The Bride Wore Black

I The Woman

It was his experience that grownups always asked such dumb questions. Questions about things that were so self-evident that you yourself had long ago learned to take them for granted. But they always had to know the answer. Especially when you wanted to do something else. Something really worth while, like bouncing an oversized brightly colored ball along the sidewalk. Like this lady that was holding him up right now. Bending down and being so kind and all that, and keeping him from having any fun.

“My, what a big ball that is for such a little fellow.”

Well, anyone could see it was a big ball. Why did she have to tell him that? Why didn’t she go home where she lived?

“How old are you?”

What did she have to know how old he was for? “Five anna haff goin’ on six.”

“Just think. Whose little boy are you?”

What did she have to know whose little boy he was for? He wasn’t hers, she ought to know that by looking at him. “My mothers and father’s,” he mumbled patronizingly. How could anyone by anyone else’s?

“And what’s your father’s name, dear?” Didn’t she know anything at all?

She probably meant that vague, formal, never-used name that his father seemed to have for an extra appendage; not the logical “Daddy.”

“Mista Moran,” he parroted.

She said something about a door. “How doorable.” Then she said, “Have you any brothers and sisters?”

“Nope.”

“Ah, what a shame! Don’t you miss them?”

How could you miss them when you never had them? However, he could vaguely sense some sort of personal reflection involved in not having any, so he immediately tried to make good the lack with substitutes. “I got a grandma, though.”

“Isn’t that lovely? Does she live right with you?”

One’s grandma never did, didn’t she know that? “She lives in Garrison.” Another substitute came to mind with that mental image, so he threw her into the gap, too. “So does my Aunt Ada, too.” Wasn’t she ever going to let him go ahead bouncing his ball?

“Oh, all the way up there!” she marveled. “Were you ever up there to meet her?”

“Shoe I was, when I was little. But Dr. Bixby said I made too much noise, so mommy hadda bring me back home again.”

“Is Dr. Bixby your grandma’s doctor, dear?”

“Shoe, he comes there lots.”

“Tell me, dear, have you started school yet?”

What an insulting question! How old did she think he was, anyway — two? “Shoe. I go to kindergarten every day,” he said self-importantly.

“And what do you do there, dear?”

“We draw ducks and rabbits and cows. Miss Baker gave me a gole star for drawin’ a cow.” Wasn’t she ever going to go away and leave him be? This felt like it had kept up for hours. He could have bounced his ball all the way up to the corner and back, the time she’d made him waste.

He tried to go around one side of her, and she finally took the hint. “Well, dear, run along and play, I won’t keep you any longer.” She patted him twice on the bullet-shaped back of his head and moved off down the sidewalk, throwing him a fetching smile backward over her shoulder.

His mother’s voice suddenly sounded through the screen of the open ground-floor window. She must have been sitting there the whole time. You could see out through the screen, but you couldn’t see in through it; he’d found that out long ago. “What was the nice lady saying to you. Cookie?” she asked benevolently. A grown-up would have detected a note of instinctive pride that her offspring was so remarkable in every way he even attracted the attention of passing strangers.

“She wanned to know how ole I was,” he answered absently. He turned his attention to more important business. “Mommy, watch. Look how high I can throw this!”

“Yes, dear, but not too high, it might roll into the gutter.”

A moment later he’d already forgotten the incident. Two moments later his mother had.

II Moran

Moran’s wife had called up the office while he was out to lunch; there was a message from her waiting there for him when he got back.

This didn’t startle him; it was a fairly frequent occurrence, on an average of every third day. Something she’d found out she needed from downtown and wanted him to stop off and get for her on his way home, most likely, he thought at first. Then on second thought he saw it couldn’t quite be that, either, or, having failed to reach him, she would have simply left the message with the switchboard girl. Unless, of course, it was something that needed more detailed instructions than could be conveniently conveyed at secondhand.

He made use of his brief after-lunch digestive torpor to phone.

“Here’s your wife, Mr. Moran.”

“Frank—” Margaret’s voice sounded emotionally charged, so he knew right away, before she’d got any further than his name, that this was more than just a purchase errand.

“H’lo, dear, what’s up?”

“Oh, Fuh-rank, I’m awfully glad you got back! I’m worried sick, I don’t know what to do. I just got a telegram from Ada half an hour ago—”

Ada was her unmarried sister, upstate. “A telegram?” he said. “Why a telegram?”

“Well, that’s just it. Here, I’ll read it to you.” It took her a moment or two; she must have had to fumble for it in her apron pocket and unfold it with one hand. “It says, ‘Mother down with bad spell, don’t want to frighten you but suggest you come at once. Dr. Bixby agrees. Don’t delay. Ada.’ ”

“I suppose it’s her heart again,” he said somewhat less than compassionately. Why’d she have to bother him in the middle of the business day with something like this?

She had begun to whimper in a low-keyed restrained way that was not quite outright weeping — a sort of frightened watering of her conversation.

“Frank, what’ll I do? D’you think I ought to call them up long distance?”

“If she wants you to go up there, you better go up there,” he answered shortly.

She’d evidently wanted to hear this advice; it chimed in with her own inclinations. “I guess I’d better,” she agreed tearfully. “You know Ada, she’s anything but an alarmist, she’s always been inclined to minimize these things before now. The last time mother had one of her spells she didn’t even let me know about it until it was all over, to keep from worrying me.”

“Don’t get so unnerved about it. Your mother’s had these spells before and gotten over them,” he tried to point out.

But her distress had already taken a different tack. “But what’ll I do about you and Cookie?”

He took umbrage at being lumped together with his five-year-old son in helplessness. “I can look after him,” he said sharply. “I’m no cripple. Do you want me to find out what buses there are for you?”

“I’ve already done that myself, and there’s one at five. If I take a later one I’ll have to sit up all night, and you know how miserable that is.”

“You better take the early one,” he agreed.

The pace of her conversation quickened, became a flurry. “I’m all packed — just an overnight bag. Now, Frank, will you meet me at the terminal?”

“O.K., O.K.” He was starting to get a little impatient with this endless rigmarole. Women didn’t know how to make a telephone call short and to the point. His secretary was standing in the doorway, waiting to consult him about something

“And, Frank, be sure you’re there on time. Remember, you’ll have to take Cookie home with you. I’ll have him with me; I’m picking him up at the kindergarten on my way downtown.”

As punctual as he made it a point to be, Margaret was already there ahead of him when he got down to the terminal, with the little dab of foreshortened humanity that was Cookie by her side. The latter began to jump up and down, giving vertical emphasis to the important information he had to impart. “Daddy, mommy’s going away! Mommy’s going away!”

He was unnoticed by both of them, this being one of the rare times he didn’t succeed in monopolizing the opening moments of one of their conversations. “What’ve you been doing, crying?” Moran accused her. “Sure you have, I can tell by your eyes. There’s no sense acting that way about it.”

A torrent of maternal advice began pouring from her. “Now, Frank, you’ll find the food for his supper all ready on the kitchen table, all you’ll have to do is heat it. And, Frank, don’t feed him too late, it isn’t good for him. Oh, and another thing, you’d better let him do without his bath tonight. You don’t know enough about giving it to him, and I’m afraid something might happen to him in the tub.”

“One night without it won’t kill him,” Moran grunted contemptuously.

“And, Frank, do you think you’ll know how to undress him?”

“Sure. Just unbutton, and there you are. What’s the difference between his things and my own? Just smaller, that’s all.”

But the torrent spilled forth unabated. “And, Frank, if you should want to go out yourself later on, I wouldn’t leave him alone in the house if I were you. Maybe you can get one of the neighbors to come in and give him an eye—”

A voice was megaphoning sepulchrally somewhere in the vaulted depths below the waiting room. “—Hobbs Landing, Allenville, Greendale—”

“That’s yours, y’better get on.”

They moved slowly down the ramp to departure level. The torrent was at last slackening; it came only in desultory little spurts now, afterthoughts concerned with his own personal well-being. “Now, Frank, you know where I keep your clean shirts and things—”

“Ba-awd,” the bus starter was keening.

She wound her arms about his neck with unexpected tightness, as though she were still not one hundred percent maternal. “Good-by, Frank, I’ll be back the minute I can.”

“Phone me when you get up there, so I’ll know you arrived O.K.”

“I do hope she’ll be all right.”

“Sure she will, she’ll be up and around again before the week is out—”

She crouched down by Cookie, adjusted his cap, his jacket collar, the hem of one of his little knee pants, kissed him on the three sides of the head. “Now, Cookie, you be a good boy, listen to whatever daddy tells you.”

The last thing she said, from inside the bus steps, was, “Frank, he’s forming a habit of telling little fibs lately, I’ve been trying to break him of it; don’t encourage him—”

She finally had to turn away because others were trying to get in after her and she was blocking the entrance. The bus driver turned his head and followed her morosely with his eyes down the aisle toward her seat. He muttered: “For Pete’s sake, I only run a couple of hours upstate, not all the way to the Mexican border.”

Moran and offspring shifted over on the platform opposite her seat. She couldn’t get the window up, or she would probably have gone on indefinitely in the same vein as before. She had to content herself with blowing kisses and making instructive signs to the two of them through the pane. Moran couldn’t tell what most of them meant but pretended he understood by nodding docilely in order to make her feel better about it.

The bus started to wheel out along the concrete with a gritty, hissing sound. Moran bent down to the diminutive self beside him, raised one of its toothpick arms. “Wave goodbye to your mother,” he instructed. He worked the little appendage awkwardly back and forth, like something on a toy pump.

He was thinking of Margaret for the tenth time, with a newborn respect, almost with awe, for being able to whip any kind of results out of chaos like this — and not just once, but day after day — when the doorbell rang.

He groaned aloud. “I haven’t got enough on my hands, I gotta have company yet, to hang around and laugh at me!”

He had his coat and tie off, shirt sleeves rolled up out of harm’s way, and one of Margaret’s aprons tucked into his belt. He’d managed to get Cookie’s food warmed up — after all, the way Margaret had left it waiting, all you did was strike a match and put it on the gas stove — and he’d managed to bring Cookie and the food together at the table, after a lot of running around. But accomplishment ended there. What did you do to keep a kid from walloping it backhand with the flat of his spoon, making mud pies with it so to speak, so that it flew up all over? With Margaret around. Cookie just seemed to eat. With him, he laid down barrages on it, and flecks of it were even hitting the wall opposite.

Moran kept shifting around behind him from one side to the other, trying to nab the niblick shots that were doing all the damage. Persuasion was worse than useless; Cookie had him out on a limb and knew it.

The doorbell peeped a second time. Moran meanwhile being so busy he had already forgotten about the first ring. He raked despairing fingers through his hair, looked from Cookie out toward the door and from the door back to Cookie. Finally, as though deciding nothing could be any worse than this, he started out to answer it, wiping off a dab of spinach from just above one eyebrow.

It was a woman, and he didn’t know her. She was a lady, anyway; she carefully refrained from seeming to see the apron with blue forget-me-nots in one corner, acted as though he looked perfectly normal.

She was young and rather pretty but was dressed in a way that seemed deliberately to seek to ignore the latter attribute; in a neat but plain blue serge jacket and skirt. Her hair was reddish gold and kept in severe confinement by pins or some other means. Her face was innocent of anything but soap and water. She had a little rosette of freckles on each cheek, high up on it; none anywhere else. She had an almost boyish air of friendliness and naturalness.

“Is this Cookie Moran’s house?” she asked with a friendly little smile.

“Yes — but my wife’s away right now—” Moran answered helplessly, wondering what she wanted.

“I know, Mr. Moran.” There was something understanding, almost commiserating, about the way she said it. There was also a betraying little twitch at the corner of her mouth, quickly restrained, “She said something about that when she came by for Cookie. That’s why I’m here. I’m Cookie’s kindergarten teacher. Miss Baker.”

“Oh, yes!” he said quickly, recognizing the name. “I’ve heard my wife speak of you a lot.” They shook hands; she had the firm, cordial sort of a grip you would have expected her to have.

“Mrs. Moran didn’t actually ask me to come over, but I could tell by the way she spoke she was worried about how you two would make out, so I took it upon myself to do it anyway. I know she’s had to leave on fairly short notice, so if there’s anything I can do—”

He didn’t make any bones about showing his relief and gratitude. “Say, that’s swell of you!” he said fervently. “Are you a lifesaver. Miss Baker! Come in—”

He became belatedly aware of the forget-me-notted apron, snatched it off and hid it behind him bunched in one hand.

“How do you get them to eat, anyway?” he asked confidentially, closing the door and following her down the hall. “I’m afraid to ram it in his mouth, he might choke—”

“I know just how it is, Mr. Moran, I know just how it is,” she said consolingly. She took one all-comprehensive look around her when she got to the dining-room doorway and gave a deep-throated little chuckle. “I can see I got here just in the nick of time.” He’d thought it was in pretty good shape until now, compared to the kitchen. That was where the hurricane had really struck.

“How’s the young man?” she asked.

“Cookie, look who’s here,” Moran said, still overjoyed at this unexpected succor that was like manna from heaven. “Miss Baker, your kindergarten teacher. Aren’t you going to say hello to her?”

Cookie studied her a long moment with the grave unblinking eyes of childhood. “Is not!” he finally said dispassionately.

“Why, Cookie!” Miss Baker rebuked gently. She crouched down by the high chair, bringing her head to the level of his. She put a finger to his chin and guided it. “Turn around and look at me good.” She found time to flash a tolerant smile to Moran over his head. “Don’t you know Miss Baker any more?”

Moran was embarrassed for the child, as though it made him out the parent of a mentally retarded offspring. “Cookie, what’s the matter with you, don’t you know your own kindergarten teacher?”

“Is not,” said Cookie without taking his eyes off her.

Miss Baker looked at the father, completely at a loss. “What do you suppose it is?” she asked solicitously. “He’s never been that way with me before.”

“I dunno, unless... unless—” A remark his wife had made came back to him. “Margaret warned me just now before she left that he’s starting to tell little fibs; maybe this is one of them now.” He put an edge of authority into his voice for his auditor’s benefit. “Now, see here, young man—!”

She made a charming little secretive gesture with her eyelids, a sort of deprecating flicker. “Let me handle him,” she breathed. “I’m used to them.” You could see she was a person who had infinite patience with children, would never lose her temper under any circumstances. She thrust her face toward him cajolingly. “What’s the matter. Cookie, don’t you know me any more? I know you—”

Cookie wasn’t saying.

“Wait, I think I have something here—” She opened her large handbag, brought out a folded sheet of paper. Spread, it revealed an outline drawing, printed, filled in with crayon coloring by hand. The crayon filling did not match the guidelines very accurately, but the will was there.

Cookie eyed it without any visible signs of pride of accomplishment.

“Don’t you remember doing this for me this morning — and, I told you how good it was? Don’t you remember you got a gold star for doing this—?”

That, at least, had a familiar ring to Moran’s own ears, if not his offspring’s. Many a night on coming home he’d gotten the vertically ejaculated tidings, “I got a gole star today!”

“Are you Miss Baker?” Cookie conceded warily.

“Ho!” She worried the lobe of his ear. “Of course I am, bless you! You know that.”

“Then why don’t you look like she does?”

She smiled amusedly at Moran. “I suppose he means the glasses. He’s used to my wearing horn-rimmed glasses when teaching class; I came out without them tonight. There’s a fine point of child psychology involved, too. He’s used to seeing me in the kindergarten and not in his home. I don’t belong here. So” — she spread her hands — “I’m not the same person.”

Moran was secretly admiring her scientific attitude toward the child and the thorough knowledge it was obviously grounded on, so different from Margaret’s irrational, emotional approach.

She stood up, evidently not a believer in pressing a contested point too far with a reluctant child at any one given time; rather winning it over to her viewpoint by degrees, a little at a time. He’d heard Margaret say that was the way they handled the youngsters at the kindergarten.

“He’ll forget all about this refusal to recognize me himself in five minutes — watch, you’ll see,” she promised brightly in an undertone.

“You’ve got to know just how to go about it with kids, don’t you?” he said, impressed.

“They’re distinct little entities in their own right, you know, not just half-formed grown-ups. That’s a mistaken old-fashioned notion that we’ve discarded.” She removed her hat and jacket, started toward the ravaged kitchen. “Now, let me see what I can do here to help. How about you yourself, Mr. Moran?”

“Oh, never mind about me,” he said with insincere self-denial. “I can go out to a cafeteria later—”

“Nonsense, there’s no need for that at all. I’ll have something ready before you know it. Now, you just read your evening paper — I can see by the way it’s still folded over you haven’t had a chance to go near it yet — and just forget everything, as though your wife were here looking after things.”

She was, thought Moran with a grateful sigh, one of the nicest, most competent, most considerate young women to have around that he’d ever yet had the pleasure of encountering. He strolled out into the living room, rolled down his shirt sleeves and eased back behind his evening box score.

It seemed a longer ride than it had the summer before, when she and Frank had last made the trip up, although Garrison hadn’t moved any at one end, or the city at the other. But that was because she was making it alone, for one thing, she supposed, and under unfavorable auspices, for another.

Frank had got her a seat by the window, and no one came to claim the one beside her, so she was spared the added discomfort of having to keep up a desultory conversation with some well-meaning seatmate; the penalty for refusal being, as she knew only too well, the even greater discomfort of sitting in strained, hostile awareness of each other after the preliminary snub.

The countryside spilled past with the rippling motion of overturned earth, as though the bus were plowing a steady furrow through it but carrying its trees, houses, fences along with it intact. She saw it only with the physical surface of her eyes, it wasn’t transmitted through the iris. Every twelve minutes, regularly, she remembered something she’d forgotten to tell Frank about Cookie or the house or the milkman or the laundryman. But then — and she realized this herself — even if she had remembered in the first place and told him, he probably would have forgotten it himself by now. That docile nodding outside the bus window hadn’t fooled her; it had been too facile.

Between the twelve-minute intervals she did a lot of worrying about her mother. The way one does, anyone does.

But she realized she was only making herself feel worse, borrowing trouble ahead of time, writing an obituary, so to speak, before there was any need to. As Frank said, it would be all right. It had to be. And if — God forbid — it turned out not to be in the end, then rushing to meet it halfway was no help, either.

She tried to shorten the trip, take her mind off its purpose, by thinking of other things. It was not easy to do. She had not the pictorial eye; inanimate scenery had never meant much to her. And since, on the other hand, she had never taken a passionate interest in the study of human nature in the abstract, what else was there left on a vehicle of this sort? She wondered if it would have helped if she’d bought a book or magazine at the terminal and brought it with her. Probably not; it would have remained opened on her lap at one certain page the whole way. She’d never been any great shakes as a reader.

In desperation that was almost pathetic she started to tally up her household expenses for the past week, and then for the past two weeks. The figures blurred in her mind, became fantastically senseless. She could not forget the hard little knot of worry that lay heavy within her.

It had grown dark now, and the view became restricted to the midget, tubular world she was confined in. The other people around her in the bus were — the other people usually around in a bus. No sublimation to be found there. Just the backs of heads.

She sighed and wished she were an Indian or whatever those people were who could leave their bodies and get there ahead of where they were going. Or something like that, anyway; she wasn’t sure of the mechanics of it.

Around eight they stopped at Greendale for ten minutes, and she had a cup of coffee at the counter in the bus station. As far as Cookie was concerned, at home, the worst was already over by this time, she realized. Either he had a bad case of stomachache by now or else Frank had fed him the way he should be fed and there was nothing further to worry about.

It seemed needless to phone ahead to Garrison from here; she was already two-thirds of the way there. And then there was always the thought that if she should get worse news than she’d already had in the telegram, it would make the rest of the trip an unendurable torment. It was better to wait until she got there herself to find out.

They arrived strictly on schedule, ten-thirty on the dot. She was the first one down, elbowing her way through the other passengers.

She wasn’t disappointed that there was no one waiting to meet her, because she realized Ada must have her hands full at the house; it couldn’t be expected at such a time.

Garrison’s brief, foreshortened nightlife was in mid-career immediately outside the bus station. Which meant the movie-theater entrance was still lighted on one side of the way and the drugstore on the other.

She passed a group of chattering young girls in their late teens and early twenties holding down a section of the board sidewalk just outside the drugstore entrance. One of them turned her head to look after her as she went by, and she heard her say, “Isn’t that Margaret Peabody — now?”

She hurried along the plank walk, head lowered, into the surrounding darkness. Luckily they didn’t yoo-hoo after her to try to make sure. She didn’t want to stop and talk to near strangers. They might have news. She didn’t want to hear it from them first. She wanted to go straight home and get it there, good or bad. But that “now,” it hung trembling over her, roaring in her mind. What did it mean, that it was already—?

She hurried up the dark tunnel-like length of Burgoyne Street, smothered under trees, turned left, continued on for two house lengths (which here meant two city blocks, very nearly), turned in at the well-remembered flagstone walk with its tricky unevenness of edges. Each one went up a fraction of an inch higher than the one adjoining. Many a fall in childhood’s awkward days—

She caught her breath with a quick little suction as the house swiveled around full face to her. Oh, yes, oh, yes, there were too many lights lit, far too many. Then she curbed her mounting panic, forced it down. Well, even... even if mother was laid up in bed at all with the slightest of attacks, Ada would have more than the usual number of lights lit, wouldn’t she? She’d have to, to be able to look after her.

But then as she stepped up on the little white-painted porch platform, dread assailed her again. There were too many shadows flitting back and forth behind the lowered linen shades, you could hear the hum of too many voices coming from inside, as at a time of crisis, when neighbors are called in. There was something wrong in there, there was some sort of commotion going on.

She reached out and poked the bell button with an icicle for a finger. Instantly the commotion became aggravated. A voice screamed, “I’ll go!” Another shrieked, “No, let me!” She could hear them clearly out where she was. Had one of them been Ada’s, high-pitched and unrecognizable with uncontrollable grief? It seemed to her it had. She must be hysterical, all of them must be.

Before her heart had time to turn over and drop down through her like a rock, there was a quick shuffle of frenzied footsteps, as though someone was trying to hold someone else back. The door billowed open and a great gush of yellow interior light fanned out all over her. There were two unrecognizable figures silhouetted in it, grotesques with strange shapes on their heads.

“I got to it first!” the smaller one proclaimed jubilantly. “I was opening doors before you were born—” The music and the welter of hilarious voices streamed out around them into the quiet country night.

Her heart didn’t drop, her overnight bag did instead — with a slap to the porch floor. “Mother,” she gasped soundlessly.

The other figure in the paper party cap was Ada. “Margaret, you darling! How did you remember it was my birthday? Oh, what a dandy surprise, I couldn’t have asked for anything—”

They were talking at cross-purposes, the three of them. “Oh, but Ada—” Margaret Moran was remonstrating in a shaky, smothered voice, still unmanageable from the unexpected shock. “How could you do it that way! If you knew what I went through on the way up here! No, mother’s health is one thing I don’t think you have any right to joke about. Frank won’t like it a bit when he hears it!”

A puzzled silence had fallen over the two standing in the doorway. They turned to look after her. She was inside in the crepe-paper-lighted hallway now. The vivacious old lady asked Ada with a birdlike, quizzical cock of her head, “What does she mean?”

Ada asked at the same time, “What on earth is she talking about?”

“I got a telegram from you at one this afternoon. You told me Mother’d had another of her attacks, and to come at once. You even mentioned Dr. Bixby’s name in it—” Margaret Moran had begun to cry a little with indignation, a natural reaction from the long strain she had been under.

The mother said: “Dr. Bixby’s in there now; I was just dancing a cakewalk with him, wasn’t I, Ada?”

Her sister’s face had gone white under the flush of the party excitement. She took a step backward. “I never in the world sent you any telegram!” she gasped.

Moran surreptitiously stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers to gain a little additional slack. “Margaret couldn’t have done any better herself,” he said wholeheartedly, “and when I say that, I’m giving you all the praise I know how.”

“It’ll make her your friend for life when I tell her how you walked in here and saved the day. You must come over and have dinner with the two of us — I mean without working for it — when she gets back.”

She eyed the empty plates with a cook’s instinctive approval, flattered to see that her efforts have not been slighted. “Thank you,” she said, “I’d love to. I don’t get as much home cooking as I might myself. I’ve had a room at the Women’s Club since I’ve had this school job, and there are no facilities. Before then, of course, at home, we all took turns in the kitchen.”

She rose slowly, stacked the dishes together. “Now you just sit there and take it easy, Mr. Moran, or inside in the next room or wherever you please. I’ll get through these in no time.”

“You could leave them in there,” he remonstrated. “Margaret’s cleaning lady comes tomorrow, and shell do them—”

“Oh, well,” she shrugged deprecatingly, “it’s not much trouble, and one thing I can’t bear to see left lying around is dirty dishes, in my own or anybody else’s kitchen. I’ll be all finished before you know it.”

She was going to make some lucky stiff a mighty fine little wife one of these days, Moran thought, watching her bustle back and forth; the wonder of it was she hadn’t already. What was the matter with the young fellows around these parts, didn’t they have eyes in their heads?

He went into the living room, turned on the double-globed reading lamp and sat down with his paper, to give it a second and more exhaustive going-over. It was just as good as though Margaret were home, really; you could hardly tell the difference. Except maybe that she didn’t say, “Don’t” to Cookie quite so often. Maybe too much of that wasn’t good for a kid. She was a teacher, she ought to know.

She came out to the dining-room door one time and spoke to him, drying a large dish between her hands with a cloth. “Nearly through now,” she announced cheerfully. “How’re you two getting along in here?”

“Fine,” said Moran, looking back across his shoulder at her from the semireclining slope the chair gave him. “I’m waiting to hear from my wife; she promised to call as soon as she gets up there and let me know how things are.”

“That won’t be for some time yet, will it?”

He glanced at the clock across the room. “Not much before ten-thirty or eleven, I guess.”

She said, “I’m going to squeeze out some orange juice for the two of you, for the morning, as soon as I finish putting the last of these away. I’ll leave it in a glass inside the frigidaire.”

“Aw, you don’t have to bother doing that—”

“Doesn’t take a minute; Cookie really should have it daily, you know. It’s the best thing for them.” She returned to the kitchen again.

Moran shook his head to himself. What a paragon.

Cookie was in there with him just then, playing around. Then a minute or so later he got up and went to the hall door, stood there looking out, talking to her. She’d evidently wandered out there herself, from the kitchen door at the other end of it, while she finished drying the last of the utensils. Margaret had that habit, too, of perambulating around when she was in the last stages of drying.

Cookie was standing perfectly still, watching her. He heard him say, “What’re you doing that for?”

“To dry it off, dear,” she answered with cheery forthrightness.

Moran only heard it only subconsciously, so to speak, with the fraction of those faculties not absorbed in his paper.

She came in a moment later, painstakingly wiping the blade of a small sharp-edge fruit knife that she’d evidently just used to cut and prepare the oranges.

Cookie’s eyes followed the deft motions of her hands with that hypnotic concentration children can bring to bear on the most trivial actions at times. Once he turned his head and glanced back into the hallway, somewhere beyond the radius of the door, where she had been just now, with equally rapt absorption. Then back to her again.

“There, all through,” she said to him playfully, flicking the end of the dishcloth toward him. “Now I’ll play with you for five or ten minutes, and then we’ll see about putting you to bed.”

Moran looked up at this point, out of sheer sense of duty. “Sure there’s nothing I can do to help?” he asked, hoping against hope the answer would be no.

It was. “You go right back to your paper,” she said with friendly authoritativeness. “This young man and I are going to have a little game of hide-and-seek.”

She was certainly a godsend. Why, when it came to getting your paper read without distraction, she was even better to have around than Margaret. Margaret seemed to think you could read your paper and carry on a conversation with her at one and the same time. So either you had to be a surly bear or you had to read each paragraph twice, and slowly, once as a gentle hint and once for the meaning.

Not that he was being disloyal about it; rather have Margaret, bless her, conversational interruptions or not.

Ada tried to silence the buzzing party guests. “Shh! Be quiet just a minute, everybody. Margaret’s out in the hall, trying to call her husband in the city and tell him about it.” She took the added precaution of drawing the two sliding parlor doors together.

“From here?” one of the younger girls piped up incredulously. “For heaven’s sake, that costs money!”

“I know, but she’s all upset about it, and I don’t blame her. Who could have done such a thing? Why, that’s a horrible trick to play on anyone—!”

One of the matrons said with unshakable local pride, “I know nobody up here in our community would be capable of it. We all think too much of Delia Peabody and her girls.” Then immediately spoiled it by adding, “Not even Cora Hopkins—”

“And they signed my name to it!” Ada protested dramatically. “It must be somebody that knows the family.”

“And mine, too, isn’t that what she said?” Dr. Bixby added. “Where’d they hear about me?”

Half-frightened little glances were exchanged here and there about the room, as though somebody had just told a chilling ghost story. One of the girls, perched on the windowsill, looked behind her into the dark, then stood up and furtively moved deeper into the room. “It’s like a poison-pen tellygram,” somebody breathed in a husky stage whisper.

Ada had reopened the sliding doors a foot, overcome by her own curiosity. “Did you get him yet?” she asked through them. “What does he say?”

Margaret Moran appeared in the opening, widened it and then stayed in it undecidedly. “She said our house doesn’t answer. He could be out, but — look at the time. And if he is, what’s he done with Cookie? He wouldn’t have him out with him at this hour. And the last thing he said was he wouldn’t budge out of the house. There ought to be someone there with Cookie to watch him—”

She looked helplessly from Ada to her mother to the doctor, who were the three nearest to her. “I don’t like it. Don’t you think I ought to start back—”

A chorus of concerned protest went up.

“Now?”

“Why, you just stepped off one bus, you’ll be dead!”

“Ah, Margaret, why don’t you wait over until the morning at least?”

“It isn’t that — it’s that telegram. I don’t know, it gives me a creepy feeling, I can’t shake it off. A thing like that isn’t funny, it’s... it’s malicious; there’s something almost dangerous about it. Anyone that would do that — well, there’s no telling what—”

“Why don’t you try just once more,” the old family doctor suggested soothingly. “Maybe he’s gotten back in the meantime. Then, if he hasn’t and you still feel like going, I’ll drive you over to the bus station; my car’s right outside now.”

This time they didn’t bother closing the doors at all; they didn’t have to be told to be quiet. With one accord they all shifted out into the hall after her and fanned out in a wide half circle, ringing her and the telephone about, listening in breathless sympathetic silence. It was as though she were holding a public audition for her innermost wifely distress.

Her voice shook a little. “Operator, get me the city again. That same number — Seville 7-6262.”

From time to time he could hear a splatter of quick running footsteps somewhere nearby, and a burst of crowing laughter from Cookie, and an “I see you!” from her. Mostly up and down the hall out there.

Hide-and-seek, he supposed tolerantly. They said there were two things that never changed, death and taxes; they should have added a third — children’s games. Even this she seemed to be able to go about in a soothing, fairly subdued way, without letting the kid be too boisterous about it. Must be the professional touch, that. He wondered how much kindergarten teachers earned. She was certainly good.

One time there was a stealthy, stalking cessation of sound, a little more long-drawn-out than the others, and he looked up to find her hiding herself just within the room doorway. She was standing with her back to him, peeping out around it into the hall. “Ready?” she called genially.

Cookie’s answer came back with unexpected faintness. “Not yet — wait.”

She seemed to enjoy it as much as the kid. That was the right way to play with them, he supposed — put your whole heart and soul into it. Children were quick to spot lack of enthusiasm. You could tell Cookie was already crazy about her. He was evidently seeing her in a different light than he had in the school, where she had to maintain a certain amount of discipline.

She turned her head, found him watching her approvingly. “He’s gone into that little storage space built in beneath the staircase,” she confided with a twinkle. And then, more seriously, “Is it safe for him to go in there?”

“Safe?” repeated Moran blankly. “Sure — there’s nothing in there, couple of old raincoats.”

“Ready,” a faint voice called.

She turned her head. “Here I come,” she warned, and vanished from the doorway as unnoticeably as she had first appeared in it.

He could hear her pretendedly questing here and there for a preliminary moment or two, to keep up the relish of the game longer. Then a straining at woodwork and a muffled burst of gleeful acknowledgment.

Suddenly his name sounded with unexpected tautness. “Mr. Moran!” He jumped up and started out to them. It had been that kind of a tone: hurry. She’d repeated it twice before he could even reach them, short as the distance was.

She was pulling at the old-fashioned iron hand-grip riveted to the door. Her face was whitening down around the chin and mouth. “I can’t get it open — see, that’s what I meant a minute ago!”

“Now, don’t get frightened,” he calmed her. “There’s nothing to it.” He grasped the iron hand-grip, simply pulled it up a half inch parallel to the door, the latch tongue freed itself, and he drew out the heavy oaken panel. It was set into the back of the staircase structure, half the height of the average door and a little broader. It did not quite meet the floor, either; there was a half-foot sill under it.

Cookie clambered out hilariously.

“See what it was? You were trying to pull it out toward you. It works on a spring latch and you have to free that first by hitching the iron bracket up; then you pull it out.”

“I see that now. Stupid of me,” she said half-shamefacedly. She gestured vaguely above her heart, fanned a hand before her face. “I didn’t let on to you, but what a fright it gave me! Phew! I was afraid it had jammed and he’d smother in there before we could—”

“Oh, I’m sorry — darn shame—” he said contritely, as if it had been his fault for having such a door in his house at all.

She seemed to want to continue to discuss possibilities, as though there was a hidden morbid streak in her. “I suppose if worse had come to worst, you could have broken it down, though, at a moment’s notice.”

“I could have taken something to it, yes,” he agreed.

She seemed surprised. He saw her eye glance appraisingly over his husky upper torso. “Couldn’t you have broken it down with your bare hands or by crashing your shoulder against it?”

He fingered the edge of the door, guided it outward so she could scan it. “Oh, no. This is solid oak. Two inches thick. Look at that. Well-built house, you know. And it’s in a bad place; there isn’t room enough on either side to run against it, to get up impetus. The turn of the wall here only gives you a couple yards of space. And on the inside it slants down with the incline of the stairs; you can’t even stand up full-length. The closet’s triangular, wedge shaped, see? Swing your arm too far back over your shoulder, on either side of the door, and it would jam against the sloping top. Or against the wall indentation out here.”

Suddenly, to his surprise, she had lowered her head, gone through the low doorway into the darkness inside. He could hear her sounding the thick sides of it with her palms. She came out again in a moment. “Isn’t it well built!” she marveled. “But it’s stuffy in there, even with the door open. How long do you suppose a person could last if they did actually happen to get themselves locked into such a place?”

His masculine omniscience was caught unprepared for once. He’d evidently never given the matter any thought before. “Oh, I don’t know—” he said vaguely. “Hour and a half, two hours at the most.” He looked up and down the thing with abstract interest. “It is pretty airtight, at that,” he conceded.

She winced repugnantly at this thought she had herself conjured up, wholesomely changed the subject. Everyone, after all, has odd moments of morbid conjecture. She leaned down, grasped Cookie from below the armpits and started to march his legs stiffly out before him like a mechanical soldier. “Well, mister.” Then she deferred to Moran: “Do you think he should go to bed now?”

Cookie started some more vertical emphasis. He was having too good a time to give it up without a battle. “One more! One more!”

“All right, just one more and then that’s all,” she conceded indulgently.

Moran went back to his chair in the living room. He’d finished his paper. Exhaustively; even down to the quotations of stocks he didn’t own but would have liked to. Even down to letters from readers on topics that didn’t interest him. He took out a cigar the man he’d lunched with had given him today, appraised it, accepted it for smoking, stripped it and lit it up. He blew a lariat of sky blue around his head with ineffable comfort. He sat there with it for a moment in a complete vacuum of contentment.

It was a seldom enjoyed luxury, and he almost didn’t know what to do with it. His head started to nod. He caught it the first time, took time off to put his cigar on the tray beside him so he wouldn’t drop it and burn a hole in Margaret’s carpet.

Cookie came tiptoeing in with exaggerated mincing of footfalls that was almost a hobbling creep, probably impressed upon him from outside, carrying Moran’s soft-toed carpet slippers, one in each hand. Soft-toed and soft-soled. “Miss Baker says to put these on, you feel better,” he whispered sibilantly.

“Say, that’s fine,” Moran beamed. He bent down and effected the change. “Tell her she’s spoiling me.”

Cookie tiptoed out with the discarded shoes — heavy soled, thick toed — with as much precaution as when he’d come in, even though the object of his care was unmistakably still awake.

Moran sprawled back and, when the second and third nods came, let them ride. A girl like that oughta... oughta be in a jewelry-store window... mmmmmm—

He meant well, but oh, God, it was like being on the rack to have to sit there beside him and listen to him. “Yessir, I brought all three of you girls into the world. I can remember the night you came as clear as though ’twere yesterday. And now look at you, sitting here beside me, all grown up and married and with a youngster of your own—”

And frightened, oh, how frightened, she thought dismally, eyes straining for the bus that seemed never to come.

“Doesn’t seem possible. No sir, either you grew up too fast or I don’t feel old enough for my age, must be one or the other.”

She matched her chortle with a wan smile by the faint light of the dashboard.

“I know,” he purred. He reached out and grasped her outside shoulder and juggled it hearteningly. “I know. You’re all worried and upset and wish you were down there already. Now, honey, don’t take on like that. It’ll be all right, it’s bound to be, how could it help being otherwise? Just ‘cause he doesn’t answer the telephone? Shucks, he’s probably over at one of the neighbors’ houses guzzling beer—”

“I know, Dr. Bixby, but I can’t help it. It’s that telegram. It gives me the most uncanny feeling, and I can’t throw it off. Somebody sent that telegram—”

“Nat-chelly, nat-chelly,” he chuckled benevolently, “telegrams don’t just send themselves. Maybe some blame fool in his office thought he’d like to get back at him—” But he let the thought die out; it wasn’t very convincing.

She was staring ahead, down the state highway that skirted the opposite side of the bus station to where the doctor had his Ford parked. “It’s late, isn’t it? Maybe there aren’t going to be any more tonight—” She kept continually putting a finger to her teeth, replacing it a moment later with another one.

Dr. Bixby good-naturedly drew her hand down, held it pressed to her lap. “I broke you of that habit when you were seven; you’re not going to make me do it all over again, are you?” He looked ahead through his none-too-spotless windshield. “Here she comes now. See those two lights way off down there? Yep, that must be her, all right.”

Something soft brushing against his legs down by the floor roused him. He brought the point of his chin up off the second button of his shirt, looked down blurredly.

Cookie was scampering around down there on all fours like a little animal, head almost lower than his feet. “Still trying to find someplace to hide?” Moran asked fondly.

His young son looked up, sharply corrected his failure to keep abreast of current events. “We not playing now any more. Miss Baker loss her ring, I’m he’ping her to fine it.”

Her voice sounded somewhere outside at that moment. “See it yet, dear?”

Moran roused himself, got up and went out. He remembered seeing it on her when she first came in.

The stair closet door was wide open, as though she’d already been in there. She was exploring the baseboard across the way, on the opposite side of the hall, slightly bent forward, hands cupped to knees.

“I don’t know how it happened to slip off without my feeling it,” she said. “Oh, it’s probably around somewhere. The only reason I’d feel bad about losing it is my mother gave it to me on my graduation—”

“How about in here?” he said. “Have you looked in here? You stepped in here once, remember, and thumped the sides—”

She glanced casually over her shoulder while she continued her search. “I looked in there already, but I didn’t have any matches, so it was hard to make sure—”

“Wait a minute, I’ve got some right here. I’ll look again for you—” He stepped across the sill, struck a tarnished gold glow, crouched down with his back to the entrance.

The sound the door made was like a pistol shot echoing up and down the enclosed hallway.

III Post-Mortem on Moran

Superior to Wanger:

“Well, what’dja find out over there? You seem to be becoming our expert in murders-that-don’t-look-like-murders-but-are.”

“Sure it was! Certainly it was! How can there be any doubt about it?”

“All right, don’t blow all these papers off my desk. Well Kling tells me the men he put on it don’t seem to feel as sure about that as you do yourself. That’s why I got his O.K. on your homing in. He was very nice about it—”

“What?” Wanger became almost inarticulate. “What’re they trying to do, build it up that he locked himself in acci—”

His superior sliced his hand at him calmingly. “Now, wait a minute, don’t get so touchy. Here’s what he means by that, and I can see his point, too. It’s true that Mrs. Moran got, or claims she got, an anonymous telegram with her sister’s name signed to it. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any trace of it found around the house; it’s disappeared, so there’s no way of tracing where it was filed from. It may have been filed right here in the city, and in her perturbation she didn’t notice the dateline. It’s true that the kid keeps prattling about a ‘lady’ playing games with him. The only two facts that point definitely to an adult agency’s being involved are the cut telephone wire and the note on the kid’s quilt—”

Wanger forced up his underlip scornfully. “And what about the putty?”

“Meaning the kid couldn’t have reached the top of the door with it, that it? No, Kling tells me they tried him out on that. Didn’t interfere, just handed him the putty set, said, ‘Let’s see you cover up the door like the other night,’ stood back and watched. When he’d gotten as high up as he could go, he dragged over the three-legged telephone stool, climbed up on that, and his hands spanned the top crack beautifully. Now if he did that, of his own accord and without being coached, the second time, why, they wanna know, couldn’t he have done it the first?”

“Hoch!” Wanger cleared his throat disgustedly.

“They put him to another test. They said to him, ‘Sonny, if your daddy went in there, what would you do — let him out or make him stay in?’ He said, ‘Make him stay in there and play a game with me.’ ”

“Are those guys crazy — where’re their heads? I suppose the kid cut the phone wire, too. I suppose he wrote out that note in printed capitals—”

“Let me finish, will you? They’re not trying to say that the kid did all those things himself. But they are inclined to think along the lines of it being an accident, with a clumsy frightened attempt on someone’s part, afterward, to escape being involved.

“Now here’s the theory of Kling’s men — and remember, it hasn’t jelled, they’re just playing around with it until something better shows up: Moran had some lady friend on the side. A fake telegram was sent to the wife to clear the coast. Before the woman got there, Moran, alone in the house with his kid, started playing games with him. He accidentally locked himself in the closet and the damn-fool kid puttied up the door. The woman shows up and Moran is smothered to death in there. She loses her head, deathly afraid of being dragged into it because of her reputation. She puts the kid to bed and leaves an unsigned note pinned to the quilt for the wife. Maybe the phone starts ringing while she’s there, and, afraid to answer it, she loses her head even further and cuts the wire. They think she even went so completely haywire that after having already opened the closet door once and seen that Moran was dead, she made a panicky attempt to leave things looking just like she found them by closing the door on him a second time and leaving him in there, even replugging the putty so it would look like the kid’s work and nobody else’s. In other words, an accident followed by a clumsy attempt at concealment on the part of somebody with a guilty conscience.”

“Pew!” said Wanger succinctly, pinching the end of his nose. “Well, here’s the theory of your man Wanger: bull fertilizer. Do I stay on or do I come off?”

“Stay on, stay on,” consented his overlord distraitly. “I’ll get in touch with Kling about it. After all, you can only be wrong once.”

They seemed to be playing craps there in the room, the way they were all down on their haunches hovering over something in the middle of the floor. You couldn’t see what it was; their broad backs blotted it out completely. It was awfully small, whatever it was. Occasionally one of their hands went up and scratched at the back of its owner’s rubber-tired neck in perplexity. The illusion was perfect. All that was missing was the click of bone, the lingo of the dice game.

A matron stood watchfully looking on, over by the doorway, without taking part in the proceedings herself. Something about her clashed with one’s sense of fitness. Almost anyone’s sense of esthetic fitness. She kidded the beholder, from the top of her head all the way down to her ankles, that she was going to end bifurcated, in a pair of trousers. Then at the ankles she ended in a skirt anyway; and the sense of harmony was revolted.

Wanger, over in the opposite doorway, where he’d just come in unnoticed, stood taking in what was going on as long as he could stand it. Finally he strode forward, the apelike conclave disintegrated, to reveal a pygmy in the middle of the giants. Cookie looked even smaller than he was against their anthropoidal bulk.

“Not that way, not that way,” Wanger protested. “Whaddaya trying to do, anyway — sweat a kid that age?”

“Who’s sweating him?” Wanger knew they hadn’t been. One of them put away a gleaming pocket watch he’d evidently been dangling enticingly at the end of its chain with complete lack of result.

The matron threw back her head and laughed with a neigh like a horse.

Cookie, with that devilish quickness of children to scent sympathy and play up to it, took one look at Wanger, wrinkled up his muzzle into a monkey grimace and began to emit the moderator opening stanzas of a good hearty bawl.

“Yeah. See?” Wanger said, fixing an accusing eye around the room. “Don’t y’know kids that age are afraid of cops to begin with? Each one of you guys is a natural enemy to it, and when you all gang up on it at once—”

“We’re in civvies, ain’t we?” one of them retorted in perfect seriousness. “He didn’t see the badges, so how could he tell?”

“The expert child handler,” another chuckled under his breath as they moved toward the door.

The last one said morosely, “I hope y’have better luck than we had. Jazes, I’d rather tackle the hard-to-crackest yegg any day than a kid like this that don’t even know what you’re saying to it at all.”

“It knows all right,” Wanger grunted. “It takes a little finesse, that’s all.”

The matron was the only one who stayed in the room, though her value was problematical. It had been found early in the game that she terrified their “material witness” far more than all the males put together. If she came any closer than the doorway, he went into nightmare hysterics.

Wanger drew up a chair, sat down on it, spread his legs at a ninety-degree angle and perched Cookie on one.

“We’re going to play Charlie McCarthy again,” the matron chuckled pessimistically. “I don’t think he was even awake through the whole thing that night—”

“He was awake all right. Who’s doing this?”

Cookie was beginning to know Wanger from previous knee “interviews.” He smiled favoringly, perhaps even a trifle venally, up at him. “You got’ny more jelly beans?”

“No, the doctor says I gave y’too many already.” Wanger got down to work. “Who made your daddy go in the closet, Cookie?”

“Nomebody made him, he wannedta go. He was playin’ a game.”

“That’s the same place where y’got stumped before,” the matron pointed out gratuitously.

Wanger snapped his head around with a flash of unfeigned ill temper, rare with him. “Listen, will you do me a favor!” He drew a long, preparatory belly breath to see him through what he knew he was in for. “Who was he playing the game with. Cookie?”

“Us.”

“Yes, but who’s us? You and who else?”

“Me and him and the lady.”

“What lady?”

“The lady.”

“What lady?”

“The lady that was here.”

“Yes, but what lady was here?”

“The lady that, the lady that—” It wasn’t that Cookie wasn’t willing; the dialectics of the thing were throwing him. “The lady that was playing the game with us,” he concluded with a burst of inspiration.

Wanger had nearly run through the breath supply he’d laid in by now; he let the dregs of it out with a dejected hiss.

“Y’see how he gets away from y’each time? That kid isn’t going to need a mouth when he grows up.”

Wanger was not in an equable mood. “Listen, McGovern, I’m not kidding, if you make one more side remark while I’m doing this—”

“Doing what?” the matron wanted to know, but with prudent inaudibility.

Wanger took out a small black pocket notebook. He turned back to his knee-riding witness, who was swinging his legs blithely. “Well, look, what was the name of the game?”

“Hide-’n-seek!” crowed Cookie positively. He was on familiar ground now.

“Whose turn was it first?”

“Mine!”

“And then whose turn was it?”

“ ’Nen the lady’s!”

“And after that?”

“ ’Nen it was my daddy’s turn.”

“Build-up,” murmured Wanger softly. He scribbled almost undecipherably on his free knee, using the curve of one arm to support his other burden: “Invegled—” He crossed it out, substituted, “Invagled—” He crossed that out, too, scrawled: “Lured in during game of hide-and-seek.”

Then he looked up bitterly. “What the hell! It don’t make sense! How’s a strange woman that the guy never saw before going to walk into a house and get a full-grown man to play games with her — just like that!”

The sardonic matron said very softly, to make sure she couldn’t be accused of having spoken at all, “You’d be surprised. But not the kind of games you mean.”

The book hit the opposite wall and dropped with a little flurry.

“What’sa matter?” asked Cookie, looking after it interestedly. “What’d the book do, ha?”

“Wait a minute, you’re taking it for granted he never saw her before, aren’t you?” the matron tried to remind him, at the risk of her neck.

“You heard what he says each time!” Wanger hollered over at her wrathfully. “I’ve got it jotted down in that thing six times over! She never came to their house before.”

Cookie started to pucker up into his wizened monkey expression again.

“I’m not sore at you, sonny,” Wanger hastily amended patting the slope of Cookie’s head mollifyingly a couple of times.

Then it suddenly came. Cookie looked up at him with the uncertainty of one whose confidence in a relationship has just been shaken. “Whoua you mad at then’? Are you mad at Miss Baker?”

“Who’s Miss Baker?”

“The lady that was playin’ games with—”

Wanger nearly dropped him to the floor on the back of his head. “My God, I actually got her name out of him! Did you hear that? Here I didn’t even think he—”

His enthusiasm was short-lived. His face dimmed again. “Aw, it was probably just a spiked handle she gave herself. She started being Miss Baker when she came in the door, she stopped being Miss Baker the minute she got outside it again. If I could only get an idea of what the stall was she sold herself to Moran on, to be let in here like that, it might help some—”

“One of the neighbors?” suggested the matron.

“We’ve canvassed every one of them for six blocks in all directions. Cookie, what did Miss Baker say to your daddy when he first opened the door and let her in?”

“She said hullo,” he faltered tentatively, evidently doing his conscientious best to fulfill what was required of him.

“That’s going to start in again,” sighed the matron resignedly.

Wanger glanced around in the direction of the stairs. “I wonder if she’d be any help— Ask the doctor if she’s in condition to come down for just a minute. Tell him I don’t want to question her, y’understand, I just want to see if she can throw some light on a point the kid brought up. I won’t keep her a minute.”

“Don’t take any lead pipe to the kid while I’m out of the room now,” the matron warned. “I’m supposed to be in attendance the whole time he’s with you.”

She returned in a couple of minutes. “They didn’t want her to, but she did want to. Shell be right down.”

The doctor and a nurse both came in with her. She walked very slowly. The murder hadn’t been in the closet out there; it was in here on her face.

“Now, please—” the doctor urged Wanger.

“I promise you,” Wanger assured him.

She was a mother. She was half-dead herself, but she was still a mother. “You’re not tiring him too much, are you, officer?” She tottered over to the two of them, bent forward and kissed the youngster. The doctor and the nurse held her up, each by an arm.

Wanger almost didn’t have the heart to go ahead. But, after all, it had to be done sooner or later. “Mrs. Moran, I don’t suppose there’s a Miss Baker that you happen to know of— I’m trying to find out if there really is such a person or if it was just a— He just mentioned a Miss Baker—”

He saw the change come over her face before the doctor and nurse did, because she was turned toward him. It had seemed impossible a moment ago that anything could have been added to the emotion she had undergone already, and yet now something was. A climactic excess of horror, to top all the other horror she had experienced, seemed to spread slowly over her face like a cold, viscous film. She pressed two fingers to the outer edge of each eyebrow, as if to keep her skull from flying apart. “Not here!” she whispered.

“That’s what he says,” Wanger breathed back unwillingly.

“Oh, no — no!”

He correctly translated the meaning she gave the harried negative; not a denial of the person’s existence, a denial of the accusation — simply because it was so unthinkable.

“Then there is—” he persisted gently.

“The child’s—” She pointed, hardly able to articulate. Tears, no longer of grief but of mortal terror, welled unchecked from her eyes. “Cookie’s — kindergarten teacher—”

If there was anything could make what had happened seem even worse than it was, it was this: to have the cause of it take form, materialize into human shape, cease to remain just an abstraction — become, from an impersonally barred door, the young woman who was in charge of her own child several hours each day.

She crumpled; not in a faint, but her legs gave under her. The nurse and doctor caught her, supported her between them. They pivoted her slowly around to face the door, started her over toward it, taking small steps. She was incapable of saying anything further, but nothing further needed to be said. It was all in Wanger’s hands now.

Just before the door closed on the pathetic little procession, the doctor snarled crankily over his shoulder, “You fellows make me sick.”

“Can’t be helped,” answered the detective doggedly. “Had to be done.”

She was in the middle of a flock of kids in a subdivided section of the school yard, separated from the rougher activities of the older children. They were playing games, marching one at a time under the arched hands of two pivots, and then being imprisoned there and swung back and forth, and then being given a whispered choice of two incalculable treasures, and then being posted behind one or the other of the two pivots, according to the selection they’d made. They’d never played that in Wanger’s day, down on East 11th Street, so he couldn’t follow it very closely.

He hated to do this more than he’d ever hated any job before, even though it was not an arrest yet or anything even remotely resembling it. He supposed the sight of the kids made him feel that way. There was something brutal, almost unclean, about hauling her off from here, to find out if she had taken a human life.

She saw him watching and left them a minute and came over to him. She was a short, slender little body with coppery gold hair; young, not more than twenty-four, or — five; pretty behind her shell-rimmed glasses. In fact, even pretty before them, if a trifle more austere. Sparingly gilded with freckles on her cheekbones. They were becoming.

“Were you waiting for one of them?” she asked pleasantly. “The session won’t be over for another—”

He’d asked that he be allowed to find his way out here to her unescorted — or rather guided only by a “monitor,” one of the older children, who had now gone back — and hadn’t explained his business to the principal; it seemed more considerate. “It’s you yourself I’d like to speak to,” he said. He tried to do his job without frightening her unduly. After all, she was just a stray name on a child’s lips, so far. “I’m Wanger, of the police department—”

“Oh.” She wasn’t particularly frightened, just taken aback.

“I’d like you to come over and see Cookie Moran — you know, Mrs. Frank Moran’s youngster — with me as soon as you’re through here, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah, yes — poor little soul,” she commiserated.

The game had stalled meanwhile. The children were still in playing formation, all faces turned toward her for further instructions. “Should we start pulling now, Miss Baker?”

She glanced at him inquiringly. “Finish your class out first,” he consented. “I’ll wait for you.”

She went back to her charges immediately, no premonition of impending difficulties seeming to mar her attention to her duties. She clapped her hands briskly. “All right, now, children. Ready? Pull!.. Not too hard now... Look you, Marvin, you’re tearing Barbara’s sleeve—”

In the classroom later, the children all safely packed into the bus and sent off, he watched her clear the desk at which she held sway over them, putting things neatly away into the drawer. “Those little crayon drawings they do for you — like those you’ve got there — don’t they take them home every day?”

It was the idle question of a man standing by watching something he is not familiar with. It had that sound, at least.

“No, Fridays are our days for that. We let them accumulate during the week, and then on Fridays we clear out their little desks and send everything home with them to show their mothers how they’re progressing.” She laughed indulgently.

He picked up one of the color plates at random. It was an oversize robin perched on a limb. He chuckled with hypocritical admiration. “Is this pattern from last week or from this week?” Another of those idle, stopgap questions, as if simply to make conversation while she was straightening her hat.

“This week’s,” she said, glancing around to identify it. “That was their Monday afternoon assignment.”

Monday night was the night—

They took a taxi to the Moran house. Wanger was the more diffident of the two, kept looking out the window on his side. “Is this a police matter you’re taking me over on or... er... an errand of mercy?” she finally asked, a little embarrassedly. It wasn’t the embarrassment of guilt, it was the uncertainty of a totally new, uncharted experience.

“It’s just a bit of routine, don’t pay any attention to it.” He looked out the cab window again as though his thought were a thousand miles away. “By the way, were you over there the night it happened?” He couldn’t have made it sound more inconsequential if he’d tried.

Not that he was being unduly considerate or leaning over backward about it; the situation so far didn’t warrant any heavier handling. He would have been out of order.

“Over there at the Moran’s?” She arched her brows in complete astonishment. “Why, good heavens, no!”

He didn’t repeat the question and she didn’t repeat the denial. Once each was enough. She was on record.

Wanger had looked on at many confrontations, but he thought he had never been present at a more dramatic one than this. She was so defenseless against the child, in one way. And the child was so defenseless against the whole grown-up world, in another way.

He was overjoyed to see her when the matron brought him in. “H’lo, Miss Baker!” He ran across the room to her, clasped her below the hips, looked up into her face. “I couldn’t come to school today because my daddy went away. I couldn’t come yesterday, either.”

“I know, Cookie, we all missed you.”

She turned to Wanger as if to ask, “Now what do I have to do?”

Wanger got down on his haunches, tried to keep his voice low and confidence inspiring. “Cookie, do you remember the night your daddy went into the closet?”

Cookie nodded dutifully.

“Is this the lady that was here with you in the house?”

They waited.

She had to prompt him herself finally, “Was I, Cookie?”

It seemed as though he were never going to answer. The tension became almost unendurable, as far as the grown-ups in the room were concerned.

She took a deep breath, reached down, sandwiched one of his little hands between her two. “Was Miss Baker here with you the night daddy went into the closet. Cookie?” she asked.

This time the answer came so suddenly it almost jolted out of him. “Yes, Miss Baker wuss here. Miss Baker had supper with my daddy and me — ’member?” But he was talking directly to her, not to them.

She straightened slowly, shaking her head blankly. “Oh, no — I can’t understand it—” Their faces had sort of closed up around her. Nothing was said.

“But, Cookie, look at me—”

“No, please don’t influence him,” Wanger cut in, civilly but decisively.

“I’m not trying to—” she said helplessly.

“Will you wait for me outside, Miss Baker? Hi be with you in just a moment.”

When he came out presently, she was sitting by herself out there, in a chair against the wall. True, there was a man busy with something or other in one of the adjacent rooms that commanded the front door, but she didn’t know that. She was fastening and unfastening the clasp of her handbag, over and over. But she looked up at him with directness. “I can’t understand that—”

He didn’t say anything more about it one way or the other. The child was on record now, too, that was all.

He’d brought a crayon-colored outline pattern out to show her. An oversize robin on a bough. “You’ve already told me that this is the pattern you gave them to fill in Monday afternoon. And that they only bring their work home once a week, on Fridays.”

Her eyes clung to it much longer than was necessary for mere identification. He waited a moment, then folded it and put it away.

“But it was found right here in the house. Miss Baker, in the early hours of Tuesday morning. How do you suppose it got here?”

She just looked at the place where it had last gone into his clothing.

“It’s possible, of course, that the youngster brought it home with him himself without permission that day, before it had even been marked.” The suggestion came from him, questioningly.

She looked up quickly. “No, I... I don’t think he did. I excused him ahead of the rest that day, because his mother was waiting outside to take him with her. You can ask Mrs. Moran, but—”

“I have already.”

“Oh, well, then—” she stood up. A little added color peered slowly into her face. “Then what was that supposed to be, a verbal trap for me?”

He quirked his head noncommittally.

“This seems to have put me in a somewhat awkward position.”

“Not at all,” he said insincerely. “Why say that?”

She looked down at her handbag, unfastened and re-fastened its catch one more time, then suddenly looked up, flung at him with a spirited little flare-up of impatience that matched her hair, “Although I don’t know why it should! That was hardly a fair test in there just now.”

He was urbane to the point of silkiness. “Why wasn’t it? Doesn’t the child know you well enough? Doesn’t he see you five days a week? It’s not conclusive as far as we’re concerned, that you’re entitled to say, but fair it was.”

“But don’t you see? A child’s mind, a child that age, is as sensitive as an exposed camera plate; it’ll take the first impression that comes its way. You asked me not to influence him just now, but you men have undoubtedly already influenced him, maybe without meaning to, during the past few days. He’s heard you talking about my being here and now he believes I was. In children the borderline between reality and imagination is very—”

He spoke in a patiently reasoning tone. “As far as our influencing him goes, you’re entirely mistaken. We’d never heard the name, any of us, until he first mentioned it, so how could he have heard it from us first? As a matter of fact, we had to send for Mrs. Moran and have her explain who you were, when he first brought it out.”

She didn’t actually stamp her feet, but she gave a lunge of her body that expressed that state of mind. “But what am I supposed to have done — would you mind telling me? Walked out of here, when such a thing took place, without notifying anybody?”

“Now, please—” He spread the flats of his hands disarmingly. “You’ve already told me once you weren’t here, and I haven’t asked you a second time, have I?”

“And I repeat I wasn’t. Most decidedly! I’ve never been in this house before today.”

“Then that’s all there is to it.” He made a calming motion, as of pressing something gently downward with his hands. Peace at any price. “Nothing more to be done or said about it. Just give me a rough outline of your movements that night, and we’re through. You don’t object, do you?”

She quieted down. “No, of course not.”

“No offense, it’s just routine. We’ve asked Mrs. Moran that herself.”

She had sat down again. Quiet become thoughtfulness. “No, of course—” Thoughtfulness became a loss in innermost contemplation. “No—”

He cleared his throat presently. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Oh, beg pardon. I seem to do everything wrong, don’t I?” She opened and closed her handbag catch one final time. “The children were sent home at their usual hour. Four, that is, you know. Until I cleared my desk and so on, it must have been four-thirty by the time I left. I went back to my room at the Residence Club, stayed in it until about six, resting and doing a little personal laundering. Then I went out and had my dinner, at a little place down the block where I usually go. You want the name, I suppose?”

He looked ruefully apologetic.

“Karen Marie’s; it’s a little private dining room run by a Swedish woman. Then I took a walk, and at, oh, sometime around eight, I dropped in to a moving picture—”

“Don’t recall just which one it was, I suppose?” he suggested leniently, as though it were the most unimportant thing in the world.

“Oh, oh, yes. The Standard. Mr. Smith, you know. I don’t go to them very often, but when I do, the Standard’s the only one I go to. Well, that’s about all, I guess. I came out when the show did and got back to the Residence Club just a little before twelve.”

“All right, well, that’ll do very nicely. Thanks a lot, that takes care of everything. Now, I won’t keep you any longer—”

She stood up almost unwillingly. “You know, I almost would rather not go under — under these circumstances. I’d feel better if this whole thing were cleared up one way or the other right while I’m still here.”

He gave one hand a paddle twist. “There’s nothing to clear up. You seem to be reading more into it than we’re willing to put into it ourselves. Now don’t worry about it, just run along and forget the whole business.”

“Well—” She went reluctantly, looking back until the very last, but she went.

The minute the front door had closed on her he seemed to get an electric shock from some unseen source. “Myers!” The man who had been in the room farther down the hall popped out. “Day and night. Don’t let her out of your sight a minute.” Myers went hustling by to seek the back way out.

“Brad!” Wanger called. And before the staircase had stopped swaying with tumultuous descent: “Beat it out of here fast; check with the Standard Theater and find out the name of the other picture they were showing there Monday night, with Mr. Smith. That’s one good thing about double features; they come in handy in our business. Then check with this Karen Marie’s place; find out if she ate there. I’m going to go over this alibi of hers every inch of the way and God help her if it doesn’t hold up under hundred-pound weights dropped from a height!”

First phone call to Wanger, at the Moran house, twenty minutes later:

“Hey, Lew; this is Bradford. Listen, I didn’t have to check with the Standard movie house. The name of the second feature that night was Five Little Peppers, if you still want it. But somebody else stopped by just ahead of me and asked them the same question, I was told. The girl in the box office wondered why all the sudden interest in a grade-B filler.”

“Who?” Wanger jumped through the phone at him.

“Her. The Baker girl. I got her description. Must have headed straight over there as soon as she left you. How d’ya like that?”

“I like it pretty well,” answered Wanger with grim literalness. “Polish the rest of it off. The kid just came through with the color she was wearing that night. Another of those freak spills, like his popping the name. Dark blue, got it? Go over to the Residence Club, see if you can get a line on what color she had on when she left her room Monday evening; somebody might have noticed. And do it cagey; no badge. I don’t want her to tumble we’re taking stitches until the sewing up’s all done. You’re just a guy trying to follow up a crush on someone whose name you don’t know; you can get to her by elimination.”

Second phone call to Wanger, same place, half an hour later:

“Brad again. Holy smoke, is her alibi cheesecloth! I think we’ve got something now all right.”

“All right, never mind the schoolboy ardor; when you’ve been at this as long as I have you’ll realize that the time you think you’ve got the most is when you’ve got two big handfuls of nothing.”

“Well, d’ya wanta hear it or should I keep it confidential to myself?”

“Don’t get fresh, rookie. What is it?”

“She didn’t eat in Karen Marie’s that night! First the Swensky woman that runs it backed her up solid. ‘Oh, ya, ya. Sure she vos dare.’ Well, after what happened at that movie box office, I dunno why, but something gimme kind of a hunch, so I took a chance and played it. And it paid off! I threw a big bluff and got tough about it and told her, ‘Whattaya trying to do, kid me? Don’tcha suppose I know she was just in here herself and told you to say that, if anyone asked you? Now, d’ya wanta get in trouble or d’ya wanta stay out of it?’

“She caved right in like wet cement. ‘Ya,’ she admitted, kind of scared, ‘she vos here yust now. I like to help her if I could, but as long as you know dot already, I don’t want to get in no trouble myself.’

“And wait, there’s more yet. I spaded around over at the Residence Club lobby. The elevator girl and the desk clerk both remembered seeing her pass through that night, and she was wearing — dark blue.”

“Come to Papa,” intoned Wanger fervently.

Third phone call to Wanger, next day:

“Hello, Lew? This is Myers. I’m outside the school. I’ve got her safely nailed down until four this afternoon. I’ve been practically sitting on her shoulders ever since yesterday. But here’s a little something just turned up; I wanted you to get it right away. It might mean something and then again it might not. I picked her up when she came out of the Residence Club doorway just now, and on her way to the bus I noticed a fruit-stall keeper give her the old good-morning and she smiled back. So I dropped behind and cased him quick, so I’d still be able to make the same bus she did. He told me she bought half a dozen Florida oranges from him at six o’clock Monday evening. I’m remembering that two glasses of orange juice turned up in the Moran refrigerator the morning after that Mrs. Moran couldn’t account for, that she was certain she didn’t prepare herself before she went up to her mother’s.”

“I’m remembering that, too. At six she was on her way out, not in, even according to her own story. She took them somewhere with her. I’m going over there right now and have a chat with the cleaning maid that does her room. One good thing about oranges, from our point of view, is you can’t eat the peel, too.”

Wanger to superior:

“How’s it looking up. Lew?”

“Almost too good to be true. I’m afraid to breathe on it for fear the whole thing’ll collapse. Believe it or not, chief, I’ve got a life-size, flesh-and-blood suspect at last, after chasing will-o’-the-wisps until now. I’ve actually talked to her and heard her answer me. I keep pinching myself all the time.”

“Pinch her, that’ll be a little more constructive.”

“This girl has tried to palm off a tissue of lies on us for an alibi. I’ve heard of them with one weak link, and two weak links, but this thing is spun sugar in the sun! She wasn’t at the restaurant where she said she was, she wasn’t at the picture show, she left her room in a dark blue outfit. The Moran kid identified her to her face as having been with him and his father that night. A crayon drawing he did in school Monday afternoon was found there in the house in the small hours of Tuesday morning, and Mrs. Moran is dead sure he didn’t have it with him when she called for him and took him away. And just to do it up brown: she bought half a dozen Florida oranges at a fruit stall near the club six o’clock Monday evening and took them with her — to wherever she was going. There were two large double glasses of the stuff found standing in the Moran Frigidaire afterward that Mrs. M is positive were prepared by some other hand than her own. True, there were already oranges in her bin, to the best of her recollection. But then where did the ones this Baker girl bought go to? They never showed up in her room from first to last; I’ve questioned the cleaning maid and she didn’t remove any orange peel from that room all week long, not so much as a dried seed.

“Now, what does it look to you?”

“It looks like three strikes and out. Suppose you let her flounder for, say, another twenty-four hours and see if she goes in any deeper. Then get ready for the jump. But don’t lose her whatever you do. Stick close to her day and night—”

“And even at other times,” amended Wanger remorselessly.

“This is Wanger, chief.”

“I’ve been waiting to hear from you. I think you better bring the Baker girl in with you now.”

“I am, chief. I’m calling you from the lobby of the Residence Club right now. I wanted your O.K. before I go up to her room and get her.”

“All right, you’ve got it. I just got a report that gives the kid’s story grown-up confirmation for the first time, even if it’s only partial. A man named Schroeder who lives on the other side of the street a few doors down happened to go to his bedroom window to pull down the shade and definitely saw the figure of a woman leaving the Moran house shortly before midnight. He couldn’t identify her at that distance and in the dark, of course, but I don’t see much sense in holding off any longer.”

“No, there isn’t. Not with her past record of disappearances. I’ll be in in about fifteen or twenty minutes.”

The girl elevator operator tried to bar his way. “I’m sorry, sir, no gentlemen are allowed up in the rooms.”

“I’m not a gentleman, I’m a detective,” Wanger was half-tempted to say, but didn’t. He had to admit there had been pickups he’d like better than this one. “The desk cleared me,” he told her gruffly. She looked out across the lobby and got a surreptitious high sign that it was all right to go ahead up with him. Wanger hadn’t been willing to take a chance on his slippery quarry to the extent of waiting below and having them call her down.

The girl opened for him at the seventh.

“Wait here for me. And no other passengers on the way down, straight trip.”

She was all eyes as he made his way down the peaceful, homelike corridor; she could tell it was an arrest.

He knocked on the door. Her voice said unfrightenedly, “Who is it?”

“Open the door, please,” he answered quietly.

She did immediately, surprise at the male voice still showing on her face. She had a washbasin full of silk stockings there behind her.

“Would you mind coming over with me?” He was somber about it but not truculent.

She said, “Oh,” in a weak little voice.

He stood there waiting in the open doorway. She fumbled around for her outer things in a closet, couldn’t get what she was looking for. “I don’t know why I’m not frightened,” she faltered. “I suppose I ought to be—” She was very badly frightened. She dropped the hanger with her coat and had to brush it off. Then she tried to put the coat on, forgetting to take the hanger out of it.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. Miss Baker,” he said morosely.

“I’ll have to leave my stockings go, won’t I?” she said.

“I guess you better let them go.”

She knitted her brows, pulled out the stopper on her way past. “I wish I’d finished them before you got here,” she sighed. “Am I coming back?” she asked just before putting the lights out. “Or should I...should I take anything with me for the night?” She was very badly frightened.

He just closed the door for her.

“You see, I’ve never been arrested before,” she said placatingly, accompanying him down the hall, quick nervous little steps to his longer slower ones.

“Cut it out, will ya?” he said gruffly, with a sort of querulous annoyance.

He came into the dim room, looked at her, lit a cigarette whose outer radius of slowly expanding smoke took a moment or two to reach the conical shaft from the shaded light over her. When it did it turned pale blue, like something in a test tube. “Crying won’t do any good,” he said with distant correctness. “You’re not being mistreated in any way. And you have only yourself to blame for being here.”

“You don’t know what it means—” she said in the direction his voice had come from. “You deal in arrests, to you it’s nothing. You can’t possibly know what goes through you, when you’re in your room, secure and contented and at peace with the world one minute, and the next someone suddenly comes for you to take you away. Takes you down through the building you live in, in front of everybody, takes you through the streets — and when they get you there you find out you’re supposed to have — to have murdered a man! Oh, I can’t stand it! I’m frightened of the whole world tonight! I feel as though I were in the middle of one of those stories told to my own children, suddenly come true; bewitched, held under the power of some ogre’s spell.”

And as she wept, she tried to smile into the darkness at them, in apology.

Another voice spoke up from the perimeter of gloom: “D’you think Moran had an easy time of it, that last half hour or so in the closet? You didn’t see him when he was taken out; we did.”

She pressed her hair flat to her head, soundlessly.

“Don’t,” Wanger said in an aside. “She’s the sensitive type.”

The unseen matron made a plucking sound at her lips with her tongue, to express her own opinion on that subject.

“I didn’t know it was a murder. I didn’t know it was done to him purposely!” the girl on the wooden chair said. “When you had me out there at their house the other day, I simply thought it had been an accident, that he’d locked himself in some way, and the child hadn’t realized the seriousness of the danger, and then afterward perhaps, to escape the blame, as children will, had made up the story that I was there.”

Wanger said, “That doesn’t alter the case any. That’s not what we’re talking to you about now. You didn’t eat at the Swedish woman’s. You didn’t go to the Standard. But you went to both of those places afterwards and told them to say you did! Then you wonder why you’re here.”

She held one wrist with the other hand, twisting at it circularly. Finally she said, “I know — I didn’t realize I was being watched so soon — you seemed so friendly that afternoon.”

“We don’t give warnings.”

“I didn’t know it was a murder; I thought it was just the child’s little fib I had to contend with.” She took a deep breath. “I was — with my husband. His name is Larry Stark, he... he lives at 420 Marcy Avenue. I made dinner for him at his apartment and was there all evening.”

It made no impression. “Why didn’t you tell us that the first time you were asked?”

“I couldn’t, don’t you see? I’m a teacher, I’m not supposed to be married, it’ll cost me my job.”

“We’ve shot your first story to pieces, there’s nothing left of it; naturally you’ve got to replace it, you can’t just stand on thin air. Why should we believe this one any more than the first?”

“Ask Larry — he’ll tell you! He’ll tell you I was there with him the whole time.”

“We’ll ask him all right. And he probably will tell us you were there with him. But the Moran child tells us you were there with him. And the crayon drawing tells us you were there with him. And the two glasses of orange juice in the icebox tell us you were there with him. And your dark blue suit tells us you were there with him. And your own actions for the past few days tell us you were there with him. That’s quite a lineup to buck, little girl.”

She gave a wordless intake of breath and let her head tilt back across the chair back.

A shaft of yellow corridor light slashed through the foursquare darkness around her and a voice said, “He’s ready for her now.”

Wanger’s chair scraped back. “It’s a little late for that now. It won’t do you as much good as if you’d come out with it in the beginning. This thing’s well under way. Miss Baker, and it seldom pays to change trains in the middle of a trip — you’re liable to fall down between the two of them.”

His hand became visible up past the wrist, reaching out into the downpouring cone of light for her.

She was crying again, soundlessly as ever, when the matron and Wanger brought her up before his superior’s desk.

“So this is the young lady?” Under other circumstances it might have been misconstrued as a half-friendly opening remark. It wasn’t meant that way.

A phone beside him stuttered, “D-d-d-d-d-ding, br-r-r-r-ring.”

He said, “Just a minute.”

Then he said, “Who? Yes, there’s a Wanger here, but you can’t use his extension. Well, what is it you—”

He lowered it, looked across the desk at him. “There’s somebody has something to tell you about this girl you just brought in. Go ahead, see what it is.”

He motioned, and the matron stepped outside with Miss Baker again.

“The husband, I guess,” Wanger murmured, moving around beside him and picking up the instrument.

A woman’s voice said, “Hello, is this Wanger?”

“Yes. Who is it wants to—” he started to say warily.

The other voice cut through his like a knife through butter. “I’m doing the talking. You’ve just brought a girl in with you from the Women’s Residence Club. A Miss Baker, a kindergarten teacher. That right? Well, this is just to tell you she had nothing to do with what happened to Moran in that closet; I don’t care how it looks or what you think you know or what you think you’ve found out.”

Wanger started to have ants in his pants, to squirm around trying to keep the mouthpiece silenced and at the same time signal, “Trace this! Trace this!” to his superior.

The voice was almost telepathic. “Yeah, trace this, I know,” it observed dryly. “I’m getting right off, so don’t waste your time. Now, just in case there are any doubts in your minds, and you want to pass me off as a crank, the note pinned to the Moran kid’s quilt read, ‘You have a very sweet child, Mrs. Moran. I am leaving him where he will be safe until you return, as I would not want any harm to come to him for the world.’ Miss Baker couldn’t possibly know that, because you haven’t given it out yourselves. Their radio’s a Philco, he reads the Sun, I gave him scrambled eggs for his last meal, there were two moldy raincoats in the closet, and his whole cigar burned down without losing its shape, next to the chair he was last sitting in. You’d better let her go. Good-by and good luck.” Click.

The other phone on his chief’s desk was ringing at that very moment.

“A pay telephone in the Neumann Drugstore, corner of Dale and Twenty-third!”

Wanger nearly pulled the door off its hinges, left it open behind him.

Six minutes and eighteen seconds later he was panting his insides out into the face of a startled proprietor hauled out from behind the prescription counter. “Who just put in a call from that middle booth there, where the bulb is still warm?”

The proprietor shrugged with expansive helplessness. “A woman. Do I know who she was?”

Wanger’s record on Frank Moran:

Evidence:

1 note in hand-printed capitals pinned to quilt on child’s bed.

1 crayon-colored outline drawing, probably an adult imitation of a child’s handiwork.

Case Unsolved.