementary. Appleton is a senile ass making something out of nothing, probably to cover up his incompetence in letting Mr. O’Shea die of something that could have been diagnosed by any good veterinarian. However, if Uncle Slater was dosed with something deadly, it appears to me quite clear that the dose was administered in this bottle of bonded bourbon.”

“That may be true,” Prin said, “but I don’t see what’s so clear about it.”

“My dear child,” said Coley with a smile. “You overlook your late uncle’s chronic thirst. The bourbon is something he would have been certain to indulge in generously at the first opportunity on his return home this afternoon. However, I strongly doubt that there was any poisoning at all. He drank the whisky, and lay down for a nap, and simply died of something old Appleton didn’t know he had.”

Prin regarded him adoringly. But then her heart jumped, because Coley suddenly raised his hand and cocked his head.

“Do you hear anything?” he whispered.

She listened and shook her head.

“Open the door and have a quick look.”

She opened the door cautiously and stuck her head into the hall. The hall was empty. She withdrew her head, closed the door and gave a sudden jump and gasp.

“Damn it, Coley,” Prin said, “did you have to slip up behind me like a ghost the minute my back was turned? You almost scared the panties off me.”

Coley moved closer. He moved so close that Prin found herself backed against the door. “Anybody out there?” His eyes were glittering.

“Coley! What’s the matter with you? Why are you acting so queer suddenly...?”

“Who’s acting queer?” Coley muttered menacingly. “I just wanted to be sure no one was coming so our investigation shouldn’t be a total loss. Shall we therefore indulge in a few gestures of affection before going downstairs?”

He began at once to activate his suggestion. Even while Prin collaborated, she felt uneasy. The gestures of affection were no more than good taste demanded in the presence of a third party, especially one who was dead, but even so... Besides, it was hard not to feel glad-happy-joyous under the influence of Coley’s gestures, and this tended to get in the way of Prin’s sad feelings about Uncle Slater. The most disturbing thought of all was that Uncle Slater in his time had himself been no mean hand at gestures of affection; and their gesticulating interchange in his presence seemed rather like rubbing it in.

All these thoughts had the effect of taking the fun out of everything, so Prin said, “Coley. Darling. Coley. Don’t you think we’d better go downstairs?”

Coley, who was in the middle of a particularly affectionate gesture, said, “No, I don’t.”

“But dearest, someone’s sure to miss us soon, if not already... Cole... ey... and there’s the... police-and-besides-it-doesn’t-seem-right-to-do-what-we’re-doing-with-Uncle-Slater-lying-here...”

“Uncle Slater doesn’t mind. He wouldn’t even if he could.”

“Well, I do,” Prin said a little crossly, “and it prevents my giving you my full attention. So if you please...”

“Oh, hell, all right.”

Coley released her sulkily, switched off the light and opened the door. The timing was uncanny: if he had not opened the door in that instant, it would have been opened from the other side in the next, for there in the hall, one aged hand in the act of reaching for the knob, stood Dr. Horace Appleton. The old physician looked so fiercely fiery that Prin went weak. But then she saw from Coley’s composure that her soldier of fortune had the situation perfectly in hand, and felt immediately better. It was one of Coley Collins’s most endearing virtues, this ability to make her feel immediately better in the worst circumstances.

“What in the ding-dang devil you two up to?” screamed Dr. Appleton.

“Dr. Appleton, I presume?” said Coley coolly.

“What? Yes! What you been doing in this room?”

“What we have been doing in this room, Doctor,” replied Coley, “is looking around.”

“Ha!” said Dr. Appleton. “The police will be interested to hear that!”

“The implications in your statement, not to mention the tone in which you uttered it, sir,” said Coley frostily, “come dangerously close to slander. You’re taking far too much upon yourself, my dear doctor. Have a care.”

Dr. Appleton began looking apoplectic and seemed about to join Slater O’Shea, wherever Slater O’Shea was. “Unlawful entry,” he spluttered. “Destruction of evidence on the scene of a crime—”

“Entering a room in a house where one is a resident or guest hardly constitutes unlawful entry,” said Coley, at absolute zero now. “Plus we have destroyed nothing, because we have touched nothing. And may I point out, sir, that so far this room is merely the scene of a death? That a crime has been adduced only by you?”

Dr. Appleton made a heroic effort to remain in the realm of the quick. He slowly regained his natural color, which was pink, not purple.

“I am the doctor on this case,” he said, “and I have acted in all ways within my competence. Now! Why were you in this room after I locked it? The truth! You may tell me or the police, as you choose.”

“As I see it,” Coley said, “it’s a poor choice either way, and nothing constructive is likely to come of it.”

This time Dr. Appleton contracted asthma. He tried to say something, but nothing came out except a kind of shrill whinny that, without being intelligible, nevertheless contrived to sound profane. Coley, seeing that he had achieved a tactical advantage, remorselessly pressed it.

“You have no one to censure but yourself, Dr. Appleton,” he said evenly, “if I have felt compelled to conduct a preliminary investigation of the scene in defense of this defenseless young woman, whose very liberty may be threatened by your sly folly. It is my conviction, sir, that you are yelling copper in order to cover the tracks of your own professional incompetence. If I am in error, I tender you my apology in advance. In either case, the police will decide when they get here — which, unless my ears deceive me, is an event that is taking place right now.”

And so it was. They were out on the veranda ringing the bell, and by the time old Appleton and Coley and Prin got downstairs they were inside the house, all two of them.

6

The pair constituted precisely half of Cibola City’s plainclothes force. The one in charge was very tall and very lean, with squared-off shoulders and a square-jawed head that he kept cocking, first on one side and then on the other. This gave him a disconcerting appearance of continuous skepticism. As Prin learned later, his name was Sherm Grundy, his rank was lieutenant, and he was reputed to be as sour-souled as a stoat. Somehow, Prin doubted it.

At that moment, having just been admitted by Twig, Lieutenant Grundy looked as if he thought he were being made the victim of an impractical joke.

“What are you made up for?” Prin heard Lieutenant Grundy demand of Twig as she and Coley and Dr. Appleton came down the stairs. “Halloween?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Twig stiffly.

“Skip it. What’s your name?”

“Twig O’Shea. Mr. Slater O’Shea’s nephew.”

“Well, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“That’s what I thought!”

“I mean,” said Cousin Twig, “nothing is wrong in the lawful sense of the word. Our Uncle Slater has died in his room today, and that old fool Appleton insists on making a federal case out of it.”

“We’ll see who’s a fool,” shrilled Dr. Appleton, coming up on Twig from the rear and making him jump a foot. “It’s my professional opinion, Lieutenant Grundy, that there’s something very funny here, and I don’t mean funny. I might add that everything I’ve seen and heard since my arrival has only confirmed my suspicions.”

“Whoa, Doc, let’s take one thing at a time,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “Slater O’Shea is dead. Two-fisted drinkers like Slater O’Shea lead a risky life. They die all the time.”

“Damn it, you don’t need to tell me about two-fisted drinkers,” cried Dr. Appleton, “I know more about confirmed crocks than the rest of you put together! But they don’t die all the time, or any time except their allotted time, when they’ve got the constitution of a Slater O’Shea. Slater O’Shea is dead, all right, but not from drinking. Alcohol, anyway.”

“You mean—?”

“Certainly I mean! By God, do I have to spell out everything I say?”

“Not so fast,” said Grundy. “First things first. O’Shea is dead, you say. Now he died from either natural causes or unnatural causes, right? Right. So the first thing we have to do is find out which it is.”

“Exactly my point,” said the old doctor vigorously. “That’s why I called you in. I don’t want to tell you your business, Lieutenant, but I suggest you begin with these two here.”

The lieutenant looked around suspiciously. “Which two?”

Dr. Appleton stabbed his bony forefinger first at Coley Collins and then at Princess O’Shea. “I had locked the door of the death room. I pocketed the key. This precious pair sneaked upstairs while I was in the living room with the others and broke into the locked room. I caught them sneaking out a moment before you arrived.”

Lieutenant Grundy possessed a very snaky eye, and Prin felt herself immediately look guilty. “What’s your name?” he asked her softly.

“Princess O’Shea. Uncle Slater’s niece,” said Prin. “And I live here, which is more than Dr. Appleton does, though he acts as if he owns the deed to the place.”

“Never mind that,” said Grundy, directing his reptilian gaze upon Coley. “And who are you?”

“My name is Coley Collins,” said Coley with a little bow.

“And do you live here, too?”

“No,” began Prin, “but you see—”

“I’ll handle this, my dear,” said Coley. “No, Lieutenant, I do not have the good fortune to be entitled to claim this as my residence. However, Miss O’Shea and I have an understanding that, while not yet formalized, will soon culminate in a legal relationship, if I make myself clear—”

“If you’re going to marry the girl, why don’t you just say so?” snapped Grundy. “Anyway, is Dr. Appleton’s charge true?”

“It is not,” said Prin, snapping back, snake eye or no snake eye. “To charge that we broke into Uncle Slater’s room is a gross exaggeration. I’ll change that. It’s a damn lie. I got the key from my own bedroom door and we unlocked Uncle Slater’s door with that.”

“Point two,” said Coley. “We were not — I repeat — not sneaking. We simply went up there and went in and came out again. If you ask me, Dr. Appleton requires the immediate services of a geriatrician.”

“What’s that?” demanded the old doctor, who had been following the conversation between alternate attacks of apoplexy and asthma.

“You see?” said Coley sympathetically. “The old gentleman is so senile he can’t even remember a simple medical term. I doubt that anything he says can be relied on.”

“However you got into that room,” screamed Dr. Appleton, dancing a little, “and regardless of whether you were sneaking or walking on your hands, the fact is you two had no business going in there when I locked the door and told you — you, Miss O’Shea — that no one was to go in there and you knew I was calling the police but you went in anyway you and this young maniac and what I want to know is why why why!”

“Take it easy, old boy, or we’ll have to call a doctor for you,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “Just the same, the doc’s got a point. What were you doing in that room?”

“Prin,” said Coley, holding up his hand with dignity. “Allow me, since it was my idea entirely. Why, Lieutenant, this poor old fellow was making the wildest kind of accusations. Since my fiancée’s reputation, not to mention her safety from harassment, was vitally involved, I deemed it necessary to learn as much about the actual situation as I could while I still had freedom of movement.”

“We both did,” added Prin, and she clamped an armlock on Coley. “And don’t let him tell you different, Lieutenant.”

“I have no intention of interfering with Mr. Collins’s or your exercise of free speech,” replied Grundy, who seemed affected at last by the prevailing semantic elegance. “Inasmuch as you’ve both just admitted the doc’s charges are true. It will look even worse for you two if we find that he’s also right in suspecting that Slater O’Shea did not die of natural causes.”

“Yes,” piped Dr. Appleton, still doing his little dance. “And an autopsy will prove me right!”

Cousin Twig, who had been edging stealthily out of the line of fire, started with violence at the word “autopsy.” He coughed just a little and advanced a half step. “Excuse me,” Twig said. “We probably have never adequately expressed our appreciation for your unselfish devotion to the professional care of Uncle Slater, Dr. Appleton, but you have my word — speaking for our entire little family — that we are grateful, sir, grateful beyond words, which is why we never expressed it. What I mean is—”

“What do you mean?” growled Lieutenant Grundy, who seemed to have developed a dislike for Twig, not a difficult thing to do. And the truth was, his fawning speech to Dr. Appleton sounded like one great sneer, an unfortunate effect which Twig had not merely not intended but was wholly unaware of.

“What I mean,” said Twig hurriedly, “is that we wouldn’t hurt Dr. Appleton for anything in the world, in view of our great debt to him—”

“Which reminds me,” said Dr. Appleton nastily. “Slater didn’t pay my last two bills.”

“I mean,” continued Twig, his voice rising — here it comes, thought Prin; Twig can never keep his true feelings under cover for very long — “I mean, hurt Dr. Appleton or not hurt Dr. Appleton, to hell with this autopsy business! The answer is no! No autopsy! We forbid it!”

“So that’s it,” said Lieutenant Grundy, and Prin could have sworn she heard his rattles. “Well, let me tell you something, bud. If we find evidence of homicide, or even the suspicion of evidence of homicide, that uncle of yours is going to find himself on an autopsy table whether you forbid it or not!”

“Speaking purely in the spirit of science, Lieutenant,” said Coley, “I am all for it. How else can we prove that this once reasonably functioning disciple of Aesculapius is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf?”

“That’s about it,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “I’ve hacked around this nuthouse long enough. Now I operate! You filberts go on in there and wait. Boatner, you come along with me.”

Prin was startled to hear this strange name tossed suddenly into the conversation; but then she saw that the lieutenant was addressing the other plainclothes-man. Since entering the house with Grundy he had held up the lace-curtained front door, saying nothing and doing nothing — almost, as it were, being nothing. Prin could never afterward recall him in any way — as a face, for example, or as a voice, or as an influence on events to even a micrometric degree. If Boatner was important to Grundy, Grundy concealed it with cunning. Prin never saw him look at Boatner, even when speaking to him; and soon no one else looked at him, either.

Now he followed Grundy up the stairs, and Dr. Appleton sank into a hall chair, wearily livid. Prin, Coley and Twig went into the living room, where Aunt Lallie, Peet and Brady were pretending to be mice with a cat loose on the premises.

Aunt Lallie did not approve of Coley Collins (“on principal,” as Prin had told him, “since you don’t pay dividends”), and her reception of him now was not entirely cordial.

“Oh, it’s you again,” said Aunt Lallie. “Why are you here, and when did you come?”

“Your niece Princess is my reason, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley with proper respect, “and my arrival time was about a half hour ago.”

“A half hour?” Aunt Lallie’s tone suggested that she had slipped with no sweat into the head-of-the-family niche so unexpectedly vacated by Uncle Slater. “Where have you been, young man? What have you been doing to my niece?”

“‘With’ would be the more appropriate preposition,” said Prin quickly, before Coley could answer. “We’ve been in the hall closet making love.”

“The hall closet?” frowned Cousin Peet. “Isn’t that rather small for things like that?”

“Not if you’re talented,” said Prin.

“You’re being facetious, of course,” said Aunt Lallie coldly, “and showing extremely poor taste, with your Uncle Slater lying upstairs dead and the house full of police. That was the police you admitted, Twig, wasn’t it?”

“You know damn well it was,” replied her nephew. “Two detectives named Grundy and Boatner. They’ve gone upstairs for a look at Uncle Slater. Incidentally, that’s where Prin and this Collins character have been, not any hall closet. Old Appleton caught them sneaking out of Uncle Slater’s room and told Lieutenant Grundy about it.”

“Prin!” said Aunt Lallie. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Prin tiredly.

“But why? Aren’t we in enough trouble without you and this — this bartender making matters worse?”

“Don’t blame your niece, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley. “It was my idea, and bartending is only a trivial avocation—”

“Your idea!” frowned Aunt Lallie. “And what business was it of yours, pray, to barge in where you are not wanted?”

“My turn,” said Prin to Coley. “Why, Aunt Lallie, Coley didn’t barge in on anyone but Uncle Slater, who couldn’t have cared less. As for Coley’s not being wanted here, I want him, and I’ll remind you that this is my home as well as yours. Also, I think we’d better stop bickering and start remembering that Dr. Appleton has practically accused one of us of murdering Uncle Slater. And if he gets that lieutenant to agreeing with him—”

“But that’s so silly. Why would one of us wish to murder poor Slater?”

“Exactly, exactly,” said Brother Brady nervously. “Uncle Slater was the patron saint of freeloaders. None of us with a brain cell in his or her head would have knocked him off.”

“Brady, you have a crude and disgusting manner of expressing yourself, do you know that?” said Aunt Lallie. “And anyway, what do you mean by that remark?”

“If I may interpret, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley, “your nephew is not sure that everyone here measures up to his specification.”

“Specification,” said Peet. “What does he mean by specification?”

“His specification that no one with a brain,” explained Twig, “would have dreamed of murdering Uncle Slater.”

“Is that what you meant, Brady?” demanded Peet. “That I’m stupid?”

“It’s all right, Peet,” muttered Brady. “I don’t think I could stand it if you added intelligence to your other equipment. You’d be a bigger menace than the H-bomb.”

“Why, Brady,” said Peet, mollified. “What a nice thing to say.”

“Peet darling, why don’t you change your position a little?” suggested Prin. “You’re disturbing Brady. And I’m not sure he’s the only one.”

Peet, startled, lifted her right knee off her left and switched legs. This accomplished nothing but an inversion of the view, as in a mirror; and Coley, who had glanced guiltily away at Prin’s last sentence, glanced guiltily back. Brady, glowering, repaired to the bar just as Lieutenant Grundy marched in, followed by Dr. Appleton and the silent Boatner.

The lieutenant was carrying a brown bottle by the very tip of its neck. It was the same half-empty bottle of bonded bourbon, Prin was sure, that she had seen upstairs on Uncle Slater’s bedside table. Detective Boatner — Prin took note of this phenomenon quite without reference to him personally — had Uncle Slater’s glass, also from the night table, balanced on one virtually invisible palm.

“So there you are,” said Aunt Lallie huffily. “You, the tall one with the pickleface. Would you be so good as to explain why you have entered my house and tramped all over it without permission? According to the TV shows, you should have produced a warrant or something. Well?”

Grundy seemed a little thrown. “Madam,” he said, “I came here to look into the allegedly suspicious circumstances of a man’s death at the request of the deceased’s physician. For that no warrant is necessary.”

“Yes!” shouted Dr. Appleton.

“In the second place, Madam, it’s my understanding that this is not your house but the deceased’s house—”

“Point of order, Lieutenant,” said Twig. “Aunt Lallie is not a madam but a mademoiselle — on the well-aged side, like a good cheese, but a mademoiselle nevertheless.”

“I should say so!” said Cousin Peet indignantly. “Isn’t a madam somebody who runs one of those awful places where men go? I don’t think it’s very nice of you to accuse my aunt of a thing like that when it isn’t true.”

“By God! this is too much!” Grundy exclaimed. “No one is accusing anyone of anything! I’m only conducting an investigation in a legal and orderly manner!”

“I would like to know,” Prin said, “exactly what you are investigating.”

“I’ve just told you! I’m investigating the death of Slater O’Shea.”

“Isn’t it true that deaths are investigated only when they are not natural?”

“When they’re not natural, or when someone thinks they’re not natural.”

“I would like to know, then, what you have discovered to make you think that Uncle Slater’s death was not natural.”

“I haven’t discovered anything yet, to tell the truth,” said Grundy reluctantly. “All I have so far is Dr. Appleton’s professional opinion.”

“If I were a policeman,” Coley said, “I would hesitate a long time before going out on a limb with poor old Dr. Appleton. It seems to me a highly precarious procedure.”

“When the autopsy has been completed,” Dr. Appleton said with a corpse-like grin, “we will see how precarious it is!”

“Autopsy?” Aunt Lallie screeched. “Did you say autopsy? I simply will not subject Slater to such an indignity, and that’s that!”

“That is not that,” said Dr. Appleton with enjoyment. “And the sooner you get used to the idea, Miss O’Shea, the better for all concerned.”

“We’ve had enough horsing around,” growled Lieutenant Grundy. “Let’s get to it.”

“To what?” asked Brady in an alarmed tone.

“Everybody sit down!”

Momentarily cowed, everybody who was standing sat down; those who were sitting, unconsciously burrowed deeper into their seats with their bottoms, as if to establish the fact. Lieutenant Grundy, still carrying the bottle, stood in the middle of the room, prepared to swivel in any direction.

“Miss O’Shea,” Grundy began. Since there were three Miss O’Sheas present, a slight confusion ensued. The lieutenant restored order by indicating Prin. “You were the one who found Mr. O’Shea dead.”

Prin kept looking at him with interest.

“I asked you—”

“No, Lieutenant, you told me. But if you’re asking, the answer is: Yes, I was, for the umpteenth time.”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“That you,” cried Grundy, “were the one who found him!”

“I went up to call him to dinner.”

“Suspected something was wrong, is that it?”

“Of course not. We just thought Uncle Slater mightn’t have wakened from his afternoon nap.”

“Oh, he took a nap every afternoon?”

“Well, he went up to his room every afternoon, so presumably it was for a nap.”

“For a nip nap, you might say,” said Twig.

“I’ll get to you,” said Grundy; “but until I do I’ll thank you not to interrupt. Miss O’Shea, how long did your uncle usually stay in his room when he went up for these so-called nips — I mean naps?”

“An hour or so,” said Prin, fighting an impulse to giggle.

“And you didn’t think it queer that he stayed so much longer in his room today?”

“We didn’t think about it at all till Mrs. Dolan — that’s the cook — announced that dinner was ready. When Mrs. Dolan says dinner is ready, people jump around here. We were all down but Uncle Slater, and somebody asked where he was, and somebody else said he was probably still in his room, so I went up to see.”

“Did you see your uncle before he went upstairs?”

“I saw him on his way upstairs, which is a little different, I think. He’d been out somewhere, and when he got home about two o’clock he went straight to his room. I was sitting in here alone listening to Till, and I saw Uncle Slater going up the stairs. I waved to him and he waved back to me and that was it.”

“Who’s Till?” asked Grundy suspiciously.

“Till Eulenspiegel. That’s a tone poem by Richard Strauss.”

“Poetry, huh?” Grundy’s tone disposed of that. Prin wondered what the doughty lieutenant would have said if his range of general information had embraced the even more deplorable fact that a tone poem was a form of music. “How was Mr. O’Shea acting when you saw him go upstairs?”

“Perfectly natural.”

“Not mad or upset or anything like that?”

“No. He smiled and waved and was in the best of spirits, as far as I could tell—”

“He wasn’t in the best of spirits, if I knew Uncle Slater,” said Cousin Twig involuntarily. “The best of spirits was in him.”

Over the lieutenant’s glare at Twig, Prin said, “Well, yes. He was very cheerful-looking. I guess he was carrying a load of sorts at that.”

“Drinking.”

“Isn’t that what I said, Lieutenant?”

“No. You said he was perfectly natural.”

“Uncle Slater was perfectly natural when he was drinking. It was when he wasn’t that he wasn’t.”

Grundy’s head during this phase of the interrogation had been lolling to the left. Now he brought it erect with an appearance of great effort, but he brought it over too far, and it immediately lolled to the right.

“All right. So you went up to get him for dinner. Did you just walk into his room?”

“Of course not. Do I look like the sort of person who goes around just walking into other people’s bedrooms? I knocked. When he didn’t answer I opened the door and peeped in. And saw him lying on the floor, near his bed. At first I thought he’d fainted or something, but when I went in and took a closer look I knew he was dead.”

“Did you touch him?”

“I don’t think so. He was so definitely dead.”

“What made you so sure, Miss O’Shea?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It must have been the way his arms and legs were. Sort of scattered, if you know what I mean. And then, of course, he wasn’t breathing.”

“Did you look closely at his face?”

“Not hardly,” said Prin with a little shudder. “He was lying on his stomach, his head turned so only one side of his face showed. Anyway, it was dim in the room by that time.”

“How long were you up there?”

“Two minutes, I suppose.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“You’ve already asked me that. I did not. I ran right downstairs and told everybody Uncle Slater was dead. No one would believe me.”

“By everybody you mean the people in this room now?”

“Except Coley — Mr. Collins. He didn’t come till later.”

“Did anyone else go into that room between the time you found your uncle dead and the time Mr. Collins came?”

“My brother Brady. That was after I’d phoned Dr. Appleton.”

“Brady.” Lieutenant Grundy looked around. “That’s you, I take it?”

“Right, Lieutenant,” said Brady powerfully.

“You went upstairs to your uncle’s room?”

“To, but not into, if you get the distinction,” said Brady.

“You didn’t actually set foot in the room?”

“Not I. I had a quick look at Uncle Slater from the doorway, and came right back down.”

“Why didn’t you go in?”

“I’m allergic to dead people. I break out in goose pimples.”

“You were satisfied that he was dead?”

“I accepted it, but I can’t say that it gave me any satisfaction. He is dead, isn’t he?”

“Oh, he’s dead, all right.”

“Then I can’t see why we have to keep going over and over it,” said Brother Brady crossly. “Do we have to circulate a petition to make it legal?”

“If Dr. Appleton’s right,” said Grundy grimly, “you people will need all the legality you can get.”

“And if Dr. Appleton is not right,” piped Aunt Lallie spitefully, “I shall sue him for one million dollars.”

The little old doctor walked over to Aunt Lallie, laughed in her face and walked back again.

“Let’s not start the suing talk,” said Grundy, “not before we do a little more spadework. For instance: I want everyone here to tell me where he or she was and what he or she was doing this afternoon as nearly as he or she can remember it, which had better be the way it actually was if he or she knows what’s good for him or her. And we’ll start with... you!” and his forefinger speared Aunt Lallie, who went very nearly blue as she jumped.

This was the auspicious beginning of the most inauspicious interrogation thus far. No one, it seemed, had had anything significant to do, and no mnemonically linked place to do it; as a consequence, everyone had been all over the premises at one time or another during the day, and no one could be more specific than that. But Lieutenant Grundy persisted. Gradually he elicited a few statements that might vaguely be considered facts.

Aunt Lallie had spent most of the afternoon in her room, she was sure of that, but she had been out of it once or twice for reasons that had slipped her mind. Cousin Peet had lain in the sun on the terrace, which Twig, Brady and Prin could verify; but then she had gone upstairs after talking with Prin. She had not the least idea what time that had been, time never having had any particular significance for her; and there was only her word that she had showered and admired her luscious nude self in her pier glass, for so far as she knew she had seen, and had been seen by, no one. Brady, after itchily leaving Peet on the terrace, had gone around back and knocked some golf balls around, which may have had something symbolic about it; and later, after sitting a while in the sun contemplating his navel (Prin thought it had much likelier been Peet’s), he had trudged upstairs and talked to Prin in her room before going to his own room and biting his fingernails for an hour or so (he placed his fingertips in evidence). Twig had been out of sorts, he said. He had considered going into town to a movie, but he had decided against it because neither feature was a horror picture; and all in all he had just drifted around the premises, in and out and downstairs and upstairs. He had noticed Peet, yes, and Brady, too — Peet on the terrace and Brady swatting golf balls, but he had avoided them (as too obvious targets for his malice). Prin told about faking the little-girl’s lunar complaint shamelessly and coming home and the rest of it, some for the second and third time.

It was Lieutenant Grundy’s opinion that they had all had plenty of opportunity to abridge Uncle Slater’s constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and he said so snidely.

“With your permission, Lieutenant,” said Coley Collins, “I should like to make a point, to wit: There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that Uncle Slater’s constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was abridged.”

“No evidence to prove it, maybe,” said Grundy, “but plenty to indicate it.”

“Is that so?” said Prin with interest. “Would you be kind enough to tell us what? And you listen, Coley — maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about the science of detection.”

“Of course,” said Coley. “It is always instructive to pay heed to the words of a professional.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lieutenant Grundy handsomely, “we make our mistakes. But I would have you note — if my understanding of the point is correct — that anyone who dies while awake, with his eyes open, will be found after death with his eyes still open. Slater O’Shea died with his eyes shut. From this we may conclude that he died while asleep or in a comatose condition. And this leads us to the crucial question: Was he naturally asleep or unnaturally unconscious at the time of death? I would doubt the former, since it seems extremely unlikely that Mr. O’Shea enjoyed lying down on the floor for his nap when there was a bed available a foot away for the purpose. Unconscious — let us say from simple overindulgence in spirits? That will be determined by the percentage of alcohol found in his blood measured against his normal capacity, and other scientific considerations. But it is my preliminary view that mere overindulgence will not explain his position on the floor. Because there is something very rotten in the state of this bourbon we found at his bedside, or I miss my guess.”

Until Lieutenant Grundy had launched into his analysis, Prin had thought of him as a small-time cop of nasty personality and mere brute intelligence. It seemed to her the grossest deception for him now to prove himself otherwise.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Prin.

“Someone here will,” smiled Grundy, “if I’m not mistaken. However! I’m through for the present, although it’s likely I shall see you all again after the autopsy. Boatner, phone for an ambulance and then join me upstairs. We’ll wait on the scene of the suspected crime till the meat wagon comes.”

The lieutenant turned to follow Boatner out when Cousin Twig stopped him. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said. “I understand why you want to take Uncle Slater’s bottle of bourbon with you — after all, if it’s full of poison it isn’t any good to us anyway — but why are you taking the glass?”

“Because,” said Grundy, “it’s the connecting link between the bottle of bourbon and your uncle’s tummy. Not an indispensable point, perhaps,” he said modestly, “but we like to be thorough.”

“Well,” said Cousin Twig glumly. But then he brightened, if a lesser darkness could be called brightness. “If the glass turns out all right, or anyway when you don’t need it any more, would you make a note to return it to us? We’ve got to start economizing around here.”

7

With Lieutenant Grundy and Detective Boatner waiting upstairs with Uncle Slater for the meat wagon, they all had to agree that the situation looked pretty grim. Everything considered, they agreed to a surprising degree. The conviction was voiced by everyone that Uncle Slater had not been murdered by anyone present, because none of them would have been fool enough to kill the lovely golden goose. So if it had been murder the obvious explanation was that an unknown somebody had slipped into the house at considerable risk and poured a shot of something deadly into Uncle Slater’s bourbon bottle for no reason anyone present could think of. It all made so little sense that the longer they discussed Uncle Slater’s death the surer they were that he had not been murdered at all. Still, Grundy and Dr. Appleton had seemed so positive that something would be found in the bottle and in Uncle Slater.

“But can they just go ahead and autopsy Uncle Slater without permission?” Cousin Peet wanted to know.

“We’ve been all through that, Peetie,” said Prin kindly.

“They’ve got to have the permission of the next of kin,” said Coley, “or evidence of an unnatural cause. If they find poison in the bottle of bourbon that’s all they’ll need to go right ahead and autopsy Mr. O’Shea on their own.”

“Damn that bottle of bourbon,” said Cousin Twig viciously.

“I didn’t like that business about Uncle Slater’s eyes, either,” Brady muttered.

“I agree,” Aunt Lallie said. “Slater has made things difficult for us in a number of ways. In the end, he behaved badly.”

“Well,” Prin said, “however badly he may have behaved, it was not so badly as we’re behaving now. Uncle Slater is a lot worse off than we are, and I simply will not talk any more about it. Coley, I’d like to go outside and sit on the steps or take a short walk or something, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Coley said.

“How about you, Peet?” Brady said. “Wouldn’t you like to go for a short walk?”

“With you?” asked Peet.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Prin and Coley went out to the front porch, sat down on the top step and began holding hands. But they had hardly begun when the ambulance came for Uncle Slater.

“There’s a big tree stump in the back yard,” Prin said, rising hastily. “Let’s go around there and sit on it.”

“Don’t you want to stay and see Mr. O’Shea off?” asked Coley.”

“No, I don’t.”

So they went around to the back yard and sat on the big tree stump while Grundy and Boatner departed at last in the wake of Uncle Slater’s basket. So long as Uncle Slater had been upstairs on the floor, physically in residence, Prin’s feelings had been qualified by an irrational notion that he might decide to rise and take up where he had left off. But after he was taken away by the meat wagon no such notion could survive. He was simply and irrevocably gone.

It was apparent to Coley that Prin was feeling worse. He resumed holding her hand for comfort, and she leaned against his shoulder and looked up at the moon. Coley could see the clean line of her throat in the moonlight and the shadow of her lashes on her cheeks, and this sight made him flex his muscles with tender manliness.

“What are you thinking?” he asked softly.

“I’m thinking that it’s too bad Uncle Slater had to die, and that it’s even worse if someone helped him do it.”

“Well, I’m thinking that it’s time you and I got married, or that it will be time after your uncle is buried.”

“Oh, Coley, I don’t know. You haven’t got a bean, and my share of Uncle Slater’s estate would keep us for about six months if we were extra-careful — what would we live on after that?”

“You could stay at the drug store for a while, and I could hold onto my taproom job while I look for something that pays more. When I’m finished with the accounting course, you won’t have to work at all, because I mean to be the best damn accountant you ever saw.”

“I’ve never even seen an accountant,” said Prin adoringly.

“Well, you’re going to see one every day for the rest of your life. Will you marry me, Princess O’Shea?”

“Of course. I’ve intended to from the first daiquiri that first night.”

There was no conversation for some time. When they stopped to get their breaths, Prin said, “Poor Uncle Slater. I’m sure he did things now and then that he’s ashamed of right now, but he was a kind and generous soul. If somebody murdered him I hope he sizzles in hell — I mean the somebody, not Uncle Slater.”

Coley pulled his lower lip far out, as if to make room for a large idea. “You know something, Prin?” he said suddenly. “It just occurred to me. When Mr. O’Shea made that new will you told me about, leaving everything to be divided equally among the twenty-two surviving O’Sheas, he must have had good reason to think he might otherwise be murdered.”

“He practically told us as much. Or at least that he considered it enough of a possibility to take out some insurance.”

“Well, I don’t know about the other O’Sheas, but if that Frankenstein monster of a Cousin Twig of yours were my beneficiary to any sizable amount, I think I’d want some insurance, too. And Brady, if you’ll excuse my saying so, would probably slit his own sister’s throat to keep from having to go to work.”

“Do you think so? I am his sister, you know — the only one he has, to my knowledge. Do you really think Brady would be capable of slitting my throat?”

“I’m willing to say, having considerable interest in your throat, which I would like to kiss this instant, that I’m relieved that he has nothing to gain from doing so. Any more,” added Coley regretfully, “than that gargoyle Twig.”

“I’d rather have it kissed than slit, and by you than by anyone else I know.”

This seemed to Coley an invitation. After kissing her throat, he went on to several other places, which took some time. In the course of this engagement, they changed positions on the stump the better to concentrate, but it was not, in spite of willing effort, one of Prin’s more accomplished performances.

“That was pleasant enough,” Coley said, “but it lacked something. I don’t believe you are quite as dedicated as usual.”

“I’m sorry, darling. I tried, honestly I did, but Uncle Slater keeps getting in the way.”

“Uncle Slater would be sorry to hear that, I’m sure.”

“It’s just that I keep hoping he died naturally. But the more I think, the more I’m afraid he didn’t.”

“Then you’d better begin thinking constructively — say, as follows? On the surface, we can see no reason why the O’Sheas of this household should want to do your uncle in; to the contrary, his continued existence would have kept you all paid-up members in the freeloaders’ fraternity. On the other hand, we agree that at least two of said household O’Sheas would have done him in without lashing a bat if a reason existed that we know nothing about. In such a case the lack of financial motive might well serve as a red herring across the trail of actual motive. What do you think, Prin?”

“I don’t know. Anything is possible, I suppose, where O’Sheas are concerned.”

“At least nothing should be overlooked. For instance, we should not consider insiders to the exclusion of outsiders. An outsider doesn’t seem likely under the circumstances of your uncle’s death, but it’s always possible.”

“You may be right, Coley.”

Coley grabbed her. “You have someone in mind,” he said eagerly.

“No, but knowing something of the kind of life Uncle Slater led before his marriage, it wouldn’t surprise me if he left a trail of people who wanted to kill him, and one of them caught up with him.”

But Coley shook his head. “That kind of killer wouldn’t use poison. You would have to expect something more violent. Like shooting, or hitting him over the head.”

“Not if the killer were a female.”

“A female? At your uncle’s age? You can’t be serious.”

“Darling, you must read a biography of Victor Hugo some day. Never mind, though. I’ll merely say that a woman in the case of my Uncle Slater — at any age — was technically quite possible.”

“All right,” said Coley, nodding, “we’ll tuck that theory away for future consideration. Prin, if it turns out that Slater O’Shea met with foul play—” (“Why do they call it play?” Prin murmured) “—I go into action. I used to be known as Nosy Collins — stuck my beak into everything; the original cat killer. Well, I mean I’ve always thought I’d make a splendid detective. How does it strike you?”

“The only thing that strikes me right now,” said Prin, screwing up her pretty face, “is a splitting headache. I think I am coming down with that unmentionable condition I mentioned to Mr. Free this morning as an excuse to get out of work. Coley, do you think it’s my punishment for lying?”

“No,” said Coley, “but you go right on thinking so. It may act as a catharsis and give you absolution.”

“I’ll take aspirin,” said Prin. “It would also help, I think, if I were to get some sleep. Would you very much mind, darling, if I were to go in and try?”

“Princess. I love you.”

“Coley. I love you. You’re so sweet and clever and — and lovable.”

“I’m actually devious as the devil,” said Coley modestly. “Let me take you into the house.”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll go in through the kitchen, and you can cut through to the street. It’s a long walk back to town. Kiss me good night?”

They kissed with fervor beside the stump, joining shadows in the moonlight, and then Coley went one way, toward the street, and Prin went another way, toward the house. The rear of the house was dark, and she felt her way onto the screen porch. She was sure the door would be unlocked, for no one ever bothered to lock a door, a kind of slovenly trustfulness of O’Shea character that was not likely to be altered by murder or anything else. She was just reaching for the back door knob when something stirred in the nearby darkness of the porch. Prin jumped and squealed.

“It’s only me, Princess,” said Cousin Twig’s appalling voice.

“Damn it, Twig, what in the hell do you mean by skulking here in the dark and scaring me out of ten years’ growth?”

“I wasn’t skulking. I was waiting.”

“For what? A broomstick?”

“You. I thought you’d never send that Coley away. I want to talk to you.”

“Well, dear cousin,” snapped Prin, “it will have to be some other time, if ever. I have a headache, and I’m going up to my room and take some aspirin and go to bed.”

“Stay and have a cigarette with me, Prin. Please?”

“No, thank you.”

“You have plenty of time for that Coley.”

“What I have for Coley and what I have for you are two different things, thank God.”

“Including kisses. I saw you out there kissing in the moonlight.”

“So you’re a Peeping Tom in addition to your other disgusting accomplishments. I’m sorry conditions were unfavorable tonight, Twig. Otherwise you might have seen a lot more exciting sight than a few kisses.”

“Cut it out, Prin,” Twig said rather thickly. “You go too far with me and you’ll be sorry.”

“No danger, Twiggy. I’m not going anywhere with you — far or near.”

“You’d better be careful. I’m warning you.”

Prin had a sudden notion, accompanied by a chill, that maybe she’d better. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the shape of Twig as a long-domed shadow among shadows. There was something rather dreadful in his immobility, as if he had been waiting — was still waiting — for more than her mere body. She knew that his disproportionate face was dark and still and hard as buried stone. His voice was a listless, lusterless monotone, almost without inflections or stress — the voice of a Thing, Prin thought; and she shivered and decided not to arouse him further by leaving.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“About you and your precious Coley, for one thing.”

“What about him?”

“To begin with, I don’t like him.”

“I’m sorry, Twig. I do.”

“You’ll change your mind after a while.”

“You think so? Why?”

“He’s not good enough for you.”

“Who is good enough, do you think? Twig O’Shea?”

“Why not?”

“This is very sudden, I must say. I had no idea you really care so much.”

“Because I haven’t carried on about you like Brady after my stupid sister? Your brother is a fool.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“Tell him whatever you please.”

“You’ll regret it if I do.”

Twig barked a laugh. “He can’t even handle Peet.”

“Brady has no desire to knock Peet’s head off. I think he’d enjoy going to work on yours.”

“Perhaps that’s what Peet needs. As an introduction, that is, to something else she needs.”

“I suppose that would be your approach?”

“That’s right.”

Prin said rather carefully, “I take it you mean that would be your approach... to me?”

“I’ll consider it.”

“All right, Twig. Then I’ll merely consider telling Brady what you just said about him.”

The laugh spat at her from the dark again. “Brady has more to worry about than anything I’ve said.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the police.”

“Why should Brady be worried about the police?”

“Because if Uncle Slater was murdered, there will be an investigation. And once a murder investigation starts, a lot more may be dug up than what’s being looked for.”

“You think my brother has done something he needs to worry about?”

“A dozen things.”

“How about yourself?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Is that so? It hasn’t been apparent. Now that Uncle Slater isn’t here any more, we’ll see how well you can take care of yourself.”

The voice nearby was stilled. Then it began again with a sort of cornered-rat determination. “We’ll all have to clear out of here soon. Let’s you and I clear out together, Prin.”

Prin said, “You think I would—?” But then she controlled herself. “I have other plans, Cousin Twig.”

“Involving Coley Collins?”

“Intimately.”

“It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t let you.”

“And how do you propose to not let me?”

“You’ll come around, Prinny. Do you know the things we could do together...?” And now the unnatural voice held an undernote of hot yearning, thick and fierce as a flow of lava. But the words were obscene, utterly obscene; and they painted such pictures as Princess O’Shea had only dreamed of in her ghastlier nightmares, so that she wanted to scream and had to choke the screams back lest the very fears at their source touch off the actions that the words only spoke.

All that Prin could think to say when the monster across the porch paused, heaving for breath, was: “Did you hear yourself, Twig? Did you listen to yourself?”

“I want you,” Twig gasped. “I want you....”

He made a soft hissing sudden sound and she heard the scrape of his feet.

“I’d rather be dead,” Prin cried; and she lunged for the back door and jerked it open and ran into the kitchen and slammed and locked the door in one fluid blur. She could hear him rattling the knob and cursing her as she sped upstairs.

With the key turned securely in the lock, Prin stood still and breathed deeply in the moonlight flooding her bedroom. She counted for a minute the diminishing beat of her heart. Then she undressed, put on pajamas as pale as the moon itself, and lay down on the bed, turning her face to the windows. Her head still ached in a cadenced throbbing. She was intensely awake. There was no sleep for her, then or soon, or even at all.

She got up and went into her bathroom and took three aspirins, then crept back into bed and lay stiffly, face turned again to the moonlight. She was still lying that way, a long time afterward, when someone tapped secretively on her door.

Dear God, Prin thought, dear good God, let it not be the monster. She covered her ears. She pulled the summer blanket over her head. She burrowed under her pillow. But she could still hear the tapping.

Prin sat up in bed. She swallowed first, hard. “Who is it?”

“It’s me. Let me in, Prin.”

Brady. It was Brady! “Go away, Brady,” Prin said. “I’m in bed.”

“Prin, I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” How wonderful of Brady.

“You may as well let me in. I won’t go way until you do.”

“Oh, all right,” said Prin. “Just a minute.”

She crawled out of bed and, with her hand on the key, had a horrid thought. “Are you alone, Brady?”

“Of course I’m alone,” he said peevishly. “What kind of question is that?”

The best kind, Prin thought; oh, the best kind. “Wait a minute,” she said, “till I get back into bed.” She turned the key and got into bed and said, “All right, now... Lock the door, Brady.”

“What’s the matter with you tonight?” He locked it and came walking through a wall of moonlight and sat down on the edge of her bed. He sat in the shadows, and she could not see his face. But his voice sounded strained.

“I’m sorry, Prin, but... you’re the only one I trust around here. A brother and sister have to stick together.”

“Do we?” said Prin.

“I know I haven’t been much of a brother. We hardly know each other.”

“That’s a fact. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

He shifted his weight on the bed. “About what you and Collins were really doing in Uncle Slater’s room.”

“Just what Coley and I told that policeman — looking around to see what we could see. We also did some smooching, but not much. With Uncle Slater lying there...”

“Look, Prin.” Brady made an impatient noise. “Whom you smooch with and where are your business. But what you saw may be the business of all of us — if that old maniac of a doctor is right about Uncle Slater’s being murdered, that is. Do you really think he was?”

“I don’t know, Brady. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Did you see that bottle when you were in the room?”

“I must have. I’m sure I’d have noticed if it wasn’t. Bottles and Uncle Slater sort of went together.”

“It’s a damn shame you didn’t take it away.”

“Why, Brady?” asked Prin curiously. “If Uncle Slater was poisoned, don’t you want his poisoner punished?”

“Hell, no. What difference would that make to Uncle Slater? Now there’s probably going to be a messy investigation.”

“Oh, I see. You’ve done something you’re afraid they’ll find out.”

“Never mind that!” said Brady savagely. But then he said, “All right, suppose I have?”

“It couldn’t be that you put poison in that bottle, could it?”

“My God, Prin, don’t talk like that! What reason would I have? And even if I had, would I have been dumb enough to leave the bottle there? I’d have come back and taken it away. Anybody with sense would.”

“I don’t know about reasons. All I know is that it was an awful thing to do to Uncle Slater — if it was done, I mean — and, frankly, I’m not sure you weren’t capable of doing it.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say about your own brother,” Brady said angrily.

“If you are my brother.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Brady.”

He was silent. Then he muttered, “You mean you forgot me so completely during the years I was away that you even doubt I’m the real Brady O’Shea?”

“It was a long time,” said Prin, feeling sorry for him suddenly.

“I take it, then, that you feel no affection for me at all.”

“I don’t know, Brady. It’s troubled me a great deal. I just don’t know.”

This time his silence went on and on. Finally, days later it seemed, Brady said, “In that case I’d better get out of here and leave you alone.”

He got up from the bed. He stood there without moving, however, for some time, as if he were hesitating about saying or doing something more. But then he stalked to the door, unlocked it and stalked out. Prin got swiftly out of bed, flew to the door, shut and locked it, and stood with her back to it, trembling.

The house was full of darkness. Dark people, dark thoughts, dark motives, dark pasts... darkness everywhere.

Uncle Slater had been murdered, all right.

Prin was suddenly sure of it.

8

And so, two days later, was Lieutenant Sherm Grundy.

Two reports lay before him, one an analysis of Slater O’Shea’s bourbon from the bedside bottle and the other of Slater O’Shea’s interior. Neither report, from Grundy’s point of view, was ideal. For they disturbed his personal concept of the good detective life, which was based on as little trouble as possible for himself. His reputation as a death-on-rats sourpuss stemmed from this — the more ruthlessly he pursued an investigation, the more quickly it came to an end and restored the pleasant status quo ante of police life in Cibola City.

He read the reports again. Slater O’Shea’s bottle of bourbon had been liberally laced with a drug identified as a synthetic substitute for insulin. This drug was used in the treatment of diabetes. An overdose was fatal. But the effect was a delayed one, taking about an hour to produce unconsciousness and death. This delayed-action effect had indubitably taken place inside Slater O’Shea, where the identical insulin substitute had been found in lethal quantity. No trace of the drug had been found in the glass.

As Grundy reconstructed the last hour or so of Slater O’Shea’s life, he had come home, gone to his bedroom, taken a few — in this case unhealthy — slugs directly from the doctored bottle, ignoring the glass, and lain down for his afternoon nap. Aware after a while that something more than simple drowsiness was overcoming him, he had got off the bed, taken a step or two, and collapsed. There, on the floor, he had shut his eyes and taken his nap at last, or his last nap, which in his case came to the same thing.

What Grundy disliked most about his reconstruction, aside from its homicidal indications, was its fanciness. He had known on contact that nothing simple or sensible could be expected from the O’Sheas, but he had at least hoped for an ordinary, decent poison, something you might buy at a hardware store in a can of weed killer or insecticide. He would really have preferred another kind of weapon altogether, such as a gun or a knife or a blunt instrument. But a synthetic substitute for insulin, for God’s sake! Grundy was not at all sure he was up to it.

Cursing softly, the lieutenant put his mind to the problem of fancy murder. Even plain murder had been a rarity in his professional experience, Cibola City being a singularly docile community.

It took little experience, however, considering the O’Shea tribe even as he slightly knew them, to come to an immediate conclusion: profit, or the hope of it, must be the motive. The trouble was that damn will of Slater O’Shea’s his heirs-in-residence had subsequently told him about. With the modest fortune divided among almost two dozen O’Sheas, how could the testator’s death greatly profit any one of them? Especially the five who lived with him and off him? Of course, profit was a relative thing; what seemed small at one time might seem large indeed at another, depending on circumstances. Still, Grundy was uneasy. Perhaps, he thought, brightening, no such will existed. Brother, let us pray!

Digging a directory from his drawer, Grundy located the telephone number of the O’Shea residence. This done, he dialed the number and waited for a response, which was finally made by Mrs. Dolan. Mrs. Dolan, audibly disappointed at not being asked to relay a message, summoned Miss Lallie O’Shea. Miss Lallie O’Shea, sounding far more alert to the ear than she appeared to the eye, demanded to know when the police department was going to let Slater O’Shea’s family have him back for decent disposal — “that is,” said deceased’s sister, “if there is anything left of him to dispose of.”

“You may have the body back immediately, Miss O’Shea,” said Grundy. “I assure you it is almost entirely in one piece.”

“Thank you,” said Aunt Lallie coldly. “I have never in my born days heard of anything more disgusting. I suppose you found that that old fool of a doctor should be committed to a mental institution?”

“We’re not ready with our findings yet,” lied Grundy. “By the way, Miss O’Shea, can you tell me the name of your brother’s lawyer?”

“His lawyer? Why do you want to know that?”

“Routine,” said the lieutenant, resorting to the magic word. “His name, Miss O’Shea?”

“It seems to me you’re being terribly evasive, Lieutenant.”

“So are you!”

Aunt Lallie chuckled unexpectedly, “Too-shee.”

“I can get the information the hard way, Miss O’Shea. Why not be cooperative and save us a little trouble?”

“I don’t see why I should. However, I suppose it can’t do any harm. Slater’s lawyer was Selwyn Fish.”

“Oh. Thank you very much.”

Grundy hung up and pulled his long nose longer. He might have known, he reflected bitterly, that an oddball client like Slater O’Shea would go for an oddball attorney like Selwyn Fish like a fly for an open garbage pail. Professionally, Fish gave off a mephitic aroma. Everything about him — his person, his office location, his methods — offended the nostrils. He was an expert in the art of marginal dealing, said art consisting in a talent for pursuing the questionable while remaining just inside the purlieus of the law. There was a certain poetic unity in the revelation that the victim of a fancy murderer had engaged the services of a shyster lawyer, but Lieutenant Grundy did not warm to it. Grundy’s lack of empathy with art in whatever form has already been remarked.

Consequently, he rose from his desk with a scowl; and he covered his head with a hat and left his office, Selwyn Fish-bound.

It was a short walk from police headquarters. The shyster’s office was located over a cheap-john clothing store in the seediest section of old Cibola City, on a crooked side street with gaps in its cobbles, like broken teeth. The two-story frame building leaned a little on its foundations, and its ancient dirt-colored walls always reminded Grundy of the scaling hide of a dying old dwarf elephant. It was twenty years past its just deserts of condemnation, a fate it successfully avoided by the fact that it was owned by the most influential member of the Cibola City Council.

The lieutenant pushed open the street door, which screamed feebly, and he groped through the sour dimness of a flight of narrow creaking stairs to the upper floor. Here, lurking along the grimy little hall, were grimy little offices, their half-pebbled glass doors announcing a chiropractor, the headquarters of a local sect known as The Sublime Order of the Sons of the Sun, a public stenographer, and finally — in scabby gilt lettering — Selwyn Fish, Attorney-at-Law.

Grundy walked in. He found himself in a sort of closet, presided over by a desiccated female with a new purple pimple on the end of her nose and a shroudlike black dress over her bones. All Grundy could think of was a disinterment order.

“Yes” this lady snapped. Then she noticed who it was, and she said, this time in a wary tone, “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Grundy, police,” Grundy said. “Mr. Fish in?”

“Police?” she repeated, as if she had not noticed. “Mr. Fish has a client with him. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” said Grundy; and he looked around for a chair. There was none except the chair occupied by the talking corpse. He leaned against the door and waited.

He waited twenty minutes. Then the inner door of the closet opened and a woman with dried-out yellow straw for hair and an improbable chest measurement appeared. At sight of Grundy she froze like an alley cat. Then she tiptoed across the closet floor, Grundy politely held the door open for her, and she clattered down the hall and down the stairs on her three-inch heels as if she expected him to come racing after her, gun in hand. Grundy knew her well. Her name was Big Suzy.

“Come in, Lieutenant, come in,” called a boomy voice; Grundy shut the hall door and went into the inner office. Selwyn Fish was on his feet behind his desk, showing his crystal teeth in what Grundy supposed was intended as a smile. “Sit down, sit down. What can I do for you?”

Grundy sat down in an armchair with a broken spring. He placed his hat precisely in his lap, taking his time about it; accommodated his lean buttocks to the lumpy seat; then deliberately sat back and looked Selwyn Fish over. Fish had been fashioned in the same remarkable workshop that had produced Twig O’Shea. He had a long thick torso set on short bandy legs, so that when he stood he looked like a dwarf and when he sat down — as he now rather uncertainly did — he seemed gigantic. Above the enormous shoulders wobbled a pin-head, without a hair on it, but whose contents, Grundy knew, were out of all proportion to its container. The whole effect was that of an android made up out of spare parts by a drunken workman of the year 2783. The lawyer’s only savory feature were his eyes — large, black, brilliantly beautiful, like some gorgeous flower growing in a swamp.

“I understand,” began Grundy, “that you were the late Slater O’Shea’s attorney, Mr. Fish.”

“Who told you that, Lieutenant?” asked the lawyer, cautiously.

“Miss Lallie O’Shea.”

“I see. Well, yes, I was old Slater’s lawyer. Quite a shock, his dying so suddenly.”

“He’s dead, there’s no question about that.”

“Why are you interested, Lieutenant? Did Slater break a law before he died? If so, you’re a bit late.”

“He didn’t break any law. Not that I know of.”

“Well, I’ll venture that he broke quite a few you don’t know of. He wasn’t greatly inhibited by scruples, the old rascal. Just ran down a bit in his later years.”

“He was a wealthy man, I understand.”

“To you and me, yes. Wealth is relative, isn’t it? Inherited it from the widow he married. Quite the lady’s man in his day. I suspect Slater made a good thing out of more than one gullible female.”

“You drew up his will?”

“That’s right. It’s in my safe there.”

“Funny sort of will, I understand.”

Fish said quickly, “Why do you say that? Who told you about it?”

“The family. They all seem to think it was a dirty trick for him to split his estate up among so many heirs.”

“Oh, that.” Selwyn Fish laughed, and he sounded like Basil Rathbone doing the Witch in Hansel and Gretel. “That was no will. It was a fraud.”

“What!” said Grundy.

“O’Shea had a fine time over it. A joke on his free-loading family, he called it. He had me draw it up, but he never signed it. It has no legal standing at all.”

“The hell you say.”

“Whatever else he may have been, old Slater was nobody’s fool. He didn’t want his money scattered among a lot of relatives he didn’t give a damn for and who certainly didn’t give a damn for him.”

Grundy was thinking acidly, This complicates an already complicated mess. “I take it O’Shea left another will? A secret one that’s legal? Who inherits, Fish?”

“Well, now,” demurred the Little Giant, making a steeple out of his conical fingers, “I don’t know that I can tell you that, Lieutenant. As a matter of ethical practice.” Grundy suppressed a snort. “I’d have to have the family’s consent.”

“Counselor, this is a police inquiry.”

“Why should the police be interested?” asked Fish innocently. “Is there something suspicious about Slater O’Shea’s death?”

Grundy briefly considered coming clean, then decided against it.

“It’s just something that’s come up,” he said. “Let’s not get technical, Counselor. I’ll know shortly, anyhow. How about it?”

“Well... I always do prefer to cooperate with the police... All right, Lieutenant. The truth is that Slater O’Shea left his entire estate to his next of kin, his sister.”

“The one they call Aunt Lallie?”

“That’s right. Lallie O’Shea.”

“Does she know this yet?”

“No, indeed. I follow the custom in such matters. I shall read the will to the family after the testator is properly interred.”

“Any chance that O’Shea might have told his sister about this beforehand?”

“Slater? No, no. That would have given away the show — the fake will. I’m quite certain not a soul knows about the real will except myself. And now you, of course.”

Grundy rose abruptly. “Thanks, Counselor.”

Fish waved pooh-poohingly. “Happy to be of assistance. In any way short of betraying a client’s interests, Lieutenant. Everyone knows Selwyn Fish’s reputation.”

“And that,” said Grundy, “is a fact.”

Walking back, he went over the ground in the light of Fish’s information. That the “will” Slater O’Shea had told his relatives-in-residence about had been an invalid joke did not surprise Grundy in the least; the whole crew were lunatics, in his opinion. What did surprise him was O’Shea’s secret choice of heir. Even on slight acquaintance, Grundy would have guessed the heir to be Prin, not her aunt.

Aside from that, if he accepted Selwyn Fish’s assurance that the existence of the valid will was unknown to the family, then the motive-situation remained unchanged. Murderers were motivated not by what is the fact, but by what they think is the fact. If the five freeloaders still thought that on Slater O’Shea’s death his estate would be divided into twenty-two equal parts, none of them had a credible gain-motive to hasten his death; on the contrary, all had a vested interest in keeping him alive.

But suppose Selwyn Fish had been mistaken? In that case, it was quite possible that Lallie O’Shea had learned about the will by accident, or even by chicanery. The likeliest theory, Grundy ruminated, was that Slater himself had let the secret out when he was well into the bottle. Lallie O’Shea’s foreknowledge that she was her brother’s heir had to be considered.

Aunt Lallie as the poisoner did not tax Grundy’s credulity in the slightest. He could easily visualize her in the role of, say, Lady Macbeth, a Lady Macbeth who would have fewer dreams about it afterward (the pretty little lady’s large, hairy hands helped a great deal). If she were Lady Macbeth, she had a collaborator; and Grundy immediately thought of several prospects — Twig, Brady, Peet; it was even conceivable that they were all in it together, every damn one of them. Or was it? On second thought, it was doubtful that Lallie O’Shea would have let into her plot several potential blackmailers. One confederate would have been likelier; and in that case, Grundy thought reluctantly, the logical nominee was Princess O’Shea, because she worked in a drug store. He could not see Peet O’Shea as having knowledge of any drug more sinister than aspirin; and, while her brother Twig and Princess’s brother Brady could have the knowledge, they lacked Prin’s opportunity.

Unless, Lieutenant Grundy thought suddenly, one of the trio was a diabetic. A diabetic would surely keep up with the latest developments relating to diabetes, especially one that offered the oral advantage of the synthetic substitute for hypodermic-injected insulin. True, a diabetic known to be using the drug would be taking a monstrous chance to use it to commit murder. On the other hand, poisoners almost invariably expected their crimes to go undetected (and Grundy knew perfectly well the statistical estimate of the proportion of poisonings that did go undetected); so a diabetic murderer was not so far-fetched as it seemed.

In fact, the lieutenant decided, he had better check that theory at once; and, consulting his watch and finding the time to be well within office-hour probability, he headed for Dr. Horace Appleton’s abattoir.

9

Dr. Horace Appleton’s consulting room had not changed in forty years. Its most conspicuous furnishings were a rolltop desk; two aged armchairs covered with wrinkled black leather, on one of which the good doctor sat; and a sectional bookcase with cracked glass doors containing, among other ancient medical volumes, a copy of Gray’s Anatomy — Grundy would not have been surprised to learn that it was a first edition. The lieutenant sat in the other chair looking up at a number of yellowed diplomas and licenses framed on the wall. There was also a studio portrait, hand-tinted, of a rather glassy-eyed young man in a frock coat which Grundy recognized with a start as Dr. Appleton.

“Well, Grundy,” old Dr. Appleton snorted, “and how are you making out with that zooful of O’Sheas?”

“It’s a little early to say, Doctor.”

“They’re crazy, every last one of ’em. Were you able to have the autopsy done on Slater O’Shea?”

“Yes.”

“How did you manage it?”

“We found evidence and got an order.”

“Aha,” said the old man, rubbing his hands. “Where did you find it? In the bottle?”

“That’s right.”

“I knew it! I knew it from the beginning! I’m an old fool, am I? Who poisoned O’Shea?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“I don’t envy you your job. By God, everywhere you look in that infernal family there’s a logical suspect. You must have a notion, though.”

“No, Doctor. All I have is a question.”

“For me? What?”

“Did Slater O’Shea suffer from diabetes?”

“Eh? Certainly not!” Dr. Appleton seemed to be infuriated by the question. “I’ve said over and over that Slater O’Shea had nothing wrong with him except a mild corruption of the kidneys from too much alcohol. By God, Grundy, are you trying to impugn my competence as a doctor?”

“Of course not. I ask because of the way Slater O’Shea died.”

“What’s that? I’d appreciate it, Grundy, if you’d be more explicit! What way?”

“He died of a fatal dose of a synthetic substitute for insulin. The bottle was loaded with it, and so was he.”

“By God, that’s exactly what you’d expect from an O’Shea. No garden variety drug for that crew. No, sir.”

“Of course,” remarked the lieutenant, just to see what the old fire-eater would say, “it mightn’t be murder at all.”

The old ears pricked up. “Eh? What’s that? What d’ye mean?”

“Maybe it was self-administered.”

Dr. Appleton glared. “You’re talking through your hat, Grundy! Slater O’Shea had too much drinking and living left to do. Anyway, why would he put the stuff in the bottle? Why not just in the drink? And why this fancy drug instead of something easier to get hold of? I don’t discount the fact that all O’Sheas are loony and might do anything, but old Slater commit suicide? Ridiculous!”

Grundy nodded. He had reached the same conclusion. “Ever treat any of the O’Sheas besides Slater?”

“Are you kidding? Think those vultures would go to a doctor they’d have to pay? Of course I’m their doctor, because I’m Slater’s — or was — and he paid the bills. Trouble is, they’re all so damn healthy. They never seem to have anything wrong with ’em, drat the luck.”

“Then none of them has diabetes?”

“Diabetes? Them? No.”

Grundy scowled. It was getting more and more complicated. “Tell me. This insulin substitute, would it be available to anybody?”

“Anybody with a prescription. It’s manufactured by a number of pharmaceutical houses, under different trade names, but they’re all essentially the same.”

“I see.” Grundy rose, and in the act belched softly. “Say, Doc, what’s good for gas?”

“See a doctor.”

Grundy thanked him.

“You’re entirely welcome. We’ll see who’s an old fool!”

Outside, Grundy thought how wonderful it would be for his gas if he dropped in at the nearest bar and lowered his nose into several seidels of beer. But duty was duty, so instead he walked over to Free’s Drug Store. He went reluctantly, because what he dreaded most of all was to turn up evidence that Slater O’Shea had been plowed under by Princess O’Shea who, as things now looked, stood almost alone in the field, with Aunt Lallie O’Shea possibly skulking behind, ready to lend a hand. Grundy was unmarried, but it had occurred to him on several occasions recently that if he were ever crazy enough to consider committing matrimony, Prin O’Shea could easily become the cause of the crime.

The lieutenant sighed, rubbed his taut belly and entered the air-conditioned precincts of Free’s Drug Store. He made his way to the rear of the store, where Orville Free was busy with the mysterious ingredients of a prescription. Grundy told a clerk smelling of hair tonic that he would wait until Mr. Free was free; and while he waited for Mr. Free to be free he looked around for Prin, who should have been there but wasn’t. Apparently she meant to goof off from work until her uncle was properly disposed of. He felt rather relieved.

Free emerged from his druid’s cubicle. He was a small red man wearing a starched white jacket, and the expressions of his face and voice were measured to the requirements of the occasion — as if they also, like the contents of his jars and bottles, were prescriptive ingredients. The pharmacist and Grundy had gone to school together at South Cibola City High. Grundy had beaten him up regularly during recess, he recalled with guilty satisfaction.

“Sherm,” Orville Free said with a precise nod. “What can I do for you?”

“Hello, Orv. I’m after information about a drug. It’s a synthetic substitute for insulin used in the treatment of diabetes.”

“And put out under various trade names. Yes? What about it?”

“You carry the stuff in stock? Dispense it?”

“Of course. On prescription. You have diabetes, Sherm?” Orville, too, remembered the beatings.

“No, gas. I’d like to see your prescription file.”

The pharmacist looked shocked. But then he braced himself and said coldly, “Come on around in here.”

Grundy followed him into the holy of holies, and Free hauled down his prescription file for Grundy’s examination. Almost an hour later he was still at it.

“Do you fill all prescriptions for the Slater O’Shea family, Orv?”

“I would think so,” replied Free, “seeing that Slater had a charge here and they buy-and-charge with me all the time.”

Grundy went back two years. There was no O’Shea on record as having had the substitute for insulin prescribed. There were other drug stores in Cibola City, of course, and he would have to check them all, but Grundy had the glum feeling that results elsewhere would be no more fruitful.

The pharmacist was looking inquisitive as Lieutenant Grundy finished. “What’s up, Sherm?”

“Official,” Grundy said. “Top secret.” He hesitated before asking what he wanted next to ask. But he could discover no way to ask it without asking it. “Orv... could some of this stuff have been swiped from your supply without you missing it?”

“What an idea!” Orville Free said indignantly. “Certainly not.”

“Well, have you missed any?”

“Of course not!”

“How do you know?” Lieutenant Grundy asked with morbid pleasure. “Have you checked what you’ve dispensed against your inventory of supply?”

“No,” the pharmacist said, drawing himself up like an offended potentate. “I don’t mind telling you, Sherman, I don’t care for your line of questioning.”

“Never mind that, now. Princess O’Shea works for you, I believe?”

“You know darn well she does.”

“Then where is she?”

“Don’t you know her uncle, Slater O’Shea, died suddenly? She’s home, mourning. What kind of police brutality are you up to, Sherm Grundy? Why do you bring that lovely child’s name into this... this third degree!” Orville Free was completely off-balance now, Grundy noted sadistically. In a way, it was like the old fine days of the school playground beatings.

“I’m doing the questioning, Orv,” Grundy said in a crisp voice. “Now tell me something, and I warn you not to read anything into my question. Does Princess O’Shea have access to your prescription department?”

“She has access to the whole store, you fool,” Free said shortly. “What are you suggesting, with that foul police mentality of yours?”

“Nothing,” Grundy said, “nothing at all. Well, thanks, Orv. Remember — hush-hush.”

“Oh,” Orville Free said, “go... go fish!”

10

Lieutenant Grundy waited in the late Slater O’Shea’s living room while Mrs. Dolan went upstairs to fetch Miss Lallie O’Shea. Glancing idly through the sliding glass doors to the terrace beyond, Grundy was momentarily electrified. Little Cousin Peet was lying naked out there on a pad. But then he saw that she was not naked, kept from being so by two strategic strips of cloth of the same fleshy shade as her succulent hide.

In a canvas chair nearby skulked Brady O’Shea. His dark face was sullen, the lower lip protruding murderously, the eyes going slowly over Peet’s body like a vacuum cleaner.

Grundy was actually conscious of a slight chill. Of the candidates wishful thinking proposed for the position of Slater’s murderer — Twig possibly excepted — Brady was Grundy’s favorite. There was a quality in that handsome, glowering face that suggested violence. Poisoning, however... Grundy shook his head. Every theory in this case carried with it its own built-in objection.

He was almost relieved when this nakedly expressive pair’s little big-handed aunt entered the room.

“I don’t like you, Lieutenant Grundy,” was Lallie O’Shea’s greeting. “Why do you keep coming around?”

“This time, Miss O’Shea, it’s to tell you that the autopsy on your brother has been completed.”

“And of course you found out that Slater died of natural causes, as I told you from the beginning.”

“You were mistaken, Miss O’Shea. Your brother died of an unnatural cause. He was poisoned.”

“Stuff,” said the dainty little lady; she leaned forward and peered at him with an I-smell-something-bad expression. “You’re just making that up to annoy me.”

“Miss O’Shea, I’m a policeman, not a Halloween joker. The county coroner’s physician reports that your brother died of poisoning.”

“Then he’s as incompetent as you are. Who on earth would want to poison Slater?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Aunt Lallie sniffed. “And what was he poisoned with? Tell me that. Or can you?”

“It’s a drug recently developed as a substitute for insulin. Used in the treatment of diabetes.”

“Well, no one here is diabetic,” snapped Aunt Lallie, “and who but a diabetic would even think of using such a thing? The whole thing is absurd.”

“Maybe not, Miss O’Shea. This drug has a delayed action, which could have certain advantages for a poisoner. It can be swallowed, as it undoubtedly was, without suspicion. Also, the victim falls into a coma and dies, and the death could pass for a natural death. And finally, though it’s not common, it could be at least as readily available to a certain person as commoner drugs or poisons.”

Lallie O’Shea stood uncharacteristically looking at him as he spoke, and for some time afterward, her scoffing regality seeming shaken by her discovery that he was able to put several ideas together in logical sequence. All at once she stalked over to the terrace doors and opened one of them.

“Peet, you had better come inside at once. Brady, you, too. Where are Princess and Twig?”

Peet rolled over onto her back and raised her delectable little self on her elbows. The front view was so extraordinary that Grundy felt himself blush.

“Prin went for a walk behind the house,” Peet said. “I think Twig followed her. Did you see Twig follow Prin, Brady?”

“Yes,” Brady said, still looking at her.

“Call them,” Aunt Lallie commanded.

Peet scrambled to her feet and took a deep breath. The deep breath, as deep breaths do, caused her to become greater here and smaller there, and Grundy had a moment’s alarm regarding the pair of Peet-colored scraps, each endangered by opposite reactions. But his alarm was immediately swallowed up by sheer surprise. Peet’s speaking voice, which was small and sleepy and rather fuzzy, had done nothing whatever to prepare him for the clarion call that now issued from her. It was the sound of a French horn produced by a flute.

“Prin!” she called. “Prin and Twig! Come back at once, wherever you are!”

Grundy half expected to see Twig and Prin come flying into view, racing each other for home base. They did indeed come, but at a mere walk. Peet and Brady waited for them on the terrace, and the two pairs of cousins entered the living room together. Peet seated herself on the sofa Buddha-fashion; Brady drew up a chair opposite and continued his visual vacuum-cleaning; Prin perched on the arm of Brady’s chair; and Twig rode the piano bench as if it were an ass. Aunt Lallie remained standing.

As did Grundy. Surrounded by hostile O’Sheas, he had the oddest feeling of entrapment.

“Now, Lieutenant,” Aunt Lallie said, “please relate to my nieces and nephews what you have just related to me.”

The lieutenant repeated what he had told Aunt Lallie about the cause of Slater O’Shea’s death. “He was given a lethal dose of this drug,” he concluded. “We found it (A), in the bottle of bourbon, and (B), in Slater O’Shea.”

Grundy was prepared for anything but nothing. There was no eruption at all. Everyone merely stared at him with distaste and disapproval, as if he had told a bawdy joke in church.

“That’s perfectly silly,” Peet said at last. “I don’t believe it.”

“I believe it,” Grundy said. “The county coroner believes it. The county attorney believes it. And in my opinion, when the time comes, a jury will believe it, too.”

“Where the devil would anyone get such a drug?” Brady said. “I’ve never even heard of it before.”

“It can be had on prescription from any pharmacy. Or it could have been acquired without prescription by someone with a supply of the drug available.”

“Prin’s the only one who works around a pharmacy,” Twig said, looking interested. “Could you possibly mean Prin?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say it,” said Prin, “but you meant it.” She was looking a little cyanotic around the gills.

“Prin,” said Aunt Lallie severely. “Did you steal some of that whatsis and give it to your Uncle Slater in his bourbon?”

“I did not,” said Prin.

“That settles it, Lieutenant. If my niece Prin says she didn’t do it, she didn’t do it. Will that be all today?”

“It’s not that simple.” Damn! Grundy thought. Why did I ever become a cop?

“It’s plain stupidity,” Brady said. “We’ve told you over and over. None of us would have killed Uncle Slater, if only because of that will he told us about.”

“That’s right,” said Peet. “We’ve told you over and over. Can’t you understand English, Lieutenant?”

“Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t,” Grundy said. “But I always understand what I’m plainly told, and I’ve been plainly told by an authority on the subject that no such will exists.”

He was not quite certain afterward whether he made the statement deliberately or had been stung into it against his better judgment. However, the die was cast; and he watched them closely.

“Doesn’t exist? The will doesn’t exist?” Aunt Lallie was opening and shutting her formidable hands as if to prepare them for Grundy’s throat. “Are you trying to — to provoke us, you policeman, you? Or what?”

The others all had their mouths open.

“I’m simply telling you what Slater O’Shea’s attorney just told me. Selwyn Fish states that no such will exists. Mr. O’Shea did have a mock will to that effect drawn up, but it’s only a scrap of paper; he never signed it and it has no legal validity. Fish says he did it for a joke. If you ask me, he wanted you all to believe that if you killed him you’d lose money by it.”

“Why, I can’t believe my ears,” exclaimed Aunt Lallie. “To be dealt such shabby treatment by one’s own brother. A cheap trick—”

“Maybe it’s even cheaper,” said Brady. “Maybe he left another will, a real one, that’s worse.”

“How could it possibly be worse?” said Peet pettishly.

“If he cut us all out altogether. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Is there another will?” Prin asked Grundy. “A real one?”

“And don’t bother with details,” said Twig. “Who gets what?”

“Testator’s sister, Lallie O’Shea,” said Grundy, “inherits everything.”

Watching Lallie O’Shea, the lieutenant had grudgingly to concede that she was either honestly flabbergasted or the world’s greatest unsung actress. She stood frozen in her tracks, mouth agape, but this was only for a moment. Then the virginal little lips came together, and over her dainty features came an expression of pure ecstasy, as if she had just been transported to a higher plane of spiritual existence by an overwhelming religious experience. This was quickly replaced by an earthier look, suggesting that she was not the least bit surprised, a sibling having certain natural rights not to be arrogated by mere nieces and nephews. The nieces and nephews, after exhibiting shock, incredulity, disgruntlement and anger in varying degrees of intensity and speed, turned a battery of stares at their Aunt Lallie in naked targetry — looking at her, speculating upon her character and potential, really for the first time in their lives.

“Do you suppose old Fish could be lying?” Brady wondered aloud.

“Why should he?” Twig said. “He will have to produce the will sooner or later.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Lallie, “and at the first opportunity I shall ask him why it hasn’t been sooner. There is simply no excuse for his having kept me in ignorance all this time.”

“Fish says,” said Grundy, “that he observes the custom of not reading the will until after the funeral.”

“Nonsense,” said Aunt Lallie imperiously. “He should have told me privately what I have a perfect right to know. You may be sure I shall speak to this Selwyn Fish about that.”

“Atta girl, Aunt Lallie,” said her nephew Twig tenderly. “Whatever you say.”

“Well,” said his sister Peet, “I don’t think it was fair of Uncle Slater to leave everything to Aunt Lallie. Though it’s better this way than sharing with seventeen other O’Sheas we hardly know. What I can’t understand,” Peet went on, wrinkling her pretty brows painfully, “is why Prin isn’t the one. We all know you were Uncle Slater’s favorite, Prin. I’d have thought he’d leave you something.”

Prin shrugged.

“Shame on you, Peet,” said Twig severely. “You seem to forget we’re now dependent on Aunt Lallie for everything.”

“Yes, Peet,” said Aunt Lallie. “You would do well to consider carefully before you speak!”

“Well, I’ll be double-jiggered,” murmured Prin. “Uncle Slater’s will has hardly been mentioned, let alone probated, and already we’re on notice that we’d better live on tiptoe around here or we’ll be thrown out on our ears.” Although the way Prin pronounced the last two words, it might have been “our rears.”

“It may be,” Brady said darkly, “that she will be in no position to throw anybody out of any place.”

“What do you mean by that, Brady?” Aunt Lallie demanded. “Are you implying that I am somehow vulnerable?”

“I don’t mind saying that it’s something to think about,” Brady grinned. “After all, we mustn’t forget that Uncle Slater was murdered. It looked as if there was no reason for any of us to have done it — in fact, just the reverse. But now it appears that one of us did have a reason all along, and I won’t bother at this time to mention the name.”

“Brady O’Shea,” said Aunt Lallie, “you’re a degenerate, and I’ve always known it! You’ll be sorry for what you’ve just said.”

“Oh, but,” Twig said, “Uncle Slater’s real will wouldn’t have made any difference to Aunt Lallie if she didn’t know about it. And you didn’t, did you, Aunt Lallie?”

“No, indeed,” said Aunt Lallie, giving Twig a look of benign gratitude. It was evident that Twig was well on his way to becoming her court favorite.

“Of course not,” said Twig. “And besides, how would a lady like Aunt Lallie know anything about poisoning people? Or, even if she wanted to, know where to get some?”

“Well, Prin works in a drug store,” Peet said, in her uncompromisingly logical way. “Prin, did you steal some of Mr. Free’s whatever-it-is for Aunt Lallie to poison Uncle Slater with?”

Grundy, studying the procession of expressions shuttling over Prin’s face, was aware of a compulsion to go over to her and put an arm about her comfortingly. But it was a guilty compulsion. His sympathy was in conflict with his suspicions, which had already taken the shape of Peet’s question. So he simply sat there in uneasy surveillance.

Then Prin was standing straight as a drum majorette, and she spoke with outraged pride and throbbing scorn.

“I will tell you all something,” she said, “and I don’t care one little whoop-de-doop whether you believe me or not. I have not stolen any whatever-it-is, or any other drug or poison, at the instance of or at the instigation of or in the interests of Aunt Lallie, or anyone else, in order to poison Uncle Slater. I have been sitting here listening to you all, and it’s made me ill. Uncle Slater has been murdered, and you have been talking and talking about which one of us might have killed him, or helped kill him, and the significant thing is that each of you doesn’t doubt for one second that any of the rest of us is perfectly capable of it, the only question being who had something to gain and who didn’t. You are all even worse than I thought you were, which was bad enough to begin with. Maybe I’m not much better, when all is said and done, but at least I’m sorry Uncle Slater’s dead, and I truly hope whoever killed him is even sorrier in the end. You have talked and talked and talked, and not one of you is any good — any good whatever — and moreover you have made accusations in the hearing of Lieutenant Grundy, a policeman, which makes you fools, besides. Now I have said what I wanted to say, and I’m going out for some fresh air, unless I am under some kind of detention, because I don’t want to hear any of you or see any of you for the present, or ever again if I can help it.”

And when it became evident that detention was not in Lieutenant Grundy’s mind, Prin O’Shea walked out holding her little chin high. She had been gone for most of a minute before anyone recovered.

“Well,” gasped Aunt Lallie. “I have never in my born days witnessed such a disgusting display. I will say, however, that Prin was quite right in one respect, Lieutenant. It was unforgivably rude of you, not to say boorish, to take advantage by listening in on a family consultation. You should have had the good grace to leave the room. I believe I shall report you for not having done so.”

“I suggest the Chief of Police,” Grundy said wearily. “Now if you will excuse me? At the risk of offending again, I’ll be seeing you all soon, very soon.”

As he was about to climb into his car, Grundy caught sight of Prin O’Shea striding away in the direction of downtown. She gave the impression of purpose. He thought of offering her a lift to wherever she was going, but then he put Satan behind him. And so he passed her on the street, a slim swift-striding figure who did not even glance his way, and Lieutenant Grundy drove on with a distinct feeling of personal loss.

11

When Prin left the house she had no other intention than to get away. But she was no sooner outside in the diminishing afternoon than she felt such a need for the sight and sound of Coley Collins that it was like a crampy pain, and she turned her steps at once toward town. She could not remember if Coley was on duty at the taproom this evening or not, everything had been so disrupted and confused since Uncle Slater’s death. She decided to try the hotel first.

She walked under darkened trees whose upper branches were still touched with light, imparting to the leaves an illusion of undersea translucency. The air was alive with cicadas and peepers crying their wares — altogether, Prin thought, too lovely an ending to a day made ugly by death and deviltry. What she had to do, and quickly, was to find Coley; and then things would seem not quite so bad as they indubitably were. Her pace quickened, and soon she came to the hotel and made for the taproom.

But Coley was not on duty.

At first Prin felt lost and betrayed, all hope dissolved in the instant. But then she took hold of herself. She was being absurd. What she must clearly do was to go on to the house where Coley lived — where he most likely was this very moment. She left the hotel and headed for Grantlund Street.

The number was 2267; and since she turned into Grantlund Street on the 900 block, she had thirteen blocks to walk. By the time she reached the 2200 block it was too dark to read the house-numbers; but 2267 must be toward the end of the block, so Prin hurried along.

It was not a good block, even charitably regarded. The houses were mostly tiny one-family units in need of paint and repairs, with scratchy little six-by-six gardens, most of them tall with weeds. Then Prin spotted a larger house just off the far corner, and that was obviously the house, because it was the only one that seemed to have room for even a small apartment to rent. So she went up onto the porch and peered at the number on the door, and it was 2267, sure enough.

She hesitated. She did not know if the whole house was rented, or only part of it; if the owner happened to live downstairs, it might not be discreet to ring the bell and ask the way to a young man’s apartment — although, from the looks of the neighborhood, this was a question that might not be considered unusual or objectionable. On the whole, she decided, it would be better simply to go in and up the stairs; so she did. No one stopped her, Coley’s door had his name tacked to it, and there was no problem.

Prin knocked, and heard movements beyond the door. Now that there was only a door between them, she became desperately eager. She meant to throw her arms around Coley and kiss him without shame or ceremony the moment he was within reach, and she had this so strongly in mind that she almost did it in spite of the fact that it was not Coley who opened the door.

The door opener was a very small young man who would have necessitated stooping if the kiss had been executed. The top of his head, which was blond and burred, came approximately to Prin’s chin; and Prin thought in the first traumatic instant of recoil that he was not a young man at all, but a boy, which had not been true for a good many years. He was wearing heavy glasses that, on his tiny face, conveyed the immensity of racing goggles. Below a button nose lay a pinched mouth, so that Prin’s third impression, after those of the young man and the boy, produced a composite old-young man-boy. Which was, although she could not know it, remarkably close to the fact.

“Oh,” said Prin, “I’m sorry. I thought Coley Collins lived here.”

“So he does,” the old-young man-boy said, “and so do I.”

“You mean you live here together?”

“Certainly.”

“How odd!”

“How odd of you to think so. May I ask why?”

“Because Coley forgot to mention you, that’s all. I assumed he lived alone.”

He removed his goggles and wiped them on the tail of the sport shirt screaming outside his pants. Then he put the goggles back on and, leaning a little, peered.

“You’re Princess O’Shea,” he exclaimed.

“How did you know?”

“Coley may never have mentioned me to you, but he’s mentioned you to me so many times that I’m sick of you. I must admit, though, that Coley has a sharpshooter’s eye. You’re the type girl I’d like to draw a bead on myself, I think, if I liked girls.”

“You don’t like girls?”

“No, because they don’t like me. It’s a kind of sex war.”

“That’s too bad. There are so many fun-things boys and girls can do together.”

“I don’t want to discuss it,” said the gnome. “Coley’s in love with you. Do you know that?”

“I should hope so,” said Prin, wondering when he was going to ask her in.

“Oh, there’s no question about it. Are you going to take him away from me?”

Prin was rather startled. “I suppose so. You don’t have any claim on him, do you?”

“Just the claim of undying friendship.”

“Well, I’m sorry. But if we’re going to be married—”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me live with you,” the little man-boy asked wistfully, “afterward?”

“I doubt,” said Prin with no doubt whatever, “that an arrangement like that would work out.”

He looked glum. “I’m inclined to agree. I’m the jealous type. Don’t misunderstand me,” he said suddenly. “Coley and I are not—”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said Prin; and she was, too.

“You won’t mind my visiting him now and then?”

“Well, no.”

“Thank you. My name is Winston Whitfield. Coley isn’t here just now.”

“Where is he, Mr. Whitfield?”

“He’s at an evening class taking a lesson in embezzlement. You know, Coley is learning how to steal a bundle so we can go away somewhere and live forever after without having to work.”

“Plans have now changed. I’m the one who’s going with him.”

Whitfield’s little face reflected first frustration, then menace. “You promised to let me visit,” he said, “and don’t — you — forget it!”

“I’ll send you a proper invitation at the proper time. Do you expect Coley back soon, Mr. Whitfield?”

“Call me Winnie,” Winston Whitfield said sulkily. “Any time now. I’m listening for his signal. He always whistles coming up the stairs.”

“May I come in and wait?”

“If you like snakes.”

“I beg pardon?” said Prin.

“The place is full of snakes. I just thought I ought to tell you.”

“That’s considerate of you. On second thought, I believe I’ll wait out here.”

“They’re contained, of course. I have them in aquariums.”

“In that case, I’ll come in.”

Winnie Whitfield stepped aside to admit her. Prin looked cautiously around a room that would not have merited a second glance, for it was drab and nappy as the soul of a landlord, except for the aquariums. There were some two dozen of them, all furnished tastefully with colored rocks and weathered wood, and each housing at least one wriggling, sinewy thing.

“Would you like to hold one?” asked Winnie, pleased at her interest.

“Well, no, thank you.”

“Oh, you’re really missing something. They’re so affectionate.”

“How do you tell the difference between affection and hunger?”

“You have the usual prejudices,” said the little man sadly. “Snakes are the most slandered of living creatures. Don’t you realize that of the more than one hundred varieties of snakes in this country, only four are poisonous?”

“Is that a fact?” said Prin politely. “I’m pretty ignorant about snakes.”

“Most people are. Only our coral snake, water moccasin, copperhead and rattlesnake are poisonous.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said Prin.

“Snakes are so beautiful. Take that common bull snake over there. See how esthetically designed he is? The perfect harmony of his colors? Would you care to watch him walk across the room?”

“No, thank you,” said Prin hurriedly. “I didn’t know snakes walk, by the way. I thought they slither along on their tummies.”

“Another slander. Many of them walk. Actually, on their ribs. Grip the ground with them. That’s why they can’t get along on a slick surface.”

“How do you happen to be so interested in snakes?” asked Prin, just to keep the little weirdo from demonstrating one of them.

“Because nobody likes them,” said Winnie Whitfield savagely, “that’s why. All because of that fairy tale about the Garden of Eden. If you ask me, a woman invented that story about Eve being tempted with the apple by the snake! Transferring her own guilt to a poor old reptile. Why, there are endless satisfactions in studying snakes. For instance, they swallow their food whole—” Prin could not suppress a shudder “—even though they have teeth. Why? Because their teeth are slanted the wrong way. Did you know that? Watch a snake shed its skin sometimes — it’s marvelous. Did you know some snakes bear their young alive? Garter snakes do that, little plain old garden variety garter snakes. Isn’t that wonderful? And useful — why, take the bull snake, the king snake. They eat rats and mice.”

“How, ah, do you keep your bull snake,” coughed Prin, “on his regular diet?”

“I set traps for mice — I have an arrangement with a wholesale grocer.”

“I can see you really love snakes.”

“Oh, yes, better than anything in the world.” Winston Whitfield, who had been looking intensely happy, now looked intensely sad. “Excepting Coley, that is. I love Coley Collins even more than snakes. He’s so clever, so kind. He’ll really steal a great deal of money some day.”

“I hope not,” said Prin with asperity. “Coley told me about those embezzlement lessons. Can’t you tell a joke when you hear one?”

“Joke?” said Winnie, looking puzzled. “Well, no matter. Rich or poor, Coley’s the finest fellow alive. I wish you and he had never met.”

“Nature had to be served eventually,” said Prin philosophically. “Have you known each other long?”

“Since we were boys. He was the only one ever liked me, I don’t know why. He never gets angry with me.”

“Doesn’t he ever get angry about your having snakes around?”

“Never,” said Winnie stoutly. “He will even hold one once in a while to please me. I can hardly bear to think of living without him. Isn’t there anything I can say or do to make you give him up?”

“I can’t think of anything. Isn’t that Coley now? Someone is whistling on the stairs.”

“I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” said the little fellow gloomily. “Yes, that’s Coley, all right.”

And so it was. Coley came in and saw Prin and immediately stopped whistling.

“Hello, there,” Coley said. “What brings you here, Prin? Is something wrong?”

“There’s hardly anything right, darling, but you could start making things better by kissing me.”

“It wouldn’t be fair in front of old Winnie,” said Coley bashfully. “He’s the jealous type.”

“So,” said Prin in a grim voice, “he told me.”

“Oh, so you and old Winnie have been getting acquainted. He’s a sweet little guy, if on the nutty side. Aren’t you, Winnie?”

“Yes, Coley,” said Winnie Whitfield ecstatically.

“But all these snakes—” began Prin.

“Oh, you get used to them after a while. They keep Winnie happy, that’s the important thing. Though I admit I was kind of upset one night when one got into bed with me.”

“It was only a king snake, Coley,” Winston said with anxiety.

“It’s worse than having to sleep with somebody who has cold feet. Do you have cold feet, Prin?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. But I’m sure I’m warmer than a king snake.”

“You mentioned kissing,” Coley said suddenly. “Shall we go somewhere and indulge ourselves?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I know a little park. It’s only a few blocks from here. We could sit on a bench and do it.”

“A dark bench?”

“The darkest we can find. And maybe later we’ll step out. Winnie, Prin and I are going to the park.”

“I heard you,” Winnie said sullenly.

Coley took Prin to the little park and kissed her. The kiss was repeated repeatedly, since Coley pointed out with irrefutable reason that one kiss was about as satisfying as one beer. Later, when Prin had been sufficiently comforted, they approached Uncle Slater and the murder by way of Winston Whitfield.

“Well,” Coley said, “what did you think of old Winnie?”

“He’s a bit odd, isn’t he?” said Prin. “You said so yourself. Is that why you haven’t told me about him before?”

“Oh, I’m so used to having him around I keep forgetting about him. Besides, most people don’t understand him.”

“I can see why they wouldn’t. I’m not sure I understand him myself, and I’ve had plenty of practice understanding odd people.”

“He’s an engaging little devil when you get to know him. Currently, however, he’s something of a problem. I don’t know what to do with him when we get married.”

“He’s a grown man, isn’t he? He’ll just have to shift for himself.”

“A grown man? Winnie? By God, that’s true, when you stop to think of it.”

“Darling, you’re far too warm-hearted for your own good.”

“Well, I feel sort of committed to old Winnie. I’ve kind of led him to expect certain things.”

“He absolutely worships you. He thinks you’re the kindest and cleverest and finest fellow alive.” Prin watched him narrowly.

“Did he say that?” asked Coley, obviously touched.

“Yes.”

Coley uttered a distressed sound. “I wonder if we couldn’t arrange it so he lives with us later.”

“We could not. And you’d better stop thinking along those lines, Coley Collins!”

“You’re probably right. He’d only make a bloody little nuisance of himself — snakes all over the place, and all that. It’s a big house, though. Maybe we could put him and his snakes in the basement or some place.”

“Which house do you mean?”

“Your Uncle Slater’s, of course. I assume we’ll be living there.”

“Why should you assume any such thing? Uncle Slater is dead, and everything has changed.”

“You mean about that crazy will, ringing in all those remote O’Sheas? Princess, I’ve always had a feeling you’d come out better than the others. He liked you the best — told me so himself one night in the taproom. You’ll see, Prin. The house will be yours at least. Probably the whole estate.”

“On the contrary, Coley, nothing is mine.”

“What’s that? What did you say?”

“He didn’t leave me anything at all.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“The crazy will was a deliberate fake. He never signed it. Lieutenant Grundy found out about the real will from Selwyn Fish, Uncle Slater’s lawyer. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk with you about. Everything goes to Aunt Lallie.”

“Aunt Lallie! Did you say Aunt Lallie gets it all?”

“That’s what I said.”

Coley was in the grip of a terrible excitement. He leaped from the bench and began pacing with a measured wildness, so many steps this way and so many that, like a big cat in a small cage. It was too dark for Prin to see him clearly, but she knew from having seen it before that his eyes were glittering with fierce thought. Finally he sat down again on the bench, breathing deeply.

“Well!” he said. “Well, by God!”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Prin said, “Aunt Lallie is welcome to her haul. It’s bad enough that Uncle Slater was murdered, but to think that it was probably done by a member of his family! Whoever it is ought to be ashamed of himself.”

Coley muttered absently, “Aren’t you using the wrong gender?”

“The wrong what?”

“Gender. You said ‘ashamed of himself.’ It should be ‘herself.’”

“You mean Aunt Lallie? Don’t be silly, Coley.”

“Why not? As it’s turned out, isn’t she the one who profits?”

“Aunt Lallie says she had no knowledge whatever of the existence of that valid will.”

“My God,” groaned Coley. “Of course she said she didn’t know anything about it! Would you expect her to say that she did?”

“What about the drug? It wasn’t the kind of drug Aunt Lallie would even know existed, let alone get hold of and use.”

“What drug? You haven’t told me that.”

“A synthetic substitute for insulin. Something new for diabetics.”

“The devil it was,” said Coley thoughtfully. “Who said that was what was used? Grundy?”

“Yes. They found it in Uncle Slater’s bottle of bourbon, and then in Uncle Slater. Enough to kill him and then some.”

Coley was quiet. Finally he said, “Did Grundy say who he thought did it?”

“No. But public opinion apparently favors a collaboration between Aunt Lallie and me.”

“That’s utterly weird. By God, that’s just the sort of insanity you’d expect a herd of O’Sheas to come up with.”

“There is a kind of logic in it, though,” sighed Prin. “Aunt Lallie had the motive, and I had access to the drug. I mean, I work in a drug store. It’s something that would occur to anyone.”

“It didn’t occur to me. It’s obvious I’m going to have to put my mind to this if I’m to be of any use to you in this business. Don’t worry, Prin. I’ll set things straight if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Well, I hope it isn’t the last thing. I have some additional duties in mind that I’m rather looking forward to.”

“Me, too, so I have a selfish interest in seeing that you’re not charged with something that you didn’t do. Or, for that matter, that you did do.”

“Oh, Coley,” said Prin, burrowing into his shoulder.

“To begin with,” muttered Coley, “I’ll go see that knucklehead Grundy. If he’s left to his own devices, he’s sure to come to all the wrong conclusions.”

“I’m not at all convinced he’s a knucklehead, darling. I get the positive feeling that he’s a lot smarter than he lets on. Besides, he likes me.”

Coley looked stormy. “Has the guy been making passes at you?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just a feeling I get. He suspects me, of course, but he keeps hoping I’m innocent — that sort of thing. Isn’t that an advantage?”

“I prefer something more substantial,” said Coley coldly, “such as catching the murderer. I still incline toward your Aunt Lallie. And I’ve just thought of something that may surprise a lot of people, including your smitten detective-lieutenant.”

“You have?” murmured Prin happily. “What, darling?”

“Never mind.” Coley’s voice softened. He lifted her face and said, “What we should do now is think pleasant. Have you had anything to eat recently?”

“No, but I’m not hungry.”

“Would you like to go to a movie?”

“No, I would like you to kiss me again, and then take me home.”

“Do you feel better now?”

“Much, much better.”

So he kissed her again — and again, and again, and again and again and again and again — and then he took her home and they sat on the front steps and kissed some more and held hands, and it was a good interlude in a bad time that might have been worse.

That was worse, and was to get worse still.

Had they but known.

12

Although it was early, the lower floor of the house was dark except in the hall, where a night light burned at the foot of the stairs. There were brightly lit rooms on the upper floor, however — Prin had seen them from outdoors — indicating that the O’Shea tribe were dispersed among their various caves, for which she was glad. What she wanted more than anything else, now that she had been thoroughly kissed and comforted by Coley, was to avoid any contact with her brother or her cousins or her aunt... to get as quickly and quietly as possible to her room.

Intent upon this purpose, Prin scudded along the hall toward the stairs. Just as she passed the darkened living room, there was a sudden noise that almost lifted her from her feet and sent her heart sailing to her throat. She whirled, and there was Frankenstein’s monster, with the darkness behind him and the dim light of the hall on his face.

“God damn it, Twig,” Prin said furiously, “must you always lurk in dark places and leap out at people? This is the second time recently that you’ve scared the hell out of me. I want you to quit it!”

“Are you frightened?” Twig asked rustily. “Of your own cousin?”

“I’d be frightened of Little Bo Peep if she jumped out at me from the dark.”

“I didn’t jump. I have only been waiting for you to come home so I could talk to you.”

“No, thanks. I don’t even want to look at you. I would consider it an act of mercy if you never came near me again.”

He contorted his incongruous features in what he evidently intended as a placating smile. “I notice you don’t seem to feel any aversion to that Coley Collins.”

“Coley doesn’t make my skin creep,” said Prin wildly. “You do.”

“It’s all in your mind. You ran off to him right away, didn’t you?”

“I most certainly did.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What I told him is none of your business.”

“I think it may be. Let me warn you against trusting a stranger. As I see it, you are hardly in a position to cozy up to any outsider.”

“What is my position exactly, if you please?”

“You know what it is. There’s no use being devious with me.”

“I’m not being devious! You think you’re clever, Twig, but you’re only malicious and dull. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”

She merely started for the stairs. For Twig raised a hand in a curiously commanding gesture, and Prin waited, wondering why she did so.

“Not quite yet, please,” said Twig.

“What?” said Prin. “What do you want now?”

“A good-night kiss.”

“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?” cried Prin. “I’d sooner kiss the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“Kiss me, Prin,” said Twig urgently. “The way you just kissed that Coley Collins on the front steps.”

“So you were spying on us again. Twig, are you a pervert or what?”

“Watch that tongue of yours,” said Twig, his voice thickening. “I’m willing to help you, but you’ve got to be nice to me.”

“Help me?” Prin laughed. “What makes you think I need help? Or, if I needed any, that I’d accept it from you?”

“You think I’m a fool? You think you can make me believe that that stupid old woman upstairs thought this through and did it all by herself? Aunt Lallie doesn’t have the brains for this kind of job. It was a clever crime, even though it’s been exposed, thanks to that meddling old ass Appleton.”

“Not that again,” said Prin wearily. “I’m the brains behind Aunt Lallie, is that it? Got her the drug, and all the rest of it?”

“Of course. And now you’re in trouble, so you need help.”

“And you’re going to give it to me.” Prin made a sudden decision. Her voice lowered, and she said, “How, Twig?”

He stood looking at her, light and shadow shifting on his tall head, which had a queer flatness, like a painting; and suddenly, after a moment, he crooked his index finger, beckoning her closer. She found herself obeying in a sort of trance.

“Aunt Lallie is weak and soft,” he whispered. “Once the police go to work on her she’ll fall apart. She’ll blab everything and try to put most of the blame on you.”

“If that’s true, nothing can be done about it.”

“Yes, it can. She’s guilty, and she knows everyone knows it, including Lieutenant Grundy. To avoid the worst, she’ll commit suicide.”

“I see,” Prin whispered back. Horrid little ice-cold fingers were scurrying up and down her spine. “A suicide you’d arrange.”

Again that dreadful imitation of a smile. “A suicide.”

“It’s one thing to brag about it, another to do it.”

“You’ve always underestimated my ability, haven’t you?”

“All right,” Prin said. “But what good would it do? I’d still be left.”

“You’re tough, and you’re smart. You gained nothing from the will. Once Aunt Lallie is past blabbing you’ll be safe. And I’ll see to it they accept her as the sole culprit.”

“I don’t get it,” Prin prodded him. “All right, so Aunt Lallie goes, and I’m safe — but, as you’ve just pointed out, I’ve gained nothing under Uncle Slater’s will. What are you going to get out of it?”

“You,” Twig said. “You, Princess! I want you. I’ve always wanted you. I want you for your body, and I want you for your spirit, and I want you because you don’t want me. You’ll be my lovely little luck-piece, too. How much we could do together that we can’t do alone!”

Prin wanted to say something appropriate to her revulsion, but she could not think of anything. Instead, she began to laugh. And she could not stop. Her laughter was like an intense and leaping spasm, and she had the wildly helpless feeling that she was about to fly apart in a thousand pieces and every direction. Pressing her knuckles against her teeth, she tried to stuff the laughter back. But it was no use, and Twig’s eyes widened and immediately narrowed to arrowhead slits.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he snarled. “Stop that damn cackling!”

He took one step toward her, and the movement frightened her laughter to death.

She fled from him — across the hall, up the stairs. At the top of the stairs she twisted about for an instant to see if he was following. But there, at the foot of the stairs looking steadily up at her, was Cousin Twig. For a timeless moment they stared at each other, one down, one up; then Prin ran to her room and locked the door behind her with hasty, clumsy fingers. And she leaned against the door, thinking a wordless little prayer.

When finally she moved, and snapped on the light, it was with a crushing feeling that she had endured the limit of endurable experience that night. But then Prin simultaneously gave a little terrified squeak and sprang back. For there, in a chair beside her bed, sat Aunt Lallie. For a ghastly instant Prin thought that through some horrid wizardry Twig had already performed his murderous act, for Aunt Lallie sat quite rigid, looking unblinkingly at something that was not there.

But then the corpse stirred, and Aunt Lallie’s normal voice said, “Why is it that you always run away when you are needed most?”

“Why were you sitting in the dark in my room?” cried Prin.

“I’ve been waiting for you. Come here, Princess, and sit on the bed. By me.”

Prin went over to the bed and sat down near Aunt Lallie. She pressed her knees together and folded her hands on them.

“Please, Aunt Lallie, I’m very tired. What is it you wanted?”

“Just this,” said Aunt Lallie in a fluty voice. “I find myself in a most trying position, thanks to you, and I wish to know what you propose to do about it.”

“Thanks to me?”

“Don’t evade! You heard what that nasty brother of yours said. Brady practically accused me of poisoning Slater’s bourbon. Out loud, in front of everybody! Simply because Slater left me everything.”

“Brady can be nasty enough, and a lot more besides, I suppose,” said Princess wearily, “but what does that have to do with me?”

“You’re as much under suspicion as I, because you work in that drug store. I’ve told you time and again how silly it was to keep that job! Now see where it’s got us.”

“But the drug store has nothing to do with anything, Aunt Lallie. I didn’t steal the drug. And if anybody knows that you and I had no arrangement to kill Uncle Slater, you do.”

“What you and I know is not sufficient. That man Grundy is the nuisance, and I’m counting on you to convince him for my sake.”

“I’ll try to convince him, of course, since I’m absolutely innocent. But it will be for my sake, Aunt Lallie, not for yours.”

“You needn’t be discourteous.”

“I’m not. I’m factual. Please, Aunt Lallie. I’d like to go to bed.”

Aunt Lallie’s pretty little mouth thinned to an ugly little gash. “You are as boorish in your own way as Brady and your two cousins, though I must say that Twig has acted with surprising decency since Slater’s death.” She popped out of the chair and stood there like a miniature Lady Macbeth in her flowing chiffon negligee with its bloody poinsettias. “And I shall take this opportunity to remind you, Princess O’Shea, that I am mistress here, and I am planning a few changes that certain people will not care for.”

“If that’s a threat to throw me out,” Prin murmured, “it’s an empty one. I am not staying in this house one minute longer than I have to, Aunt Lallie. As soon as Uncle Slater is buried, I’m leaving.”

“Good riddance!” hissed Aunt Lallie and went to the door and unlocked it. Trailing chiffon and blood, she swept out of the room.

Prin continued to sit on the edge of the bed. She was so exhausted that she thought she would never move again. And it was, in fact, a long time before she did.

13

It was not quite midnight, and Coley lay staring up at the invisible ceiling. He had been in bed only a short time, having made a couple of detours on his way back from Princess O’Shea’s. He had found Winston Whitfield already nested down across the room, and Coley had undressed noiselessly. Now, lying motionless, Coley suddenly knew that Winnie was awake. He could feel it. Vibrations.

He spoke in a loud voice. “You’ve been awake all along, Winnie, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” came Winnie’s voice, coldly.

“Then why the hell did you let me creep around in the dark like a dope?”

“I didn’t care to talk.”

“You sore at me about something?”

“Should I be?”

“Don’t play cute with me, old Winnie. You’re jealous of Prin. Isn’t that it?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Coley Collins. Me jealous? Ha, ha.”

“You don’t like her.”

“I don’t like any girl, you know that. Though if I did, I’d probably go for her.”

“That’s a real compliment, Winnie, coming from you.”

There was a half-sour, half-pleased grunt. Then Winnie’s voice, not quite so cold, said, “I suppose there’s no mistake, Coley? You really want to marry her?”

“Yes, but don’t worry. We’ll work out something for you.”

“She won’t let me live with you. She says she won’t.”

“Well,” said Coley judiciously, “in a way you can’t blame her.”

“I’ll be lonesome when you go away. I may go away myself.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere.”

“You stay right in Cibola City. Then I won’t have to fret about you. You make enough money in that stock-clerk job to get by on. Maybe I can even help you out a little now and then.”

“No, I’ll be less lonesome off somewhere,” said Winnie stubbornly. “I couldn’t stand your being so close and living with somebody else.”

“But she’ll be my wife, old Winnie. Doesn’t that make it kind of different?”

“No,” said Winnie.

“What about your snakes? If you went away you’d have to get rid of your snakes.”

There was a stricken silence. Then Winnie muttered, “Gosh, I forgot about that. You’re right, Coley. I’ll have to stay here.”

“It will work out just fine,” said Coley with relief. “You’ll see.”

“While you live in that big house across town.” Winnie was cold-voiced again.

“That’s what I thought. Now I’m not so sure.”

“How come?” asked Winnie, with a faint interest.

“Oh, just something that’s come up.”

“I hope you do live there. In a big house like that you could certainly find room for me. And that girl is real gone on you, Coley, anyone can see that. So if you put your foot down—”

“The snakes,” said Coley.

Winnie sighed. Coley cursed in silence. Winnie was a bloody nuisance, but he was an amusing little devil, and Coley hated to hurt him or see him droopy-faced.

“Did Prin have to wait long for me?” he asked encouragingly.

“Oh, maybe fifteen minutes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing much. Snakes. You. How you’re studying embezzlement and all.”

“You’d better go easy on the embezzlement bit, Winnie.”

“She knew all about it,” said Winnie, hotly this time. “Said you’d told her yourself.”

“I guess I did at that. Prin’s all right. Understands lots of things. What else did you talk about?”

“Nothing! Just snakes and you. I told you.”

“You’re a pal. Most fellows talking to a doll like Prin would have talked mostly about themselves.”

“I don’t,” said Winnie shortly.

“There’s no use trying to cheer you up. Sleepy?”

“No.”

“Well, better try. You know how early you have to get up.”

“It won’t do any good.”

“You can try, can’t you?”

“All right,” mumbled Winnie; and there was silence.

Coley lay brooding. He had been brooding all evening. His detours en route from Prin’s had taken him into two bars, in each of which he had brooded over beer. His brooding was deep and bitter and befuddled, for what he was brooding about was Prin’s revelation that Aunt Lallie O’Shea was coming into Slater O’Shea’s entire estate.

It did not make sense.

Coley knew that it did not make sense. Knew it — not wished it, or guessed it, or heard it on the wind. Coley knew that it did not make sense because he had had very specific information to the contrary straight from the horse’s mouth.

So he lay in the dark and brooded.

And after a while he stopped brooding and listened for Winnie Whitfield’s breathing. When Winnie Whitfield was asleep his breathing sounded like a cage full of terrified birds trying to get away from a tiger-striped cat, with a dog on the floor near the cage trying to get at the cat. Winnie was not sleep-breathing. Winnie was awake-breathing.

“Winnie,” Coley said.

“What?” Winnie said.

“About Prin,” Coley said.

“What about her?” Winnie said.

“I know she gets on your nerves. She does, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” Winnie said.

“All right, then. If she should come around again when I’m not here, don’t talk to her. Don’t even let her in. Just tell her I’m not here and slam the door.”

“Hard?” asked Winnie, his voice brightening.

“Hard as you can.”

“Oh, boy,” said Winnie.

“Satisfied, Winnie?”

“Oh, boy,” said Winnie.

“Now try to get some sleep.”

That being taken care of, Coley went back to brooding again. And in the other room the snakes kept doing whatever snakes do at night.

14

Lieutenant Grundy was hot, damp and irritated. Office fan notwithstanding, his collar sawed at raw neck and his shoes nipped at swollen toes. He unbuttoned the collar and slipped off the shoes, leaned back in his swivel chair and sighed, and he closed his eyes.

Grundy had just returned from Slater O’Shea’s funeral. His attendance had been a compromise between attending and not attending; that is, he had avoided the service at the church, but he had trailed along to the cemetery. He had not gone to the cemetery out of respect or grief. He had gone to the cemetery because that was what the book prescribed. Of course, the book prescribed it on the theory that the murderer cannot stay away from the funeral of his victim, and in this case the murderer was bound to be there anyway, as a member of the family; but perhaps the aberrant O’Shea character would manifest a guilt he could seize on.

So, naturally, they behaved impeccably. Damn contrary crew! Aunt Lallie had stood with bowed head, a scrap of black cambric pressed to her eyes, and it was actually moist afterward. Twig, who looked as if he prowled cemeteries at night for the fun of it, on this daylight occasion looked almost human. Brady O’Shea had seemed distressed. Peet had been pertly interested. And Prin, slim and grave, had presented an appearance chaotically at odds with Grundy’s suspicions of her. The tearlessness of her eyes was contradicted by the pinched set of her lips; there was a touch of suffering gallantry about her. Grundy had not known whether to be sorry or glad.

He sighed again. He was not feeling as a police officer should in the prevailing circumstances. Now that Slater O’Shea had been laid to eternal rest on his subterranean couch, the wickedness that had put him there seemed not very important. Whereupon Lieutenant Grundy thought: Damn all O’Sheas to hell and back!

That was when the sergeant came into the office. “Say, Lieutenant, some young twerp name of Collins is out there, real brass monkey. Says he’s got to see you in person, no stand-ins.”

“Coley Collins?” Grundy sat up straight. Princess O’Shea’s boy friend had been at the cemetery, too, supporting her elbow. “You send that monkey in!”

Coley entered scowling. It was the same expression, Grundy remembered, that he had worn at the cemetery, as if in dying Slater O’Shea had imposed unreasonable demands on him, Coley Collins.

“What can I do for you?” Grundy snapped.

“It’s not what you can do for me that counts,” Coley said, “it’s what I can do for you.”

“That so? And just what is it you can do for me?”

“I can tell you who knocked off Slater O’Shea.”

Grundy glared with resentment. “Oh, you can, can you?” he said. “All right, sit down.”

Coley sat down calmly. Grundy rocked back in his swivel. The resentment persisted; and this was ungracious, he knew, inasmuch as Coley’s information, if it could be supported by evidence, would end a case that for Grundy could not end soon enough.

“That’s a pretty big hunk of real estate you’ve just bitten off, young fellow,” Grundy said. “Maybe you’d better think about it before you say any more.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Coley said. “Look, Lieutenant. Do you want to crack this nut or don’t you?”

“Can you substantiate what you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s your job, not mine. I can only tell you what to look for.”

Grundy braced himself. “Shoot. Who murdered O’Shea?”

“His sister Lallie.”

Grundy experienced disappointment. He had half hoped for someone outside the area of his suspicions. That is, he had half hoped for a Twig or a Brady.

“Miss Lallie O’Shea is indicated by circumstances,” he said, to lead Coley Collins on.

“You mean because of the will?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that brings me to someone else who may surprise you. Aunt Lallie is guilty, no question about it, but she’s not alone in this. No, sir.”

Here comes my little Princess, thought Grundy, killing Coley Collins with his glance. It was made all the worse by the identity of the informer. What kind of crum was this, to betray his girl friend — especially a girl friend like Princess O’Shea?

“Well, speak up,” Grundy barked. “Who is it?”

“Selwyn Fish.”

Grundy’s mouth assumed a fishlike character for a moment. “Selwyn Fish? The lawyer?”

“I thought that would jar you,” said Coley Collins, smacking his lips. “Yes, sir, that slimy shyster is right in it with Lallie, and you can bank on it.”

“Fish... Where does Fish come into it?”

“With Slater O’Shea’s last will and testament, that’s where.”

“Which will,” Grundy asked cautiously, “would that be?”

“The one allegedly leaving everything to Lallie O’Shea.”

“Allegedly?” Grundy shot up in his chair. “What do you mean, Collins? Talk plain English, will you?”

“All right, here it is: The will that Fish claims gives everything to Lallie O’Shea is a fraud, with a forged signature.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it has to be. Because I know as a matter of absolute fact that Slater O’Shea didn’t leave a plugged quarter to his sister Lallie. Because I know as a fact that he left everything to his niece Princess O’Shea.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Lieutenant Grundy, passing a hand over his forehead. “How do you know that?”

“Because,” said Coley Collins simply, “Slater O’Shea himself told me.”

“Slater O’Shea himself told you.” Grundy got a grip on himself. “Collins, you’re going to have to tell me a hell of a lot more than that before I stop suspecting you’re an escaped psycho. When did O’Shea tell you this? Where? And why — why would he tell you?”

“One at a time, Lawman,” said Coley, unruffled. “When? About ten days, maybe two weeks, before I even laid eyes on Princess O’Shea for the first time. Where? At the bar in the hotel taproom, one night when I was on duty. And why? Because old Slater was aslosh to the guards that night with bourbon Manhattans. It was a slow night and I had plenty of time to listen. And also he’d taken a shine to me, from hanging around my bar so much. And most of all because I was a bartender... None of it meant a thing to me at the time, because I’d never laid eyes on any of the O’Sheas except the old boy. All I knew about them was what he’d confided in me. Next question?”

Grundy had kept his ear tuned for a false note throughout Coley’s explanation. He could not detect one. Still...

“Okay, Coley,” the lieutenant said. “Just what was it he told you?”

“First he told me about the phony will he’d had Fish draw up, the one he never signed. He said it was a kind of life insurance. He wouldn’t put anything past an O’Shea, he said, even murder; but if the five relatives living with him thought that on his death they’d have to share his estate with seventeen other O’Sheas scattered to hell and gone, they’d sit up nights biting their nails trying to figure how to keep him alive forever.

“At the same time,” continued Coley, “he wanted his estate to go to the only relative he really liked and trusted, his niece Prin. So he told me he’d had Fish secretly draw up a valid will leaving everything to Prin, the secret will to be kept in Fish’s safe; and he said that the only ones in the world who knew about that will were Fish and himself — he hadn’t even let on to Prin.”

“So the way you see it,” said Grundy, “Fish must have suppressed the real will and drawn and signed the will you claim is fraudulent — the one leaving everything to Lallie O’Shea?”

“Who else could have drawn and signed it, me?” jeered Coley. “Who told you such a will exists, and that it’s old Slater’s last will and testament? Lawyer Fish. Who told you said will is in his possession? Lawyer Fish. Who’s going to read that will to the family? Lawyer Fish. Who’s going to file it for probate? Lawyer Fish. And who hasn’t breathed a syllable about the will old Slater told me was his last will and testament, the one leaving everything to Princess O’Shea? Lawyer Fish!”

“Maybe some time between the night Slater told you about the Princess will and his death, he had a change of mind and decided to leave everything to his sister,” pointed out Grundy. “That would collapse your whole argument.”

“Then why didn’t Fish mention that to you, Lieutenant? If that Lallie thing is valid and will stand up under examination, Fish wouldn’t have any reason to conceal the existence of an earlier will, would he?” Coley shook his head disgustedly. “Anyway, this whole Lallie-inherits-all caper reeks, and you know it. And I know it because of the way old Slater talked about his kin, including his sister Lallie... all except Prin, whom the old scoundrel doted on.”

Grundy rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “So you figure that Fish and Lallie are in a conspiracy in this thing — Fish doing the mechanical dirty work so Lallie can fraudulently inherit, on some kind of split arrangement?”

“How else is there to figure?” said Coley. “Come on, Lieutenant, get with it. You can bet your shield they’ve got something going between them. And don’t be surprised, when you dig into this midden heap, if you find more than a money arrangement between them. Lallie’s a pretty sleek little old girl, except for those hands of hers, and who knows? Maybe Selwyn Fish has a hand fetish, or something else that would fit right in with the rest of him — revolting as the idea sounds to a normal person like me.”

And Coley stopped, regarding Lieutenant Grundy coolly. Grundy was drumming out a jazz beat on his desk with four fingers of his right hand.

“You don’t buy it,” said Coley in a very flat voice. “By God, no wonder the United States has the highest crime rate in the world!”

But Grundy refused to be ruffled. “Let’s see what you’ve been trying to sell me,” he said. “For business and/or amorous reasons, Selwyn Fish, Slater O’Shea’s lawyer, and Lallie O’Shea, his only sister and closest blood-relative, enter into a murder conspiracy. Fish draws up the phony will naming Lallie as sole heir. Fish either destroys or hides the real will naming Princess O’Shea as Slater’s sole heir. Then Lallie O’Shea slips a lethal dose of that drug into her brother’s bourbon, either having procured it herself or, more likely, got hold of some through Fish. And that’s it. Very ingenious. There’s only one thing wrong with it.”

“What’s that?”

“I have only your word for it that any such conversation between you and Slater O’Shea took place. In other words, that any such will as the one you claim leaves everything to the niece exists or existed.”

“I knew you’d louse it up,” said Coley disgustedly. “Of course you’ve got only my word for it. How about you getting off your duff and proving I’m telling the truth?”

“Was there a witness to this conversation?”

“Of course not.”

“Why didn’t you come forward with this information before?”

“Would you expect a priest to come running to you with something he had heard in the confessional?” asked Coley with dignity. “A bartender holds just as sacred the confidences told to him over his bar. The only reason I’ve come in with the story is that I can’t stand by any longer, keeping this to myself. I’m not going to let my girl be cheated out of her rightful inheritance or those two fiends in human form get away with murder. By God, Lieutenant, you ought to be down on your knees thanking me for solving your case for you, instead of acting as if I were high man on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“Easy, kid,” said Grundy. “I’m only doing—”

“Your duty? The hell you are! You should be out right now getting a court order to take that phony Lallie will out of Fish’s possession and having Slater O’Shea’s and the other signatures on it expertized. Do I have to point out to you that therein lies the weakness in the plot?”

“What weakness?” asked the lieutenant feebly.

“Look. That slippery Fish monger must have a thousand smelly contacts — you can bet he knows more than one forger who’d do a job for a price and keep his mouth shut. Or he forged old Slater’s name and the witnesses’ signatures himself — all he had to do was trace the signatures from the valid Prin will to the phony Lallie one. Who’d know the difference? Slater O’Shea is dead. The witnesses to his genuine signature, whoever they are, probably have no idea what was in the will they witnessed — the law only requires, as I understand it, that the testator declare the document they sign to be his legal will — he doesn’t have to let them read it or tell them what’s in it. So Fish figured he and Lallie O’Shea would be absolutely safe. And this is my clincher: Don’t forget that Fish never expected the forged Lallie will to be subjected to expert examination. He thought nobody knew about the genuine Prin will except old Slater and himself — how could he foresee that the old boy would spill it to me in his cups? So it’s my considered opinion, Lieutenant, that those signatures on the Lallie will won’t stand up for thirty seconds. Well?”

Grundy could not help shaking his head in admiration. “You’re quite a lad. All right, Coley, I’ll check your yarn out. By the way, have you told Princess O’Shea about this?”

“I didn’t know if I should, but I finally decided she had a right to know. I told her this afternoon, right after the funeral.”

“Did you tell her you were coming to me with the story?”

“Well, no,” said Coley, looking a bit shamefaced. “She asked me to promise not to tell you till she could have a talk with her Aunt Lallie. I sort of evaded promising. I mean, I’m pretty good at evading commitments when I deem it necessary.”

“You may be good at evading commitments,” said Grundy grimly, “but you’re not so good at using your head. How long ago was it that you left the girl?”

“Not long. An hour or so.” Coley looked puzzled. “Why?”

“Because the last thing that girl ought to do is talk to her aunt!”

“But what of it?”

“What of it? What do you suppose she means to talk to her aunt about? She’ll spill the whole story as you told it to her, and Lallie O’Shea will know she and Fish are in hot water, and the first thing she’ll do is contact Fish, to tell him. She may have done so already. And if she has, my young Sherlock Holmes, there won’t be any will with forged signatures to expertize. The first thing Fish will do is burn it. Now do you see what you’ve done?”

“By God, oh, by God,” groaned Coley. “You’re right, Lieutenant, I didn’t give this enough thought. Wait! Maybe Prin hasn’t talked to her yet! I’ll call her right now—”

“If you don’t mind,” said Lieutenant Grundy, “I’ll call her.”

But all he could get out of the O’Shea residence phone was the peevish beep of the busy signal.

Grundy banged the receiver and began to jam on his shoes. “Ten to one Lallie O’Shea’s talking to Fish right this minute! We’d better get over to Fish’s office in a hurry!”

“Hello?” said Aunt Lallie agitatedly. “Is that you, Selwyn?”

“Whom would you expect to answer my phone,” Selwyn Fish said, “Cary Grant? What’s up, Lallie? You sound excited.”

“Is it any wonder? Everything is going all wrong, and it’s your fault!”

“If you’re referring again to the drug in poor Slater’s bourbon, it seems to me you’re at fault there, old girl, not I. If you had waited — not been so greedy — and done the job under competent supervision nobody would have suspected, not even that old ferret Appleton.”

“Selwyn Fish, are you accusing me of — of disposing of my own dear brother Slater?”

“Come off it, Lallie. I confess I didn’t think so at the start. I thought Slater had died a convenient natural death — I couldn’t believe that even you could be so stupid as to have gone ahead without consulting me first. However, what’s done is done. Stop worrying and leave everything to me.”

“I can see now why you have never succeeded in your profession,” said Aunt Lallie spitefully, “even with an utter lack of ethics to get in your way. You can’t recognize the truth when you hear it, Selwyn Fish.”

He chuckled. “I can recognize a bird of a feather. That’s why you and I are so compatible, old girl.”

“Please don’t be any more offensive than you absolutely have to, Selwyn. I’m in no mood for it. Besides, I am no longer so sure we’re compatible. In fact, you are proving a terrible disappointment to me. Not only have you caused me to be suspected of a murder, you have also made it impossible for me to receive any benefit from it.”

“What precisely are you babbling about?” asked the lawyer, a bit sharply. “Whatever it is, though, we had better not discuss it over the telephone. Come over to my office — I’m all alone here.”

“There’s no time. My niece Princess has just told me that Coley Collins has probably already gone to tell Lieutenant Grundy about the will.”

“Will? Which will?” Fish sounded very sharp now. “Damn it, Lallie, try to be explicit!”

“Please do not swear at me, Selwyn Fish.”

“All right, I apologize and all that,” he said rapidly. “Now. Which will?”

“The one you forged, of course — the one making me sole heir. Why should I be concerned about any other will?”

“Will you not use words like forge? Who’s Coley Collins? Wait. Isn’t he the young wolf Princess O’Shea picked up in some bar?”

“She did not pick him up — my nieces do not do such vulgar things. He works there as a bartender, and it was a sad day for you and me when he got that job.”

“For the love of heaven, Lallie, is it necessary for you always to talk like the Delphian Sibyl? Why was it a sad day? What could a young imbecile of a bartender possibly have to do with us?”

“Coley Collins is not such an imbecile as you think.”

“Damn it, come to the point. Come to the point at once. What are you trying to tell me?”

“That Coley Collins knows Slater left everything to Princess, and not to me, because Slater told him so one night when he was intoxicated at Coley Collins’s bar.”

“Oh,” said Selwyn Fish in a sort of moan. “Oh, that besotted idiot. Slater promised me — he promised me he wouldn’t breathe a word about the Princess will — to anyone, anyone!” He was silent, and Aunt Lallie, hearing him breathe like a leaky steampipe, felt an obscure satisfaction. “We may be all right, though, Lallie. It would only be the word of a bartender against that of the testator’s attorney—”

“Since when has the testator’s attorney’s word been taken by anybody for anything?” asked Aunt Lallie sadistically. “Anyway, you are not thinking clearly, Selwyn. Princess has told me that Coley Collins is going to demand that the signatures on the forged will be analyzed by an expert.”

“Will you stop using that word!”

“Do you want to risk that?” continued Aunt Lallie.

“Well... no. I don’t. You’re right. I had better do some thinking.”

Aunt Lallie graciously permitted him to do it, and Fish did it furiously. It took him perhaps fifteen seconds to draw a major conclusion from the facts.

“Well,” he said.

“And what do you think, Selwyn?”

“I think, old girl, that we must retreat to a prepared position. In short, I must regretfully resort to old Slater’s genuine will, which I have saved for just such an emergency.”

Aunt Lallie began to snuffle. For some reason Selwyn Fish, hearing the snuffling sound, immediately thought of her hands. “It’s a great disappointment to me, Selwyn, and so are you. After all your promises — my complete trust in you — I’m to inherit nothing, nothing at all.”

“It’s better than going to jail, which I hope to avoid. It’s also better than squatting on the hot seat, which is something you still have to consider.”

“You stop saying things like that!” said Lallie O’Shea hysterically. “I don’t know why I ever listened to you, or let you — let you—”

Selwyn Fish hung up on her. It was exactly two minutes after Grundy had hung up in his office.

And approximately ten minutes before Grundy and Coley Collins rushed into Fish’s office. The little lawyer was seated at his desk over some legal papers, the very portrait of a busy attorney.

He looked up in surprise. “Why, Grundy, hello,” he said cordially. “I didn’t hear you gentlemen come in. Always glad to see a worthy member of the law enforcement arm. Sit down, sit down.”

“You may not be so glad to see this one,” said the lieutenant. “Know Coley Collins?”

“I believe I have not had the pleasure formally. However, we have mutual acquaintances. Indeed, we attended a funeral together today, didn’t we, Mr. Collins? All three of us did, come to think of it. Won’t you gentlemen sit down?”

“I’d sooner sit down on a rattlesnake’s nest,” said Coley.

“Ah, then this is more or less official,” said Selwyn Fish, leaning back comfortably. “What’s bothering you, Lieutenant?”

“Mr. Collins here,” said Grundy, “has made a serious charge against you, Fish.”

“So? I can’t imagine what it is. What is it?”

Grundy said abruptly, “I want to see that O’Shea will.”

“You mean the one you questioned me about, Lieutenant?”

“That’s right.”

“You know, Lieutenant,” said Fish, “I stretched ethical practice a bit when I told you about it. Now you ask to see it. I haven’t even read it to the bereaved family yet — that’s scheduled for tomorrow morning. Must you see it, Lieutenant?”

“I sure as hell must,” said Grundy grimly. “Of course, you can refuse to show it to me, but then I’d have to get tough. In the end I’d get it, anyway. Come on, Fish, what is it? Yes or no?”

“But my dear Grundy,” said Fish, smiling, “I haven’t the faintest intention of refusing. I simply wanted to establish that I am showing it to you under duress. Fact is, it happens to be right at hand. Here in this drawer. I was reading it over shortly before you arrived, in preparation for tomorrow.” He opened the belly drawer of his desk and extracted a thin blue-clad document, consisting of a single sheet of legal paper. “Here you are, Lieutenant.”

“Before I take it,” said Grundy, “I want to be sure I get this straight. This is Slater O’Shea’s genuine last will and testament, right?”

“Right,” said Fish, cheerfully.

“I mean, the will that makes Miss Lallie O’Shea her brother’s sole heir?”

“I beg your pardon?” Fish, who had been holding the document extended, suddenly retracted it. “Did I hear you correctly, Lieutenant? Did you just say Miss Lallie O’Shea?”

“That’s what I said. And the reason I said it is that that’s what you told me.”

“Really?” The lawyer looked distressed. “Heavens above, how could I possibly have been so absentminded as to use the wrong name?”

“What d’ye mean the wrong name?” growled Grundy. “You not only told me the heir is Lallie O’Shea, you even referred to her as Slater O’Shea’s sister.”

“I did? I don’t see how I possibly could have. Of course, I’m not doubting your word, Lieutenant; it’s just that I don’t understand how I could have made such a lapsus linguae. Well, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. The important thing is what the will says. Here, take a look.”

Grundy took it. Coley, at Grundy’s shoulder, looked at it with him. It was the simplest kind of will, with scarcely three paragraphs. The important one stated that Slater O’Shea left all his worldly goods, real and personal, “to my beloved niece, Princess O’Shea, daughter of my deceased brother Royal O’Shea.” The signature “Slater O’Shea” was a quick, slashing arrangement of pen strokes, without a quiver in it.

The lieutenant looked up and at the lawyer. “By God,” he said slowly. “The old switcheroo. You’ve put the real one back.”

“By God,” said Coley Collins, “the little shyster at least had the good sense to hang on to it in case something went wrong, as it has, and he needed it, as he does. It’s pretty clear what’s happened, Lieutenant. Prin has unwisely let the cat out of the bag to Aunt Lallie, and Aunt Lallie has handed the cat over to Fish, and Fish has decided to drown it. So — an empty bag. But that’s better than a stretch, old Fishy, isn’t it?”

Old Fishy rose to his full stature, which in spite of its limitations managed to look formidable. “Let me give you some free legal advice, young man,” he said sternly. “Don’t ever again call a lawyer a shyster until you familiarize yourself with the laws of slander. And good day to you, sir!”

“A better one than it’s going to be to you,” snapped Coley. “But that’s the lieutenant’s department. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got back for Prin what her uncle meant her to have, and that’s all I care about.”

“Gentlemen,” said Selwyn Fish, “you are wasting my time.”

“I’ve done a lot more than waste my time, Fish!” shouted Lieutenant Grundy. “I’ve let you make a fool out of me! Damn it, I’ve already told the whole O’Shea shebang that Aunt Lallie is the sole heir — including Aunt Lallie!”

“So I heard,” Selwyn Fish said disapprovingly, “and I could scarcely credit my ears. I was tempted to disillusion Miss Lallie O’Shea at once; it seemed a shoddy trick to play on the poor woman, raising her hopes falsely that way. But then it occurred to me that you might have done it for some police purpose, however cruel, so I held my tongue. Will that be all, Lieutenant?”

“For now,” snarled Grundy, still red in the face. “But you haven’t heard the last of this, Fish — I’m going to pass it on to the district attorney. However, when the will fraud business comes out, though, I want to remind you that nothing’s changed as far as the motive for dosing Slater O’Shea with that insulin substitute is concerned, and everybody involved had better keep that in mind—” Grundy whirled “—including you, Collins!”

“W-what do you mean, Lieutenant?” stammered Coley.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you where this gumshoe work of yours has left Princess O’Shea? Now she’s the only one with motive!”

And Grundy stalked from the room, to be followed a moment later by a stumbling, protesting Coley Collins — leaving Selwyn Fish with his fingers laced over his belly in an intricate design.

15

Princess O’Shea’s intention was to slip out of the house undetected by various O’Shea eyes and ears. To this end she waited until Aunt Lallie went up to her room to suckle her grievance against a world that permitted a rich brother’s only sister to be disinherited before ever she was an heir; and Peet was off somewhere, which took care of Brady, too. Prin’s big worry was Twig, whose whereabouts was a mystery. However, she decided to take a chance. She let herself softly out onto the front porch and discovered that she would never have made a successful gambler. For there, lurking in a crouch behind a basket chair, was Twig.

“Yeep!” said Prin, jumping back.

“No one can say you don’t have a positive reaction to me,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Wherever you’re not.”

“Let me go with you?”

“I’d sooner go with the Devil.”

“You needn’t act snooty just because you’re rich.”

“May I pass, please?”

“You’ll wish yet that you’d treated me better,” said Twig darkly. “Don’t forget that you’re the one who’s profited by Uncle Slater’s murder, besides being the only one in the family who had access to what murdered him. Tell me something, dear cousin — confidentially, of course. Did you have much trouble swiping that stuff? I can’t imagine Orville Free keeping orderly records. He’ll probably have to cover up the shortage to hide his own sloppiness. Or have you given old Orv some quid for his quo?”

Prin looked at him. In that instant she had a sense of release so strongly light that she felt as if she might levitate at will and float away.

“I’m so glad you said that, Twig,” Prin said. “Because I’ve been wondering what to do about you when things are all settled, and now I know. I’m going to throw you out of my house, Twig, that’s what I’m going to do. Your freeloading days are about over. I know I’ll have nightmares about you, but I can always wake up from a nightmare. Everyone who stays under my roof will work and contribute something to the household, but I wouldn’t let you stay thirty seconds longer than it’s physically possible for you to get out if you could pay me a million dollars a minute.”

She was rather glad, too, to get away from the vicinity of Twig at that moment, because his expression, never reassuring, was positively Martian.

She set her course for Grantlund Street, for she was going to see Coley again. He had to be in this time, because while it was one of his working nights it was still afternoon and he was not due at the taproom for some time yet. So she turned into the walk at 2267 and entered the house without ringing or knocking and went directly upstairs. And there, just locking the door of Coley’s apartment, apparently about to go out, was little Winston Whitfield.

He gave a guilty start when he looked up and saw Prin standing there.

“Hello,” said Prin.

“Go away, please,” said Winston. “I’m not to talk to you.”

“You’re not?” said Prin. “Who issued that decree, Winnie?”

“Coley.”

“Coley? You must have misunderstood him.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t,” said Winnie, beginning to get excited.

“But why?”

“Because you get on my nerves, Coley says.”

“I get on your nerves! Well, I like that. Wait till I lay my hands on that joker.” Then, being female, Prin asked curiously, “Do I get on your nerves, Winnie?”

Winston Whitfield’s excitement increased. “No,” he said. “Oh, no. Though you do make me feel kind of wiggly inside. Like one of my snakes.”

“So there. You see?” said Prin, feeling vindicated. “And, talking about your snakes, I’m really not afraid of them. I mean — well, I’m sure I could get used to them.”

“You could?” Winnie was entirely won back now; he was regarding her like a worshipful beagle. “I believe you. I like you much better than other girls. Could you like me, too? I suppose you couldn’t.”

“Why, Winnie, what an awful thing to say. Of course I like you.”

“Then can I come live with you and Coley?” Winnie asked eagerly.

“Well,” said Prin, not quite so warmly, “we’ll see.”

“Thank you, thank you! Wait till I tell Coley.”

“Where is Coley? Isn’t he in?”

“No.”

“Will he be back soon?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I think I’ll wait for him.”

“All right,” said Winnie. “Here, let me unlock the door — I was just on my way out—”

“Never mind, Winnie,” said Prin quickly. “I can wait here in the hall.”

“My snakes, eh?” asked Winnie with sorrow.

“No, no, Winnie. I just... prefer it.”

“All right,” said Winnie, shaking his head. “You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got to be going.”

“Will you be gone long?”

“I have to have a prescription refilled at the Star Pharmacy.”

“I didn’t know you were sick. You don’t look sick.”

“I’m not. I mean, it’s not the kind of sickness that makes you look sick. I mean, if you take your medicine regularly.”

“Why, Winnie,” said Prin with concern. “That sounds like a chronic condition of some kind. Your heart?”

“My sugar.”

“What?” said Prin.

“I spill sugar. I’m a diabetic. I used to have to take insulin by injection, but now they’ve got some kind of substitute for it you just swallow. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for me fine...”

When the street door banged downstairs, Prin sat down on the top step upstairs. She hoped she would not have to wait for Coley long, because she did not think she could bear too long a wait, sitting there with a sick heart looking down into the gloomy depths of the stairwell. So while she waited she thought and thought, and she thought so hard and so deeply that when Coley did come she did not know he was there until she found him staring straight into her eyes from a lower step.

“Oh, Coley,” Prin said.

“Hi, Princess,” Coley said briskly. “What’s up?”

“I have to talk to you,” Prin said. “There’s something I need to get settled in my mind.”

Coley sat down on the top step beside her and put his arm around her.

“Now is the time to settle it,” he said, “if ever.”

“Not right now,” she said, “and not here. You’ve got to come with me somewhere.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t want to go. I must go.”

“Why?”

“Will you come with me, Coley?”

“Of course, but why so mysterious?”

“It’s just that I’ll have to talk about it when we get there, and I’d rather not have to say this particular piece twice.”

“All right, Mystery Girl,” said Coley lightly; but his eyes were serious and puzzled and just a bit wary.

They rose together, his arm still around her.

Outside, they turned toward town, walking along under the tall old trees, drifting through sunshine and shade. It was one of those timeless afternoons filled with the lazy scents and sounds of summer. The kind of afternoon that always made Prin feel like a little girl fresh from her bath, wearing a newly ironed organdy dress and a big bright satin ribbon in her hair. It was strange that she should feel that way, for Prin could not remember ever having owned an organdy dress or a big bright satin ribbon during the childhood Royal O’Shea had made for her — could not really remember ever having been a little girl, for that matter.

She and Coley walked in silence, since they had agreed that nothing was to be said until they got to where they were going. But he took her hand and gripped it, and that was the way they walked to town, and through town to Cibola City Hall.

When Coley saw that they were going into Cibola City Hall, he let go of Prin’s hand. And when they were inside, at the door marked Cibola City Police Department, Coley stopped altogether.

“Why are we coming here?” he demanded.

“To see Lieutenant Grundy.”

“What for?”

“I told you, Coley. There’s something I have to say.”

“This is about your uncle, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand women at all! Why the sudden switch, Prin? Haven’t I protected your interests to your satisfaction? After all, I was the one who turned the tables on your aunt and that shyster and got back what they tried to steal from you.”

“I know you did, Coley,” said Prin softly, “and I’m grateful, I really am.”

“Then what’s this all about? Don’t you trust me any more?”

“It’s not a question of trust. It’s just that this is something I have to do all by myself, Coley. I’ve thought and thought about it, and my mind is made up. Won’t you please come on?”

“All right,” grumbled Coley. “But I warn you, you’re not going to find Grundy in a very understanding mood. Selwyn Fish just made a monkey out of him, and he knows it.”

“Lieutenant Grundy,” said Prin grimly, “will understand this.”

The desk sergeant showed them into Grundy’s office. The lieutenant, as Coley had predicted, did not seem in an understanding mood. In fact, he was sitting behind his desk wearing the blackest of scowls. For two days, after the district attorney had laughed in his face, he had tried to think of a way to nail Selwyn Fish for the crime Grundy knew he had committed; and he had failed. The district attorney was right. There was no evidence of crime to present to a grand jury. Slater O’Shea had told Coley Collins that he had made a will leaving everything to Princess O’Shea; and Selwyn Fish had produced a genuine will signed by Slater O’Shea, leaving everything to Princess O’Shea. For the existence of the fraudulent will leaving everything to Miss Lallie O’Shea there was only Grundy’s word that Selwyn Fish had told him about it, to which Fish had merely to enter a denial. And that the fraudulent will was now smoke and ashes flushed down a drain even Grundy had had to concede.

When the sergeant announced Princess O’Shea and Coley Collins, Grundy was turning his thoughts to another line of attack. He was convinced that Slater O’Shea had been murdered by the team of Lallie O’Shea and Selwyn Fish; if he could get to Fish through Aunt Lallie... murder was a better rap than fraud and forgery... At that moment Prin and Coley came in, and the lieutenant looked up impatiently.

“Yes?” he said.

“Miss Princess O’Shea,” said Mr. Coley Collins, “has something to tell you, Lieutenant, and since she refused to tell me beforehand what it was, I sincerely wish you would listen to her so that I may satisfy my curiosity.”

Grundy shot a look from Coley to Prin. What he saw on Prin’s pretty face sent all thoughts of Selwyn Fish et al. from his head.

“In that case,” he said, “you two may as well sit down.”

Prin did, folding her hands and holding them rather high, so that for a startled moment Grundy thought she was praying. Coley remained on his feet in an attitude that said he was ready for anything.

“Start talking,” Grundy said to Prin.

“With discretion,” Coley said to Prin.

“No, it’s courage that’s necessary,” said Prin, “and I have only enough to last a little while, so hear me out. What has been occupying my thoughts, of course, is Uncle Slater’s murder and who might be accused of it. Aunt Lallie and that lawyer Fish might be, if it could be proved that they dreamed up the fraudulent will; and I might be, if it could be proved that I knew before Uncle Slater’s murder that I was his sole heir; and Twig might be, because he’s the one I’d like it to be, if it has to be anyone; and Brady might be, on the basis of general lack of character; and even Peet might be, if this were a detective story and you had to have it the least likely person. And that was all there seemed to be in the way of suspects. Until suddenly,” said Prin, “I thought of another one.”

“Who’s that?” asked Coley.

“You,” said Prin.

“Me?” said Coley.

“Him?” said Lieutenant Grundy, staring at Coley as if he had just contrived to crawl out of the woodwork.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” said Prin steadily. “Coley knew I was sole heir even before he met me, because Uncle Slater had told him; and then a couple of weeks later I happened to stop into the taproom and right away he wanted to marry me and after a while I said yes — and that gave Coley a motive... through me.

“When you think about the why,” Prin continued in the deathly stillness, “you can’t help going on to think about the how. The day Uncle Slater died he came home loaded, which meant he had been at a bar; and his favorite bar was the Coronado taproom. And, of course, that synthetic substitute for insulin having a delayed effect of about an hour, as somebody or other said, Uncle Slater could have been given the overdose in a drink at the taproom just before he left for home, instead of in his bedside bourbon bottle. And then I remembered how Coley had insisted on our slipping upstairs for a look at Uncle Slater’s room after I’d found him dead, and the bedroom was dim and I was distracted and Coley could have dropped some of the drug into the bourbon bottle at that time to make it seem as if the murder was an in-the-house crime.

“And then just this afternoon,” Prin went on in the same steady voice, not looking at Coley, who was looking at her with the same sort of horror with which Grundy was looking at him, “I walked over to where Coley lives, and I met his friend Winnie Whitfield, with whom he shares the apartment, and all of a sudden it came out that Winnie was on his way to a drug store to refill a prescription for an insulin substitute, because Winnie says he is a diabetic. And that would seem to give Coley a simple, direct way of getting hold of the drug, because all he had to do was steal some from Winnie’s supply. Now do you see the lines along which I have been thinking?”

“What I see,” said Coley bitterly, “is that you will sure as hell get me electrocuted if you don’t quit talking right now.”

“What I see,” said Lieutenant Grundy in an iron voice, “is a great — white — light.”

“Then, Lieutenant,” said Prin, “you are quite blind. What you think you now see through my eyes you would sooner or later have seen through your own; it is only a question of time; but through my eyes or your own, what you think you see is a big fat coincidence. No, Lieutenant, I can’t let Coley go through the ordeal of arrest and conviction, and maybe the agony of execution, just because of a remarkable accident of circumstances. Coley didn’t murder Uncle Slater.

“I did.”

16

And in this swift transshipment of horrors — Grundy to Coley to Princess O’Shea, Coley to Princess O’Shea from one cast of horror to another — Prin went inexorably on.

“Because, you see,” said Prin, “I’ve known about the will all along. Uncle Slater told me about it in confidence just after he had Selwyn Fish draw it up secretly. That was Uncle Slater’s mistake. He forgot that for all the sweetness and light I’m supposed to radiate, I am nevertheless an O’Shea born and bred, however much I’ve always wished I weren’t; and that an O’Shea will do anything, for any reason — even, sometimes, for no reason.

“But this time there was reason enough. Uncle Slater was an old dear, but the way he was going he might have lived on and on and on. And I knew he had left everything to me, and I was sick of pretending to be someone I never really was, and going through the motions of working for my keep — what a joke that job is, and how I loathe it! — and being dependent on handouts, et cetera, ad infinitum. So I stole some of the drug from Mr. Free’s pharmaceutical cubby, and I dropped a lethal dose into Uncle Slater’s bedside bottle of bourbon just before he came home for his nap. If he had to die at my hand, I wanted his death to be as painless and even pleasurable as possible. And it was — oh, I hope it was.

“So now, Coley, go away,” said Prin in a strange half cry. “Go away and let Lieutenant Grundy do whatever he has to do. And don’t look at me that way, I can’t bear it. Go away!”

And Princess O’Shea clutched her pretty face with her two little palms and began to weep, not as if her heart were breaking, but rather as if it had broken long, long before and she had forgotten how to weep properly.

And Lieutenant Grundy, who had been glaring at her in profound horror, now glared at her with profound bitterness; and finally he looked away, as if he were unable to take the sight of her at all any longer, because she had betrayed him into human feeling against the dictates of his policeman’s training and his policeman’s sense, which had told him all along that she had plotted the murder of her uncle.

As for Coley Collins, he had turned his back on her. And there he stood, a sad figure with a droop to his shoulders, in an attitude of hopelessness and helplessness, as if she had reduced him in a stroke to something far less than a man. But then he turned around, and Lieutenant Grundy saw that this had all been illusion, a trick of posture and atmosphere. For Coley Collins’ eyes held something hard and abstracted, and there was a twisted smile on his lips, a smile at once sorrowful and cynical — the grist of a mill that had ground an unexpected portion for the miller. And Coley sighed, and he spoke. And although he addressed Princess O’Shea principally, and Lieutenant Grundy incidentally, he actually seemed to be talking to himself.

“All right, you win,” Coley said. “You win, Princess; and you lose, Coley; and you don’t know what we’re talking about, Lieutenant, which isn’t to be marveled at, because murder isn’t your dish of chop suey, is it? — which is a nice-nelly way of saying you wouldn’t last two weeks on a big-city police force.

“The lady declines to accuse me,” Coley went on as Prin raised her quite tearless face and Lieutenant Grundy parted his quite dry lips, “and I thank the lady for that; but by accusing herself she has cleverly placed me in a position in which I must accuse myself; and that is cleverness indeed. Because it calls on me to act in a manner unnatural and painful and downright stupid, when you come to think of it; and only a master psychologist or an outraged female would think of it.”

Coley Collins turned to Grundy. “Miss O’Shea was right the first time, Lieutenant. I killed Slater O’Shea. He was a nice old bird, and I hated to do it, but I did. Maybe the idea,” he continued, turning to Prin squarely, “sneaked into my head in a sort of suppositional way when your uncle blabbed to me about the will, I don’t know. I do know there was an heiress around, and I’ve never had any luck with heiresses, because either they were ugly and I didn’t want them, or they were pretty and they didn’t want me. But then you came into the taproom one evening, and everything felt just right. You were an heiress, you were a doll, and you were interested. So it became more than a hypothesis — much more. It became a plan — well, all right, a plot. I should like to assure you, if you need assurance, Princess, that Uncle Slater’s money became immensely more attractive because you came with it. But I don’t suppose you care about that now. Anyhow, we both know there was something between us. I knew we’d be married if things worked out, so I put the stuff in your uncle’s bourbon Manhattan-for-the-road that afternoon at my bar just before he left for home. Because of its delayed action I was pretty certain he wouldn’t die till he got there; and I figured his death would pass as from natural causes — heart failure; and I’ll bet it would have, too, if not for that old maniac Appleton.

“The reason I dropped in later that day was to look over the field of action and see if there were any holes in the line that needed plugging. And the first thing I ran into was Appleton’s fool talk about calling the police and having an autopsy and all. And I realized right off that I had to change my strategy. If the thing was going to be handled as a murder instead of a natural death, I had to protect myself. And I saw that the best way to do it was to make it appear that the murder had taken place in Slater O’Shea’s house — if I didn’t do that, the police would surely trace the crime back to my bar. That’s why I conned you into taking me upstairs to your uncle’s room, Princess. And while we were up there I managed to slip some more of the drug into the bourbon bottle on his bedside table, as you figured. I’d taken the stuff from old Winnie’s supply to dose Uncle Slater’s last drink at my bar; I still had some with me — luckily, I thought — so I was sitting pretty.

“Don’t look at me that way, Princess,” Coley went on, a rather wistful note creeping into his voice. “In directing suspicion toward your family so it wouldn’t occur to anyone that I was the last one with opportunity to give old Slater his lethal drink, I knew I was also directing suspicion toward you, as one of the family. In fact, I knew you’d be the principal suspect when the will became known, but I saw no other choice; it simply had to be risked. I kept telling myself that they’d have to prove you stole the drug from old Free’s stock, and I knew you hadn’t stolen any, so how were they going to prove you had? But, let’s face it — I was using you. And that, I suppose, is what you couldn’t forgive, and why you decided to put me on this spot. You had me pegged right. I’m in love with you. Funny, isn’t it, that a jerky little four-letter word should be the thing that in the end made me not able to go through with it? I don’t understand it. It shows that a fellow can’t trust anybody, especially himself.”

And Coley Collins took a short turn about the frozen little office, ruminating aloud with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, like Napoleon. “It might have worked out all right even then if it hadn’t been for Aunt Lallie and that old fish Shark — I mean, that old shark Fish. After Appleton, they’re the ones who really ruined me. No one knew I knew about Slater’s real will, and no one would ever have known if I hadn’t been forced to expose that crooked will they fixed up between them so Lallie could get what Slater intended for Prin. And in being forced to say I knew about the real will, I had to reveal that I had a motive, through you, Prin, for killing him. You were sharp, Prin, sharp; you saw that before anyone else. What a team we could have made! Well, the whole thing went sour. I wish it hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

The stone that had been Grundy stirred. And he made a stony fist and pounded the fist into his palm, looking from Coley Collins to Princess O’Shea as if they were personal enemies.

“Which one of you is telling the truth?” he bellowed. “By God, which one of you is telling the truth?”

For the first time, really, Prin’s glance and Coley’s glance met eye to eye. But then Coley looked away, and he said to Grundy, “I am, Lieutenant.”

“Is he?” Grundy demanded of Prin coldly. “Or are you still sticking to your story?”

Prin shook her head. “I withdraw it, Lieutenant. It has served its purpose. It was all a lie. You’ve just heard the truth from him.”

“In that case,” and Grundy turned to Coley Collins, towering over him like some outraged spirit, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Slater O’Shea, and anything you may say et cetera.”

“I never thought I would be,” Coley sighed, “but it’s clear that I am. Prin, there is something I would like to know, if you don’t mind telling me.”

“There are many things I would like to know,” said Prin, “one of which is how a person like you happens.”

“Would you really have stuck to your confession if I’d kept quiet?”

“Now that,” said Prin, “I don’t know. It’s sometimes hard to tell what one will do.”

“A profound truth,” said Coley. “If anyone had accused me yesterday of behaving as nobly as I have behaved today, I would have laughed in his idiotic face. I must be out of my mind.”

“I shall try,” she said, “to hold on to that thought.”

Prin rose and straightened her frock with finality. As she did so, she looked again at the young murderer, but he seemed to have retreated into some daytime land of dreams. Funny, Prin thought, that she had never really noticed before how old he looked, how old and unredeemable.

“I feel a sudden need for a long, hot, cleansing tub,” Prin said. “May I go now, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Grundy said, “Sure you may,” and to her astonishment it was said with a vast tenderness. “I’ll see you’re not bothered any more than is absolutely necessary...” and he hesitated over a sound that might have been intended to become a word beginning with “P.” But at the last instant it came out a rather stiff “Miss O’Shea.”

And to her continuing astonishment Prin found herself smiling up at this suddenly tender-voiced small-town police officer. She had not thought it possible ever to smile again at anyone, especially a man.

“You may call me Princess,” Prin said shyly; and she was gone.

But not before she heard from behind her the thoughtful tones of Coley repeating the words, “I must be out of my mind... Grundy, I want to phone my lawyer.”

“And who would that be?” growled the tender lieutenant.

“I think... Yes! Selwyn Fish.”

Mr. Coley Collins was already at work preparing his defense.

Content

Ellery Queen
The Golden Goose

Cast of characters

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