William Irish

The Dancing Detective

The Dancing Detective

Patsy Marino was clocking us as usual when I barged in through the foyer. He had to look twice at his watch to make sure it was right when he saw who it was. Or pretended he had to, anyway. It was the first time in months I’d breezed in early enough to climb into my evening dress and powder up before we were due on the dance floor.

Marino said, “What is the matter, don’t you feel well?”

I snapped, “D’ya have to pass a medical examination to get in here and earn a living?” and gave him a dirty look across the frayed alley-cat I wore on my shoulder.

“The reason I ask is you’re on time. Are you sure you are feeling well?” he pleaded sarcastically.

“Keep it up and you won’t be,” I promised, but soft-pedaled it so he couldn’t quite get it. He was my bread and butter after all.

The barn looked like a morgue. It always did before eight — or so I’d heard. They didn’t have any of the “pash” lights on yet, those smoky red things around the walls that gave it atmosphere. There wasn’t a cat in the box, just five empty gilt chairs and the coffin. They had all the full-length windows overlooking the main drag open to get some ventilation in, too. It didn’t seem like the same place at all; you could actually breathe fresh air in it!

My high heels going back to the dressing room clicked hollowly in the emptiness, and my reflection followed me upside down across the waxed floor, like a ghost. It gave me a spooky feeling, like tonight was going to be a bad night. And whenever I get a spooky feeling, it turns out to be a bad night all right.

I shoved the dressing-room door in and started, “Hey, Julie, why didn’t you wait for me, ya getting too high-hat?” Then I quit again.

She wasn’t here either. If she wasn’t at either end, where the hell was she?

Only Mom Henderson was there, reading one of tomorrow morning’s tabs. “Is it that late?” she wanted to know when she saw me.

“Aw, lay off,” I said. “It’s bad enough I gotta go to work on an empty stomach.” I slung my cat-pelt on a hook. Then I sat down and took off my pumps and dumped some foot powder in them, and put them back on again.

“I knocked on Julie’s door on my way over,” I said, “and didn’t get any answer. We always have a cup of Java together before we come to work. I don’t know how I’m going to last the full fifteen rounds...”

An unworthy suspicion crossed my mind momentarily: Did Julie purposely dodge me to get out of sharing a cup of coffee with me like I always took with her other nights? They allowed her to make it in her rooming house because it had a fire escape; they wouldn’t allow me to make it in mine. I put it aside as unfair. Julie wasn’t that kind; you could have had the shirt off her back — only she didn’t wear a shirt, just a brassiere.

“Matter?” Mom sneered. “Didn’t you have a nickel on you to buy your own?”

Sure I did. Habit’s a funny thing, though. Got used to taking it with a sidekick and — I didn’t bother going into it with the old slob.

“I got a feeling something’s going to happen tonight,” I said, hunching my shoulders.

“Sure,” said Mom. “Maybe you’ll get fired.”

I thumbed my nose at her and turned the other way around on my chair. She went back to the paper. “There haven’t been any good murders lately,” she lamented. “Damn it, I like a good, juicy murder wanst in a while.”

“You’re building yourself up to one right in here.” I scowled into the mirror at her.

She didn’t take offense; she wasn’t supposed to, anyway. “Was you here when that thing happened to that Southern girl, Sally, I think was her name?”

“No!” I snapped. “Think I’m as old as you? Think I been dancing here all my life?”

“She never showed up to work one night, and they found her... That was only, let’s see now” — she figured it out on her fingers — “three years ago.”

“Cut it out!” I snarled. “I feel low enough as it is.”

Mom was warming up now. “Well, for that matter, how about the Fredericks kid? That was only a little while before you come here, wasn’t it?”

“I know,” I cut her short. “I remember hearing all about it. Do me a favor and let it lie.”

She parked one finger up alongside her mouth. “You know,” she breathed confidentially, “I’ve always had a funny feeling one and the same guy done away with both of them.”

“If he did, I know who I wish was third on his list!” I was glowering at her, when thank God the rest of the chain gang showed up and cut the death watch short. The blonde came in, and then the Raymond tramp, and the Italian frail, and all the rest of them — all but Julie.

I said, “She was never as late as this before!” and they didn’t even know who or what I was talking about. Or care. Great bunch.

A slush pump started to tune up outside, so I knew the cats had come in, too.

Mom Henderson got up, sighed. “Me for the white tiles and rippling waters,” and waddled out to her beat.

I opened the door on a crack and peeped out, watching for Julie. The pash lights were on now and there were customers already buying tickets over the bird cage. All the other taxi dancers were lining up — but not Julie.

Somebody behind me yelled, “Close that door! Think we’re giving a free show in here?”

“You couldn’t interest anyone in that secondhand hide of yours even with a set of dishes thrown in!” I squelched absentmindedly, without even turning to find out who it was. But I closed it anyway.

Marino came along and banged on it and hollered, “Outside, you in there! What do I pay you for anyway?” and somebody yelled back, “I often wonder!”

The cats exploded into a razz-matazz just then with enough oompah to be heard six blocks away, so it would pull them in off the pave. Once they were in, it was up to us. We all came out single file, to a fate worse than death, me last. They were putting the ropes up, and the mirrored tops started to go around in the ceiling and scatter flashes of light all over everything, like silver rain.

Marino said, “Where you goin’, Ginger?” and when he used your front name like that, it meant he wasn’t kidding.

I said, “I’m going to phone Julie a minute, find out what happened to her.”

“You get out there and goona-goo!” he said roughly. “She knows what time the session begins! How long’s she been working here, anyway?”

“But she’ll lose her job, you’ll fire her,” I wailed.

He hinged his watch. “She is fired already,” he said flatly.

I knew how she needed that job, and when I want to do a thing, I do it. A jive artist was heading my way, one of those barnacles you can’t shake off once they fasten on you. I knew he was a jive because he’d bought enough tickets to last him all week; a really wise guy only buys them from stretch to stretch. The place might burn down for all he knows.

I grabbed his ticket and tore it quick, and Marino turned and walked away. So then I pleaded, “Gimme a break, will you? Lemme make a phone call first. It won’t take a second.”

The jive said, “I came in here to danst.”

“It’s only to a girl friend,” I assured him. “And I’ll smile pretty at you the whole time.” (Clink! Volunteer 8-1111.) “And I’ll make it up to you later, I promise I will.” I grabbed him quick by the sleeve. “Don’t go way, stand here!”

Julie’s landlady answered. I said, “Did Julie Bennett come back yet?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I ain’t seen her since yesterday.”

“Find out for me, will ya?” I begged. “She’s late and she’ll lose her job over here.”

Marino spotted me, came back and thundered, “I thought I told you—”

I waved the half ticket in his puss. “I’m working,” I said. “I’m on this gentleman’s time,” and I goona-gooed the jive with teeth and eyes, one hand on his arm.

He softened like ice cream in a furnace. He said, “It’s all right, Mac,” and felt big and chivalrous or something. About seven cents’ worth of his dime was gone by now.

Marino went away again, and the landlady came down from the second floor and said, “She don’t answer her door, so I guess she’s out.”

I hung up and I said, “Something’s happened to my girl friend. She ain’t there and she ain’t here. She wouldn’ta quit cold without telling me.”

The goona-goo was beginning to wear off the jive by this time. He fidgeted, said, “Are you gonna danst or are you gonna stand there looking blue?”

I stuck my elbows out. “Wrap yourself around this!” I barked impatiently. Just as he reached, the cats quit and the stretch was on.

He gave me a dirty look. “Ten cents shot to hell!” and he walked off to find somebody else.

I never worry about a thing after it’s happened, not when I’m on the winning end anyway. I’d put my call through, even if I hadn’t found out anything. I got back under the ropes, and kept my fingers crossed to ward off garlic eaters.

By the time the next stretch began, I knew Julie wasn’t coming anymore that night. Marino wouldn’t have let her stay even if she had, and I couldn’t have helped her get around him anymore, by then, myself. I kept worrying, wondering what had happened to her, and that creepy feeling about tonight being a bad night came over me stronger than ever, and I couldn’t shake it off no matter how I goona-gooed.

The cold orangeade they kept buying me during the stretches didn’t brace me up any either. I wasn’t allowed to turn it down, because Marino got a cut out of the concession profits.

The night was like most of the others, except I missed Julie. I’d been more friendly with her than the rest of the girls, because she was on the square. I had the usual run of freaks.

“With the feet, with the feet,” I said wearily, “lay off the belt-buckle crowding.”

“What am I supposed to do, build a retaining wall between us?”

“You’re supposed to stay outside the three-mile limit,” I flared, “and not try to go mountain climbing in the middle of the floor. Do I look like an Alp?” And I glanced around to see if I could catch Marino’s eye.

The guy quit pawing. Most of them are yellow like that. But on the other hand, if a girl complains too often, the manager begins to figure her for a troublemaker. “Wolf!” you know, so it don’t pay.

It was about twelve when they showed up, and I’d been on the floor three and a half hours straight, with only one more to go. There are worse ways of earning a living. You name them. I knew it was about twelve because Duke, the front man, had just wound up “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and I knew the sequence of his numbers and could tell the time of night by them, like a sailor can by bells. Wacky, eh? Half-past — “Limehouse Blues.”

I gandered at them when I saw them come into the foyer, because customers seldom come in that late. Not enough time left to make it worth the general admission fee. There were two of them: One was a fat, bloated little guy, the kind we call a “belly-wopper,” the other was a pip. He wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome because he was medium height, light-haired, and clean-cut-looking without being pretty about it, but if I’d had any dreams left, he coulda moved right into them. Well, I didn’t, so I headed for the dressing room to count up my ticket stubs while the stretch was on; see how I was making out. Two cents out of every dime when you turn them in.

They were standing there sizing the barn up, and they’d called Marino over to them. Then the three of them turned around and looked at me just as I made the door, and Marino thumbed me. I headed over to find out what was up. Duke’s next was a rumba, and I said to myself, “If I draw the kewpie, I’m going to have kittens all over the floor.”

Marino said, “Get your things, Ginger.” I thought one of them was going to take me out; they’re allowed to do that, you know, only they’ve got to make it up with the management for taking you out of circulation. It’s not as bad as it sounds; you can still stay on the up and up, sit with them in some laundry and listen to their troubles. It’s all up to you yourself.

I got the backyard sable and got back just in time to hear Marino say something about, “Will I have to go bail for her?”

Fat said, “Naw, naw, we just want her to build up the background a little for us.”

Then I tumbled, got jittery, squawked, “What is this, a pinch? What’ve I done? Where you taking me?”

Marino soothed, “They just want you to go with them, Ginger. You be a good girl and do like they ast.” Then he said something to them I couldn’t figure. “Try to keep the place here out of it, will you, fellas? I been in the red for six months as it is.”

I cowered along between them like a lamb being led to the slaughter, looking from one to the other. “Where you taking me?” I wailed, going down the stairs.

Maiden’s Prayer answered, in the cab. “To Julie Bennett’s, Ginger.” They’d gotten my name from Marino, I guess.

“What’s she done?” I half sobbed.

“May as well tell her now, Nick,” Fat suggested. “Otherwise she’ll take it big when we get there.”

Nick said, quietly as he could, “Your friend Julie met up with some tough luck, babe.” He took his finger and he passed it slowly across his neck.

I took it big right there in the cab, Fat to the contrary. “Ah, no!” I whispered, holding my head. “She was on the floor with me only last night! Just this time last night we were in the dressing room together having a smoke, having some laughs! No! She was my only friend!” And I started to bawl like a two-year-old, straight down my makeup onto the cab floor.

Finally this Nick, after acting embarrassed as hell, took a young tent out of his pocket, said, “Have yourself a time on this, babe.”

I was still working on it when I went up the rooming-house stairs sandwiched between them. I recoiled just outside the door. “Is she... is she still in there?”

“Naw, you won’t have to look at her,” Nick reassured me.

I didn’t, because she wasn’t in there anymore, but it was worse than if she had been. Oh, God, that sheet, with one tremendous streak down it as if a chicken had been—! I swiveled, played puss-in-the-comer with the first thing I came up against, which happened to be this Nick guy’s chest. He sort of stood still like he liked the idea. Then he growled, “Turn that damn thing over out of sight, will you?”

The questioning, when I was calm enough to take it, wasn’t a grill, don’t get that idea. It was just, as they’d said, to fill out her background. “When was the last time you saw her alive? Did she go around much, y’know what we mean? She have any particular steady?”

“I left her outside the house door downstairs at one-thirty this morning, last night, or whatever you call it,” I told them. “We walked home together from Joyland right after the session wound up. She didn’t go around at all. She never dated the boys afterward and neither did I.”

The outside half of Nick’s left eyebrow hitched up at this, like when a terrier cocks its ear at something. “Notice anyone follow the two of you?”

“In our racket they always do; it usually takes about five blocks to wear them out, though, and this is ten blocks from Joyland.”

“You walk after you been on your pins all night?” Fat asked, aghast.

“We should take a cab, on our earnings! About last night, I can’t swear no one followed us, because I didn’t look around. That’s a come-on, if you do that.”

Nick said, “I must remember that,” absentmindedly.

I got up my courage, faltered, “Did it... did it happen right in here?”

“Here’s how it went: She went out again after she left you the first time—”

“I knew her better than that!” I yipped. “Don’t start that. Balloon Lungs, or I’ll let you have this across the snout!” I swung my cat-piece at him.

He grabbed up a little box, shook it in my face. “For this,” he said. “Aspirin! Don’t try to tell us different, when we’ve already checked with the all-night drugstore over on Sixth!” He took a couple of heaves, cooled off, sat down again. “She went out, but instead of locking the house door behind her, she was too lazy or careless; shoved a wad of paper under it to hold it on a crack till she got back. In that five minutes or less, somebody who was watching from across the street slipped in and lay in wait for her in the upper hallway out here. He was too smart to go for her on the open street, where she might have had a chance to yell.”

“How’d he know she was coming back?”

“The unfastened door woulda told him that; also the drug clerk tells us she showed up there fully dressed, but with her bare feet stuck in a pair of carpet slippers to cool ’em. The killer musta spotted that, too.”

“Why didn’t she yell out here in the house, with people sleeping all around her in the different rooms?” I wondered out loud.

“He grabbed her too quick for that, grabbed her by the throat just as she was opening her room door, dragged her in, closed the door, finished strangling her on the other side of it. He remembered later to come out and pick up the aspirins that had dropped and rolled all over out there. All but one, which he overlooked and we found. She wouldn’t ’ve stopped to take one outside her door. That’s how we know about that part of it.”

I kept seeing that sheet, which was hidden now, before me all over again. I couldn’t help it, I didn’t want to know, but still I had to know. “But if he strangled her, where did all that blood—” I gestured sickly, “come from?”

Fat didn’t answer, I noticed. He shut up all at once, as if he didn’t want to tell me the rest of it, and looked kind of sick himself. His eyes gave him away. I almost could have been a detective myself, the way I pieced the rest of it together just by following his eyes around the room. He didn’t know I was reading them, or he wouldn’t have let them stray like that.

First they rested on the little portable phonograph she had there on a table. By using bamboo needles she could play it late at night, soft, and no one would hear it. The lid was up and there was a record on the turntable, but the needle was worn down halfway, all shredded, as though it had been played over and over.

Then his eyes went to a flat piece of paper, on which were spread out eight or ten shiny new dimes; I figured they’d been put aside like that, on paper, for evidence. Some of them had little brown flecks on them, bright as they were. Then lastly his eyes went down to the rug; it was all pleated up in places, especially along the edges, as though something heavy, inert, had been dragged back and forth over it.

My hands flew up to my head and I nearly went wacky with horror. I gasped it out because I hoped he’d say no, but he didn’t, so it was yes. “You mean he danced with her after she was gone? Gave her dead body a dime each time, stabbed her over and over while he did?”

There was no knife, or whatever it had been, left around, so either they’d already sent it down for prints or he’d taken it out with him again.

The thought of what must have gone on here in this room, of the death dance that must have taken place... All I knew was that I wanted to get out of here into the open, couldn’t stand it any more. Yet before I lurched out, with Nick holding me by the elbow, I couldn’t resist glancing at the label of the record on the portable: “Poor Butterfly.”

Stumbling out the door I managed to say, “She didn’t put that on there. She hated that piece, called it a drip. I remembered once I was up here with her and started to play it, and she snatched it off, said she couldn’t stand it, wanted to bust it then and there, but I kept her from doing it. She was off love and men, and it’s a sort of a mushy piece, that was why. She didn’t buy it, they were all thrown in with the machine when she picked it up secondhand.”

“Then we know his favorite song, if that means anything. If she couldn’t stand it, it would be at the bottom of the stack of records, not near the top. He went to the trouble of skimming through them to find something he liked.”

“With her there in his arms already!” That thought was about the finishing touch, on top of all the other horror. We were on the stairs going down, and the ground floor seemed to come rushing up to meet me. I could feel Nick’s arm hook around me just in time, like an anchor, and then I did a clothespin act over it. And that was the first time I didn’t mind being pawed.

When I could see straight again, he was holding me propped up on a stool in front of a lunch counter a couple doors down, holding a cup of coffee to my lips.

“How’s Ginger?” he said gently.

“Fine,” I dribbled mournfully all over my lap. “How’s Nick?”

And on that note the night of Julie Bennett’s murder came to an end.

Joyland dance hall was lonely next night. I came in late, and chewing cloves, and for once Marino didn’t crack his whip over me. Maybe even he had a heart. “Ginger,” was all he said as I went hurrying by, “don’t talk about it while you’re on the hoof, get me? If anyone asks you, you don’t know nothing about it. It’s gonna kill business.”

Duke, the front man, stopped me on my way to the dressing room. “I hear they took you over there last night,” he started.

“Nobody took nobody nowhere, schmaltz,” I snapped. He wore feathers on his neck, that’s why I called him that; it’s the word for long-haired musicians in our lingo.

I missed her worse in the dressing room than I was going to later on out in the barn; there’d be a crowd out there around me, and noise and music, at least. In here it was like her ghost was powdering its nose alongside me at the mirror the whole time. The peg for hanging up her things still had her name penciled under it.

Mom Henderson was having herself a glorious time; you couldn’t hear yourself think, she was jabbering away so. She had two tabloids with her tonight, instead of just one, and she knew every word in all of them by heart. She kept leaning over the gals’ shoulders, puffing down their necks: “And there was a dime balanced on each of her eyelids when they found her, and another one across her lips, and he stuck one in each of her palms and folded her fingers over it, mind ye! D’ye ever hear of anything like it? Boy, he sure must’ve been down on you taxis—”

I yanked the door open, planted my foot where it would do the most good, and shot her out into the barn. She hadn’t moved that fast from one place to another in twenty years. The other girls just looked at me, and then at one another, as much as to say, “Touchy, isn’t she?”

“Get outside and break it down; what do I pay you for anyway?” Marino yelled at the door. A gob-stick tootled plaintively, out we trooped like prisoners in a lockstep, and another damn night had started in.

I came back in again during the tenth stretch (“Dinah” and “Have You Any Castles, Baby?”) to take off my kicks a minute and have a smoke. Julie’s ghost came around me again. I could still hear her voice in my ears, from the night before last! “Hold that match, Gin. I’m trying to duck a cement mixer out there. Dances like a slap-happy pug. Three little steps to the right, as if he were priming for a standing broad jump. I felt like screaming, For Pete’s sake, if you’re gonna jump, jump!”

And me: “What’re you holding your hand for, been dancing upside down?”

“It’s the way he holds it. Bends it back on itself and folds it under. Like this, look. My wrist’s nearly broken. And look what his ring did to me!” she had shown me a strawberry-sized bruise.

Sitting there alone, now, in the half-light, I said to myself, “I bet he was the one! I bet that’s who it was! Oh, if I’d only gotten a look at him, if I’d only had her point him out to me! If he enjoyed hurting her that much while she was still alive, he’d have enjoyed dancing with her after she was dead.” My cigarette tasted rotten. I threw it down and got out of there in a hurry, back into the crowd.

A ticket was shoved at me and I ripped it without looking up. Gliding backward, all the way around on the other side of the barn, a voice finally said a little over my ear, “How’s Ginger?”

I looked up and saw who it was said, “What’re you doing here?”

“Detailed here,” Nick said.

I shivered to the music. “Do you expect him to show up again, after what he’s done already?”

“He’s a dance-hall killer,” Nick said. “He killed Sally Arnold and the Fredericks girl, both from this same mill, and he killed a girl in Chicago in between. The prints on Julie Bennett’s phonograph records match those in two of the other cases, and in the third case — where there were no prints — the girl was holding a dime clutched in her hand. He’ll show up again sooner or later. There’s one of us cops detailed to every one of these mills in the metropolitan area tonight, and we’re going to keep it up until he does.”

“How do you know what he looks like?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a whole bar. “We don’t,” he admitted finally. “That’s the hell of it. Talk about being invisible in a crowd! We only know he isn’t through yet, he’ll keep doing it until we get him!”

I said, “He was here that night, he was right up here on this floor with her that night, before it happened; I’m sure of it!” And I sort of moved in closer. Me, who was always griping about being held too tight. I told him about the impression the guy’s ring had left on her hand, and the peculiar way he’d held it, and the way he’d danced.

“You’ve got something there,” he said, and left me flat on the floor and went over to phone it in.

Nick picked me up again next dance.

He said, shuffling off, “That was him all right who danced with her. They found a freshly made impression still on her hand, a little offside from the first, which was almost entirely obliterated by then. Meaning the second had been made after death, and therefore stayed uneffaced, just like a pinhole won’t close up in the skin after death. They made an impression of it with moulage, my lieutenant just tells me. Then they filled that up with wax, photographed it through a magnifying lens, and now we know what kind of a ring he’s wearing. A seal ring shaped like a shield, with two little jewel splinters, one in the upper right-hand corner, the other in the lower left.”

“Any initials on it?” I gaped, awe-stricken.

“Nope, but something just as good. He can’t get it off, unless he has a jeweler or locksmith file it off, and he’ll be afraid to do that now. The fact that it would press so deeply into her hand proves that he can’t get it off, the flesh of his finger has grown around it; otherwise it would have had a little give to it, the pressure would have shifted the head of it around a little.”

He stepped all over my foot, summed up, “So we know how he dances, know what his favorite song is, ‘Poor Butterfly,’ know what kind of a ring he’s wearing. And we know he’ll be back sooner or later.”

That was all well and good, but I had my own health to look out for; the way my foot was throbbing! I hinted gently as I could. “You can’t do very much watching out for him, can you, if you keep dancing around like this?”

“Maybe you think I can’t. And if I just stand there with my back to the wall it’s a dead giveaway. He’d smell me a mile away and duck out again. Keep it quiet what I’m doing here, don’t pass it around. Your boss knows, of course, but it’s to his interest to cooperate. A screwball like that can put an awful dent in his receipts.”

“You’re talking to the original sphinx,” I assured him. “I don’t pal with the rest of these twists anyway. Julie was the only one I was ever chummy with.”

When the session closed and I came downstairs to the street, Nick was hanging around down there with the other lizards. He came over to me and took my arm and steered me off like he owned me.

“What’s this?” I said.

He said, “This is just part of the act, make it look like the McCoy.”

“Are you sure?” I said to myself, and I winked to myself without him seeing me.

All the other nights from then on were just a carbon copy of that one, and they started piling up by sevens. Seven, fourteen, twenty-one. Pretty soon it was a month since Julie Bennett had died. And not a clue as to who the killer was, where he was, what he looked like. Not a soul had noticed him that night at Joyland, too heavy a crowd. Just having his prints on file was no good by itself.

She was gone from the papers long ago, and she was gone from the dressing-room chatter, too, after a while, as forgotten as though she’d never lived. Only me, I remembered her, because she’d been my pal. And Nick Ballestier, he did because that was his job. I suppose Mom Henderson did, too, because she had a morbid mind and loved to linger on gory murders. But outside of us three, nobody cared.

They did it the wrong way around, Nick’s superiors at homicide, I mean. I didn’t try to tell him that, because he would have laughed at me. He would have said, “Sure! A dance-mill pony knows more about running the police department than the commissioner does himself! Why don’t you go down there and show ’em how to do it?”

But what I mean is, the dance mills didn’t need all that watching in the beginning, the first few weeks after it happened, like they gave them. Maniac or not, anyone would have known he wouldn’t show up that soon after. They needn’t have bothered detailing anyone at all to watch the first few weeks. He was lying low then. It was only after a month or so that they should have begun watching real closely for him. Instead they did it just the reverse. For a whole month Nick was there nightly. Then after that he just looked in occasionally, every second night or so, without staying through the whole session.

Then finally I tumbled that he’d been taken off the case entirely and was just coming for... er, the atmosphere. I put it up to him unexpectedly one night. “Are you still supposed to come around here like this?”

He got all red, admitted, “Naw, we were all taken off this duty long ago. I... er, guess I can’t quit because I’m in the habit now or something.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said to myself knowingly. I wouldn’t have minded that so much, only his dancing didn’t get any better, and the wear and tear on me was something awful. It was like trying to steer a steamroller around the place.

“Nick,” I finally pleaded one night, when he pinned me down with one of his size twelves and then tried to push me out from under with the rest of him, “be a detective all over the place, only please don’t ask me to dance anymore, I can’t take it.”

He looked innocently surprised. “Am I that bad?”

I tried to cover up with a smile at him. He’d been damn nice to me even if he couldn’t dance.

When he didn’t show up at all the next night, I thought maybe I’d gone a little too far, offended him maybe. But the big hulk hadn’t looked like the kind that was sensitive about his dancing, or anything else for that matter. I brought myself up short with a swift, imaginary kick in the pants at this point. “What the heck’s the matter with you?” I said to myself. “You going soft? Didn’t I tell you never to do that!” And I reached for the nearest ticket, and tore it, and I goona-gooed with a, “Grab yourself an armful, mister, it’s your dime.”

I got through that night somehow but I had that same spooky feeling the next night like I’d had that night — like tonight was going to be a bad night. Whenever I got that spooky feeling, it turns out to be a bad night all right. I tried to tell myself it was because Nick wasn’t around. I’d got used to him, that was all, and now he’d quit coming, and the hell with it. But the feeling wouldn’t go away. Like something was going to happen before the night was over. Something bad.

Mom Henderson was sitting in there reading tomorrow morning’s tab. “There hasn’t been any good juicy murders lately,” she mourned over the top of it. “Damn it, I like a good murder y’can get your teeth into wanst in a while!”

“Ah, dry up, you ghoul!” I snapped. I took off my shoes and dumped powder into them, put them on again. Marino came and knocked on the door. “Outside, freaks! What do I pay you for anyway?”

Someone jeered, “I often wonder!” and Duke, the front man, started to gliss over the coffin, and we all came out single file, me last, to a fate worse than death.

I didn’t look up at the first buyer, just stared blindly at a triangle of shirtfront level with my eyes. It kept on like that for a while; always that same triangle of shirtfront. Mostly white, but sometimes blue, and once it was lavender, and I wondered if I ought to lead. The pattern of the tie across it kept changing too, but that was all.

“Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors

Are the sweethearts my good luck has brought me.”

“Why so downcast, Beautiful?”

“If you were standing where I am, looking where you are, you’d be downcast too.”

That took care of him. And then the stretch.

Duke went into a waltz, and something jarred for a minute. My timetable. This should have been a gut bucket (low-down swing music) and it wasn’t. He’d switched numbers on me, that’s what it was. Maybe a request. For waltzes they killed the pash lights and turned on a blue circuit instead, made the place cool and dim with those flecks of silver from the mirror-top raining down.

I’d had this white shirt triangle with the diamond pattern before; I remembered the knitted tie, with one tier unraveled on the end. I didn’t want to see the face, too much trouble to look up. I hummed the piece mentally, to give my blank mind something to do. Then words seemed to drop into it, fit themselves to it, of their own accord, without my trying, so they must have belonged to it. “Poor butterfly by the blossoms waiting.”

My hand ached, he was holding it so darned funny. I squirmed it, tried to ease it, and he held on all the tighter. He had it bent down and back on itself...

“The moments pass into hours—”

Gee, if there’s one thing I hate it’s a guy with a ring that holds your mitt in a straitjacket! And he didn’t know the first thing about waltzing. Three funny little hops to the right, over and over and over. It was getting my nerves on edge. “If you’re gonna jump, jump!” Julie’s voice came back to me from long ago. She’d run into the same kind of a—

“I just must die, poor butterfly!”

Suddenly I was starting to get a little scared and a whole lot excited.

I kept saying to myself, Don’t look up at him, you’ll give yourself away. I kept my eyes on the knitted tie that had one tier unraveled. The lights went white and the stretch came on. We separated, he turned his back on me and I turned mine on him. We walked away from each other without a word. They don’t thank you, they’re paying for it.

I counted five and then I looked back over my shoulder, to try to see what he was like. He looked back at me at the same time, and we met each other’s looks. I managed to slap on a smile, as though I’d only looked back because he’d made a hit with me, and that I hoped he’d come around again.

There was nothing wrong with his face, not just to look at anyway. It was no worse than any of the others around. He was about forty, maybe forty-five, hair still dark. Eyes speculative, nothing else, as they met mine. But he didn’t answer my fake smile, maybe he could see through it. We both turned away again and went about our business.

I looked down at my hand, to see what made it hurt so. Careful not to raise it, careful not to bend my head, in case he was still watching. Just dropped my eyes to it. There was a red bruise the size of a small strawberry on it, from where his ring had pressed into it the whole time. I knew enough not to go near the box. I caught Duke’s eye from where I was and hitched my head at him, and we got together sort of casually over along the wall.

“What’d you play ‘Poor Butterfly’ for that last time?” I asked.

“Request number,” he said.

I said, “Don’t point, and don’t look around, but whose request was it?”

He didn’t have to. “The guy that was with you the last two times. Why?” I didn’t answer, so then he said, “I get it.” He didn’t at all. “All right, chiseler,” he said, and handed me two dollars and a half, splitting a fiver the guy had slipped him to play it. Duke thought I was after a kickback.

I took it. It was no good to tell him. What could he do? Nick Ballestier was the one to tell. I broke one of the singles at the orangeade concession — for nickels. Then I started to work my way over toward the phone, slow and aimless. I was within a yard of it when the cats started up again!

And suddenly he was right next to me, he must have been behind me the whole time.

“Were you going any place?” he asked.

I thought I saw his eyes flick to the phone, but I wasn’t positive. One thing sure, there wasn’t speculation in them any more, there was — decision.

“No place,” I said meekly. “I’m at your disposal,” I thought, “If I can only hold him here long enough, maybe Nick’ll show up.”

Then just as we got to the ropes, he said, “Let’s skip this. Let’s go out to a laundry and sit a while.”

I said, smooth on the surface, panic-stricken underneath, “But I’ve already tom your ticket, don’t you want to finish this one out at least?” And tried to goona-goo him for all I was worth, but it wouldn’t take. He turned around and flagged Marino, to get his O.K.

His back was to me, and across his shoulder I kept shaking my head, more and more violently, to Marino — no, no, I don’t want to go with him. Marino just ignored me. It meant more money in his pocket this way.

When I saw that the deal was going through, I turned like a streak, made the phone, got my buffalo in it. It was no good trying to tell Marino, he wouldn’t believe me, he’d think I was just making it up to get out of going out with the guy. Or if I raised the alarm on my own, he’d simply duck down the stairs before anyone could stop him and vanish again. Nick was the only one to tell, Nick was the only one who’d know how to nail him here.

I said, “Police headquarters, quick! Quick!” and turned and looked over across the barn. But Marino was already alone out there. I couldn’t see where the guy had gone, they were milling around so, looking over their prospects for the next one.

A voice came on and I said, “Is Nick Ballestier there? Hurry up, get him for me.”

Meanwhile Duke had started to break it down again; real corny. It must have carried over the open wire. I happened to raise my eyes, and there was a shadow on the wall in front of me, coming across my shoulders from behind me. I didn’t move, held steady, listening.

I said, “All right, Peggy, I just wanted to know when you’re gonna pay me back that five bucks you owe me,” and I killed it.

Would he get it when they told him? They’d say, “A girl’s voice asked for you, Nick, from somewhere where there was music going on, and we couldn’t make any sense out of what she said, and she hung up without waking.” A pretty slim thread to hold all your chances on.

I stood there afraid to turn. His voice said stonily, “Get your things, let’s go. Suppose you don’t bother any more tonight about your five dollars.” There was a hidden meaning, a warning, in it.

There was no window in the dressing room, no other way out but the way I’d come in, and he was right there outside the door. I poked around all I could, mourning, “Why don’t Nick come?” and, boy, I was scared. A crowd all around me and no one to help me. He wouldn’t stay; the only way to hang onto him for Nick was to go with him and pray for luck. I kept casing him through the crack of the door every minute or so. I didn’t think he saw me, but he must have. Suddenly his heel scuffed at it brutally, and made me jump about an inch off the floor.

“Quit playing peek-a-boo, I’m waiting out here!” he called in sourly.

I grabbed up Mom Henderson’s tab and scrawled across it in lipstick; “Nick: He’s taking me with him, and I don’t know where to. Look for my ticket stubs. Ginger.”

Then I scooped up all the half tickets I’d accumulated all night long and shoved them loose into the pocket of my coat; then I came sidling out to him. I thought I heard the phone on the wall starting to ring, but the music was so loud I couldn’t be sure. We went downstairs and out on the street.

A block away I said, “There’s a joint. We all go there a lot from our place,” and pointed to Chan’s. He said, “Shut up!” I dropped one of the dance checks on the sidewalk. Then I began making a regular trail of them.

The neon lights started to get fewer and fewer, and pretty soon we were in a network of dark lonely side streets. My pocket was nearly empty now of tickets. My luck was he didn’t take a cab. He didn’t want anyone to remember the two of us together, I guess.

I pleaded, “Don’t make me walk anymore, I’m awfully tired.”

He said, “We’re nearly there, it’s right ahead.” The sign on the next comer up fooled me; there was a chop-suey joint, there, only a second-class laundry, but I thought that was where we were going.

But in between us and it there was a long dismal block, with tumbledown houses and vacant lots on it. And I’d run out of dance checks. All my take gone, just to keep alive. He must have worked out the whole setup carefully ahead of time, known I’d fall for that sign in the distance that we weren’t going to.

Sure, I could have screamed out at any given step of the way, collected a crowd around us. But you don’t understand. Much as I wanted to get away from him, there was one thing I wanted even more: to hold him for Nick. I didn’t just want him to slip away into the night, and then do it all over again at some future date. And that’s what would happen if I raised a row. They wouldn’t believe me in a pinch, they’d think it was some kind of shakedown on my part. He’d talk himself out of it or scram before a cop came.

You have to live at night like I did to know the real callousness of passersby on the street, how seldom they’ll horn in, lift a finger to help you. Even a harness cop wouldn’t be much good, would only weigh my story against his, end up by sending us both about our business.

Maybe the thought came to me because I spotted a cop ahead just then, loitering toward us. I could hardly make him out in the gloom, but the slow steady walk told me. I didn’t really think I was going to do it until we came abreast of him.

The three of us met in front of a boarded-up condemned house. Then, as though I saw my last chance slipping away — because Nick couldn’t bridge the gap between me and the last of the dance checks anymore, it was too wide — I stopped dead.

I began in a low tense voice, “Officer, this man here—”

Julie’s murderer had involuntarily gone on a step without me. That put him to the rear of the cop. The whole thing was so sudden, it must have been one of those knives that shot out of their own hilts. The cop’s eyes rolled, I could see them white in the darkness, and he coughed right in my face, warm, and he started to come down on top of me, slow and lazy. I sidestepped and he fell with a soft thud and rocked a couple of times with his own fall and then lay still.

But the knife was already out of him long ago, and its point was touching my side. And where the cop had been a second ago, he was now. We were alone together again.

He said in a cold, unexcited voice, “Go ahead, scream, and I’ll give it to you right across him.”

I didn’t, I just pulled in all my breath.

He said, “Go ahead, down there,” and steered me with his knife down a pair of steps into the dark areaway of the boarded-up house it had happened in front of. “Stand there, and if you make a sound — you know what I told you.” Then he did something to the cop with his feet, and the cop came rolling down into the areaway after me.

I shrank back and my back was against the boarded-up basement door. It moved a little behind me. I thought, “This must be where he’s taking me. If it is, then it’s open.” I couldn’t get out past him, but maybe I could get in away from him.

I turned and clawed at the door, and the whole framed barrier swung out a little, enough to squeeze in through. He must have been hiding out in here, coming and going through here, all these weeks. No wonder they hadn’t found him.

The real basement door behind it had been taken down out of the way. He’d seen what I was up to, and he was already wriggling through the gap after me. I was stumbling down a pitch-black hallway by then.

I found stairs going up by falling down on top of them full length. I sobbed, squirmed up the first few on hands and knees, straightened up as I went.

He stopped to light a match. I didn’t have any, but his helped me too, showed me the outline of things. I was on the first-floor hall now, flitting down it. I didn’t want to go up too high — he’d only seal me in some dead end up there — but I couldn’t stand still down here.

A broken-down chair grazed the side of my leg as I went by, and I turned, swung it up bodily, went back a step and pitched it down over the stairwell on top of him. I don’t know if it hurt him at all but his match went out.

He said a funny thing then. “You always had a temper, Muriel.”

I didn’t stand there listening. I’d seen an opening in the wall farther ahead, before the match went out. Just a blackness. I dived through it and all the way across with swimming motions, until I hit a jutting mantel slab over some kind of fireplace. I crouched down and tucked myself in under it. It was one of those huge old-fashioned ones. I groped over my head and felt an opening there, lined with rough brickwork and furry with cobwebs, but it wasn’t wide enough to climb up through. I squeezed into a corner of the fireplace and prayed he wouldn’t spot me.

He’d lit another match, and it came into the room after me, but I could only see his legs from the fireplace opening, it cut him off at the waist. I wondered if he could see me; he didn’t come near where I was.

The light got a little stronger, and he’d lit a candle stump. But still his legs didn’t come over to me, didn’t bend down, or show his face peering in at me. His legs just kept moving to and fro around the room. It was awfully hard, after all that running, to keep my breath down.

Finally he said out loud, “Chilly in here,” and I could hear him rattling newspapers, getting them together. It didn’t sink in for a minute what was going to happen next. I thought. Has he forgotten me? Is he that crazy? Am I going to get away with it? But there’d been a malicious snicker in his remark; he was crazy like a fox.

Suddenly his legs came over straight to me; without bending down to look, he was stuffing the papers in beside me. I couldn’t see out anymore past them. I heard the scrape of a match against the floorboards. Then there was the momentary silence of combustion. I was sick, I wanted to die quick, but I didn’t want to die that way. There was the hum of rising flame, and a brightness just before me, the papers all turned gold. I thought, “Oh, Nick! Nick! Here I go!”

I came plunging out, scattering sparks and burning newspapers.

He said, smiling, pleased with himself, casual, “Hello, Muriel. I thought you didn’t have any more use for me? What are you doing in my house?” He still had the knife — with the cop’s blood on it.

I said, “I’m not Muriel, I’m Ginger Allen from the Joyland. Oh, mister, please let me get out of here, please let me go!” I was so scared and so sick I went slowly to my knees. “Please!” I cried up at him.

He said, still in that casual way, “Oh, so you’re not Muriel? You didn’t marry me the night before I embarked for France, thinking I’d be killed, that you’d never see me again, that you’d get my soldier’s pension?” And then getting a little more vicious, “But I fooled you, I was shell-shocked but I didn’t die. I came back even if it was on a stretcher. And what did I find? You hadn’t even waited to find out! You’d married another guy and you were both living on my pay. You tried to make it up to me, though, didn’t you, Muriel? Sure; you visited me in the hospital, bringing me jelly. The man in the next cot died from eating it. Muriel, I’ve looked for you high and low ever since, and now I’ve found you.”

He moved backward, knife still in hand, and stood aside, and there was an old battered relic of a phonograph standing there on an empty packing case. It had a great big horn to it, to give it volume. He must have picked it up off some ash heap, repaired it himself. He released the catch and cranked it up a couple of times and laid the needle into the groove.

“We’re going to dance, Muriel, like we did that night when I was in my khaki uniform and you were so pretty to look at. But it’s going to have a different ending this time.”

He came back toward me. I was still huddled there, shivering. “No!” I moaned. “Not me! You killed her, you killed her over and over again. Only last month, don’t you remember?”

He said with pitiful simplicity, like the tortured thing he was, “Each time I think I have, she rises up again.” He dragged me to my feet and caught me to him, and the arm with the knife went around me, and the knife pressed into my side.

The horrid thing over there was blaring into the emptiness, loud enough to be heard out on the street: “Poor Butterfly.” It was horrible, it was ghastly.

And in the candle-lit pallor, with great shadows of us looming on the wall, like two crazed things we started to go round and round. I couldn’t hold my head up on my neck; it hung way back over my shoulders like an overripe apple. My hair got loose and went streaming out as he pulled me and turned me and dragged me around...

“I just must die, poor butterfly!”

Still holding me to him, he reached in his pocket and brought out a palmful of shiny dimes, and flung them in my face.

Then a shot went off outside in front of the house. It sounded like right in the area-way where the knifed cop was. Then five more in quick succession. The blare of the music must have brought the stabbed cop to. He must’ve got help.

He turned his head toward the boarded-up windows to listen. I tore myself out of his embrace, stumbled backward, and the knife point seemed to leave a long circular scratch around my side, but he didn’t jam it in in time, let it trail off me.

I got out into the hall before he could grab me again, and the rest of it was just kind of a flight nightmare. I don’t remember going down the stairs to the basement; I think I must have fallen down them without hurting myself — just like a drunk does.

Down there a headlight came at me from the tunnel-like passage. It must have been just a pocket torch, but it got bigger and bigger, then went hurtling on by. Behind it a long succession of serge-clothed figures brushed by me.

I kept trying to stop each one, saying, “Where’s Nick? Are you Nick?”

Then a shot sounded upstairs. I heard a terrible death cry. “Muriel!” and that was all.

When I next heard anything it was Nick’s voice. His arm was around me and he was kissing the cobwebs and tears off my face.

“How’s Ginger?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, “and how’s Nick?”

Two Fellows in a Furnished Room

I can’t say I took a shine to the idea of clearing out and turning the place over to him like that on a Monday night. If it’d been any other night but Monday. Monday I always did my studying-up for the night class I went to once a week, on Tuesday night. He knew that by now. We’d been rooming together long enough.

But he went ahead and asked it anyway. “—And I got a ring from her just before I left work. She said it’s very important, she’s got to see me right tonight, and it’s got to be someplace where we can talk. Now you know I can’t go over to her place on account of the way her family feels about me. So I told her to come up here, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind—” And then he ended up, “Just this once. I won’t ask anything like this of you again, Red.”

I thought: Darned right you won’t, because you’ll get turned down flat if you do. But what could I do? Refuse point-blank to his face? That wouldn’t have made for very pleasant living together afterwards. And after all, he did have half-rights in the place.

I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been a half-decent night. But there was one of those fine needle rains oozing; the kind that doesn’t fall, that you don’t even see in the air, but that just shows by wetting the surface of the street and tickling the back of your neck. It was no use going to the library and doing my stuff there; that closed at nine and I would have been only about half-through by then. I saw where I’d have to let it go altogether tonight, try to cram it all in just before class the following evening. Just roam around for tonight and try to find someplace to hang out in, out of the mist.

“All right,” I gave in, “what time does curfew go into effect?”

“Now you don’t have to dodge meeting her, I don’t mean that,” he protested. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about her and me. This isn’t a date, there’s nothing underhanded about it. She said it’s something that concerns both our futures, and it’s just that there isn’t anyplace else we can talk in privacy. And with the three of us around here at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to get your studying done and we wouldn’t be able to talk freely. You don’t have to duck out before she comes; I just thought I’d explain the situation to you ahead of time, to avoid embarrassment. She said she’d be here around eight-thirty or a little after.”

“It’s nearly that now.” I reached for my hat, edged up my coat-collar. “Maybe I can find some kind of a show,” I suggested half-heartedly.

He followed me to the door. “Now don’t be peeved about this, will you, Red?”

What was the use of being a grouch about it? As long as I was doing it I might as well do it obligingly, I figured. My disposition matches my hair; I can get sore, but I can’t hold it. “Forget it,” I squinted at him. He closed and I went down.

I met her coming up. I’d never seen her before, but I’d heard him talk enough about her to know it was she. She had on a raincoat made of green cellophone. I’m quick to judge. She was a nice girl. So nice she could have brought an overnight-case here with her, and you’d know just by looking at her there was nothing shady about it.

I edged over to give her room. She knew who I was too, I guess, from him. She smiled sociably. “I hope he didn’t chase you out on my account?” she said.

I didn’t know if he wanted her to know he had or not, so I said: “No, that’s all right, I was going out anyway.”

There wasn’t very much more than that for us to say; we didn’t know each other after all. “Well, goodnight,” she said, and went on up. “Goodnight,” I said, and tipped my hat and went on down.

I heard him come out to the door and let her in, just before I quitted the bottom of the staircase. She hadn’t knocked or anything, he must have seen her from the window. “Hello, Estelle,” I heard him say. His greeting sounded a little grave, a little troubled, I thought.

I thought about the two of them intermittently during the next few hours, but only because of the inconvenience they were putting me to. I had a hard time of it. Man is a creature of habit. My habit was to study for night class on Monday evenings, and because that had been disrupted I found myself at a complete loss for something to do. I couldn’t find a show that suited me. Then before I could make up my mind, it was already too late for one, so that took care of that. I’m not a solitary drinker, never have been, so that excluded taprooms. I finally compromised by sitting down at a little coffee counter somewhere and poring slowly through a tabloid I’d bought. For the first and last times in my life I found myself doing anagrams and acrostics by the time I’d worked my way to the back of it.

When the clock hands started inching into the last half-hour before midnight, I finally chucked it, started back. I’d given them three hours together. That should have been enough, they should have been able to settle the destiny of the world in three hours. I didn’t feel obliging now any more. If she was still up there chewing the rag with him, then she was going to clear out and give me a chance to get these wet shoes off. On the up-and-up or not, it wouldn’t look right if she stayed very much later than this, and the two of them ought to have sense enough to realize that without being told.

I took a look up at our room windows from the other side of the street first, before I crossed over. They were brightly lit up, and as I looked I saw his shadow flit across one of them. No sign of her, though. “Here I come, ready or not,” I grunted. I’d absorbed so much moisture into my shoes by this time they made a little squirting sound every time I pressed them down.

I crossed over, let myself in the street door, and trudged up the stairs. I took off my hat and beat it out against the rail as I went up, to get the spray off it.

I listened outside the room-door a minute to see if I could still hear her voice in there. Not that I wasn’t going in. I could hear him moving around quite plainly but I couldn’t hear anything said, so she must have left. He sounded very active, almost hurried. In the brief moment I stood there I heard him pass back and forth across the room three times. He might have been just pacing though, not doing anything.

I rapped. There was a sudden silence, movement stopped dead, but he didn’t come over to the door. I had to rap a second time.

He opened it, looked out at me, skin pulled back tight around his eyes. Then it relaxed again. He’d been holding it defensively a minute, at a narrow width. When he saw it was me he opened it wide, but I’d caught the hesitation.

“What’d you do that for?” he said a little sharply, as though it had rattled him. “Didn’t you have your key?”

“What’s matter, you nervous?” I said. “Sure I had my key. Why should I go dredging into my damp pockets, as long as you were in here?” I came in, glanced around. “Girl-friend gone?”

“Yeah, just before you got here.”

“You’re some guy. You mean you let her go alone, didn’t even take her home, on a night like this?”

“I put her in a taxi at the door.” He’d flung himself into a chair which happened to be facing my way. He made the mistake of crossing his ankles out at full leg length from his body. That way the soles of his shoes were tipped-up from the floor. I could see both of them; they were dust white, bone-dry. I’d never yet heard of anyone putting a girl into a taxi by staying back within the shelter of the doorway and letting her cross the wet sidewalk to the curb by herself.

He was lying. He’d made that up on the spur of the moment, because he was ashamed to have me think he hadn’t been more considerate of her. I didn’t call him on it. Why should I have a row with him, it wasn’t any of my business. I had my own lamentable condition to occupy me. I peeled off one sock, then the other, took a twist in them, drops of water oozed out. I meant it as an indirect way of rubbing it in, but he seemed too preoccupied to get the point.

I knew him well enough by now to know something was getting him. No chatter, like when he’d been out with her of an evening and I had to listen to all about how wonderful she was. On the other hand, no fretting and complaining either, like when the mother’s campaign to separate them had first started in. Not a word. His face was a mask of some deep emotion or other, frozen fast, caked on him. I couldn’t name what it was, I’m no soul doctor.

He stayed in that chair where he’d first dropped into when I came in, made no move about getting to bed. Finally, coming to the bedroom-opening and looking out at him, buttoning my pajama coat, I said: “What’s matter, did you have a row?”

He didn’t give me a direct answer. “Why should we have a row?” was the way he put it.

It wasn’t any of my business, I’m no cupid.

He got up suddenly, as though a spring had been uncoiled under him, went over to the cupboard where we usually kept a bottle of liquor in reserve. He brought it out, held it to the light. “This all gone?” he said disappointedly, and let his arm trail down again with it.

I’d been the one had supplied it, and it hadn’t been the last time I’d seen it, so someone must have helped himself to it liberally, fairly recently — maybe within the past hour or so.

“I’m going down to the corner a minute and get a quick one,” he said.

“What d’you want a drink for at this hour?” We weren’t either one of us topers. We weren’t goody-goods that didn’t touch drink, but we usually only went in for it when we were out celebrating on a Saturday night or something like that. This nightcap business was something new. I felt like saying, I was the one was out in the wet, you weren’t, I ought to need one if anyone does. But I let it go by. I noticed he didn’t ask me if I wanted to come with him. But then after all, that might have been because he saw me already half-into my pajamas, I figured. I wouldn’t have gone even if he’d asked me to, anyway.

“I’m going to bed,” I warned him. “Better take your own key with you.”

“I’m coming right back,” he assured me. “I’m going to bed too.”

He closed the door after him and I quit thinking about him.

I had to cross the room in my bare feet to put out the light, which he’d forgotten to do. No sense subsidizing the Edison Company.

Something bit into my unprotected sole, and I snatched it up, held it with both hands for a minute. I looked to see what it was, and it was a little metal clamp or clasp, with a little wisp of green cellophone still thrust through it. His girl-friend had lost one of the fasteners of her raincoat. But it hadn’t just loosened and dropped off, they were patented not to; the tatter of green adhering to it showed it had been torn off bodily. Maybe she had caught it on something. I wondered why she hadn’t taken it with her, to try to have it reattached in some way; they must be hard to match up, if you lost one of them.

I put it aside where it wouldn’t be mislaid and went to bed.

It always took me three complete turns to get in position, about five minutes between each one. And once I was in position I didn’t want to get out of it for anybody.

Just as I got into it, and was set for the night, the phone had to start ringing. I kept my eyes closed and tried to ignore it. I was sure it was a wrong number; what else could it be at this hour of the night? I kept hoping he’d come in just at that minute, and answer it and save me the trouble of getting up. Or else it would quit of its own accord.

Neither thing happened. He didn’t come in, and it kept on. It kept on long after the usual length of signaling, as though the party were urging the operator not to desist. I had to give in finally. I got out of position, put on my bathrobe, and went over to it with a good sour face. I answered it in the dark, I knew where it was by heart.

It was a woman’s voice. It had three elements in it, they were unmistakable from the very opening phrase. Some voices can be eloquent that way. The three tonal components were a deep-seated, cold hostility; the sort of hostility that has been borne over a considerable period of time; and a heated resentment, newer, brought on by the occasion itself, kept in leash only with difficulty; and lastly, less discernible than the other two, there was a thread of fear stitching through it.

The voice didn’t address by name or give any opening salutation. “Will you please put my daughter on?” it began without prelude. “Now she promised me to have a definite understanding with you once and for all, and to come right back. Those were the conditions under which I let her go to see you tonight, and if you think that you’ll get anywhere by trying to influence her until all hours of the—” Then she stopped short and said, “This is Mr. Dixon, isn’t it?” She hated even to have to pronounce the name. I suppose she called him “that young man” to the girl.

I’d been trying to say that it wasn’t all along. “No, this is Stewart Carr, his roommate; I expect him back any minute.”

The cold hostility and the resentment immediately veered off, since they weren’t meant for me personally; only the thread of fear remained. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “Well I presume she’s left, then. If he was a gentleman, he would have seen to it that she reached home before now, he wouldn’t have kept her there until this hour, on such a rainy night, until I had to phone to remind—”

I tried to be reassuring about it. “She left over three-quarters of an hour ago, she ought to be there any minute now, Mrs.—” I didn’t even know their last name. That should have been about right; I’d been in at least that long myself, and Dixon had said she’d left just before I—

I’d evidently said the wrong thing; fear took over the voice, crowding everything else out. “Three-quarters of an hour ago! Then why isn’t she back here by now? It’s only six blocks to her own door, from there. It shouldn’t take her that long, for such a short distance.”

It shouldn’t have, if that was all it was. And he’d said he’d put her in a cab, which should have cut the time it would take her down to next to nothing. I had sense enough not to mention that detail.

“It would be just like him to keep her loitering along the way, on a wet night like this!” the voice went on bitterly. She was assuming that Dixon was bringing her back, I could see. I didn’t know whether I ought to disabuse her on this point or not. It would probably add fuel to her disquiet, to hear he’d let her make her own way back. And since the girl was bound to reach there any minute, what difference did it make anyway? Let her find out from the girl herself what had caused the delay; why did I have to be roused in the middle of the night about it?

“She’ll probably be there in no time now,” I tried to calm her.

“I sincerely hope so,” she fretted. And then on a note of taut warning, “If she isn’t back here soon I’ll—” She didn’t finish it; she’d hung up.

I did too. I gave the oblivious door a dirty look. Why didn’t he come up here and answer his own tracer-calls? I had to get some sleep, I had to get up in the morning.

I climbed back in and went through the triple gear shift again. I dropped off. Then sleep smashed apart, like an electric-light bulb that you pop, and the damn phone was ringing away again in the middle of the fragments.

I went back to it in a sort of blur, too groggy even to be sore this time. It woke me right up, like a filch of cold water in the face. It was the same woman. You wouldn’t have known it by the voice. The voice was husky this time with out-and-out terror. No more genteel indignation and trepidation. Stark fright, maternal, unreasoning, straining at the leash of self-possession. “I demand to speak with John Dixon! I demand to know what’s become of my daughter!”

“She isn’t back yet?”

My futile surprise went unnoticed. “What has he done with her? Why isn’t she here? My Estelle wouldn’t stay out until this hour of her own accord. I know her better than that! I’ve been pacing the floor here until I can’t stand it any more; I’ve even been down to the corner three times in all the rain to see if I could see her coming— Do you know what time it is?”

I hadn’t until then. I thought maybe this was twenty minutes later. “Just a minute.” I reached for the switch with my free hand, put on the light, looked at the clock. Horrified incredulity sparked from the look. Quarter to three in the morning. He’d been gone himself nearly three hours. She was supposed to have left for home over three-and-a-half hours ago — and she only lived six blocks away.

I didn’t know what to say. “He... he stepped down to the corner and he hasn’t come back yet—” I faltered. But I’d told her that hours ago.

The voice was repressing hysteria only with the greatest difficulty. It was all shredded and coming apart. “Why does he refuse to come to the phone himself and face me like a man? What does he think he’ll gain by avoiding me like this? He can’t do this to me. I warned her, I told her all along if she kept on seeing him, something would happen sooner or later—”

I didn’t say anything this time; what was there I could say any more?

The voice was utterly beyond control now, had disintegrated. It was awful to have to stand there and listen to it — harrowing; it went right through you. “I want my little girl back! What’s he done with her? I’m going to notify the police. They’ll help me, they’ll find out why she doesn’t come home—”

Suddenly she had hung up, there was silence.

And then, just a minute too late, his key dialed the lock and he came in, looking haunted.

“Well, it’s about time!” I said wrathfully. “Where the hell have you been? You go down for just one drink and you stay down half the night — and let me do your dirty work for you up here!”

Something electric flickered over his face, I couldn’t tell what it was. “What’s up?”

“You’re in trouble, that’s what’s up. Your girl never got home from here tonight. Her mother’s phoned twice since you’ve been gone, and the last time she said she was going to notify the police. You better get over there fast and find out what’s happened—”

I waited. He waited too. He just stood there looking at me, without moving.

“Well, don’t you think you’d better at least call her back?”

“She wouldn’t listen to me, she wouldn’t give a chance to— She hates me, she’s been trying to break us up. If anything’s happened — this is my finish.”

“That’s no kind of a reason. The girl was over here and she knows it; at least get in touch with the woman. If you don’t, she’s liable to think the worst.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you; she does already. No matter what I’d do, she’d—”

I didn’t know what to do against a line of reasoning like that; it was all haywire. It was going to lead him into trouble, if he wasn’t in it already.

I shut up for awhile and watched him. Didn’t stare at him, I mean, but just studied him offside. He wasn’t drunk. He’d been down drinking for three solid hours — supposedly — and yet he wasn’t drunk. I thought I’d like to find out about that. “Where were you, at McGinnis’s?” I asked offhandedly.

He nodded dully, looking at the floor.

That was the place on our corner. I’d been in there with him often enough. They had bowlfuls of these oyster crackers sitting at each end of the long bar. Unless it was very crowded — and it wouldn’t be at three in the morning on a rainy Monday — you’d take your stand somewhere along the midsection. When you went down for crackers, you’d bring back a few at a time with you, to save yourself making the trip down and back too often. I’d never been in there with him yet but what he hadn’t had a few left over in his pocket when he came away.

He’d hung his coat off the northeast corner of his chair. “Got a cigarette?” I said, and went over to it and reached down into the flap pocket. A solitary oyster cracker came up in my hand.

“You didn’t get much of an edge,” I said, taking one of my own cigarettes instead, without letting him see me. He could have been in there five minutes and still put that cracker in his pocket. Two-and-a-half. And then what had become of the other two hours and fifty-five?

“I didn’t even finish the one drink I bought, just sat there moping. I didn’t realize how time passed. There are times you feel too low even to—”

I was standing by the window with my back to him, looking down at the patent-leather finish the rain had given the street. I stiffened my back at one point. That was the only indication to show I was seeing anything. I thought I’d better give it to him ahead of time, though, let him get ready. I said without turning my head: “A cop just got out and came in here. I saw the glint of his visor disk.”

“Red, you’ve got to stick by me.”

This time I did turn my head, fast. “What do you mean I’ve got to stick by you?”

He clutched at the hack of his neck, groped for the answer. “If they come here and ask you if — if you saw her leave, tell them you did. Tell them you came along just in time to see me come down to the street door with her and put her in a taxi.”

“But I didn’t.” My tone was flat as an 1890 dime.

“I know you didn’t, but if you’d been five minutes sooner you would have. Don’t you see, the way it is now, no one saw her leave here. She ends here. If I can at least produce someone that’ll say they saw her leave here— That five minutes makes all the difference.”

I remembered the dry soles of his shoes. I had to be sure of what I was doing. I thought: I’ll give him one more chance on that. If he gives me a second wrong answer, he can go to blazes. “But which’ll I be doing?” I said. “Describing something I just missed seeing, or describing something that — didn’t happen for anyone to see? Are you sure you took her down to the door and put her in a cab?”

I don’t know if my steely look warned him off, or he just thought better of it himself. His luck was he gave the right answer this time. “N-no,” he corrected himself, “I didn’t take her down to the door myself. But you can be sure she left here, and you can be sure she left here in a taxi—”

“The first time, you told me you took her down and put her in the taxi.”

“I know; it wasn’t this serious yet, it didn’t seem to matter much one way or another then. I was ashamed to let you think I was heel enough not to see her off right. We parted on the outs, she just walked out. Then I heard her whistling up a taxi from the doorway downstairs. I could hear it plainly through the windows. I heard one drive up, she darted out and climbed into it, and—”

“Wait a minute. You saw her get into it?”

He gave me a harried look. “I got over to the window a minute too late. Her figure had just crouched in. Her hand was still on the doorcatch, pulling it to after her. What the hell. Who else could it have been? She had just left the room up here a minute before. I stayed on there at the window after the cab drove off, brooding down into the rain for a good five minutes or more, and no one else came out of the house. That must have been she in the cab. Now is it going to hurt you to say you saw that too, from down at the corner? All I’m asking, Red, is—”

Before I could answer, the knock had already sounded on the door. The knock we’d both been expecting from one minute to the next, held back like a Chinese water-drop torture. I jerked my thumb toward the sound, as much as to say: “There’s your party now.”

Even then he found time to make his plea once more, in a husky, anxious whisper, as he edged reluctantly across the room: “Are you with me, Red? How about it, are you with me?”

He sure needed moral support bad. I couldn’t help wondering why he should. Why wasn’t his own sense of innocence backing-up enough?

It was just the curtain raiser, this first time. Just routine, just a uniformed patrolman sent around to check. No question of foul play yet, Missing Persons didn’t even have it yet. Just the complaint of the crazed mother.

For that very reason I couldn’t help wondering, as I saw that shield coming in the door, that openly worn shield that usually forecast little more than a ticket for parking overtime or a warning to “Cut out that noise up here now,” why Dixon should be so ready to expect the worst beforehand, why he should seem so — how’ll I put it? — ahead of the game. He seemed rushing to meet the worst possible conclusion before anyone else was, including the authorities themselves. Always excepting the mother. And mothers — are they gifted with special foresight or are they blinded by lack of it?

It went off very smoothly, without a hitch. The cop jotted in a notebook, Dixon answered what he asked him... About quarter to twelve... No, I offered to, but she wouldn’t let me, she said she had a raincoat, and she’d get a cab right from the door... (Distorting what he’d told me, that they’d parted “on the outs.”)

That reminded me of something. I looked over at the table where I’d put that ripped-off raincoat clasp I’d trodden on. It wasn’t there any more. I looked at Dixon. He looked down his cheeks.

The cop only asked me one thing. “Were you here?”

I answered the one thing with only one word, “No.” That was the extent of my participation. The problem in ethics Dixon had posed for me hadn’t even come up — yet.

The cop left. We went to bed. It was four by that time. He was still awake when I went to sleep. He was awake again — or yet — when I woke up. We didn’t talk about it. I was in too much of a hurry and too half-slept to be able to give a thought to anything but getting down on time. I tore out of the place without a word, kiting my coat after me by one-quarter of one sleeve length.

He wasn’t there when I got back. Someone else was. I put the key to the door and came in and found a man making himself at home in our easy-chair, pretending to read a newspaper. You could tell he’d just picked it up when he heard me at the door. One edge of the carpet was a little rippled, as though it had been turned over, then flung back.

We’d had the curtain raiser. Now this was the First Act.

I said “What goes on?” without too much cordiality.

He showed a badge, said: “Super let me in to wait for you boys. You Carr? You the other fellow that lives here with Dixon?”

“That’s who.”

“A girl named Estelle Mitchell came here last night, didn’t she?”

“Okay if I sit down? I had to stand all the way home.” I sat.

“Well?”

“Yes,” I said coolly, “there was a girl dropped in here last night, and I believe her name was Mitchell.”

“What time’d she get here?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“You saw her come in?”

“I met her on the stairs, on my way out.”

“What time’d you get back yourself?”

“Close to twelve.”

“Was she still here then?”

“She’d just left.”

“How’d you know she just left? Did your friend tell you that, or did you see her leave?”

The problem in ethics had come up. It wasn’t my own skin I gave a rap about. If I could have been sure of him, Dixon, I would have gladly said I took her back to her own door myself, and the hell with this dick and all other dicks. But I wasn’t as sure of him as... well, as I would have liked to be. “I as good as saw her leave.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

“As I turned the corner and came in sight of the house here, I saw a cab standing waiting to take on someone at the door. I saw a figure run out and get in it, and I saw my friend standing up at the window looking down—”

“You’re positive it was she?”

“That isn’t what I said.” I was willing to step as far over the line for him as I possibly could, but not all the way — until I was surer. I have a funny conscience, awfully inelastic, practically no give to it at all. “I’m positive it was a girl. But the night was too murky and I was too far away to be able to recognize her face. When I got upstairs a minute later, he told me she’d just left. Draw your own conclusions.”

“Had you ever seen this Mitchell girl before?”

“No, last night on the stairs was the first time I met her.”

That inclined him to leniency in my favor, I could see. I mean, about this figure-in-the-doorway angle. How could I be expected to recognize her from a distance, in a needle rain? “What time does he get back as a rule?”

He was always back before now other nights. I wasn’t going to give him away on that. “Oh, he’s not very punctual,” I said carelessly. “He may have stopped off at the Mitchells’ to see if they’ve had any word.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll wait,” he said doggedly.

“Is it all right if I step out and feed? I’ve been running on a malted milk since noon.”

He made a reassuring hand pass toward me. “You go ahead, Carr.”

I didn’t like the way that sounded. As much as to say, It’s not you we’re after.

I gave him a look, but I got up and went. I headed for a place around the corner. The tire of a parked car went out with a sharp hiss just before I rounded it. Only it was on the wrong side of me, where there were doorways instead of a roadway. He was standing there in one of them. I stopped short, veered in. “Well, I’ll be blamed! What’re you doing in there, playing hide-and-seek?”

“My shoelace came undone, I had to step in here and fasten it.” Then he said, “Has anyone been around?”

“There’s a dick up there right now waiting to talk to you.”

Even so, he shouldn’t have flinched the way he did. I waited for him to make a move; he didn’t.

“Well, why don’t you go up and get it over with?”

He just looked at me, like I was asking him to go into a den with a man-eating lion.

“Have you been around to the Mitchells’?”

He shook his head, looked down.

“Haven’t you even called up to find out? You mean you haven’t once gotten in touch with them since last night?”

“The old lady hates me, I tell you. She’ll fly off the handle, scream all kinds of things at me. I can’t face it, now less than ever.”

“Look, Dixon,” I tried to point out, “you’re doing all the wrong things, all the way through this. Now don’t start off on the wrong foot, there’s no reason why you should. I know how it is, you’re nervous and jumpy — but you didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance, why should you dodge her mother or the dicks or any guard-dam one else?”

“Even you,” he said bitterly, “you ought to see your eyes when you say that. There’s a sort of steely stare in them, like you weren’t sure yourself.”

I hadn’t meant to let him see that, it must have shown without my knowing it. I figured the best — and kindest — way to cover that up was to ignore the accusation altogether. “You better go on up to the place, Dixon,” I advised him crisply. “Your shoelace is fastened now.”

I walked away thinking, “He’s not the type this should have happened to, he’s going to make a mess of it before he’s through.” If it had happened to me, for instance, me with my red hair, I would have been hanging around Headquarters day and night, getting in their way, cursing them out for not finding her quicker. He seemed to sort of skulk and act suspicious.

I ate and then I went back. He was out again. And this time the dick was too. He came in about forty minutes afterwards. He almost seemed to reel in. He looked all drained of blood; he’d turned so white that it wouldn’t wear off. And when he took off his coat and vest, there was a regular dark stain down the back of his shirt, he’d sweated so.

“They had me down at Headquarters to question me,” he said. He slumped into a chair, pulled the knot of his tie loose as though it were choking him, took a long shuddering breath in different wave lengths. “I thought they weren’t going to let me go, at one time, but in the end they did.”

I pitched up my shoulders. “Why shouldn’t they let you go?”

He didn’t say. “Gee, I can’t stand much more of this.”

“I dunno, you never seemed particularly sensitive until now,” I let him know. “Why should you let it get you like this? They gotta ask questions, don’t they? There’s nothing personal in it—”

He gave a bitter laugh. “They made it seem pretty personal, down there just now.”

I thought, “If you acted down there like you’re acting up here, you didn’t do yourself any too much good!” If he wouldn’t help himself, somebody ought to at least try to put an oar in for him, and I supposed that left it up to me. I walked around the room awhile. Finally I stopped by him, laid a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, for your own sake, I want you to do something for me. Call up the mother and at least say something to her, don’t just lie low like this. At least find out if anything’s been heard.”

He shied, right away. “I keep telling you, in her mind I’m already responsible for whatever’s happened, and there’s nothing I can do or say—”

I took another few turns around the room. “Did the girl mean anything to you at all?” I spat curtly.

That caught him off guard. “Red, I was crazy about her, I was mad about her, I’da done anything rather than lose her. I’da rather seen her dead than have her go to him—” He realized too late how that sounded, bit it off short.

Everything wrong; he said and did everything wrong.

“Well, that’s a crack I wouldn’t make twice,” I advised astringently. I picked up the phone.

“What’re you going to do?”

“What’s their number? What’s the number of her house?”

He gave it to me. I called it for him. A man answered first. For some reason I got the idea he was a detective, over there talking to them. “Mrs. Mitchell, please.”

“Who is this wants her?”

“Dixon wants to speak to her,” I said noncommittally.

Sure, he must have been a detective. There was too long a wait. They must have been talking it over— Suddenly I heard her say distinctly, within a foot of the phone, to someone else: “You shouldn’t make me, you shouldn’t ask me to.”

I hitched my head at him commandingly. “Come on, I’ve got her for you.” Even now, I could only get him to come halfway toward it; I brought it the other halfway, shoved it into his hands, left it there.

Gee he sounded lame. I couldn’t help thinking that myself while I listened. “Mrs. Mitchell, any word of Estelle yet—?”

That was as far as he got. She cut in with something, I could hear the rasping against the transmitter. His face got as white as though a whip had creased it. He let go of the thing and it hit the floor like a shot.

I picked it up and put it to my own ear. She was uncontrollable. She was just saying one thing over and over. “Murderer!” She spaced it for emphasis. “Mur-derer! MUR-derer!”

I hung up. I didn’t blame him for getting white.

He was taking a drink when I looked around. He’d brought a new bottle in with him when he came back from Headquarters. I couldn’t blame him for that either. I would have wanted something to wash down a word like that myself, if it had been jammed into my craw.

“Now you see?” I expostulated. “If you’da shot straight over there after she phoned last night like I advised you to, the thing wouldn’t have gotten to this stage. Your play was to notify the cops right along with her as soon as you heard the girl hadn’t shown up home; to take part in the thing, not stay out of it and let them turn it against you.”

And even now, if it had been me, I would have gone tearing over there and raised holy cain with her, whether she was grief crazed or not, for having the nerve to— But it wasn’t me, it was he. I was just the fellow he lived with. And far to the back of my mind, there was this suppressed thought struggling to come clear: I would, that is, assuming that I was innocent. If I was guilty, if the shoe fitted, how did I know but what I wouldn’t act just about like — he was?

I kept that thought pushed back. I let it squirm, but I kept it down. I left him up there in the place, went out. I could tell by the way he acted, kept edging up slantwise to the window, that he was worried they’d already posted someone down there to watch him, tail him if he went in or out. For my part, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had. And it still didn’t have to mean anything much; whether he let it hamper him or not all depended on what was in his own mind.

“You coming back soon?” he asked.

Other nights he didn’t give a rap whether I came back soon or late. I knew what he was dying to ask me — but didn’t have the nerve to: “See if you notice anyone hanging around watching the house.”

“I’ll be back,” I said indefinitely. I had a couple things on my mind I wanted to attend to.

If there was a spotter, the spotter knew his business; I couldn’t spot him for love nor money.

This McGinnis was a monkish-looking Celt with a bald crown; you kept looking for the hood and tasseled girdle, and all you ever got was a big imperfect perfecto. He knew Dixon and me, both, like his right arm. And as I said before, by that I don’t mean we were bar-flies or tanks. But anytime we had stepped in anywhere for a drink, for over eight months now, it was to his place.

“Was my pal in here last night?” I wanted to find out about those missing three hours.

“Dixon?” he said. “That he was. And what was the matter with him? He left half his drink behind.”

He’d told me that himself. “I was looking high and low for him,” I said, to cover it up so it wouldn’t sound like a check-up. “How long was he in here, about? Can you remember?”

“He was in here till a good thray o’clock. He held the fort, that he did; there wasn’t another soul—”

That was just the time he’d got back to the flat. I felt relieved. I even dunked my upper lip into the beer I didn’t want, in order not to offend his professional pride like Dixon had about his drink last night.

“Is he feeling any better today?” he went on.

I thought he meant on account of the unfinished drink, or because he’d been noticeably downcast. I would have let it go at that.

“The best thing to do for an upset stomach is just lave it alone—” he rambled.

I brought my scattered thoughts up short. Upset stomach? He had his symptoms crossed. Or did he? I didn’t ask him. There was only one way he could have arrived at such a mistaken diagnosis.

I waited a minute or two, then I said: “Be with you,” and went back to it and inside. I’d probably been in the washroom once or twice before, but it hadn’t been vital to notice it closely until now. There was just a rather unclean washstand, and then a cabinet behind a slatted half-door. It was very small and very uncertainly lighted.

The window — I remembered that there was one in here only now that I saw it again — was chink-narrow and very long. The glass was of a double opacity, whitewashed, and then filmed with accumulated dust. It was open a little from the top, for ventilation. It seemed humanly impossible for an adult to squeeze out through it. More important still, he’d only come in here to McGinnis’s after. What would he have gained by establishing an alibi after? It wasn’t like me to start suspecting him. Well, dammit, then why didn’t his behavior give me a chance to stand up for him?

I got up on the edge of the washstand with one foot and peered out through the top of the window. Its already prohibitive narrowness was still further bisected by a vertical iron bar. Furthermore, the light coming from behind me mushroomed out against blank brickwork only four feet in front of my face. The window just looked out on an air shaft bored down into the building, no way of getting up, no way of getting down. The iron bar was just gratuitous, or maybe one of the cubed walls was a later addition, sealing up what had until then been a three-sided indentation.

I got down, opened the dust-caked pane from the bottom, not without a good deal of difficulty. I wanted to see if I could make out the bottom of the shaft. I could; it ended only a few feet below the window. I looked at it a very long time, forehead grazing the rust-flaked iron bar. I have very good eyes, and I gave them the workout of their life.

I didn’t take their word for it; I pulled my head in again and gave them a little help. I happened to have a newspaper furled up in my side pocket. I took it out, struck a match, and set the end of it on fire. Then I stuck it, burning, through the window and held it out above the shaft floor. It played it up to a dusky orange, plenty bright enough. I pulled the improvised torch in again before it got out of control, stamped it out on the floor. It had done the trick, shown me what my eyes had only been able to hazard at.

I tried with my arm first, but it couldn’t get anywhere near the shaft floor, the damn perpendicular bar held my shoulder joint too far back. I never chewed gum. I went out there now and bought a penny package from his machine and mashed it up. I didn’t want to have to ask McGinnis for anything, he probably wouldn’t have had anything the right length anyway. He didn’t even notice me come out and then go in again, he’d gotten a batch of new customers just then and was busy taking their orders.

I went to work on one of the slats of the cabinet door, wrenched it out of its socket at both ends and used that. They were all dilapidated and half-loose anyway. It was the same principle kids use in dredging up coins through a sidewalk grating. I stuck the gum on the end of the slat, poked it through the window, stabbed the shaft floor, and each time came back with something I had seen before — and I don’t mean just now winking faintly in the gloom at the shaft bottom either. They were the two mates to the patented raincoat fastener I had trodden on up at our place. And if there was any doubt in my mind that they were mates, the tatter of green cellophane clinging to each one settled that.

That accounted for three of them. Three out of a possible four, at the very most. And to lose that many fasteners, that raincoat had been subjected to the roughest sort of treatment, must have been wrenched-at and pulled around unmercifully (with its wearer inside it). Even so, it wasn’t the patent that had failed to meet the test, the fabric around it was what had given way under the strain.

Even the implication of inordinate violence didn’t make me as creepy as the attempt at concealment. The washroom window must have been open only from the top, as I had found it myself, and perhaps he didn’t realize the floor of the shaft was as accessible to the washroom as it turned out to have been. I held open the cabinet door I had victimized, struck a match, stared intently. There were no traces left. But after all, a fabric like that must be highly combustible. Or if not, it was just a matter of severing it into small enough pieces to pass through the drain. And as for smuggling it in here unseen, how do people who swipe hotel towels for souvenirs, for instance, get away with them? By folding them flat underneath their vests and buttoning their coats over them. A pliable raincoat like that must fold into very nearly handkerchief size.

I didn’t feel so jolly. After I had cleaned the gum off the two fasteners, I wrapped them in a bit of paper, thrust them in my pocket to be retained against further decision. I was in a blue funk when I came out of McGinnis’s. The best I could muster was a half-hearted, “Keep an open mind, now, as long as you can. Don’t jump to too-hasty conclusions. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, you’d want it given to you in his place.” It was already like swimming upstream.

If I hadn’t known I was going to wind up at the Mitchells’ until then, there wasn’t much doubt of it by the time I came out of McGinnis’s with those two raincoat fasteners in my pocket. Where else could I go? Back to him? He’d made the third one I’d already retrieved once at our place disappear a second time. To the police? Not at this stage of the game. Maybe not at any stage of the game. When you watch a guy going down in a quicksand before your eyes — if he doesn’t deserve to — you give him a hand out; if he does, maybe you fold your arms and let him go. But at least you don’t shovel rocks on his head to make him go down faster. I don’t, anyway.

I had to look it up in a phone directory, I had no idea where it was. There was a half-column of Mitchells, but I had no trouble separating the appropriate one, he’d already given me the phone number that paired with it. Mrs. Fanny A. It was only about six blocks from our place, as she’d said last night; almost too short a distance for any anonymous harm to have befallen the girl; it made it seem more likely than ever it had been a personally directed, intentional harm, meant for her alone by someone who knew her.

It was an outworn apartment house, when I got there, that just managed to maintain itself above tenement status, more through its cleanliness than anything else. The mother evidently lived on her income, and a very tenuous one at that. It was on the ground floor, and after I’d already located it I had an attack of last-minute qualms about going in. I wondered if I was being a hypocrite by coming here like this, with two of the very fasteners from her raincoat packaged in my pocket at the moment, and yet no intention of turning them over to them. It was a hell of a thing to do; either I was on their side or I was on his.

I poised my finger toward the doorbell. Then I dropped it again. I started to walk back and forth undecidedly, crosswise across the lobby. This kept carrying me to and fro in front of the elevator-grate. The car itself was somewhere out of sight the whole time, bedded in the basement most likely, as often occurs in those run-down poorly serviced houses. Without being aware of it I was accidentally giving the impression of someone whose business was on one of the upper floors, not down here at all, waiting to be taken up.

I still hadn’t been able to make up my mind, when I heard the street door open, and as I turned my head, two cops came in carrying a sort of hamper between them. They had newspapers spread loosely over the top of it. I heard one ask the other, “Why didn’t they have her come down, instead of us bringing it up here?”

“I dunno, I guess she couldn’t make it or somep’n.”

They started diagonally across the lobby to the door on the left. Then when they got halfway to it the leader said, “Naw, it’s the one on this side,” and abruptly changed directions. They ended up before the one I had just been hesitating outside of myself a moment ago. But the swerve was violent enough to dislodge part of the newspaper covering on top of what they were carrying. It drifted off, and the rear carrier had to stop a minute and replace it.

It was just a fluke that I happened to be standing right there in the same apartment lobby with them at that moment. They didn’t try to hide the momentary glimpse I was afforded of what was in the hamper. They didn’t look twice at me, I was just someone waiting to be taken up to one of the higher floors. They didn’t think the tattered, grimy, green-cellophane raincoat lying spread on top of other maltreated garments would have any particular meaning to me, or that I could transmit the knowledge to the one place they didn’t want it to go until they were ready for it.

I didn’t get out fast enough. I couldn’t bolt right in front of them; I had to wait until they were admitted first. The mother must have been somewhere close at hand near the apartment door. They just about got in with it, took the newspapers off, when her scream slashed through it like a knife through cheesecloth. That was identification, complete, devastating, final — that harried scream that ended in a soft thump on wood.

I got outside to the street fast. The six lengthwise blocks, that were all the margin of lead I had, streamed by under me; I can’t remember now any more whether I actually ran or just hiked fast. I kept thinking, “What’ll I do about this?”

I slowed when I got to our corner. They might have someone watching the place already. They must have. If there was, I couldn’t see him. But then if I could have, he wouldn’t have been any good to them. I only walked slow up to the door. Once inside, I ran up the stairs again. I keyed the door open and closed it behind me again with camera-shutter rapidity.

The room was dark, at first I thought he was out. But he was lying on the bed. Not like you lie on it to sleep on it, the other way, across it from side to side, head down, face buried in a tragic nest he’d made out of his arms. Heartbreak, I suppose; I don’t know. He reared his head when he heard me come in, but I’d already had time to glimpse him the way he was first.

“That you, Red?”

“Yeah, it’s Red.” I stood in the doorway looking at him.

He got up off the bed, slowly, one limb at a time. He tried not to show he could feel me looking at him. Finally he couldn’t help it any more. “What d’you keep looking at me for?”

“You better get ready for a long pull. Your girl’s dead.”

His face shifted gears. I thought he was going to cry, but if he did, it didn’t come to the top. He said, “Are they sure?”

“They were just bringing her things into the flat when I was outside it just now. I recognized the raincoat—”

I heard him draw his breath in, deep. Then suddenly he shot past me. I went after him. “I’m going to get out of here,” he said in a smothered voice. The panic was on him. Maybe so, but I was running out of excuses.

I slapped the flat door shut again before he’d gotten it far enough out to get through it. “Now wait a minute, don’t lose your head; you’re doing the worst possible thing.”

“I’m getting out! I saw how they acted about it tonight at Headquarters the first time already. They only let me go because they didn’t have anything on me then.”

He kept trying to get it open, I kept trying to hold it back.

“Did you come back here to hold me for them, so I’d be here when they get here?”

“No — I came back to tip you off ahead of time, I guess—” I took one arm down off the door.

“Then lemme get out. Red, gimme a chance at least!”

“Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re as good as admitting the fact you did something to her, you’re advertising it.”

He was past reasoning with. “It’s easy for you to talk, isn’t it? It’s not your freedom, is it? It’s not your neck, your life. I should stay here and let them bag me, and never have a fighting chance from then on!”

He couldn’t get out past me, he couldn’t get me out of the way. He had to give up finally, he was all winded and — although we hadn’t come to blows, principally because he’d known enough not to strike the first one — a wrestling match can tire you as much as a fist fight. He flopped back into a chair, stayed there inert, tongue out — metaphorically speaking, anyway. I stayed there by the door, also breathing hard.

“My own friend,” he said finally.

Maybe that did the trick, I don’t know. If he’d kept on trying to edge me aside, force his way out, I suppose I’d have kept blocking him. It was when he quit trying, slumped down like that, that it got to me. “I don’t think you can make it any more,” I side-stepped grudgingly. I took a look from the window. Nothing yet. He didn’t try to make a break for the door, even after I’d left it; maybe I had him cowed, or he was resigned now.

I picked up the coat and hat I’d just had on me, threw them over at him. “All right, there’s your chance, take it if you want it,” I relented. “They’ve seen me in this outfit two or three times already, you may get away with it. You’d better not try the street, they must have been watching it long ago. Go out through the back yard and maybe you can get through to the next one over, like I did that night when that instalment collector was on my tail. And if you do make it, walk like I do, long slouchy strides — not snappy ones like you take. Keep your left hand in your trouser pocket the whole time. That’s me. Wear the hat down forward like I do, almost over the bridge of your nose. Until you get — wherever you’re going.”

He opened the door. I was soft, I was molasses.

“Here, d’you need dough? You better take this with you—” I shoved some into his hand.

He tried to shake mine, but mine wasn’t there any more. “Where’ll I get in touch with you, Red?”

“D’you want to?” I couldn’t help asking pointedly.

“Sure, I... I’ve got to find out what happens — I’ll find some way; it won’t be here or at the place you work.” He turned and went out.

There went a foolish guy. He had to have his chance, I supposed. You’d give a dog his chance. I watched him down the first flight. I couldn’t tell if he looked like me or not, because I couldn’t tell what I looked like. He didn’t look like himself, to me, in that hat and coat, so maybe that was enough.

I listened until he got the rest of the way down. The stairs must have been clear yet, I heard him get the yard door open and go out through there. I rapped once against the wooden doorframe beside me, for luck. His luck. Then I closed the door and went in.

“Now, what’d I do that for?” I wondered, shaking my head.

It took them a little while to make their arrangements, I guess, or maybe they’d had to wait for orders from higher up. They had no inkling that there was any hurry about it, that I’d accidentally tapped a wire, so to speak, or they would have been over a lot sooner. The knock on the door, of course, was an indication in itself that he’d made it.

There were two of them. The man in the lead slanted me aside as if I were just an extension panel on the door, strode through. “Come on out, Dixon, don’t make us go in after you.”

“He’s not in here,” I said innocently.

The other one was the same one had been installed up here when I got home earlier tonight — Hiller I heard his teammate call him. “He’s skipped the gutter, Hiller. Here’s his hat and coat.”

Hiller took a look. He caught on fast. “Where are yours?” he said, coming back to me.

“On the third hook from the left, in the closet,” I stalled.

“You mean he walked out in ’em.” He was trying to get me for being an accessory. “Now what were you doing while this was going on?”

“I was in there shaving; how’d I know he was going to take a duster?”

He went in the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and tested the bristle of my brush. Then he dried-off the tips of his fingers on a towel. Even that didn’t satisfy him; he reached up and felt the side of my face. His fingers skidded on it like an ice-skating rink. Sure I’d shaved. I always shaved at nights. I’d had nearly fifteen minutes to shave, between the time Dixon left and they got here.

Hiller narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you sure you weren’t in on this?”

“What would I get out of it either way, whether he stayed or went?”

I had him there so beautifully that he failed to notice I’d answered his question by asking him one of my own. “No use waiting,” he said to his partner. “He won’t be back — not here anyway. You better come down with us, Carr; I think we’d like to ask you a few, this time.”

I had to go without my hat and coat, my friend had mine. Hiller even suggested I put on his. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, for some strange reason; call it superstition if you like. I still wasn’t positive they hadn’t last been worn by someone who had taken a life.

They pegged away at me down there quite a bit, but it didn’t get them anywhere. Whether you’re telling a lie or telling the truth, the whole art of it lies in simplicity; stick to something simple and don’t ball yourself up. I’d seen the figure of a woman get in a cab at my doorway, through the mist; I didn’t claim it was Estelle Mitchell, I never had. That was the whole gist and burden of my story. How could anyone trip on anything as short and uncomplicated as that? Well — detectives like this Hiller get thirty-six-hundred a year, I think. I was now about to find out why.

They didn’t let on that I’d fallen face-flat, so to speak. Hiller just mumbled, “Ask you to go up to Mrs. Mitchell’s with us for a few minutes,” and we were on our way again.

It was a typical early-century interior; gloomy hall going back for miles, with doors opening all the way down it. A man that I at first thought was a teammate of theirs, working at this end, admitted us. He was up in his late thirties, I should say, or even higher than that. Hiller said, “Hello, Tremholt; we’d like Mrs. Mitchell to come out and hear something, a minute.”

He cranked his head kind of dubiously. “The doctor was with her until now; he just about got her quieted down. Go easy, will you, fellows?” But he went down the hall to one of the end doors. So by that I caught on he wasn’t a bureau man but some relative or member of the family. Meanwhile we’d detoured into an old-fashioned parlor, cluttered up with junk. The girl’s late father, in a photographic enlargement, looked down from one wall, the mother from the other. As she had once been.

She came in a minute later, on the arm of this Tremholt, and made the picture out a liar. The thing had turned her inside out. Her eyes were lost in deep skull pits. She had a wet compress pasted across her brows, and it adhered of its own saturation. She could only hate now, thirst for vengeance, that was all that was left to her. She hated well. For the first time I could understand Dixon’s peculiar skittishness about facing her.

Tremholt led her to a chair, arm solicitously about her, said, “Sit down, Mom.” I couldn’t figure him the girl’s brother, he must have been a half-brother. Then he stood attentively behind her, hand resting on the back of her chair. I could see it over her shoulder. He’d taken out his own anxiety and grief in a much simpler form: nail-biting. I’d never seen such nails; they were down to the quick, and even past it. The indentations were still left-to show how much of them had been gnawed away. A poodle, which had a sort of wistful air, like it missed her too, had trailed into the room after the two of them.

Hiller said, “Now just once more, in Mrs. Mitchell’s presence.”

“Why, simply,” I began uneasily, “that I saw a woman’s figure enter a cab—” I ran through it once again. I could sense something had come up, but couldn’t get what it was. Which is liable to happen when you horse around with detectives.

“I’m not calling you on that,” he said quietly. “What I want to know is, did you hear the signal given, the hail, that brought the cab down the street that far, to your doorway, for her?” And then, for bait, “There must have been one; no cabdriver’s attention could have been attracted if she’d just waved an arm, in that kind of visibility.”

I could sense the trap. He wanted to drive a wedge between my version and Dixon’s, in order to knock the support from Dixon’s, demolish it. I only had a split second in which to make up my mind, with three pairs of eyes boring into me. If I denied hearing her summon the cab, that would shake the credibility of Dixon’s version, wouldn’t it? How had he been able to hear it, through a closed window, if I hadn’t, right out there in the open? There was also a trap within a trap. He was decoying me by using the terms signal, hail. He wasn’t going to trip me up on that. Dixon had said unmistakably that she’d whistled for one. I’d hooked my story onto his. He’d assured me that I wasn’t backstopping a lie, but simply bridging a five-minute time difference; in other words, corroborating something that had actually occurred, only just too soon for me to eye- and ear-witness it. If his whole story was a lie, that was my tough luck. But you can’t corroborate a thing like that in parts, you either corroborate it all the way or not at all.

“There was no hail given,” I said. “There was a whistle given. I heard it.”

No one said anything. They seemed to be waiting for Mrs. Mitchell to speak, as though they already knew something I didn’t. Tremholt looked down at her from behind her chair. Hiller looked across the room at her.

She spoke at last, in a deathly low voice. “My daughter couldn’t whistle. Not a note. It was an absolute limitation, some kink in her tongue maybe. Many’s the time we heard her try it, all she could do was make a soundless breath, like someone blowing soap bubbles. When she had this dog out with her, the only way she could call him was by clicking her tongue or speaking his name.”

She’d been addressing Hiller until now. Now she turned on me, as Tremholt started to lead her out of the room. “So if you heard a woman in your doorway whistling for a cab, it was not my daughter. You did not see my daughter leave that house!” And then from further down the hall, out of sight: “And no one else did either!”

Hiller just sat there looking at me, and I just sat looking at my own innermost thoughts. They were a glowing red, and they kept repeating a single phrase over and over again: “The dirty liar! The dirty liar!” And I didn’t mean the dick, either.

I went back with him to Headquarters from there. I still wasn’t turning stool pigeon. I couldn’t have anyway, even if I’d wanted to, in the only way that would have done them any good. But even if I could have, I knew I wouldn’t have. I didn’t know where he’d gone. And if — and when — I found out, I considered that a little personal matter between him and me. I wasn’t doing their work for them.

They wore out finally. The lieutenant or whoever he was in charge suggested, “Why don’t you boys take him over and let him see for himself what this precious friend of his has done? Then maybe he’ll feel a little differently about it.”

That was the first I knew that the body had been found.

They took me over to the Morgue with them. They drew out a sort of drawer or lateral cupboard they had her in and whisked back the covering. It would have been tough enough to take even without the way they stood around me and rubbed in it.

Her neck had been broken in some God-awful way; I’d never seen anything like it in my life before. The whole head was twisted out of line with the body. As though her neck had been caught under someone’s arm in a viselike grip, and then the killer had twisted his own whole upper body around out of joint, to accomplish the fracture. Even then I still couldn’t understand how anyone of less than abnormal strength could—

They took pains not to leave me in the dark on this point. “Take a good look, Carr. This girl was twenty-two years old, think of that. Do you want to know just what happened to her, with accompanying blueprints? She went to this skunk-friend of yours to tell him they were through; that she was giving in to the old lady and marrying Tremholt—”

“Marrying Tremholt?” I’d thought he was her brother until then.

“He’s boarded with the Mitchells for years and he’s been crazy about her ever since she was in grade school. The understanding always was that he was to marry her when she was old enough. He’s practically subsidized the mother for years, she could never repay the amounts she owes him. But that was all right, it was supposed to be all in the family. The girl thought he was pretty swell herself, until Dixon came along. She wasn’t coerced into giving him up; Dixon’s glamor started to wear thin and she finally saw things her mother’s way.

“All right, so she told him that night. The old lady was a fool to let her go there alone, and Tremholt didn’t know about it. The girl gave your pal the brush-off and walked out on him. He got his second wind, ran after her, caught up with her on the next landing, and started to drag her back, throttling her so she couldn’t scream. He didn’t kill her then, but she’d lost consciousness and he thought he had. He lost his head, dragged her on up a flight above his own door, and secreted himself in the incinerator closet on that floor, maybe because he’d heard somebody come out below.

“You know those incinerator closets in your building, Carr. A metal flap that you pull down gives onto the perpendicular chute that carries the refuse down to the basement to be burned. Now listen to this if you can stand it — and remember we can show you the scientific evidence for every one of these steps, it’s not just a theoretical reconstruction. He pulled down the flap and tried to unload her body — and she was still alive, see? — down the chute, headfirst, toward the basement and eventual incineration. It was just a panic-reflex. The flap opening wasn’t wide enough, any more than the chute backing it would have been; but there was evidently someone coming up or down out on the stairs at that moment and he was crazed. He wedged her in, then when he tried to extricate her again, after the immediate danger had receded and he could think more clearly, the head and the one shoulder that he had managed to insert, jammed. You can see what happened by looking—”

“Cut it out,” I said sickly, “cut it out.”

“He finally heaved her out, but in doing so he broke her neck against the angle of the chute, wrenched her head nearly all the way around back to front. The only consolation is she didn’t feel anything, was unconscious at the time. That guy has been sleeping on the same mattress with you, Carr; keying the same door.”

I took out a handkerchief and patted it around my mouth.

“When the coast was clear, he hauled her on up the rest of the way to the roof. He went over the communicating roofs as far as he could — four buildings away, toward Demarest Street, and found a barrel there. They’d recently retarred and regraveled that roof, and the barrel was left over. He put her in that, first emptying the gravel that remained, then covering her lightly with it. The workmen who carried it away got it all the way downstairs before they realized what made it weigh so much and found out what was in it.

“It’s the prettiest case we’ve had in years.” And they didn’t mean pretty.

“Now, d’you still want to go to bat for a guy that did anything like that? Tell us where you think he’s gone, you must have some idea.”

I took the handkerchief away from my mouth, and looked at them a long time, and said slowly, “Gents, I only wish I did have.” And did I mean it!

And on that note they let me go home. They knew I was on ice now, they knew I’d keep. They knew, they could tell just by the look in my eyes.

I didn’t sleep so good that night. I threw the mattress on the floor and slept on die naked bed frame. I kept seeing her before me. She spoke to me like she had on the stairs. “He didn’t chase you out on my account, did he?” Only her head was twisted around so that it practically faced forward across her own shoulder.

She was buried next day. I went to the services. I sent flowers with a card that said: “From someone who should have stayed home.” Meaning it wouldn’t have happened that night if I’d been there. The mother was there, and Tremholt, sitting close to her, looking after her, as usual. It must have been tough on him. He was under a strain, you could see. He kept breaking up wooden matchsticks between his fingers, sitting there in the pew with her. Afterwards, when the few of us filed out, I glanced down and the floor was covered with them around where he’d been sitting.

Monday came around again, and I had to do my studying for my Tuesday night class. I had to change textbooks first, we’d finished Volume One the week before, and were going to start in on Volume Two this time. They were standard textbooks, Dixon knew them well, the way I’d had the first one kicking around the place, on renewels, for about six weeks straight. I’d mentioned to him, I think, that we would be about ready to tackle Volume Two in another week’s time, and I could remember his kidding answer: “My, my, you’re getting to be a big boy now!” He probably thought this self-improvement stuff was the bunk.

Anyway, on my way home from the job, I dropped off at the library, turned in Volume One, and picked up Volume Two, which I’d made sure would be there waiting for me on the shelf. I holed-up for the evening, rolled up my shirt sleeves, sat down at the table with pencil, blank paper and book in front of me, and got ready to cram improvement into my skull.

I didn’t see it until I’d gotten well into the second theorem, and had to turn a page. Somebody’d been working out one of the problems on the margin of the page. People often did that, I’d noticed, with textbooks of this kind, too lazy to get their own scratch paper or somethi—

I thought I was seeing things. It was my own name, or part of it anyway, staring up at me from the page. “Red— Call me from Mallam’s ten sharp night you get this out.” Just a hurried pencil scribble, as cramped as possible in order to be inconspicuous, but I recognized the writing. Dixon — the murderer. He must have slipped into the library sometime earlier in the day, located the reference book he knew I was sure to take out next, and taken a chance on contacting me in this way.

Well, that was his big mistake. I was fresh out of sympathy with lousy girl killers. I closed the book with a sound like a firecracker going off, and I shoved my fists back through the sleeves of my coat — fists this time, not open hands. He didn’t know when he was well-off. I picked up the phone, hesitated, put it down again. No, Hiller and his side-kicks could come and get him from here, take up where they’d left off the night I’d so misguidedly abetted his running out. I’d bring him back to his original starting point alone and unaided. That was the least I could do in the way of making amends.

Mallam’s was a big drugstore we both knew well and often patronized. He hadn’t given any number, so how I was to call him I couldn’t figure, but he’d mentioned an hour, ten sharp, so it behooved me to be at the right place at the right time and leave the method up to him.

The method was simple. I was hanging around by the cigarette-counter when the phone in the middle booth started to ring. The counterman started for it, but I stepped in ahead of him. “That’s probably for me,” I said.

It was. I knew his voice. He’d simply called me, instead of having me call him; a lot safer. “You saw it,” he said.

“Yeah, I saw it.” I tried to keep my voice neutral; I was still at his mercy, he could cut himself off.

“Are you alone there? Are you sure no one’s following you or anything?”

“Dead sure,” I said grimly.

“I gotta see you, I gotta know where I stand; it’s not in the papers any more. You’re the only friend I have, Red—” (Wrong tense, I thought to myself, you should have used the past tense.) “—I don’t know who else to turn to. I’m going crazy — and I’m strapped, I can’t even get out of this place I’m in if I want to—”

“I’ll take care of that,” I promised. I wasn’t kidding by a long shot.

He said, speaking quickly, probably to override his own misgivings, “Take the Laurel Avenue bus line, to the Whitegate part of town. Get off at Borough Lane stop. There’s a rooming house there, 305, with a tailor shop below. Go up one flight. Harris is the name.” Then he caught his breath, said, “And whatever you do, if you notice anyone following you—”

“They’ve given me up as a hopeless case long ago. Don’t worry, everything’ll be under control.”

He hung up without waiting for any more. That was all right; now I had him.

He looked bad when he finally let me into the place, after all the usual rigamarole of casing the stairs to make sure no one was at my heels. He looked like he hadn’t slept decently since he’d left our own place. It was a cheesy-looking little hole, about the best a guy wanted by the police could hope to get for himself. Judging by the litter, he’d been doing most of his eating out of cracker boxes and tomato cans, and smoking himself to death.

“Yeah, I brought some dough,” I answered his question. I didn’t bother passing it to him, because he wasn’t going to need it anyway.

“Are they still hot for me?”

“I don’t know. The last I saw Hiller was the day of the funeral, standing over in the shadows at the back of the church. I guess he was hoping that — the guy that did it would show up, out of curiosity or something. I didn’t let on I recognized him.”

He took quick steps back and forth, raking at his hair. “It’s not fair! Through no fault of my own, I’m suddenly hunted down like a mad dog — for something I didn’t do! I suddenly find myself in a position where there’s only one guy left that’s still willing to believe I didn’t.”

“No,” I said, quietly but succinctly.

That brought him up short. His lips formed the question without sounding it.

“You better make that unanimous,” I went on. “What do you expect? What choice have I got?” He tottered backward, crumpled onto the sagging, unmade cot, reached down and gripped the mattress edge with one hand as if to steady himself. I went over the whole thing again, step by step, but as much for my own benefit as for his. “I came back that night, and instead of taking it easy reading like other nights, you were rushing around in there, as if you were straightening things up. I heard you through the door.”

“Sure, I was pounding distractedly back and forth; you would be too if you’d just lost your girl.”

“I knocked instead of using my key, and the knock frightened you. You only opened on a crack until you saw who it was—”

“That was just a reflex; I didn’t want to see anyone, I had too much on my mind—”

“You told me you’d just put her in a taxi at the door. The sidewalk was wet, but the soles of your shoes were dry.”

“Yes, that was an outright lie, but an innocent one. I didn’t want you to think I was heel enough to let her go down by herself.”

“You told me you heard her whistling up a cab, you let me lie to the cops about that. Her mother says she couldn’t whistle a note.”

He looked at me wide-eyed. “I didn’t know that, I didn’t know that.”

The edges of my mouth curled. “She was your girl and you didn’t know she couldn’t whistle?”

“She never happened to tell me; the occasion never arose. I heard someone whistle—”

“A little bird, no doubt.” I went ahead. “You left me at twelve, to go down for a quick pick-up. McGinnis told me you didn’t show up in his place until two. What were you doing before you went in there?”

“Walking around in the rain,” he said dully, “like you do when you’ve lost something.”

“Was this what you lost?” I gave the two raincoat fasteners I’d been carrying around on me all week a careless pitch over toward him. They landed on the cot beside him. “There was a third one, that you overlooked. I stepped on it up at our place, while you were out that night ‘walking around in the rain.’ I put it on the table, and the next I knew it had disappeared; you hid it from that first cop that came around to question you.”

“Yes, I did.” He lowered his head. “She was already missing, it already looked bad enough for me, without him picking a thing like that up. I was starting to get nervous by that time. When she was trying to leave, I’d tried to hang onto her, get her to stay, but not in a murderous way. She had to wrench her raincoat from my pleading grip, and the fasteners came off. I thought it might save me a lot of unnecessary trouble if that cop just didn’t see that third one lying there on the table right as he was checking the description of what she’d been wearing. Sure it was foolish to conceal it, but everyone does foolish things at times, why should mine be made to count so heavily against me?”

“And then you threw the other two — those, over there next to you — out the washroom window at McGinnis’.”

“That was just a rebellious gesture. I’d lost her, I was hurt and bitter. I did that like a man picks up a pebble or a stick and chucks it away from him, as a vent to his inner feelings. And Red, be logical; if I did it for concealment, why wouldn’t I have done it sooner, the whole two hours I was roaming around in the rain, why did I have to wait until I got in there?”

“Maybe you only recalled you had them on you after you got in there, maybe you didn’t remember them while you were still outside.” I shook my head at him slowly. “It’s no use, Dixon. Do you blame me, after all that, for thinking you did kill her? Would you blame anyone for thinking it?”

“So you’re going back to them now and tell them where I am. Tell them where they can come and find me.”

I shook my head quietly.

“Then where are you going?”

“Just back to our place—” I looked him straight in the eye. “And you’re coming with me.”

“That’s what you think.” His hand, the right, had been clutching the mattress edge all this while. I’d mistakenly thought for balance, for moral support. He withdrew it now, and a gun came slithering out in its grip. He must have bought it in some pawnshop with the money I’d staked him to; he hadn’t taken one with him the night he left. He pointed it square at me and said, lethally, “You’re never going to leave here alive again. I can’t afford it, I’m fighting for my life now. Well if it’s got to be me or you, then it’s going to be you. If you were my own blood-brother standing before me—”

“Now at last,” I told him, “you’ve put the finishing touch to your own admission of guilt. A man who’s capable of murdering his own best friend in cold blood, like you’re about to, is certainly capable of murdering his sweetheart. If you didn’t kill her, why would you be so afraid to go back with me—?”

I didn’t know just when he was going to pull the trigger; he was going to any second, I could tell that just by looking at the expression in his eyes. The cot was a decrepit iron affair, one of those so-called portable things with legs that folded back under it. One hadn’t been opened fully, or else had slipped back a little from the repeated vibration of his getting on and off the cot twenty times a day, like he must have. I’d noticed long before this came up that it didn’t hit the floor perpendicular, but leaned in a little, letting the other three do most of the work for it.

I was sitting close enough to it, but that was the trouble — I was so close that any move my foot made was sure to catch his eye. I said, “All right, Johnny, let’s have it and get it over with,” and I clasped my hands at the nape of my neck and leaned my head and shoulders back in the chair, as if at defiant ease. That attracted his dangerously twinkling eyes to the upper part of my body, and the very act of stretching backward from the waist up brought my legs unnoticeably further out in the opposite direction. I felt my shoe graze the cot support. I swung my foot out, like when you tee-off. Then I chopped it back. The support snapped up flat against the frame, and that corner of the cot came down.

The shot was jolted out of him by the sudden slide. It tore straight through at heart level, but the shift over carried it under my left arm pit, and the elbow was up, so it didn’t do anything. I dove over on top of him before another one could come out, slapped the gun hand down against the mattress, and ground my knee into it.

The beating I gave him brought the other cot support down, and we rolled down to the floor together, in a mixture of soiled sheets, gun-smoke and dust from the mattress. As he’d said, it was him or me, and he had a gun; I didn’t pull my punches, although my usual way of fighting is not to hit a guy when he’s down under you.

I quit when he stopped fighting back, and pocketed the gun. He went out a little from my jaw and face blows. No one seemed to have heard the shot, or if they did, it was the kind of a place where they believed in minding their own business. I threw water in his face to revive him, and before his head had altogether cleared he was already down below on the street with me, rocky but standing on his own legs. I got him into a cab, and before he knew it I had him over at our place, had closed the door on the two of us, and flung him back into his own favorite chair — only from about five yards away.

He just cowered there, didn’t say anything, didn’t move. His eyes kept following me around, mutely pleading. “Don’t look at me like that,” I told him finally, wincing from the touch of the iodine stopped on my open knuckles. I didn’t offer him any because for all I knew he might have swallowed it. “D’you think this is fun for me? D’you think this is my idea of how we should wind up, you and me?” I picked up the phone.

He spoke, for the first and last time since we’d come away from the hide-out. He didn’t call me Red any more. “Carr,” he said, “you’re not human at all!”

“Gimme Police Headquarters,” I answered that.

A whistle sounded somewhere under our windows. A woman’s voice called, “Yoo-hoo! Taxi!” Then the whistle sounded again, a fine full-bodied thing a man needn’t have been ashamed of. Gears meshed faintly somewhere in the distance and a machine came slithering up, braked directly outside. I heard a door crack open.

I put the phone down, open the way it was, streaked across the room, threw the window up. I was just a minute too late. I could see the cab roof, but the whistler had just finished getting in. Her hand reached out, pulled the cab door to with a slam.

I emptied my lungs out. “Driver! Hey you down there! Hold it — stay where you are!”

He looked out and up at me. “I got a fare al—”

I backed my lapel at him; all there was behind it was a little dust, but he couldn’t tell from that distance. “Police business!” I said warningly, and hauled my head in.

I put the phone together on an increasingly annoyed voice that was saying: “Police Headquarters! Who is this?” evidently for the fourth or fifth time, with an abrupt “Sorry, wrong number.” I changed the key around to the outside of the door and locked Dixon in behind me. There was no fire escape to our window, so his only other way out was to come down four stories on the top of his head.

The woman in the cab was about thirty-six, very blonde; she stuck her head out at me inquiringly as I came skidding up to the cab door.

“D’you live here in this house?” If she had, I’d never seen her before.

“Yeah, 2-C, second-floor rear. I been a tenant here three weeks now.”

“Last Monday night, that’s a week ago tonight, near twelve, this same time — did you call a cab to this door, by whistling for it like you did just now? It was raining—”

“Sure,” she said readily. “I call a cab to the door every night, rain or shine, so I must’ve that night too. It’s the only way I’d get to work on time. I do a specialty at 12.05 each night, at the Carioca Club. And why wouldn’t I whistle for it, that’s my special talent. Leonora, that’s me. I imitate birdcalls. The customers call ’em out and I give ’em. Anything from an oriole to a—”

Then he’d told the truth. He had heard someone whistle for a cab; he had seen one standing below; he had — as I had myself — just missed seeing her get in. And maybe it shouldn’t have, but for some reason that made the whole thing look different. The same facts remained, but I saw them in a different light now. Not bathed in glaring suspicion any more, but just unfortunate coincidences that had damned him. Yes, even to his pitching the raincoat fasteners through the washroom window in the bar; that became just a gesture of frustration, of ill temper at having lost her, such as anyone might have made.

The blonde was saying, “Well, mister, I gotta go, I go on in about ten minutes. If I been disturbing people by whistling for a cab every night, I’ll tone it down—”

“No,” I said gratefully, “you haven’t disturbed anyone; you’ve saved a man’s life. I want to see you when you get back from work; Carr, fourth-floor front.”

I went chasing upstairs again. He hadn’t even tried to bust down the locked door with a table or chair or anything while I was gone; he must have been resigned by now.

“You’re in the clear as far as I’m concerned,” I flung at him abruptly when I came in.

He just looked at me dazedly; the change was too sudden for him.

“Hiller told me they’ve established Estelle got as far as the landing below your door, and then someone jumped on her, stifled her cries, choked her senseless then and there. A moment later this Leonora, this professional performer, must have come out on her way to work, a landing below that. The girl wasn’t dead yet, but he thought she was. He lost his head, thought he was trapped, picked her up in his arms and carried her up past this floor to the incinerator closet on the one above this. He actually killed her in there without knowing it, trying to get rid of her. Meanwhile you’d heard the whistle from below, got to the window just too late, mistakenly thought you’d seen Estelle go off in a cab.

“The thing is, who was the guy? It wasn’t just a stray, a loiterer. He would have waited until she got out into the dark street; there was no robbery motive, she didn’t even have her handbag with her. It was someone who knew her, someone who had followed her here to your place, who had been lurking around outside your door the whole time she was in there, who put the worst possible construction on her visit to you.”

He nodded dismally. “She kept saying all the way through that she loved me. Even after she’d already opened the door and wrenched herself away from me by main force, she came back a step and kissed me goodbye and said, ‘Nobody can ever take your place, Johnny—’ ”

“Then he heard that; it only added fuel to his smouldering jealousy. He was too yellow to tackle you personally; he waited until you’d gone in, caught up with her on her way down, leaped on her in a jealous rage.”

We didn’t mention anyone’s name; we didn’t need to, now that we’d gone this far. I guess we both had the same name in mind. But knowing was one thing, tacking it on another. We were both stopped for awhile.

I paced around smoking like a chimney. He sat there biting his nails. He’d always been inclined to do that when he was keyed up. After awhile he noticed himself doing it, said mournfully: “I’ve backslid. She’d broken me of this habit, like girls usually try to break the fellows they go around with of little habits they don’t approve of. Here I am doing it again, because she’s not around to see me.” I didn’t say anything. “That was the one thing I ever heard her say in his favor: ‘Tremholt never bites his, why do you have to bite yours—?’ ”

I stopped short, whirled on him so suddenly, he edged away from me in the chair. “He doesn’t, huh? I saw his hand, resting on the back of Mrs. Mitchell’s chair, when Hiller took me over there, and he practically had no nails left, they were down to the raw. Then again, at the services, when he was nervous, he didn’t gnaw them, he kept breaking matchsticks instead, I watched him. If he was a nailbiter he would have bitten them then of all times. That shows he wasn’t, Estelle was right. Then why’d he bite them — or more likely file them down to the quick — right around the time she met her death?” I answered that myself. “Because he got something on them. Probably tar from that barrel of gravel on the roof when he finally — I wonder if we could get him on that?”

“How?” he said forlornly. “The nails are gone now — and the tar with them, if that’s what it was.”

“Maybe it wasn’t that.” Something else came to me. “Wait a minute, didn’t I hear the janitor say something about repainting those incinerator closets, around that time? I think I met him in the hall a day or two before, lugging a brush and paint can around with him. I’m going up and take a look. You stay here, someone might recognize you out on the stairs—”

I went up by myself and inspected the one she had been dragged into. It was just a little dugout at the end of the hall. As you opened the door a light went on automatically, so the tenants could see where to dump their refuse.

I could tell by the clean look and shiny finish to the walls it had been recently repainted. Those places get pretty crummy in no time at all. He’d done a pretty good job for an amateur. Light-green. The important thing was, had the repainting been done before the night the killer dragged the girl in here, or only afterwards? If it had only been done since, then obviously he couldn’t have gotten fresh paint under his nails.

I took my own thumbnail to it and tested it by scraping a little nick in it. It was pretty fresh; that didn’t look so good. He’d only given it one coat, and my nail dug through that and laid bare the old coat beneath: a faded beige.

I looked him up in the basement and asked him about it. He gave me the answer I’d been hoping he wouldn’t. “Naw, I didn’t get to that one until after it happened. I’d gotten up as high as your floor the day of the murder, that was a Monday. I only had the one on the fifth left, I was going to finish that one up the first thing the next morning. He couldn’t get into the one on the fourth with her, because I’d locked it overnight, to keep the tenants out and give the paint a chance to dry. So he took her to the one above. As a result, I didn’t get a chance to paint that until them cops were all finished with it. They made me leave it like it was until late Wednesday afternoon.”

So whatever the reason was for his destroying his nails, it certainly wasn’t because of the adhesion of fresh paint particles. The paint hadn’t been applied until nearly forty-eight hours after Estelle Mitchell’s death. Probably tar from the rim of the barrel he’d hidden the remains in. And as Dixon had said, as long as the nails were gone anyway, what good was that.

I went back to him in the flat, spread my hands dejectedly. And then suddenly, in the very act of giving up hope like that, a way occurred to me. It comes to you as unexpectedly as that, sometimes. I looked at him narrowly, said, “Can you tell me offhand what color the walls of that closet were before they were repainted?”

“Hell no,” he admitted. “When did I ever go in there?”

“See, and you live right here in the house. I couldn’t have either, until I scraped below the top layer just now. I’m going to try to get him on that! It’s just a trick, but it’s about all we have left now.”

He looked at me puzzled.

“It was still beige the night it happened. Gus, the janitor, wasn’t allowed to do it over until after the cops were through with it. But if this guy didn’t go in there with her that night, he’s not supposed to know that.”

I was at the phone. He looked worried when he heard me say, “Headquarters.” I said, “Not you this time, Dixon.” When I got through to Hiller, I just said, “Will you meet me at the Mitchell place? I’ve got something I want you to hear.” I left Dixon in the apartment, told him to lie low, not put on any lights. “Stay here now, will you? When I come back maybe I’ll have good news for you.”

Outside the Mitchell door I had to talk like a trooper to get Hiller to cooperate with me — even as a test. His mind was already made up and he wasn’t unmaking it, not for any murderer’s exroommate. “I don’t ask you to open your mouth and say a word. All I ask you to do is not contradict what you hear me say, act as though it were official. And just listen to what he says. You’re sure he wasn’t allowed in that closet anytime during the following day, while you men were working on it?”

“No one was.”

“That’s all I want you to remember.” I rang the bell, Tremholt came to the door, and the dick and I went in together. I was shaking all over — inside where it couldn’t be detected. It was such a threadlike little thing to hang anything on. Hiller just looked inscrutable. Tremholt looked calm and self-possessed. His nails were starting to grow out again, I noticed, proving that that had been an emergency removal, he wasn’t a chronic biter.

The thing to do was to get him rattled, so he’d lose his head for a minute, wouldn’t be able to think quickly enough. I built up to it carefully, increasing the tempo as I went along. My insinuations became broader every minute, until they’d crossed the line, become outright accusations. Sure it was you, we’ve all known that all along! I was scared stiff Hiller would butt in, contradict me. He kept to the agreement, sat there impassive. He was just the audience.

“Yeah, I know you were supposed to be in your room here all evening. What does that amount to? Your room’s down near the front door, Mrs. Mitchell’s is all the way at the back of the hall. You have your own latchkey, you could have slipped in and out unnoticed a dozen times over between the time she first saw you come in at eight and the time she knocked to tell you she was getting worried about the girl not returning!”

I figured he was ripe enough now. Outwardly he was still imperturbable. But he was idly shredding a paper-folder of matches, and that was a giveaway. I gave him the punch-line. “And why did you feel you had to clip or file down your fingernails to the quick?” I didn’t give him time to shock-absorb that one. “I’ll tell you why, Hiller! Because he got pale-blue paint under his nails, from the incinerator closet where he dragged her—!”

He was still calm, derisive — outwardly, anyway. “Listen to that, will you? That’s a good one. The incinerator closet wasn’t even light-blue in the first place, it was tan, so how could I—”

I quit talking, I didn’t have to talk any more.

All Hiller said, very softly, almost purringly, was: “You weren’t suppose to know that, baby-boy,” and he started to get up from the chair he’d been in until now.

It was nearly dawn by the time I got back for Dixon. “Come on,” I said, “I’ve got to bring you down to Headquarters with me.”

The old fright came back again, that had done him so much damage.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of any more,” I insisted. “The thing’s unraveling beautifully. They’ve had Tremholt down there with them for hours, and he’s getting in deeper by the minute. His alibi wasn’t worth a damn, you know, once they gave it a really good shaking. I promised to produce you, and you’re coming with me. You can’t be cleared by proxy, you know.” And on the way down there I couldn’t resist remarking, “He may have had you darn near framed, but it wasn’t him alone, don’t forget.”

“Who else was in it with him?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“You yourself. I never saw a guy help to frame himself like you did.”

I don’t live with Dixon any more. I’ve moved out since. It’s hard to explain just why. He didn’t kill her. He did try to kill me, but it isn’t that either.

I run into him now and then, and we’re on the best of terms, but we never prolong the encounters, we’re never completely at ease. There’s a self-consciousness between us. You don’t want to be reminded of a murder every time you look at a guy.

The Light in the Window

Night, and the soldier stood under the lamp-post watching. High up over his head the arc-light was like a motionless flare-shell, blinding, dazzling, sending out rays; but standing still up there, not settling slowly to the ground the way a flare-shell would. And then down where he was, on the pavement, there was a big round disc of ghost-light, like a thin dusting of talcum on the ground, with him standing in the middle of it, like a phantom spotlight. Halfway down the tall post, between the two, the arc-lamp and him, two flanges stuck out, like a clothes-peg spread wide open. One said “14th Avenue,” and it pointed behind his back. One said “Second Street,” and it pointed the way he was looking.

He stood there like a statue. Only statues don’t feel. He stood there like a chunk of wood. Only chunks of wood don’t hurt so much.

His back was pressed up against the post; the post was what was keeping it up straight. He had one arm looped behind him, giving him an added grip on the post. The other hung slack. He was young, as soldiers are. But not a boy any more. There were lines on his face that had come too soon. His cheekbones were too pronounced; his jaw needed a little easing. His eyes were steady, and slitted with distant sighting. They never moved, they never wavered. They were on a certain window, diagonally opposite, a number of houses down. They never once left it.

On the ground at his feet there lay a number of things. Things that must have fallen, that didn’t belong there. A cone of thin green tissue paper. The paper was so flimsy it had burst a seam with its own fall, and the head of a rose and a sprig of fern were peering out through the rent. Then there was an oblong box lying there too, also wrapped in paper, with a tinseled string securing it, the way a candy-box is secured. Then there were two or three cigarettes. The peculiar thing about them was they were all still full-length; that is, unconsumed. The tip of each was just a little charred from the first touch of flame. As though they had been dropped by awkward handling in the very act of lighting them, before they had served their purpose, and not just been thrown away.

He didn’t seem to notice that they had fallen. His eyes never left that window.

It was the ground-floor window. It lay alongside the door. Over it there were others in a straight line, a second, a third, a fourth, but he paid no heed to them; it was that one, and that one alone, that held his fixed gaze — his haunted stare.

It was dark, dead, lifeless. It gave him back nothing, not a sign. The one over it, on the second, was lit, was cheerful, was alive. There was even a pot of geraniums on the sill of that one, as if to dress it. But that wasn’t the one he was watching, that couldn’t do anything for him. Then over that, the third was dark again. And then the fourth in turn was lighted. They seemed to alternate. One floor light, the next dark. But those weren’t the ones he was watching. The first, the ground-floor one, was dark.

She was out. But she’d come home soon. He’d watch for her to come home. And then just as she was about to enter he’d call to her and say—

No, that would frighten her. Too sudden, too unexpected after three years; out here in the dark, on the empty street. She’d think she was seeing a ghost. Well, she was; there are ghosts of flesh and blood, just as well as the other kind. Who should know that better than he? He’d wait for her to go inside. He’d let her get in first. He’d know when she was in by the way the window lit up. That would tell him. Then he’d go in after her and knock on the door. Softly, quietly, in order not to alarm her. Then she’d open. Then she’d see him. Then hurting would stop.

He should have told her that they’d brought him back. He should have written and let her know, all these weeks, that he was already over here, in a hospital on this side. But he’d wanted to wait until he was all right, to make it even better, to make it more complete. They’d told him he would be. And now finally he was.

She’d come along soon. Better get ready. He’d have to pick up the candy first, he’d have to pick up the flowers. He started to; he started to bend over slowly towards them. He couldn’t quite make it, though. He went back flat against the post again. Well, not right now, then; in another minute or two, instead. He’d rest up some more first, before doing it. Funny how tired you got. Battle fatigue, they called it at the hospital. They said it would wear off, they said, “You’ll be all right now.”

Under the lamp-post the soldier stood watching.

A car horn gave a sharp tweak as it glided past behind him, and he recoiled against the lamp-post, his head went back and hit it, and the hollow stem sounded with a lazy brazen bong. Then he let out his breath slowly, and it made a soft hiss. He moved his arm, he drew his sleeve across his forehead, and he was all right again.

He said to himself: ‘I think I’ll try again. I’ll try lighting another of those. So that by the time she comes I can show her I have it licked.’

He only had one of each left, one cigarette, one match. He took the cigarette out and put it in his mouth. That part he could always get. Then he pulled off the match and struck it. That part he could do all right too. It was bringing the two of them together.

He started to move the flame closer. He was afraid of it. It was like that one that had burst right in front of him up front that day. It touched the tip of the cigarette, and he couldn’t help it, his face jerked back. The cigarette dropped.

I guess I won’t smoke right now, he decided ruefully. She’ll light one for me when she comes, and we’re in there together. Like she used to. Only in those days I didn’t have to have it done for me.

She ought to be home soon now. She ought to be home soon. Please. Out here alone in the dark.

Suddenly his eyes were wide. Something had happened to the house front. The window, the window, had bloomed yellow. And she hadn’t come in from the street. No one had gone in. He’d been right here watching. His eyes hadn’t once left it. She must have — she must have been in there all the time.

In the dark?

There was no other room, only that one overlooking the front; no second room for her to have been in. He’d been in there lots of times before he went away.

It must be — not there. He blinked to make it go away. It stayed bright yellow. He backed his hand across his eyes and held it off a moment, then took it away and looked again. It stayed bright yellow. The one above had gone out by now, but it, the one that mattered, it stayed bright yellow.

It even made a pale reflection out before it on the street, and only real things can make reflections. Something can fool you itself, but if it has a reflection it’s there.

The front door swung out, dropped back, and a man was standing there in front of it.

I’ll wait until he’s out of the way, the soldier said to himself, then I’ll start for over there. He’ll go away in a minute.

The man just stood there, enjoying himself. You could tell he was enjoying himself. You could see his head go back and his chest go out, while he took a deep breath of the fresh air, and held it for a while appreciatively, and then let it go again.

He gave his hat a little shift to make it sit more jauntily. He straightened the shoulders of his coat to make them fit more closely. Then he straightened his tie conceitedly. Then at last he struck out and came down the steps to the sidewalk.

He turned towards the corner the soldier watched from, instead of the other. He was still on the opposite side at first. Then he left it. He was crossing diagonally towards the soldier now, approaching that pallid spotlight of his vigil.

The soldier didn’t move, he stayed there, back to post. He’d be out of the way in a minute, this passer-by, and behind him the window still waited.

He passed behind the soldier, to the rearward of the post, for that was out at the edge.

The footsteps stopped short. Then they came back a pace or two, as if to regain perspective from the side.

“Hey, wait a minute—”

The soldier hadn’t moved, it was just rhetorical.

“Aren’t you Mitchell Clark? Sure. Mitch; that was it. They used to call you Mitch.”

The soldier turned his head and he was standing there right beside him looking at him.

“I thought I knew your face,” he exulted. Then a momentary shade of concern crossed his own. “Don’t you remember me? Art Shearer, from the old neighborhood.” He held out his hand.

“Oh,” the soldier said. He did now; he hadn’t at first. “Oh, sure.” He shook the other’s hand.

“How long is it now? Must be four, five years.” He didn’t wait for the answer. “You’re looking good. Must have agreed with you. Rugged grind, hunh?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “Back for good, or just temporary?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “What are you doing around here, holding up this post?” He glanced briefly up towards the flanges. “Oh, waiting for a bus, I guess. I don’t envy you, brother; you’re going to have some wait, these days.”

He brought out cigarettes, as a spur to sociability.

“Have one.”

They had black bands encircling their waists, up near the tips.

“What are they?” the soldier asked curiously.

“They’re called ‘Black-and-Whites.’ Funny brand, hunh? You don’t often run into them. I stick to them because I got used to them.”

He was prodding into his pockets.

“Gee, I lost my lighter. Or left it somewhere. Can’t find it.” He clicked his tongue worriedly. “What d’you think of that? Never mind, I think I’ve got a match. Yeah, here’s one.”

The small flame, bedded in Shearer’s two hands, yellowed both their faces for a moment as they inclined towards it. The soldier’s eyes came to rest on Shearer’s cheek, at a point offside to his mouth, remained fixed there.

“There’s something on your face.”

“Where?”

“Right there. No, there.”

Shearer took a handkerchief out, touched it with the tip of his tongue, dug at his face. Then he peered at the handkerchief. The smear had transferred itself.

“That stuff gets all over the map,” he smirked, pleased with himself.

Mitch Clark tilted his nose slightly and sniffed. “What’s that?” Then he looked dubiously at the cigarette he was holding.

“What? Oh, that. That’s not the cigarette. It’s probably on me.” He hoisted his coat lapel up towards his own nose, sniffed in turn. “Yeah, it’s all over me,” he admitted ruefully. “Whew! It’s called ‘One Hour Alone.’ Can you imagine; so strong it even gets on you secondhand.” He wagged his head deprecatingly, but he was still pleased, none the less.

Mitch Clark kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to look at the other man. He didn’t want to look at the window, lighted, waiting, there in the background behind him.

He edged his foot forward. The candy box went over the edge of the curb and into the gutter below. It was damp there. The paper stained dark in patches as it soaked in the moisture. It was no good now.

“What was that?” Shearer asked, glancing down. “Something for the garbage-collector’s truck, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Mitch Clark answered dully. “Something for the garbage-collector’s truck.” He kept looking down.

“What’re you looking at?” Shearer asked finally, following the direction of the look with his own eyes a second time.

Mitch Clark’s mouth twisted briefly, then resumed its normal outline. “You’ve got your — left shoe on your right foot and your right on your left. The hollows are on the outside.”

Shearer chuckled. He waited deliberately for the soldier to look up at him, meet his eyes. Then when he had, he winked portentously at him. “I have?” he drawled, with complete lack of discomfiture. “Well, what d’ya know?”

Mitch Clark shivered a little, bunched his shoulders defensively. “Chilly tonight, isn’t it?” he mumbled.

“Chilly?” Shearer gave him a look of roguish surprise. “Blamed if I can notice it. Don’t ask me to tell you. Not when you’ve just been treated like I have.”

He wanted the soldier to know. He wanted him to get it. He wanted to brag about it. He wanted to hammer it into him, by every means except the direct statement.

He even turned his head and glanced briefly over his shoulder, towards where he’d come from. Then when he’d brought his face forward again, there was that smirk of self-esteem all over it.

It faded slowly. His audience wasn’t appreciative enough. This conversation hadn’t been any fun.

“You’ve changed some, haven’t you?” he let Clark know critically. He threw his cigarette away rather curtly. “Well, I guess I’ll be moving. No use hanging around here all night.” He didn’t offer his hand in parting. Then, from a pace away, “Hope you get your bus. Take it easy.”

The soldier didn’t answer, didn’t move. He heard the footsteps dilute with distance, blur and expire. Silence all around him now. His back wasn’t upright against the post for its entire length any more; the upper part was curved forward, as if it had started to peel off it. But he hadn’t answered; didn’t move.

Only his thoughts moved. But not in a straight line; circularly, round and round, like wisps of bunting caught in the wings of an electric fan. “I’m more tired than I was before. I’ve got to get away from this post. I’ve got to go. But where? Turn, go back, before you know. You don’t know yet. Turn, go back, before you do. No, it’s too far away. And they don’t want you to come back, they said you were all right. You’ll have to — go forward, across the street, that’s much nearer. But then you’re liable to know. Isn’t there any place where you can go except just those two, forward and back? No, none. Some people have so many places to go, and you have just two, and you don’t want to go to either one of them. Why did you, how did you, happen to run out of places, get lost like this?... I’m more tired than I was before. I’ve got to get away from this post. Like this. That’s it. Now pull. Pull hard—”

He broke from it, and was on his own. He went the way the other man had come, diagonally towards the far side. He staggered twice, but he made it. He got up on to the opposite kerb. He wanted to stop again, but there was no post handy. He went over to the steps that led up to the door and stopped there, bending his stomach over the ornamental iron knob that flanked them.

He stopped a long time. His thoughts went around like wisps caught on an electric fan. “I’ve got to get away from these steps. I’ve got to go in. In there, right in front of me.” He went up the three or four steps and then he stopped again, this time leaning against the door embrasure, head down as if he were listening to the stone.

Then suddenly he made a neat, deft little move, an economical half-turn, on one shoulder against the stone, and went in, slipped in like a shadow. Like a shadow when the light changes on a stone facing and drives it away.

The door was white. A pure color, an innocent color. The push button beside it was white too; of bone. His finger, held rigid to the push button, was white — with pressure, with strain. The nail was white, all the blood had been forced away from under it. Across the knuckle were livid white cicatrices, ugly to look at, produced by the flattening tension.

The sound of a bell ringing mutedly came through the wood; it was curiously like the whimpering of a sick, puny child.

Over the button there was a card held fast in a rack. On it was printed “Miss Constance Sterling.” It, the card, would have been a blameless white too, but for one single blemish. The print of somebody’s grimy thumb had been left on it; had soiled it, marred it, stained it. It stood out across the “Constance,” dimming it somewhat. It was large, could only have been the print of a man’s thumb.

His finger trailed off the push button; his whole arm dropped to his side, and swayed with its own weight, then hung inert. The puling sound behind the wood stopped.

He let his head sink forward until his forehead touched the door. It was as though he were saying a prayer.

He heard something and drew it back.

The door opened and a girl stood there, her face now where his had been only a moment ago.

Her hair was disheveled. On one side of her face it stood too far forward, almost enclouding one eye. On the other side it was pushed too far back. It was as though her head had been reclining sideways upon a pillow, in sleep or — indolent dalliance. The lower part of her form was enshrouded in soft clinging drapery, that fell too slack, overhanging even the tip of her foot; that had not yet been adjusted properly to her figure, for above it failed to cover one shoulder entirely, and clung to the outermost curve of the other by sheer grace of accident. Her hand was busy with it, trying to support it, to retrieve it.

Two fever-spots of red stood out upon her cheeks that were not rouge, for they were too sharply defined, not graduated enough about their edges.

Her eyes were large with fright. White ships pierced with tremendous black holes, and about to sink at any moment.

They danced about, trying to get in step with his, the man’s, as though there were a form of dancing performed by the eyes alone, in which, just as in the bodily form, the man led, the woman followed. She was out of step in this dance.

They stood there, faces close. So close that only a kiss could have brought them closer. There was no kiss.

“Why don’t you speak to Mitch?” he said poignantly. “Why don’t you say hello to Mitch?”

“Mitch,” she answered. She was all out of breath, even with just that one word, so it must have been something else that had robbed her of it.

She panted a little, lightly. “For a minute I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

“Maybe you are,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.” His jaw was still tight, and it made the words come out flat. Everything he said had a toneless, pressed quality to it.

“Are we — just going to stand like this?” he said.

She moved backward, and drew the door with her. Two sides of a room expanded into view, like a strip of picture postcards being opened to form a single scene.

In the corner stood the bed. It was tortured, had been used. One pillow overhung the side, as if all but swept off with the sudden inquiring departure of its occupant. The other was reared slightly upward against the headboard, in opposite direction to the first. Orange light leered dimly over it, from under the silk shade of a lamp that stood low beside it. This shade had a single rent or ‘run’, as in a taut silk stocking, close beside one of its supporting ribs, and there the light came through less dissembling, less evasive, in a clearer tone of yellow.

A still-kindled cigarette lay under the lamp, causing the orange light to seem to flicker at times as its invisible exudation filmed it. A book lay there too, on its face in sudden discard, pocket-sized and paper-covered, its backbone reared and not heavy enough to force itself flat.

“I shouldn’t let you in,” she said. “Like this, the way I am. But you’ve been away to war. You’ve been hurt.”

“You shouldn’t let anybody in,” he said tightly. “Not just me; anybody.”

He moved slowly past her, through the gap she allowed him, she offered him, and then she closed the door behind him.

“Here, sit down here,” she said, and her hand speared at a chair, sketchily readying it for him. Some pinkish garment that had been slung across its back whipped rearward from sight and never reappeared again, as though done away with by sleight of hand.

“Just let me — fix this,” she said, and sat down before the mirror of a dresser, at the opposite wall from the bed. She drew the garment higher about her shoulders and fastened it with something, some pin or something, in front, out of his sight — her back was to him — so that it stayed primly secured from then on.

She took a comb and touched it to her hair in a place or two, then set it down, and touched the places she had touched with it with her hand instead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. “The last letter, you were still over there. Why did you walk in like this?”

He was fumbling for a cigarette. He didn’t answer.

She must have seen him in the mirror. “There are some over there,” she said.

He got up and went slowly to the place she had pointed out. He found the package. There was only one left in it. He took that one out. But then he kept looking at the package, even though it was now worthless, empty. He did everything very slowly, as though he were infinitely tired and had scarcely the energy to do it.

Again, she must have seen him in the mirror, for she didn’t turn her head.

“What’s the matter?”

“Do you always smoke this brand?” he said thoughtfully. “ ‘Black-and-Whites’?”

“Oh, those—” The way she stopped, for a moment he had an impression she was almost as surprised as he at their being there. “No, I—” Then she said: “It’s the first time. They were all I could get. I had to take what he’d give me. There’s been a shortage, you know.”

He picked up an ashtray and looked at it pensively.

“Why are you doing that?”

He put it down again. He said dully, as though it were entirely unimportant. “You must have smoked some with your lipstick on — and some without it. Some are pinkish at their tips. And some are still white.”

She turned round and looked at him over her shoulder, ingenuously blank. “Some must be from earlier in the evening, when I first came home and still had it on. Then after I cleaned it off I went ahead smoking, and those are the others.” She laughed apologetically. “I should have emptied it out.”

“That’s a good answer,” he said sadly. And then he agreed wistfully, “Yes, you should have.” His fist slowly closed, and the empty cigarette package pleated into a curlicued pod, and then dropped from it.

He watched it intently even after that, as though expecting it to re-form and fill out to its original shape again. Then he seemed to notice that he was still holding the cigarette in his hand. For he looked at it, in a rather helpless, dubious sort of way, as though wondering what it was there for, wondering what was meant to be done with it.

“Wait,” she said eagerly. She jumped up from the mirror. “Let me. Like I used to. Remember? You go and sit down. I’ll do it for you.”

He returned to the chair.

“I was trying to outside on the street before, and I—”

She was standing before him now, holding a small enamelled lighter. She bent over towards him with fond intentness, flicked her thumb against it a number of times. Only an arid spark resulted.

“Oh,” she said impatiently, “it’s always out of fuel just when I want it. Wait, here’s another.” She had gone, was back again. A generous, spiraling flame leaped up this time.

“That’s a man’s, isn’t it?” he said indifferently.

It was squat, bulky, coated with rough-grained simulated leather.

He smiled astringently, raised sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes towards her. “What are you doing with it?”

“I don’t know whose it is. I found it. I was coming home one night, and it was lying there, big as life, outside my door there in the hall. So I picked it up and brought it in with me. There’s nothing on it to show whom it belongs to.”

“No, there isn’t, is there?” he agreed forlornly. “Not a thing, not the slightest.” He shook his head, as if in melancholy accord with her negation.

He had neglected to raise the cigarette to proper position. She was waiting, inquiringly. “I don’t want to smoke,” he said muffledly. He let that fall from his fingers, as the package had before. Then he stroked them unnoticeably against the side of his thigh, as if he were wiping them, or removing some foreign, unworthy tincture from them.

She quenched the flame with a click and put the little implement aside. Then she turned her face back towards him again, querulously worried.

“I know we’re a little strange to each other yet. Just at first. They told me it might be like— But... we’ll be all right, won’t we, Mitch?” She brought her face closer, her lips towards his. “Don’t you want to — say hello to me, the right way? Our old way? You haven’t yet, since you first came in, you know.”

Her hand went up and traced his hair back, lingeringly. Then when it rose a second time to repeat it, his head wasn’t under it any more; it had shifted or swerved somehow, without her actually seeing it do so. She was stroking barren space.

Again her lips diffidently approached his. He drew in his breath, sharply. “What is that?”

“What?”

He drew in breath a second time.

“Oh, that. ‘One Hour Alone’.”

“So strong,” he said, as if repeating something from memory, “it even gets on you secondhand.” She saw his eyes go up towards the ceiling, as if trying to determine whether he had recited it right.

“I may have used too much,” she admitted. “Just now I was so excited, seeing you sitting there in front of me, by way of the mirror.”

“Just now?” was all he said.

She withdrew herself slowly from him, reluctantly straightened to her feet. “You’re tired,” she said mournfully. “We’ll have to get used to each other all over again. But we will. I’m going to make you some coffee, that’ll help. I have it right here.”

“I don’t want anything,” he said, with a dull, sightless shake of his head, staring before him towards where she had been until now.

She stopped again, baffled. “What is it, Mitch, what is it?” she pleaded in a low, coaxing voice. “What have they done to you?”

“I ask that,” he said absently.

They remained without speaking for a moment after that. She, standing in arrested departure, sideways and rearward of him, looking back at him. He, seated, vacant-eyed, looking forward at nothing.

Then suddenly, as if revivified, he stood, went over to the bed. He picked up the paper-backed book, reversed it, glanced into the two exposed pages.

“I saw your light go on, about ten or fifteen minutes ago,” he said, without raising his eyes towards her, continuing to scan the page.

“I’d been lying awake in the dark,” she said. “Worrying about you, as I always do. I couldn’t sleep. So I got sick of it finally, and put on the light and tried to read.”

“This?” He raised the book slightly with both hands, lowered it again. But without taking his eyes off it, seeming to peruse it absorbedly.

“Yes, that.”

“What was the last line you read, just as my knock came? What was the last thing of all?”

“Oh, Mitch—” she laughed reproachfully.

He kept staring at the book. “I’d like to find the place. To put my finger on it, and say: ‘Up to here, she was alone. And then I came in.’ ”

Her hand sought her hair, strayed into it baffledly. “I can’t,” she said. “Your knock drove it out of my mind, and now it won’t come back. I wasn’t interested in it, anyway.”

“But you were reading,” he said placidly, as if in reminder of something she herself had forgotten, and was supposed not to.

“Yes, I was reading it.”

“Can’t you give me just the sense of it? Just a word?”

“Oh, but Mitch, this is childish.” She smiled, but again her hand went to her hair. “I can’t think for the life of me— No, wait, I have it! He was asking her if she remembered a woman in the theatre-audience wearing the same kind of hat she herself had on.” She chuckled with a mischievous sort of satisfaction. “It just came back to me now.”

“That’s not here,” he said stonily. “Not on here anywhere.” He began to turn the pages. Endlessly, he seemed to go on turning them in reverse, from back to front. Suddenly he stopped again, retraced his course by a single page. “It is in here,” he said. “I see it. It’s the chapter before. You must have been reading it some other night. Not tonight.”

“No, I read it tonight. I’m sure of it now. When I threw the book down, the pages must have slipped over and carried my place too far forward.”

He turned it in his hands so that it was now face down; he parted his hands and let it fall that way, so that it fell from a greater height than if one had merely discarded it in haste at reading level.

Then he took it up and looked.

“It’s still at the same place,” he said, with all the objectivity of a physicist.

Then he closed it for good, and thus arbitrarily ended the story it held.

Her face had sobered. “I’ll fix that coffee,” she said.

“There won’t be time.” He put his hand out towards her, dissuadingly, but in a lazy, enervated sort of way. And yet the half-hearted gesture was enough to stop her, hold her there, half in, half out of the little recess or wall alcove she had evidently intended using for the purpose.

There was a moment’s pause, while he seemed to be thinking what to say, his head held contemplatively downward. “I’ve been standing out there ever since half past nine. You didn’t go by. I didn’t see you come in.”

“But I was here already. I’ve been here since nine, a little after. Why didn’t you come to the door and—”

Like a drowning man grasping at straws he suddenly blurted out, “You’ve been visiting somebody upstairs. Somebody in the house that you know, you ran up there first, like girls do, when you first came home—” and beat out a sort of agonized time to it by striking his own knee with his clenched fist, once to almost every word, as if by repetition, by rhythm, he could rid himself of pain. “Some girl-friend, some chum, that lives in the building... Then you came down here, after that.” And made a bitter mouth, through which, all incongruously, emerged a throb of happy, almost vacant, laugher.

“I don’t know anyone upstairs.”

“You’ve been visiting on the third or fourth, then. Way up. Think.”

“I don’t know anybody in the house. Not a soul in the entire house.”

“Say you’ve been visiting somebody upstairs,” he pleaded. “Say it.”

“Why should I, when I haven’t?”

He got up from the chair suddenly, started towards the door, as if in desperate urgency to get out, to leave her. Then the impulse wavered, and he stopped and turned towards her, parenthetically. As if still intent on carrying out the idea of departure, but only waiting to be reassured on some point first before doing so.

“Say you haven’t waited. Say you haven’t been true to me, Constance, and I’ll go. I’ll go right now. Without a word, without a whimper. Only don’t fool me. Respect me, even if I am — what I am now. Say it.”

Her eyes were brimming, but she gave no other sign of stress. She shook her head, but with such leniency of motion that the gesture was scarcely discernible at all. As though the phantom of a contradiction was even too substantial to give to such a non-existent idea. “I haven’t looked at another man since you’ve been gone.”

A retch of risibility seemed to course from his stomach, and he even placed his hand towards it for a moment as if to quell the pain implicit in it. “I forgive you, Constance. I overlook it. I... I understand. The war was long and — and hopeless. What am I now — and what was I before? It’s happened to others, why not to me? Only just say it with your own mouth. Is that asking too much? Hurry up, Constance, while I can still take it.”

She came towards him slowly. Her voice was choked with compassion. “You’re so sick. Oh, what is it, what’ve they done—?”

Her arms went towards him, and she slowly twined them about his neck, and looked into his face. Then she tried to bring her own closer, to find his lips with hers, and kiss them in consolation.

He breathed heavily. “So strong it even gets on you secondhand,” he whispered stonily. He swerved his head violently aside, without otherwise moving, and she was left there pendant, unable to reach him with her lips.

The embrace unraveled, and her arms slipped over his shoulders and fell down like loose ropes.

“I’d better make that coffee,” she said almost inaudibly. “There doesn’t seem to be — anything else I can do for you.”

She turned away and went into the alcove, passing from sight for a moment. A tin container clashed briefly, as it was shifted from a higher to a lower level. There was the scratch of a matchstick against sandpaper, the feathery puff of ignited gas.

His hands went towards his waist, and with a sort of introspective leisureliness he began to separate the fastening of his belt.

She had come back to the alcove opening, was staring at him.

“Mitch, what are you doing? I don’t like that. Don’t do that here. I don’t like that here. Mitch, what are doing that for?”

He had withdrawn it now from the loops that held it. His wrists moved with the sort of absent dexterity one gives to the act of disrobing. Mechanical, oft-repeated, with the thoughts elsewhere. “I’m making it small. I’m making a loop of it. So it’ll go around you.” He had made a slipknot of it. The horror was in the way he looked at it, not at her. As though his whole preoccupation were with it, to see if it were satisfactory or not, and she were just an onlooker, an admiring feminine observer to his typical masculine skill at such problems as this.

“Will you say you haven’t been faithful?”

She didn’t answer. She moved suddenly, and to move was death. She darted forward to get to the outer door, swerving outward to get past the place he stood.

He, on the contrary, didn’t move from it. Simply pivoted on his heels to face the other way, while she made the longer outward progress. Like a ringmaster halting some small animal prancing about him on a given radius that cannot be altered.

It dropped over her head just as she reached the door. Her outstretched hand, one moment inches from the knob, was drawn slowly backward, as the pressure of the throng arched her back away from it. The second hand, futilely reaching out to take the other’s place, was again too late. It likewise fell short, strained tremblingly against inexorable backward draw, stretched out on empty air, then at last receded to a distance that could no longer hope to be bridged.

Then, no longer their own masters, they both flew up to ease the stricture, like mechanical things that, once bent back that way, could no longer open out again.

She dropped to her knees, close up against his legs. He kept doing something with his wrists, with deft economy of movement. Her face turned towards him, but whether puppeted by his hands or in last despairing plea of her own volition, it was no longer possible to determine. They were too inextricably entwined. They were what he had wanted them to be: one.

Death came sectionally, not totally.

Her arms died first. Then her legs died, dancing against air. Then her heaving breast. Her eyes died last, after everything else was gone. The lights went out, but they stayed open.

He bent his head slowly. He found her agonizedly parted lips with his and kissed them. Lingeringly, devoutly. The kiss of homecoming, the kiss of parting.

Then he let go of the belt, that he was gripping behind her head, holding her up as by a halter, and she seemed to fall away from him. She dropped suddenly on to the bed. The bed shook and she seemed to shake with it, but it was only the bed shaking, not she.

“Now I’m alone,” he whispered, baffled. “Now she’s not here any more. Now I’m without her anyway.” A puzzled expression creased his forehead. “What good did that do?” Then the answer he was groping for seemed to come to him, belatedly, and it partially eased him. “Now she has to be true to me, whether she wants to or not.” The lover that had her now, he never gave them back again.

He wanted the belt back. There was some sort of dim precaution involved in this; but it wasn’t at all coherent to him. Don’t leave your belt on her, was all it seemed to say; don’t leave your belt on her. He wasn’t sure why, but it nudged at him insistently in the twilight of his reflexes.

It was hard to get it off. He’d stop each time, afraid that he was hurting her; then he’d remember that she couldn’t feel it now, and go ahead a little more.

It was hard to straighten, too, even after it was off.

He paid it off in a straight line along the floor, and then he smoothed it by treading on it with his foot, and drawing his foot slowly along it, as if he were pressing it with an iron. Then he picked it up.

He turned his back on her, with some dim instinct of delicacy, and inserted it through the loops of his waistband. And then buckled it.

Now he was very tired, now he could sit down and rest.

He sat down on the chair, and supported his head for a while with one hand. It was quiet in the room, soothing. His eyelids started to droop closed once or twice, but he would blink them open again, go on resting again, contemplative, motionless.

She stared at the ceiling, he at the floor. It was as though they had had a quarrel and were sulking, pretending indifference to each other.

After a while something bothered him. There was something still wrong, something left undone. He couldn’t think what it was at first. He looked over at her. “My belt is not around her throat.”

Then suddenly he knew what it was. “I am still in here with her. I am still in the same room with her. I should be outside somewhere, away from here.”

Questions, that was all he was afraid of. Too many questions. He was too tired.

He struck the arms of the chair with his hands, as the preliminary stage of rising. Then enervated, tired, did nothing else.

(More than that, that’s not enough. You just moved your hands. You’ve got to pull your whole body up.)

He thrust one foot backward, under the chair seat, to gain leverage for rising. Then followed it with the second. Then again did nothing further.

(Still not enough. Now this is the hard part. This comes next. Want to, like they told you at the hospital. Want to bad.)

He pulled himself erect. He stood there just forward of the chair. He swayed. He sought backward-flailing support of the chair-arms and found himself sitting again.

He grimaced and his eyes got wet.

(All right then, do it over. You’ll have to start in from the beginning and do it over again. Ready? Rested? Now.)

He was standing again. He fixed his eyes on the door.

(Now go over there.)

Midway to it he stopped. Looked back.

(But why do I have to leave her? There was some reason, but I’ve forgotten.) He half turned, about to retrace his steps. (No, keep going, and try to remember it on the outside, if you must. It won’t come to you here. The air’s clearer out there.)

He got to the doorknob, and punched it into his stomach with both hands, and that held him for a while, as though he’d skewered himself on to it bodily. Then he got the door open and crept around it to the outside.

He closed the door with infinite, tender slowness, holding her face fixed within view to the last. “Little Connie,” he whispered, as if reassuring her of his fondness. “We’ve known each other such a long time, haven’t we?”

He touched two fingers to his lips, in what, had it been completed, would have been the gesture of wafting a kiss.

But the kiss faltered, and the fingers dropped, and the door closed.

Outside in the open, it was cool and still and dark. The only sound was the scrape of his foot on the steps of the house. He stood there for a moment on them, as he remembered once having seen some other man do — he couldn’t remember who, couldn’t remember when — on leaving a house that he had stood watching.

The freshness of the air helped him. He felt a little less tired. He knew the respite was temporary, it would come back again. He knew that when it did, this time it would be for good. He knew, somehow, that before it did he must get as far away from here as he could.

He would have liked to stay there in the doorway, but he forced himself to leave it. He crossed to the other side of the street, at a rather faltering, shaky gait. There was about the way he lifted and set down his feet (almost seeming to free them with a lingering shake each time) a faint suggestion of a struggling fly, already trapped but still able to move, trailing over flypaper.

He stopped and looked back from there. The light was still on in her window. He knew that she was dead in there. He knew that he should go away from it as far as he could. Those two things were clear and distinct. They were all that were.

Then he looked up higher, to see if anyone was looking out. No one was. The last thing he saw was the geraniums, on the window-sill over hers. They were black, but he could still see their outline.

They should be down below, he thought vaguely. Flowers are for death.

The first block wasn’t so difficult. He was conscious of going steadily forward. Though he didn’t know in what direction forward lay, still he did not stand still, and he kept going away from where he had been. That much was a gain.

Fatigue began creeping back. Not fatigue of the limbs, that can be overcome by resting; fatigue of the senses, that leads into nonawareness, into nothingness. His mind was like an exposed photographic plate, still clear in the centre but beginning to blur all around the edges. In the clear patch in the centre there remained but one sharply defined image or message: Keep going, keep going far away.

The second block he was stopping more frequently now, coming to an erratic standstill every so often, then going on again. As though an enormous hand had been cupped upon him suddenly, holding him where he was; then lifted again, as inexplicably, letting him continue. He was like a mannikin, or something wound with a key, that follows a mechanical trajectory. He would even continue stiffly facing in the one set direction, while the halt lasted; even though it might be on the bias to the guiding-lines of pavement edge and building base. Then continue on it when he resumed going.

It was fairly horrible; night charitably covered most of it.

Once he passed a sentry, and the man studied him suspiciously, but there was no challenge, so he gave no recognition. No halting shot followed, either, though his neck was bent defensively for some time after. He went on until he was past that area.

The swirling blur had all but closed over the clear space in the centre now. One twinkling point of light remained, like a glimmering star. Keep on, farther away.

He stumbled over some hidden curbstone hazard, went down. A screaming shell went by just then, trailing blinding light. He could feel the air flurry of its passage, so the fall must have saved him. There was no concussion; it never exploded. It simply whined itself out into far distance. It seemed to skim the surface of the earth without ever descending to it to detonate, without its arc ever coming to an end. He’d never experienced a shell like that before.

He dropped the protective arm with which he’d shielded his eyes, and picked himself up, and went on.

Another one came at him, this time from the opposite direction. He must be in the centre of a cross-fire. Again on a blinding trail of light that preceded it. He stood still, paralyzed. It swerved violently to one side of him, snaking its comet-like glare with it, skimmed past, then straightened back upon its former trajectory. A smouldering red spark marked its recession. Again there was no thud. His nerves cried out for it, and it never came.

These were the worst kind; there was no sundering of tension after them. They never hit anywhere.

He began to run now, at a sort of tottering trot, to get away from them. No more came for a minute. He stopped, panting and clutching at his stomach with both hands to keep it from rejecting.

Suddenly a voice said: “Anything wrong? Anything I can do for you, buddy?”

His lieutenant, giving him an order.

“Yes sir,” he said crisply, and saluted mechanically, and went forward, walking rapidly in a straight, unerring line.

He went face first into a wall, and felt it blindly with the flats of his hands for an opening, then, finding none, and not knowing how to overcome it, lieutenant or no lieutenant, allowed it to deflect him and followed it instead. They often sent you places like that, where there was no way through. You had to go, though, just the same.

The wall turned, and he did with it. Then it left him, and he was on his own again.

They were starting to come around him thick again. Some of them screeched, and some of them hummed, and some of them gave ear-slitting honks, like flying metal geese. He’d better hurry and get a hole dug.

He dropped to his hands and knees, keeping his head low, as he had learned to do, and raked with his bare nails, in long strokes in two parallel rows.

The surface was hard, he couldn’t seem to break it, to get through to the fill. He tried harder, faster. His arms flailed in and out.

They kept dropping around him. The flash would come, but then it wouldn’t go out again. It would sort of slide to a stop, to one side of him, and then just stay there with a sort of purring throb, that even shook the ground he was groveling on.

Voices came from them, and doors cracked, and feet thrust suddenly down into view from on high, then took root.

“What is it? What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know. I been following him for several blocks. Something wrong.”

“Oh, my God, Charlie! Don’t just stand there watching him. Help him. Look at his hands.”

There were narrow, dark, glistening tracks appearing now in the wake of his fingers, freshly renewed each minute.

Arms went round his middle. The arms of medicos, they must have been. He was lifted up, held propped. Hands fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and he could feel his dog-tag being twisted, drawn out through the opening.

“From — Convalescent Hospital,” a muffled voice said. “Better get him back there, right away.”

His hand groped upward, trying to find his forehead in a salute.

“I couldn’t make it,” he sighed inaudibly.

“Easy, easy,” a sympathetic, sob-thick voice murmured. “The war’s over, soldier.”

The war’s over, soldier. He took that with him down into the long sleep that follows battles. Constance was his girl, safe, waiting, three thousand miles away. Someone to go back to—

It was warm in the sun, on the park bench. It went through your clothes, and found your skin, and felt good; you didn’t hurt any more. There were green leaves, and under them a film of pale-blue shade, off that way in the distance, but it was even better here, out in the open, out in full sun.

You just sat, and the blue shade slowly circled round on the ground under the trees, from one side all the way over to the other. Let the shade move. You didn’t. You just sat. There was nowhere to go but here. He knew now all the places to go — he wasn’t lost or uncertain any more, his mind was clear — and he knew there was no other place but this to go.

There was no going back now, either. He knew that too. He was all right now. You couldn’t always go back. He could light a cigarette now. Watch. See? He could walk as long as he wanted to without stopping. And that was all-right. That was all it would ever be from now on. If there had been other things, there weren’t any now.

There was no place to go, nothing to do. Sit in the sun, watch the shade go round. You grew old, like the shade. You had to wait for it, what else could you do? It was an order, from a lieutenant. A different one, you never saw. But he’d given it just the same; you had to obey.

The man over at the other end of the bench got up, left his newspaper lying there behind him.

After a while he reached over and picked it up. He rearranged it and started to pore over it patiently. It took a long time, it said so many things. It helped the shade go quicker; it helped in carrying out the lieutenant’s order.

It said so many things. Some of them were large, some of them small. He got to even the smallest eventually, after the large ones were done.

It said: “Forecast for Thursday: Clear and warm, with variable winds, lowered humidity. Maximum temperature—”

It said: “Extraordinary Values! Mail and phone orders filled while quantities last. Come early to be sure of a full selection—”

It said: “Cards Strike Out in Second—”

It said: “Killer Pays Penalty. Orville Johns, 32, went to his death last night in the execution chamber of the State Penitentiary at — for the murder of Constance Sterling, in June of last year. Johns was the janitor of the building in which the slain girl lived; a number of her belongings were found in his basement apartment shortly after the discovery of the crime. He disappeared at the time, and was not apprehended for some months afterwards... Protesting his innocence to the last, the condemned man entered the chamber at 11:10 and was pronounced dead at 11:15. # # # For acid indigestion, use Bell-ans. Twenty-five cents at all drugstores.”

“I did that,” he said to himself, squinting thoughtfully up at the sun. “That was me.”

He’d known he’d done it, for some time now.

But it had been outside the hospital walls at first, something waiting outside, while he was still on the inside. Now he was outside himself. And now that he was, it wasn’t out here any more after all. It wasn’t anywhere any more.

It was warm in the sun. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. He knew all the places, and he knew there was nowhere for him to go. The orders took such a long time to be carried out. You just had to be patient and wait, that was all. You couldn’t question a lieutenant.

A man’s voice broke in on him. “Here’s a seat,” it said.

The shadow of a man flitted between him and the sun. Then the shadow of a perambulator. Then the shadow of a woman guiding it along. Then the little procession ended, and they were seated.

He didn’t look over that way.

The man’s voice intruded again, after a brief lapse. “Forgot them. Wait a minute, I’ll ask him. Say, buddy, do you happen to have a match on y—”

The man was staring at him now. He turned his head slowly, to see why.

“Wait a minute, aren’t you Mitch Clark?” The man’s hand came out toward him. “Remember me? Art Shearer, from the old neighborhood.”

The man seized and shook his hand.

“This is my wife, and kid. Yeah, I finally got hooked. I haven’t seen you in — how long is it now?” He turned to the woman over his shoulder. “Old friend of mine, from when we were kids. Last time I met him I was coming out of your place one night.” He turned back to him again. “Isn’t that right, Mitch? Must be almost two years ago n—”

“Her place?” Mitch Clark whispered. “She lived in that house, on Second Street, down near Fourteenth?”

“Sure. I used to visit her there all the time.”

“All hours of the night, too; I never could get rid of him,” the wife chimed in coyly. “It’s a good thing he finally decided to marry me, the way the neighbors were talking.”

He turned toward her again, grinned reminiscently. “Second floor, in the front, remember? You used to have a pot of geraniums stuck on the window sill.”

Mitchell Clark wasn’t listening to them any more.

One light went out, he was recalling with time-dulled poignancy; one went on.

Silent As the Grave

It was a night like any other night. The moon was out; and there were stars.

A man and a girl strolling in the dark; the oldest story in the world. The music, mournful, nostalgic on the night air, ebbed away behind them, and the lights of the pavilion went with it. She was glad they were gone; just being with him was entertainment enough. She had her music and her dancing in the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand in hers.

Presently they came to a bench and, without a word, sat down. She knew why they had come out here. She knew what he was going to ask her. She wanted him to ask her. She had her answer ready, before he asked her, and it was “Yes.”

His head went back, to look up at the stars. She looked at the turn of his chin, at the gnarled hitch in his throat, those were, for her, the stars. The starlight traced a thin silver line, like frost, along the upturned edge of his profile. That was proportionately all she knew of him, she reflected, that thin, argent, contour line; and the rest was still all in darkness, unknown, unguessed, like a planet already there but not yet emerged.

Her mother said it was risky to love anyone as much as she did him, so soon after meeting him, and knowing so little about him. Her mother said with dark head shakes, “Now don’t be in too much of a hurry, young lady!” and “Just be careful what you’re doing!” and other things like that your mother says to you. What did her mother know? Her mother’s time for love was past.

Three weeks, two days, twelve hours. Yes, it was a short time. Very short for a lifetime.

Mitchell. Kenneth Mitchell. She said it over softly in her mind. Mitchell. Mrs. Frances Mitchell. No, Mrs. Kenneth Mitchell. That was better. She wanted everything to belong to him, even her first name.

“Frances—” His arm slipped around her.

This was it. Here it came now. She nestled closer. “Yes, Ken?”

“I’m in love with you. Would you — you wouldn’t marry me, would you?”

“Yes, Ken,” she sighed. “I would.” She seemed to blend into his arms, almost to lose her own identity, as if she were a part of him, his other self. They didn’t stir for awhile, just stayed like that, blindly contented, without need for anything else. All the traffic of courtship — caresses, kisses, words of love — were superfluous. Their oneness was their sole caress.

Then suddenly his arm was gone. She was alone again, there was space between them on the bench.

“I had no right— I didn’t mean to ask you that.”

“But it’s all right, Ken. Can’t you tell it’s all right?”

“There’s something I have to tell you first. Something you’ve got to know.”

Something about some other girl, of course. What else could it be? What else did a man have to tell a girl at a time like this, what else ever mattered between man and girl? All the rest belonged in the man’s world, a sphere apart that the girl never entered, that didn’t conflict with her.

“But Ken, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.”

“You have to know this. This is something you have to. Before I ask you. Before you answer me.”

She edged closer, by way of mute consent. She waited.

“Frances, I killed a man once.”

For a minute it was meaningless. All she could feel was a sense of relief. It was almost anticlimax. The threatened impediment had dissolved. She had been afraid of some entanglement barring her way, some undissolved marriage or unsevered amorous connection. But this was from that other sphere, that other plane, the man’s world; this had nothing to do with her, this didn’t conflict with her in any way. This wasn’t anything that could affect their love.

This was almost as if a small boy were to come to you and say, “I threw a rock through somebody’s window and broke it.” He shouldn’t have, it was wrong of him, the policeman down on the corner mightn’t approve — but that didn’t lessen your own affection for him in any way; how could it?

She breathed deeply, in lightened tension. “I thought it was — that there was somebody else.” Then almost in parenthesis, “What was it, an accident?”

He shook his head doggedly. “It was no accident. It was what they call — murder. I went looking for him, and I found him, and — I did it.”

Their oneness persisted; the thing had no power to divide them, every pore in her body was conscious of that fact. “What did they do to you, Ken?”

He said it lower than before. “They never found out it was me. They don’t know to this day. I never gave myself up, because... well, he had it coming to him, he deserved it. He’d done me an injury. And I never forgive an injury.”

An old rancor came up in him. She could feel the stiffening, the anger, from somewhere out of his past.

“It happened in St. Louis, long ago. Ten years ago. His name was Joseph Bailey, and he—”

Her hand flew up against his mouth, sealing it. “No more. I don’t want to know any more.”

They sat like that for a few minutes. Then, finally, her hand dropped. She had made her decision.

“Ask me what you were going to,” she whispered. “Ask me. Nothing makes any difference. Nothing could change the way I feel about you. Nothing you could tell me.”

His eyes kept pleading with her in the starlight. “But maybe later you won’t feel the same. That’s what I’m afraid of. Promise me you won’t change. Promise me you won’t throw it up to me, some day, if we should quarrel, like people do. I couldn’t stand that, Frances. Promise me you’ll never mention it, never remind me, in days to come.”

She tilted her face to look up into his eyes. “I’ll do more than promise. I swear it to you. I take a sacred vow, here and now. You’ll never hear me speak of it again. It’ll be just as though you never told me. It’ll never pass my lips. I’ll be as silent as the grave, dear heart. As silent as the grave, forever.”

He made a sudden little move, and her arms, outstretched to poise protestingly against his shoulders, seemed to cave in across the little dimpled hollows opposite their elbows, and the span between the two of them had vanished, they were together again for good.

It was a night like any other night. The moon was out; and there were stars.

That this state of chronic happiness could keep on like that for three years after was no surprise to her, for she had expected it to. She had known it would, she had been sure it would, but still she could not have explained why it should. How was it that it lasted with them, when others seemed to lose it so slowly but nevertheless so surely? Was she different from others? Was he?

She knew they weren’t. She knew it wasn’t that. They were as hemmed-into a tiny cubicle of two rooms and bath, ceilings low over their heads, as any other city dwellers. They were stripped of all artifices, all privacy, all mystery, before one another. There would be nothing, soon, that they could say to one another they had not said before; nothing they could do they had not seen one another do already. Almost, nothing they could think, the other did not guess that they were thinking.

He came home as pinched and chilled in the winter, as frayed and tired in the summer, as any other man, as all other men. His feet sometimes would hurt and he would take his shoes off. On Sundays he didn’t shave, and the rim of his jaw would look shadowed and soiled. Her hair could grow as dank hovering over the torrid steaming stewpans, of a blazing July evening, as any other woman’s; her nose could grow as blue and she could sniffle just as inelegantly through it, on arising before him at the crack of a bitter winter dawn to close the windows and turn the heat valves, as any other woman’s.

And still, whatever this magic was that filled their hearts with content, it survived all that. It survived without a necktie at the table, without cosmetics at the night table, without the utterance of any startlingly original remark any longer, without the belated revelation of any new quality, any unguessed facet to the personality, kept hidden until now.

Why was this? No one could know. If they could not know themselves, how could anyone else know?

It wasn’t one of these gusty, flaring things that quickly exhausts itself and dies out again, leaving an ash of bitterness and cold. It reminded her of the pilot light on the gas stove in her kitchen. Not very bright, not very noticeable, but always there, burning steady, burning low, at the center of its little world.

A doctor once, whom they had gone to consult about some minor matter — a boil on Ken’s neck that required lancing — came as close, perhaps, to putting his finger on it as anyone could have, though even his interpretation may have veered too closely to the clinical. Looking them over in shrewd appraisal, as they sat there before him side by side after the trivial operation, he asked with kindly interest, “About how long are you two married, six months or so?”

“Three years last May,” she answered, with a smile that had in it both vainglory and humility.

It apparently startled him somewhat. She saw him shake his head slightly, in admiring approval. “You seem to be very well-mated,” he murmured thoughtfully. Then added, “Both mentally and physically.”

She looked down at the floor for a moment, and could feel her face grow warm. It was a little bit like — being disrobed for an examination. Neither she nor Ken referred to it between themselves afterward, on leaving.

They were so content, so at peace with one another and hence with the world, they didn’t even want much more than they had in a material way. Ambition is a plant that sprouts best in the loam of discontent. Certainly they didn’t crave great wealth. For what purpose? Clothes? In the darkness of the picture theater they went to once a week, who could tell whether she had on a fifty-dollar or a five-dollar dress? Better furniture, a roomier apartment? They’d have that some day, maybe in a year, or two, or three; it wasn’t urgent. What difference did your surroundings make, when all you saw, all you cared about, all you were aware of, was that other face before you? When it wasn’t there, the walls were barren; when it was, they were lighted, radiant, warm. A car? They could have that, too, in a little while; only a very small down payment was required. But what real need was there for one, when the subway kiosk was only down at the next corner?

Even children— She didn’t really miss them, and when her mother, once or twice, slyly asked her if she were avoiding having any, her answer was: “No, but it’s just as well we haven’t had any. It’s Ken I love; I haven’t room for anything else.”

The job he had, fit him like a comfortable pair of old shoes. He’d grown into it. He’d already had it for two years before their marriage, five in all now. It had become a part of the very warp and woof of his existence, as closely knitted to him as she was. It was not a job, that designation was incorrect, not just an offhand way of earning a living. It was that part of his life that was spent away from her, from morning until early evening each day, and just as cherished, just as dear to him in another way, as the part spent with her.

The man over him was lenient, friendly, understanding. Hallett was his name, and he had made an invisible third at the table with them so many nights that she felt she knew him well, though she had never met him.

He’d say, “Hallett came back from his vacation today, and you wouldn’t know him. He’s put on fifteen pounds in the two weeks.”

“I’m glad he picked up a little, he was looking all in before he went away,” she would say, although she’d never seen him. But Ken had said he was.

Or, “Hallett’s kid is coming out with a new tooth. I wish you could have seen him. He was sitting there proud as a peacock all day.”

“My, but it’s forward!” she’d marvel. “That’s the second one, already, in no time at all.”

Nearly every night he sat there with them at the table like that, an invisible but welcome third.

Once, around the time the dying decade was merging un-noticeably into the strange new times ahead, Ken received an offer of another job, at better pay.

“Did you tell Hallett about it?” she asked him.

“Sure. I wouldn’t do anything behind his back. He’s been too regular to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He said much as he’d hate to see me go, he didn’t want to stand in my way. He gave it to me fair and square. He said he couldn’t give me any more than I’m getting now. He said the bottom’s starting to drop out of everything; what happened in Wall Street is starting to spread around now, and it’ll take a good six months, maybe more, before it wears off again. But on the other hand, he told me, as long as he’s with the outfit, I haven’t got a thing to worry about, he’ll see that I’m treated fair and square. I can consider myself set for life.”

And in a day or two, when she asked him, “Have you decided what you’ll do about that?”

“I’ve turned the offer down; I’m staying with Hallett.”

She’d known he would. She was glad he had. She wanted him happy. Or rather, she wanted the two of them to be happy; his happiness was hers.

And then suddenly there was no Hallett any more. He was gone overnight, and a stranger had taken his place at their supper table. It was almost like a personal bereavement to the two of them, that first night when he came home and told her. Her face even paled for a moment or two, as his must have when he’d first learned it earlier in the day. He couldn’t eat very much.

“What’s he like, this new man, this Parker?”

“I can’t tell yet, I only saw him today for the first time.” He tried to be fair to him. “I suppose he’s all right. He’s sort of lost, hasn’t got the hang of things yet.” He turned his fork over a few times, without lifting it from the table.

“You’ll get used to him,” she tried to console him. And then with an odd little burst of commiseration, “That poor woman! Hallett’s wife. Just think what she must be going through tonight!”

She had a rather strongly developed fellow-feeling for other women, not a very commonly met with trait.

“He doesn’t like me,” he blurted out one night a few weeks later.

“Maybe you just imagine that.” She wondered, privately, how anyone could possibly not like Ken.

“I can tell. He knows I’m one of Hallett’s old men, of course, and he’s got it in for me. I can tell by the way he looks at me.”

“Well, don’t give him an opening, don’t give him a chance to show it.”

“I’m not. I’m minding my own business, and doing my job, like I’ve always done.”

They were selling apples and tangerines on the street corners now. That is to say, peddling them out of sheer destitution, in a city that had never known emergency beggary before, only the professional kind. These vendors were men in their prime, able-bodied. Then abruptly within a month or two, the phenomenon had vanished again, as if already the proportion of those reduced to such straits, as over against those remaining still above it, had increased too greatly to permit any further profit to be derived from it. The ratio of the needy to the prospering had reversed itself.

Parker cut his wages in half. His bitterness, brought home to smoulder there in worried sight of her, was not due so much to that in itself as to the fact that others, there a shorter time than he, had not been similarly reduced. “Parker’s own men,” as he expressed it.

“But are you sure?”

“I asked a couple of them. They wouldn’t admit it, but I could tell by the look on their faces when they heard it that they hadn’t been cut themselves.”

“But that’s not fair.”

His mouth twisted into an ugly shape. “You bet it isn’t. I’m taking the cut, so that some of his men don’t have to be let out.”

“Maybe if you went to him and—”

“That’s just what he’d like me to do, so that he could chuck me out altogether. You should have seen his face when I stepped away from the cashier’s window and opened my envelope. I caught him looking at me with a smirking expression all over his face.”

“But why, Ken? You haven’t done anything to him.”

“He’s got it in for me, that’s all. And that’s something you can’t buck. You can’t buck that on any job, when the guy over you has it in for you. He’s got you, and you know it, and he knows it.”

“Maybe things’ll begin to clear up, and you can go somewhere else. The President says by next spring—”

“Does he work at my job?” he said glumly. Then after a while he added, “I’m only hanging on because I have to. I’ve got to get out of there, the minute I can. It’s gotten so that just looking at the guy does something to me, inside. Every time he even passes in back of me while I’m busy at my layouts, I can feel something—”

She could sense that tightening-up again come over him that she had noticed one night long ago. Long ago, on a bench, beneath the stars.

“I don’t hate easy, Frances,” he muttered, “but once I start in, I don’t quit easy either. I never forget an injury.”

She dropped her eyelids for a moment, raised them again. A forbidding memory had crossed her mind just then. “Sh!” she urged, “Sh-h-h,” and pressed her hand soothingly to his forehead, as if to cool it.

It was a night like any other night. There was no moon, but there were stars.

She was already badly frightened by then, it was so late and she had stood so long watching for him from the window. Then when she finally saw his figure approaching below in the dark, she knew by his walk something was the matter. He didn’t even remember the right door, went on past their own house entrance almost to the next one down, then just as she was about to fling up the window and call out to him, he turned abruptly, retraced his steps, and came in where he belonged.

She left the window, and in the moment or two it took her to reach their flat door, wrung her hands close before her face in flurried, unseen appeal, to whom or what she did not know herself.

He came up the stairs quietly and slowly, to where she was waiting. His face was white with spent emotion, but composed. There was a big rent in his shirt, up near the collar, and two of the buttons on his coat were gone. Then when he’d gone in past her, wordlessly, and raised his hands to remove his hat, she saw that his hair was disordered, and there was a faint trace of orange across his knuckles that must have been left there by shed blood.

He sat down heavily and blew breath between his cupped hands, as though to warm them, although it wasn’t cold out.

She drew up a kitchen chair and sat down across the table from him. He didn’t seem to want to say anything, and she was afraid to for awhile. Presently she reached over toward him timidly, as if afraid of being rebuffed, and drew the knot of his necktie out from under his rumpled collar, where it had become wedged, and around toward the front where it belonged.

“Parker, Ken?” she asked finally.

He began to speak as though his silence had been an oversight, he had simply been waiting to have it called to his attention. His voice was husky from recent stress. “They took me to the police station, that’s why I got back so late.”

She started using the tips of her fingers for the teeth of a comb, raking his hair back with them, very softly, very persuasively. She didn’t say anything.

He smiled at nothing she could see there on the floor. “I hit him good,” he said with grim satisfaction. “Boy, what a slam I gave him! That one sock alone was worth everything I’ve had to take from him all these months. He went all the way back across his own desk and then down to the floor on the other side of it, and all the stuff he had on it went down on top of him. Just like you see in the pictures.”

They were just like little boys, she thought. Only, the consequences of their acts could be so much graver when their bodies had become those of men.

“If they hadn’t grabbed me and held me back, I think while I was at it I would have—”

She tried to ward the word off by quickly shuttering her eyes. He didn’t say it anyway.

“So then he called in a cop. You know — trying to throw a scare into me. They held me over there for awhile. Finally he phoned in that he didn’t intend lodging any complaint, they could let me go if they wanted to. Bighearted.” He almost spat the word. “So I’m through there,” he said finally.

“Never mind, maybe it’s better so. I’m glad it’s over. It was starting to get you, Ken. I could see it more and more every day.”

“I’ll get another job,” he said. “Watch me.”

She waited a moment or two. Then she asked timidly, “But what about references, Ken? They’ll want them everywhere, no matter where you go; these days especially, when there are a dozen and one applicants for every job. And as long as he’s down there in charge, even if someone just phones in to ask anything about you, he’d be just mean enough to—”

He didn’t answer for some time, as though that had only now occurred to him — for the first time. Then finally he said, “If I ever find that out—” And didn’t finish it.

Their money came to an end on a crisp fall morning in the third year of the bad new times, the Election Year, that was. They went together to the bank to draw it out, although the account was in his name alone. The way a couple feel obliged to attend some solemn formal occasion together, a deathbed or a funeral, when the presence of one without the other would be unthinkable.

“This closes the account,” the teller reminded them gratuitously.

It was only a matter of four-dollars-fifty-cents, that was all that was left by then; but somehow when the leaves of the passbook had been perforated to form the letters “Closed” and it had been returned to them worthless, it did make a difference, a vast difference. She could feel it herself; a psychological difference. There was a horrid nightmare-feeling to it of going down over their heads into black, bottomless depths of water, never to rise again.

He walked out of the bank dazed, staring down at the little booklet, frittering its pages back and forth under his thumb endlessly. She had to guide him, unnoticeably, with her arm under his to keep him from jostling into people. Outside on the sidewalk he came to a halt, as though not knowing which way to go. “There goes — security,” he said finally. “There go — three years of our lives.”

“Don’t, Ken,” she pleaded. “Don’t take it like that.” She freed the booklet gently from his hands and shied it into a refuse can. “Come on. Come on home now.”

He only said one thing more, very quietly, almost stonily. But she didn’t like the sound of it. “I have Garrett Parker to thank for this.”

He got something to do several weeks later, but it wasn’t a job any more. He was paid by the hour, twenty-five cents an hour. Demonstrating in a drugstore window. Some impulse made her follow him there later in the day; he had told her where it was.

She saw this small crowd collected in front of the place, and she crept up behind them, rose on tiptoes, looked fearfully over their shoulders. He was within the lighted showcase, stripped to his undershirt and trousers. He had always had powerful shoulders and biceps, they showed up well. He was holding up a small patent-medicine, pointing to it, then flexing his arms so that his muscles swelled, striking himself on the chest like Tarzan in the movies. At twenty-five cents an hour. For anyone who came along the street to stand and gape at.

She would have died rather than let him see her looking at him; his crucifixion was complete enough without that. She turned and fled all the way home, her arms protectively clasped around her own form as though she had been suddenly stripped naked. She couldn’t forget that telltale pulsing she had noted at his temple, that betrayed how he had been steeling himself.

She didn’t say anything when he came home at last, only tried not to look at the seventy-five cents he put down on the edge of the table. She didn’t tell him that she’d seen him, that she knew what it was for.

He toppled into a chair and hung his head.

“I’m ashamed,” he breathed stifledly. “Frances, I’m so ashamed.”

“Don’t go back there again, Ken,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

His attitude of humiliation, of self-reproach, was much harder to bear than the conditions that had brought them to this pass. “I shouldn’t have met you, married you. I’m not even able to give you food for your mouth. I’m no good.”

She dropped to her knees beside him. “I don’t know what words to say, to tell you what you mean to me. I’m as proud of you now as if you had all kinds of money, and were on top of the world. I don’t know how not to be proud of you.”

From his hidden face and concave middle, arched over the table-top, came those peculiar, wrenching guttural sounds of male grief she had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. And through the subsiding sobs, at last, a still, cold voice filtered. “One man did this to me. One man.”

Then a ray of brightness, when night was at its darkest. A beam of hope. He went to look up Hallett in his despair; his former boss, the one before.

“Oh, Ken! Can he do something for you—?”

He couldn’t bring it out coherently at first. But the mere fact that he wanted to so bad, was so pitifully anxious to tell it, showed her in a flash that it must be good. “Wait’ll you hear— My own line of work, France! He’s going to talk to them right tomorrow. I’m to go down there. He’s not in the business himself any more, but he knows these people, and he thinks he can swing it for me. He says with my previous experience there shouldn’t be any reason— And what do you think he tried to do? I caught him trying to slip something into my pocket when I wasn’t looking. A five-dollar bill. Didn’t want to hurt my feelings by asking me openly if I—”

His face was a poem of gratitude. He said with husky, feigned censure that was meant for the deepest admiration, “The old son-of-a-gun. What can you do with a guy like that?”

He couldn’t sleep all night, that night. But there was a difference. He didn’t lie there growling surreptitiously deep inside his throat, hissing maledictions through his clenched teeth. He lay there wide-eyed, breathlessly hopeful. She knew, because she couldn’t sleep either. They both got up much earlier than they needed to, red-eyed, haggard, supremely happy. She walked with him as far as the corner to see him off. She wished him luck. Long after he had disappeared from sight she stood there looking after him. Praying.

But when he came back there was something wrong. Her own face dimmed to the lacklustre of his.

“Ken, didn’t they—? Did Hallett forget to talk to them?”

“References,” he said tersely. He swallowed before he could bring himself to pronounce the name. “Parker.”

She just looked at him, caught her underlip with her teeth in foreboding.

“He was my last boss, after Hallett. Hallett’s recommendation wasn’t enough by itself.”

He dropped heavily into a chair, shaded his eyes. “They’ll let me know tomorrow. It’s still this way.” He seesawed his hand uncertainly, to show her. “I think I still have a chance.”

She knew what he was thinking, though. “Don’t be afraid. No one could be that inhuman. What can he truthfully say against your ability? Nothing. Only that you lost your temper once and went for him.”

She could see his cigarette all night in the dark, glowing and then dimming again, over there by the window. Like a pulsing ember of frustration.

When he was leaving the next day, she said: “Ken, I know it’s extravagant, but would you phone me as soon as you find out? I’ll wait downstairs in the candy store, right by their phone. Just so I’ll... I’ll know sooner.”

He didn’t say anything, but he kissed her affirmatively.

She waited there from ten on. She sat perched on one of the high stools before the soft-drink counter. She chatted with the proprietor’s wife. She sat on, waiting, long after they’d stopped chatting for lack of anything further to talk about. She was glad when three o’clock came, and the woman changed places with her high-school-age daughter, and was no longer there to be a witness to her misery.

Four o’clock came, and five, and the new place would be closing soon. All business places closed around five or so.

She stood up abruptly, and put a nickel in the phone, and called it herself; he’d given her its name.

Timidly she asked, “Has there — has there been a new man taken on today?”

The girl said, “Yes, I believe there has.”

Her heart soared, and all the wait was nothing. “Could you— would you give me his name, please?”

The girl looked it up, or got it from someone.

“Howard Ellson,” she said.

She felt her way along the soft-drink counter, and out the door, and upstairs to their flat. He was sitting there, with the lights unlit. He must have come back long ago, hours ago, while she stayed on waiting in the candy store below.

He just looked up at her, then looked down again. She would have read that look anyway, even if she hadn’t already known. She didn’t go to him and put her hands on him. His grief needed elbowroom.

“He did it,” he said after a long time.

He took a long breath, seemed to draw air slowly into his lungs, for a whole minute or two, and never let it out again. “I ought to kill him,” he said almost inaudibly.

“Ken,” she moaned. “Ken.”

“It was my one chance, and it won’t come again. I had it, and I lost it — thanks to him. Someone else has the job now, and people hang onto their jobs these days. I can’t asked Hallett to go around acting as an employment agent for me. Months more of misery now for the two of us. On his account. Maybe years. Do you know what that means?” He pulled his shirt open and ground his fist against his bared chest. “Do you know what it does to you, in here, when you can blame that all on one man? Not Fate, not Conditions, not Bad Luck or Coincidence — but one man, walking around on the very same streets you are, not very far from where you are.”

“Ken, don’t. Think of me. I can’t stand it when I hear you talk like that.”

And then he said again, more softly than the first time, almost in a baleful whisper, “I’d like to kill him.” And she saw his hands close up and freeze.

She got him to eat a little, after awhile. She thought the worst of it was over by then. And then later, he was sitting there in the kitchen, directly behind her, while she washed the dishes.

There wasn’t a sound from him. She turned her head suddenly and looked, and the chair was empty. The wet plate dropped and shattered into the spokes of a wheel, and she ran to the door and looked out.

Hours later she was waiting down on the corner for him, when he finally came along. He was drunk, she could tell by his walk. But that didn’t matter, nothing mattered; only that he came along. She ran to him and put her arm about his waist, and they went wavering back toward the house together.

“Ken, why did you do this to me, why did you frighten me this way? You left without a word, without saying goodbye. Ken, I thought such awful things.”

He knew what she was saying, could understand. “Poor France,” he said. “I’m drunk. It didn’t do any good. I didn’t forget once, the whole time I was doing it.”

They went up the inside stairs slowly, side by side, reeling as though they were both drunk and not just one of them. “I’m drunk, France. You never saw me that way before, did you? You don’t want to kiss me now, do you? But I still want to kiss you. More than ever.”

“I do. Look. I do.”

When they got inside their own flat, he toppled heavily into a chair, almost pulling her down with him.

“Shall I help you off with your shoes?”

He shook his head, smiled wanly. “I’m not that drunk.” His hands went up.

“Let me see your face. Why are you covering your face like that?”

“What is there to see?”

There was nothing. It was just his face, as it had always been. His hands, released, went up to it again and covered it once more.

Just before their evening meal, something happened to change him. She couldn’t tell exactly what it was, at first. He’d still seemed all right when he came in with the paper and sat down to read it. Then by the time she’d called him to eat, there was already something different about him, some alteration had taken place. It had none of the symptoms she was so familiar with by now. She couldn’t tell what it was. She could discern something utterly new in it, constraint, furtiveness; and could only ascribe it to remorse for last night’s drunkenness. But if he was ashamed, why so belatedly ashamed, at the end of the day? Why not immediately on getting up and facing her this morning? He hadn’t been then.

She saw him looking at her closely several times, as if wondering how to forestall some discovery she was bound to make eventually herself. Abruptly, he said, “Did you see that, in the paper?”

“What?” she asked.

“Turn toward the back. No, the page after that.”

Parker had been found dead on the street near his house. The details didn’t matter. Scarcely any were given, anyway. Only that he had met death by violence at somebody’s hands. “Some person unknown,” the paper said.

She peered at him through the mist of stupefaction that the item had created in her mind. She saw him drop his eyes, then raise them again with an effort, to meet hers.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away? As soon as you first read it?”

“I felt funny about it,” he admitted with a defensive shrug.

At first she couldn’t understand what he meant by that. “But why, Ken? Why should you feel funny about it?”

He looked away, sidewise, down at the floor. “Because I’ve been talking about him like I have; knocking him so.”

It sounded lame, it didn’t ring true somehow. She felt his real reason went deeper than that. But for once her understanding of him failed her, she couldn’t imagine what it was.

Presently, as they sat there discussing the event, she murmured, with that characteristic compassion of hers toward other women: “I feel sorry for his poor wife. What she must have felt, when he didn’t come home, and then finally a stranger rang the doorbell to tell her—”

“It was a good job!” he blurted out savagely. “He had it coming to him, if anyone ever did!”

She sat in stunned silence after that. Not because of what he’d just said, but because of a discovery that what he had just said had brought about. The discovery was this: his recent self-consciousness about the item being in the paper was not due to the way he had reviled Parker, as he had said it was. It could not be. For here he was doing it again. He’d contradicted himself, without realizing it.

It must have been due to something else.

It only came to her that night, in a flash, as she lay awake in the dark, thinking. A flash that seemed to light up the whole room, with a horrid ruddy glow. She had been thinking: It may be better, for Ken’s sake, that this has happened to Parker, that he’s out of the way now. It’s like a load off my mind. Because I’ve been dreading for weeks and months past now, that this very thing might happen some day. Only it would be Ken who—

And then the flash came.

Why should he be self-conscious in front of me when he first read it tonight?

Why should be take such a long time to show it to me? Why not instantly?

He told me once he never forgives an injury.

He’s done it once already, there, before we were married.

Even to herself she never said “St. Louis.”

She propped herself up on her elbow, turned toward him. She stretched out her hand to touch him, but something seemed to hold it back, she couldn’t make it go all the way. “Ken,” she whispered fearfully.

He was either fast asleep or he didn’t hear the faint breathing of his name.

No, I’d better not ask him, she thought. How can I ask him? To ask him about this would be like reproaching him for that other time. I’ve made my vow, and I must keep it. Never to speak of it, never.

She forced herself to lie back again. She pressed her hand tightly to her mouth, held it that way, as if to smother the horrid question that kept trying to force its way out.

“It isn’t so,” she said to herself over and over again. “It can’t be. He was out drinking that night. Only out drinking.”

And then an insidious afterthought, as if malignantly hovering about waiting its opportunity, forced its way in.

“But where was he out drinking that night? Where did he go?”

The next night he was sitting there in the room with her reading the paper.

She spoke at last. For five whole minutes she’d been trying to. “Ken. Where — what bar did you go to, that night you — came home like that?”

He took a minute’s time. “I don’t remember,” he said, through the newspaper like a screen.

“Quinn’s, down by the corner?”

“No,” he said. “Further away. Some bar or other. I don’t remember.” He gave the newspaper a shake, as if to say: Stop this.

She daren’t go any farther. Why should he go farther away than Quinn’s? In Quinn’s they’d trust him for a drink or two. Elsewhere they wouldn’t. And he must have had quite a few that night.

“Did they get him yet?” she asked presently.

“Who?”

“Whoever did that. You know, Parker.” She turned to look at him as she asked it, drying a dish with its rim held pressed into her midriff. She could only see the top of his forehead, the paper hid his face from there down.

“No,” he said tonelessly. “Not as far as I see.”

“They will in a day or two, I suppose?” she suggested. “They always do.”

“Not always,” he said curtly. Neither forehead nor paper moved. He must have stopped reading, or the one would have slowly climbed above the other as his eyes went down the page.

She turned away again, put the dried plate down atop the others. They didn’t once, she agreed silently. In St. Louis.

He roamed restlessly about for awhile, stood here, stood there. Finally he said, “Think I’ll take a little walk, get some air.”

“You’d better cover up good,” she warned. “It’s ice-cold out. Your coat is like tissue paper. Put your sweater on underneath.”

But when he’d done so, he complained, “I can’t wear both things. Too bulky.” And he took the coat off, and left just the sweater on. He went out, and it stayed there where he’d flung it, carelessly rumpled on a chair.

She got a clothesbrush, and drew the coat across her lap, and started to dust it off a little. She turned the linings of the pockets out, to rid them of the debris, the tobacco grains and clotted bits of wool that she knew by experience were likely to adhere along their seams. A crumpled scrap of pale-green paper clung to one of them even after it had been reversed, and she plucked it off. It was nothing, only a trolley-car ticket.

Her clothesbrush halted again after a single upward stroke. Funny he should take a trolley, when the subway was so much more accessible to where they lived, and so much faster. She picked it up again from where she had discarded it, and straightened out the creases so that it expanded to twice its length.

Why, this wasn’t even a downtown line, she could tell by the list of transfer points running down one side of it, under the heading “Not Good if Detached.”

“Canton Boulevard, South.

Macomber Avenue, South.

Fillmore Avenue, South.”

The coat fell off her lap and she stepped over it in moving across the room, forgetful of the fact that she had just been about to brush it. The newspaper was on the table where he’d thrown it when he finished with it, but she didn’t want that one, she wanted the previous night’s. She found it thrust away in a receptacle with paper bags and things.

Two words out of all the hundreds it contained were all she wanted, and she found them quickly, for she knew which text they were imbedded in. “...Garrett Parker, of 25 Fillmore Avenue, South...”

The ticket’s date, printed in red, was that of two nights ago, the night he had been out drinking. It had a double row of little boxes, each with a numeral in it, to mark the exact hour of issuance. The upper ones were for A.M, the lower for P.M. The “10” of the bottom row had been neatly punched through with a little round hole. She wouldn’t have known which it was, only the “9” was still there on one side of it, the “11” on the other. The time of Parker’s death had been between ten and half-past.

A blind interval, during which movement became automatic, unrecorded, followed. She was standing before the stove, holding the pilot key out so that the light flared wide, thrusting the pale-green ticket into it. Her face was that of a desperately sick woman.

“Now I know,” she kept saying to herself over and over. “Now I know.”

She put out the lights and raised the window shade.

It was a night like any other night. There was no moon, but there were stars.

Two nights later she saw the name for the first time, this stranger’s name that meant nothing to her. Pulled out of thin air.

“They got him,” Ken said abruptly. And she thought she heard him give a long sigh.

She ran over quickly beside him, to read. They had arrested a man named Considine, on the accusation of having killed. Parker. He’d worked for Parker; not in Ken’s time, but more recently, a few short weeks ago. He’d been unjustly discharged. He’d borne a grudge. It was Ken’s case all over again, almost terrifyingly so. Just with a change of names. He couldn’t prove where he’d been that night, around ten to half-past. He said he’d gone out and had a few drinks, and couldn’t remember. She was almost terrified by the similarity.

That was about all there was to it. It was only a small item at the foot of a back page. But it meant so much in someone’s life. In theirs too, for that matter. Immunity from now on. She could see him go out on the streets now without that cold terror in her heart. She could hear a knock at their door, or a heavy tread coming up the stairs, without dying a little.

“He denies he did it, Ken,” she said mournfully, without meeting his eyes.

“They all do,” he said callousedly. “You don’t expect him to admit it, do you?” He put the paper aside, stood up. “Let’s go out to a movie,” he said. “I... I feel a lot better tonight.”

It came creeping back that night in the dark, the banished named. Considine. Just an abstract name in a newspaper. Jones, Smith, Brown, Considine. She said to herself, “I must forget this name. I must say, ‘It doesn’t belong to anyone real. There is no such man.’ ”

She tossed and turned restlessly in the bed.

There is no such man, there is no such man, there is no such—

But it kept pounding at her mercilessly, like the throbbing of a drum. “Considine. Considine. Considine.”

He was working again. They’d taken him back at his old place, now that Parker was out of the way. His wages were exactly two-thirds of what they had been when he was with the concern the time before. But the world about them, beginning to struggle painfully up out of the depths, had found new standards of contentment, frugality, simplicity. Safety, security, came drifting back within sight on the troubled waters, but never again the old expansiveness.

They discontinued accepting relief almost with his first pay check. They were compelled to, under penalty of prosecution, but thousands postponed doing so as long as they could. But with him it was almost a physical restorative, an aid to convalescence. His step became firmer, quicker. The old, open untroubled width of eye returned. Slowly the soreness of spirit was eased, the bitterness was mellowed, as he basked in the renewed illusion of being of some use in the world, as under therapeutic rays.

Even heartiness, gayety, began to peer tentatively forth again at intermittent times, as when he brought her home his pay envelopes on alternate Saturdays. What they contained stood for so much more than the intrinsic value of the money they held.

“Why can’t I get you to smile any more?” he asked wistfully, as she looked down at it in her lap where he’d dropped it.

“I do smile — look — I do. I smile whenever you do, like I always did.”

“But it doesn’t go in. It doesn’t go inside.”

(“He had a job too, poor soul,” she thought.)

The name had vanished again from the newspapers, after that first brief mention — it seemed like months ago, or was it only weeks? It was such a minor, unimportant case after all. She never went near the papers any more while he was present. But once or twice, when they were preparing for bed, she made some excuse to go back into the other room in her nightgown, stand hurriedly searching through them for a moment before putting the light out. There was never any mention of it that she could find. But still he’s real, she told herself, returning wraithlike to where her own husband lay safe in the darkness; he’s real, he’s somewhere.

One night she asked, “Whatever became of that man they arrested — on account of Parker? Are they still holding him?”

“They must be. I haven’t read of his being released.”

“All this time in jail,” she thought, “while we—”

And suddenly within a week, as if her question had been ill-omened, had released pent-up evil forces held in abeyance all the while, they read of his being brought to trial. It wasn’t a celebrated crime, it wasn’t given much space. Things like that were happening all the time in a big city such as theirs, people charged with murder being tried for their lives. In the standard-sized paper that he habitually brought home there were never any pictures, as least not of that sort of thing. But once he happened to bring a tabloid in addition; not that he had bought it, but someone had left it on the subway seat next to him and it was practically uncreased. And this was two-thirds pictures and very little text, and all of that very sort of thing.

Leafing unsuspectingly through it, she looked up, stunned.

“What’s the matter?”

“He has a wife,” she said aghast, as though she’d seen a ghost. “I didn’t know that until now.”

“Who? Oh, Considine. What made you think he hadn’t?” And after a moment he added, “Even murderers have wives.”

Ah yes, she agreed to herself, with poignant bitterness. Yes, Kenneth Mitchell, you’re right, even murderers have wives.

That night she had a terrifying dream, in which a stranger’s face hovered over her as she lay. there. The face of a strange woman, stricken with grief. It bent low above her own. “You have your husband,” it whispered balefully. “Where is mine?”

She turned her face feverishly, to try to avoid the accusing sight.

“Murderess!” hissed the phantom. “Murderess!”

“I didn’t do it,” she breathed tormentedly. “He did.”

“He killed Parker. But you are the one who is killing my husband. By remaining silent. You, not he! Murderess, murderess!”

She awoke with a stifled scream, and fled from the bed, and ran to the window and stood there looking out.

Her breast was rising and falling convulsively, and there was cold moisture on her face. She’d always had such a strongly developed feeling of sympathy for other women.

It was a night like any other night. Without a moon, and without stars.

She found herself looking at the house from the opposite side of the street. Its cracker-box outline, its canary-brick facing, dim with soot, looked so prosaic, so matter-of-fact. It was just a flat like thousands of others, all over the city. On nearly every street you could see one just like it.

She tried to tear herself away, and she couldn’t. She wondered: behind which one of those windows is she sitting, agonized, stifling her pain? Waiting for the night to come. He dies tonight; tonight is his last night.

I’m the only one can save him. If I go on my way now, if I go home, nothing can save him; he’ll surely die tonight. If I come back tomorrow, it’ll be too late. He’ll be gone, then, and nothing can bring him back.

She crossed the street, against the traffic, dazedly, like a sleepwalker. She went up to the door, pulled it open, went inside. She was in a grubby hallway that smelled of dust and stale cooking. She went over to the letter boxes and lowered her head, scanning the names.

A janitress came out from behind the stairs carrying a pail of water. “Who did you wish to see, Missus?”

“Considine. Are they — is she still living here?”

“Sure. She’s up on the third. You know her?”

“No,” Frances said simply. “I felt I — had to see her. I feel sorry for people in trouble.”

The janitress nodded. “Yes, that’s trouble, all right.”

“What’s she like?” Frances asked.

“Like you. About your age. Nice little body. She was so happy with him before it happened. She had another baby since they took him to jail.”

“She’s taking it hard, I suppose?”

Again the janitress’ choice of an illustration was deadly. “Wouldn’t you? He was all she had.”

She had once been about Frances’ own age. She was a crazed automaton now, beyond calculations of age or personality. She seemed unable to stand entirely straight, even in the narrow door opening. She stood bowed forward, as if a heavy lodestone were suspended from her neck.

“You don’t know me,” Frances said. “I’d like to talk to you. Please let me come in. I’d like to talk to you.”

The woman in the doorway said listlessly, “Come in.” Her dazed mind evidently couldn’t grasp the fact that Frances was a complete stranger to her.

She began to cry again as soon as the door was closed. It had become so continuous by now there was scarcely any facial change went with it; just a renewed dimming of the puffy eyes and then a glistening track down the cheek. She said, as though she had known Frances a long time, “My sister is coming over to take the children and me back with her later, but she didn’t get here yet. But tonight! Oh, how am I going to stand it tonight?”

There was a little boy standing there, staring up at Frances. The mother patted the top of his head absently. “No, you go inside. Don’t come in here. Stay inside and play with the baby like I told you.”

She turned to Frances when he had gone. “He doesn’t know,” she choked. “How can I tell him? He keeps asking. He keeps asking all the time where he is.”

Frances kept opening and closing the frame of her handbag. Over and over, incessantly, without looking at it.

The other woman’s voice rose, strangulated. “What harm has that child done? I’m not asking anything for myself, but is it right to take that child’s father away from him? Is that what the Law is for, to punish innocent children?”

“Don’t,” Frances breathed expiringly, and covered her ears. “I can’t stand it.”

The woman turned toward the window. It looked out on a whitewashed brick shaft. The wall was blue with shade now nearly all the way up, only at the very top was their still a triangular wedge of crimson sunlight, shaped like a guillotine blade. She pointed to it, held her shaking arm extended full-length. “Look how fast it goes, that sun,” she groaned. “Why doesn’t somebody stop it? Oh, why doesn’t somebody make it stay still?”

Frances impulsively stepped close to her, took her shoulders, gently tried to turn her away. She resisted passively. Her waist and shoulders turned under the coaxing pressure, but her face remained stubbornly fixed on the evaporating patch of sunlight out there. “That’s his last sun,” she whimpered. “That’s the last time he’ll ever see it. Don’t let them take the sun away from him. Oh, miss, whoever you are, don’t let them!”

Frances drew her to a chair, sat her down in it. She stroked her disheveled hair back from her brow. She brought a little water in a glass, held it for her to drink. “Sh-h-h-h,” she whispered on a long-drawn breath. “Sh-h-h-h.”

“I was up to see him Sunday,” Mrs. Considine murmured presently, quieting a little. “I said goodbye Sunday. I don’t know how I got back here. If I hadn’t known my children were here waiting for me, if my brother-in-law hadn’t been with me on the train— Oh, that awful train ride! The wheels kept going around in my head. They kept saying, ‘Goodbye forever, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye—’ ”

Frances winced, and, bending down over her from behind the chair, tilted her own face for a moment, ceilingward, as if in supplication of some sort of guidance neither one of them could see.

“Did he—” She could barely make herself heard. “Did he— say it wasn’t he — he didn’t?”

“He told me again, like he’s told me from the beginning. He swore it to me by our two children. He didn’t, he didn’t; he never went near that man. I know he’s telling the truth. You’d have to know my Al like I do. He wouldn’t lie to me, my Al wouldn’t lie to me. It isn’t in him to do that to anyone; I know him too well. He only went out for a few beers that night; is there any harm in that? Just that night he had to go. I even said to him, ‘Al, don’t go tonight.’ Never dreaming. You know, just because I wanted him to stay around, I was lonely. But he went to look up his friend Nick Mano. That’s a friend of his, Nick Mano. And just that night Nick had to be out. If he’d only been with him, they wouldn’t have been able to say — but he waited around for him. And that’s when it happened.” The figure in the chair rocked desolately to and fro. “But who is there will listen? Who is there will help me? Who can help me?”

I can, Frances thought. I can, I alone. Only I. It was as though a bright, cold light had suddenly been turned on. Everything, the outlines of things, the room about her, the woman in the chair immediately below her, suddenly seemed so clear, crystal-clear, diamond-clear, where until now they had been hazy, blurred by her own turmoil. Everything seemed so lucid, so logical, so — inevitable.

The other woman’s voice droned on, in its litany of misery. “The last words he said to me Sunday, his very last words when they were making me leave, were, ‘I didn’t do it, Frances. They’re taking me away from you for something I didn’t do.’ ”

“Is that your name?” Frances shuddered violently. “My God!” she moaned low.

The woman’s sobbing singsong continued. Suddenly she turned her head questioningly toward the back of the chair. “Miss—?” she called out wonderingly. “Miss—?”

There was no one standing there any longer. The room was empty. The door hung cryptically open.

Suddenly she found herself in a phone booth. Somewhere, she didn’t know where. It seemed so simple, so easy. A little light went on, to see by. She found a nickel and she dropped it in. Just like when you wanted to phone the grocer or the butcher. No different. So easy, so simple, so compulsory.

A voice said, “Police Department, good evening.”

She said, “I want to talk to someone about that Parker case. What they’re killing that man for tonight. I don’t know how to go about it—”

“Just a moment.” Another voice got on. It wasn’t a frightening voice. It was impersonal, but it wasn’t severe, or bullying, or anything. It was just like — well, once she’d had to call up one of the department stores about making an exchange; it took patience, but she’d finally succeeded in making herself understood. “Yes, ma’m. Now, what is it?”

She said, “It’s about that Parker case. He didn’t do it. That man they’re — putting away tonight. Considine. He didn’t do it. You must believe me—”

The voice was calmingly reasonable. First things first. “Would you give me your name please?”

You had to give your name when you were asked it by a police official, even over the telephone wire. It never occurred to you not to. The habit of being law-abiding, of never having anything to hide or fear, saw to that. “I’m Mrs. Kenneth Mitchell.”

The voice showed approving consideration. “And what is your address, please, Mrs. Mitchell?”

“Forty Forthway.” Then she added, gratuitously, “Apartment C.” The stores always liked that, when you gave the exact flat number. It made it easier for them to deliver. It seemed to add plausibility now.

“Yes, Mrs. Mitchell. And now you say—?”

“He didn’t do it. Considine. I know it, oh, I know it! You’ve got to listen to me. I wouldn’t have done this, if I weren’t sure—”

“What makes you think that, Mrs. Mitchell?”

“Because... because—” She floundered, helpless. “Because I know he didn’t. I know.”

The voice was considerate, patient, willing to give her a fair hearing to almost any lengths. “But you must have some reason for such a belief, Mrs. Mitchell.”

“I have,” she protested tearfully. “I have.”

“Then what is it, Mrs. Mitchell?”

Somehow she found herself in a verbal corner. She couldn’t seem to extricate herself, go back along the way she’d entered and thus get out again. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. There were two parts to the act of vindication. Exoneration. And then substitution. But she only realized that now. She hadn’t taken the second one into her calculation, visualized it. And they were indivisible, the two.

The voice persisted, nudging her, nudging her ever so gently. Not allowing her to stand still in her cul-de-sac. “But what is your reason for thinking Considine didn’t do it, Mrs. Mitchell? How can you be so sure?”

“Because— Because—” There wasn’t any other way. It had to be one or the other. To be believed at all. And to be believed was uppermost in her tormented mind just then. Overshadowing every other consideration. “Because my own husband did it.”

The voice showed no dramatic alteration whatever. It continued on its even tenor. It still seemed reluctant to believe her. Perhaps having found this attitude to be the most profitable up to now, it shrewdly continued with it, “Are you sure of what you’re saying, Mrs. Mitchell?”

It was easier from there on. She began speaking more volubly, in the effort to convince him. “Yes! Yes! I am. Oh, I am. He worked for Parker for years. He was unjustly discharged; we’ve been through a lot of hardship on Parker’s account. He often said he would, and I know he meant it. Oh, I can’t remember every little thing now any more — I found a trolley-car ticket in his pocket that he used that night—”

“Have you kept this?”

“No, I didn’t. I did away with it.”

The voice said, almost skeptically, “You haven’t anything more conclusive than that, then?”

“No. But I know he did it. I know what I’m saying. Oh, don’t let them kill that man! You’ve got to stop them.” She had to beat down his disbelief, his obtuseness; why didn’t his voice change, why didn’t he get excited, interested? Didn’t they care? “Don’t you believe me? I know!” she kept repeating.

“Yes, but how? Why?”

“Because he did it once before.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he told me!” She was almost beside herself. “He told me the night we became engaged. They never found out, but he told me about it. That’s why I know he did it this time too.”

“And how long ago was this, this first time?”

Oh, why was he so thick, so stupid? What difference did time make? “Ten years before we were married. In St. Louis.”

“And you’ve been married?”

“Three years.”

“Thirteen years ago, in St. Louis,” the voice said with judicial impartiality. She could somehow sense that a pencil point was moving over paper; some slightly absent inflection of the voice gave her that. “But you have no way of knowing whether that’s true, either; simply that he told you that. Is that right?”

“But he wouldn’t have told me, if it weren’t. Why would he have told me that? The man’s name was Joe Bailey; I’ve never forgotten the name.”

“Joe Bailey,” the voice repeated mechanically.

“Don’t you see?” she pleaded tearfully. “All I’m trying to get you to do is have them stop that thing tonight! It mustn’t be carried out. Even if it’s only a postponement— Oh, please; I don’t know the man, I’ve never even seen him. But I can’t sleep thinking about it—”

But to the end his voice never changed, woke up; she couldn’t seem to impress it on him that she was telling him the truth. “I understand, Mrs. Mitchell. I don’t know whether there’s anything I can do, but I’ll see. But you haven’t given us very much to go by.” It pondered briefly. “Perhaps it might be better if you’d come down here. If you’d care to give us your statement personally—”

Suddenly she was frightened. In a new way. You didn’t just step into a booth on your homeward way, put through a call, and secure the reprieve of a condemned man. There was more to it than that. You became involved, tangled up; your own life interfered with. Worst of all, he’d find out about it. It was like a dash of cold water full in the face. The clear white flame of altruism was quenched, went out with a hiss of sudden personal fear. The old blurredness came back, of before her visit to the Considine flat.

“Oh, no, I can’t!” she gasped. “I can’t make it. I... I have to go home and fix supper — he’s waiting for me — I’m late—”

She hung up. She came out of the booth, staggering a little. Almost at once a telephone started ringing behind her, where she’d just come from. It frightened her all the more, and she started to run. She ran all the way. She ran until her hat fell off, and she left it there behind her. She ran, and a sobbing voice kept saying over and over somewhere inside her, “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!” She ran until the night around her had fogged with her own exhausted exertion, and she couldn’t see which way she was going any more.

Then suddenly he had stopped her, on the sidewalk out in front of their home. She ran straight into his arms, without seeing him.

He said, “Frances!” and his arms were around her and the whole thing vanished. The whole thing she’d been fleeing from.

“I didn’t mean it, Ken!” she panted distraught. “Ken, I didn’t mean it!”

“Why, because you’re late? What’s so terrible, what’s the difference? Don’t take it like that. As long as you’re here now.” He took her upstairs with him, carrying her, holding her feet off the ground. “I didn’t know what happened to you. I was starting to get uneasy. But it’s all right now.”

And there was the lamplight of home around her, and the whole thing — back there — was just like a bad dream.

“Let me fix your supper. No, I’ve got to fix your supper. They can’t take this away from me.” She went into the kitchen, and squatted on her heels before the stove, and thrust the broiler-pan with meat on it into its proper rack.

He followed her and looked at her searchingly. “Something’s the matter. You’re not well.”

“They can’t take this away from me,” she kept repeating. Then she said, “She’s happy now. I gave all this back to her. She’ll have this again now, herself.”

“Who’s happy?” He put his hand across her forehead, as if to test its temperature. “Frances,” he pleaded. “Don’t frighten me like this. Something’s happened to you. You’re hysterical. Won’t you tell me what it is? You saw a bad picture. You were nearly run down on the street. Won’t you tell me?”

She tried to struggle to her feet, and he tried to help her. Suddenly she sagged limply backward into his arms, and he caught her and kept her from falling. “I’ve given it back to her,” she breathed. “Oh, Ken,” she whispered, “Ken, I dreamed I did a terrible thing.” Her eyes dropped closed, and she lay inert, pressed against him.

He had her on the sofa when she opened them again. She was lying on the sofa, and he was crouched there beside her, holding her hand between his, his face anguished.

“Ken—”

“Sh, lie quiet now. Don’t talk. The doctor’ll be here soon. I phoned him to come over.”

“They can’t take this away from me,” she breathed. She tried to turn her head a little and look out past the obtruding sofa arm. “Ken, your supper— The table, not set yet— The meat, it’s been in too long— Ken, I’ve never been so late with you before—”

She tried to struggle upright, and he pressed her gently back. “No, never mind now. Just lie still, lie quiet—”

“Ken—”

“He’ll be here soon. What is it? What hurts you?”

“The whole world, Ken,” she whispered. “The whole world hurts me.”

Suddenly recollection, like a galvanic electric shock, coursed through her. He couldn’t hold her prone any more. She jolted upright, fastened her hands to the revers of his coat, shook him imploringly. “Ken, it wasn’t a dream—! It happened! Quick, the valise—!”

He tried to restrain her, while she struggled, strove against him.

“Our valise — the big one — where is it? Get it out. No, you’ve got to listen to me! Bring the valise in here. Hurry, Ken. Get out your things. And mine—”

The sudden pounding was like surf breaking against a rocky shore, and coming back again and back and back.

Her arms whipped inextricably around his neck like a knot. Like the knot of a hangman’s noose.

He tried to regain his feet. “It’s only the doctor. But why does he make so much noise—?”

“No!” she screamed. “Don’t go! Don’t go near it!”

“I’ve got to let him in. I sent for him.”

“No,” she groaned, in an access of disemboweling terror. “Don’t go!” She wouldn’t loosen her arms. She held him down there by her, in a headlock, with convulsive strength. “Stay here with me like this. Let me hold you tight like this. Oh, make it last, I want it to last—”

He had to exert all his strength to pry her grip loose. And then he burst the embrace and left her fallen draggingly, from sofa seat to floor, one arm still extended after him in futile desperation. And he was gone.

She couldn’t call out, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even see any more. She could only listen. As to the resonance of a knell.

A door opened. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Joseph Bailey, in St. Louis, Missouri, thirteen years ago.” And then, “Your own wife.”

She tottered to her feet, and staggered after him, arms feeling the way for her blinded eyes. She came up against the front of someone’s gray suit — but Ken’s was a blue one — and someone held her, propping her like a sort of spindly, life-sized doll without any bones in it.

And then that voice, tomblike, guttural with all the pain and all the dismay and all the heartbreak there have ever been in the whole world, since the first man loved the first woman. And the first woman loved the first man.

“Frances, Frances, what have you done to me?”

Calling out to her, calling, in haunting supplication, as it receded from the room, from her life, from her love, forever.

“Fran-ces, Fran-ces, what have you done to me—?”

Fading away at last into the irretrievable distance.

Somebody kept holding her up, somebody anonymous, somebody in a gray suit.

“But have they saved Considine at least? At least have I done that much?”

“Considine was executed half an hour ago. He made a full confession of guilt fifteen minutes before he went to the Chair.”

She was slipping down the front of the gray suit, it seemed to go rushing up past her. Her thoughts exploded into white-hot particles of agony, that slowly cooled and went out one by one.

“I will be silent as the grave, dear heart. Silent as the grave forever. For now indeed I am one.”

It was a night like any other night. There was no moon; there were no stars.

The Detective’s Dilemma

He sent his card in to me. We don’t get much of that down at headquarters. Any, you might say. They’re either dragged in, or, if they come of their own accord, they just say who they arc by word of mouth. What was on it made me raise my brows.

Arnoldo, Prince of Iveria.

With a crown over it. We don’t get much of that either, down at headquarters. I was so impressed I even talked it over with Crawley, who happened to be in the room at the time, before I did anything about having him shown in. Sort of trying to get my bearings.

“What the hell do you suppose a blue blood like this could want? And he comes to us in person, yet, instead of sending for us to come to him!”

“I suppose the family rubies have been stolen,” Crawley snickered.

“In the first place, is he a real prince or is he phony?”

“There is a party by that name,” Crawley told me. “I’ve seen it in the papers once or twice. Wait a minute. I can check, so we’ll be that much ahead.”

He seemed to know how to go about it; I wouldn’t have known myself. He called some book or magazine called Who’s Who, and also some very swank club, and managed to find out what we wanted, without letting on we were the police. “Get a description while you’re at it,” I said over his shoulder.

When he got through he said, “The genuine article is about twenty-nine, nearly six feet tall, lean and light haired; looks more English than Latin.”

The cop who had brought the card in nodded vigorously and said, “That’s who’s waiting out there right now!”

“All right, then we don’t have to worry about phonies,” I said, relieved.

“Here’s a thumbnail sketch of the rest of it,” Crawley said. “His own country don’t exist any more; it was annexed by another country. He’s married to an American girl, the former Marilyn Reid. Scads of dough. Her grandfather first invented chocolate bars with peanuts in ’em. They live out at Eastport.”

“That ought to do. I hate to have to ask a lot of fool questions with a guy like this. Better not keep him waiting any more, O’Dare.”

I was almost stage-frightened by this time. I straightened the knot of my tie, polished the toe of my shoe against the opposite trouser leg, sat down and arranged a lot of papers in front of me, like I was up to my cars in work. “How does this look?” I asked Crawley nervously.

“Phony as hell — to me,” he grinned. “But he won’t know the difference.”

The cop held the door open and there was one of those breathless waits, like in a play on the stage. He came in on a cane. For a minute I thought it was just swank, but then I could see he seemed to need it. A little shaky on his legs.

I didn’t know how to address him, so I didn’t. Just nodded.

Maybe he didn’t know how to address me either, because he nodded back. He said, “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m not — very strong.”

Crawley slid a chair up, and I said, “Sorry we kept you waiting like that—”

“I don’t mind. You see, I had to come to you myself. If I’d sent for you, it would have defeated the very purpose — for which I’ve come to you.”

I said, “What can we do for you, your highness?”

He shook his head. “There are no highnesses here. I am taking out my first papers next month. But, of course, I won’t live to become a full-fledged citizen—”

I looked at Crawley and he looked at me.

Iveria had taken out a hammered gold cigarette case, with a sapphire clasp. I thought to smoke, but he didn’t open it, just passed it to me. “I may not be able to prevent it coming out that I stopped in here. In which case I shall say that I came in to report the loss of this very case. So suppose you keep it in the meantime, as an excuse. Let us say some honest person found it and turned it in. You arc holding it for me. That will explain my visit here. Is that all right with you?”

I could have told him that I was a homicide man, and not the lost-and-found department, but I didn’t. “If you want it that way, yes,” I said uncertainly. Again Crawley and I exchanged a look.

“Now, as to what I have actually come here about—” he looked from one to the other of us — “I am sorry, but I don’t intend to speak about it before more than one person. I want this held confidential between myself and just one detective or police official. Until the time comes for this one official to act upon what I have told him today. Then let the whole world know. I will be gone by then anyway. Now — can that be arranged?”

I didn’t answer him right away.

He went on, “It is very painful; it is very personal; it is so subtle it will require a man of acutest perception and greatest tact.”

I said, “Well, would you care to tell Crawley here? He’s very perceptive and tactful—”

He took just one look at him, then he turned back to me. “You have just shown yourself to be the more tactful of the two, by the very fact that you recommended him, he did not recommend you. You arc the man I want. You are the man I would like to tell this to, if I may.”

“I’m at your disposal,” I said.

Crawley took it in good part. He said. “See you later,” and eased out.

“And now—”

“Inspector Burke,” I supplied.

“And now, Inspector Burke—” He opened his fluffy llama’s wool coat, took a thick manila envelope soldered with sealing wax out of its inner pocket. “This is an affidavit, duly notarized, which, however, merely restates what I am about to tell you verbally. It will bear more weight later than a verbal accusation, particularly after I am no longer alive. You will put it away please until the time comes for you to make use of it. Write your own name on it; show it to no one.”

I scrawled “Burke, in re Iveria” across it, went over and put it in the safe, along with the cigarette case. Then I came back and waited for him to begin.

He made a steeple out of his hands. “Now it is a very simple matter. Stated in its simplest form — which, however, does not do it justice — it is merely this: I am about to be killed by my wife. But without me, you will not be able to prove that she did such a thing.”

“I won’t have to prove it, I’ll prevent it—” I started to say vigorously.

He flexed his hand at me almost indifferently. “No, neither you nor I will be able to prevent it. It will surely happen. Nothing will be able to prevent it. For it is coming in such a small way. So, for all practical purposes, let us say I am already dead.”

“We don’t acquiesce in things like that over here—” I started to say, but again he overrode me. “But it is not right that she should do such a thing and remain unpunished, isn’t it so? Or at least, enjoy the fruits of her crime, enjoy peace of mind afterwards — with him. That is why I have come to you ahead of time. Even so, you will have a very difficult time proving it. Without me, you would never even be able to establish it was a murder.”

I just sat there eying him unblinkingly. Whatever else I was, I wasn’t bored. He had the verbal gift of holding you spellbound. Once the desk phone rang, and I switched the call into another room without even trying to find out what it was.

“Here is the background, so you will understand the thing fully,” he went on. “You must realize that it is difficult for me to speak of these things to another man. But for present purposes you are not a man, you are a police official—”

I considered that a dubious compliment at best, but I let it go.

“—so I will hold nothing back. I am descended from a branch of the ruling house of what was formerly Iveria. I therefore bear in my veins both the assets and the liabilities of royalty.” He smiled ruefully when he said that, I noticed.

“I met my wife, the former Marilyn Reid, three years ago in St. Moritz, and we were married there. She was supposedly enormously wealthy; both parents dead, sole heiress to the Reid peanut-bar fortune. I have seen American papers which thought it was one of those usual fortune-hunting matches, and didn’t hesitate to say so. I gave her the title, for what it was worth; she gave me the use of her money. As a matter of fact it was quite the other way around. I was the wealthier of the two by far, even at the time of our marriage. On the other hand, through bad management and her own extravagance, the enormous estate that had come down to Marilyn from her grandfather was already badly depleted at the time I first met her, and since then has dwindled away to nothing. Naturally, that isn’t commonly known. Even if it were, it wouldn’t be believed. Say ‘exiled aristocracy’ to people and they immediately think of poverty.

“The point is, I did not marry Marilyn for her money. When you see her face, you won’t have to be told why I did: she was the most beautiful girl in Europe and she still is the most beautiful in America today. Try to keep in mind — when the time comes — that she murdered me. It won’t be easy to.

“The rest is rather shabby. I will hurry over it as quickly as I can. I am ill; she married only a shadow of a man. But when a thing is once mine, I keep it. If she wanted freedom only for herself, I would give it to her. But she wants it for this — automobile speed-racer.

“In Cannes we met this Streak Harrison. She’d always had a mania for breakneck driving herself, so that gave him a good head start. What is there about boxers, airplane pilots, dirt-track racers, that makes women lose their heads? After we’d been back six months and he had ‘casually’ turned up over here himself, she asked me for her freedom. I said no.

“She was tied hand and foot, the decision rested with me, and it has brought murder into her heart. She could not buy me off; I had the fortune and she no longer had a dime of her own by that time. She could not get a divorce, because divorce is not recognized in Iveria and my entire estate is there. Nor could she have it annulled on the grounds of my hereditary disability. I took pains to warn her of that before our marriage, and there are documents in existence that will prove that. She went into the marriage with her eyes open.

“I am the last of my line. As my widow — but only as my widow — she would be sole inheritor under Iverian law.

“Now we come to my imminent murder. My affliction is hemophilia, the disease of kings. You know what that is.” I did, but he went on to illustrate anyway. “Once the blood begins to flow, there is no checking it. There is imminent death about me all the day long. Things which to you are simply an ‘Ouch!’ and a suck at the finger, to me can mean death. For instance. I am sitting here in this office with you. There is a nail on the underpart of this chair. I touch it — so — and accidentally make a little puncture on the pad of my finger. Within a few hours, if they can’t find a way of stopping it, I am done for.”

“Don’t do that again, will you?” I gasped, white-faced. I knew that chair, and there was a nail under it; Crawley had torn his pants on it once.

He smiled; he saw that he’d gotten his point across.

“But are you sure she contemplates actual murder, Iveria?”

“If I weren’t, do you think I would be here?”

“Let me ask you something. Is she a very stupid woman, your wife?”

“She is one of the most keen-witted, diabolically clever women there are to be met with.”

“Then why should she need to risk murder? Granting that she wants to be rid of you, wants to marry this Harrison and at the same time enjoy your ancestral fortune, all she needs is a little patience. As you yourself said a few minutes ago, you bear imminent death about with you all day long. All she has to do is sit back and wait—”

“You forget something. I have lived with this blood curse all my life. I know how to guard against it, take care of myself. If you or anyone else were suddenly afflicted with it, you would probably do something that would cause your death within the first twenty-four hours, you wouldn’t be used to taking precautions against it. That is the difference between us. I avoid angles and sharp-edged or pointed things. I have my hair singed instead of clipped, my nails sandpapered instead of filed, I don’t dance on waxed floors nor walk about my bedroom in carpet slippers, and so on. My father lived to fifty, my grandfather to sixty-four, and both had it. I have lived twenty-nine years with it. What is to prevent my living another twenty-nine? Another thing: she knows that so far, until now, she stands to inherit automatically, under Iverian law, in case of my death. She cannot be sure that tomorrow, I will not give away my entire estate to charity or deed it to the state, a privilege which is mine while I am still alive. She cannot afford to wait, as you think. It is a matter of days, of hours.”

That did put a different slant on it; he was winning me over. But I still had to be sure. “In this set-up you have outlined,” I said, speaking slowly, “there is invitation enough to murder. But what actual proof have you that she intends doing so?”

“I thought you would ask that, as a police official,” he smiled wryly. “I cannot give you phonograph records on which she says at the top of her voice ‘I will kill him!’ I can only give you little things, which show the way the wind blows. Tiny, trifling things. Each one in itself meaning nothing. But added to one another over a period of time meaning — murder. That is why I said I wanted to tell this to someone who was acutely perceptive, who does not need a brick wall to fall on his head before he senses something. Well, at random, here are some of these trifling things. And I am leaving out as many as I am recalling. When this Streak first came back here from Europe, he seemed very anxious to enjoy my company. He kept asking me to go out driving in his car with him. Since they loved one another, I couldn’t understand why he should be concerned with my being present. I unexpectedly agreed one day, simply to find out what it was about. At once a sort of tension came over the two of them. She quickly gave some lame excuse at the last moment, to get out of going with us; apparently it was not part of their plan for her to endanger herself.

“I figured the route he would take, stepped back in the house a moment just as we were ready to leave, and phoned ahead to a gas-station attendant that Marilyn and I both knew. When we reached there he was to tell Streak there’d been a call for him — from a lady — and he was to wait there until she called back. He’d think it was Marilyn of course.

“The mechanic flagged us and Streak fell for it. While he was in the office waiting, I said to the attendant, ‘Check over this car thoroughly and find out what’s the matter with it.’ And I got out and stood clear while he was doing it.

“He went over it quickly but expertly, and when he got through he said, ‘It’s in fine condition, I can’t find anything wrong with it.’ Then he took his handful of waste and, from long habit, began polishing up the windshield. It fell through the frame intact and shattered all over the front seat where I’d been until then. The little clamps that held it to the frame had all been unnoticeably loosened, so that any unusual pressure or impact— He would have braked abruptly somewhere along the way, or grazed a tree or a wall or another car — just enough to give it that little shaking out. He would have been with me, of course. Maybe he would have even been more hurt than I was. He could afford a few bloody nicks and gashes. I couldn’t have. I went back to our place on foot and left him there in the office still waiting for that non-existent call. I didn’t say a word to her; simply that I was not used to being kept waiting at the roadside by anyone and had changed my mind. They couldn’t tell if I knew or didn’t know.

“But that ended his participation, gave him cold feet. He never came around again. I’ve never seen him since. I know he’s lurking there unseen in the background, waiting for her to do the job and give him the all-clear signal. He may be reckless on the speedway, but he has no stomach for murder.

“All the remaining attempts have come from her. More trivial even than that, as befits the feminine genius. So subtle that — how shall I repeat them to you and make them sound like anything?”

“Let me be the judge.” I murmured.

“The other night she attempted to embrace me, wound both arms about my neck. A caress, surely? But the gesture is false, has no meaning any more between us, so I quickly ward it off in the nick of time — for that reason alone. What death lurked in that innocent sign of affection? Then I noticed a heavy slave bracelet, a bangle, that doesn’t seem to close properly on her wrist. Its catch is defective, sticks up like a microscopic spur, needs flattening. What could it do to anyone else but graze them, inflict a tiny scratch. ‘Ouch!’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear, I’ll kiss it away.’ ‘Forget it.’ But to me it would have brought death. Strange, that only on the night she was wearing that particular ornament did she try to hug me tightly around the neck. The night before, and the night after, she didn’t come near me.”

He stopped and looked at me. “More?”

“A little more. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“In a hundred ways she has tried to draw the single drop of blood from me that will eventually bring death in its wake. She introduced a cat into the house, a pedigreed Persian. Yet I happen to know that she hates the animals herself. Why a cat, then? I soon found out.” He shrugged. “You know the feline propensity for stalking, and finally clawing, at anything moving? I sat reading one night before the fire, with the cat there, and finally dozed off, as she must have hoped I would sooner or later. I opened my eyes just in time to find the cat crouched at my feet, tail lashing warningly back and forth, about to spring. My arm was hanging down limp over the side of the chair. Its claws would have raked it in a half-dozen places. A loose piece of string was traveling up my arm, drawn from behind the chair. Luckily there was a cushion behind me. I just had time enough to swing it out in front of me, use it as a buffer. The cat struck it, gashed it to ribbons. When I stood up and turned, she was behind me, holding the other end of the string she had used to bait it. What could I say? ‘You tried to kill me just then?’ All she seemed to be doing was playing with the cat. Yet I knew she had tried; I knew she must have kept flinging out that piece of string again and again until it trailed across my arm as she wanted it to.

“Whom could I tell such a thing to — and expect to be believed? What bodyguard, what detective, can protect me against such methods?”

He was right about that. I could have sent someone back with him to protect him against a gun, a knife, poison. Not against a woman playing with a cat or twining her arms about his neck. “Why don’t you leave her, then? Why don’t you get out while there is still time? Why stay and wait for it to happen?”

“We Iverias don’t give up the things we prize that easily.”

That left me kind of at a loss. Here was a man who knew he was going to be murdered, yet wouldn’t lift his little finger to prevent it. “Any more?”

“What is the use of going ahead? I have either already convinced you by the few samples I have given, or else there is no hope of my ever convincing you.”

“And now just what is it you want me to do?”

“Nothing. When it happens — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week — I will call you, while I still have the strength left, and say ‘This is it.’ But even if I fail to, be sure that it is ‘it.’ You will read in the papers, within a day or two after that, that the Prince of Iveria died from hemophilia. Some slight mishap in the home. A pin had been left in his freshly laundered shirt.

“There isn’t a living soul in the whole world, physician or layman, will believe such a thing could have been murder. But you will know better, Inspector Burke, you will know better after what I have told you today.

“Take my affidavit out of your safe, go up there, and arrest her. Force the issue through, so that she has to stand trial for it. Probably she will never be convicted. That doesn’t matter. The thing will be brought out into the open, aired before the whole world. His name will be dragged into it. Convicted or acquitted, I will have succeeded in what I set out to do. She cannot marry him nor go near him, after I am gone, without branding herself a murderess in the eyes of the whole world.”

“So that’s it,” I said softly. What a revenge.

“That’s it. He can’t have her and she can’t have him. Unless they are willing to go through a living hell, become outcasts, end by hating one another. In which case they have lost one another anyway. I am a Prince of Iveria. What once belonged to me I give up to no other man.”

He’d said his say and he had no more to say. He stood up and stretched out his hand to me.

“Good-bye, Inspector Burke. We shall probably not see one another again. Your job is to punish murder. See that you don’t fail to. You’ll do what I’ve asked you to?”

What could I do? Go up there and arrest her, to prevent it? On what charge? Wearing a bracelet with a catch that needed repairing? Playing with a pet cat in the same room he happened to be in? True, he was almost seeking the thing instead of trying to ward it off. But I couldn’t compel him to move out of his own home, if he didn’t want to. If murder was committed, even though he made no move to avoid it, even though he met it halfway, that didn’t make it any the less murder.

He kept looking at me, waiting for my answer.

I nodded gloomily at last, almost against my will. “I’ll do — whatever the situation calls for.”

He turned and went slowly out through the doorway with the aid of his cane, stiffly erect, just leaning a little sidewise. I never saw him alive again.

It came quicker than I’d expected it to. Too quickly for me to be able to do anything to prevent it. I’d intended paying a visit up there in person, trying to introduce myself into the establishment in some way, to see if I couldn’t size up the situation at first hand, form my own conclusions. He hadn’t given me any physical evidence, remember, that she was attempting to murder him, only oral. All right, granting that he couldn’t give me physical evidence, the very nature of the set-up forbade it, he still hadn’t convinced me a hundred percent. My own eyes and ears would have helped. But before I had a chance, it was already too late, the thing was over.

The second day after his visit, at nine in the morning, just after I’d gotten in to headquarters, I was hailed. “Inspector Burke, you’re wanted on the phone.”

I picked it up and a woman’s voice, cool and crisp as lettuce, said, “Inspector Burke, this is the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital at Eastport. We have a patient here, the Prince of Iveria, who would like to speak to you.”

I waited, squeezing the life out of the thing. There were vague preparatory sounds at the other end. He must have been very weak already. I could hardly hear him at first. Just a raspy breathing sound, like dry leaves rustling around in the wind. They must have been holding him up to the phone. I said, “I can’t hear you!”

Then he got words through. Four of them. “Burke? This is it.”

I said, “Hello! Hello!” He’d hung up.

I called right back. I couldn’t get him again. Just got the hospital switchboard. They wouldn’t clear the call. The patient was in no condition to speak further to anyone, they told me. He was — dying.

“You’ve got to put me through to him again! He was just on the line, so how can an extra thirty seconds hurt?”

Another wait. The hospital operator came back again. “The patient says — there is nothing further to be said.” Click.

If ever a man embraced death willingly, you might say exultantly, it was he.

I grabbed my hat, I grabbed a cab, and I went straight out there to the hospital myself, then and there. Again the switchboard operator down on the main floor blocked me. She plugged, plugged out again. “Sorry, no one can go up. The Prince of Iveria is in a coma — no longer conscious — sinking fast. I’m afraid there’s not much hope left.”

That cooled me off. If he couldn’t talk, there wasn’t much use going up. I said, “I’ll wait,” and hung around down there in the lobby for the next two hours, having her ring up at intervals to find out. There was always a chance he might rally. What I wanted to hear from him was: had she done it or hadn’t she. True, the implication of “This is it,” was she had; he’d warned me that was all he was going to say when the time came, but I had to have more than that. Probably the only material witness there would ever be against her was slipping through my fingers. I didn’t have a nail intact left on my ten fingers, the marble flooring on my side of the reception foyer was swimming with cigarette butts, by the time the two hours were up. I must have driven the poor switchboard girl half-crazy.

Twice, while I was waiting, I saw rather husky-looking individuals step out of the elevator. They were both too hale-looking to be hospital cases themselves. One was counting over a small wad of bills, the second one hitching at his sleeve as though his arm were tender. Without knowing for sure, I had a good hunch they were donors who had been called on to infuse their blood into him.

The operator tried his floor once more, but he was still unconscious so it looked as though it hadn’t helped. Even my badge wouldn’t have gotten me up — this was a hospital after all — but I didn’t want to use it, in any event.

At ten to two that afternoon the elevator door opened and she came out — alone. I saw her for the first time. I knew it must be she. He’d said she was the most beautiful girl in Europe or America. He needn’t have left out Asia or Africa. She was the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen anywhere in my life. The sort of a face that goes with wings and a halo. She was all in black, but not the black of mourning — yet — the black of fashion. She wasn’t crying, just looking down at the floor as if she had a lot to think about. So at least she was no hypocrite, I gave her that much.

As she moved through the foyer the nurse at the switchboard followed her with her eyes, a pair of question marks in them that couldn’t be ignored. She — Iveria’s wife — felt their insistence finally, looked over at her, nodded subduedly, with a sort of calm sadness. About the same degree of melancholy introspection that would go with the withering away of a pet plant in one’s garden, say, or the receipt of bad news from one’s stockbroker.

So he’d died.

I didn’t accost her, didn’t do anything about it right then. She wasn’t some fly-by-night roadhouse hostess that you grab while the grabbing’s good; she would always be where I could reach her. The patrimony of the House of Iveria, immovably fixed in the ground in mines, farms, forests, castles, would see to that. If she’d done it, plenty of time. If she hadn’t, even more time than plenty.

She went on out through the revolving door to a car waiting for her outside. Nobody else was in it but the driver. It skimmed away like a bolt of satin being unrolled along the asphalt.

The switchboard operator turned to me, and whispered unnecessarily, “He’s dead.”

It was up to me now, I was on my own. All I had was the valueless memory of a conversation and an almost equally valueless affidavit, deposed before the event itself. And my own eyes and ears and good judgment, for whatever they were worth.

There had been a pyramidal hierarchy of medical experience in attendance on him, as was to be expected, but I didn’t bother with the lower strata, took a short-cut straight to the apex, and singled out the topmost man. I did it right then and there, as soon as I’d seen her leave the hospital.

His name was Drake, and he’d treated everyone prominent who’d ever had it, which meant he got about one patient every ten years. And could live nicely on it, at that, to give you a rough idea.

I found him in some sort of a small, pleasant retiring-room reserved for the doctors on the hospital staff — it was a private institution after all — on the same floor Iveria had just died on, but well-insulated from the hospital activities around it. He was having a glass of champagne and bitters and smoking a Turkish cigarette, to help him forget the long-drawn-out death scene he’d just attended. A radio, tuned down almost to the point of inaudibility, was whispering away.

I didn’t make the mistake of thinking this was heartlessness. I could tell it wasn’t, just by looking at him. He had a sensitive face, and his hands were a little shaky. The loss of the patient had affected him, either professionally or personally or both.

He thought I was a reporter at first, and wasn’t having any. “Please don’t bother me right now. They’ll give you all the necessary details down at the information desk.” Then when he understood I was police, he still couldn’t understand why there should be any police interest in the case. Which didn’t surprise me. Whatever the thing was, I had expected it to look natural, Iveria had warned me it would, so natural I might never be able to break it down.

I didn’t give him an inkling what my real purpose was. “This isn’t police interest in the usual sense,” I glibly explained. “His Highness took me into his confidence shortly before this happened, asked me to have certain personal matters carried out for him in case of his death, that’s my only interest.”

That cleared away the obstructions. “Wait a minute, is your name Burke?” He put down his champagne glass alertly.

“That’s right.”

“He left a message for you. He revived for a moment or two, shortly before the end, whispered something to us. The nurse and I jotted it down.” He handed me a penciled scrap of paper. “I don’t know whether we got it right or not, it was very hard to hear him—”

It said on it: “Burke. Don’t fail me. This is a job for you.”

Which was a covert way of saying murder. “Yes, you got it right,” I assented gloomily and put it in my pocket. “Was his wife present when he whispered this?”

“Not in the room itself, in the outside room.”

“Did she see it afterwards?”

“No. He muttered something that sounded like ‘Nobody but him,’ so we took that to mean he didn’t want anyone but you to see it.”

“That’s right, he didn’t.”

“Sit down. Have some?” I shook my head. “Swell fellow, wasn’t he? Practically doomed from the beginning, though. They always are with that. I tried five transfusions, and I even tried this new cobra-venom treatment. Minute doses, of course. Very efficacious in some cases. Couldn’t stop the flow this time, though. You see, that’s the worst part of the hellish thing. It’s progressive. Each time they’re less able to resist than the time before. He was too weak by this time to really be pulled through—”

He’d been under a strain, and he was going to work it off in garrulousness, I could see, if I didn’t stop him; so I stopped him. I wasn’t interested in the medical aspects of the case, anyway. There was only one thing I wanted. “What brought it on this time?”

“The lesions were all over his forehead and scalp. An unfortunate chain of trivialities led to an accident. They occupied adjoining bedrooms, you know. The communicating door was faced with a large pier glass, a mirror panel. There was a reading chair in Iveria’s room with a large, bulky hassock to go with it, on which he habitually rested his feet. There was a bedside light, which should have cast enough light to avoid what happened. At any rate, he was awakened from a sound sleep by his wife’s voice crying out a name; evidently she was being troubled by a bad dream. There was such terror and grief in her voice, however, that he could not be sure it was just that and not possibly an intruder. He seized a small revolver he habitually kept bedded under his pillow, drew the chain pull of the bedside light. It refused to go on, the bulb had evidently burned itself out unnoticed since the last time it had been in use. The switch controlling the main overhead lights was at the opposite side of the room, far out of reach. He therefore jumped up without any lights, made for the mirror door by his sense of direction alone, gun in hand. The reading chair and hassock should have been far offside. The chair still was; the hassock had become misplaced, was directly in his path. It threw him. There was not enough space between it and the mirror-faced door to give the length of his prostrate body clearance. His forehead struck the mirror, shattered it; it was only a thin sheeting after all.

“It would have been a serious accident with anyone. It would not have been a fatal accident with anyone else. None of the numerous little gashes were deep enough to require stitches. But he and his wife both knew what it meant, they didn’t waste any time. She telephoned me in Montreal where I was attending a medical convention, and I chartered a plane and flew right back. But I doubt that I could have saved him even if I had been right in the same room with him when it happened. I had them remove him to the hospital and summon donors before I even started down. I gave him the first transfusion ten minutes after I arrived, but he failed to rally, continued sinking steadily—”

I wasn’t interested in the rest, only in what the original “mishap,” the starting point, had been. I thanked him and I left. This was going to be a tricky thing to sift to the bottom of, if there ever was one. Acutely perceptive? You needed to be a magnetized divining rod to know what to do!

I opened the safe and read over his affidavit before I went out there to tackle her. The affidavit didn’t bring anything new to bear on the case, simply restated what he had said to me that day in the office, only at greater length and in more detail. The incident of the loosened windshield was there, the cat incident, and several others that he hadn’t told me at the time.

...I, therefore, in view of the above, solemnly accuse my wife, Marilyn Reid d’Iveria, of having at various times sought to cause my death, by means of the affliction known to her to be visited upon me, and of continuing to seek to do so at the time this deposition is taken, and charge the authorities and all concerned that in case of my death occurring at any time hereafter during her continued presence in my house and proximity to me, to apprehend and detain the said Marilyn Reid d’Iveria with a view to inquiring into and ascertaining her responsibility and guilt for the aforesaid death, and of bringing just punishment upon her.

Arnoldo Amadeo Manfredo d’Iveria

With that final postscript tacked onto it, it was going to be damned effective. Plenty enough to arrest her on, book her for suspicion of murder, and hold her for trial. What went on after that, in the courtroom, was none of my business. I was a detective, not a lawyer.

I put it in my pocket and left to interview the party of the second part — the murderess.

He’d been buried in the morning — privately — and I got out there about five that same afternoon. There was no question of an arrest yet, not on this first visit anyway, so I didn’t bother looking up the locals, even though I was out of jurisdiction here. She could slam the door in my face, if she wanted. She wouldn’t, if she was smart. It wouldn’t help her case any.

It was a much smaller place than I’d expected it to be. White stucco or sandstone or something. I’m not up on those things. I turned in along the driveway on foot. It was dusk by now, and a couple of the ground-floor windows around on the side were lighted, the rest of the house was blacked-out.

There was a high-powered knee-high foreign car outside the entrance. It wasn’t the one she had driven away from the hospital in. It looked like the kind of a job that would belong to a professional auto racer — if he could afford it. I whistled soundlessly, thought: “Whew! Already?” It was almost too good to be true. Maybe this case wasn’t going to be such a tough baby to crack after all. One sure thing, she was writing herself up a bad press, if things ever got as far as a jury, by doing this sort of thing. They should have at least let Iveria cool off overnight before they got together.

It was probably the sight of the car that kept me from ringing for admittance right away, sent me on a little cursory scouting expedition around to the side those lighted windows were on. She’d probably be sitting there all in black trying to look sorrowful, with him holding her hand trying to look consoling, and each one of them knowing the other was a damn liar.

When I got in line with them. I moved in close enough for what was behind the gauze, or whatever it was backing them, to come into focus. Just close enough, no closer. To try and take a little of the ignominy out of snooping like that, I suppose. Then I stood stock-still there on the well-kept lawn. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

It was her, all right. She was dancing around the room in there, without a partner. The way you do when you’re overjoyed, can’t contain yourself. Arms stretched out wide, in a gesture of release, waltzing, or at least swaying around. She was in a light tan dress, and it billowed out all around her as she went.

He was sitting there, watching her. I got my first look at him. He was dark haired and broad-shouldered, that was about all I could tell from out where I was. I couldn’t see much to him, just something to hang a Stetson on. Iveria’s words came back to me. “What is there about boxers, plane pilots, auto racers, that makes women lose their heads?” He was holding his head cocked at a slight angle, with an air of proud ownership, as if to say, “Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she cute?” To which my own commentary would have been, “She’s the cutest little murderess I’ve seen in an age.”

If this was how she was the very afternoon of the day he’d been buried, I couldn’t help wondering what she would have been like a week — or a month — afterwards. Probably eating picnic lunches on his grave. Why, there was no difficulty about this case, it was a pushover. I was only sorry I hadn’t brought out a warrant with me, made arrangements with the Eastport locals, and gotten it over with then and there. Whether the crime could ever be proven or not was beside the point. She was begging for arrest if anyone ever was, just on grounds of public decency.

I strode around to the front and rang. Peremptorily. A maid opened the door. I said, “I want to see the princess, or whatever she calls herself.”

She’d received her orders ahead of time. “She’s not at home to anyone—”

I felt like saying, “No, except to Barney Oldfield, Jr., in there.” Instead I elbowed her aside without another word and walked down the hall to where they were. The open doorway of the room cut an orange notch across the corridor, and I turned right at it.

She’d just finished her solo dancing. She’d come to a stop before him, but her filmy tan skirt was still swinging around from before. She was leaning her face down toward him, a hand resting on either arm of his chair. Their lips were only inches apart, and in another minute—

I just stood there taking it in. Did I say she was beautiful, before? Double it in spades, and you’re still short-suited. I couldn’t understand why nature should go to town so, all over one face, and let the others all go hang.

She became aware of me, shot up and back like something released from a bowstring. He reared his head and turned and looked at me, around the back of his chair. She said, “Who’re you?” with a sort of unintentional matter-of-factness, that came from not raising her voice high enough to suit the situation.

“Sorry to intrude,” I said. “I’ve come out here to see you. You’re d’Iveria’s widow, I believe?” I eyed the light tan dress she had on, meaningfully.

“Yes, but people don’t just walk in here—” She made an abortive gesture toward some service pushbutton or other.

“That won’t do any good,” I said. “I came here to have a talk with you, and I’m having it.”

The Harrison fellow got up at this point, ready to take part in the matter. He was taller than I’d thought. He must have had a hard time tucking away those legs under a racing car hood. He was just a kid, really. I mean, a kid of about twenty-seven. He was pretty clean-cut looking, too, for a... well, call it home wrecker or whatever you want. I was surprised. He looked like he drank milk with his meals, and when he wanted to paint the town red, went to a movie with a bag of salted peanuts in his pocket.

He started toward me, biting off something about, “You’ll have the talk when she’s ready, and not when you feel like it—”

Suddenly, something made her change her mind. Some second look at me, or more likely, some unspoken thought in her own mind. She wanted the talk right away, it couldn’t come fast enough. But without him; she didn’t want him to have any part in it, you could see that. Her arm shot out before him, barring his way. “Don’t, Streak,” she said. “I think I know what this is. You go now, will you? Call me later.” And then to me, almost pleadingly. “It’s myself you want to speak to, isn’t it? Not the two of us. It’s all right if — if he goes now, isn’t it?”

“Yourself’ll do nicely,” I said ominously.

Harrison, who wasn’t very alert at grasping nuances (a sign of honesty, they say), couldn’t get off anything better than: “Well, but—”

She went into high gear, edging and propelling him toward the room door. She kept throwing me appealing looks, as if begging me to keep quiet just a minute longer, until she could get him out of the way. At least, that was the way I translated them; I couldn’t be sure. Meanwhile she was almost crowding him out into the hall before her, saying disconnectedly, “You go now, I know what this is. It’s all right, it’s nothing. Call me later. About ten?”

The only way I could figure it was, either she wanted to hang onto his good opinion of her as long as she could, or she wanted to keep him in the clear and, ostrich-like, thought that by getting him out of here that would do it, or she thought she could handle me better if he wasn’t around to cramp her style. One thing was plain, she already knew what was coming up. And if she wasn’t guilty, how the hell could she have known? How should such an idea ever enter her head?

I let him go. It made the issue more clear-cut just to deal with her alone. He hadn’t been in the picture at all since the windshield incident, according to d’Iveria’s own affidavit. I could always get him later, anyway.

The last thing I heard her say, when she got him as far as the front door, was, “Get home all right. Don’t drive too fast. Streak, I’m always so worried about those intersections along the way.” That was sure love, to be able to think of such a thing at such a time. Well, I suppose even murderesses love someone.

She didn’t come right back to the room. She called, “I’ll be right with you, Officer!” and then ran up the stairs before I could get out there and stop her. By the time I did, she was already making the return trip down again. She hadn’t been up there long enough to do any damage. She was holding some sort of small black folder in her hand. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, except that it was no weapon of any sort.

We went back into the room where they had been originally. She was breathing rapidly from the energy she’d used just now in maneuvering him to the door and then running the stairs — or maybe it was from some other cause entirely, I don’t know. People’s breathing quickens from fear, too.

She began with beautiful directness. “I know what you’re going to say. I wanted to get him out of here before you said it. He would have come to blows with you, and gotten in trouble. I can handle it more tactfully. You’re going to say I killed Arnold, aren’t you? You’re the police, aren’t you? Only a detective would crash into a room like you did just now. I suppose you looked through the windows first and saw me dancing, because I was happy he was gone. Well, if you didn’t, that’s what I was doing just before you got here, so now you know anyway. May I see your credentials?”

I showed her my badge.

“I knew he was going to do this to me,” she said. “Yes, I’m not wearing black. Yes, I’m glad he’s gone; like a prisoner is when his term is up.” She had opened the little black folder while she was speaking, torn out a light blue tab. She was writing something on it. “Do you mind giving me your name?” she said, without looking up.

“The name is Nothing-doing-on-that-stuff.” I hitched the light blue tab out from under the midget gold fountain pen she had point-down on it, so that the last zero — there were three after the “1” — streaked off in a long diagonal ink line across the face of it. “Keep it up,” I said. “You’re saving some lawyer-guy lots of hard work.” I put it in my pocket; the blank check had Iveria’s name printed across one edge in lieu of written endorsement, so it was as incriminating as if she’d signed it.

“Then there’s nothing I can do or say that will — avert this thing, this thing that he wanted to happen to me?”

“Not along those lines. What you can do and say, for the present, is sit down quietly a minute and answer a question or two about your husband’s death. Would you mind giving me the exact circumstances, in your own words?”

She calmed herself with a visible effort, sat down, lit a cigarette and then forgot to smoke it. “I was asleep—”

“Do you recall having an unpleasant dream that caused you to cry out?”

She smiled. “One often doesn’t, even if one did. The unpleasant dream, in my case, was during my waking hours, you see—”

(“Trying to gain my sympathy,” I thought warily. “That has nothing to do with it. Please go on.”

“I heard a breakage sound that waked me, I lit the light, I saw the communicating door move slowly inward and his hand trail after it on the knob, to gain my help. It opened inward, and he kept it locked on his side—” Her eyelids dropped. “—as if afraid of me at night. I found him attempting to pick himself up, in a welter of glass shards. I saw a gun there on the floor behind him that had spiraled from his hand when he fell. I took it into my room and hid it in my dressing table—”

“Why?”

“We both knew he was doomed, instantly. I was afraid, to avoid the pain, the lingering death, that was a certainty, he would take a quicker way out.”

(“Which would not look quite so much like an accident?” I addressed her silently.) “That’s the whole sum and substance of the matter?”

“That’s the whole sum and substance.”

“May I see this room it happened in?”

“Of course.”

I followed her up the stairs. “The local authorities have already examined it?”

“The local authorities have already examined it.”

I looked at her. Meaning, “You didn’t have much trouble convincing them, did you?” She understood the look, she dropped her eyes.

The only vestiges remaining of the “accident” were the spokes of emptiness slashed out of the mirror panel, in sun-ray formation. His head had struck it low; the upper two-thirds were still intact. The inclined reading chair was far out of the way, a good two to three yards offside. The hassock, now, sat directly before it, where it belonged. “Is this the habitual position of this chair?” But I didn’t really have to ask her that. The carpet was a soft plush that showed every mark; the chair had stood there a long time, its four supports had etched deep, ineradicable indentations into the nap where it now was. This was a mark against, not for, her. How could a bulky thing like that hassock travel three yards out from where it belonged — unaided?

I asked her that. I said I wondered.

“I don’t know,” she said with an air of resigned hopelessness. “Unless he may have kicked it away from him, in getting up from the chair to go to bed.”

I sat down in it, arched my legs to the hassock. I had to try it three times, myself, before I could land it all the way out in a line with the mirror door. And I had stronger leg muscles than he; he’d had to walk with a cane. Still, he could have done it, in a burst of peevishness or boredom.

I looked the bedside light over next. It was just a stick with a bulb screwed in at the top and a shade clamped over that. I hitched the chain pull; the bulb stayed dark.

“How is it he would not have noticed this bulb was defective before getting into bed?” I wondered aloud for her benefit. “Isn’t that what bedside lights are for, to be left on until the last?” The wall switch controlling the overheads was all the way across the room, beside the door leading out to the hall.

“I don’t know, maybe he did,” she shrugged with that same listless manner as before. “What would he want a new bulb for at that hour, if he was on the point of retiring for the night? He would have had to go downstairs for it himself, the help were all in bed by then. Or perhaps it was still in working order up to the time he turned it off. Bulbs have been known to expire passively between the time they were last used and the next time they are turned on.”

I removed the clamped shade. I tested the pear-shaped thing gingerly. It vibrated slightly beneath my fingertips, I thought. I gave it a turn or two to the right. It responded. There should have been no give there, if it was fastened as tightly into the socket as it would go. Brilliant light suddenly flooded it.

The bulb was in perfectly good condition; it had simply been given a half-turn or two to the left, sufficient to break the current.

I looked at her, keeping my hand still in it for as long as I could stand the increasing heat. Her eyes had dropped long before then.

“You say the communicating door was kept locked. Was the outside-door, to the hall, also kept locked by your husband, do you know?”

“I believe it was,” she said lifelessly. “I believe the butler, in whom my husband had the greatest confidence, used a special key to let himself in the mornings. We were — rather a strange household.”

I noticed an old-fashioned bell pull there by the bed. I reached for it. She stopped me with a quick little gesture. “I can give you the answer to what you are about to ask him, right now, myself; it will save time. He forgot his key that night, left it standing in the outside lock of the door, after he had concluded his duties for the night and left my husband. I noticed it there myself and returned it to him the next day.”

“Then anyone else in the house could—”

She wouldn’t let me finish. “Yes, anyone else in the house could have entered my husband’s room after he had gone to sleep. To do what? Give a bulb a half-turn so it wouldn’t light? Shift a hassock out of place? Don’t you think that would have been a foolish misuse of such an opportunity?”

“No. I don’t!” I crackled at her. I couldn’t have made it more emphatic if I’d tried. “If a knife had been left sticking in him, or a fine wire tightened around his throat, that would have been murder. But he died of an ‘accident.’ One little mishap led to another, as inevitably as in a Rube Goldberg freak invention.” I drove the point home viciously. “You and I are agreed on that, he died of an ‘accident’!” I dropped my voice. “And I’m here to find out who caused it.”

She twined and untwined her fingers a few times. “And I cannot defend myself,” she shuddered. “It is not that the charge is so hard to prove; it is that it’s so hard to disprove. This is what he intended to happen. I saw the smile on his face, even when I first found him lying there in the litter of glass. As if to say, ‘This time I’ve got you.’ I beg of you to do this much at least. Send for the maid that cleans this room. Don’t ask her any questions about the bedside light, just test her. Just — well, let me do it, may I?”

I nodded, more on guard than ever. She hitched the bellpull a certain number of times, had me replace the lampshade, lit a cigarette and flicked ashes over it.

Within a few minutes a maid appeared, not the same one who had admitted me to the house originally. “Will you dust off this little bedside light?” Iveria’s wife said casually. “Don’t take extra pains, just do it as you would ordinarily.” I noticed her wrists were both trembling slightly.

The girl took a cloth from her waistband, took a swipe around the stick part. Then she began to swivel the cloth around the shade. She was left-handed, she moved the cloth from right to left. Not only that, but she held the little appliance by the stick to steady it, so that the shade was not held fast at all, began to slip unnoticeably around a little under her ministrations. And the wire cleats that gripped the bulb moved with it of course, turning the bulb a little in its socket.

“That will do.” The girl stepped back. Iveria’s wife said to me, “Try it now.”

I jerked the chain pull. The bulb failed to light up.

She looked at me animatedly, hopefully.

“Very interesting,” I said dryly. “You were pretty sure it would happen just that way, though, weren’t you?”

I saw the hopefulness ebb out of her face little by little; her former listless resignation came back. “Oh, I see,” she said quietly, “I’m supposed to have rehearsed her to do it just that way—” She stood up, smiling wanly. “Will you excuse me for a moment? You’ll want to question her alone, I’m sure. And even if she tells you I haven’t coached her about this lamp at all, you won’t believe I didn’t anyway. There isn’t really anything I can do or say. Arnold has won; he won in life, and now he’s won in death.”

She opened the marred mirror panel, stepped through to her own room, closed it behind her.

I said to the maid, “Do you always dust off lamps that vigorously?”

She looked undecided for a moment, finally snickered, confessed, “Only when someone’s around to see. When no one’s around—” She flicked the edge of her cloth at the lampshade and back to show me.

“Tell Mrs. Iveria I’d like to see her again, if she doesn’t mind.” The girl opened the door, went in there after her, closed it again.

I creased my eyes dissatisfiedly to myself. Every new fact that appeared on one side of the ledger, brought its corollary with it on the opposite side. To a chartered accountant it might have been heaven, to a detective it was hell.

I wondered why she was taking so long to come out. I crossed to the mirror, threw it open without waiting, even though it led to a lady’s room. You couldn’t knock on the thing any more without risking bringing the rest of the glass down out of its frame.

I didn’t see them for a minute; they were over on the side of the room screened by the door, engaged in a breathless, utterly silent, almost motionless hand-to-hand deadlock over a winking little gun — I suppose the one she had taken from him the night of the accident.

I jumped in at them, caught the wrist holding it, turned the skin cruelly around. She dropped it and I caught it in my open palm. The maid stepped back, began to snivel.

I said, “Why didn’t you call me, you little fool!”

“I did call you,” she snuffled. “Pity you wouldn’t come in and find out what was the matter!”

I pocketed the revolver, said to the girl, “We don’t need you any more.” And to Iveria’s wife, “Come on downstairs.” She followed me, white as a ghost but calm now once more.

“Do we go now?” she asked at the foot of the stairs.

“You don’t suppose I’m going to leave you behind out here, after what you just tried to do.”

“That was a momentary impulse. It won’t happen again. It wouldn’t be fair to Streak, I see that now. It would be giving Arnold his victory too cheaply.”

We’d gone back to the room in which I’d first spoken to her.

“Sit down,” I said curtly. “Give yourself time to quiet down first.”

She looked at me hopelessly. “Is there anything I can do or say that will make you believe me? I had nothing to do with Arnold’s death.”

I didn’t answer — which was answer enough.

“I don’t suppose you believe that, do you?” I didn’t answer. “You’re positive that I meant to kill Arnold, aren’t you?” I didn’t answer. “He saw to it that you would be. He went to you and told you the story, didn’t he? Told it his way.”

I didn’t see any point in denying that; it was self-evident, by the mere fact of my being here. “Yes, he did.”

She let her head slowly droop forward, as if in admission of irretrievable defeat. But then she raised it again a moment afterwards, refusing the admission. “May I have the same privilege? May I tell the same story my way?”

“You’re going to have that privilege anyway, when the time comes.”

“But don’t you see it’ll be too late by then? Don’t you see this is a special case? The mere accusation in itself is tantamount to a conviction. One wisp of smoke, and the damage has been done. Streak and I can never live it down again — not if every court in the land finds insufficient evidence to convict us. That’s what he wanted, don’t you see? To blast the two of us—”

“But I’m just a detective; I’m not a judge or State’s attorney—”

“But he only told it to you, no one else at the time—”

This did get a rise out of me. “How do you know that?” I said sharply.

“Dr. Drake showed me the dying message he had them take down; it had your name on it — ‘Burke’ — it was addressed to you personally, no one else. It was easy to see he’d made you the sole repository of his confidences — until the time came to shout the charges from the roof tops. The evidence was too nebulous, there was no other way in which to do it.”

“Tell it, then,” I assented.

She didn’t thank me or brighten up; she seemed to know it would be hopeless ahead of time. She smiled wanly. “I’m sure the external details are going to be the same. He was far too clever to have changed them. He selected and presented each and every one of them so that I cannot deny them — on a witness stand for instance — unless I perjure myself. It’s their inner meaning — or rather, the slam of the story — that he distorted.”

I just sat and waited, noncommittal. I’d been through this once before. Now I was going to get it a second time. But make no mistake, I wanted to hear it. Just to see what she could do with it.

“I met Arnold in St. Moritz, and I felt vaguely sorry for him. Pity is a dangerous thing, you so often mistake it for love. No one told me what was the matter with him.”

Here was the first discrepancy. He’d said she knew ahead of time. But he’d said he had documents to prove it.

“He proposed to me by letter, from hotel to hotel — although we were both at the same resort. He used the word ‘hemophilia’ in one of them, said he knew he had no right to ask me to be his wife — I’m not a medical student. I’d never heard the word before. I thought it was some minor thing, like low blood pressure or anemia. I felt the matter was too confidential to ask anyone; after all, the letter was a declaration of love. I wrote back, using the strange word myself; I said it didn’t matter, I thought enough of him to marry him whether he was in good health or poor health.

“By the time I actually found out, it was too late. We’d already been married eight months. I stick to my bargains; I didn’t welsh. I was married to a ghost. That was all right. But then I met Streak and — I found out my heart was still single. I went to Arnold and I said. ‘Now let me go.’ He just smiled. And then I saw I hadn’t married any ghost, I’d married a devil.

“You don’t know what torture really is, the mental kind. You may have beaten up suspects at times. You don’t know what it is to have someone hiss at you three times a day: ‘You wish I was dead, don’t you?’ Until finally you do wish they were dead.

“We didn’t want a cheap undercover affair. If that was all we’d wanted, it could have been arranged. Streak was born decent, and so was I. He wanted to be my husband and I wanted to be his wife. We were meant for each other, and this ghost had to be in the way, this specter.

“Finally I couldn’t stand it any more. I said, ‘It would be so easy: why should we go on letting him do this to us?’ Streak said. ‘Don’t talk that way. We don’t want to get together by building a bridge over someone’s dead body.’ Streak’s not a murderer. Streak’s out of this entirely.”

Which didn’t prove a thing, except how much she loved him.

“They say the female of the species is more deadly than the male. I toyed with the idea. I let it grow on me. Finally it took hold, became decision. Arnold wouldn’t give me a chance to change my mind, he kept it at boiling point himself.

“Streak came around in his car, to see if he couldn’t win Arnold over by having a man-to-man talk with him alone. I knew he didn’t have a chance. I knew what a venomous, diseased mind he was up against. I was the one loosened the clamps on that windshield, with a little screwdriver, while they were both inside the house. But it missed fire.

“I tried in one or two other ways. And then suddenly I came back to my senses. I saw what it was I’d been trying to do all those weeks and months. Take away someone’s life. Murder. No matter what a fiend he was, no matter how he’d made us suffer, I saw that that was no solution. I’d only have it on my conscience forever after. Dead, he would keep me and Streak apart far more effectively than he had when alive.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? When I wanted to kill him, nothing I tried would work. Then suddenly, after I’d stopped trying, he goes off—” She snapped her thumbnail, “like that!”

I said, “D’you realize what you’ve just been saying? What you’ve just admitted? That you actually did try to murder him several times without succeeding. And now you want me to believe that this last time, that finally did succeed, it wasn’t you but an accident!”

“Yes, you’ve got to — because it’s true! I could have denied that I ever had such an idea altogether. But I don’t want to mix part truth and part falsehood. What I’ve told you is all truth from beginning to end, and I want you to believe it. I did intend killing him. I did try; then I changed my mind, gave up the idea, and an accident for which I was not responsible took his life.

“All right, now you’ve heard my side of it, as well as his. If you want me to go with you, I’m ready to go with you. Only think well what you’re doing, because once the damage is done, there’s no undoing it.”

“Suppose I go back to town now without doing anything — for the present. Say just overnight. What will you do?”

“Wait here — hoping, praying a little, maybe — until I hear from you.”

“How do I know that?”

“Where can I go? Running away won’t help; it’ll just fasten guilt on me. It’ll just bring on the ignominy he wanted Streak and me to suffer, all the faster. If we were going to run away now, we could have run away while he was still alive.”

She was right about that, of course. I speared my finger at her. “Then wait here in this house until you hear from me. Consider yourself in the custody of your own conscience. I’m going back to town now, alone. I want to think this whole thing out — by myself, away from here. I can’t think clearly when I’m this close to you. You’re very beautiful, you know. I’m a human being, I’m capable of making a mistake, and I don’t want to make a mistake. As undeniably as you arc beautiful. Iveria is just as undeniably dead.”

“It’s going to be awful,” she said, “to have it hang suspended over my head like that. Will it be very long before I know?”

“As soon as I know myself; sometime tomorrow maybe. Don’t leave the house. If the doorbell rings, and you see me standing out there — you’ll know I’ve come to take you back to face a charge of murder. If the telephone rings — that means you’re in the clear, it’s over, you can forget all about it.”

Crawley looked in at me at midnight on his way out, said. “What’s the matter, haven’t you any home?”

I motioned him on his way. “I’m trying to think something out,” I said. “I’m going to sit here if it takes all night.”

I had the deposition on the table in front of me, and the cigarette case, and the deathbed note he’d left for me. It all balanced so damnably even, his side and hers. Check and double-check. Which was the true one, which the false?

The crux of the whole thing was that final incident. That was where my dilemma lay. If it was murder, Iveria’s death demanded reparation. If it was an accident, then it proved him the devil she claimed him to be, for he himself must certainly have known it to be an accident, yet before he died he deliberately phoned me from the hospital and dictated that deathbed message emphasizing that it was murder, in order to fasten the guilt on her inextricably, wreak a lifelong revenge on her in that way after he was gone.

I reviewed the whole case from start to finish. He had walked in to us at headquarters and left an affidavit in my hands telling me he expected his wife to kill him, in the guise of a trivial accident; telling me he would say “This is it” when it happened, if she had. He’d had a trivial accident and he’d said “This is it” before he died. I went out to question her and I found her dancing for joy in the presence of the man she loved. She admitted she had tried to kill Iveria several times in the past. She denied she had tried to kill him this last time. But — she had tried to bribe me not to pursue the investigation any further. What was the evidence? A bedside bulb loosened a little in its socket so it wouldn’t light, a hassock misplaced from where it belonged.

She had left me, as if overwhelmed by this gossamer evidence, that was no evidence at all. She didn’t come back. I sent the maid after her. I went in there and I found the two of them grappling in desperate silence over a gun she had tried to use on herself. As a guilty person who felt that she had been found out might have. Or an innocent person who despaired of ever satisfactorily clearing herself. I calmed her down, listened to her side of the story, and finally left to think it over alone, telling her I would let her know my decision by coming back for her (guilty) or telephoning (exonerated).

And here I was.

And I’d finally reached one. Even though the scales remained as evenly balanced and counterbalanced as ever, to the last hairbreadth milligram. One little grain more had fallen on one side than on the other, I found when I’d concluded my review.

In the cold, early daylight peering into the office I picked up the phone and asked the sleepy headquarters operator to get me the number of the Iveria house up there in the country, where she was waiting to know.

I hadn’t heard the maid call out, from that adjoining room, and I had been fully awake. But he claimed he had heard his wife cry out in there, and he was supposedly asleep.

No; he had actually been on his way in there at the time, gun in hand, to take her life, when a combination of unexpected little mischances turned the tables on him.

Fur Jacket

His face got pale, standing at the telephone. He was there by himself, talking to someone. It was late at night, and his voice was low. No one in the room to hear him, no one in the room to see him. He lived alone — now.

His name was Colin Hughes.

The conversation had been going for some time. One-way; he’d been doing the listening, mostly. His face had been strained, uneasy, from the very beginning. But it was pale now, at something that was just said.

“No, don’t,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll make good. I’ll pay. I’ve told you that already. Only, I can’t this minute; I haven’t got that much right now. If you’ll only give me a little more time.”

Then he listened some more. He tried to light a cigarette with one hand, but he was too nervous, he dropped it. His hand was shaking.

“I know you’ve given me plenty of time already,” he faltered. “But if you’ll only give me a little more—”

His forehead ridged and twinkled with sweat along the seams between the ridges.

“I haven’t that much, I tell you,” he pleaded. “Give me a break, give me more time.” His voice had the bends in it. “Where am I going to get it?” He looked around him helplessly.

There was a photograph on the dresser. He’d seen it lots before. He must have. It was his dresser. It was even a little faded, the photograph, so it must have been standing on the dresser for a long time, it must have been left over on it from habit.

It said under it: “To Colin from his loving wife Maureen.” The date was three years ago.

He turned back to the phone again. But only after pregnant minutes. His voice was brisker now. It had juice in it now. The ridges had left his forehead; it was smooth again, like stone.

He said, “How much time can I have?”

Then he said, “No, I’m not still stalling, this is on the level. This is the pay-off. I know how I can get it now.”

Then he listened. Then he said, “Yes, I’m sure of getting it. It’s as good as mine now. I’ve already as good as got it, you might say, but I need time to collect it. A certain amount of time. Restrictions covering it. How much can I have?”

The party must have believed him. The ring of his voice must have sold it. The answer must have been a good one. Something he liked hearing. The pallor was all gone now, his color had come up again. Red; which is the color of blood. He was even grinning. So do skulls.

“As long as I’m sure of getting it, I can have as much time as it requires? Well, I am sure.”

He looked over at the photograph again.

“Dead sure.”

He hung up.

He looked over at the photograph some more. He looked at it steadily.

Colin Hughes had stopped in for a minute to see his girl. He didn’t even take his hat off, he told her he wasn’t going to stay. “I just wanted to tell you I’m coming over to see you tomorrow night,” he said to her.

She wasn’t an acutely perceptive type — he didn’t like his girls acutely perceptive — but this struck even her as a little strange.

“But you come over and see me nearly every night,” she said. “Why do you have to come over special the night before to tell me you’ll be here the night after?”

“I just wanted to tell you, that’s all. Have some people here.”

“But you always like it best when we’re by ourselves.”

“This time I feel like having some people around for a change. See that you do it.”

He was looking around the room as though he’d never seen it before.

His eyes stopped one time, as if they’d found something. Then they went on past there again. After a minute he gave his head a hitch back toward that place where they’d stopped.

“How often do you wind that clock?”

“Once every eight days. It’s an eight-day clock.”

“When’s its next winding due?”

“Not for six more days. I did it two days ago.”

After that he didn’t talk any more about it. He had that way of skipping; she never could keep up with him.

“Take a look out, see if I left the lights on, on my car.”

She stepped out into the hall, looked through the glass in the front door. Then when she came back again, he didn’t give her a chance to tell him whether he had left the lights on or not.

“I’m going now,” he said abruptly.

He had her midget radio tucked under his arm; he was winding its aerial wire around it to keep it from trailing.

“Where you taking that?”

“Down to the repair shop; you’ve been saying it needs new tubes.”

“Yeah, but won’t we need it for the party? It plays good enough the way it is.”

“We’ll do without it at the party; we’ll play records or something instead.”

“Who’ll I have?”

“Your sister and her husband, the people next door to them, it don’t much matter who.” Then he added, “Don’t ask that guy Miller, though, from down the street. He’s always looking at his watch, he wants to go home.”

She accompanied him out into the hall. “Don’t forget what I told you now, I’m coming around tomorrow night at eight,” he said.

“I know, you told me that already.”

“At eight, I said.”

“I heard you,” she protested patiently.

He gave her a sort of half-muffed kiss; he’d had her about six weeks already and she was beginning to wear off on him.

She walked to the door with him, and he got in the car and drove away. She came back into the room again, started putting out the lights. As long as he wasn’t going to be around down here, she might as well go up to bed.

Her eyes rested on the clock for a minute in passing.

“That’s funny,” she murmured to herself indifferently. “He wasn’t here a whole hour, he was only here a minute or two. I looked at it just before he got here and I could have sworn it was eight. Now it’s nine already.”

She left it alone. It really didn’t matter to her. When he wasn’t around, she wasn’t going any place, she wasn’t doing anything, so what difference did it make?

She was getting dressed to go out with her husband. She was taking a lot of trouble with her dressing. She always did. She was what they call a well-dressed woman.

And tonight in particular she wanted to look good. She hadn’t seen him in over a year. She hadn’t seen him since that last day in the divorce court, when the final decree was handed down.

Funny he should phone her like that, suddenly, out of nowhere. She’d been glad to hear from him, though. She still had a soft spot left for him, she guessed. He’d remembered it was their anniversary, he said. He’d wondered if she had any objection to seeing him again, going out with him tonight for old times’ sake?

Why not? There hadn’t been any bitterness, any woman trouble between them. It was that most modern of all divorce causes: financial jealousy. She’d begun to make more money than he did, and he couldn’t take it, it got on his nerves. She’d kept going up the scale all the time, while he’d kept going down. Each job she got was a boost, each job he got was a comedown. And between each of his jobs, toward the end, there was a longer and longer wait, while she had to carry him.

All right, let bygones be bygones. One night couldn’t hurt.

She didn’t even mind putting herself out, going all the way out to meet him at that rather out-of-the-way place he’d suggested, instead of having him pick her up here. It was a sort of remote roadhouse, where they’d sometimes gone in their courtship days; sentiment, she supposed, had made him select it tonight. Funny, she’d thought it was no longer in existence, she’d heard it had closed up quite some time ago. But when she’d mentioned that just now, he’d assured her she was mistaken, it was still in operation. Well, he ought to know; he was calling her right from there, he’d said.

She was ready now. She had on black velvet, soft as a kitten’s fur; one of the new wartime evening dresses, to the knees only. There was a silver fox cape on the bed. First she was going to go without it. She didn’t really need it. It was warm tonight.

She got as far as the door, opened it, stepped outside, and was about to close it after her.

Then she changed her mind, went back again, and put the cape on. She didn’t look well-dressed without it. And what was the good of having one if you didn’t wear it? A well-dressed woman doesn’t dress for the weather alone, she dresses mainly for looks.

Now she looked like the finished job, now she was satisfied. And if she was too warm in it, she could take it off in the car; at least she’d have it with her to show.

This time she did leave, for good.

For good was right.

The detective comes into it now. Nothing brilliant or exceptional about him. He worked hard for his thirty-six hundred a year. He never got anything by intuition. He never got anything by brain waves. He only got it by work.

He wasn’t bright even in a general sense. In fact he was dumb, limited, in a rut. He didn’t know anything about hardly anything, except one thing: being a detective. He knew everything there was to know about that. He was a good detective.

His name was Evans.

She was lying dead on a seldom-used road, near a closed-down roadhouse. Her own car was standing not far off. It was easy to see what had happened. She’d got into difficulties with it, stepped incautiously out into the road to try to get help, and something coming along had knocked her down and killed her.

Nothing remarkable about it, except the fact that she was so well-dressed.

Evans went over and looked at her.

“Accident,” one of the men said. “Hit and run.”

Evans took a good long look. Eight years’ worth of a look; that was how long he’d been a detective. Thirty-six hundred dollars’ worth of a look.

“No, it wasn’t,” he said. And that was all he said.

He went away from there and began to work. It wasn’t his job to pick them up. It was just his job to see that they were paid up for.

Within twelve hours he’d already had his first talk with the woman’s husband. That wasn’t anything. A harness cop would have done as much. The woman had been married to this man. She wasn’t at the time of her death. But there was no one else closely related to her. That was all it was.

“You know your former wife is dead?”

“I read it in the papers.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“In the judge’s chambers just about a year ago. The day we were handed down our decree. We shook hands and wished each other luck and that was that.”

“How was she fixed financially?”

“I don’t know. Good, I guess. She had a big department-store job. Vice-president or something.”

The detective became confidential, man to man. “Down there they tell me she was hauling down twenty thousand a year; vice-president of the whole works or something. I suppose you know you were named beneficiary on her insurance.”

The husband pricked up his ears. “No, I didn’t. How much is it for?”

“I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to take that up with them.”

He must have said something the detective didn’t like. The detective backed up instead of going on forward. This was the first time it had happened in the whole conversation.

“Would you give me the dates of your marriage, from when to when. Just for the record.”

“1940 to 1943.”

“The insurance was taken out in 1942. You were married to her at the time. How is it you didn’t know you were the beneficiary?”

“I did know then. You didn’t understand — what I meant — I didn’t know I was still the beneficiary. I thought she’d changed that since.”

“Oh, I see.”

But that must have been something the detective didn’t like. His flow of questioning wasn’t smooth any more. It had jammed.

It was like grit on a railroad track: it can throw a whole train.

The door closed finally.

Colin Hughes mopped his face.

Anyone would, after talking to a detective. There’s something about them. Anyone would.

Hughes’s girl got frightened. She said, “Is he in trouble? What’d he do?”

“No, he isn’t in trouble. He didn’t do anything. Just a checkup. Doesn’t mean anything, don’t let it bother you. He was over here last night with you, that right?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Just the two of you by yourselves?”

“No, we had some others. A party, like.”

“What was it in celebration of?”

She looked blank, as though this hadn’t occurred to her herself, until now. She looked helpless. “I don’t know.”

“When you have a party, isn’t it usually in celebration of something? What was it, somebody’s birthday, a wedding anniversary?”

“No reason. I guess we just felt like it.”

“Well, who got it up?”

She looked helpless again. “I guess it just got itself up.”

“Who was at it?”

“Oh, nobody much. My sister and her husband, the couple next door to them. That’s about all.”

He drifted toward the door. “I may be back,” he said. “But don’t be frightened. I usually forget things I want to ask the first time, and have to come back again and ask them the second time. I’m not very good that way.”

She wasn’t very perceptive. “I suppose he was doing the best he could,” she thought patronizingly, “but he acted like he didn’t know what it was all about. They must take anybody on the detective division these days.”

Hughes’s girl’s sister said, “Oh, from about seven-thirty until about twelve, I guess. She insisted that we come over. We were going to the movies. Tuesday’s our regular night for the movies. And it was the last night for Jean Arthur, too. But we didn’t have the heart to turn her down, she seemed so set on it, so we went over there instead.”

The couple next door to Hughes’s girl’s sister said, “We turned her down the first time she called; Mike didn’t want to go, he’s pretty tired these days from working. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer, so the second time she called we gave in and went.”

He showed up again, so he must have remembered something he’d forgotten to ask her the first time.

“Who suggested having that party? He or you?”

“It was between the both of us, I guess.”

“What time did you call him, about coming over?”

“I didn’t, he just came.”

“But he brought an armful of records in with him, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did!” She beamed, still pleased in retrospect at this mark of attention.

“Then, if you didn’t call him, how’d he know enough to bring records to the party?”

She would have fallen into a bad silence there, but he pulled her out of it, since this wasn’t an unfriendly questioning, so to speak. He forgot, and asked her one of the same questions over.

“Who first spoke of having the party, he or you?”

There was only one way out, so what could she do, she had to take it, she couldn’t stay there, walled-in by contradictions. “Well, I guess he said something the night before about having some people in. Then I did the calling. So it was like between the two of us, you might say.”

He nodded, satisfied. He was very easy to satisfy, really.

“What time’d he get here?”

“Oh, it was about eight o’clock.”

“How do you know? Excuse me for annoying you, but I’m in a funny business. We have to have everything down to a T.”

“It was on the clock, that’s how I know.”

“What made you look at the clock?”

“He came in and he said, ‘Everybody here already! What am I, late? What time is it?’ So I looked. You know how you look when somebody says something like that.”

“Yes, I know how you look when somebody says something. like that.” Then he said carelessly, more to himself than to her, “I guess he took the other girl home first, and then came over here, that’s what held him up a little getting here—”

“What other girl?” she said sharply.

“You know, the one he had out in the car with him,” he said absent-mindedly, his attention on what he was writing.

She didn’t say very much after that. He didn’t ask her anything more anyway, so there was no compulsion for her to speak.

“Do I have to answer any more of your questions?”

“No, not a one.”

She slammed the door after him.

He started to walk away from the house. Not very fast, but still with every earmark of final departure. He had one hand pocketed. He was holding two of its fingers crossed.

The door-opened again behind him. He uncrossed his fingers, but kept walking.

“Mister,” she called out, “I forgot to tell you—”

He turned and looked back at her. “Yes?”

“That clock was an hour slow. He got here at eight by my clock. But everywhere else it was nine!”

The man at the garage said, “This is it, this one here.”

Evans said, “Has there been any cleaning done on it?”

“No, not a thing. Just bedded-down for the night.”

Evans was bleaching the treads with his flashlight, stroking it as carefully along them as though he were painting them with a brush.

“What is it, mister?”

“I ask them, you answer them.”

Evans even got in and drove it a half-wheel-turn out of place, to uncover the patches of tire that had rested on the garage floor. Then he painted the seats white with his light too, up and down in straight lines, as though he were a typical house-painter.

“You clock them, don’t you?”

“Yeah, we use a time-keeping system.”

“How long has it been in?”

“I can get that for you.” They went down front. “He brought it back here at eleven-forty-five.”

“You sure of that?”

“Mister, it’s right here on this card. They pay by the hour. Why should we cheat ourselves?”

“Before that, when did it go out?”

“Ten to nine.”

“Damn!” Evans said viciously.

“What’s the matter, mister?”

“That was the wrong answer.”

Didn’t use his own car, he said to himself.

He copied out a stiff two-and-a-half columns from the Classified Directory. On the page headed “Auto Rentals.” It started with Acme and it ran down to Zenith. Then the Auto Supplies began. He didn’t want that.

The twenty-ninth listing, at about the two-thirds point, was “Monarch Automobile Rental.” He got down to it finally. He stayed there.

“Yeah, we rented out three cars yesterday,” the man at Monarch said.

“Show them to me.”

He gave them the torchlight treatment, one by one.

He put his torch away. “This car’s impounded. Don’t rent it out any more, and don’t let anyone go near until I can send someone over here.”

“Why, what’s the matter with it? What’d you find on it just now?”

“A silver fox hair on the back of the seat, that was all. Couple of small stains on the tires. I wouldn’t care to say what they are myself. But I’ve got someone who can and will. Who rented this car?”

“A Mr. Joe Miller.”

“Joe Miller. That’s a good enough name. What kind of credentials did he give? Let’s have a look.”

The man hesitated.

“You mean you rent out cars here without security?”

“Ordinarily, no,” the man admitted. “But he left quite a large deposit, more than enough to cover any possible damage, or even outright loss of the whole car, and it was just for a very short time—”

“So you let him drive out of here with it just as was. You’d better tell me what this Joe Miller looked like.”

The man described him, haltingly but painstakingly.

Evans took a hefty kick at a near-by tire. Not of the car in question, but one of the others.

“What’s the matter, mister?”

“That was the wrong answer.”

Got someone else to rent the car for him, he said to himself as he strode out.

He had his cue poised for a trick corner-pocket shot when Evans’s hand landed on his arm and killed the shot for him. He just stayed there, draped over the edge of the pool table, without moving, without even looking around to see who it was, for a solid minute afterwards. The way a small animal, a ferret or a weasel, stands motionless when it feels itself trapped.

A hand with a tin lining came around in front of his face.

“Take off your eyeshade and come outside, I want to talk to you.”

“Can’t I finish the game first?” he said surlily.

“You have already.”

The tin said do it. He did it.

Upstairs on the sidewalk outside the poolroom Evans stopped and told him things. Things he knew already.

“Your name’s Chuck Flynn. Last night you rented a car from Monarch under the name of Joe Miller. What’d you do with it and where’d you go?”

“I don’t have to—” this Flynn began defensively.

“Okay, you don’t have to,” Evans agreed. “You’re under arrest for murder then. Come on.”

Flynn nearly fell to pieces in his hands. “I never murdered anyone — I... I—! Wait—! Don’t, will you?”

“The car’s a murder-car, and you took it out and brought it back, so that makes you It.”

“It wasn’t me! I wasn’t in it! I just took it out for someone else!”

“Now you’re telling it?”

“Now I’m telling it!” He was practically drooling, he was spilling it so fast. “I was cleaned out playing against some of the fellows back there, and I come up on the sidewalk for a breath of air. A fellow goes by while I’m standing there. He kind of looks me over in passing, and all of a sudden he changes his mind, turns and comes back to me. He asks me if I’d care to do him a favor. He says there’s twenty bucks in it for me, if I’m willing.”

“And you were willing?”

“I wanted to get back into the game. And twenty bucks is no mean stake.”

“This is corn right off the cob,” Evans told him with an air of utter disbelief. “But go ahead, what was the favor?”

“He was in a jam. He’d lied to his girl, told her he had a car of his own, and she was waiting somewhere for him to take her out in it. If he didn’t show up in one, she was the kind would quit going around with him, he said. He’d tried two or three car agencies already, but there was too much red tape, and he had no driver’s license or something. He said he’d heard that at this Monarch place, if you greased the mitt of the guy there, he’d let you have a car without all that, as long as you left a deposit to cover loss of the car. But the rub was, he said, he’d already had one of their cars out once before, and he still owed them some money for damages that he’d never paid up. He was afraid they’d recognize him and turn him down if he went there himself, and he asked me if I’d do it for him, under a fake name, not my own, of course.”

“And you fell for that?” Evans said scathingly.

“What did I care, I wasn’t giving my right name. So I took it out for him, and I just drove it around the corner, and picked him up where he was waiting. Then he dropped me off at the poolroom, and I played again for an hour. There was still half of the twenty coming to me, and I wanted to collect it, so about quarter to nine I went outside and met him again like we’d arranged. He showed up right on time. I took the car back for him and reclaimed the deposit.”

“How much was it?”

“It was a hundred bucks, less the rental of the car.”

“And you gave that back to him?”

Flynn’s eyes slanted evasively. “He — wasn’t there any more, when I got back where I’d left him. I don’t know what happened to him. I couldn’t find him.”

Evans chuckled grimly. “You know, the funny part of what you just said is this: You think you’re telling a lie, and you’re trying to get me to believe it’s the truth. But the fact of the matter is, it is the truth, without your knowing it. He wasn’t there any more, he didn’t wait. If you’da gone back looking for him, you wouldn’t have found him, just like you say you didn’t. Only you didn’t go back looking for him. You went the other way, to get as far away from him as you could with that deposit money.” He nodded, said, more to himself than his prisoner, “Smart play. Very smart. He figured you’d do just that, walk off with the money. And he wanted you to. It was the best guarantee in the world that you’d stay out of sight, keep your mouth shut about the whole thing from then on. Cheap, at that price.”

Flynn was shaking all over.

He was also shaking the detective imploringly, with both hands at once. “I know it sounds phony. But you’ve got to believe me! You’ve got too!”

“No, I don’t,” Evans answered mercilessly. He took his time. Then he added, “But it so happens — I do.”

“What’re you looking so glum about, Evans?” somebody on the squad said to him. “Has working on that case about the well-dressed dame lying in the road got you down?”

“Working on it? I’m all finished.”

“Then what’re you wearing your chin down on your wishbone for? You got the guy that did it?”

“Long ago. I’ve got everything but one thing: the actual, life-sized proof.”

“What do you do in a case like that? I guess you just wait until you get it.”

“No, you make it yourself.”

Chuck Flynn was scared when Evans showed up and took him out of his cell. He was even more scared when the detective shoved him onto a bus without a word and rode all the way uptown with him. He was terrified when they got out again and walked along anonymous streets. And by the time his captor had stopped abruptly and turned aside with a muttered, “This is as good a place as any,” he was verging on panic.

“What’d you bring me here for? What’re you going to do with me now?” he quavered.

“Just stand here back inside this store entrance with me,” Evans ordered crisply. “Now keep your eyes on that doorway across the street. See the one I mean? That one.” He scanned his watch. “It’s ten to five now. For the next twenty minutes we’re going to stand here; that ought to be long enough. Between now and ten past five, you watch everyone that goes in that doorway. When you see someone you’ve seen before, no matter who it is, jerk my sleeve.”

They watched and waited.

A man went in. A woman went in. Another man went in. A man and woman came out.

At 5.08 Evans felt a tug on his sleeve.

“That’s him. Didje see that guy that just went in there now, in a tan coat? That’s him. The guy I was telling you about, that come up to me outside the pool hall the other night—”

Evans just stared across at the doorway, empty now.

“Don’tcha believe me?” Flynn was whining in falsetto. “That’s him, I tell ya! I know it; I got good eyes for things like that.”

Evans nodded. “I know it too. I knew it even before. But knowing it and proving it are two different things.”

Flynn was dancing from foot to foot with impatience. “Ain’t you going to go over there and—?”

Evans didn’t budge. “If I bring the two of you face to face, it’s still just your word against his. That’s not good enough. You’ll say he got in the car; he’ll say he didn’t get in the car.” He scratched his chin in leisurely cogitation. “If I could only fix it so I’d have your word and his, against his own—”

Suddenly he slapped the store door open, towed Flynn outside after him. All the latter’s jitters came back, one hundred proof. “What’re you going to do with me now?”

Evans kept walking — down the street away from the doorway they’d been spotting.

“You got twenty bucks for getting out of that car the other night. How’d you like to get another twenty for staying in it? All the way to wherever it went and back?”

“I don’t get you.”

“You don’t have to. You just get the twenty bucks.”

Hughes found a message waiting for him when he came home from work. They had a switchboard operator who took calls for the tenants while they were out. It was short and calamitous. “Call Inspector Evans of the Police Dep’t as soon as you return.” And the Headquarters number was appended.

He stood and looked at it. The operator and switchboard swung all the way around him like a merry-go-round a couple of times.

To the operator, looking at the outside of his face, there was just puzzlement there. “Must be something about your car,” the operator suggested. “That’s all it is, usually, when they call you up like that.”

Yes, it was something about his car, all right, Hughes reflected wryly, without even cracking an inward grin.

He went upstairs like someone who has seen a ghost. When he’d gone inside his own room, the dresser top, in that particular place, was empty; but maybe that was where the ghost emanated from.

He did a lot of walking around inside the room, without going anywhere. It can’t be anything much, kept running through his head. They don’t telephone you and ask you to call them when — they want you for something serious. They come up and get you.

He went over to the phone and he asked for the police-station number. A desk sergeant answered and gave the precinct house designation. He asked for Evans. His face was white again, like that night of the other phone conversation, here in the same room.

Suddenly Evans was on.

“Could you come down here as soon as possible?”

Cluck. Evans had hung up again.

His complexion hadn’t improved any. There should have been pools of water on the floor where he’d been standing.

It’s all right, it’s got to be, he kept telling himself. They don’t do it that way when they really — want you for something. Just routine, probably.

He waited awhile. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind to go. He changed his shirt. He needed to by now. Warm day.

“But if I don’t go, it makes it look — strange.”

It was the worst form of torture. Maybe without knowing it, Evans had invented something new in police methods. A third-degree without the police themselves being present. A softening-up, a breaking-down.

He looked as if he’d been pulled through a wringer, before he’d even moved a step out of the place. It was now fully ten minutes since Evans had spoken to him on the phone. He should be almost arriving there by now. In another five minutes, if he hadn’t got there, it would begin to look as if he were balking...

Suddenly he grabbed his hat and went. He went fast. He slammed out with a jerk and a bang. Almost as though he didn’t trust himself to go any other way but that: blindly headlong.

He was still a little pale, but very straightforward and businesslike when he walked into the room the desk sergeant had indicated. Evans was sitting at a desk. They evidently did paperwork too, these dicks.

“What’d you ask to see me about?”

Evans got up and shook hands with him across the desk, warm and friendly, evidently considering their one previous interview grounds enough for this touch of sociability. He offered him a cigar, and then he pillowed his hands behind his head, cocked his elbows up, and relaxed, like a man taking time off from his official duties for a moment.

“Were holding a suspect,” he said, “and we’d like your help.”

“Suspect in what?”

“The death of your wife, Mr. Hughes. We’ve got the man who ran her down and killed her and then left the scene.”

“Oh, you have,” said Hughes neutrally.

“We’ve been pushing him around all day, and we’ve finally got him ripe enough to break down and confess. He’s run through all the usual stages; first, a complete denial, then a partial denial, then an attempt to involve someone else. Now he’s about ready for the final stage of confession, involving no one but himself. There’s where you come in; we’d like you to help us.”

“How? How can I help? I—”

He was about to say more, but Evans cut him off. “He’s tried to involve you,” he said smoothly, “and that’s how we can get at him, by bringing the two of you face to face. Then his last defense will crumble.”

Hughes found the chair seat a little hard on his pants; he shifted around a little. “How do you mean, involved—?”

Evans put him at his ease immediately. “Please don’t be uncomfortable. If I thought you were going to be uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have asked you to come down here. It’s just that I thought, with your help, we could take a shortcut and put him out of his misery a little quicker. Look, I’ll explain to you what I mean. Your wife met her death at approximately eight-twenty that night. Now, we’ve checked — no offense, Mr. Hughes, but we have to check in cases of this kind — and we know that you were at the house of a young lady friend of yours from about eight that night until well on toward twelve. About six different people saw you arrive there, and they all agree it was eight o’clock. So you’re out of it entirely.”

Again he stopped him. “Now wait, Mr. Hughes, let me finish before you say anything. However, you did do something that night, that for some reason or other, you overlooked mentioning to us before. You accepted a lift from a stranger for several blocks, from Mercer Street, on your way over to your girl’s house.” He began to speak more quickly, as if to prevent Hughes from interrupting. “We checked on that, and we know that you did ride those couple of blocks, you were recognized in the car with him. It’s a ghastly coincidence, and you won’t believe this, but that car and that stranger were actually the ones that, about half an hour after you got out again, hit and killed your wife out near the Rosedale Inn. It’s one of those flukes that only happens maybe once in a hundred years. That gave him the idea for his alibi. Now, to save himself, he’s trying to claim that you rode out with him all the way and back. And that you were at the wheel at the time. In other words, trying to pass the buck to you.”

Again a swift pass of Evans’s hand dammed up Hughes’s brimming protests.

“He doesn’t know we know who you are, of course, or can bring you forward to confound him. And above all, he doesn’t know that we’ve found out to our satisfaction that you couldn’t have been in any car, anywhere, at eight-twenty that night, because you were at a party at a certain young lady’s house from eight on. Now do you see what we’re driving at? All you have to do is tell us at which point you left the car. All we’re trying to establish is at what point, from what point on I should say, he took over the car alone. And is solely responsible for your wife’s death. Have you any objection to helping us steam that out of him?”

“Not at all,” Hughes said pensively. He thought it over. “Not at all,” he said a second time.

“You do that, and I can promise you won’t even be held as a material witness.”

“Market Street,” Hughes snapped.

“All right, bring him in,” Evans said. “This ought to do the trick.”

They brought Flynn in. He looked in bad shape. His eye had discolored in a very peculiar way. It almost looked as though ink had been splashed around it. He had various nicks and marks on him. You couldn’t tell if they were blood or mercuro-chrome.

He was whimpering like someone who’s had the stuffing laced out of him.

“Did you ever see this gentleman before?” Evans asked him tersely.

“He’s... he’s the one got in the car with me, at Mercer Street—”

“And for the last time, where did he get out again?”

“He didn’t,” the victim wailed. “He rode out all the way with me—”

Evans made a friendly signal to Hughes on the side, not to interrupt, to let the miscreant sew himself up in his own lies.

Flynn was babbling like a man who doesn’t know what he’s saying any more, he’s told so many conflicting stories. “He came up to me and gave me some money to hire a car—”

“You’re a liar, Flynn!” Evans said, and took a hefty poke at him. “I thought we knocked that fairy tale out of you! Are you starting that one again? What would he need to hire a car for? He’s got one of his own. Show him your driver’s license, Mr. Hughes.”

Flynn quickly retracted, in the face of this evidence. “I... I mean I gave him a lift, and he rode out in the car with me all the way—”

“You’re still lying!” This time he cuffed him with the back of his hand. Then he turned to Hughes, with polite deference. “At what point did you step out of the car, Mr. Hughes?”

“Market Street,” Hughes said, with a pitying look at the punch-drunk culprit.

“There’s no reason why we should detain you any more. Would you have any objection to signing a statement to the effect that you got into that car at Mercer Street and left it again at Market Street, Mr. Hughes? Then we can use that as a point in evidence. We won’t have to trouble you any further.”

“I have no objection, none whatever,” Hughes condescended.

A police stenographer was summoned, stuck a sheet of paper into a typewriter, and tapped it out then and there. Evans held it up and read it aloud for Hughes’s approval. The wilting Flynn, meanwhile, had been pushed back against the wall.

“ ‘I rode in the car bearing license plate number nine-o-eight, seven-six-one between Mercer Street and Market Street, on the night of April thirtieth.’ That’s all there is to it. Is that satisfactory, Mr. Hughes?”

“Let me see it a minute.”

He read it at first hand. “Yes, that’s perfectly satisfactory.”

“Then if you’ll sign it, in the presence of this witness and myself, we’ll get to work on our friend here.”

Hughes signed it.

Evans took it and blotted it. “You can go now,” he said, scrutinizing it intently without looking up.

Hughes turned and started for the door. The cop who was by it stiff-armed him and sent him kiting back halfway across the room.

“Not you, him I was talking to,” Evans said, with an indifferent jerk of his head toward the sheepishly grinning Flynn. “And see that you stay around until you’re wanted.”

The door closed. Hughes was the only civilian left in the room. He was rocking there like a kingpin that’s just been nicked by a hurtling ball and can’t decide whether to stay up or topple down.

“But you said I wouldn’t even be held as a material witness!” he gasped.

“That’s right, you won’t be. What you’re being held for, as of now on, is something entirely different: murder in the first degree. In case you don’t know your law terms, that doesn’t mean hit-and-run either: that means premeditated murder and it carries the death penalty.”

The cop threw some water on him from the cooler, and they picked him up from the floor.

“You’ve admitted now you were in this particular car,” Evans went ahead, when Hughes could hear him again. “I have your own signed statement to that effect. That was the hard part of it, getting you into the car. We’re going to do it in reverse this time, by subtraction. Flynn can prove he was out of the car, steadily, from almost eight all the way around to nearly nine. He was seen by a whole poolroom full of people, playing away there in the middle of all of them. I worked on that all afternoon. You can’t prove you were out of the car during that time.”

“My girl—”

“You got there at nine. I can prove that clock there was an hour slow, all evening.”

“See, all I had to do was get you into the car at all. The rest is just a matter of subtraction. The car didn’t run out there under its own power and murder her. Two men in a car, from Mercer Street to Market Street. Take one out. The car goes ahead and kills her. What have you got left? The one who stayed in it was the one who killed her. He can prove he got out. You can’t. That leaves you.”

Hughes’s head went all the way over, until he wasn’t looking at anything but floor.

“That’s close enough to a confession for the time being,” Evans remarked contemptuously. “We can wire it for sound later. Take him out.”

Evans turned his chief’s compliment aside. He looked put out. “Fast work?” he repeated. “Fast work? Slow is what you mean, chief, slow as hell! I could have arrested him six hours after her death. I knew it was murder the minute I looked at the body, right where it was, lying on the street. I knew it was he the minute I talked to him. But I had to wait for proof. Worse than that, I had to build my own proof.”

“All my men should be slow like that,” his chief said devoutly. “But what do you mean you knew it was murder the minute you looked at the body?”

Evans turned up his hands expressively. “The body of a well-dressed woman like that, lying out in the street.”

“But I don’t get you. Can’t a well-dressed person be knocked down and killed just as well as a poorly dressed one?”

“Oh, sure. But his trouble was he was too accurate. She was too well-dressed. He’d been married to her, he knew her habits too well. He knew she never would have been caught dead without that silver fox cape on her. No matter what the weather. The only trouble was, she was caught dead without that silver fox cape on her.”

“It was on her when she was found.”

“That’s what I mean exactly. She’d brought it with her, all right. He was right about that, she wouldn’t be seen anywhere without it. Only for a moment, she must have slipped it off her. He got her out of the car on some excuse or other, and it stayed behind on the seat. Then he focused his headlights on her full glare, blinded her, ran her down, and broke her back.” He snapped his fingers. “She died like that.

“They always think they have to be so careful,” he went on. “If he’d been just a little careless, he would have got away with it completely. He was just a little too careful, so he got caught. He wanted her to stay in character down to the last minor detail. Something that nobody but himself could have known about anyway. So, by trying so hard to make what was murder look like an accident, he only managed to make what would have looked like an accident, if he’d let it alone, turn out to look like a murder.

“She had on a black velvet dress. It took the print of the wheels where they went over her like dusting powder almost. There was a tread mark striping it down below, where there was no fur cape to cover it. But there was also a tread mark striping it up above, under the fur cape.”

Leg Man

He had it all lined up ahead of him, like a flight of steps. First step would be a by-line over his piece. Over all his pieces. “By Clint Burgess.” Maybe in a year. Maybe even in six months. Next, a feature of his own, with a little boxed photo of him at the top. By the time he was in his thirties. Next, the city desk, where Herrick hung out now. By the time he was in his forties. Then managing editor. And then the top step — owner of the whole rag. He’d be old by then, fifty, but he wouldn’t raise a belly like the present old man, and he wouldn’t make a fool of himself on the links, and he’d treat his staff human, and—

“Burgess!”

He bounced all the way down the steps, owner, managing editor, city desk, feature, by-line — and there he was down at the bottom again. Just a leg man. A guy that dug ’em up and phoned ’em in, didn’t even write his own stories.

Herrick said dryly when he came over to the desk: “Yeah, I know you’re not appreciated, and I know you could do much better in this chair than I’m doing — saw you looking wistfully over at it just now — but in the meantime let’s keep it to ourselves just a mite longer.” The big sea-lion actually went coy on him, laid a finger across his lips and went: “Sh! And while we’re getting ready to turn over the paper to you, and while they’re painting your name on the old man’s door in there, suppose you haul your moss-grown behind outa here and earn the thirty-five bucks blackmail you’re shaking us down for every Saturday!”

The last couple of couplets boomed out like something over a loud-speaker. A copy-boy snorted somewhere in the background.

Burgess said: “All right! All right! If a guy busted an arm covering an assignment for you, he’d still be a lazy bum ’cause he didn’t bust both arms.”

“Naw,” said Herrick dryly, “he’d just be damn careless, that’s all. Now, to be more specific, chase over to a place called Mike’s Tavern, I think it’s somewhere along Blake Street. A tip just came into the office a few minutes ago that there’s been somebody killed over there. Find out what there is to be found out. Nothing fancy. Just facts, I want, facts. Get ’em straight and keep ’em straight. It’s probably just another dime-a-dozen bar hold-up and killing, so it’s worth maybe a paragraph on the second page, if nothing better turns up. It just happened, so lift your feet. In fact, if you were any kind of a leg man at all, you would have been over there already before it happened and not have to be sent around after it’s over by your hard-working editor.”

“Gee, what is a guy supposed to be, a mind-reader?” grumbled Burgess as he closed the door after him, to the accompaniment of another snicker from the copy-boy.

Herrick buckled his arms threateningly at the latter. “He’s a better newspaperman than you’ll ever be, brat. He’s got it in him. The only guys I insult around here are the guys I like.” Then he added threateningly: “You go back and tell him that and I’ll break your neck!”

“Ghee!” said the kid, ducking out, “I guess you must like me too.”

Burgess, meanwhile, was stemming his way to his assignment, muttering to himself every once in awhile: “Just facts he wants. All right, just facts he’ll get.”

Mike’s Tavern, at nine-thirty in the morning, wasn’t very convivial-looking. In fact, it wouldn’t have been very inviting even apart from the fact that a murder had just taken place in it. There was a detective squad car in front of it, and the unmistakable and slightly repellent shape of a morgue ambulance drawn up alongside that, with a stretcher partly protruding from it like an avaricious tongue. There was a very thin crowd, not large at all, with a single harness cop to keep it divided in two with a wide swath through it from curb to doorway. At that, its interest was only half-hearted. Even as he arrived it was already beginning to melt away. People had to work at that hour.

A second cop stopped him just inside the tavern entrance. Burgess showed his press card and the cop still kept on stopping him. “How’s chances?” Burgess wheedled.

“I’ll see what he says,” the cop condescended.

He dipped his head and one shoulder inside, pulled them out again. “He says all right,” he said.

Burgess went inside. It looked as dim and depressing as only the inside of such a place can look at such an hour. There were plenty of men there, but they weren’t drinking and their presence did nothing to liven it up any. Small leaded panes of colored glass, red, blue, and green, made the bright morning outside seem like twilight. They had a pair of high-powered lights rigged up now, but without them it would have been impossible to look in from the street and see anything. A large clock high on the wall over the bar said 9:32. A small tab sticking up in the indicator of the cash-register said “20¢.” A detective said: “All right, stand back and let him take those glasses now!”

There were two glasses standing in lonely abandonment on the bar, on the customers’ side of it and fairly close together, as though the vanished drinkers had stood elbow to elbow. There was also a man groveling bodily atop the bar, like a monkey, on his knees and forearms, sighting some sort of a camera apparatus down into the narrow well between counter and wall. A bright blue flash went off, and then he turned around and jumped down, on the outside. He sighted at the glasses next, dipping down so that he’d be on a level with them. Another blue flash went off. Then he straightened up and departed, brushing by Burgess and mumbling something as he went that sounded like: “That’s all the pretty pitchers for today.”

Two men came in with a morgue basket between them. They went around behind the bar, through a little opening at the far end, where it joined the wall. After that, you could only see them from about the ribs up. They had a hard time doing whatever it was they were doing. The first one rose a little, then went down again, as though he had scissored his legs widely to step over something. Then he turned and faced the other way, back toward his stretcher-mate. Then they both looked down and scratched their heads, as though faced with a problem in hydraulics.

“Put it down on top of him and then turn ’em both over together — that’s the only way to get him in,” one remarked to the other.

They both dipped down below the bar and stayed out of sight for several moments.

When they bobbed up again, they were both roundshouldered, as though borne down by considerable weight.

There was a slight concussion against the shelves caused by some inadvertent movement of theirs, and a bottle of Jamaica rum that had been standing too close to the edge toppled over and went down.

All the onlookers jumped a little with nervousness, Burgess included, but the shattering crash that they were expecting never came. The bottle never struck the floor. A moment later it had reappeared, still intact, and was replaced in its former position on the shelf. “Right in the breadbasket,” one of the transport agents commented to the other.

They maneuvered their way around the end of the bar out into the open again and proceeded rapidly to the street, carrying something covered-over between them, that was rounded in the middle like a shaky plate of jelly. A pair of shoe-tips stuck up at one end. Burgess didn’t try to uncover it and look as it went by. He was willing to take their word for it the man was dead.

“How much did they take the place for?” he asked the detective in charge of the case, whom he’d overheard them calling Lyons.

“It wasn’t a cash-killing,” the latter said, relighting a cigar that he’d allowed to expire under pressure of his duties. “There’s no take in a bar-till at this hour of the day. We figure it for a grudge-killing. They knew his habits, knew they could get him alone in the place right after he opened up.”

“Any idea—?”

“Nobody saw them come, nobody saw them go. The barman came in and found him lying there like that, still warm, with a slug in his back, around behind the bar where he couldn’t be seen from the street.”

“I thought he was the barman — who was he?”

“Naw, he was the owner. Mike Oliver. Used to come in and open up himself every day. That’s the barman standing over there.”

Burgess went to work on him next. He’d taken him to be a third-grade detective breaking in at his first murder-case, until now. He’d had that air of trying to be helpful but not knowing exactly what to do that such a novice would have had.

Burgess used an old one that had never yet failed to work, human nature being what it is. “I don’t suppose you mind if I mention you,” he said deferentially. “This is for the papers.”

The barman thawed. In fact he even turned into a gushing stream of garrulity.

“What sort of a guy was he?” Burgess suggested.

The barman glanced around toward the now-vacant aisle behind the bar, screened the side of his mouth with the flat of his hand, as though his late employer was still somewhere around likely to overhear him. “He was a very unpopular guy. Hardly anybody got along with him at all. He had these ways, y’know, that don’t take with customers. He wouldn’t carry anyone on the cuff. He was tight like this.” He packed a close fist and showed it to Burgess. “Any time I tried to pass out a round on the house, he’d give me a dirty look that would take all the good spirit out of it. Customers are quick to notice a thing like that, y’know. And worst of all, he had a very bad habit of collecting for the drinks right as he put them down, instead of waiting until after. He’d stand there with his hand out, and if they didn’t shell out, he’d mention the amount and make sure they did before they had a chance to hoist them.”

“A guy like that must have made plenty of enemies,” Burgess acquiesced.

His informant nodded vigorously. “I remember one night, only about a month ago, he had a terrible row with a guy in here, that only started about some little thing like that. No first-time stranger, either, but a good steady customer that had been coming in here regular for years past. The guy handed him a ten-dollar bill. There was a big rush on that night, they were lined up three deep, and in his hurry the boss didn’t look at it close enough. He only gave him back change for a five. The guy kicked, and the boss called him a liar to his face. I saw what was going to happen, and I tried to take him aside and reason with him. I said: ‘He’s been coming in steady for years. Even if he’s wrong about it, his trade’s worth more than five dollars to you, boss. Give it to him.’ But he wouldn’t listen to me. The guy called him a crook, so the boss jumped over the counter then and there and threw him out. He was a big, husky guy, you know. The guy picked himself up off the street and came back as far as the door and hollered in, ‘I’m going to get you for this! I’m going to get you if it’s the last thing I do!’ Everyone in the place heard him. Then he went off. I thought sure he was coming back with the cops any minute, but he never showed up again.”

“So then when he didn’t, the boss says to me with a knowing grin: ‘That proves he was lying, and he knows it himself! If he was really gypped out of five dollars, he would have been back here with a cop.’ I said to him: ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ ”

Burgess looked thoughtful. “I’m not so sure about it either,” he murmured. “There are other ways.”

“So the punch-line on it is this,” the barman went ahead. “That night when we tallied up, we found we were five dollars ahead of the register. There was an extra five in the till that wasn’t accounted for. The boss didn’t give a rap. All he did was shrug and say to me: ‘If he shows up again, give it back to him.’ But he never did. He’s never been here again from that night on.”

“Did you tell them that?” Burgess asked, dropping his voice a little and hitching his head toward the detectives in the background.

“I had to,” the bartender said uncomfortably. “You can’t keep anything back from them guys when they start asking you things. I had to tell them his name too. We’d gotten to know him by name, he’d been coming in here so long. Chuck Hastings was his name. I had to tell them that and what he looked like.” He drew a deep breath. “They wanted to know.”

Burgess saw him down at headquarters later on the same day. They were just bringing him fresh out of Lyons’ office but he looked pretty wilted. He was a very badly frightened guy. Burgess couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He looked as though he’d been severely mauled and even more severely grilled. He was question-drunk. Somebody’d already passed the word to Burgess who he was, that was how he knew him.

A minute or two later the door opened again and Mike’s bartender came out. Evidently an identification had taken place in there. He went by without recognizing Burgess and the latter didn’t tip himself off to him.

Lyons let him come in after that, while he was catching his breath between more important things he had to do.

“I see you’ve got yourself a suspect already,” Burgess began.

“Nope.” Lyons crumpled a paper cup and threw it away under the water-cooler. He shook his head decisively. “We’ve got the culprit. Solid. He’s cooked, washed and bottled. His prints were taken and they match those on the death-glass left on the bar. And that, I might add, was practically tapestried with them.”

Burgess put a pencil to the back of an envelope, which was just a mannerism with him. He didn’t jot anything. “Has he got any kind of an alibi?” he asked.

“Don’t they all? Only his is deaf and dumb, can’t even talk for him. His bed. Claims he was in it all morning. He was still letting on like he was asleep in it when we went for him.”

“Who was behind the second glass?”

Lyons smiled bleakly. “You can’t expect him to admit he knows that, when he’s denying he himself was behind the first. At least not right off. But we’ll get that out of him. If we don’t today, we will tomorrow. If we don’t tomorrow, we will Thursday.” He picked up an unsigned confession lying on his desk, flourished it, dropped it again. “He’ll change his mind about signing this too, before were through. We got lot of time. We’re not in any hurry. But those are just odds and ends left over. The case is closed. He goes up before the Grand Jury end of next week.” He tipped from his eyebrow to Burgess. “Be seeing you, reporter.”

Burgess opened the door, and then hung around it.

Lyons looked up from the desk at which he’d sat down and busied himself once more. “What’s the matter, the hinges need oiling?” he suggested pointedly.

“Don’t you think it’s funny about the second glass not having any prints on it at all? It was standing there emptied out, so somebody must have lifted it. It’s all right about the second guy having gloves, but then Mike Oliver’s own fingerprints would have still been left on it. He must have set it down on the bar, it didn’t fly down by itself. If it didn’t have any prints on it at all, then it looks as if it must have been wiped clean on purpose. Well, then, if one of the death-glasses was wiped clean, why wasn’t that done to the other too?”

“One of the two guys had more presence of mind than the other. One remembered to, one forgot — showing which of the two it was who fired the shot. The guy who forgot to. Now close the door.”

A cop stepped over and did it for him, swinging it so that it ended up an inch from Burgess’ face.

“Well, if he said you can see the pictures, you can see them,” the custodian of the police photographic files said wearily. “I’ll just get his O.K. on it.” He reached for the phone.

“No, don’t bother him about it now,” Burgess said hastily. “He’s busy, that’s why he sent me around to you myself. I was just in his office, I only left it this minute. Not the body, you understand. Just the background shots, the bar itself.”

The attendant wearily took down a large folder, opened it. “You was in the place yourself this morning, what d’you want to look at pictures of it for? Why don’t you just go back there and take another look at it instead?”

“I want to see it like it was, not like it is now. I thought I saw something then, and I want to see if I was right, and it’s still on the pictures the way I thought I saw it at the time.”

The custodian watched him bend down close to the prints, poring over them with his face an inch away as if he were nearsighted. “Well, are you? Is it?” he demanded at last.

“Yeah,” Burgess said excitedly, straightening up. “I am! It is!”

“Well, what is it?” the man in charge asked, letting curiosity get the better of him for a minute.

“Thanks a lot,” Burgess called back, and let the door swing closed after him.

He used one of the public telephones right there in the corridor of the headquarters building to call his office.

Herrick was wroth. “It’s about time!” he barked. “You’ve only been out all morning and half the afternoon! I could have written the history of Rome in that time. What d’you think were doing down here, piece-work? Half the working day for every two lines that gets tucked in where a column winds up short!”

“Yeah, but it’s not over yet.”

“All right, four words takes care of that. ‘An arrest is expected.’ You don’t have to stay out and wait for it to happen!”

“The arrest has been made already,” Burgess faltered. “They made it at eleven this morning, but—”

“Well, is it the guy that did it?”

“They say it is, but—”

Herrick rumbled like a volcano. “Well, do they say it’s over?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then who says it isn’t over?”

Burgess swallowed hard. “I do.”

He could hear Herrick leave his creaky swivel-chair and then hit it again. It took him a minute to get his larynx hooked up again. “Why? Because he hasn’t been executed and buried yet? We’re running a daily newspaper, not an annual. Listen, I didn’t send you out to solve detective cases, I sent you out to get facts. If the police say he did it, then it’s over! I’ll give you ten minutes to get back here and get to work!”

“But listen, boss, if you’ll only give me time to explain what I noticed, something I’ve found out that I think they missed seeing themselves, you’ll understand why I think they’re holding the wrong guy—”

A feminine voice cut in at this point. “Ti-yum is up. Deposit another nickel, pal-lease.”

Burgess began to grub desperately at the linings of his various pockets with one hand, hanging onto the receiver with the other. Pennies turned up, quarters turned up, even a half-dollar turned up, but no nickel. “Hey, wait, don’t cut—” he pleaded.

Herrick’s voice was fading away like distant, rolling thunder. “Remember, ten minutes, or you don’t need to come back at all!” Something went clunk and the connection was cut.

Burgess hung up and used both hands to go over himself this time. He stepped outside the booth, where there was more elbow-room. Suddenly it turned up, the lone Jefferson-head that he’d known he had somewhere or other all along.

He tossed it up and down in his hand a couple of times, pondering. Then he shook his head, put it back again where he’d just found it. “I better act like I didn’t have one anyway,” he muttered to himself. “If I call him again he’ll only tell me to come back, and I can’t — not just yet, not till this thing is over.”

He went back to Mike’s Tavern. It was still open for business, surprisingly enough, either going along under sheer momentum or because it would take a few weeks to dispose of the lease and the stock on hand. But it wasn’t doing well, no one was in the place. People evidently didn’t feel at ease hanging around premises where there had been a violent death so recently.

“Gimme two fingers,” Burgess said.

“You’re the newspaper guy from this morning,” the barman recalled. “I thought I seen you before.”

Burgess held up his glass as though he were scanning the drink. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t, he was scrutinizing what held it in. “Do you keep count of how many glasses like this you have in stock?” he asked idly.

“Oh, sure. I got it right at the end of my fingertips. You have to in this business. We got in three dozen of ’em only a couple weeks ago.”

“Lost any through breakage since then?”

“No, I’m pretty careful. You have to be, working for a guy like Mike.”

“Then you ought to have thirty-five, not counting that one the police impounded, that right?”

“Thirty-five, and eighteen that we were down to before we reordered, that makes it fifty-three.”

Burgess reached into his pocket. “I’m not one of these betting guys,” he said, “but I got nothing to do right now, and you got nothing. Here’s a dollar bill says you haven’t got fifty-three in stock right now. Fade me.”

“That’s an easy way to double my money,” the barman said scornfully. He put down one of his own. He picked up a flat stick used to scrape the head off beer. “I’ll hit ’em so they sing out, you can keep count with me as I go along. They’re all lined up here even, except that one in front of you.”

The stick started to sound off flutelike little musical notes, ting, ting, ting, while Burgess kept score out loud. “Fifty-one.” Ting. “Fifty-two.” Ting. “Fifty-three.”

There was a pause. Then the stick went ting one last time.

They both said it together. “Fifty-four!”

The barman straightened up. He scratched his head. “There’s one over. I musta miscounted.”

“No, you didn’t miscount,” Burgess said, without explaining further. He split the kitty up again. “Keep your dollar, I don’t want it.” He pocketed his own. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Sure,” said the barman, relieved at not having to forfeit his share of the ante. “What’ll it be?”

Burgess groped around, eyes vacant, as if in search of a topic. “I suppose you knew the ins and outs of your boss s personal affairs pretty much.”

“Better than my own. I been working for him for fifteen years.”

“Everybody makes enemies. Who hated him pretty much?”

“Who didn’t?” was the succinct answer.

“Pretty long list, huh? Well, now this is just rambling talk, but who out of the many would you say hated him enough to kill him?”

The barman scraped his chin. “First off, this guy Chuck Hastings, I’d say.”

That, Burgess knew, was auto-suggestion pure and simple. Hastings was already being held for the murder, therefore his name was the first to occur to the Solon of the lager schooners. “Who else, after him?” he encouraged. He poised pencil to one of his reliable envelope-backs. “Let’s see if we can’t rig up a sort of list, between the two of us. Something like this: if Hastings hadn’t been the one to kill him, who would have been the one likeliest after him to do it?”

“This is good,” the barman chuckled. “It’s kind of like a crossword puzzle.”

“Kind of like,” Burgess assented.

It took time. Time and patience and dexterity. But when he came out of there, six drinks, two gift-cigars, and ninety minutes later, he had this list on the back of his envelope (he hadn’t bothered transcribing motives, just names):

1. Hastings

2. Big Tim Leary

3. Cosentino

4. Edge

5. Poletti

Herrick had been just on the point of leaving the office on his way home. Burgess could tell that by the length of time it took him to come back to his desk and answer the phone. He was usually sitting right beside it.

“Listen, boss,” Burgess began ebulliently. “I’ve found out there’s one glass too many at the tavern where the shooting—”

That was as far as he got. Herrick could be surgically cutting when he wanted to be. He was now. “Who’re you?” he asked, puzzled.

“Aw, boss, don’t. This is Burgess, you know who—”

“There’s no one by that name on the staff now.”

“At least give me a rewrite man, if you won’t listen to me yourself,” Burgess pleaded.

Herrick was regretfully polite. “Only guys on the payroll are entitled to rewrite men. I can’t give strangers rewrite men.”

“But boss, I’ve got a list of five possible suspects, and one of them—”

“I thought the police already had the guy that did it, and that it was finished.”

“Naw, because he didn’t do it.”

“Sorry, but it’s never been our policy to accept tips from outsiders. And you were fired, as of two hours and twenty minutes ago,” said Herrick with unimpeachable logic.

There never was a newspaperman yet, who when fired, didn’t take it out in drink. And Burgess immediately set about running true to form. He went from the telephone straight out into the opening stages of what had all the earmarks of being a progressive, night-long binge. But the similarity ended there. The average person will stay in one place until he gets a good edge on. Burgess, on the contrary, didn’t even give himself a chance to get warmed up in any one place. He kept moving from bar to bar, at a ratio of one short drink to a spot. Furthermore, he hardly took more than a sip of each individual drink. He just dipped his gums once each time and called it a slug. He seemed to have a sort of geographic formula for getting high, as though he were following a roadmap. He drank his way down the left side of Sycamore Avenue. Then back along the right side. Then he moved over one block, and drank his way down the left side of Central Avenue. Then back along the right. Then he moved over one block, and did the same thing on the next thoroughfare.

In each place he’d ask a question. Just one. “Was a jigger like this taken from your bar within the last few nights?” He kept getting no’s and shakes of the head, shrugs and stares. “Who would take a thing like that? Are you kidding, mister?” He’d turn around and walk out again without pursuing the subject any further. He had a lot of ground to cover and only a limited time at his disposal.

At about the third place on the right side of the third avenue, with time running close to midnight and his mouth flaming from the dry cleaning it was getting, there was a sudden variation in the result. He got a double-take from the bartender, after he’d already gotten the usual no and had started over toward the door on his way out. “Hey, wait, mister, what was that you just asked me?”

He repeated it. “I said was one of these jiggers swiped from your bar here within the last couple of nights?”

The barman nodded. Slow at first, then faster. “Yeah. Come to think of it, one was.” Then the man’s mouth opened into an oval of mystification, stayed that way. “But how did you know that? Who told you?”

Burgess closed in again, avidly. “Got any idea who took it?”

“I don’t know who he was, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you did see him?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

Burgess went up on his toes a little, palms to bar-edge. “What did he look like? Gimme an idea, quick.”

“He was medium height, on the slender side. Let’s see now. Dark hair, and skin a little bit sunburned, he was peeling up around the forehead.”

“A cast in one eye?”

“Yeah, one eye a little squinty, like there was something the matter with it.”

Burgess had sunk back to dead floor-level even before he’d heard the answer. His shoulders slumped over frustratedly. The description was that of Chuck Hastings, whom they had for the murder anyway.

“You didn’t see him take it, actually, though, did you?” he asked dispiritedly.

“No, I didn’t. But it was his jigger, so he must have. When he walked out, I went over to where he’d been standing, to clean up, and there was no glass there to put back. His chaser-glass was still there big as life, but no jigger. I couldn’t figure it. I even leaned over and looked down on the outside to see if it had tumbled off, but there was nothing on the floor, either broken or whole. I couldn’t get over it. It’s a thing that never happens, you know. They’re not worth a damn, them little things.”

They’re not worth anything in money, Burgess reflected without answering, but they can cost a life.

Lyons looked at him as though he thought he was crazy. “Why should I let you go in and talk to him? What do you think this is, Old Home Week in the detention cells? The guy’s being held on murder charges. People can’t just walk in off the street and visit with him.”

“I only want to get a little of his background, for a human interest story I’ve been commissioned to write. How can that hurt any?”

“Well, go get your background out in front of the building someplace.”

“What, are you afraid if I talk to him a couple minutes I’m liable to find out the guy’s innocent and you’re holding the wrong party? You must have a pretty shaky case.”

“Why, you—!” Lyons half-rose from his desk, shot his sleeves back as though he meditated taking a swing at him. “I ought to...” Then he changed his mind, sank down again. “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll write it up your own way, make us out like heels,” he growled. “I know you guys.” He called someone in. “Take Pencil-Happy back and give him five minutes with Hastings. He wants to hold hands with him or something. Vacuum him good first.”

“I had a hard time getting in here,” Burgess began without preamble as soon as the gratings had clashed closed on the three of them.

“I didn’t,” Hastings said gloomily, without looking up from the bunk.

“And they’re not giving me much time, so I’ve got to talk to you fast.” He speared his thumb at the cop glaring down watchfully at the two of them with his back to the grating. “Never mind him, I’m not going to ask you anything that it can hurt for them to hear. Only, please answer me straight, will you? That’s the only way I can help you.”

“What d’ya want to know?” Hastings answered surlily.

“Who’d you shake hands with last night?”

Hastings straightened up a little on his elbow, looked at him askance. “What are you, a little dippy or something?”

“Who’d you shake hands with last night? That’s what I said. Who’d you shake hands with in a bar, the night before you were arrested for the killing?”

Hastings brushed his hand thoughtfully across his mouth, eyed him vacantly. “I don’t — I didn’t meet anyone I knew, any friend, all that night. I was by myself the whole time.”

“Wait a minute. You were in a place called Sullivan’s, on Union Avenue. That much is right, isn’t it?”

Hastings nodded. “Yeah. But I went in alone, and I came out alone. I wasn’t in there over ten, fifteen minutes at the most.”

“You didn’t shake hands with anyone while you were in there? Think, man, will you?”

Hastings came perfectly erect at last. “Wait a minute. I didn’t shake hands with anyone of my own accord. But somebody did grab my mitt and pump it at one time, I remember that now. There was one of these souses next to me. You know the kind — the whole world was his long-lost brother. The kind you can’t get rid of, once they fasten on you. First he apologized for slopping over against me. Then he wanted to buy me a drink. I told him no thanks, I was checking out as soon as I finished the one I had in front of me. Then he said, ‘No hard feelings,’ and reached down and pumped my hand about sixteen times. After that, he didn’t pester me any more. That what you wanted?”

Burgess gave a grim duck of his head to show it was. “Did you notice your hands when you got home last night?”

“What d’you mean?” Hastings said impatiently. “They were still with me, I didn’t leave ’em nowhere.”

“No, no, I mean did you wash them before you turned in, did you happen to look them over? Was there anything on them?”

Hastings stopped short, took a hitch in his breathing. “What are you, psychic? There was something! There was a couple of spots of grease on them. On one, the right. Axle-grease or something, stuff that was hard to get off. That lush I told you about must’ve been working around a car or in a machine-shop.”

Burgess suddenly slammed him hard across the chest with the back of his hand. “I’m on the right track!” he exclaimed jubilantly.

He leaned forward intently. “Was he anyone you ever saw before?”

“Naw, I never saw him before in my life. He was a big, bulky guy, from what I can remember. I didn’t look at him very close. I think he had on dungarees and an oiler’s cap, but I’m not sure. He was just some stray lush.”

“He wasn’t stray and he was no lush, but never mind about that now.” He got out his old standby, the envelope and pencil. “Hastings, who hates you pretty much?”

“The whole world, the way it looks tonight.”

“I don’t, and I’m asking you. What do I get out of it? I’m only trying to help you. Who hates you enough to frame you for a murder?”

“How you going to tell about that?” was the disgruntled answer. “Sometimes you don’t know it when they do.”

“You usually have a pretty fair idea.”

When he left him he had this list:

1. Harlan

2. Strickland

3. Edge

4. Al Vogel

He sat down on a bench on his way back to Lyon’s office, took out the other one, the list he’d obtained from the bartender at Mike’s Tavern, and held the two side by side. Then he took his pencil and drew a line through each name that appeared only once on the two.

When he got through, he had this, on both:

4. & 3. Edge.

“Throw the guy out,” Lyons said wearily. “You give these newspaper guys an inch and they take thirty-six miles.”

Burgess ducked in under the arm of the cop as the latter turned his way to throw him out.

“Look, I admit I’m not a detective and I’m not trying to be,” he said, straining forward while the cop tried to drag him out by the back of the collar and the slack of the coat. “I’m just trying to get the facts in this case. I’ve got who did it.”

“Let him alone, O’Keefe,” Lyons said contemptuously. “I want to hear this. It ought to do me good. I haven’t laughed all week.”

He made a steeple of his hands, leaned comfortably back in his chair. “Well, where is he?” he asked, pretending to scan the hallway in back of Burgess.

“I don’t know where he is, I haven’t got him with me! But I do know who he is. He’s a guy named Edge. He’s in the wholesale liquor business. But that’s just a front for what amounts to a big ring putting on the squeeze-play pretty much as the old bootleg rings did in the prohibition days. The only difference is that they can distribute openly now, it’s not against the law. But the squeeze is pretty much the same. If the retailer gets tired of paying what they soak him, and tries to switch to some other distributor — well, it’s just too bad for him. And according to Mike Oliver’s barman, Mike cancelled his orders several months back and refused to continue letting Edge’s outfit supply him.”

“Very interesting,” said Lyons sarcastically. “What does he look like?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him in my life.”

Lyons addressed the cop. “He doesn’t know where he is, he’s never even seen him, but he’s sure he killed Oliver. That s what I call a strong circumstantial case.”

“You’re convicting Hastings just on the strength of that one glass, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and you’re trying to get us to convict Edge just by pulling his name out of a hat. We got fingerprints on the glass at least. You got nothing.”

Burgess rushed on: “There’s also a revenge-motive there, I mean on Edge’s part against Hastings. Edge used to operate a speakeasy in the prohibition days, and Hastings was an employe of his at that time, worked for him. They were raided and federally tried. A lot of inside evidence turned up mysteriously from somewhere, that helped convict Edge, as though somebody had ratted, made an arrangement with the authorities. He was never able to find out where it came from, but there was one thing noticeable when the trial ended. He got a stiff sentence, and Hastings, for some peculiar reason, got off with a remarkably light one.”

“Prohibition ended in 1933,” Lyons said dryly, “and he waits until 1943 to get even with him.” He hiccoughed scornfully. “Good snappy work.”

“Motives are one thing that never grow stale.”

“You’ve got from nothing,” Lyons told him. “All you’ve got is a couple of say-so’s, second-hand. A guy that’s already under arrest himself — and you know how they’ll grab at any straw — remembers a guy that didn’t like him ten years ago. And a barman, who admits his boss was unpopular with everyone in general, remembers someone who didn’t like him. So that’s enough for you. You’ve got the guy who did it, right away. Bertillon wasted his time inventing the system of fingerprints.” And he cinched it with what on the face of it was an insuperable argument. “Just let me point out something. I don’t like you, at this minute. In fact, I dislike you so intensely that I am yearning to throttle you with my own bare hands. But that don’t mean I’m going to murder you. Far from it. See the difference?”

Burgess scrubbed the back of his neck in exasperation. “What do I have to do to convince you?” he asked.

“Get the guy to break down and confess out of his own mouth,” Lyons jeered. “Then maybe I’ll pay some attention.”

“I don’t even know where to reach him,” Burgess murmured in a helpless undertone.

“Go ahead, O’Keefe, you can finish throwing him out now,” Lyons said. “That was funny enough to last me the rest of the week.”

Burgess took the furled directory from the bar into the phone-booth with him, keeping his finger on the name he’d found, to make sure of not losing his place again. He dropped a nickel in and asked for the number. A man’s voice answered. “I want to speak to Joseph Edge,” Burgess said.

“Who is it and what about?” the voice said inhospitably.

“He doesn’t know me, and it’s strictly personal.”

Another voice got on, a little suaver than the first.

Burgess said: “Is this the Joseph Edge who is in the liquor distributing business?” He’d already tried two who weren’t.

“This is Joe Edge, and that’s my ra— my occupation. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I figured maybe there was something I could do for you.” He waited a minute. “You were in Mike’s Tavern early this morning, around nine, nine-fifteen,” he said flatly.

The voice showed no dismay. Only bland interest. “Mike’s Tavern? Where’s that?”

“That’s where the shooting was. Where you were when the shooting took place.”

The voice was silken, unruffled. “I don’t get you.”

“I’ll explain. I was the first customer in there this morning. I went in a minute or two after the place was opened up, almost at the heels of the owner. I went back to the men’s washroom, right after I entered. I was in there when you came in. I saw the whole thing through the crack of the door. You didn’t think to look in there. That was your mistake.”

“Don’t waste my time. Tell it to the marines.”

“The only drawback is, they don’t pay you.”

“Oh, a shake, is that it?” The voice was amused.

“I haven’t got any job or anything. I’m pretty well broke. Matter of fact, I been saving this for a rainy day. Well, it’s pouring cats and dogs right now.”

The voice laughed heartily. The voice was very sure of itself. “Hate to disappoint you, but it’s dry and sunny at this end.”

“You don’t believe I was in there, do you? I’ll draw you a picture. There was another guy with you, two of you came in. You stood up against the bar on the right-hand side, as you come in. He stood on the left. After the shooting, one glass was wiped off clean. The other...” He dropped his voice a little, spoke close to the phone. “Now is it clouding up a little at your end?”

There was a pause at the other end. Burgess knew what the cause of it was. It wasn’t due to fear, nor loss of presence of mind. It was due to a momentary muffling of the phone, while an order was being given in the background: “See where this is coming from.”

The voice came back again. “Who’s in on this with you?” it asked, almost affably. Burgess could tell it was playing for time. He didn’t mind playing along with it, he was a willing dupe.

“Nobody. Just me by myself.”

“Maybe you did see that. You sound convincing enough. But how do you know I’m the same person you saw in there?”

“I made it my business to find out. What d’you suppose I’ve been doing all day?”

There was another pause. The call had been traced. Probably a slip of paper had been thrust before the speaker, for him to read.

“So you’re in this by yourself,” the voice resumed. “Well, your proposition interests me. About how large an umbrella would it take to keep you dry?”

“About a five hundred dollar one.”

“That’s a pretty large umbrella.”

“This is a pretty heavy rainstorm.”

“All right,” the voice acquiesced. “No harm in getting together and talking it over. I usually get shaved the first thing in the morning at a barbershop called the Empire. It’s on Central Avenue, you can’t miss it. It has a pole out front, on the sidewalk. You be standing up alongside that, about nine o’clock. Have you got that, now?”

“I’ve got it,” Burgess said. He didn’t bother jotting it down. He knew it was an appointment that would never be kept. It couldn’t be, for it was an appointment between the living and the dead. One party to it wouldn’t be alive any more by that time.

He hung up. He consulted his watch, then he retrieved the directory, once more traced his finger down it until he had located Edge’s number. This time it was the street-address given with it that interested him, though. “About ten minutes to get here,” he murmured under his breath. He fished out one of his ubiquitous envelope-backs and jotted something on it. Then he folded it over small and stuck it back in his pocket.

He came out of the booth and moved back to the bar again.

“What time do you close up?” he asked the man behind the counter.

“Four o’clock, the usual time.”

“About twenty minutes to go,” Burgess murmured.

The place was emptying out by degrees. He stayed by himself at the far end of it. In ten minutes he looked at his watch again. Then he turned his head slowly and eyed the door. Nothing happened. No one came in. He packed a fist and swung it low toward the bar, under cover of his body, then pulled it short — as though his calculations had gone wrong, and he felt like taking it out on somebody.

The barman started putting out some of the lights. The last of the other customers had drifted out by now, there was no one at all in the place but Burgess. The barman came back toward him to give him the hint. “Care for a nightcap before I put the corks back in for the night?”

Burgess nodded. He took out a bill and put it into the barman’s hand. “No change,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” the barman beamed. Then he started to look down into his own palm.

“Don’t look at it, just take it over to the register with you,” Burgess said out of the comer of his mouth.

The barman went over to the register, stole a look of curiosity back toward him as he stood there before it.

Burgess got up and walked slowly toward the front entrance. He stood there a minute and buttoned up his coat tight. He shivered a little, as if he found it chilly-looking outside from where he was standing.

“Goodnight,” the barman called after him.

“Good-bye,” Burgess answered. He had a feeling that that was the right word to use. He pushed out into the eerie blackness of the street, pulled his hat down low, started to trudge away. It was now four o’clock in the morning. He wouldn’t have taken even odds on his chances of seeing five roll around, like he’d given the barman at Mike’s on the extra jigger.

Rubber whispered insidiously up alongside him before he’d moved half-a-dozen feet away, and a hooded car was there, slowly pacing him. A voice spoke from it. “Buddy, could we trouble you for a light?”

His breathing changed, but he didn’t give any other sign of knowing what this was. He reached in his pocket, then turned aside and went over to it.

He still couldn’t see anyone, it was like a coffin on wheels. They must have had the shades drawn. A hand reached out and took the matches, but they weren’t used, the flare from inside never came.

“Say something, buddy,” the voice urged.

“What d’you want me to say?”

“Just that, that’ll do nicely.” A second voice spoke from the depths of the car. “That’s him. I know him by his voice. He’s the one.”

“Here’s your matches back, buddy.”

Burgess looked down at where the hand had come slightly forward through the door-gap again. “That’s a gun you’ve got there,” he remarked calmly.

“It says ‘get in and make yourself comfortable.’ ”

A second door opened rearward to the first and he got in. Both doors closed tight and the wheels started to pick up pace.

It was pitch-black. He could feel someone on each side of him, but they were just formless masses of darkness, without faces or anything else. A voice spoke to his left. “You called up a certain party about a certain matter, a little earlier tonight, didn’t you?”

“Every call is to a party, about a matter,” Burgess parried.

“You don’t have to be afraid, buddy. There’s a nice umbrella in it for you. All we gotta do first is find out if you’re a phony or on the up.”

“Where we going to do that?” Burgess asked quietly.

“To a warehouse where they store liquor. Was you ever to a warehouse where they store liquor? It’s very instructive.”

“You’ll frighten the guy,” a voice on the other side of him remonstrated with mock solicitude.

“No, the guy isn’t frightened,” Burgess answered imperturbably. He had to quirk his neck to get the words out freely, but they didn’t see that in the dark.

“Oh, the guy’s brave, huh?” was the jeering reply.

Something white showed up in the blackness in front of him, and he instinctively shied away from it. “Just hold steady, buddy, this goes around your eyes.” The nudge of a tubular gun-muzzle into the cleft between two of his ribs added a note of persuasion. A blindfold was pulled tight around him, fastened at the back of his head.

“What for? I can’t see anything even without it.”

“Well, with it you can’t see. twice as good, that’s what for.”

The car ran up some sort of a trucking ramp, then gave off a hollow, echoing sound, as though it had entered some sort of a vast enclosed place. Then it stopped, the doors latched open, and he could hear them getting out.

“All right, buddy, end of the line. Down you come.”

He missed the car-step, and flopped inertly against someone. He was shoved back, then steadied, gripped by both arms, and hustled forward, to the accompaniment of a small battery of other footfalls all around him, striking on wooden planking. “You stay out there with the car, Muggsy,” a voice ordered. The rest kept going.

Presently it spoke again. “Are we all in? Turn on some lights.” A thin line of yellow showed up along the bottom of Burgess’ blindfold. “Take the blinkers off him.”

The bandage was whipped off. He blinked helplessly a couple of times before he could get his eyes into focus. He was in some sort of a huge cavernous place, its ceiling so high it was completely ought of sight in the gloom. A shaded light brooded down on the floor, and on the four men around him, none of whom he had ever seen before. There was a shadowy background of packing cases dimly discernible, with aisles left through them here and there.

Four pairs of eyes stared at him with flinty inflexibility. One of their owners spoke at last. “Now there’s four of us here. You say you saw two guys come into Mike’s Tavern and shoot him, yesterday morning. All right, pick out the two you say you saw.”

He knew his life depended on the answer. “Give me a minute’s time,” he stalled. “Give my eyes a chance to get used to the light. I had a couple drinks back there, and I want to be sure what I’m doing.”

“Yeah,” the spokesman echoed mordantly. “You want to be sure what you’re doing.”

Burgess stared hard at the first one, on his left. The man stared back at him, evil eyed and granite-faced. He passed on to the next, stared at him. The man tiled to stare back. His jaw twitched a little. His eyes dropped momentarily, then he recovered, went ahead staring.

“Come on,” somebody said. “Either you do know or you don’t!”

“I do know. I want to figure out what it’s best for me to say.”

The fourth man took out a sheaf of bills, left them lying in front of him on a corner of the packing case, without saying a word. There must have been at least a thousand dollars worth in the crumpled mass.

Burgess took a deep breath. “The two guys I saw come into Mike’s Tavern and shoot Mike Oliver were you, the second guy, and you, the fourth,” he said quietly.

Nothing happened for a minute. Then the man who had produced the money emitted a soft sigh of regret in the silence. He smiled a little with it. “That was the wrong answer.”

“You two were the ones that were there, what’s wrong about it?”

“Sure we were. And that’s why it’s the wrong answer. If you’d picked the wrong two, we’d have known you were guessing. You would have probably walked out of here alive. You picked the right two, so we know now you were really there. Too bad, but you’ll have to take your five hundred in capsule form now.”

A gun came up in his hand. “Move him out a little,” he instructed. “It’s liable to go into one of the cases, and that’s my best four-star stock you’ve got him standing in front of.”

Two of them grabbed Burgess each by an arm and started to swing him out further into the aisle.

“And put that down yourself,” an authoritative voice suddenly bellowed from further back in the shadows, “or it’s liable to go into something else besides that!”

Edge swung around to face in the new direction, and hitched the gun up to shoot. The crash, however, came from the other end of the target-line, and he went slapping back into one of the cases with a wooden thud.

Inspector Lyons came forward, wallowing through the haze of his own shot. “You should always do as you’re told the first time,” he said grimly, “when it’s a police order.” He plucked the gun out of his hand, and Edge went sidling down to the floor, leaving a thin red streak across the stenciled signs on the packing-cases that said: “Edge’s Four-Star Bond.”

There was a cop or detective standing at each of the four aisles converging on the open place where Burgess’ execution had been slated to take place, blocking it off. The remaining three profited by the demonstration they had just been given. They obeyed the order the first time it was given, and showed their empty palms.

Lyons came over to where Burgess was hanging onto the edge of one of the cases by the backs of his elbows for support. “Are you O.K.?” he asked him.

“I’m all right,” Burgess answered, mopping his forehead. “My legs are just kind of rubbery, that’s all. Did you hear him? Were you close enough to hear him? You said if he convicted himself out of his own mouth—”

“I heard him, all right!” Lyons assured him. “And so did the whole squad I brought with me.”

“Then that’s all that matters. I guess I’ll sit down now.”

Burgess let himself down to the floor, knees reared. “Give us a cigarette,” he said limply. “I’m no hero.”

“No?” answered the inspector dryly. “You just gave an imitation good enough to fool me.”

Burgess struggled to his feet again. “I gambled heavy,” he explained. “I didn’t know if the bartender would take me seriously or not. I didn’t want to phone you before anything happened, because I had a hunch you wouldn’t pay any attention.”

“Guess I wouldn’t’ve,” Lyons admitted sheepishly.

“I couldn’t talk to him across the bar, for all I knew they were watching me from outside. So I scribbled on the back of an envelope for him to call you as soon as I left and tell you it was Edge, and that if I turned up croaked to blame it on him.”

“He did better than that. He got so curious after reading what was on it that he followed you to the door and watched you go — with the lights out behind him, of course. He saw the car pick you up and he even got a look at its number. He phoned that in to me. I sent it right out on the radio and a prowl-car spotted it on the way and tailed it here. Then all we had to do later was come where they’d told us.”

He went over and supervised the removal of Edge, prone on a stretcher, came back again.

“Is he dead?” Burgess asked.

“Naw. He’ll live to cost the state money on its electric bill. He thinks he’s dying, though, and he just admitted he did it, a second time over. Then in a couple days he’ll go into the second stage they all pass through, retract it again. That’s all right, we’re used to that. Let’s get back now, I want to sapolio the rest of these guys.”

On the way over to headquarters he remarked: “Those must have been a tough few minutes there, when they put you to the test.”

“Sure they were, but not in the way you think. The tough part was to guess the right ‘wrong answer,’ as he put it. I knew I could save my skin by guessing wrong, but that wasn’t what I was after. I’d never seen any of the four of them before. What I was scared of was picking the two that hadn’t been there, and getting let off instead of being given the works.

“You see how it was worked now, don’t you?” he went on. “It was a case of two birds with one stone. Or I guess you should say, one bar-glass. Edge had a long-standing grudge against Hastings. And a more recent and even hotter one against Mike Oliver for daring to stand up to his liquor-distributing ring and refusing to be hijacked by it any more. So he figured one murder should be enough to take care of the both. He had one of his men, with grease on his hand, put on a souse-act and follow Hastings into a bar the night before. He shook hands with him, and Hastings printed his own tips all over the glass he was using, without knowing it. Then the would-be souse swiped it and brought it to Edge, probably wrapped up in a cloth or something. Edge took it in to Mike’s with him, and switched glasses, left it behind there to damn Hastings, and carried his own out and threw it away. The guy with him wiped his own off clean before they left, but that one wasn’t touched. The gun, I suppose, was taken apart and scattered all over the landscape. I tried to tell you about an extra glass turning up in the stock at the Tavern, but you wouldn’t listen—”

Afterwards, back at his own office, the preliminary dry-cleaning of the suspects concluded for the time being, Lyons said to him: “The mechanics of the thing is clear enough, the switch of glasses and all that, but there’s one thing I’d like to know. One thing that we missed up on and that you evidently didn’t. What was it first started you off thinking the glass was a plant, and there was something phony about the whole set-up? There must have been something you caught that we didn’t.”

“That was a small thing. I didn’t even bother mentioning it to you, because I was sure you’d seen it for yourselves. Edge, as often happens in such cases, in spite of the fact that he’s dealt in liquor all his life and made all his money out of it, is not a whiskey-drinker himself, never touches it. So he went in there and ordered. He made one little slip. He didn’t think it mattered what that last order was, that death-order. He already had Hastings’ glass in his pocket, ready to leave behind him there. And he was taking his own out with him, no one would ever see it. So he must have figured what difference did it make whether he ordered champagne or vodka or whatever it was? So habit reasserted itself, and he ordered beer. And the monkey with him, acting under the sort of auto-suggestion that often crops up at such times, seconded his order. But Mike Oliver had a peculiar habit of insisting on payment first, his own barman told me that, and he beat the bullets into the cash-register with the coins they’d given him. The evidence was still there when I came into the place, half an hour later. And to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, I looked it up on your own police photographs and I saw it over again. There was a whiskey-jigger and a beer-glass standing on the counter, and yet the indicator over the cash-box said ‘20¢.’ You can’t break that down into a whiskey and a beer. There’s no whiskey in town that sells for ten cents a slug. Even arguing that the beer was just a chaser for the whiskey — and it wasn’t, because they were both on an even line at the edge of the bar, and two customers’ width away from one another — the price for the cheapest brand that Oliver’s place carried in stock would have been twenty-five cents for one shot.”

Lyons drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. “Do you know of a good optician?” he said. “There’s a few of the men detailed to me I’m thinking of sending around to one. And it wouldn’t hurt for me to go myself.”

He had it all lined up ahead of him. He’d just been given a by-line over his piece, so that was one step accomplished. Next a feature of his own. Then the city desk. Then managing ed—

“Burgess!”

He bounced all the way down the steps, and there he was at the bottom again.

“Suppose you haul your petrified person out of here and earn the fifty bucks blackmail you’re shaking us down for every week! Now to be more specific, I understand there’s a woman on a window-ledge over on Franklin Street, threatening to jump—”

Burgess slammed the door on the stentorian tirade. “Well, at least I got a fifteen-buck raise out of it,” he grumbled.

The Fingernail

Inspector Morrow, retired, followed his friend to one of the little tables against the wall.

“This place is famous for its food,” the other man, who was acting as host, remarked as they sat down, unfurled their napkins. “Ever been here before?”

Morrow looked around him uncertainly. “Restaurant Robert,” he murmured. “Wait a minute, I remember this place. Before my retirement from Homicide we once traced a murderer as far as here — and then we lost him again. Remind me to tell you about it after we’ve ordered.” He took up his bill-of-fare, studied it a moment or two. “You come here a lot — what’s good?”

“Try one of Robert’s famous rabbit-stews,” the other man suggested. “They’re made separately for each customer, in little individual earthenware casseroles. It’s Robert’s own secret recipe, he won’t share with anyone.”

“Sounds good to me,” acquiesced Morrow.

“Two,” said his companion to the waiter. “And tell Robert I have a new customer with me tonight.” He turned to Morrow. “That’ll bring him out in person at the end of the meal, to hear you praise his efforts — it always does. He’s as proud as a kid of these rabbit-stews of his.” He leaned back comfortably in his chair. “It’ll take a little while. Now what was that story you promised to tell me?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Morrow helped himself to a piece of bread. “It’s a good five years ago now. We found a man murdered one night—”

Inspector Morrow, five years younger, five inches slimmer at the waist, climbed down the rickety iron steps into the basement antique-shop. A younger man came toward the entrance to greet him, said, “Hello, Inspector.”

“Hello, Fletcher. What’s the good word so far?”

“Well, I’ve got all the preliminaries over with,” his subordinate said. “Weylin Hamilton’s his name. He lived here alone on the premises, in back of the shop. It happened in the early part of last evening. Robbery-motive. He evidently kept considerable money down here with him. We found the box he’d hidden it in busted open — and empty. No relatives or next of kin.”

The place was even more grotesque within than it had looked from the outside. Technically it might have been an antique shop, but to Morrow’s practical eye it looked more like a junk shop. It contained just about everything a person would not want, the way he felt about it. A suit of Japanese armor loomed terrifyingly in one corner. Scimitars, spears, and venerable flintlock pistols were affixed to the walls. There were squat Chinese buddhas, a South Sea war drum, even a Turkish water pipe coiled on a tabouret.

“Look out, that’s him,” Fletcher warned abruptly as his superior was about to thrust his way between a couple of the overcrowded display-stands. Morrow recoiled, just missing stepping on the inert bundle on the floor.

He gestured impatiently. “Move this trash out of the way and give me some room. That’s better.” He crouched down, peered attentively at the form lying there. “Now let’s see what we’ve got here.” The handle of an antique Florentine dagger, wrapped in felt, protruded from the dead man’s chest.

“That came down off the wall over there,” Fletcher pointed out.

“In other words, it wasn’t premeditated. The guy didn’t bring his own weapon with him. Hamilton came out of the back room, interrupted the guy trying to rob him, and the guy snatched down the first thing he could lay hands on and let him have it.” He pointed. “What’s this cotton wool doing wrapped around one of his insteps?”

“He was suffering with arthritis, the medical examiner says. Couldn’t put one shoe on. Couldn’t move around much, the last few weeks.”

“Then it’s a cinch he couldn’t manage those breakneck iron steps outside, leading up to the sidewalk. Must have been sort of marooned down here.” Morrow got up again. “Now let’s see this box you think he kept money in.”

“I know he did; there’s a tiny corner of a dollar bill — or maybe it was a five or ten — got caught under the back of the lid and torn off in the murderer’s hurry to get it out. I guess the old guy had it wadded in pretty tightly. Here it is.”

Morrow eyed the tiny fragment of paper first. “Yeah, that’s Government-paper,” he agreed. “You can see the blue and red threads even with the naked eye.” Then he turned to the box itself. It was of Oriental origin, lacquered wood on the outside, but lined with a thin sheeting of copper on the inside. The lacquer was marred and gouged-at all along the seam of the lid.

“He had a tough time opening this, even though it has no lock and key,” Morrow pointed out. “You see, it operates by pressure; there’s an unnoticeable sort of bulge in the wood. You press against that and that releases the lid. He didn’t get the hang of it, must have kept digging his nail into the seam and trying to pry it up that way.” He took it over closer to a portable reflector that had been rigged up, peered at the lining. “Then it shot up suddenly when he least expected it and his finger rammed home. He hurt himself on it, too. There’s a thin dark hairline across the edge of the metal lining, where it peers above the edge of the wood casing — blood. Just where did you find the box lying?”

Fletcher took him over and showed him. Morrow got down and began to scan the floor. “Here’s a drop here. Here’s another. They must have escaped before he could wrap something around it—” He motioned imperatively to his assistant. “Gimme a piece of paper, any kind will do—” He scooped at something with it, held the paper out to show him. “See what this is?”

Fletcher squinted at the little shell-like object. “It looks like — like somebody’s whole fingernail.”

“It is. He lost his whole nail. It must have been defective to start with to come off that easy, but the metal edge of that box lining caught under it and sliced it off. If it didn’t come right off at once, he pulled it off himself to keep it from dangling. That was his mistake. It takes too long to grow a new nail for him to be able to cover up the loss before we’ve caught him.” He wrapped and pocketed the queasy little memento.

“It was somebody that paid two or more visits — he knew just which box the old man kept his cash in, out of all the junk in here, and made a beeline for it without disturbing anything else. Hamilton must have been incautious enough to haul it out once or twice in his presence.”

“That looks like Hamilton paid him instead of him paying Hamilton for something that he bought,” Fletcher observed.

“Let’s take a look at what the inside room is like.”

It was just a cubbyhole with a cot and cupboard in it and not much else. Morrow glanced around with eyes trained not to miss little details that somebody else might have overlooked. He opened the cupboard, revealed several bottles of liniment and nothing else. He turned to Fletcher. “The medical examiner says he was suffering from arthritis lately and couldn’t navigate the entrance steps. You say he had no relatives or intimate friends. Well, where’d he get his meals from, then? There’s not so much as an empty cracker box in sight.”

Fletcher scratched his head. “Gee, I never thought of—”

“He had them sent in, that’s what he did. From some place near by where he’d been in the habit of going formerly, before he was incapacitated. That means a waiter or bus boy of some kind. And that’s who killed him. It all checks. Repeated visits with a covered tray or hamper. And Hamilton took money out of the box to pay him, instead of his paying Hamilton. Now we’re getting somewhere. We want a waiter with the nail gone from one of his fingers, who works at some place in the immediate vicinity, within a radius of about three or four blocks at the most.” He blew between his hands, ground them together. “It’s practically over!”

Andy, the junior waiter at Robert’s, was nervous. He stood there in the kitchen with his back to the boss, while the latter cut up the skinned rabbits that went piecemeal into the famous stews, six casseroles of which were already slowly simmering on the charcoal stove.

Robert, a great good-natured hulk of a Frenchman, bald as an onion under his chef’s cap, was rambling on, as he had a habit of doing whenever there was anyone in the kitchen to listen, no matter who. “Fonny thing happen this afternoon. Some guy he come to my door upstairs here in house, before restaurant is open, say he want to speak to me. I think he’s policeman; you know, one of those kind without blue suit?”

Andy had stopped his work of trimming radishes, stood listening intently, head bent, with the paring knife held motionless in one white-gloved hand. He didn’t say anything.

“He look at me close, like owl. He say, which one of your waiters got sore finger, you happen to notice?” Robert shrugged. “I say, how I’m going to tell you that? The one strict rule in my place is, all the men work for me they got to wear white cotton gloves, kip ’em on their hands all the time for to be clean and neat.”

Andy just listened, neck rigid.

“He say, ‘Never mind, I find out for myself. Kip it under your hat, eh’?” He gestured toward the dining-room door. “He sitting out there now, I see him when I come through. What you suppose is matter, eh?”

“I don’t know,” Andy said in a muffled voice.

Robert wiped his hands on his apron. “All right, ragout they all ready now, just wait for to put seasoning in. I go down basement, bring up little spice. Kip eye on fire for me, eh, Andy? If she get too low, put on little more charcoal—” He opened the cellar door that led down to the supply room, waddled clumsily out of sight down the steps.

Andy swallowed hard, as though he had a lump in his throat. He turned and eyed the redly glowing charcoal range. He went over to the sack of fuel slumped in a corner, scooped out a trowelful, carried it to the stove, crouched down and spaded it in. Then he looked around across his shoulder. He was alone in the kitchen at the moment, and such moments were likely to be few and far between as the dinner hour got under way.

He unpinned something from the inside of his shirt. With furtive, trembling, white-gloved fingers he tore it across once, twice. He flung the pieces in on top of the flame-licked charcoal. One fragment escaped him in the draught, fell to the floor, lay there for a moment. The numeral “20” was engraved on it, in green and white, with red and blue threads veining the paper. He retrieved it, sent it in after the other pieces. Then he closed the stove flap. His face had been gray even in the ruddy glow beating against it.

He jumped furtively back to the work table, just as the swing door flapped open and one of his fellow-workers came bustling in. The latter loaded a tray without glancing at Andy, hoisted it to his shoulder, swung out again into the dining-room.

Andy went after him, but only as far as the door. He steadied it with one hand, peered cautiously out through the glass inset near the top. There was a sprinkling of early arrivals already in the outer room. Most of them were habitués, he knew their faces. All but one. There was a man sitting by himself at a table against the far wall. He’d never been in the place before. Andy was sure of it. He didn’t act hungry, he was ignoring the bill-of-fare. A waiter came over to take his order and the man said something to him. The waiter looked surprised, hesitated momentarily. The man repeated what he had said in a tight-lipped way that brooked no argument. Then Andy saw the waiter slowly strip off first one glove, then the other, poise his hands for inspection, palms down. The man nodded curtly and the waiter slowly began to draw his gloves on again.

Andy didn’t wait to see any more. He left the door pane, fled swiftly across the kitchen toward the opposite door that gave onto the outside alley, stripping off his apron and flinging it behind him as he went. He pushed the door open, then drew up short. There was the motionless figure of a man outlined at the alley-mouth against the street light beyond. He was just standing there waiting, effectively blocking all egress. There was no other way out but past him — in the other direction the alley came to a dead end.

Andy turned, floundered strickenly back into the kitchen again. He looked around him with agonized helplessness. Robert’s slow, heavy tread was starting up the basement-steps from below.

He had a minute left. It ended.

He was standing there, bent forward over the work table, face ghastly white, when Robert came lumbering up into sight a minute later. Robert gave him a sudden, startled look. “What’s matter, you sick? You got pain in stomach?”

“Boss, you’ll have to let me go home for tonight,” Andy whispered weakly. “I can’t work any more.” There was sweat on his forehead.

Another waiter came barging in. “One rabbit stew for the rich dame at number four table!”

Robert was a considerate boss. “All right, Andy, you go,” he consented. “You no look good, that’s a fact. You take over his tables for him tonight, George—”

Andy’s face was still deathly pale, but calm and untroubled now, when he tottered out to the alley mouth a moment later. The man standing there promptly reached out, pinned him fast. “Just a minute, brother, let’s have a look at your hands.”

Andy obeyed without demur. He held them out, shakily, palms downward. They were ungloved. The index finger of the right hand was a sodden, topheavy funnel of telescoped gauze bandaging.

“Take that off,” growled the man.

Andy didn’t have to. He just gave his hand a slight downward hitch and the saturated dressing flew off of its own weight. There was nothing to hold it, nothing under it, just a gory space between the thumb and the middle finger.

“It was him all right, eh?” Morrow’s friend asked absorbedly.

“Sure it was him,” Morrow scowled. “But knowing a thing is one thing, proving it another. He’d worn his white service gloves when he’d carted the tray over, so that did away with all hope of prints. The pair of gloves that had become bloody, he probably destroyed. He admitted he’d taken quite a few meals over to Hamilton, but so had all the others. Hamilton had been seen alive after he called for and removed the tray that last night. The question was, which of them had sneaked back after the tray had been taken away, to rob the old man? We had to have that finger!

“I raised holy hell with them when they brought him in to me. ‘You numbskulls, get that finger!’ I hollered at them. ‘That’s almost more important than he is!’

“We jumped right back to the place, all of us. Inside of ten minutes after it happened, we were on the job turning the premises inside out. We put out the fire then and there, raked through the half-burned charcoal. We stopped the garbage before it had had a chance to go out, went through it with a fine comb. We emptied out all the flour bins and containers and whatnot they had around, we made a wreck out of that place. But the finger never turned up.

“He claimed it was an accident, of course. The knife had slipped and taken it clean off. He claimed he’d fainted with the shock, and was in too much pain when he came to, to notice what had become of it.

“We ragged him for days after that, but it didn’t do any good. We never found the money on him, nor any evidence that he’d spent it. We couldn’t shake his alibi for the particular time the crime had taken place. He’d outsmarted us. We knew he was the guy. But without that nailless finger we couldn’t prove it.

“It still burns me up, even at this late day, to think of it. It spoiled what would have otherwise been a hundred-per-cent perfect record for me. I still can’t figure out what became of it, what he did to make it disappear so fast — and thoroughly.”

“Here comes Robert, as I warned you, to find out how you liked his specialty,” his friend remarked.

“Say, that rabbit stew was great,” Morrow complimented the old chef. “I never tasted anything to beat it!”

“You like, eh?” Robert’s chest puffed out like a pouter pigeon’s. “I never had a complaint yet, in over twenty years—” He corrected himself conscientiously. “Just once, I remember now. One night fussy rich lady, who used to come regular, she send for me. This long time ago, we have a little trouble in kitchen that night. I get maybe a little excited.

“She say, ‘Robert, are you sure that was all rabbit? I may be wrong, but the flavor at times seemed to vary a little—’ ”

Content

William Irish
The Dancing Detective

The Dancing Detective

Two Fellows in a Furnished Room

The Light in the Window

Silent As the Grave

The Detective’s Dilemma

Fur Jacket

Leg Man

The Fingernail