A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG

Very carefully, in a state of fearful pleasure, he put all the pieces of paper in order. One copy of the manuscript he put into an envelope and addressed it. The other copies he put into an empty suitcase. Then he called an airline and was lucky. A seat for New York in the morning. Morning? What morning? St. Patrick’s Day in the morning.

He had been out of this world. But now he stretched, breathed, blinked, and put out feelers for what is known as reality.

See now. He was Mitchel Brown, playwright (God willing), and he had finished the job of revision he had come home to Los Angeles to do. Wowee! Finished!

The hour was a quarter after one in the morning and therefore already the seventeenth of March. The place was his ground-floor apartment, and it was a mess: smoky, dirty, disorderly…Oh, well, first things had come first. His back was aching, his eyes were burning, his head was light. He would have to clean up, eat, sleep, bathe, shave, dress, pack. But first…

He slammed a row of airmail stamps on the envelope and went out. The street was dark and deserted. A few cars sat lumpishly along the curbs. The manuscript thumped down into the mailbox — safe in the bosom of the Postal Service. Now, even if he, the plane, and the other copies perished…

Mitch laughed at himself and turned the corner, feeling suddenly let down, depressed, and forlorn.

The Parakeet Bar and Grill, he noted gratefully, was still open. He walked the one block and went in. The Bar ran all the way along one wall and the Grill, consisting of eight booths, ran all the way along the other. The narrow room was dim and felt empty.

Mitch groped for a stool.

“Hi, Toby. Business slow?”

“Hi, Mr. Brown.” The bartender seemed glad to see him. He was a small man with a crest of dark hair, a blue chin, and a blue tinge to the whites of his eyes. “This late on a weeknight, I’m never crowded.”

“The kitchen’s gone home, eh?” Mitch said. The kitchen was not the heart of this establishment.

“That’s right, Mr. Brown. You want any food, you better go else-where.”

“A drink will do me,” said Mitch with a sigh. “I can go home and scramble yet another egg.”

Toby turned to his bottles. When he turned back with Mitch’s usual, he said in an anxious whine, “Fact is, I got to close up pretty soon and I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean, what to do?”

“Look at her.” Toby’s gaze passed over Mitch’s left shoulder.

Mitch glanced behind him and was startled to see there was a woman sitting in one of the booths. Or perhaps one could say lying, since her fair hatless head was down on the red-checked tablecloth.

Mitch turned again and wagged inquiring eyebrows.

“Out like a light,” said Toby in a hoarse whisper. “Listen, I don’t want to call the cops. Thing like that, not so good for the place. But I got a kid sick and my wife is all wore out and I wanted to get home.”

“You try black coffee?”

“Sure, I tried.” Toby’s shoulders despaired.

“How’d she get this way?”

“Not here,” said Toby quickly. “Don’t see how. So help me, a coupla drinks hit her like that. Trouble is, she’s not a bum. You can see that. So what should I do?”

“Put her in a taxi,” said Mitch blithely. “Just ship her where she belongs. Why not? She’ll have something on her for identity.”

“I don’t want to mess around with her pocketbook,” Toby said fearfully.

“Hm. Well, let’s see…” Mitch got off the stool. His drink had gone down and bounced lightly and he was feeling cheerful and friendly toward all the world. Furthermore, he felt very intelligent and he understood that he had been born to understand everybody.

Toby came too, and they lifted the woman’s torso.

Her face was slack in drunken sleep; but even so it was not an ugly face. It was not young; neither was it old. Her clothing was expensive. No, she wasn’t a tramp.

Then she opened her eyes and said in a refined voice, “I beg your pardon.”

She was not exactly conscious; still this was encouraging. The two men got her to her feet. With their support she could stand. In fact, she could walk. Mitch ran his left arm through the handle of her expensive-looking handbag. The two of them walked her to the door.

“The air maybe?” said the bartender hopefully.

“Right,” said Mitch. “Listen, there’s a cab stand next to the movie theater. By the time we walk her over there…”

Toby said shrilly. “I got to lock up. I got to take care of the place.”

“Go ahead,” said Mitch, standing in the sweet night air with the strange woman heavy in his arms, “I’ve got her.”

He heard the lock click behind him as he set off on the sidewalk, the woman putting one foot ahead of the other willingly enough.

Musing on the peculiar and surprising qualities of “reality,” Mitch had guided her halfway along the block before he recognized the fact that the bartender had taken him literally and was not coming along at all.

Oh, well. Mitch was not annoyed. On the contrary, he felt filled with compassion for all human beings. This woman was human and, therefore, frail. He was glad to try to help her to some place of her own.

The neighborhood business section was deserted. They were moving in an empty world. When Mitch had struggled all the way to the next corner, he could see ahead that there were no cabs near the theater. At this time of night the theater was dead and dark, as he should have known. He guessed he hadn’t quite been meshed with the gears of ordinary time.

Anyhow, he couldn’t turn her over to a handy cab driver. Nor to the police, since there were no policemen around either. There was nothing but pavement, those few lumps of metal left at the curb for the night, and no traffic.

Mitch wouldn’t have hailed a motorist anyway. Most motorists were suspicious and afraid. So he did the only thing he could — he kept walking.

He guided her automatic steps around the corner and down the street, for surely, he thought, if he kept her walking she would begin to be conscious and he could then ask her what she wanted him to do about her. This he felt was the right thing. Perhaps he could get out his own car…

But the air was not having the desired effect. She began to stumble.

Her weight slumped against him. Mitch found he was almost carrying her. Then he discovered that he was standing, holding her upright with both arms, directly in front of his own building. Obviously, the only thing to do was take her inside, where he could investigate her identity and telephone for a taxi.

The apartment had not tidied itself up during his absence. He let her weight go and she sagged down on his sofa. He guided her blond head to a pillow. There she lay, out like a light, a perfect stranger.

To straighten the body and make it look more comfortable, he lifted the lower part of the legs. One of her shoes — beautiful shoes in a fine green leather, with a high spike heel and a small brass buckle — one of them came off.

Mitch took hold of the other shoe and also removed it. Full of cosmic thoughts about females and heels, he put her shoes on his desk and slipped her handbag off his arm. It was the same fine green leather.

It did feel sneaky to be rifling the property of a strange woman.

Still, it had to be done.

Her name, on the driver’s license, was Natalie Maxwell. Her address was in Santa Barbara. Mitch whistled. That knocked over his scheme of sending her home in a cab, since her home was a hundred miles away. Then he found a letter addressed to Mrs. Julius Maxwell and Mitch whistled again. So she was married!

Furthermore, she was married to somebody whose name was familiar. Julius Maxwell. All that came to Mitch’s musing memory was an aroma of money. She probably wasn’t broke, then. He peered into her wallet and saw a few bills. Not many. So he riffled her checkbook and whistled for the third time. Well! No penniless waif, this one.

Mitch ran his hand through his hair and considered his predica-ment. Here he was, harboring a wealthy matron from Santa Barbara who had passed out from liquor. What was he going to do with her?

There was nothing in the bag to tell him where she was staying locally. The letter was woman’s chatter from someone in San Francisco.

So what to do?

Well, he might phone the police and dump her on them. This he could not quite imagine. Or, he could phone the residence of Julius Maxwell, in Santa Barbara, and if her husband were there, ask for instructions; or, if he were not there, surely Mitch could ask somebody where Mrs. Maxwell was staying in Los Angeles, and dump her there. All this went through his mind and was rejected.

Why cause another human being humiliation and trouble? He didn’t think she was ill. Just stinko. Sooner or later the fumes would wear away and she would come to herself. Meantime, she was perfectly safe, right where she was. Heaven knew he had no evil thoughts.

Also, he — Mitchel Brown, playwright, artist, apostle of compassion— he was no bourgeois to conform, cravenly fearing for his reputation if he were to do what is “not done.” Was he, being what he was, to put this human being into a jam with the Law, or even with her own husband? When this human being, for some human reason, had simply imbibed a little too much alcohol? He couldn’t do it.

Okay. He had been dragooned by his mood and by the perfidious desertion of Toby the bartender into acting the Samaritan. Why not be the good Samaritan, then? Give her a break.

This pleased him. It felt lucky to him. Give her a break. God knows we all need them, he thought piously.

So Mitch scribbled a note. Dear Mrs. Maxwell: Use my phone if you like. Or be my guest, as long as you need to be.

He signed it, went into his bedroom, got a light blanket, and spread it over her. She was snoring faintly. He studied her face a moment more. He put the note on the rug under her shoes where she would be sure to see it. Then he went into his bedroom, closed the door, and went to bed.

Mitchel Brown woke up on St. Patrick’s Day, early in the morning, absolutely ravenous. He had forgotten to eat anything. Now he remembered. New York! Catch plane! Pack!

He started for his kitchen and at the bedroom door remembered the lady. So he turned and put a robe on before emerging.

He needn’t have bothered. She was gone. Her shoes were gone.

Her bag was gone. His note was gone. In fact, there was no trace of her at all.

He did not wonder whether he had been dreaming. So she had come to and fled. Hm, without even a “Thank you”? Oh, well, panic, he supposed. Ah, human frailty! Mitch shrugged. But he had things to do and not enough time to do them in.

He went into a spell of demon housekeeping, threw everything perishable out of his refrigerator, everything dirty into the laundry bag, everything wearable into his suitcase. He caught the plane by a whisker.

Once on it he began to suffer. He reread his manuscript in his mind’s eye and squirmed with doubt. He tried to nap and could not, and then, suddenly, he could…and then he was in New York and God was willing and his producer was still hot and eager…

Six weeks later Mitchel Brown, playwright, got off the plane in Los Angeles. He had a play on Broadway. The verdict was comme ci, comme ça. Time, box office, word of mouth…personally he could bear no more. He wasn’t licked, but he knew he would be unless he got home and got to work on something else and that, soon.

He had been out of this world all this time, for when one has a play in rehearsal, earthquake, major catastrophe, declaration of war mean nothing. Nothing whatever.

He got to his apartment about five a.m. and kicked aside the pile of newspapers he had forgotten to stop. The place smelled stale and wasn’t really clean, but no matter. He opened all the windows, mixed himself a highball, and sat down with the last paper on the heap to catch up with the way the Western world had wagged since he had left it. International affairs he had glanced over, the last week in the East. Local affairs, of course, were completely unknown to him.

The latest murder, hm…Los Angeles papers are always hopeful that a murder is going to turn out to be a big one, so any and every murder gets off with a bang. This one didn’t look promising. A mere brawl, he judged. Would die down in a couple of days.

He skimmed the second page where all the older murders were followed up. He had missed two or three. Some woman knifed by an ex-husband. Some man shot in his own hall. Run-of-the-mill.

Mitch yawned. He would get out his car, go somewhere for a decent meal, he decided. Tomorrow, back to the salt mines.

At 6:30 p.m. he walked into his favorite restaurant, ordered a drink, settled to contemplate the menu.

She came in quietly about ten minutes later and sat down by herself at a table directly across from Mitch. The first thing he noted, with the tail of his eye, was her shoes. He had seen them before. Yes, and held them — held them in his hands.

His eyes traveled higher and there was Mrs. Julius Maxwell.

(Natalie was her given name, he remembered.) It was not only Mrs.

Julius Maxwell in the flesh, but Mrs. Julius Maxwell in the very same clothing she had worn before! The same green suit, the same pale blouse, and no hat. She was a lady, well groomed, prosperous, pretty, and poised — and now perfectly sober.

Mitch kept his head cocked and his eyes on her, waiting for her to feel his stare and respond to it. Her eyes came to his in a moment, but they were cool and empty of recognition.

Well, of course, he thought. How would she know me? She never saw me. He glanced away, feeling amused, then glanced back. Natalie Maxwell was ordering. She sat back, relaxed, and her gaze slipped past him again, returned briefly to note his interest, then went away, indicating none on her part.

Mitch could not help feeling that this was not fair. He got up and crossed to her. “How do you do, Mrs. Maxwell?” he said pleasantly.

“I am glad you are feeling better.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said. He remembered that he had heard her say this, and only this, once before.

“I’m Mitchel Brown.” He waited, smiling down at her.

“I don’t believe…” she murmured in genteel puzzlement. She had a nice straight nose and, although she was looking up at him, she seemed to be looking down that nose.

“I’m sure you remember the name,” Mitch said. “It was the sixteenth of March. No, it was Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning, actually.”

“I don’t quite…”

Was she stupid or what? Mitch said, with a bit of a sting in the tone, “Did you have much of a hangover?”

“I’m very sorry,” she said with a little exasperated laugh, “but I really don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Oh, come now, Natalie,” said Mitch, beginning to feel miffed,

“it was my apartment.”

“What?” she said.

“My apartment that you passed out in — here in Los Angeles.”

“I am afraid you are making a mistake,” she said distantly.

Mitch did not think so.

“Aren’t you Mrs. Julius Maxwell?”

“Yes, I am.”

“From Santa Barbara?”

“Why, yes, I am.” She was frowning a little.

“Then the apartment you woke up in, on Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning, was my apartment,” said Mitch huffily, “and why the amnesia?”

“What is this?” said a male voice.

Mitch swivelled his head and knew at once that here was Mr. Julius Maxwell. He saw a medium-sized, taut-muscled, middle-aged man with a thatch of salt-and-pepper hair and fierce black eyes under heavy black brows. Everything about this man blazoned aggression and possession. He reeked of push and power, of I and Mine.

Mitchel Brown, playwright, artist, and apostle of compassion, drew his own forces together, as if he folded in some wings.

“Julius,” said the blond woman, “this man knows my name. He keeps talking about Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning.”

“Oh, he does?” said her husband.

“He says I was in his apartment, here in Los Angeles.”

To Mitch Brown came a notion that would explain all this. Obviously, Natalie’s husband had never found out where Natalie had been that night. So Natalie had to pretend she didn’t know Mitch, because she knew, as he did not, that Julius Maxwell was nearby and would appear. But something in the woman’s manner did not quite fit this theory. She didn’t seem to be concerned enough. She looked straight ahead and her bewilderment was perfunctory.

Still, he thought he should be gallant. “I must have made a mistake” he said. “But the resemblance is remarkable. Perhaps you have a double, ma’am?”

He thought this was handsome of him and that it gave her a way out.

“A double?” said Julius Maxwell nastily. “Who uses my wife’s name?”

Well, of course, if the man was going to be intelligent about it, that tore it. “Sorry,” said Mitch lightly.

“Sit down and tell me about it,” said Maxwell commandingly.

“Mr.…er…?”

“Brown,” said Mitch shortly. He was of a mind to turn on his heel and go away. But he glanced at Natalie. She had opened her handbag and found her compact. This stuck him as either offensively nonchal-ant or pathetically trusting. Or what? Curiosity rose in Mitch — and he sat down.

“Why, I happened into a bar where a lady had had too much to drink,” he said, as if this were nothing unusual. “I volunteered to put her in a taxi but there was no taxi. I wound up leaving her passed out on my sofa. In the morning she was gone. That’s all there is to the story.”

“This was on Saint Patrick’s Day?” said Maxwell intently.

“In the small hours. In the morning.”

“Then the lady was not my wife. My wife was with me in Santa Barbara at our home that night.”

“With you?” said Mitch carefully, feeling a bit of shock.

“Certainly.” Maxwell’s tone was belligerent.

Mitch was beginning to wonder. The woman had powdered her nose and sat looking as if she couldn’t care less. “Not simply in the same building,” Mitch inquired, “as you may have assumed?”

“Not simply in the same building,” said Julius Maxwell, “and no assumption. She was with me, speaking to me, touching me, if you like.” His black eyes were hostile.

Oh, ho, thought Mitch, then you are a liar, too. Now what is all this? He did not care for this Maxwell at all.

“Perhaps I have mistaken her for another lady,” he said smoothly.

“But isn’t it strange that she is wearing exactly the same clothes now that she was wearing on Saint Patrick’s Day?”

(Try that one on for size, Mitch thought smugly.) Julius said ominously, “Do you know who I am?”

“I have heard your name,” said Mitch.

“You know that I am an influential man?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mitch pleasantly. “In fact, I can smell the money from here.”

“How much do you want to forget that you saw my wife in Los Angeles that night?”

Mitch’s brows went up.

“On Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning,” added Julius sneeringly.

Mitch felt his feathers ruffling, his temper flaring. “Why? What is it worth?” he said.

They locked gazes. It was ridiculous. Mitch felt as if he had strayed into a Class B movie. Then Maxwell rose from the table. “Excuse me.” He lashed Mitch with a sharp look which seemed to be saying,

“Stay,” as if Mitch were a dog. Then he strode off.

Mitch, alone with the blond woman, said to her quickly, “What do you want me to do or say?”

He was looking at her hand, long-fingered, pink-nailed, limp on the table. It did not clench. It did not even move. “I don’t understand,” she said in a mechanical way.

“Okay,” said Mitch disgustedly. “I came here for dinner and I see no profit in this discussion, so please excuse me.”

He got up, crossed over to his own table, and ordered his meal.

Julius Maxwell returned in a few moments and stood looking at Mitch with a triumphant light in his eyes. Mitch waved the wand of reason over the very human activity of his own glands. It was necessary for Mitch’s self-respect that he dine here, as he had planned to do, and that he remain unperturbed by these strange people.

His steak had come when a man walked into the room and up to Maxwell’s table. There was an exchange of words. Julius rose. Both men came over to Mitch.

Julius said, “This is the fellow, Lieutenant.”

Mitch found that the stranger was slipping into the seat beside him and Julius was slipping in beside him on his other hand. He rejected a feeling of being trapped. “What’s all this?” he inquired mildly, patting his lips with his napkin.

“Name’s Prince,” said the stranger. “Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Maxwell tells me you are saying something about Mrs.

Maxwell’s being here in town on the night of the sixteenth of March and the morning of the seventeenth?”

Mitch sipped from his water glass, watchful and wary.

Julius Maxwell said, “This man was trying to blackmail me with a crazy story.”

“I was what!” Mitch exploded.

The police lieutenant, or whoever he was, had a long lean face, slightly crooked at the bottom, and he had very tired eyelids. He said, “Your story figured to destroy her alibi?”

“Her alibi for what?” Mitch leaned back.

“Oh, come off that, Brown,” said Julius Maxwell, “or whatever your name is. You knew my wife from having seen her picture in the newspaper.”

Mitch’s brain was racing. “I haven’t seen the papers for six weeks,”

he said aggressively.

Julius Maxwell’s black eyes were bright with that triumphant shine. “Now that,” he said flatly, “is impossible.”

“Oh, is it?” said Mitch rather gently. His role of apostle of compassion was fast fading out. Mitch was now a human clashing with another human and he knew he had to look out for himself. He could feel his wings retracting into his spine. “Alibi for what?” he insisted, looking at the policeman intently.

The policeman sighed. “You want it from me? Okay. On the sixteenth of last March, late in the evening,” he droned, “a man named Joseph Carlisle was shot to death in his own front hall.” (Mitch, ears pricked up, remembered the paragraph he had seen just tonight.)

“Lived in a canyon, Hollywood Hills,” the lieutenant continued.

“Winding road, lonely spot. Looked like somebody rang his bell, he answered, they talked in the hall. It was his own gun that he kept in a table there. Whoever shot him closed the front door, which locked it, and threw the gun in the shrubbery. Then beat it. Wasn’t seen — by anybody.”

“And what has this got to do with Mrs. Maxwell?” Mitch asked.

“Mrs. Maxwell used to be married to this Carlisle,” said the policeman. “We had to check her out. She has this alibi.”

“I see,” said Mitch.

“Mrs. Maxwell,” said Julius through his teeth, “was with me in our home in Santa Barbara that evening and all that night.”

Mitch saw. He saw that either Maxwell was trying to save his wife from the embarrassment of suspicion or…that compassion was a fine thing but it can get a well-meaning person into trouble. And a few drinks might hit a murderess very hard and very fast. Mitch knew, that whatever else Maxwell said, he was lying in his teeth about this alibi. Because the woman, still sitting across this restaurant, was the very same woman whom Mitch Brown had taken in, had given a break.

But nobody was giving Mitch Brown any break. And why all this nonsense about blackmail? Mitch, with his wings folded tight away, said to the lieutenant, “Suppose I tell you my story.” And he did so, coldly, briefly.

Afterward, Maxwell laughed. “You believe that? You believe that he would take a drunken woman home with him — and close the door?”

In his breast Mitch Brown felt the smolder of dislike burst into a flame of hatred.

“No, no,” said Maxwell. “What must have happened was this. He spotted my wife here. Oh, he’d read the papers — don’t you believe that he hadn’t. He knew she had been married to Joe Carlisle. So, spur of the moment, he tried out his little lie. Might be some profit in it — who knows? Listen to this: when I asked him how much he wanted to keep this story to himself, he asked me how much it was worth.”

Mitch chewed his lip. “You’ve got a bad ear for dialogue,” he said.

“That is not exactly what I said. Nor is it the sense of what I said.”

“Oh, oh,” said Maxwell, smiling.

The lieutenant was pursing noncommittal lips.

Mitch spoke to him. “Who else gives Mrs. Maxwell her alibi?”

“Servants,” said the lieutenant gloomily.

“Servants?” said Mitch brightly.

“It’s only natural,” the lieutenant said, even more gloomily.

“Right,” said Mitch Brown. “You mean it is probable that when a man and his wife are at home together only the servants will see them there. But it isn’t so probable that a stranger will take in a drunken woman, and leave her to heaven…simply because he feels like giving a human being a break. So this is a study in probability, is it?”

The lieutenant’s mouth moved and Mitch said quickly, “But you want the facts, eh? Okay. The only thing for us to do is go and talk to the bartender.”

“That seems to be it,” said the lieutenant promptly. “Right.”

Maxwell said, “Right. Wait for us.”

He rose and went to fetch his wife. Mitch stood beside the lieutenant. “Fingerprints?” he murmured. The Lieutenant shrugged. Under those weary eyelids, Mitch judged, the eyes were human. “She has a car? Was the car out?” The lieutenant shrugged again. “Who else would shoot this Carlisle? Any enemies?”

“Who hasn’t?” the lieutenant said. “We better check with this bartender.”

The four of them went in the lieutenant’s car. The Parakeet Bar and Grill was doing well this evening. It looked brighter and more prosperous. Toby the bartender was there. “Hi, Mr. Brown,” he said.

“Long time no see.”

“I’ve been back East. Tell this man, Toby, what happened around one thirty on the morning of March seventeenth.”

“Huh?” said Toby. The flesh of his cheeks seemed to go flatter.

His eye went duller. Suddenly Mitch knew what was going to happen.

“You see this man or this lady in here between one, two o’clock in the morning last March seventeenth?” said the lieutenant and added, “I’m Lieutenant Prince, LAPD.”

“No, sir,” said Toby. “I know Mr. Brown, of course. He comes in now and again, see? Lives around here. A writer, he is. But I don’t remember I ever seen this lady before.”

“What about Brown? Was he in here that night or that morning?”

“I don’t think so,” said Toby. “That’s the night, now that I think back — yeah, my kid was sick and I shut the place up earlier than usual. Ask my wife,” said Toby the bartender with the fixed righteous gaze of the liar.

Lieutenant Prince turned his long face, his sad eyelids, on Mitch Brown.

Mitch Brown was grinning. “Oh, no!” he said. “Not the old Paris Exposition gag!” He leaned on the bar and emitted silent laughter.

“What are you talking about?” Lieutenant Prince said sourly. “You give me corroboration for this story you’re telling. Who can tell me about it? Who saw you and this lady that night?”

“Nobody. Nobody,” said Mitch genially. “The streets were empty.

Nobody was around. Well! I wouldn’t have believed it! The old Paris Exposition gag!”

The lieutenant made an exasperated sound.

Mitch said gaily, “Don’t you remember that one? There’s this girl and her mother. They go to a Paris hotel. Separate rooms. Girl wakes up in the morning, no mother. Nobody ever saw any mother. No mother’s name on the register. No room’s got the mother’s number.

Wait. No — that wasn’t it. There was a room, but the wallpaper was different.”

Julius Maxwell said, “A writer”—as if that explained everything.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” said Mitch cheerfully, “and tell each other stories?”

His suggestion was accepted. Natalie Maxwell slipped into a booth first; she was blond, expensive, protected…and numb. (Is she doped up with tranquilizers or what? Mitch wondered.) Her husband sat on her right and the policeman sat on her left.

Mitch slid in the other side of the Law and faced his adversary.

Mitch Brown’s mood was by no means as jaunty as his words had implied. He didn’t like the idea of being the victim of the old Paris Exposition gag. But he was not rattled or panicky. On the contrary, his mind began to reconnoiter the enemy. Julius Maxwell, flamboyantly successful — Mitch savored the flavor of the man’s reputation.

The buccaneer type, ruthless and bold. Julius Maxwell — with money like a club in his hand. Going to make a fool out of Mitchel Brown.

Also, there was the little matter of justice. Or mercy.

Mitch felt his wings begin to rustle again.

He said to the woman, gently, “Would you care for something?

A highball?”

“I don’t drink,” said Natalie primly. Her lashes came down. Her tongue touched her lips.

Mitch Brown ran his tongue over his upper lip, very thoughtfully.

Julius Maxwell’s energy was barely contained in this place.

“Never mind the refreshments,” he said. “Get to it. This young man, whoever he is, spotted my wife and knew her from the publicity.

He knows I am a rich man. So he thought he’d try a big lie. For the sake of the nuisance value, he thought I’d pay something. Well, an opportunist,” said Julius with a nasty smile, “I can understand.”

“I doubt if you understand me,” said Mitch quietly. “I’m sure you don’t realize how old hat that Paris Exposition story is.”

“What has any Paris Exposition got to do with it?” snapped Julius.

“Now look here, Lieutenant Prince. Can I prosecute this man?”

“You can’t prove extortion,” said the lieutenant gloomily. “You should have let him take the money, with witnesses.”

“He couldn’t do that,” said Mitch, “because he knows the thought of money never crossed my mind.”

The lieutenant’s eyes closed all the way in great weariness. They opened again and it was apparent that he believed nothing and nobody, yet. “Want to get this straight. Now you say, Mr. Maxwell—”

Julius said, “I say that my wife was at home that evening and all night, as the servants also say, and as the authorities know. So this man is a liar. Who can say why? It is plain that he can’t bring anyone or anything to corroborate this yarn he is telling. The bartender denies it. And, if you ask me, the most ridiculous thing he says is his claim that he hasn’t read the newspapers for six weeks. Shows you the fantastic kind of mind he’s got.”

The lieutenant, without comment, turned to Mitch. “And you say—”

“I say,” said Mitch, “that I have been in New York City since the seventeenth of March, attending rehearsals of my play and its opening night.”

“A playwriter,” said Julius.

“A play wright,” corrected Mitch. “I guess you don’t know what that is. For one thing, it is a person committed to trying to understand human beings. Oddly enough, even you.” Mitch leaned over the table. “You are the bold buccaneer, so I’ve heard. You’ve pirated money out of the world and now you think money can buy whatever you want. Suppose I tell your story?”

Julius Maxwell now had a faint sneering smile, but Mitch noted that Natalie had her eyes open. Perhaps her ears were open too.

Mitch plunged on.

“Your wife drove down here and shot her ex,” he said brutally.

(Natalie did not even wince.) “Well, now…” Mitch’s imagination began to function, from long practice. “I suppose that Natalie felt bad enough, upset enough, maybe even sorry enough, to need a drink and to take too many drinks until she forgot her troubles.”

Natalie was looking at him. “But when she woke up in my apartment she ran — ran to her car which she must have had. Ran home. Ah, well, what else could she do?” Mitch mused aloud. “She had done this awful thing. Somebody would have to help her.”

(Was Natalie holding her breath?)

“Who would help her?” Mitch said sharply. “You would, Maxwell.

Why? I’ll tell you why. You are not the type to want any wife of yours and the accent is on yours—to die in a gas chamber for murder.

She’d done something stupid. You bawled her out, I imagine, for the stupidity of it. But you told her not to worry. She was yours, so you would fix it. Money can buy anything. She must do exactly as you say, and then she could forget it.” Mitch hesitated. “Did you think she could forget it?” he murmured.

Nobody moved or spoke, so Mitch went on. “Well, you got to work. You bribed the servants. Bribed Toby, here. And you checked all around and discovered that there was only one other person who could reveal that she really had no alibi. That was a playwright. Oh, you checked on me too. Sure you did. You knew very well where I was and what I was doing. You found out the day and the hour I was due back in Los Angeles.”

Lieutenant Prince snorted. “Sounds nuts,” he broke in. “You say he’s been bribing everybody? Why didn’t he bribe you?”

Mitch turned a glazed eye on him. “Trouble was, I hadn’t read the papers. I didn’t know that I knew. So how could he bribe me? He put me down for an idiot,” said Mitch. “For what sane person doesn’t read the paper for six weeks? And then he thought of a way.”

Mitch addressed himself to Maxwell. “You had some hireling watching my apartment. And you and Natalie were ready and waiting, and quite nearby.” Mitch sensed the policeman’s shrug coming and he added quickly, “Otherwise, how come the very first day I’m in town I run into Natalie, and Natalie in exactly the same clothes?”

“Who says they’re the same,” said Maxwell smoothly, “except you?”

“She came into the restaurant,” said Mitch, “alone.”

“Since I had a phone call to make…”

“Alone,” Mitch persisted, ignoring the interruption, “and why?

To encourage me to come over and speak to her. That’s why the same clothes — to make sure I’d recognize her again. After she pulls the blank on me, Maxwell moves in. You, knowing how deep you’ve bribed your defenses behind you, press me into the position of looking like an opportunist — possibly like an extortionist. ‘Brown’s a writer,’ you say to yourself. Which is ‘a nut,’ in your book. ‘Nobody is going to believe a word he says.’ You’ll discredit me. You’ll rig a little scene. You’ll call a real policeman for a witness.”

“Why?” croaked the lieutenant.

Mitch was startled. “Why what?”

“Why cook all this up and call me?”

“Simple,” Mitch said. “What if I had finally read the papers and recognized her name? What if I had come to you? What am I then?

A good citizen. Isn’t that so? This way, he’s made it look as if I came to them. Making me look like an opportunist. And he’s the good citizen who called you in.”

Air came out of the lieutenant, signifying nothing.

“What a wacky scheme!” Mitch said it first. (Damn it, it was wacky.

It wasn’t going to sound probable.) “How unrealistic you are!” he taunted desperately.

Maxwell sat there smugly. “You’ve got the imagination, all right,”

he said with a wry smile. “Wild one.”

Then the policeman surprised them both. “Wait a minute, Brown.

You’re saying that Maxwell knows his wife is the killer. That he’s acting as accessory after the fact? You mean to say that?”

Mitch hesitated.

Maxwell said, “He hasn’t thought it out. Listen, he is just spinning a yarn, Lieutenant. He was challenged to do it. He’s proving that he’s clever. And that he is — for fiction. Call it a good try.”

Mitch saw his way pointed out for him.

“Or, possibly,” said Maxwell after a moment, “he was only trying to pick up a good-looking woman.” Maxwell showed his teeth in a smile.

Mitch understood — he was being shown how to save face. It was very seductive. Not only that, he was aware that if he went along, the power, the money, the influence here, there, and everywhere, would work to Mitchel Brown’s commercial advantage.

So he said slowly, “I know that he is a liar. I believe that he is an accessory after the fact. Yes, that’s what I mean to say.”

Julius Maxwell’s face darkened, “Prove it,” he snapped. “Because if you just tell it, I will have legal recourse, and I will have your skin.

I don’t sit still to be called a liar.”

Mitch looked up and said with an air of pure detached curiosity,

“What ever made you think that I would?”

“Look, give me something,” said the lieutenant with sudden anger,

“give me something to go on.”

Maxwell said contemptuously, “He can’t. It’s all moonshine.”

Mitch was scrambling for something that would help him. “I never thought of a car,” he murmured. “But I should have guessed from the shoes she wears, that she hadn’t walked here. I don’t suppose she has walked much since she married so much money.”

Mitch knew that Maxwell was swelling up with rage, or simulated rage. But he thought that Natalie was listening. It came to him, with conviction, that in spite of everything she was a human being.

So he looked at her and said, “Why did you leave this Joe Carlisle, I wonder? What kind of man was he? Did you quarrel? Did you hate him? How did he still have the power to hurt you that much?”

She looked at him, lips parted, eyes bright, startled. Her husband was on the point of getting up and hitting someone, and Mitch knew whom.

Lieutenant Prince said, “Sit down, Maxwell.” He said to Mitch,

“And you, hold on to your tongue. Don’t analyze me any characters.

Or emote me any motives. She’s got an alibi unless you can break it, and evidence is what the law requires.”

“But what about my motive for lying?” Mitch demanded. “Money?

That’s ridiculous!” He stopped, staring. Natalie Maxwell had opened her bag, taken out a lipstick. Murder, prison…she paints her mouth. Slander, blackmail…she paints her mouth. How probable was that?

“Give me proof,” the lieutenant said angrily.

“In a minute,” Mitch said, as his heart bounced upward. He leaned back. “Let me pursue the theme of money. I imagine Natalie’s got whatever money can buy. Her living is paid for. She has charge accounts.”

Maxwell said, “Let’s go. He’s rambling now.”

The lieutenant began to push at Mitch’s thigh, nudging him out of the booth.

“Know what I can prove?” Mitch said.

“What?” said the lieutenant.

“That I was working in my apartment all that day and into the night on the sixteenth, seventeenth of March. Those walls are cardboard and I am a nuisance — well known in the building.”

“So you were working,” said the policeman. “What of it?”

“I wasn’t in Santa Barbara,” said Mitch cheerfully. He reached over and plucked up Natalie’s handbag, the green one that matched the shoes.

“Now just a minute,” Maxwell growled.

“See if her checkbook is in there,” said Mitch, pushing the bag at the Lieutenant. “It’s a fat one. Her name’s printed on it, and all that: I don’t think she has much occasion to write checks. It may be the same one.”

The lieutenant had his hands on the bag, but he looked unen-lightened.

“Look at it. It’s evidence,” Mitch said.

The lieutenant’s hands moved and Maxwell said, “I’m not sure you have the right…” But the policeman’s weary lids came up, only briefly, and Maxwell was silent.

The lieutenant took out a checkbook. “It’s fat,” he said. “Starts February twenty-first. What of it?”

Mitch Brown leaned his head on the red leatherette and kept his eyes high. “Nobody on earth…unless Natalie remembers, which I doubt…but nobody else on earth can know what the balance on her check stubs was on Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning.

Even her bank couldn’t know. But what if I know? How could I? Because I looked, while she was snoring on my sofa and I had to find out who she was and how I could help her and whether she needed any money.”

The lieutenant’s hand riffled the stubs. “Well?”

“Shall I name it for you? To the penny?” Mitch was sweating.

“Four thousand six hundred and fourteen dollars, and sixty-one cents,” he said slowly and carefully.

“Right,” snapped the lieutenant and his eyes came up, wide-open and baleful on Julius Maxwell.

But Mitch Brown was not heeding and felt no triumph. “Natalie,”

he said, “I’m sorry. I wanted to give you a break. I didn’t know what the trouble was. I wish you could have told me.”

Her newly reddened lips were trembling.

“Not so I could buy off the consequences,” Mitch said. “I’d have called the police. But I would have listened.”

Natalie put her blond head down on the red-checked tablecloth where it had once rested before. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she sobbed.

“But he kept at me, Joe did. Until I couldn’t take any more.”

Julius Maxwell, who had been thinking about evidence, said too late, “Shut up!”

The lieutenant went for the phone.

Mitch sat there, quiet now. The woman was weeping. Maxwell said in a cold, severe way, “Natalie, if you…” He drew away from contamination. He was going to pretend ignorance.

But she cried out, “You shut up! I’ve told you and told you and you never even tried to understand. You said, give Joe a thousand dollars. He’d go away. You said that’s all he wanted. You wouldn’t even listen to what I was going through, and Joe talking, talking, about our baby that was dead…starved, Joe said, because she had no mother. My baby,” she shrieked, “that you wouldn’t have, because she wasn’t yours.”

Now her pink-painted fingernails clawed at her scalp and the rings on her fingers were tangled in her hair. “I’m sorry,” she wept.

“I never meant to make the gun go off. I just wanted to stop him. I just couldn’t take any more. He was killing me…driving me crazy…and money wouldn’t stop him.”

Mitch’s heart was heavy for her. “Didn’t you know what matters?”

he barked at Maxwell. “Did you think it was mink, diamonds — that stuff?”

“The child died,” said Julius Maxwell, “of natural causes.”

“Yes, he thought it was mink,” screamed Natalie. “And oh, my God…it was! I know that now. So he said he would fix it — but he can’t fix what I know, and I hope to die.”

Then she lay silent, as if already dead, across the red-checked tablecloth.

Julius Maxwell’s face was losing color, as the policeman came back and murmured, “Have to wait.” But the lieutenant was uneasy.

“Say, Brown,” he said, “you can remember a row of six figures for six weeks? You a mathematical genius or something? You got what they call a photographic memory?”

Mitch felt his brain stir. He said lightly, “It stuck in my mind. First place, it repeats. You see that? Four six one, four six one. To me that’s an awful lot of money.”

“To me too,” the lieutenant said. “Everybody in here heard what she said, I guess.”

“Sure, heard her confess and implicate him as the accessory. Take a look at Toby, for instance. He’s had it. There’s going to be plenty of evidence.”

The lieutenant looked down upon the ruin of the Maxwells. “Guess so,” he said tightly.

Later that night Mitch Brown was sitting up to a strange bar. He said to the strange bartender, “Say, you ever know that the seventeenth of March is not Saint Patrick’s birthday?”

“What d’ya know?” the bartender murmured politely.

“Nope. It’s the day he died,” said Mitch. “I write, see? So I read.

Bits of information like that stick in my mind. I’ve got no memory for figures and yet…Know the year Saint Patrick died? It was the year 461.”

“That so?” said the bartender.

“You take four sixty-one twice and put the decimal in the right place. Of course that’s not very believable,” Mitch said, “although it really happened — on Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning. How come I knew — me a person who doesn’t always read the newspaper — the year Saint Patrick died? Well, a fellow doesn’t want to be made a fool of, does he? And probable is probable and improbable is improbable — but it’s all we’ve got to go on sometimes. But I’ll tell you something,” Mitch pounded the bar. “Money couldn’t have bought it.”

The bartender said soothingly, “I guess not, Mac.”