A Kiss Before Dying

Part Two ELLEN

Letter from Annabelle Koch to Leo Kingship:

girls' dormitory

Stoddard university

blue river,

Iowa March 5, 1951

Dear Mr. Kingship,

I suppose you are wondering who I am, unless you remember my name from the newspapers. I am the young woman who loaned a belt to your daughter Dorothy last April. I was the last person to speak to her. I would not bring up this subject as I am sure it must be a very painful subject to you, except that 1 have a good reason.

As you may recall Dorothy and I had the same green suit. She came to my room and asked to borrow my belt. I loaned it to her and later the police found it (or what I thought was it) in her room. They kept it for over a month until they got around to returning it to me and by that time it was quite late in the season so I did not wear the green suit again last year.

Now spring is approaching again and last night I tried on my spring clothes. I tried on my green suit and it fitted perfectly. But when I put on the belt I found to my surprise that it was Dorothy's belt all along. You see, the notch that is marked from the buckle is two notches too big for my waist. Dorothy was quite slender but I am even more so. In fact to be frank I am quite thin. I know that I certainly did not lose any weight because the suit still fits me perfectly, as I said above, so the belt must be Dorothy's. When the police first showed it to me I thought it was mine because the gold finish on the tooth of the buckle was rubbed off. I should have realized that since both suits were made by the same manufacturer the finish would have come off of both buckles.

So now it seems that Dorothy could not wear her own belt for some reason, even though it was not broken at all, and took mine instead. I cannot understand it. At the time I thought she only pretended to need my belt because she wanted to speak to me.

Now that I know the belt is Dorothy's I would feel funny wearing it. I am not superstitious, but after all it does not belong to me and it did belong to poor Dorothy. I thought of throwing it away but 1 would feel funny doing that also, so I am sending it to you in a separate package and you can keep it or dispose of it as you see fit.

I can still wear the suit because all the girls here are wearing wide leather belts this year anyway.

Yours truly,

Annabelle Koch

Letter from Leo Kingship to Ellen Kingship:

March 8, 1951

My dear Ellen,

I received your last letter and am sorry not to have replied sooner, but the demands of business have been especially pressing of late.

Yesterday being Wednesday, Marion came here to dinner. She is not looking too well. I showed her a letter which I received yesterday and she suggested that I send it on to you. You will find it enclosed. Read it now, and then continue with my letter.

Now that you have read Miss Koch's letter, I will explain why I forwarded it.

Marion tells me that ever since Dorothy's death you have been rebuking yourself for your imagined callousness to her. Miss Koch's unfortunate story of Dorothy's "desperate need of someone to talk with" made you feel, according to Marion, that that someone should have been you and would have been you, had you not pushed Dorothy out on her own too soon. You believe, although this is something which Marion has only deduced from your letters, that had there been a difference in your attitude towards Dorothy, she might not have chosen the path she did.

I credit what Marion says since it explains your wishful thinking, for I can only call it that, of last April, when you stubbornly refused to believe that Dorothy's death had been a suicide, despite the incontestable evidence of the note which you yourself received. You felt that if Dorothy had committed suicide you were in some way responsible, and so it was several weeks before you were able to accept her death for what it was, and accept also the burden of an imagined responsibility.

This letter from Miss Koch makes it clear that Dorothy went to the girl because, for some peculiar reason of her own, she did want her belt; she was not in desperate need of someone to whom she could talk. She had made up her mind to do what she was going to do, and there is absolutely no reason for you to believe that she would have come to see you first if you two had not had that argument the previous Christmas. (And don't forget it was she who was in a sullen mood and started the argument.) As for the initial coldness on Dorothy's part, remember that I agreed with you that she should go to Stoddard rather than Caldwell, where she would only have become more dependent on you. True, if she had followed you to the Caldwell the tragedy would not have happened, but "if' is the biggest word in the world. Dorothy's punishment may have been excessively severe, but she was the one who chose it. I am not responsible, you are not responsible; no one is but Dorothy herself.

The knowledge that Miss Koch's original interpretation of Dorothy's behavior was erroneous will, I hope, rid you of any feelings of self-recrimination that may remain.

Your loving,

Father

P. S. Please excuse my indecipherable handwriting. I thought this letter too personal to dictate to Miss Richardson.

Letter from Ellen Kingship to Bud Corliss:

March 12, 1951 8: 35 AM

Dear Bud,

Here I sit in the club car with a Coke (at this hour -ugh!) and a pen and paper, trying to keep my writing hand steady against the motion of the train and trying to give a "lucid if not brilliant' explanation-as Prof. Mulholland would say-of why I am making this trip to Blue River.

I'm sorry about tonights basketball game, but I'm sure Connie or Jane will be glad to go in my place, and you can think of me between the halves.

Now first of all, this trip is not impulsive; I thought about it all last night. You'd think 1 was running off to Cairo, Egypt! Second of all, I will not be missing work, because you are going to take complete notes in each class, and anyway I doubt if I'll be gone more than a week. And besides, since when do they flunk seniors for overcuts? Third of all, I won't be wasting my time, because I'll never know until I've tried, and until I try I'll never have a moment's peace.

Now that the objections are out of the way, let me explain why I am going. I'll fill m a little background first.

From the letter I received from my father Saturday morning, you know that Dorothy originally wanted to come to Caldwell and I opposed her for her own good, or so I convinced myself at the time. Since her death I've wondered whether it wasn't pure selfishness on my part. My life at home had been restrained both by my father's strictness and Dorothy's dependence on me, although I didn't realize it at the time. So when I got to Caldwell I really let go. During my first three years I was the rah-rah girl; beer parties, hanging around with the Big Wheels, etc. You wouldn't recognize me. So as 1 say, I'm not sure whether 1 prevented Dorothy from coming in order to encourage her independence or to avoid losing mine, Caldwell being the everybody-knows-what-everybody-else-is-doing-type place that it is.

My father's analysis (probably second-hand via Marion) of my reaction to Dorothy's death is absolutely right .1 didn't want to admit it was suicide because that meant that I was partly responsible. I thought I had other reasons for doubt besides emotional ones however. The note she sent me, for instance. It was her handwriting-I can't deny that- but it didn't sound like her. It sounded kind of stilted, and she addressed me as "Darling," when before it had always been "Dear Ellen' or "Dearest Ellen." I mentioned that to the police, but they said that naturally she was under a strain when she wrote the note and couldn't be expected to sound her usual self, which I had to admit seemed logical. The fact that she carried her birth certificate with her also bothered me, but they explained that away too. A suicide will often take pains to make sure he is immediately identified, they said. The fact that other things which she always carried in her wallet (Stoddard registration card, etc.) would have been sufficient identification didn't seem to make any impression on them. And when 1 told them that she just wasn't the suicidal type, they didn't even bother to answer me. They swept away every point I raised.

So there I was. Of course I finally had to accept the fact that Dorothy committed suicide-and that I was partly to blame. Annabelle Koch's story was only the clincher. The motive for Dorothy's suicide made me even more responsible, for rational girls today do not kill themselves if they become pregnant-not, I thought, unless they have been brought up to depend on someone else and then that someone else suddenly isn't there.

But Dorothy's pregnancy meant that another person had deserted her too,-the man. If I knew anything about Dorothy it was that she did not treat sex lightly. She wasn't the kind for quick flings. The fact that she was pregnant meant that there was one man whom she had loved and had intended to marry some day.

Now early in the December before her death, Dorothy had written me about a man she had met in her English class. She had been going out with him for quite some time, and this was the Real Thing. She said she would give me all the details over Christmas vacation. But we had an argument during Christmas, and after that she wouldn't even give me the right time. And when we returned to school our letters were almost like business letters. So I never even learned his name. All I knew about him was what she had mentioned in that letter; that he had been in her English class in the fall, and that he was handsome and somewhat like Len Vernon-he is the husband of a cousin of ours-which, meant that Dorothy's man was tall, blond, and blue-eyed.

1 told my father about this man, urging him to find out who he was and punish him somehow. He refused, saying that it would be impossible to prove he was the one who had gotten Dorothy into trouble, and futile even if we could prove it. She had punished herself for her sins; it was a closed case as far as he was concerned.

That's how things stood until Saturday, when 1 received my father's letter with the one from Annabelle Koch enclosed. Which brings us to my big scene. The letters did not have the effect my father had hoped for-not at first-because as I said, Annabelle Koch's story was far from the sole cause of my melancholy. But then 1 began to wonder; if Dorothy's belt was in perfect condition, why had she lied about it and taken Annabelle's instead? Why couldn't Dorothy wear her own belt? My father was content to let it pass, saying she had "some peculiar reason of her own," but 1 wanted to know what that reason was, because there were three other seemingly inconsequential things which Dorothy did on the day of her death that puzzled me then and that still puzzled me. Here they are: 1. At 10: 15 that morning she bought an inexpensive pair of white cloth gloves in a shop across the street from her dormitory. (The owner reported it to the police after seeing her picture in the papers.) First she asked for a pair of stockings, but because of a rush of business for the Spring Dance scheduled for the following night, they were out of her size. She then asked for gloves, and bought a pair for $1 .50. She was wearing them when she died, yet in the bureau in her room was a beautiful pair of hand-made white cloth gloves, perfectly spotless, that Marion had given her the previous Christmas. Why didn't she wear those?

2. Dorothy was a careful dresser. She was wearing her green suit when she died. With it she wore an inexpensive white silk blouse whose floppy out-of-style bow was all wrong for the lines of the suit. Yet in her closet was a white silk blouse, also perfectly spotless, which had been specially made to go with the suit. Why didn't she wear that blouse?

3. Dorothy was wearing dark green, with brown and white accessories. Yet the handkerchief in her purse was bright turquoise, as wrong as could be for the outfit she wore. In her room were at least a dozen handkerchiefs that would have matched her outfit perfectly. Why didn't she take one of those?

At the time of her death I mentioned these points to the police. They dismissed them as quickly as they had dismissed the others I brought up. She was distracted. It was ridiculous to expect her to dress with her ordinary care. I pointed out that the glove incident was the reverse of carelessness; she had gone out of her way to get them. If there was conscious preparation behind one incident, it wasn't unreasonable to assume that all three had some kind of purpose. Their comeback was, "You can't figure a suicide."

Annabelle Koch's letter added a fourth incident which followed the pattern of the other three. Her own belt was perfectly all right, but Dorothy wore Annabelle's instead. In each case she rejected an appropriate item for one that was less appropriate.

Why?

I batted that problem around in my head all day Saturday, and Saturday night too. Don't ask me what I expected to prove. I felt that there had to be some kind of meaning to it all, and I wanted to find out as much as I could about Dorothy's state of mind at the time. Like poking a bad tooth with your tongue, I guess.

I'd have to write reams to tell you all the mental steps I went through, searching for some relationship among the four rejected items. Price, where they came from, and a thousand other thoughts, but nothing made sense. The same thing happened when I tried to get common characteristics in the wrong things she had actually worn. I even took sheets of paper and headed them Gloves, Handkerchief, Blouse, and Belt, and put down everything I knew about each, looking for a meaning. Apparently, there just wasn't a meaning. Size, age, ownership, cost, color, quality, place of purchase-none of the significant characteristics appeared on all four lists. I tore up the papers and went to bed. You can't figure a suicide.

It came to me about an hour later, so startlingly that I shot up straight in bed, suddenly cold. The out-of-style blouse, the gloves she'd bought that morning. Annabelle Koch's belt, the turquoise handkerchief... Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

It might-I keep telling myself-be a coincidence. But in my heart I don't believe that.

Dorothy went to the Municipal Building, not because it is the tallest building in Blue River, but because a Municipal Building is where you go when you want to get married. She wore something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue -poor romantic Dorothy-and she carried her birth certificate with her to prove she was over eighteen. And you don't make a trip like that alone. Dorothy can only have gone with one person-the man who made her pregnant, the man she'd been going with for a long time, the man she loved-the handsome blue-eyed blond of her fall English class. He got her up to the roof somehow. I'm almost certain that's the way it was.

The note? All it said was "I hope you will forgive me for the unhappiness I will cause. There is nothing else that I can do." Where is there mention of suicide? She was referring to the marriage! She knew Father would disapprove of a hasty step like that, but there was nothing else she could do because she was pregnant. The police were right when they said the stilted tone was the result of strain, only it was the strain of an eloping bride, not of a person contemplating suicide.

"Something old, something new" was enough to set me going, but it would never be enough to make the police reclassify a suicide with note as an unsolved murder, especially when they would be prejudiced against me-the crank who pestered them last year. You know that's true. So I'm going to find this man and do some very cautious Sherlocking. As soon as I turn up anything that supports my suspicions, anything strong enough to interest the police, I promise to go straight to them. I've seen too many movies where the heroine accuses the murderer in his soundproof penthouse and he says "Yes, I did it, but you'll never live to tell the tale." So don't worry about me, and don't get impatient, and don't write my father as he would probably explode. Maybe it is "crazy and impulsive" to rush into it this way, but how can I sit and wait when I know what has to be done and there is no one else to do it?

Perfect timing. We're just entering Blue River now. I can see the Municipal Building from the window. I'll wind this letter up later in the day, when I'll be able to tell you where I'm staying and what progress, if any, I've made. Even though Stoddard is ten times as big as Caldwell, I have a pretty good idea of how to begin. Wish me luck...

Dean Welch was plump, with round gray eyes like buttons pressed into the shiny pink clay of his face. He favored suits of clergy-black flannel, single breasted so as to expose his Phi Beta Kappa key. His office was dim and chapel-like, with dark wood and draperies and, in its center, a broad field of meticulously accoutred desktop.

After releasing the button on the inter-office speaker, the Dean rose and faced the door, his customary moist-lipped smile replaced by an expression of solemnity suitable for greeting a girl whose sister had taken her own life while nominally under his care. The ponderous notes of the noonday carillon floated into the chamber, muffled by distance and draperies. The door opened and Ellen Kingship entered.

By the time she had closed the door and approached his desk, the Dean of Students had measured and evaluated her with the complacent certainty of one who has dealt with younger people for many years. She was neat; he liked that And quite pretty. Red-brown hair in thick bangs, brown eyes, a smile whose restraint acknowledged the unfortunate past... Determined looking. Probably not brilliant, but a plodder... second quarter of her class. Her coat and dress were shades of dark blue, a pleasant contrast to the usual student polychrome. She seemed a bit nervous, but then, weren't they all?

"Miss Kingship..." he murmured with a nod, indicating the visitor's chair. They sat. The Dean folded his pink hands. "Your father is well, I hope."

'"Very well, thank you." Her voice was low-pitched and breathy.

The Dean said, "I had the pleasure of meeting him... last year." There was a moment of silence. "If there's anything I can do for you..."

She shifted in the stiff-backed chair. "We-my father and I-are trying to locate a certain man, a student here." The Dean's eyebrows lifted in polite curiosity. "He lent my sister a fairly large sum of money a few weeks before her death. She wrote me about it. I happened to come across her checkbook last week and it reminded me of the incident. There's nothing in the checkbook to indicate that she ever repaid the debt, and we thought he might have felt awkward about claiming it." The Dean nodded.

"The only trouble," Ellen said, "is that I don't recall his name. But I do remember Dorothy mentioning that he was in her English class during the fall semester, and that he was blond. We thought perhaps you could help us locate him. It was a fairly large sum of money..." She took a deep breath.

"I see," said the Dean. He pressed his hands together as though comparing their size. His lips smiled at Ellen. "Can do," he snapped with military briskness. He held the pose for an instant, then jabbed one of the buttons on the inter-office speaker. "Miss Platt," he snapped, and released the button.

He brought his chair into more perfect alignment with the desk, as if be were preparing for a long campaign.

The door opened and a pale efficient-looking woman stepped into the room. The Dean nodded at her and then leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall beyond Ellen's head, mapping his strategy. Several moments passed before he spoke. "Get the program card of Kingship, Dorothy, fall semester, nineteen forty-nine. See which English section she was in and get the enrollment list for that section. Bring me the folders of all the male students whose names appear on the list" He looked at the secretary. "Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

He made her repeat the instructions. "Fine," he said. She went out. "On the double," he said to the closed door. He turned back to Ellen and smiled complacently. She returned the smile.

By degrees the air of military efficiency faded, giving way to one of avuncular solicitude. The Dean leaned forward, his fingers softly clustered on the desk. "Surely you haven't come to Blue River solely for this purpose," he said. "I'm visiting friends."

"Ahh."

Ellen opened her handbag. "May I smoke?"

"By all means." He pushed a crystal ashtray to her side of the desk. "I smoke myself," he admitted graciously. Ellen offered him a cigarette, but he demurred. She lit hers with a match drawn from a white folder on which Ellen Kingship was printed in copper letters.

The Dean regarded the matchbook thoughtfully. "Your conscientiousness in financial matters is admirable," he said, smiling. "If only everyone we dealt with were similarly conscientious." He examined a bronze letter opener. "We are at present beginning the construction of a new gymnasium and fieldhouse. Several people who pledged contributions have failed to live up to their words." Ellen shook her head sympathetically, "Perhaps your father would be interested in making a contrubiton," the Dean speculated. "A memorial to your sister..."

'I'll be glad to mention it to him."

"Would you? I would certainly appreciate that" He replaced tide letter opener. "Such contributions are tax-deductible," he added.

A few minutes later the secretary entered with a stack of Manila folders in her arm. She set them before the Dean. "English fifty-one," she said, "section six. Seventeen male students."

"Fine," said the Dean. As the secretary left he straightened his chair and rubbed his hands, the military man once more. He opened the top folder and leafed through its contents until he came to an application form. There was a photograph pasted in the corner of it "Dark hair," he said, and put the folder on his left.

When he had gone through all of them, there were two uneven piles. Twelve with dark hair and five with light," the Dean said.

Ellen leaned forward. "Dorothy once told me he was handsome..."

The Dean drew the pile of five folders to the center of his desk blotter and opened the first one. "George Speiser," he said thoughtfully. "I doubt if you'd call Mr. Speiser handsome." He lifted out the application form and turned it towards Ellen. The face in the photograph was a chinless, gimlet-eyed teen-ager. She shook her head.

The second was an emaciated young man with thick eyeglasses.

The third was fifty-three years old and his hair was white, not blond.

Ellen's hands were damp on her purse. The Dean opened the fourth folder. "Gordon Gant," he said. "Does that sound like the name?" He turned the application form towards her.

He was blond and unarguably handsome; light eyes under full brows, a long firm jaw and a cavalier grin. "I think so..." she said. "Yes, I think he..."

"Or could it be Dwight Powell?" the Dean asked, displaying the fifth application form in his other hand.

The fifth photograph showed a square-jawed, serious-looking young man, with a cleft chin and pale-toned eyes.

"Which name sounds familiar?" the Dean asked.

Ellen looked impotently from one picture to the other.

They were both blond; they were both blue-eyed; they were both handsome.

She came out of the Administration Building and stood at the head of the stone steps surveying the campus, dull gray under a clouded sky. Her purse was in one hand, a slip of paper from the Dean's memo paid in the other.

Two... It would slow her up a little, that's all. It should be simple to find out which was the one... and then she would watch him, even meet him perhaps-though not as Ellen Kingship. Watch for the darting eye, the guarded answer. Murder must leave marks. (It was murder. It must have been murder.)

She was getting ahead of herself. She looked at the paper in her hand: Gordon C. Gant 1312 West 26th Street Dwight Powell 1520 West 35th Street Her lunch, eaten in a small restaurant across the street from the campus, was a hasty mechanical affair, her mind racing with swift thoughts. How to begin? Ask a few discreet questions of their Mends? But where do you start? Follow each men, learn the identity of his friends, meet them, find the ones who had known him last year? Time, time, time... If she remained in Blue River too long, Bud might call her father. Her fingers tapped impatiently. Who would be sure to know about Gordon Gant and Dwight Powell? Their families. Or if they were from out of town, a landlady or a roommate. It would be impetuous to go straight to the center of things, to the people nearest them, but still, no time would be wasted... She bit her lower lip, her fingers still tapping.

After a minute she put down her half finished cup of coffee, rose from the table and threaded her way to the phone booth. Hesitantly she raffled the pages of the thin Blue River book. There was no Gant at all, no Powell on 35th Street That meant they either had no phones, which seemed unlikely, or they were living with families other than their own.

She called Information and obtained the number of the telephone at 1312 West 26th Street; 2-2014: "Hello?" The voice was a woman's; dry, middle-aged.

"Hello." Ellen swallowed. "Is Gordon Gant there?"

A pause. "Who's calling?"

"A friend of his. Is he there?"

"No." Snapped out sharply.

"Who is this?"

"His landlady."

"When do you expect him back?"

"Won't be back till late tonight." The woman's voice was quick with annoyance. There was a click as she hung up.

Ellen looked at the dead receiver and placed it on the hook. When she got back to her table the coffee was cold.

He would be gone all day. Go there?... A single conversation with the landlady might establish that Gant was the one who had gone with Dorothy. Or, by elimination, it might prove that Powell was the one. Speak to the landlady... but under what pretext?

Why, any pretext! Provided the woman believed it, what harm could the wildest story do?-even if its falseness were completely obvious to Gant when the landlady reported it. Either he wasn't the man, in which case let him puzzle over a mysterious questioner pretending to be a friend or a relative, or he was the man, in which case: A) He had not killed Dorothy-again let him puzzle over a mysterious questioner, or: B) He had killed Dorothy-and the story of a girl seeking information about him would make him uneasy. Yet his uneasiness would not interfere with her plans, for should she later make his acquaintance, he would have no reason to associate her with the girl who had questioned his landlady. Uneasiness on his part might even be a help to her, making him tense, more likely to betray himself. Why, he might even decide to take no chances and leave town-and that would be all she'd need to convince the police that there was a sound basis to her suspicions. They would investigate, find the proof...

Go straight to the center of things. Impetuous? When you thought about it, it was really the most logical thing to do.

She looked at her watch. Five past one. Her visit shouldn't be made too soon after the telephone call or the landlady might connect the two and become suspicious. Forcing herself to sit back in the chair, Ellen caught the waitress' eye and ordered another cup of coffee.

At a quarter of two she entered the 1300 block of West 26th Street. It was a quiet, tired-looking street, with pallid two story frame houses sitting behind pocked brown lawns still hard from winter. A few old Fords and Chewies stood immobile along the curb, some aging naturally, some trying to stay young with unprofessional paint jobs, bright colored but lusterless. Ellen walked with the enforced slowness of attempted nonchalance, the sound of her heels the only sound in the still air.

The house where Gordon Gant lived, 1312, was the third one in from the corner; mustard colored, its brown trim the shade of stale chocolate. After looking at it for a moment, Ellen walked up the cracked concrete path that bisected the dead lawn and led to the porch. There she read the nameplate on the mailbox affixed to one of the posts: Mrs. Minna Arquette. She stepped to the door. Its bell was of the old-fashioned kind; a fan-shaped metal tab protruded from the center of the door. Drawing a deep initiatory breath, she gave the tab a quick twist. The bell within rang gratingly. Ellen waited.

Presently footsteps sounded inside, and then the door opened. The woman who stood in the doorway was tall and lank, with frizzy gray hair clustered above a long equine face. Her eyes were pink and rheumy. A busily printed housedress hung from her sharp shoulders. She looked Ellen up and down. "Yes?"-the dry Midwestern voice of the telephone.

"You must be Mrs. Arquette," Ellen declared.

"That's right." The woman twitched a sudden smile, displaying teeth of an unnatural perfection.

Ellen smiled back at her. "I'm Gordon's cousin."

Mrs. Arquette arched thin eyebrows. "His cousin?"

"Didn't he mention that I'd be here today?"

"Why, no. He didn't say anything about a cousin. Not a word."

"That's funny. I wrote him I'd be passing through. I'm on my way to Chicago and I purposely came this way so I could stop off and see him. He must have forgotten to-"

"When did you write him?"

Ellen hesitated. "The day before yesterday. Saturday."

"Oh." The smile flashed again. "Gordon leaves the house early in the morning, and the first mail don't come till ten. Your letter is probably sitting in his room this minute.'*

"Ohh..."

"He isn't here right-"

"Couldn't I come in for a few minutes?" Ellen cut in quickly. "I took the wrong streetcar from the station and I had to walk about ten blocks."

Mrs. Arquette took a step back into the house. "Of course. Come on in."

"Thank you very much." Ellen crossed the threshold, entering a hallway that was stale-smelling and- once the front door was closed-dimly lighted. A flight of stairs rose along the right wall. On the left an archway opened onto a parlor which had the stiff look of seldom used rooms.

"Miz Arquette?" a voice called from the back of the house.

"Coming!" she answered. She turned to Ellen. "You mind sitting in the kitchen?"

"Not at all," Ellen said. The Arquette teeth shone again, and then Ellen was following the tall figure down the hallway, wondering why the woman, so pleasant now, had been so irritable over the telephone.

The kitchen was painted the same mustard color as the exterior of the house. There was a white porcelain-topped table in the middle of the room, with a set of anagrams laid out on it. An elderly bald-headed man with thick eyeglasses sat at the table, pouring the last of a bottle of Dr. Pepper into a lowered jar that had once held cheese. "This is Mr. Fishback from next door," said Mrs. Arquette. "We play anagrams."

"Nickel a word," added the old man, raising his eyeglasses to look at Ellen.

"This is Miss.. " Mrs. Arquette waited.

"Gant," said Ellen.

"Miss Gant, Gordon's cousin."

"How do you do," said Mr, Fishback. "Gordon's a nice boy." He dropped his glasses back into place, his eyes swelling up behind them. "It's your go," he said to Mrs. Arquette.

She took the seat opposite Mr. Fishback. "Sit down," she said to Ellen, indicating one of the empty chairs. "You want some pop?"

"No, thank you," Ellen said, sitting. She slipped her arms from the sleeves of her coat and dropped it back over the chair.

Mrs. Arquette stared at the dozen turned up letters in the ring of blank-backed wooden squares. "Where you on your way from?" she inquired.

"California."

"I didn't know Gordon had family in the West."

"No, I was just visiting there. I'm from the East."

"Oh." Mrs. Arquette looked at Mr. Fishback. "Go ahead, I give up. Can't do anything with no vowels."

"It's my turn?" he asked. She nodded. With a grin Mr. Fishback snatched at the turned up letters. "You missed it, you missed it!" he crowed. "C-R-Y-P-T. Crypt. What they bury folks in." He pushed the letters together and added the word to the others ranged before him.

"That's not fair," Mrs. Arquette protested. "You had all that time to think while I was at the door."

"Fair is fair," Mr. Fishback declared. He turned up two more letters and placed them in the center of the ring.

"Oh, shoot," Mrs. Arquette muttered, sitting back In her chair.

"How is Gordon these days?" Ellen asked.

"Oh, fine," said Mrs. Arquette. "Busy as a bee, what with school and the program."

"The program?"

"You mean you don't know about Gordon's program?"

"Well, I haven't heard from him in quite a while..."

"Why, he's had it for almost three months now!" Mrs. Arquette drew herself up grandly. "He plays records and talks. A disc jockey. The Discus Thrower' he's called. Every night except Sunday, from eight to ten over KBRI."

"That's wonderful!" Ellen exclaimed.

"Why, he's a real celebrity," the landlady continued, turning up a letter as Mr. Fishback nodded to her. "They had an interview on him in the paper a couple of Sundays back. Reporter come here and everything. And girls he don't even know calling him up at all hours. Stoddard girls. They get his number out of the Student Directory and call up just to hear his voice over the telephone. He don't want anything to do with them, so I'm the one's got to answer. It's enough to drive a person crazy." Mrs. Arquette frowned at the anagrams. "Go ahead, Mr. Fishback," she said.

Ellen fingered the edge of the table. "Is Gordon still going out with that girl he wrote me about last year?" she asked. "Which one's that?"

"A blonde girl, short, pretty. Gordon mentioned her in a few of his letters last year,-October, November, all the way up through April. I thought he was really interested in her. But he stopped writing about her in April."

"Well I'll tell you," Mrs. Arquette said, "I don't ever get to see the girls Gordon goes out with. Before he got the program he used to go out three-four times a week, but he never brought any of the girls here. Not that I'd expect him to. I'm only his landlady. He never talks about them neither. Other boys I had here before him used to tell me all about their girls, but college boys were younger then. Nowadays they're mostly veterans and I guess they get a little older, they don't chatter so much. Least Gordon don't. Not that I'd want to pry, but I'm interested in people." She turned over a letter. "What was that girl's name? You tell me her name I can probably tell you if he's still going out with her, because sometimes when he's using the phone over by the stairs there, I'm in the parlor and can't help hearing part of the conversation."

"I don't remember her name," Ellen said, "but he was going with her last year, so maybe if you remember the names of some of the girls he spoke to then, I'll be able to recognize it."

"Let's see," Mrs. Arquette pondered, mechanically arranging anagrams in search of a word. "There was a Louella. I remember that one because I had a sister-in-law by that name. And then there was a..." -her watery eyes closed in concentration-"... a Barbara. No, that was the year before, his first year. Let's see, Louella..." She shook her head. "There was others, but I'm hanged if I can remember them." The game of anagrams went on in silence for a minute. Finally Ellen said, "I think this girl's name was Dorothy."

Mrs. Arquette waved a go-ahead at Mr. Fishback. "Dorothy..." Her eyes narrowed. "No... if the name's Dorothy, I don't think he's still going out with her. I haven't heard him talking to any Dorothy lately, I'm sure of that. Of course he goes down to the corner sometimes to make a real personal call or a Long Distance."

"But he was going with a Dorothy last year?" Mrs. Arquette looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know... I don't remember a Dorothy, but I don't not remember one either, if you know what I mean."

"Dottie?" Ellen tried.

"Mrs. Arquette considered for a moment and then gave a noncommittal shrug. "Your go," Mr. Fishback said petulantly. The wooden squares clicked softly as Mrs. Arquette maneuvered them about "I think," said Ellen, "that he must have broken up with this Dorothy in April when he stopped writing about her. He must have been in a bad mood around the end of April. Worried, nervous..." She looked at Mrs. Arquette questioningly.

"Not Gordon," she said "He had real spring fever last year. Going around humming. I joshed him about it." Mr. Fishback fidgeted impatiently. "Oh, go ahead," Mrs. Arquette said.

Choking over his Dr. Pepper, Mr. Fishback pounced on the anagrams. "You missed one again!" he cried, clawing up letters. "F-A-N-E. Fane!"

"What're you talking about, fane? No such word!" Mrs. Arquette turned to Ellen. "You ever hear of a word 'fane'?"

"You should know better'n to argue with me!" Mr. Fishback shrilled. "I don't know what it means, but I know it's a word. I seen it!" He turned to Ellen. "I read three books a week, regular as clockwork."

"Fane," snorted Mrs. Arquette.

"Well look it up in the dictionary!"

"That little pocket one with nothing in it? Every time I look up one of your words and it ain't there you blame it on the dictionary!"

Ellen looked at the two glaring figures. "Gordon must have a dictionary," she said. She stood up. 'I'll be glad to get it if you'll tell me which room is his."

"That's right," Mrs. Arquette said decisively. "He does have one." She rose. "You sit down, dear. I know; just where it is."

"May I come along then? I'd like to see Gordon's room. He's told me what a nice place..."

"Come on," said Mrs. Arquette, stalking out of the kitchen. Ellen hurried after her.

"You'll see," Mr. Fishback's voice chased them, "I know more words than you'll ever know, even if you live to be a hundred!"

They sped up the darkwood stairs, Mrs. Arquette in the fore muttering indignantly. Ellen followed her through a door adjacent to the head of the stairway.

The room was bright with flowered wallpaper. There was a green-covered bed, a dresser, easy chair, table... Mrs. Arquette, having snatched a book from the top of the dresser, stood by the window ruffling the pages. Ellen moved to the dresser and scanned the titles of the books ranked across its top.

A diary maybe. Any kind of notebook. Prize Stories of 1950. An Outline of History, Radio Announcer's Handbook of Pronunciation, The Brave Bulls, A History of American Jazz, Swann's Way, Elements of Psychology, Three Famous Murder Novels and A Sub-Treasury of American Humor.

"Oh, shoot," said Mrs. Arquette. She stood with her forefinger pressed to the open dictionary. "Fane," she read, "a temple; hence a church." She slammed the book shut "Where does he get words like that?" Ellen eased over to the table, where three envelopes were fanned out. Mrs. Arquette, putting the dictionary on the dresser, glanced at her. "The one without a return address is yours, I guess."

"Yes, it is," Ellen said. The two letters with return address were from Newsweek and the National Broadcasting Company. Mrs. Arquette was at the door. "Coming?"

"Yes," Ellen said.

They trudged down the stairs and walked slowly into the kitchen, where Mr. Fishback was waiting. As soon as he observed Mrs. Arquette's dejection he burst into gleeful cackling. She gave him a dirty look. "It means a church," she said, slumping into her chair. He laughed some more. "Oh, shut up and get on with the game," Mrs. Arquette grumbled. Mr, Fishback turned over two letters.

Ellen took her purse from the coat-draped chair in which she had sat "I guess I'll be going now," she said dispiritedly.

"Going?" Mrs. Arquette looked up, the thin eyebrows arching. Ellen nodded.

"Well for goodness' sake, aren't you going to wait for Gordon?" Ellen went cold. Mrs. Arquette looked at the clock on the refrigerator next to the door. "It's ten after two," she said. "His last class ended at two o'clock. He should be here any minute." She couldn't speak. The image of Mrs. Arquette's upturned face swayed sickeningly. "You... you told me he would be gone all day..." she strained out finally.

Mrs. Arquette looked injured. "Why, I never told you no such thing! Why on earth you been sitting here if not waiting for him?"

"The telephone..."

The landlady's jaw dropped. "Was that you? Around one o'clock?"

Ellen nodded helplessly.

"Well why didn't you tell me it was you? I thought it was one of those fool girls. Whenever someone calls and won't give a name I tell them he's gone for the day. Even if he's here. He told me to. He..." The expression of earnestness drained from Mrs. Arquette's face. The dull eyes, the thin-lipped mouth became grim, suspicious. "If you thought he was out for the day," she demanded slowly, "then why did you come here at all?"

"I... I wanted to meet you. Gordon wrote so much..."

"Why were you asking all those questions?" Mrs. Arquette stood up.

Ellen reached for her coat Suddenly Mrs. Arquette was holding Ellen's arms, the long bony fingers clutching painfully. "Let go of me... Please..."

"Why were you snooping in his room?" The horse-like face pressed close to Ellen's, the eyes swelling with anger, the rough skin red. "What did you want in there? You take something while my back was turned?"

Behind Ellen, Mr. Fishback's chair scraped and his voice piped frightenedly "Why'd she want to steal anything from her own cousin?"

"Who says she's his cousin?" Mrs. Arquette snapped.

Ellen worked futilely in her grasp. "Please, you're hurting me..."

The pale eyes narrowed. "And I don't think she's one of those damn girls looking for a souvenir or something either. Why was she asking all those questions?"

'I'm his cousin! I am!" Ellen tried to steady her voice. "I want to go now. You can't keep me here. I'll see him later."

"You'll see him now," Mrs. Arquette said. "You're staying here until Gordon comes." She glanced over Ellen's shoulder. "Mr. Fishback, get over by the back door." She waited, her eyes following Mr. Fishback's slow passage, and then she released Ellen. Moving quickly to the front doorway, she blocked it, her arms folded across her chest. "We'll find out what this is all about," she said.

Ellen rubbed her arms where Mrs. Arquette's fingers had clamped them. She looked at the man and woman blocking the doors at either end of the kitchen; Mr. Fishback with his glass-magnified eyes blinking nervously; Mrs. Arquette standing grim, monolithic. "You can't do this." She retrieved her purse from the floor. She took her coat from the chair and put it over her arm. "Let me out of here," she said firmly. Neither of them moved.

They heard the front door slam and footsteps on the stairs. "Gordon!" Mrs. Arquette shouted, "Gordon!" The footsteps stopped. "What is it, Mrs. Arquette?" The landlady turned and ran down the hallway.

Ellen faced Mr. Fishback. "Please," she implored, "let me out of here. I didn't mean any harm."

He shook his head slowly.

She stood motionless, hearing the excited rasping of Mrs. Arquette's voice far behind her. Footsteps approached and the voice grew louder. "She kept asking all kinds of questions about what girls you were going out with last year, and she even tricked me into taking her to your room. She was looking at your books and the letters on your table..." Mrs. Arquette's voice suddenly flooded the kitchen. "There she is!"

Ellen turned. Mrs. Arquette stood to the left of the table, one arm lifted, pointing accusation. Gant was in the doorway leaning against the jam, tall and spare in a pale-blue topcoat, books in one hand. He looked at her for a moment, then his lips curved a smile over his long jaw and one eyebrow lifted slightly.

He detached himself from the jamb and stepped into the room, putting his books on the refrigerator without taking his eyes from her. "Why, Cousin Hester..." he marveled softly, his eyes flicking down then up again in considered appraisal. "You've passed through adolescence magnificently..." He ambled around the table, placed his hands on Ellen's shoulders, and kissed her fondly on the cheek.

"You... you mean she really is your cousin?" Mrs. Arquette gasped.

"Arquette, my love," said Gant, moving to Ellen's left, "ours was a communal teething ring." He patted Ellen's shoulder. "Wasn't it, Hester?"

She eyed him crazily, her face flushed, her mouth slack. Her gaze moved to Mrs. Arquette at the left of the table, to the hallway beyond it, to the coat and purse in her hands... She darted to the right, sped around the table and through the door and down the hallway hearing Arquette's "Running away!" and Gant's pursuing shout: "She's from the psychotic side of the family!" Wrenching open the heavy front door, she fled from the house, her toes biting the concrete path. At the sidewalk she turned to the right and reined to swift bitter strides, wrestling into her tangled coat. Oh God, everything messed up! She clenched her teeth, feeling the hot pressure of tears behind her eyes. Gant caught up with her and matched her strides with long easy legs. She flung a fiery glance at the grinning face and then glared straight ahead, her whole being compressed with unreasoned fury at herself and him.

"Isn't there a secret word?" he asked. "Aren't you supposed to press a message into my hand and whisper 'Southern Comfort' or something? Or is this the one where the heavy in the dark suit has been following you all day and you sought refuge in the nearest doorway? I like them equally well, so whichever it is..." She strode along in acid silence. "You ever read the Saint stories? I used to. Old Simon Templar was always running into beautiful women with strange behavior patterns. Once one of them swam onto his yacht in the middle of the night. Said she was a channel swimmer gone astray, I believe. Turned out to be an insurance investigator." He caught her arm. "Cousin Hester, I have the most insatiable curiosity..."

She pulled her arm free. They had reached an intersecting avenue along the other side of which a taxi cruised. She waved and the cab began a U turn. "It was a joke," she said tightly. "I'm sorry. I did it on a bet."

"That's what the girl on the yacht told the Saint." His face went serious. "Fun is fun, but why all the questions about my sordid past?"

The cab pulled up. She tried to open the door but he braced his hand against it. "Look here, cousin, don't be fooled by my disc jockey dialogue. I'm not kidding..."

"Please," she moaned exhaustedly, tugging at the door handle. The cabbie appeared at the front window, looking up at them and appraising the situation. "Hey mister..." he said. His voice was a menacing rumble.

With a sigh, Gant released the door. Ellen opened it, ducked in and slammed it closed. She sank into soft worn leather. Outside Gant was leaning over, his hands on the door, staring in at her through the glass as though trying to memorize the details of her face. She looked away.

She waited until the cab had left the curb before telling the driver her destination.

It took ten minutes to reach the New Washington House, where Ellen had registered before calling on the Dean,-ten minutes of lip-biting and quick-handed smoking and bitter self-denunciation, the release of the tension which had been built up before Gant's arrival and which had been left hanging, unspent, by his anticlimactic assume banter. Cousin Hester! Oh, she had really messed things up! She had bet half her chips and got nothing in return. Still in the dark as to whether or not he was the man, she had made further questioning of him or his landlady completely impossible. If investigation of Powell should show he wasn't the man, proving that Gant was, she might as well give up and go back to Caldwell, because if-always the second, the big "if'-if Gant had killed Dorothy, he would be on guard, knowing Ellen's face and knowing what she was after by the questions she had asked Mrs. Arquette. A killer on guard, ready perhaps to kill again. She wouldn't risk tangling with that-not when he had seen her face. Better to live in doubt than to die in certainty. Her only other course would be to go to the police, and she would still have nothing more to offer them than "something old, something new," so they would not solemnly and usher her politely from the station.

Oh, she had made a fine start!

The hotel room had beige walls and clumsy brown furniture and the same clean, impersonal, transient air as the minature paper-wrapped cake of soap in the adjoining bathroom. The only mark of its occupancy was the suitcase with the Caldwell stickers on the rack at the foot of the double bed.

After hanging her coat in the closet, Ellen seated herself at the writing table by the window. She took her fountain pen and the letter to Bud from her purse. Staring down at the addressed but still unsealed envelope, she debated whether or not to mention, in addition to an outline of the interview with Dean Welch, the story of the Gant fiasco. No... if Dwight Powell turned out to be the one, then the Gant business meant nothing. It must be Powell. Not Gant, she told herself,-not with that lighthearted chatter. But what had he said?-Don't be fooled by my disc jockey dialogue. I'm not kidding...

There was a knock at the door. She jumped to her feet. "Who is it?"

"Towels," a high feminine voice answered.

Ellen cross the room and grasped the doorknob. "I... I'm not dressed. Could you leave them outside please?"

"All right," the voice said.

She stood there for two minutes, hearing occasional passing footsteps and the muffled sound of the elevator down the hall, while the knob grew damp in her hand. Finally she smiled at her nervousness, visualizing herself peering under the bed old-maid fashion before going to sleep. She opened the door.

Gant lounged with one elbow against the jamb, the hand propping up his blond head. "Hi, Cousin Hester," he said. "I believe I mentioned my insatiable curiosity." She tried to close the door, but his foot was in the way, immovable. He smiled. "Much fun. Follow that cab!" His right hand described a zigzag course. "Shades of the Warner Brothers. The driver got such a kick out of it he almost refused the tip. I told him you were running away from my bed and board."

"Get away!" she whispered fiercely. "I'll call the manager!"

"Look, Hester,"-the smile dropped-"I think I could have you arrested for illegal entry or impersonating a cousin or something like that, so why don't you invite me in for a small confab? If you're worried about what the bellhops will think, you can leave the door open." He pushed gently on the door, forcing Ellen to retreat a step. "That's a good- girl," he said as he eased through the opening. He eyed her dress with exaggerated disappointment. " Tin not dressed,' she says. I should have known you were a habitual liar." He strolled to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. "Well for pity's sake, coz, stop shaking! I'm not going to eat you."

"What... what do you want?"

"An explanation."

"She swung the door all the way open and remained standing in the doorway, as though it were his room and she the visitor. "It's... very simple. I listen to your program all the time..."

He glanced at the suitcase. "In Wisconsin?"

"It's only a hundred miles away. We get KBRI. We really do."

"Go ahead."

"I listen to you all the time, and I like your program very much... I'm in Blue River, so I thought I'd try to meet you."

"And when you meet me you run away."

"Well what would you have done? I didn't plan it that way. I pretended to be your cousin because I... I wanted to get information about you-what kind of girls you like..."

Rubbing his jaw doubtfully, he stood up. "How did you get my phone number?"

"From the Student Directory."

He moved to the foot of the bed and touched the suitcase. "It you go to Caldwell, how did you get a Stoddard directory?"

"From one of the girls here."

"Who?"

"Annabelle Koch. She's a friend of mine."

"Annabelle..." He had recognized the name. He squinted at Ellen incredulously. "Hey, is this really on the level?"

"Yes." She looked down at her hands. "I know it was a crazy thing to do, but I like your program so much..." When she looked up again he was by the window.

He said, "Of all the stupid, idiotic..."-and suddenly he was staring at the hallway beyond her, his eyes baffled. She turned. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. She looked back at Gant and he was facing the window, his back to her. "Well, Hester," he said, "that was a flattering explanation" -he turned, taking his hand from inside his jacket -"and one I shall long remember." He glanced at the partially open bathroom door. "Do you mind if I utilize your facilities?" he asked, and before she could say anything he had ducked into the bathroom and closed the door. The lock clicked.

Ellen gazed blankly at (he door, wondering whether or not Gant had believed her. Her knees quivered. Drawing a deep steadying breath, she crossed the room to the writing table and took a cigarette from her purse. She broke two matches before she got it lighted, and then she stood looking out the window, nervously rolling her fountain pen back and forth over the surface of the table which was bare except for her purse. Bare... the letter... The letter to Bud! Gant had been standing near the table and he had tricked her into turning towards the hallway and then he had been facing the window and he turned, taking his hand from inside his jacket!...

Frantically she hammered on the bathroom door. "Give me that letter! Give it to me!"

Several seconds passed before Gant's deep-toned voice said, "My curiosity is especially insatiable when it comes to phony cousins and flimsy stories."

She stood in the doorway with one hand on the jamb and her coat in the other, looking from the still-closed bathroom door to the hallway and smiling inanely at the occasional passers-by. A bellhop asked if there were anything he could do for her. She shook her head.

Gant finally came out. He was folding the letter carefully into its envelope. He put it on the writing table. "Well," he said. He viewed her ready-to-flee figure. "Well." He smiled somewhat uncomfortably. "As my grandmother said when the man on the phone asked for Lana Turner, 'Boy, have you got the wrong number." Ellen did not move.

"Look," he said. "I didn't even know her. I said hello to her once or twice. There were other blond guys in that class. I didn't even know her name until her picture was in the papers. The teacher had taken attendance by seat numbers, never called the roll. I didn't even know her name." Ellen didn't move.

"Well for God's sake, if you want to break a speed record that coat's only going to be in the way." She didn't move.

In two swift strides he was at the bedside table, snatching up the Gideon Bible. He raised his right hand. "I swear on this Bible that I never went out with your sister, or said more than two words to her... or anything..." He put the Bible down. "Well?"

"If Dorothy was killed," Ellen said, "the man who did it would swear on a dozen Bibles. And if she thought he loved her, then he was a good actor too." Gant rolled his eyes heavenward and extended his wrists for the handcuffs. "All right," he said, "I'll go quietly."

"I'm glad you think this is something to joke about."

He lowered his hands. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "But how the hell am I supposed to convince you that-"

"You can't," Ellen said. "You might as well go."

"There were other blond guys in the class," he insisted. He snapped his fingers. "There was one she used to come in with all the time! Cary Grant chin, tall..."

"Dwight Powell?"

"That's right!" He stopped short. "Is he on your list?"

She hesitated a moment, and then nodded.

"He's the one!"

Ellen looked at him suspiciously.

He threw up his hands. "Okay. I give up. You'll see, it was Powell." He moved towards the door; Ellen backed into the hallway. "I would just like to leave, as you suggested," Gant said loftily.

He came into the hallway. "Unless you want me to go on calling you Hester, you ought to tell me what your name really is."

"Ellen."

Gant seemed reluctant to go. "What are you going to do now?"

After a moment she said, "I don't know."

"If you barge into Powell's place, don't pull a fluff like you did this afternoon. He may be no one to fool around with."

Ellen nodded.

Gant looked her up and down. "A girl on a mission," he mused. "Never thought I'd live to see the day." He started to go and then turned back. "You wouldn't be in the market for a Watson, would you?"

"No, thanks," she said in the doorway. "I'm sorry but..."

He shrugged and smiled. "I figured my credentials wouldn't be in order. Well, good luck..." He turned and walked down the hallway.

Ellen backed into her room and slowly closed the door.

... Its 7: 30 now, Bud, and I'm comfortably settled in a very nice room at the New Washington House -just had dinner and am ready to take a bath and turn in after a full day.

I spent most of the afternoon in the waiting room of the Dean of Students. When I finally got to see him I told a fabulous story about an unpaid debt which Dorothy owed to a handsome blond in her fall English class. After much digging through records and examining a rogues gallery of application blank photos, we came up with the man-Mr. Dwight Powell of 1520 West 35th Street, on whom the hunting season opens tomorrow morning.

How's that for an efficient start? Never underestimate the power of a woman!

Love,

Ellen

At eight o'clock she paused in her undressing and dropped a quarter into the coin-operated bedside radio. She pushed the button marked KBRI. There was a low humming and then, smooth and sonorous, Gant's voice swelled into the room. ",.. another session with The Discus Thrower, or as our engineer puts it, 'Puff and Pant with Gordon Gant,' which shows the limitations of a purely scientific education. On to the agenda. The first disc of the evening is an oldie, and it's dedicated to Miss Hester Holmes of Wisconsin..."

A jumpy orchestral introduction, nostalgically dated, burst from the radio and faded under the singing of a sugary, little-girl voice: Button up your overcoat When the wind is free, Take good care of yourself, You belong to me...

Smiling, Ellen went into the bathroom. The tiled walls rang with the sound of water pounding into the tub. She kicked off her slippers and hung her robe on a hook beside the door. She reached over and turned off the water. In the sudden silence, the wispy voice sifted in from the next room: Don't sit on hornets' tails, ooh-ooh, Or on nails, ooh-ooh, Or third rails, ooh-ooh...

"Hello?" the voice was a woman's.

"Hello," Ellen said. "Is Dwight Powell there?"

"No, he isn't."

"When do you expect him back?"

"I couldn't say for sure. I know he works over at Folger's between his classes and afterwards, but I don't know to what time he works."

"Aren't you his landlady?"

"No. I'm her daughter-in-law come over to clean.

Mrs. Honig is in Iowa City with her foot. She cut it last week and it got infected. My husband had to take her to Iowa City."

"Oh, I'm sorry...

"If you have a message for Dwight, I can leave him a note."

"No, thanks. I have a class with him in a couple of hours, so I'll see him then. It wasn't anything important."

"Okay. Good-by."

"Good-by."

Ellen hung up. She certainly wasn't going to wait to speak to the landlady. She was already more or less convinced that Powell was the man who had been going with Dorothy; checking with the landlady would only have been a sort of formality; verification could be obtained just as easily from Powell's friends. Or from Powell himself...

She wondered what kind of place it was where he worked. Folger's. It would have to be near the campus if he went there in free hours between classes. If it were a store of some sort, where he waited on customers...

She picked up the telephone book, turned to the IP's and skimmed through the listings.

Folger Drugs 1448 UnivAv.. .2-3800

It was between 28th and 29th Streets across the avenue from the campus; a squat brick structure with a long green sign stretched across its brow: Folger Drugs and in smaller letters Prescriptions and in still smaller letters Fountain Service. Ellen paused outside the glass door and smoothed her bangs. Drawing herself up as though making an entrance onto a stage, she pushed open the door and went in.

The fountain was on the left; mirrors, chrome, gray marble; fronted by a line of round-topped red leatherette stools. It was not yet noon so only a few people were seated at the forward end.

Dwight Powell was behind the counter, wearing a snug white mess jacket and a white cap which rode the waves of his fine blond hair like an overturned ship. His square-jawed face was lean and he had a moustache; a thin carefully trimmed line of almost colorless hairs, visible only when the light gleamed on it; a feature which evidently had been added some time after the taking of the photograph which the Dean had shown. Powell was squirting whipped cream from a metal cannister onto a gummy-looking sundae. There was a sullen set to his lips that made it clear he disliked his job.

Ellen walked towards the far end of the counter. As she passed Powell, who was placing the sundae before a customer, she sensed him glance up. She went on, eyes straight ahead, to the empty section. Taking off her coat, she folded it and put it with her purse on one of the row of empty stools. She seated herself on the next stool. With her hands flat on the cold marble, she examined her reflection in the mirrored wall opposite. Her hands left the marble, dropped to the bottom of her powder blue sweater and pulled it down tight Powell approached along the gangway behind the counter. He put a glass of water and a paper napkin before her. His eyes were deep blue, the skin immediately below them gray-shadowed. "Yes, miss?" he said in a low-pitched voice. His eyes met hers and then strayed downwards momentarily.

She looked at the mirrored wall, at the pictures of sandwiches fixed to it. The grill was directly opposite her. "A cheeseburger," she said, looking back at him. His eyes were on hers again. "And a cup of coffee."

"Cheeseburger and coffee," he said, and smiled. It was a stiff smile that vanished quickly, as though his facial muscles were unaccustomed to the exercise. He turned and opened a locker under the grill, taking out a patty of meat on a piece of waxed paper. Kicking the locker door shut, he slapped the meat onto the grill and peeled the waxed paper off its back. The meat sizzled. He took a hamburger roll from a bin next to the grill and began slicing it down the center with a long knife. She watched his face in the mirror. He glanced up and smiled again. She returned the smile faintly; I am not interested, but I am not completely uninterested. He put the two halves of the roll face down beside the hamburger and turned to Ellen. "Coffee now or later?"

"Now, please."

He produced a tan cup and saucer and a spoon from under the counter. He arranged them before her and then moved a few paces down the gangway, to return with a glass pot of coffee. He poured the steaming liquid slowly into her cup. "You go to Stoddard?" he asked. "No, I don't."

He rested the coffee pot on the marble and with his free hand brought a jigger of cream up from under the counter. "You?" Ellen asked.

Down the counter a spoon chinked against glass. Powell answered the call with the sullen compression returning to his lips.

He was back a minute later, picking up a spatula and turning the hamburger. He opened the locker again and took out a slice of American cheese which he put on top of the meat. They looked at each other in the mirror as he arranged the roll and a couple of slices of pickle on a plate. "You haven't been in here before, have you?" he said.

"No. I've only been in Blue River a couple of days."

"Oh. Staying or passing through?" He spoke slowly, like a circling hunter.

"Staying. If I can find a job."

"As what?"

"A secretary."

He turned around, the spatula in one hand, the plate in the other. "That should be easy to find."

"Ha," she said.

There was a pause. "Where you from?" he asked.

"Des Moines."

"It should be easier to find a job there than it is here."

She shook her head. "All the girls looking for jobs go to Des Moines."

Turning back to the grill, he lifted the cheeseburger with the spatula and slid it onto the roll. He set the plate before her and produced a bottle of ketchup from below the counter. "You have relatives here?"

She shook her head. "Don't know a soul in town. Except the woman in the employment agency."

A spoon tapped glass again down the counter. "Damn," he muttered. "Maybe you want my job?"

He stalked away.

In a few minutes he returned. He began scraping the top of the grill with the edge of the spatula. "How's the cheeseburger?"

"Fine."

"You want something else? Some more coffee?"

"No, thanks."

The grill was perfectly clean but he continued scraping it, watching Ellen in the mirror. She dabbed at her lips with the napkin. "Check, please," she said, He turned, taking a pencil and a green pad from a clip on his belt. "listen," he said, not looking up from his writing, "there's a very good revival at the Paramount tonight. Lost Horizon. You want to see it?"

"I..."

"You said you didn't know anybody in town."

She seemed to debate for a moment. "All right," she said finally.

He looked up and smiled, this time effortlessly. "Swell. Where can I meet you?"

"The New Washington House. In the lobby."

"Eight o'clock okay?" He tore the check from the pad. "My name is Dwight," he said. "As in Eisenhower. Dwight Powell." He looked at her, waiting.

"Mine is Evelyn Kittredge."

"Hi," he said, smiling. She flashed a broad smile in return. Something nickered over Powell's face; surprise?... memory?

"What's wrong?" Ellen asked. "Why do you look at me that way?"

"Your smile," he said uneasily. "Exactly like a girl I used to know..."

There was a pause, then Ellen said decisively, "Joan Bacon or Bascomb or something. I've been in this town only two days and two people have told me I look like this Joan-"

"No," Powell said, "this girl's name was Dorothy." He folded the check. "Lunch is on me." He waved his arm, trying to attract the attention of the cashier up front. Craning his neck, he pointed to the check, to Ellen and to himself, and then tucked the check into his pocket. "All taken care of," he said.

Ellen was standing, putting on her coat. "Eight o'clock in the New Washington lobby," Powell reiterated. "Is that where you're staying?"

"Yes." She made herself smile. She could see, his mind following the path; easy pick-up, stranger in town, staying at a hotel... "Thanks for lunch."

"Don't mention it."

She picked up her purse.

"See you tonight, Evelyn."

"Eight o'clock," she said. She turned and walked towards the front of the store, keeping her pace slow, feeling his eyes on her back. At the door she turned. He lifted a hand and smiled. She returned the gesture.

Outside, she found that her knees were shaking.

Ellen was in the lobby at seven-thirty, so that Powell would not have the occasion to ask the desk clerk to ring Miss Kittredge's room. He arrived at five of eight, the thin line of his mustache glinting over an edgy smile. (Easy pick-up... stranger in town...) He had ascertained that Lost Horizon went on at 8: 06, so they took a cab to the theater although it was only five blocks away. Midway through the picture Powell put his arm around Ellen, resting his hand on her shoulder. She kept seeing it from the corner of her eye, the hand that had caressed Dorothy's body, had pushed powerfully... maybe... The Municipal Building was three blocks from the theater and less than two from the New Washington House. They passed it on their way back to the hotel. A few windows were lighted in the upper floors of the looming facade across the street "Is that the tallest building in the city?" Ellen asked, looking at Powell.

"Yes," he said. His eyes were focused some twenty feet ahead on the sidewalk.

"How high is it?"

"Fourteen stories." The direction of his gaze had not altered. Ellen thought: When you ask a person the height of something that's in his presence, he instinctively turns to look at it, even if he already knows the answer. Unless he has some reason for not wanting to look at it They sat in a booth in the hotel's black-walled soft-pianoed cocktail lounge and drank whiskey sours. Their conversation was intermittent, Ellen pushing it against the uphill slope of Powell's slow deliberate speech. The taut buoyancy with which he had begun the evening had faded in passing the Municipal Building, had risen again on entering the hotel, and now was waning steadily the longer they sat in the red-upholstered booth.

They spoke about jobs. Powell disliked his. He had held it for two months and planned to quit as soon as he could find something better. He was saving his money for a summer study tour of Europe.

What was he studying? His major was English. What did he plan to do with it? He wasn't sure. Advertising, maybe, or get into publishing. His plans for the future seemed sketchy.

They spoke about girls. "I'm sick of these college girls," he said. "Immature... they take everything too seriously." Ellen thought this was the beginning of a line, the one that leads straight to "You place too much importance on sex. As long as we like each other, what's the harm in going to bed?" It wasn't though. It seemed to be something that was troubling him. He weighed Ms words carefully, twisting the stem of the third cocktail glass between long restless fingers. "You get one of them on your neck," he said, the blue eyes clouded, "and you can't get her off." He watched his hand. "Not without making a mess..."

Ellen closed her eyes, her hands damp on the slick black tabletop.

"You can't help feeling sorry for people like that," he went on, "but you've got to think of yourself first."

"People like what?" she said, not opening her eyes.

"People who throw themselves on other people..." There was the loud slap of his hand hitting the tabletop. Ellen opened her eyes. He was taking cigarettes from a pack on the table, smiling. "The trouble with me is too many whiskey sours," he said. His hand, holding a match to her cigarette, was unsteady. "Let's talk about you."

She made up a story about a secretarial school in Des Moines run by an elderly Frenchman who pitched spitballs at the girls when they weren't looking. When it was finished Powell said, "Look, let's get out of here."

"You mean go to another place?" Ellen asked.

"If you want to," he said unenthusiastically., Ellen reached for the coat beside her. "If you don't mind, I'd just as soon we didn't I was up very early this morning."

"Okay," Powell said. "I'll escort you to your door." The edgy smile which had begun the evening made its return.

She stood with her back to the door of her room, the brass-tagged key in her hand. "Thank you very much," she said. "It really was a nice evening."

His arm with both their coats over it went around her back. His lips came towards her and she turned away, catching the kiss on her cheek. "Don't be coy," he said flatly. He caught her jaw in his hand and kissed her mouth hard.

"Let's go in... have a last cigarette," he said.

She shook her head.

"Evvie..." His hand was on her shoulder.

She shook her head again. "Honestly, I'm dead tired." It was a refusal, but the modest curling of her voice implied that things might be different some other night He kissed her a second time. She pushed his hand back up to her shoulder. "Please... someone might..." Still holding her, he drew back a bit and smiled at her. She smiled back, trying to make it the same broad smile she had given him in the drugstore.

It worked. It was like touching a charged wire to an exposed nerve. The shadow flickered across his face.

He drew her close, both arms around her, his chin over her shoulder as if to avoid seeing her smile. "Do I still remind you of that girl?" she asked. And then, "I'll bet she was another girl you went out with just once."

"No," he said, "I went out with her for a long time." He pulled back. "Who says I'm going out with you just once? You doing anything tomorrow night?"

"No."

"Same time, same place?** "If you like."

He kissed her cheek and held her close again. "What happened? she asked.

"What do you mean?" His words vibrated against her temple.

"That girl. Why did you stop going with her?" She tried to make it light, casual. "Maybe I can profit by her mistakes."

"Oh." There was a pause. Ellen stared at the cloth of his lapel, seeing the precise weaving of the slate blue threads. "It was like I said downstairs... we got too involved. Had to break it off." She heard him take a deep breath. "'She was very immature," he added.

After a moment Ellen made a withdrawing movement "I think I'd better..."

He kissed her again, a long one. She closed her eyes sickly.

Easing from his arms, she turned and put the key in the door without looking at him. "Tomorrow night at eight," he said. She had to turn around to take her coat, and there was no avoiding his eyes. "Good night, Evvie."

She opened the door behind her and stepped back forcing a smile to her lips. "Good night." She shut the door.

She was sitting motionlessly on the bed, the coat still in her hands, when the telephone rang five minutes later. It was Gant.

"Keeping late hours, I see." She sighed. "Is it a relief to talk to you..."

"Well!" he said, stretching the word. "Well, well, well! I gather that my innocence has been clearly and conclusively established."

"Yes. Powell's the one who was going with her. And I'm right about it not being suicide. I know I am. He keeps talking about girls who throw themselves on other people and take things too seriously and get involved and things like that." The words tumbled quickly, freed of the strain of guarded conversation.

"Good Lord, your efficiency astounds me. Where did you get your information?"

"From him."

"What?"

"I picked him up in the drugstore where he works.

I'm Evelyn Kittredge, unemployed secretary, of Des Moines, Iowa. I just tight-roped through the evening with him."

There was a long silence from Gant's end of the line. "Tell all," he said finally, wearily. "When do you plan to beat the written confession out of him?"

She told him of Powell's sudden dejection when passing the Municipal Building, repeating as accurately as she could the remarks he had made under the influence of the doldrums and the whiskey sours.

When Gant spoke again he was serious. "Listen, Ellen, this doesn't sound like anything to play around with."

"Why? As long as he thinks I'm Evelyn Kittredge-"

"How do you know he does? What if Dorothy showed him a picture of you?"

"She had only one, and that was a very fuzzy group snapshot with our faces in the shade. If he did see it, it was almost a year ago. He couldn't possibly recognize me. Besides, if he suspected who I am he wouldn't have said the things he did."

"No, I guess he wouldn't have," Gant admitted reluctantly. "What do you plan to do now?"

"This afternoon I went down to the library and read all the newspaper reports of Dorothy's death. There were a few details that were never mentioned, little things like the color of her hat, and the fact that she was wearing gloves. I have another date with him tomorrow night If I can get him talking about her 'suicide' maybe he'll let drop one of those things that he couldn't know unless he was with her."

"It wouldn't be conclusive evidence," Gant said. "He could claim he was in the building at the time and he saw her after she..."

"I'm not looking for conclusive evidence. All I want is something that will prevent the police from thinking that I'm just a crank with an overactive imagination. If I can prove he was anywhere near her at the time, it should be enough to start them digging."

"Well will please tell me how the hell you expect to get him to talk in such detail without making him suspicious? He's not an idiot, is he?"

"I have to try," she argued. "What else is there to do?"

Gant thought for a moment "I am the owner of an old ball peen hammer," he said. "We could beat him over the head, drag him to the scene of the crime, and sweat it out of him."

"You see," Ellen said seriously, "there's no other way to..." Her voice faded. "Hello?"

"I'm still here,' she said. "What happened? I thought we were cut off."

"I was just thinking."

"Oh. Look, seriously... be careful, will you? And if it's at all possible, call me tomorrow evening, just to let me know where you are and how things are going."

"Why?"

"Just to be on the safe side."

"He thinks I'm Evelyn Kittredge."

"Well call me anyway. It can't hurt. Besides, my hair grays easily."

"All right"

"Good night, Ellen."

"Good night, Gordon."

She replaced the receiver and remained sitting on the bed, biting her lower lip and drumming her fingers the way she always did when she was toying with an idea.

Snapping shut her purse, Ellen looked up and smiled across the lobby at Powell's approaching figure. He was wearing a gray topcoat and a navy blue suit, and the same smile he had worn the previous evening. "Hi," he said, dropping down beside her on the leather divan. "You certainly don't keep your dates waiting."

"Some of them I do."

His smile broadened. "How's the job-hunting?"

"Pretty good," she said. "I think I've got something. With a lawyer."

"Swell. You'll be staying in Blue River then, right?"

"It looks that way."

"Swell..." he drew the word out caressingly. Then his eyes flicked to his wristwatch. "We'd better get on our horses. I passed the Glo-Ray Ballroom on my way over here and there was a line all the way-"

"Ohh," she lamented.

"What's the matter?"

Her face was apologetic. "I've got an errand to do first. This lawyer. I have to bring him a letter... a reference." She tapped her purse.

"I didn't know secretaries needed references. I thought they just tested your shorthand or something."

"Yes, but I mentioned that I had this letter from my last employer and he said he'd like to see it. He's going to be at his office till eight-thirty." She sighed. "I'm awfully sorry."

"That's all right."

Ellen touched his hand. "I'd just as soon not go dancing," she confided. "We can go someplace, have a few drinks..."

"Okay," he said more cheerfully. They stood up. "Where is this lawyer?" Powell asked, standing behind her, helping her on with her coat.

"Not far from here," Ellen said. "The Municipal Building."

At the head of the steps that fronted the Municipal Building, Powell stopped. Ellen, in the quadrant of a revolving door, relaxed her about-to-push hand and looked at him. He was pale, but that might have been the grayish light filtering out from the lobby. "I'll wait for you down here, Ewie." His jaw was rigid, the words coming out stiffly.

"I wanted you to come up with me," she said. "I could have brought this letter over here before eight o'clock, but I thought it was kind of odd, his telling me to bring it in the evening. He's a greasy looking character." She smiled. "You're my protection."

"Oh," Powell said.

Ellen pushed around through the door, and after a moment Powell followed her. She had turned and was watching him when he came out of the door. He was breathing through partially opened lips, his face barren of expression.

The vast marbled lobby was silent and empty. Three of the four elevators were black behind latticed metal gates. The fourth was a yellow-lighted cell with wooden walls the color of honey. They walked towards it side by side, their footsteps drawing whispering echoes from the domed ceiling.

In the cell a tan-uniformed Negro operator stood reading a copy of Look. He tucked the magazine under his arm, toed the floor button that released the big sliding metal door, and threw the latticed gate across after it. "Floor please," he said. "Fourteen," Ellen said.

They stood in silence, watching the steadily advancing position of the lighted numeral in the row of unlighted numerals over the door .7.. .8.. .9... Powell rubbed his mustache with the side of his forefinger.

When the light jumped from 13 to 14, the car came to a smooth automatic top-floor stop. The operator drew in the gate and pulled down on the jointed bar that opened that outer door.

Ellen stepped out into the deserted corridor, Powell following her. Behind them the door slid shut with a hollow clangor. They heard the gate closing and then the decrescent hum of the car "It's this way," Ellen said, moving towards the right. "Room four-teen-oh-five." They walked to the bend of the corridor and made the right turn. There was light behind only two of the frosted glass door panels in the stretch of straightened corridor before them. There was no sound except their feet on the polished rubber tiles. Ellen groped for something to say... "It won't take long. I just have to give hip the letter."

"Do you think you'll get the job?"

"I think so. It's a good letter." They reached the end of the corridor and turned right again. One door was lighted, up ahead in the left wall, and Powell angled towards it. "No, that's not the one," Ellen said. She went to an unlighted door on the right. Its frosted panel was inscribed Frederic H. Clausen, Attorney at Law. Powell came up behind her as she futilely tried the knob and looked at her watch. "How do you like that?" she said bitterly. "Not even a quarter after and he said he'd be here till eight-thirty." (The secretary on the telephone had said "The office closes at five.") "What now?" Powell asked. "I guess I'll leave it under the door," she said, opening her purse. She took out a large white envelope and her fountain pen. Uncapping the pen, she held the envelope flat against the purse and began to write. "It's a shame about the dancing," she said. "That's okay," said Powell. "I wasn't too keen on it myself." He was breathing more easily, like a novice aerialist passing the middle of the taut wire and becoming less uncertain of his footing.

"On second thought," Ellen said, glancing up at him, "If I leave the letter now I'D. only have to come back for it tomorrow anyway. I might just as well bring it over in the morning." She recapped the pen and put it back in her purse. She held the envelope at an angle to the light, saw that the ink was still wet, and began to wave the envelope with quick fanlike motions. Her gaze drifted to a door across the corridor, the door marked Stairway. Her eyes lighted. "You know what I'd like to do?" she asked.

"What?"

"... Before we go back and have those drinks..."

"What?" He smiled.

She smiled back at him, waving the envelope. "Go up to the roof."

The aerialist looked down and saw the net being drawn out from under him. "What do you want to do that for?" he asked slowly.

"Didn't you see the moon? And the stars? It's a perfect night. The view must be tremendous."

"I think we might still be able to get into the Glo-Ray," he said.

"Oh, neither of us are crazy about going." She slipped the envelope into her purse and snapped it shut. "Come on," she said gaily, turning from him and crossing the corridor. "What happened to all that romance you displayed in the hall last night?" His hand reached out for her arm and caught empty air. She pushed the door open and looked back, waiting for him to follow.

"Evvie, I... Heights make me dizzy." He forced a thin smile.

"You don't have to look down," she said lightly. "You don't even have to go near the edge."

"The door's probably locked..."

"I don't think they can lock a door to a roof. Fire laws." She frowned in mock disgust. "Oh come on! You'd think I was asking you to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel or something!" She backed through the doorway onto the landing, holding the door, smiling, waiting for him.

He came with a slow trancelike helplessness, as though there were part of him that perversely wanted to follow her. When he was on the landing she released the door. It swung closed with a soft pneumatic hissing, cutting off the light from the corridor and leaving a 10-watt bulb to fight a losing battle against the shadows of the stairwell.

They climbed eight steps, turned, and climbed eight more. There was a dark metal door with a warning painted on it in large white letters: Entrance Strictly Forbidden Except in Emergency. Powell read it aloud, stressing the words 'strictly forbidden.'

"Signs," Ellen said disdainfully. She tried the knob.

"It must be locked," Powell said.

"If it were locked they wouldn't have that." Ellen indicated the sign. "You try."

He took the knob, pushed. "It's stuck, then."

"Oh, come on. Give a real try."

"Okay," he said, "okay okay," with to-hell-with-it abandon. He drew back and slammed his shoulders against the door full-force. It flew open almost dragging him with it. He stumbled across the high threshold onto the tarred deck. "Okay, Evvie," he said sullenly, straightening himself, holding the door wide, "come look at your gorgeous moon."

"Sourpuss," Ellen said, the light tone of her voice stripping his bitterness of significance. She stepped over the ledge and breezed a few steps past Powell, advancing from the shadow of the staircase housing out onto the expanse of roof like a cold-legged skater pretending not to worry about thin ice. She heard the door closing behind her, and then Powell came up on her left.

"Sorry," he said, "it's just that I almost broke my shoulder on the damn door, that's all."-He managed a starchy smile.

They were facing the KBRI tower; skeletal, black against the blue-black star-spattered sky; at the very top of it a slowly flashing red light whose steady pulsing flushed the roof with intermittent rose. Between the red throbs there was the soft light of the quarter moon overhead.

Ellen glanced at Powell's upturned tense-jawed profile; first dim white, then bathed with red, then white again. Beyond him she saw the wall that rimmed the airshaft, its white stone top distinct in the night. She remembered a diagram that had appeared in one of the newspapers; the X at the south side of the square-the side nearest them. Suddenly she was caught by a crazy desire to go there, look over, see where Dorothy... A sick wave swept over her. The focus of her vision realigned on Powell's wideedged profile and involuntarily she drew away.

It's all right, she told herself, I'm safe-safer than pushing conversation in some cocktail lounge. I'm all right, I'm Evelyn Kittredge...

He became conscious of her gaze. "I thought you wanted to look at the sky," he said, not lowering his own skyward face. She looked up and the sudden lifting of her head heightened the dizziness. The stars wheeled...

She broke away, went to the right, to the outer edge of the roof. Abrading her hands against the roughness of the coping, she gasped lungfuls of the cold night air... This is where he killed her. He's bound to betray himself-enough to go to the police. I'm safe... Finally her head cleared. She looked at the panorama below, the myriad lights glittering off into blackness. "Dwight, come look."

He turned and walked towards the parapet, but he stopped a few feet away.

"Isn't it beautiful?" She spoke without looking back.

"Yes," he said.

He looked for a moment, while a breeze plucked softly at the tower cables, and then he turned slowly around until he was facing the airshaft. He stared at the parapet. Then his right foot extended itself and his legs began to walk. They carried him forward with silent relentless efficiency, like the legs of a reformed alcoholic carrying him to the bar for just one little drink. They carried him straight up to the air-shaft parapet and his hands rose and set themselves flat on the cool stone. He leaned over and looked down.

Ellen felt his absence. She turned around and probed the quarter-moon obscurity. Then the tower light flashed on, its crimson glow showing him at the wall of the airshaft, and her heart jumped chokingly.

The red glow vanished, but knowing where he was she could still distinguish him in the wan moonlight. She began moving forward, her steps noiseless on the resilient tar.

He looked down. A few yellow beams from lighted windows criss-crossed the square funnel of the shaft One light was far below, at the very bottom, illuminating the small gray concrete square that was the focus of the converging walls. "I thought heights made you dizzy." He whirled.

There were sweat beads on his brow and above his moustache. A nervous smile shot to his lips. "They do," he said, "but I can't help looking. Self-torture..." The smile faded. "That's my specialty." He took a deep breath. "You ready to go now?" he asked.

"We just got here," Ellen protested lightly. She turned and walked towards the eastern rim of the roof, threading her way between the gaunt shapes of ventilator pipes. Powell followed reluctantly. Reaching the edge, Ellen stood with her back to the parapet and gazed up at the rearing red-limned tower beside them. "It's nice up here," she said. Powell, looking out over the city, his hands folded on the parapet, said nothing. "Have you ever been here at night?" Ellen asked.

"No," he said. 'I've never been here before at all." She turned to the parapet and leaned over, looking down at the shelf of the setback two stories below. She frowned thoughtfully. "Last year," she said slowly, "I think I read about some girl falling from here..." A ventilator cap creaked. "Yes," Powell said. His voice was dry. "A suicide. She didn't fall."

"Oh." Ellen kept looking at the setback. "I don't see how she could have gotten killed," she said. "It's only two stories."

He lifted a hand, we thumb pointing back over his shoulder. "Over there. . . the shaft."

"Oh, that's right." She straightened up. "I remember now. The Des Moines newspapers gave it a very big write-up." She put her purse on the ledge and held it squarely with both hands, as though testing the rigidity of its frame. "She was a Stoddard girl, wasn't she?"

"Yes," he said. He pointed far out towards the horizon. "You see that roundish building there, with the lights on it? That's the Stoddard Observatory. Had to go out there for a Physical Science project once. They have a-"

"Did you know her?"

The red light stained his face. "Why do you ask?" he said.

"I just thought you might have known her. That's a natural thing to think, both going to Stoddard..."

"Yes," he said sharply, "I knew her and she was a very nice girl. Now let's talk about something else."

"The only reason the story stuck in my mind," she said, "was because of the hat."

Powell gave an exasperate sigh. Wearily he said, "What hat?"

"She was wearing a red hat with a bow on it and I had just bought a red hat with a bow on it the day that it happened."

"Who said she was wearing a red hat?" Powell asked.

"Wasn't she? The Des Moines papers said.. "... Tell me they were wrong, she prayed, tell me it was green...

There was silence for a moment. "The Clarion never mentioned a red hat," Powell said. "I read the articles carefully, knowing her..."

"Just because the Blue River paper never mentioned it doesn't mean that it wasn't so," Ellen said.

He didn't say anything. She looked and saw mm squinting at his wristwatch. "Look," he said brusquely, "it's twenty-five to nine. I've had enough of this magnificent view." He turned away abruptly, heading for the staircase housing.

Ellen hurried after him. "We can't go yet," she wheedled, catching his arm just outside the slant-roofed shed.

"Why not?"

Behind a smile her mind raced. "I... I want a cigarette."

"Oh for..." His hand jerked towards a pocket, then stopped short. "I don't have any. Come on, we'll get some downstairs."

"I have some," she said quickly, flashing her purse. She backed away, the position of the airshaft behind her as clear in her mind as if she were looking at the newspaper diagram. X marks the spot. Turning slightly, she sidled back towards it, opening the purse, smiling at Powell, saying inanely "It'll be nice to smoke a cigarette up here." The parapet reared against her hip. X. She fumbled in her purse. "You want one?"

He came towards her with resignation and compressed-lip anger. She shook the crumpled pack of cigarettes until one white cylinder protruded, thinking -it has to be tonight, because he won't ask Evelyn Kittredge for another date. "Here," she offered. He snatched the cigarette grimly.

Her fingertips dug for another one, and as they did her eyes roved and apparently became aware of the airshaft for the first time. She turned towards it slightly. "Is this where...?" She turned back to him.

His eyes were narrowed, his jaw tightened by the last threads of a fast-raveling patience. "Listen, Evvie," he said, "I asked you not to talk about it Now will you just do me that one favor? Will you please?" He jabbed the cigarette between his lips.

She didn't take her eyes from his face. Drawing a cigarette from the pack, she put it calmly to her lips and dropped the pack back into her purse. "I'm sorry," she said coolly, tucking the purse under her left arm. "I don't know what you're so touchy about."

"Can't you understand? I knew the girl."

She struck a match and held it to his cigarette, the orange glow lighting his face, showing the blue eyes simmering with about-to-break strain, the jaw muscles tight as piano wires.... One more jab, one more jab... She withdrew the match from his lighted cigarette, held it before his face. "They never did say why she did it, did they?" His eyes closed painfully. "I'll bet she was pregnant," she said.

His face flared from flame orange to raw red as the match died and the tower light flashed on. The wire-tight muscles burst and the blue eyes shot open like dams exploding.... Now!-Ellen thought triumphantly-Now! Let it be something good, something damning!...

"All right!" he blazed, "all right! You know why I won't talk about it? You know why I didn't want to come up here at all? Why I didn't even want to come into this goddamn building?"-he flung away his cigarette-"Because the girl who committed suicide here was the girl I told you about last night! The one you smile like!" His eyes dropped from her face. "The girl who I~"

The words cut off guillotine-sharp. She saw his downcast eyes dilate with shock and then the tower light faded and she could see him only as a dim form confronting her. Suddenly his hand caught her left wrist, gripping it with paralyzing pressure. A scream pushed the cigarette from her lips. He was wrenching at the fingers of her captive hand, clawing at them.

The purse slid out from under her arm and thudded to her feet. Futilely her right hand flailed his head. He was thumbing the muscles of her hand, forcing the fingers open... Releasing her, he stepped back and became a dimly outlined form again.

"What did you do?" she cried. "What did you take?" Dazedly she stooped and retrieved her purse. She flexed her left hand, her jarred senses vainly trying to recall the imprint of the object she had been holding.

Then the red light flashed on again and she saw it resting in the palm of his hand as though he had been examining it even in the dark. The matchbook. With the coppered letters glinting sharp and clear: Ellen Kingship.

Coldness engulfed her. She closed her eyes sickly, nauseous fear ballooning in her stomach. She swayed; her back felt the hard edge of the airshaft parapet.

"Her sister..." he faltered, "her sister..." She opened her eyes. He was staring at the match-book with glazed incomprehension. He looked up at her. "What is this?" he asked dully. Suddenly he hurled the matchbook at her feet and his voice flared loud again, "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing, nothing," she said quickly, "nothing." Her eyes darted desperately. He was standing between her and the stairway shed. If only she could circle around him... She began inching to her left, her back pulling against the parapet.

He rubbed his forehead. "You... you pick me up... you ask me questions about her... you get me up here..." Now his voice was entreating: "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing... nothing," warily sidestepping.

"Then why did you do this?" His body flexed to move forward.

"Stop!" she cried.

The ball-poised feet dropped flat, frozen.

"If anything happens to me," she said, forcing herself to speak slowly, evenly, "there's somebody else who knows all about you. He knows I'm with you tonight, and he knows all about you, so if anything happens, anything at all..."

"If anything...?" His brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean. If I fall..."

"Why should you...?" He stared unbelievingly. "You think I'd...?" One hand gestured limply towards the parapet. "Jesus!" he whispered. "What are you, crazy?"

She was a good fifteen feet from him. She began edging away from the parapet, cutting across to get on a straight line with the stairway door that was behind him and on his right. He pivoted slowly, following her cautious transverse path. "What's this 'knows all about me'?" he demanded. "Knows what?"

"Everything," she said. "Everything. And he's waiting downstairs. If I'm not down in five minutes he's calling the police."

He slapped his forehead exhaustedly. "I give up," he moaned. "You want to go downstairs? You want to go? Well go ahead!" He turned and backed to the airshaft parapet, to the spot where Ellen had been standing originally, leaving her a clear path to the door. He stood with his elbows resting on the stone behind Mm. "Go ahead! Go on!"

She moved towards the door slowly, suspiciously, knowing that he could still beat her there, cut her off.

He didn't move.

"If I'm supposed to be arrested," he said, "I'd just like to know what for. Or is that too much to ask?" She made no answer until she had the door open in her hand. Then she said, "I expected you to be a convincing actor. You had to be, to make Dorothy believe you were going to marry her."

"What?" This time his surprise seemed deeper, painful. "Now listen, I never said anything to make her believe I was going to marry her. That was all on her side, all her idea."

"You liar," she clenched hatefully. "You filthy liar." She ducked behind the shield of the open door and stepped over the high threshold.

"Wait!" As though sensing that any forward movement would send her running, he dropped back along the parapet and then cut out from it, following the same path Ellen had taken before. He stopped when he was opposite the doorway, some twenty feet from it. Within the shed Ellen turned to face him, one hand on the doorknob, ready to pull it closed.

"For God's sake," he said earnestly, "will you just tell me what this is all about? Please?"

"You think I'm bluffing. You think we really don't know."

"Jesus..." he whispered furiously.

"All right," she glared. "I'll itemize it for you. One; she was pregnant. Two; you didn't want-"

"Pregnant?" It hit him like a rock in the stomach. He leaned forward. "Dorothy was pregnant? Is that why she did it? Is that why she killed herself?"

"She didn't kill herself!" Ellen cried. "You killed her!" She pulled the door shut, turned and ran.

She ran clatteringly down the metal steps, her heels ringing, clutching at the bannister and swinging round the turn at each landing and before she had gone two and a half flights she heard him thundering down after her shouting Evvie! Ellen! Wait! and then it was too late to take the elevator because by the time she ran all the way around the corridor and it came and took her down he would be waiting there already so there was nothing to do but keep on running with her heart beating and legs aching down the fourteen flights from roof to lobby which were really twenty-eight half-flights spiraling down through the gloomy stairwell with twenty-seven landings to swing out arm-pullingly banging against the wall with him thundering closer behind all the way down to the main floor half-slipping with the damn heels and coming out into a marble corridor and running around clattering echoing into the slippery floored cathedral of a lobby where the startled Negro head popped out of the elevator then pushing exhaustedly out through the heavy revolving door and down more steps of treacherous marble and almost bumping into a woman on the sidewalk and running down to the left down towards Washington Avenue down the smalltown night-deserted street and finally slowing with her heart hard-pumping to snatch one backward look before rounding the corner and there he was running down the marble steps waving and shouting Wait! Wait! She wheeled around the corner running again ignoring the couple that turned to stare and the boys in the car shouting Want a ride? and seeing the hotel down the block with its glass doors glowing like an ad for hotels getting nearer-he's getting nearer too but don't look back just keep on running-until at last she reached the beautiful glass doors and a man smiling amusedly held one of them open "Thank you, thank you," and finally she was in the lobby, the lobby, the safe warm lobby, with bellhops and loungers and men behind newspapers... She was dying to drop into one of the chairs but she went straight to the corner phone booths because if Gant went to the police with her, Gant who was a local celebrity, then they'd be more inclined to listen to her, believe her, investigate. Panting, she seized the phone book and flipped to the K's-it was five to nine so he'd be at the studio. She slapped away pages, gaspingly catching her breath. There it was: KBRI-5-1000. She opened her purse and hunted for coins. Five-one-thousand, five-one-thousand, as she turned from the phone book rack and looked up.

Powell confronted her. He was flushed and panting, his blond hair wild. She wasn't afraid; there were bright lights and people. Hate leveled her rough breathing like a glacier: "You should have run the other way. It won't do you any good, but I would start running if I were you."

And he looked at her with a sick-dog, pleading, near-tears expression that was so pathetically sad-looking it had to be true, and he said softly, hurtfully, -'

'Ellen, I loved her."

"I have a phone call to make," she said, "if you'll get out of the way."

"Please, I've got to talk to you," he pleaded. "Was she? Was she really pregnant?"

"I have a phone call to make.'*

"Was she?" he demanded.

"You know she was!"

"The papers said nothing! Nothing..." Suddenly his brow furrowed and his voice dropped low, intense. "What month was she in?"

"Will you please get out of my-"

"What month was she in?" His voice was demanding again.

"Oh God! The second."

He let out a tremendous weight-dropping sigh of relief.

"Now will you please get out of my way?"

"Not until you explain what's going on. This Evelyn Kittredge act..."

Her glare was acid.

He whispered confusedly, "You mean you really think I killed her?" and saw no change in the narrow stabbing of her eyes. "I was in New York!" he protested. "I can prove it! I was in New York all last spring!"

It shook her, but only for a moment. Then she said, "I suppose you could figure out a way to prove you were in Cairo, Egypt, if you wanted to."

"Jesus..." he hissed, exasperated. "Will you just let me speak to you for five minutes? Five minutes?" He glanced around and caught a glimpse of a man's head vanishing behind a quickly lifted newspaper. "People are listening," he said. "Just come into the cocktail lounge for five minutes. What harm can it do? I couldn't 'do anything' to you there, if that's what you're worried about."

"What good can it do?" she argued. "If you were in New York and you didn't kill her, then why did you avoid looking at the Municipal Building when we passed it last night? And why didn't you want to go up on the roof tonight? And why did you stare down into the airshaft the way you did?"

He looked at her awkwardly, painfully. "I can explain it," he said haltingly, "only I don't know whether you'll be able to understand it. You see, I felt..."-he groped for a word-"... I felt responsible for her suicide."

Most of the booths in the black-walled lounge were empty. Glasses clinked and the soft piano dallied with some Gershwin themes. They took the seats they had occupied the night before, Ellen sitting back stiffly against the upholstered partition as though to repudiate any suggestion of intimacy. When the waiter appeared they ordered whiskey sours, and it wasn't until the drinks were in the table between them and Powell had taken the first sip of his that, realizing Ellen's intention to maintain a noncommittal silence, he began to speak. The words came slowly at first, and with embarrassment "I met her a couple of weeks after classes began last year," he said. "Last school year, I mean. Late September. I'd seen her before-she was in two of my classes and she'd been in one of my classes in freshman year-but I never spoke to her until this particular day because I usually wind up with a seat in the first or second row and she always sat in the back, in the corner. Well, on the night before this day when I spoke to her, I'd been talking with some guys and one of them had said how the quiet girls were the ones who..." He paused, fingering his glass and looking down at it "You're more likely to have a good time with a quiet girl. So when I saw her the next day, sitting in the back in the corner where she always sat, I remembered what this guy had said. "I started a conversation with her, going out of the room at the end of the period. I told her I'd forgotten to take down the assignment and would she give it to me, and she did. I think she knew it was just an excuse to talk, but still she responded so... so eagerly it surprised me. I mean, usually a pretty girl will take a thing like that lightly, give you smart answers, you know... But she was so... unsophisticated, she made me feel a little guilty.

"Well anyway, we went out that Saturday night, went to a movie and to Frank's Florentine Room, and we really had a nice time. I don't mean fooling around or anything. Just a nice time. We went out again the next Saturday night and two times the week after that, and then three times until finally, just before we broke up, we were seeing each other almost every night. Once we got to know each other, she was a lot of fun. Not at all like she'd been in class. Happy. I liked her.

"Early November it turned out that the guy was right, what he said about quiet girls. About Dorothy, anyway." He glanced up, his eyes meeting Ellen's squarely. "You know what I mean?"

"Yes," she said coolly, impassive as a judge. "This is a hell of a thing to tell a girl's sister."

"Go on."

"She was a nice girl," he said, still looking at her. "It was just that she was... love-starved. Not sex. Love." His glance fell. "She told me about things at home, about her mother-your mother, about how she'd wanted to go to school with you..."

A tremor ran through her; she told herself it was only the vibration caused by someone sitting down in the booth behind her.

"Things went on that way for a while," Powell continued, talking more swiftly now, his shame melting into a confessionary satisfaction. "She was really in love, hanging onto my arm and smiling up at me all the time. I mentioned once I liked argyle socks; she knitted me three pairs of them." He scratched the tabletop carefully. "I loved her too, only it wasn't the same. It was... sympathy-love. I felt sorry for her. Very nice of me.

"The middle of December she started to talk about marriage. Very indirectly. It was just before Christmas vacation and I was going to stay here in Blue River. I've got no family and all I've got in Chicago are a couple of cousins and some high school and Navy friends. So she wanted me to go to New York with her. Meet the family, I told her no, but she kept bringing it up again and finally there was a showdown.

"I told her I wasn't ready to get tied down yet, and she said that plenty of men were engaged and even married by twenty-two and if it was the future I was worrying about, her father would find a place for me. I didn't want that though. I had ambitions. Ill have to tell you about my ambitions some day. I was going to revolutionize American advertising. Well anyway, she said we could both get jobs when we finished school, and I said she could never live that way having been rich all her life. She said I didn't love her as much as she loved me, and I said I guessed she was right. That was it, of course, more than any of the other reasons.

"There was a scene and it was terrible. She cried and said I'd be sorry and all the things a girl says. Then after a while she changed her tack and said she was wrong; we would wait and go on file way we had been. But I'd been feeling sort of guilty all along, so I figured that since we'd had this halfway break, we might as well make it complete, and right before a vacation was the best time to do it. I told her it was all over, and there was more crying and more 'You'll be sorry' and that's the way it ended. Couple of days later she left for New York."

Ellen said, "All during that vacation she was in such a bad mood. Sulking... picking arguments..." Powell printed wet rings on the table with the bottom- of his glass. "After vacation," he said, "it was bad. We still had those two classes together. I would sit in the front of the room not daring to look back. We kept bumping into each other all over campus. So I decided I'd had enough of Stoddard and applied for a transfer to NYU." He saw the downcast expression on Ellen's face. "What's the matter?" he said. "Don't you believe that I can prove all this. I've got a transcript from NYU and I think I've still got a note that Dorothy sent me when she returned a bracelet I'd given her."

"No," Ellen said dully. '1 believe you. That's just the trouble."

He gave her a baffled look, and then continued. "Just before I left, towards the end of January, she was starting to go with another guy. I saw-"

"Another man?" Ellen leaned forward. "I saw them together a couple of times. It hadn't been such a big blow to her after all, I thought I left with a nice clean conscience. Even felt a bit coble."

"Who was he?" Ellen asked. "Who?"

"The other man."

"I don't know. A man. I think he was in one of my classes. Let me finish.

"I read about her suicide the first of May, just a paragraph in the New York papers. I raced up to Times Square and got a Clarion-Ledger at that Out-of-Town Newspaper stand. I bought a Clarion every day that week, waiting for them to say what was in the note she sent you. They never did. They never said why she did it...

"Can you imagine how I felt? I didn't think she had done it just on account of me, but I did think that it was sort of a... general despondency. Which I was a major cause of.

"My work fell off after that. I was bucking too hard. I guess I felt I had to get terrific marks to justify what I'd done to her. I broke into a cold sweat before every exam, and my marks turned out pretty poor. I told myself it was because of the transfer; at NYU I had to make up a lot of required courses that weren't required at Stoddard, and I'd lost about sixteen credits besides. So I decided to come back to Stoddard in September, to get myself straightened out." He smiled wryly. "Also maybe to try to convince myself that I didn't feel guilty.

"Anyway, it was a mistake. Every time I saw one of the places we used to go to, or the Municipal Building..." He frowned. "I kept telling myself it was her fault, that any other girl would have been mature enough to shrug it off... but it didn't do much good. It got to the point where I found myself going out of my way to walk past the building, needling myself, like looking into the airshaft tonight, visualizing her..."

"I know," Ellen said, hurrying him, "I wanted to look too. I guess it's a natural reaction."

"No," Powell said, "you don't know what it means to feel responsible..." He paused, seeing Ellen's humorless smile. "What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing."

"Well... that's it. Now you tell me she did it because she was pregnant... two months. It's a rotten thing of course, but it makes me feel a whole lot better. I guess she still wouldn't be dead if I hadn't ditched her, but I couldn't be expected to know how things would turn out, could I? I mean, there's a limit to responsibility. If you keep going back you could blame it on anyone." He drained the rest of his drink. "I'm glad to see you've stopped running for the police," he said. "I don't know where you got the idea that I killed her."

"Someone did kill her," Ellen said. He looked at her wordlessly. The piano paused between selections, and in the sudden stillness she could hear the faint cloth rustlings of the person in the booth behind her. Leaning forward, she began talking, telling Powell of the ambiguously worded note, of the birth certificate, of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

He was silent until she had finished. Then he said, "My God... It can't be a coincidence,"-as eager as she to disprove suicide.

"This man you saw her with," Ellen said. "You're sure you don't know who he was?"

"I think he was in one of my classes that semester, but the two times I saw them together were fairly late in January, when exams had started and there were no more classes, so I couldn't make sure or find out his name. And right afterwards I left for New York."

"Haven't you see him again?"

"I don't know," Powell said. "I'm not sure. Stoddard's a big campus."

"And you're absolutely certain you don't know his name?"

"I don't know it now," Powell said, "but I can find it out in about an hour." He smiled. "You see, I've got his address."

"I TOLD YOU I SAW THEM TOGETHER a COUple of times," he said. "Well the second time was one afternoon in a luncheonette across from the campus. I never expected to see Dorothy there; it wasn't a very popular place. That's why I was there. I didn't notice them until I'd sat down at the counter and then I didn't want to get up and leave because she'd already seen me in the mirror. I was sitting at the end of the counter, then two girls, then Dorothy and this guy. They were drinking malteds.

"The minute she saw me she started talking to him and touching his arm a lot; you know, trying to show me she had someone new. It made me feel awful, her doing that. Embarrassed for her. Then, when they were ready to leave, she gave a nod to those two girls sitting between us, turned to him and said in a louder-than-necessary voice, 'Come on, we can drop our books at your place.' To show me how chummy they were, I figured.

"As soon as they were gone one of the girls commented to the other about how good-looking he was. The other one agreed, and then she said something like 'He was going with so-and-so last year. It looks as if he's only interested in the ones who have money.'

"Well, I figured that if Dorothy was a sitting duck because she was on the rebound from me, then I ought to make sure that she wasn't being taken in by some gold-digger. So I left the luncheonette and followed them.

"They went to a house a few blocks north of the campus. He rang the bell a couple of times and then he took some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door and they went in. I walked by on the other side of the street and copied down the address on one of my notebooks. I thought I would call up later, when someone else was there, and find out his name. I had a vague idea about speaking to some of the gills around school about him.

"I never did it though. On the way back to the campus, the... presumption of the whole thing hit me. I mean, where did I come off asking questions about this guy just on the basis of some remark made by a girl who probably had a bad case of sour grapes? It was a cinch he couldn't treat Dorothy any worse than I had. And that 'on the rebound' stuff; how did I know they weren't fine for each other?"

"But you still have the address?" Ellen asked anxiously.

"I'm pretty sure I do. I've got all my old notes in a suitcase in my room. We can go over there and get it right now if you want"

"Yes," she agreed quickly. "Then all well have to do is call up and find out who he is."

"He isn't necessarily the right one," Powell said, taking out his wallet.

"He must be. It can't be anyone she started going with much later than that." Ellen stood up. "There's still a phone call I'd like to make before we go."

"To your assistant? The one who was waiting downstairs ready to call the police if you didn't show up in five minutes?"

"That's right," she admitted, smiling. "He wasn't waiting downstairs, but there really is someone."

She went to the back of the dimly lit room, where a telephone booth painted black to match the walls stood like an up-ended coffin. She dialed 5-1000: "KBRI, good evening," a woman's voice chirruped.

"Good evening. May I speak to Gordon Gant please?"

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Gant's program is on the air now. If you call again at ten o'clock you might be able to catch him before he leaves the building."

"Couldn't I speak to him while a record is on?"

"I'm sorry, but no telephone calls may be directed to a studio from which a program is being broadcast."

"Well would you take a message for him?"

The woman sing-songed that she would be glad to take a message, and Ellen told her that Miss Kingship -spelled out-said that Powell-spelled out-was all right but had an idea as to who wasn't and Miss Kingship was going to Powell's home and would be there at ten o'clock, when Mr. Gant could call her. "Any telephone numbers?"

"Darn," Ellen said, opening the purse in her lap. "I don't have the number, but the address"-managing to unfold the slip of paper without dropping the purse-"is Fifteen-Twenty West Thirty-Fifth Street." The woman read the message back. "That's right," Ellen said. "You'll be sure he gets it?"

"Of course I will," the woman declared frostily. "Thank you very much."

Powell was feeding coins onto a small silver tray in the hand of a rapt waiter when Ellen returned to their booth. A smile appeared momentarily on the waiter's face and he vanished, trailing a mumbled thank you. "All set," Ellen said. She reached for her coat which was folded on the banquette where she had been sitting. "By the way, what does he look like, our man? Aside from being so handsome that girls comment on it."

"Blond, tall..." Powell said, pocketing Ms wallet.

"Another blond," sighed Ellen.

"Dorothy went for us Nordic types."

Ellen smiled, pulling on her coat. "Our father is blond-or was until he lost his hair. All three of us-" Ellen's empty coatsleeve slapped over the top of the booth partition as her hand groped for it. "Excuse me," she said, glancing back over her shoulder, and then she saw that the next booth had been vacated. There was a cocktail glass and a dollar bill on the table, and a paper napkin which had been carefully torn into a delicate lacework web.

Powell helped her with the obstinate sleeve. "Ready?" he asked, putting on his own coat. "Ready," she said.

It was 9: 50 when the cab pulled up in front of Powell's house. West 35th Street was silent, feebly lighted by streetlamps whose beams had to strain their way through meshing tree branches. Yellow windowed houses faced each other on either side, like timid armies showing flags across no-man's-land.

As the roar of the departing cab faded away, Ellen and Powell mounted the steps of a dark, creaking-floored porch. After a few unsuccessful stabs for the keyhole, Powell unlocked the door and pushed it open. He stepped aside and followed Ellen in, throwing the door closed with one hand and flicking a light switch with the other.

They were in a pleasant-looking living room full of fat chintz-and-maple furniture. "You'd better stay down here," Powell said, going towards a staircase at the left side of the room. "Everything's in a mess upstairs. My landlady is in the hospital and I wasn't expecting company." He paused on the first step. "It'll probably take me a few minutes to find that book. There's some instant coffee in the kitchen back there. You want to fix some?"

"All right," Ellen said, slipping out of her coat Powell jogged up the stairs and swung around the newel post. The door to his room was, opposite the side of the stairwell. He went in, flipping on the light, and shucked off his coat. The unmade bed, on the right against the windows, was littered with pajamas and discarded clothes. He tossed his coat on top of the whole business and squatted down, about to pull a suitcase from under the bed; but with a sharp fingersnap he straightened up, turned, and stepped over to the bureau, which stood squeezed between a closet door and an armchair. He opened the top drawer and rummaged through papers and small boxes and scarves and broken cigarette lighters. He found the paper he wanted at the bottom of the drawer. Pulling it free with a flourish, he went into the hall and leaned over the stairwell bannister. "Ellen!" he called.

In the kitchen, Ellen adjusted the sighing gas flame under a pan of water. "Coming!" she answered. She hurried through the dining room and into the living room. "Got it already?" she asked, going to the stairs and looking up.

Powell's head and shoulders jutted into the stairwell. "Not yet," he said. "But I thought you'd like to see this." He let go of a stiff sheet of paper that came side-slipping down. "Just in case you have any lingering doubts."

It landed on the stairs before her. Picking it up, she saw that it was a photostat of his NYU record, the words Student Copy stamped on it. "If I had any lingering doubts," she said, "I wouldn't be here, would I?"

"True," Powell said, "true,"-and vanished from the stairwell.

Ellen took another look at the transcript and noted that his marks had indeed been pretty poor. Putting the paper on a table, she returned through the dining room to the kitchen. It was a depressing room with old-fashioned appliances and cream colored walls that were brown in the corners and behind the stove. There was, however, a pleasant breeze blowing through from the back.

She found cups and saucers and a can of Nescafe in the various cupboards, and while she was spooning the powder into the cups, she noticed a radio with a cracked plastic case on the counter next to the stove. She turned it on, and once it had warmed up, slowly twisted the selector knob until she found KBRI. She almost passed over it because the small celluloid-vibrating set made Gant's voice sound unfamiliarly thin. "... and a little too much about things political," he was saying, "so let's get back to music. We've just got time for one more record, and it's the late Buddy Clark singing If This Isn't Love."

Powell, having dropped the transcript down to Ellen, turned around and went back into his room. Squatting before the bed, he shot his hand underneath it-to bang his fingertips painfully against the suitcase, which had been pulled forward from its usual position flush against the wall. He jerked his hand out, waggling the fingers and blowing on them, and cursing his landlady's daughter-in-law who apparently had not been satisfied with only secreting his shoes beneath the bureau.

He reached under the bed again, more cautiously this time, and dragged the heavy-as-lead suitcase all the way out into the open. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, found the right one and twisted it in the two locks springing them. Replacing the keys, he lifted the lid. The suitcase was filled with textbooks, a tennis racket, a bottle of Canadian Club, golf shoes... He took out the larger items and put them on the floor so that it would be easier to get at the notebooks underneath.

There were nine of them; pale green, spiral-bound notebooks. He gathered them into a bundle, stood up with the bundle in his arm and began inspecting them one at a time; examining both covers, dropping the books one by one back into the suitcase.

It was on the seventh one, on the back cover. The penciled address was rubbed and smudged, but it was still legible. He dropped the other two notebooks into the suitcase and turned around, his mouth opening to form Ellen's name in a triumphant shout.

The shout didn't come through. The exultant expression clung to his face for a moment, like a stopped movie, and then it cracked and slid slowly away, like thick snow cracking and sliding from a canted roof.

The closet door was open and a man in a trench-coat stood framed there. He was tall and blond, and a gun bulked large in his gloved right hand.

He was sweating. Not cold sweat though; hot healthy sweat from standing in the sweatbox of an airless closet in the sweatsuit of an imporous trench-coat. His hands too; the gloves were brown leather with a fuzzy lining and elastic cuffs that held in the heat even more; his hands were sweating so much that the fuzzy lining was sodden and caked.

But the automatic (weightless now like part of him after dragging heavily in his pocket all evening) was motionless; the inevitable trajectory of the bullet as palpable in the air as a dotted line in a diagram. Point A: the rock-steady muzzle; Point B: the heart under the lapel of the cheesy-looking probably-bought-in-Iowa suit. He looked down at the Colt .45 as though to verify its blue steel existence, so light it was, and then he took a step forward from the mouth of the closet, reducing by a foot the length of dotted line AB. Well say something, he thought, enjoying the slow stupid melting of Mister Dwight Powell's face. Start talking. Start pleading. Probably can't Probably he's all talked out after the-what's that word?-the logorrhea of the cocktail lounge. Good word.

"I bet you don't know what logorrhea means," he said, standing there powerfully with the gun in his hand.

Powell stared at the gun. "You're the one... with Dorothy," he said.

"It means what you've got. Diarrea of the mouth. Words keep running. I thought my ear would fall off in that cocktail lounge." He smiled at Powell's widening eyes. "I was responsible for poor Dorothy's death," he mimicked. "A pity. A real pity." He stepped closer. "The notebook, por favor," he said, extending his left hand. "And don't try anything."

From downstairs, singing came softly:

If this isn't love,

Then winter is summer...

He took the notebook that Powell held out, dropped back a step and pressed it against his side, bending it in half lengthwise, cracking the cover, never taking his eyes or the gun off Powell. "I'm awfully sorry you found this. I was standing in there hoping you wouldn't." He stuck the folded notebook into his coat pocket.

"You really killed her..." Powell said.

"Let's keep the voices low." He moved the gun admonishingly. "We don't want to disturb the girl detective, do we?" It annoyed him the way Mister Dwight Powell was standing there so blankly. Maybe he was too stupid to realize.,. "Maybe you don't realize it, but this is a real gun, and it's loaded."

Powell didn't say anything. He just went on looking at the gun, not even staring now,-just looking at it with mildly distasteful interest, as though it were the first ladybug of the year.

"Look, I'm going to kill you."

Powell didn't say anything.

"You're such a great one for analyzing yourself- tell me, how do you feel now? I bet your knees are shaking, aren't they? Cold sweat all over you?"

Powell said, "She thought she was going there to get married..."

"Forget about her! You've got yourself to worry about" Why wasn't he trembling? Didn't he have brains enough...?

"Why did you kill her?" Powell's eyes finally lifted from the gun. "If you didn't want to marry her, you could have left her. That would have been better than. killing her."

"Shut up about her! What's the matter with you? You think I'm bluffing? Is that it? You think-"

Powell leaped forward.

Before he had gone six inches a loud explosion roared; dotted line AB was solidified and fulfilled by tearing lead.

Ellen had been standing in the kitchen looking out through the closed window and listening to the fading theme of Gordon Gant's program, when she suddenly realized that with the window closed, where was that pleasant breeze coming from?

There was a shadowed alcove in a rear corner of the room. She went to it and saw the back door, with the pane of glass nearest the knob smashed in and lying in fragments on the floor. She wondered if Dwight knew about it. You'd think he would have swept up the- That was when she heard the shot. It smacked loudly through the house, and as the sound died the ceiling light shivered as if something upstairs had fallen. Then there was silence.

The radio said, "At the sound of the chimes, ten PM, Central Standard Time," and a chime toned.

"Dwight?" Ellen said.

There was no answer.

She went into the dining room. She called the name louder: "Dwight?"

In the living room she moved hesitantly to the staircase. There was no sound from overhead. This time she spoke the name with dry throated apprehension: "Dwight?"

The silence held for another moment. Then a voice said, "It's all right, Ellen. Come on up."

She hurried up the stairs with her heart drumming. "In here," the voice said from the right. She pivoted around the newel post and swept to the lighted doorway.

The first thing she saw was Powell lying on his back in the middle of the room, limbs sprawled loosely. His jacket had fallen away from his chest On his white shirt blood was flowering from a black core over his heart.

She steadied herself against the jamb. Then she raised her eyes to the man who stood beyond Powell, the man with the gun in his hand.

Her eyes dilated, her face went rigid with questions that couldn't work their way to her lips.

He shifted the gun from the firing position to a flat appraising weight on his gloved palm. "I was in the closet," he said, looking her straight in the eye, answering the unasked questions. "He opened that suitcase and took out this gun. He was going to kill you, I jumped him. The gun went off."

"No... Oh God..." She rubbed her forehead dizzily. "But how... how did you...?"

He put the gun in the pocket of his coat. "I was in the cocktail lounge," he said. "Right behind you. I heard him talking you into coming up here. I left while you were in the phone booth."

"He told me he..."

"I heard what he told you. He was a good liar."

"Oh God, I believed him... I believed him..."

"That's just your trouble," he said with an indulgent smile. "You believe everybody."

"Oh God..." she shivered. He came to her, stepping between Powell's spraddled legs.

She said, "But I still don't understand... How were you there, in the lounge...?"

"I was waiting for you in the lobby. I missed you when you went out with him. Got there too late. I kicked myself for that But I waited around. What else could I do?"

"But how. . . how...?" He stood before her with his arms wide, like a soldier returning home. "Look, a heroine isn't supposed to question her nick-of-time rescuer. Just be glad you gave me his address. I may have thought you were being a fool, but I wasn't going to take any chances on having you get your head blown off." She threw herself into his arms, sobbing with relief and retrospective fear. The leather-tight hands patted her back comfortingly. "It's all right, Ellen," he said softly. "Everything's all right now."

She buried her cheek against his shoulder. "Oh Bud," she sobbed, "thank God for you! Thank God for you, Bud!"

The telephone rang downstairs.

"Don't answer it," he said as she started to draw away.

There was a lifeless glaze to her voice: "I know who it is."

"No, don't answer it. Listen,"-his hands were solid and convincing on her shoulders-"someone is sure to have heard that shot. The police will probably be here in a few minutes. Reporters, too." He let that sink in. "You don't want the papers to make a big story out of this, do you? Dragging up everything about Dorothy, pictures of you..."

"There's no way to stop them..."

"There is. I have a car downstairs. I'll take you back to the hotel and then come right back here." He turned off the light "If the police haven't shown up yet, I'll call them. Then you won't be here for the reporters to jump on, and I'll refuse to talk until I'm alone with the police. They'll question you later, but the papers won't know you're involved." He led her out into the hallway. "By that time you'll have called your father; he's got enough influence to keep the police from letting out anything about you or Dorothy. They can say Powell was drunk and started a fight with me, or something like that."

The telephone stopped ringing.

"I wouldn't feel right about leaving..." she said as they started down the stairs.

"Why not? I'm the one who did it, not you. It's not as if I'm going to lie about your being here; I'll need you to back up my story. All I want to do is prevent the papers from having a field day with this." He turned to her as they descended into the living room. "Trust me, Ellen," he said, touching her hand.

She sighed deeply, gratefully letting tension and responsibility drop from her shoulders. "All right," she said. "But you don't have to drive me. I can get a cab."

"Not at this hour, not without phoning. And I think the streetcars stop running at ten." He picked up her coat and held it for her.

"Where did you get a car?" she asked dully.

"I borrowed it"-he gave her her purse-"From a friend." Turning off the lights, he opened the door to the porch. "Come on," he said, "we haven't got too much time."

He had parked the car across the street and some fifty feet down the block. It was a black Buick sedan, two or three years old. He opened the door for Ellen, then went around to the other side and slipped in behind the wheel. He fumbled with the ignition key. Ellen sat silently, hands folded in her lap. "You feel all right?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, her voice thin and tired. "It's just that... he was going to kill me..." She sighed. "At least I was right about Dorothy. I knew she didn't commit suicide." She managed a reproachful smile. "And you tried to talk me out of making this trip..."

He got the motor started. "Yes," he said. "You were right."

She was silent for a moment. "Anyway, there's a sort of a silver lining to all this," she said.

"What's that?" He shifted gears and the car glided forward.

"Well, you saved my life," she said. "You really saved my life. That should cut short whatever objections my father might have, when you meet him and we speak to Mm about us."

After they had been driving down Washington Avenue for a few minutes, she moved closer to him and hesitantly took his arm, hoping it wouldn't interfere with Ms driving. She felt something hard pressing against her Mp and realized that it was the gun in his pocket, but she didn't want to move away.

"Listen, Ellen," he said. "This is going to be a lousy business, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'll be held for manslaughter."

"But you didn't mean to kill him! You were trying to get the gun away from him."

"I know, but they'll still have to hold me... all kinds of red tape..." He stole a quick glance at the downcast figure beside him and then returned Ms gaze to the traffic ahead. "Ellen... when we get to the hotel, you could just pick up your things and check out. We could be back in Caldwell in a couple of hours..."

"Bud!" Her voice was sharp with surprised reproach. "We couldn't do a thing like that!"

"Why not? He killed your sister, didn't he? He got what was coming to him. Why should we have to get mixed up-"

"We can't do it," she protested. "Aside from its being such a-a wrong thing to do, suppose they found out anyway that you... killed him. Then they'd never believe the truth, not if you ran away."

"I don't see how they could find out it was me," he said. "I'm wearing gloves, so there can't be any finger-prints. And nobody saw me there except you and him."

"But suppose they did find out! Or suppose they blamed someone else for it! How would you feel then?" He was silent "As soon as I get to the hotel, I'll call my father. Once he's heard the story, I know he'll take care of lawyers and everything. I guess it will be a terrible business. But to run away..."

"It was a foolish suggestion," he said. "I didn't really expect you to agree."

"No, Bud, you wouldn't want to do a thing like that, would you?"

"I only tried it as a last resort," he said. Suddenly he swung the car in a wide left turn from the brightly lighted orbit of Washington Avenue to the darkness of a northbound road.

"Shouldn't you stay on Washington?" Ellen asked.

"Quicker this way. Avoid traffic."

"What I can't understand," she said, tapping her cigarette on the edge of the dashboard tray, "is why he didn't do anything to me there, on the roof." She was settled comfortably, turned towards Bud with her left leg drawn up under her, the cigarette suffusing her with sedative warmth.

"You must have been pretty conspicuous, going there at night," he said. "He was probably afraid that an elevator man or someone would remember his face."

"Yes, I suppose so. But wouldn't it have been less risky than taking me back to his house and... doing it there?"

"Maybe he didn't intend to do it there. Maybe he was going to force you into a car and drive you out into the country someplace."

"He didn't have a car."

"He could have stolen one. It's not such a hard thing to steal a car." A street light flashing by brushed his face with white, then dropped it back into the darkness where the cleanly-hewn features were touched only by the dashboard's nebulous green.

"The lies he told me! 'I loved her. I was in New York. I felt responsible.'" She mashed the cigarette into the ashtray, shaking her head bitterly. "Oh my God!" she gasped.

He flicked a glance at her. "What is it?"

Her voice had taken on the sick glaze again. "He showed me his transcript... from NYU. He was in New York..."

"That was probably a fake. He must have known someone in the registrar's office there. They could fake something like that."

"But suppose it wasn't... Suppose he was telling the truth!"

"He was coming after you with a gun. Isn't that proof enough he was lying?"

"Are you sure, Bud? Are you sure he didn't- maybe take the gun out to get at something else? The notebook he mentioned?"

"He was going to the door with the gun."

"Oh God, if he really didn't kill Dorothy..."She was silent for a moment. "The police will investigate," she said positively. "They'll prove he was right here in Blue River! They'll prove he killed Dorothy!"

"That's right," he said.

"But even if he didn't, Bud, even if it was a-a terrible mistake,-they wouldn't blame you for anything. You couldn't know; you saw him with the gun. They couldn't never blame you for anything."

"That's right," he said.

Shifting uncomfortably, she drew her folded leg out from under her. She squinted at her watch in the dashboard's glow. "It's twenty-five after ten. Shouldn't we be there already?"

He didn't answer her.

She looked out the window. There were no more streetlights, no more buildings. There was only the pitch blackness of fields under the star-heightened blackness of the sky. "Bud, this isn't the way into town."

He didn't answer her.

Ahead of the car a white onrush of highway narrowed to implied infinity always beyond the headlights' reach.

"Bud, you're going the wrong way!"

"What you want from me?" Chief of Police Eldon Chesser asked blandly. He lay supine, his long legs supported beneath the ankles by an arm of the chintz-covered sofa, his hand laced loosely across the front of his red flannel shirt, his large brown eyes vaguely contemplating the ceiling.

"Get after the car. That's what I want," Gordon Gant said, glaring at him from the middle of the living room.

"Ha," said Chesser. "Ha ha. A dark car is all the man next door knows; after he called about the shot he saw a man and a woman go down the block and get into a dark car. A dark car with a man and woman. You know how many dark cars there is driving around town with a man and woman in them? We didn't even have a description of the girl until you come shooting in. By that time they could've been half-way to Cedar Rapids. Or parked in some garage two blocks from here, for all we know."

Gant paced malevolently. "So what are we supposed to do?"

"Wait, is all. I notified the highway boys, didn't I?

Maybe this is bank night Why don't you sit down?"

"Sure, sit down," Gant snapped. "She's liable to be murdered!" Chesser was silent "Last year her sister, - now her."

"Here we go again," Chesser said. The brown eyes closed in weariness. "Her sister committed suicide," he articulated slowly. "I saw the note with my own two eyes. A handwriting expert-" Gant made a noise. "And who killed her?" Chesser demanded. "You said Powell was supposed to be the one, only now it couldnt've been him 'cause the girl left a message for you that he was all right, and you found this paper here from New York U. that makes it look like he wasn't even in these parts last spring. So if the only suspect didn't do it, who did? Answer: nobody." His voice tight with the exasperation of repetition, Gant said, "Her message said that Powell had an idea who it was. The murderer must have known that Powell-"

"There was no murderer, until tonight," Chesser said flatly. "The sister committed suicide." His eyes bunked open and regarded the ceiling. Gant glare at him and resumed his bitter pacing. After a few minutes Chesser said, "Well, I guess I got it all reconstructed now."

"Yeah?" Gant said.

"Yeah. You didn't think I was laying here just to be lazy, did you? This is the way to think, with your feet higher'n your head. Blood goes to the brain." He cleared his throat. "The guy breaks in about a quarter to ten-man next door heard the glass break but didn't think anything of it No sign of any of the other rooms having been gone through, so Powell's must have been the first one he hit. A couple minutes later Powell and the girl come in. The guy is stuck upstairs. He hides in Powell's closet-the clothes are all pushed to the side. Powell and the girl go into the kitchen. She starts making coffee, turns on the radio. Powell goes upstairs to hang up his coat, or maybe he heard a noise. The guy comes out. He's already tried to open the suitcase-we found glove smudges on it. He makes Powell unlock it and goes through it. Stuff all over the floor. Maybe he finds something, some money. Anyway, Powell jumps him. The guy shoots Powell. Probably panics, probably didn't intend to shoot him-they never do; they only carry guns to scare people. Always wind up shooting 'em. Forty-five shell. Most likely an Army Colt. Million of 'em floating around.

"Next thing the girl comes running upstairs-same prints on the door fram up there as on the cups and stuff in the kitchen. The guy is panicky, no time to... He forces her to leave with him."

"Why? Why wouldn't he have left her here... the way he left Powell?"

"Don't ask me. Maybe he didn't have the nerve. Or maybe he got ideas. Sometimes they get ideas when they're holding a gun and there's a pretty girl on the other end of it."

"Thanks," Gant said. "That makes me feel a whole lot better. Thanks a lot."

Chesser sighed. "You might as well sit down," he said. "There ain't a damn thing we can do but wait." Gant sat down. He began rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand.

Chesser finally turned his face from the ceiling. He watched Gant sitting across the room. "What is she? Your girlfriend?" he asked.

"No," Gant said. He remembered the letter he had read in Ellen's room. "No, there's some guy in Wisconsin."

Behind the racing island of the headlights' reach, the car arrowed over the tight line of highway, tarred seams in concrete creating a regular rhythm under the tires. The speedometer's luminous green needle split the figure fifty. The foot on the accelerator was steady as the foot of a statue.

He drove with his left hand, occasionally giving the steering wheel an inappreciable right or left movement to relieve the hypnotic monotony of the highway. Ellen was huddled all the way over against the door, her body knotted tight, her eyes staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap. On the seat between them, snakelike, lay his gloved right hand with the gun in it, the muzzle riveted against her hip.

She had cried; long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

He had told her everything, in a bitter voice, glancing frequently at her green-touched face in the darkness. There were moments of awkward hesitancy in his narration, as an on-leave soldier telling how he won his medals hesitates before describing to the gentle townsfolk how his bayonet ripped open an enemy's stomach, then goes on and describes it because they asked how he won his medals, didn't they?-describes it with irritation and mild contempt for the gentle townsfolk who never had had to rip open anyone's stomach. So he told Ellen about the pills and the roof and why it had been necessary to kill Dorothy, and why it had then been the most logical course to transfer to Caldwell and go after her, Ellen, knowing her likes and dislikes from conversations with Dorothy, knowing how to make himself the man she was waiting for-not only the most logical and inevitable course, going after the girl with whom he had such an advantage, but also the course most ironically satisfying, the course most compensatory for past bad luck-(the course most law-defying, black-slapping, ego-preening)-he told her these things with irritation and contempt; this girl with her hands over her mouth in horror and had everything given her on a sliver platter; she didn't know what it was to live on a swaying catwalk over the chasm of failure, stealing perilously inch by inch towards the solid ground of success so many miles away.

She listened with the muzzle of his gun jabbing painfully into her hip; painfully only at first, then numbingly, as though that part of her were already dead, as though death came from the gun not in a swift bullet but in slow radiation from the point of contact. She listened, and then she cried, because she was so sickened and beaten and shocked that there was nothing else she could do to express it all. Her cries were long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

And then she sat staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap.

"I told you not to come," he said querulously. "I begged you to stay in Caldwell, didn't I?" He glanced at her as though expecting an affirmation. "But no. No, you had to be the girl detective! Well this is what happens to girl detectives." His eyes returned to the highway. "If you only knew what I've gone through since Monday," he clenched, remembering how the world had dropped out from under him Monday morning when Ellen had phoned-"Dorothy didn't commit suicide! I'm leaving for Blue River!"-running down to the station, barely catching her, futilely desperately trying to keep her from leaving but she stepped onto the train-"I'll write you this minute! IT! explain the whole thing!"-leaving him standing there, watching her glide away, sweating, terrified. It made him sick just thinking about it Ellen said something faintly. "What?"

"They'll catch you..."

After a moment's silence he said, "You know how many don't get caught? More than fifty per cent, that's how many. Maybe a lot more." After another moment he said, "How are they going to catch me? Fingerprints?-none. Witnesses?-none. Motive?- none that they know about They won't even think of me. The gun?-I have to go over the Mississippi to get back to Caldwell; good-by gun. This car?-two or three in the morning I leave it a couple of blocks from where I took it; they think it was some crazy high school kids. Juvenile delinquents." He smiled. "I did it last night too. I was sitting two rows behind you and Powell in the theater and I was right around a bend in the hall when he kissed you goodnight" He glanced at her to see her reaction; none was visible. His gaze returned to the road and his face clouded again. "That letter of yours-how I sweated till it came! When I first started to read it I thought I was safe; you were looking for someone she'd met in her English class in the fall; I didn't meet her till January, and it was in Philosophy. But then I realized who that guy you were looking for actually was-Old Argyle-Socks, my predecessor. We'd had Math together, and he'd seen me with Dorrie. I thought he might know my name. I knew that if he ever convinced you he didn't have anything to do with Dorrie's murder... if he ever mentioned my name to you..."

Suddenly he jammed down on the brake pedal and the car screeched to a halt. Reaching left-handed around the steering column, he shifted gears. When he stepped on the gas again, the car rolled slowly backwards. On their right, the dark form of a house slid into view, low-crouching behind a broad expanse of empty parking lot The headlights of the retreating car caught a large upright sign at the highway's edge: Lillie and Doane's-The Steak Supreme. A smaller sign hung swaying from the gallows of the larger one: Reopening April 15th.

He shifted back into first, spun the wheel to the right, and stepped on the gas. He drove across the parking lot and pulled up at the side of the low building, leaving the motor running. He pressed the horn ring; a loud blast banged through the night. He waited a minute, then sounded the horn again. Nothing happened. No window was raised, no light went on. "Looks like nobody's home," he said, turning off the headlights.

"Please..." she said, "please..."

In the darkness the car rolled forward, turned to the left, moved behind the house where the asphalt of the parking lot flowed into a smaller paved area. The car swung around in a wild curve, almost going off the edge of the asphalt into the dirt of a field that swept off to meet the blackness of the sky. It swung all the way around until it was facing the direction from which it had come.

He set the emergency brake and left the motor running.

"Please..."she said.

He looked at her. "You think I want to do this? You think I like the idea? We were almost engaged!" He opened the door on his left. "You had to be smart..." He stepped out onto the asphalt, keeping the gun aimed at her huddled figure. "Come here," he said. "Come out on this side "

"Please..."

"Well what am I supposed to do, Ellen? I can't let you go, can I? I asked you to go back to Caldwell without saying anything, didn't I?" The gun made an irritated gesture. "Come out."

She pulled herself across the seat, clutching her purse. She stepped out onto the asphalt.

The gun directed her in a semicircular path until she stood with the field at her back, the gun between her and the car.

"Please..." she said, holding up the purse in a futile shielding gesture, "please..."

From the Blue River Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, March 15, 1951: DOUBLE SLAYING HERE POLICE SEEK MYSTERY GUNMAN Within a period of two hours last night, an unknown gunman committed two brutal murders. His victims were Ellen Kingship, 21, of New York City, and Dwight Powell, 23, of Chicago, a junior at Stoddard University...

Powell's slaying occurred at 10: 00 PM, in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Honig, 1520 West 35th St., where Powell was a roomer. As police reconstruct the events, Powell, entering the house at 9: 50 in the company of Miss Kingship, went to his second-floor room where he encountered an armed burglar who had earlier broken into the house through the back door...

... the medical examiner established the time of Miss Kingship's death as somewhere near midnight. Her body, however, was not discovered until 7: 20 this morning, when Willard Herne, 11, of nearby Randalia, crossed through a field adjacent to the restaurant... Police learned from Gordon Gant, KBRI announcer and a friend of Miss Kingship, that she was the sister of Dorothy Kingship who last April committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the Blue River Municipal Building...

Leo Kingship, president of Kingship Copper, Inc., and father of the slain girl, is expected to arrive in Blue River this afternoon, accompanied by his daughter, Marion Kingship.

An Editorial from the Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, April 19, 1951 DISMISSAL OF GORDON GANT In dismissing Gordon Gant from their employ (story on p .5) the management of KBRI points out that "despite frequent warnings, he has persisted in using (KBRI's) microphones to harass and malign the Police Department in a manner bordering on the slanderous." The matter involved was the month-old Kingship-Powell slayings, in which Mr. Gant has taken a personal and somewhat acrimonious interest. His public criticism of the police was, to say the least, indiscreet, but considering that no progress has been made towards reaching a solution of the case, we find ourselves forced to agree with the appropriateness of his remarks, if not with their propriety.

At the end of the school year he returned to Menasset and sat around the house in somber depression. His mother tried to combat his sullenness and then began to reflect it They argued, like hot coals boosting each other in to flame. To get out of the house and out of himself, he reclaimed his old job at the haberdashery shop. From nine to five-thirty he stood behind a glass display counter not looking at the binding-strips of gleaming burnished copper.

One day in July he took the small gray strongbox from his closet. Unlocking it on his desk, he took out the newspaper clippings about Dorothy's murder. He tore them into small pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket. He did the same with the clippings on Ellen and Powell. Then he took out the Kingship Copper pamphlets; he had written away for them a second time when he started to go with Ellen. As his hands gripped them, ready to tear, he smiled ruefully. Dorothy, Ellen...

It was like thinking "Faith, Hope..."

"Charity" pops into the mind to fulfill the sequence.

Dorothy, Ellen... Marion.

He smiled at himself and gripped the pamphlets again.

But he found that he couldn't tear them. Slowly he put them down on the desk, mechanically smoothing the creases his hands had made.

He pushed the strongbox and the pamphlets to the back of the desk and sat down. He headed a sheet of paper Marion and divided it into two columns with a vertical line. He headed one column Pro; the other Con.

There were so many things to list under Pro: months of conversations with Dorothy, months of conversations with Ellen; all studded with passing references to Marion; her likes, her dislikes, her opinions, her past. He knew her like a book without even having met her; lonely, bitter, living alone... A perfect set-up.

Emotion was on the Pro side too. Another chance. Hit a home run and the two strikes that preceded it are washed away. And three was the lucky number... third time lucky... all the childhood fairy tales with the third try and the third wish and the third suitor...

He couldn't think of a thing to list under Con.

That night he tore up the Pro and Con list and began another one, of Marion Kingship's characteristics, opinions, likes and dislikes. He made several notations and, in the weeks that followed, added regularly to the list. In every spare moment he pushed his mind back to conversations with Dorothy and Ellen; conversations in luncheonettes, between classes, while walking, while dancing; dredging words, phrases and sentences up from the pool of his memory. Sometimes he spent entire evenings flat on his back, remembering, a small part of his mind probing the larger, less conscious part like a Geiger counter that clicked on Marion.

As the list grew, Ms spirits swelled. Sometimes he would take the paper from the strongbox even when he had nothing to add,-just to admire it; the keenness, the planning, the potence displayed. It was almost as good as having the clippings on Dorothy and Ellen.

"You're crazy," he told himself aloud one day, looking at the list. "You're a crazy nut," he said affectionately. He didn't really think that; he thought he was daring, audacious, brilliant, intrepid and bold.

"I'm not going back to school," he told his mother one day in August.

"What?" She stood small and thin in the doorway of his room, one hand frozen in mid-passage over her straggly gray hair.

"I'm going to New York in a few weeks."

"You got to finish school" she said plaintively. He was silent. "What is it, you got a job in New York?"

"I don't but I'm going to get one. I've got an idea I want to work on. A-a project, sort of."

"But you got to finish school, Bud," she said hesitantly.

"I don't 'got to' do anything!" he snapped. There was silence. "If mis idea flops, which I don't think it will, I can always finish school next year."

Her hands wiped the front of her housedress nervously. "But, you're past twenty-five. You got to- have to finish school and get yourself started someplace. You can't keep-"

"Look, will you just let me live my own life?"

She stared at him. "That's what your father used to give me," she said quietly, and went away.

He stood by his desk for a few moments, hearing the angry clanking of cutlery in the kitchen sink. He picked up a magazine and looked at it, pretending he didn't care.

A few minutes later he went into the kitchen. His mother was at the sink, her back towards him. "Mom," he said pleadingly, "you know I'm as anxious as you are to see myself get someplace." She didn't turn around. "You know I wouldn't quit school if this idea wasn't something important" He went over and sat down at the table, facing her back. "If it doesn't work, I'll finish school next year. I promise I will, Mom."

Reluctantly, she turned. "What kind of idea is it?" she asked slowly. "An invention?"

"No. I can't tell you," he said regretfully. "It's only in the-the planning stage. I'm sorry..."

She sighed and wiped her hands on a towel. "Can't it wait till next year? When you'd be through with school?"

"Next year might be too late, Mom."

She put down the towel. "Well I wish you could tell me what it is."

"I'm sorry, Mom. I wish I could too. But it's one of those things that you just can't explain." She went around behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders. She stood there for a moment, looking down at his anxiously upturned face. "Well," she said, pressing his shoulders, "I guess it must be a good idea." He smiled up at her happily.