A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Book That Squealed

The outside world never intruded into the sanctum where Prudence Roberts worked. Nothing violent or exciting ever happened there, or was ever likely to. Voices were never raised above a whisper, or at the most a discreet murmur. The most untoward thing that could possibly occur would be that some gentleman browser became so engrossed he forgot to remove his hat and had to be tactfully reminded. Once, it is true, a car backfired violently somewhere outside in the street and the whole staff gave a nervous start, including Prudence, who dropped her date stamp all the way out in the aisle in front of her desk; but that had never happened again after that one time.

Things that the papers printed, holdups, gang warfare, kidnappings, murders, remained just things that the papers printed. They never came past these portals behind which she worked.

Just books came in and went out again. Harmless, silent books.

Until, one bright June day—

The Book showed up around noon, shortly before Prudence Roberts was due to go off duty for lunch. She was on the Returned Books desk. She turned up her nose with unqualified inner disapproval at first sight of the volume. Her taste was severely classical; she had nothing against light reading in itself, but to her, light reading meant Dumas, Scott, Dickens. She could tell this thing before her was trash by the title alone, and the author’s pen name: “Manuela Gets Her Man,” by Orchid Ollivant.

Furthermore it had a lurid orange dust cover that showed just what kind of claptrap might be expected within. She was surprised a city library had added such worthless tripe to its stock; it belonged more in a candy-store lending library than here. She supposed there had been a great many requests for it among a certain class of readers; that was why.

Date stamp poised in hand she glanced up, expecting to see one of these modern young hussies, all paint and boldness, or else a faded middle-aged blonde of the type that lounged around all day in a wrapper, reading such stuff and eating marshmallows. To her surprise the woman before her was drab, looked hardworking and anything but frivolous. She didn’t seem to go with the book at all.

Prudence Roberts didn’t say anything, looked down again, took the book’s reference card out of the filing drawer just below her desk, compared them.

“You’re two days overdue with this,” she said; “it’s a one-week book. That’lI be four cents.”

The woman fumbled timidly in an old-fashioned handbag, placed a nickel on the desk.

“My daughter’s been reading it to meat nights,” she explained, “but she goes to night school and some nights she couldn’t; that’s what delayed me. Oh, it was grand.” She sighed. “It brings back all your dreams of romance.”

“Humph,” said Prudence Roberts, still disapproving as much as ever. She returned a penny change to the borrower, stamped both cards. That should have ended the trivial little transaction.

But the woman had lingered there by the desk, as though trying to summon up courage to ask something. “Please,” she faltered timidly when Prudence had glanced up a second time, “I was wondering, could you tell me what happens on page 42? You know, that time when the rich man lures her on his yasht?”

“Yacht,” Prudence corrected her firmly. “Didn’t you read the book yourself?”

“Yes, my daughter read it to me, but Pages 41 and 42 are missing, and we were wondering, we’d give anything to know, if Ronald got there in time to save her from that awful—”

Prudence had pricked up her official ears at that. “Just a minute,” she interrupted, and retrieved the book from where she had just discarded it. She thumbed through it rapidly. At first glance it seemed in perfect condition; it was hard to tell anything was the matter with it. If the borrower hadn’t given her the exact page number — but Pages 41 and 42 were missing, as she had said. A telltale scalloping of torn paper ran down the seam between Pages 40 and 43. The leaf had been plucked out bodily, torn out like a sheet in a notebook, not just become loosened and fallen out. Moreover, the condition of the book’s spine showed that this could not have happened from wear and tear; it was still too new and firm. It was a case of out-and-out vandalism. Inexcusable destruction of the city’s property.

“This book’s been damaged,” said Prudence ominously. “It’s only been in use six weeks, it’s still a new book, and this page was deliberately ripped out along its entire length. I’ll have to ask you for your reader’s card back. Wait here, please.”

She took the book over to Miss Everett, the head librarian, and showed it to her. The latter was Prudence twenty years from now, if nothing happened in between to snap her out of it. She sailed back toward the culprit, steel-rimmed spectacles glittering balefully.

The woman was standing there cringing, her face as white as though she expected to be executed on the spot. She had the humble person’s typical fear of anyone in authority. “Please, lady, I didn’t do it,” she whined.

“You should have reported it before taking it out,” said the inexorable Miss Everett. “I’m sorry, but as the last borrower, we’ll have to hold you responsible. Do you realize you could go to jail for this?”

The woman quailed. “It was that way when I took it home,” she pleaded; “I didn’t do it.”

Prudence relented a little. “She did call my attention to it herself, Miss Everett,” she remarked. “I wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise.”

“You know the rules as well as I do, Miss Roberts,” said her flinty superior. She turned to the terrified drudge. “You will lose your card and all library privileges until you have paid the fine assessed against you for damaging this book.” She turned and went careening off again.

The poor woman still hovered there, pathetically anxious. “Please don’t make me do without my reading,” she pleaded. “That’s the only pleasure I got. I work hard all day. How much is it? Maybe I can pay a little something each week.”

“Are you sure you didn’t do it?” Prudence asked her searchingly. The lack of esteem in which she held this book was now beginning to incline her in the woman’s favor. Of course, it was the principle of the thing, it didn’t matter how trashy the book in question was. On the other hand, how could the woman have been expected to notice that a page was gone, in time to report it, before she had begun to read it?

“I swear I didn’t,” the woman protested. “I love books, I wouldn’t want to hurt one of them.”

“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Prudence, lowering her voice and looking around to make sure she wasn’t overheard. “I’ll pay the fine for you out of my own pocket, so you can go ahead using the library meanwhile. I think it’s likely this was done by one of the former borrowers, ahead of you. If such proves not to be the case, however, then you’ll simply have to repay me a little at a time.”

The poor woman actually tried to take hold of her hand to kiss it. Prudence hastily withdrew it, marked the fine paid, and returned the card to her.

“And I suggest you try to read something a little more worth while in future,” she couldn’t help adding.

She didn’t discover the additional damage until she had gone upstairs with the book, when she was relieved for lunch. It was no use sending it back to be rebound or repaired; with one entire page gone like that, there was nothing could be done with it; the book was worthless. Well, it had been that to begin with, she thought tartly.

She happened to flutter the leaves scornfully and light filtered through one of the pages, in dashes of varying length, like a sort of Morse code. She looked more closely, and it was the forty-third page, the one immediately after the missing leaf. It bore innumerable horizontal slashes scattered all over it from top to bottom, as though some moron had underlined the words on it, but with some sharp-edged instrument rather than the point of a pencil. They were so fine they were almost invisible when the leaf was lying flat against the others, white on white; it was only when it was up against the light that they stood revealed. The leaf was almost threadbare with them. The one after it had some too, but not nearly so distinct; they hadn’t pierced the thickness of the paper, were just scratches on it.

She had heard of books being defaced with pencil, with ink, with crayon, something visible at least — but with an improvised stylus that just left slits? On the other hand, what was there in this junky novel important enough to be emphasized — if that was why it had been done?

She began to read the page, to try to get some connected meaning out of the words that had been underscored. It was just a lot of senseless drivel about the heroine who was being entertained on the villain’s yacht. It couldn’t have been done for emphasis, then, of that Prudence was positive.

But she had the type of mind that, once something aroused its curiosity, couldn’t rest again until the matter had been solved. If she couldn’t remember a certain name, for instance, the agonizing feeling of having it on the tip of her tongue but being unable to bring it out would keep her from getting any sleep until the name had come back to her.

This now took hold of her in the same way. Failing to get anything out of the entire text, she began to see if she could get something out of the gashed words in themselves. Maybe that was where the explanation lay. She took a pencil and paper and began to transcribe them one by one, in the same order in which they came in the book. She got:

Before she could go any farther than that, the lunch period was over, it was time to report down to her desk again.

She decided she was going to take the book home with her that night and keep working on it until she got something out of it. This was simply a matter of self-defense; she wouldn’t be getting any sleep until she did. She put it away in her locker, returned downstairs to duty, and put the money with which she was paying Mrs. Trasker’s fine into the till. That was the woman’s name, Mrs. Trasker.

The afternoon passed as uneventfully as a hundred others had before it, but her mind kept returning to the enigma at intervals. “There’s a reason for everything in this world,” she insisted to herself, “and I want to know the reason for this: why were certain words in this utterly unmemorable novel underscored by slashes as though they were Holy Writ or something? And I’m going to find out if it takes me all the rest of this summer!”

She smuggled the book out with her when she left for home, trying to keep it hidden so the other members of the staff wouldn’t notice. Not that she would have been refused permission if she had asked for it, but she would have had to give her reasons for wanting to take it, and she was afraid they would all laugh at her or think she was becoming touched in the head if she told them. After all, she excused herself, if she could find out the meaning of what had been done, that might help the library to discover who the guilty party really was and recover damages, and she could get back her own money that she had put in for poor Mrs. Trasker.

Prudence hurried up her meal as much as possible, and returned to her room. She took a soft pencil and lightly went over the slits in the paper, to make them stand out more clearly. It would be easy enough to erase the pencil marks later. But almost as soon as she had finished and could get a comprehensive view of the whole page at a glance, she saw there was something wrong. The under-scorings weren’t flush with some of the words. Sometimes they only took in half a word, carried across the intervening space, and then took in half of the next. One of them even fell where there was absolutely no word at all over it, in the blank space between two paragraphs.

That gave her the answer; she saw in a flash what her mistake was. She’d been wasting her time on the wrong page. It was the leaf before, the missing Page 41, that had held the real meaning of the slashed words. The sharp instrument used on it had simply carried through to the leaf under it, and even, very lightly, to the third one following. No wonder the scorings overlapped and she hadn’t been able to make sense out of them! Their real sense, if any, lay on the page that had been removed.

Well, she’d wasted enough time on it. It probably wasn’t anything anyway. She tossed the book contemptuously aside, made up her mind that was the end of it. A moment or so later her eyes strayed irresistibly, longingly over to it again. “I know how I could find out for sure,” she tempted herself.

Suddenly she was putting on her things again to go out. To go out and do something she had never done before: buy a trashy, frothy novel. Her courage almost failed her outside the bookstore window, where she finally located a copy, along with bridge sets, ash trays, statuettes of Dopey, and other gew-gaws. If it had only had a less... er... compromising title. She set her chin, took a deep breath, and plunged in.

“I want a copy of Manuela Gets Her Man, please,” she said, flushing a little.

The clerk was one of these brazen blondes painted up like an Iroquois. She took in Prudence’s shell-rimmed glasses, knot of hair, drab clothing. She smirked a little, as if to say “So you’re finally getting wise to yourself?” Prudence Roberts gave her two dollars, almost ran out of the store with her purchase, cheeks flaming with embarrassment.

She opened it the minute she got in and avidly scanned Page 41. There wasn’t anything on it, in itself, of more consequence than there had been on any of the other pages, but that wasn’t stopping her this time. This thing had now cost her over three dollars of her hard-earned money, and she was going to get something out of it.

She committed an act of vandalism for the first time in her life, even though the book was her own property and not the city’s. She ripped Pages 41 and 42 neatly out of the binding, just as the leaf had been torn from the other book. Then she inserted it in the first book, the original one. Not over Page 43, where it belonged, but under it. She found a piece of carbon paper, cut it down to size, and slipped that between the two. Then she fastened the three sheets together with paper clips, carefully seeing to it that the borders of the two printed pages didn’t vary by a hair’s breadth. Then she took her pencil and once more traced the gashes on Page 43, but this time bore down heavily on them. When she had finished, she withdrew the loose Page 41 from under the carbon and she had a haphazard array of underlined words sprinkled over the page. The original ones from the missing page. Her eye traveled over them excitedly. Then her face dropped again. They didn’t make sense any more than before. She opened the lower half of the window, balanced the book in her hand, resisted an impulse to toss it out then and there. She gave herself a fight talk instead. “I’m a librarian. I have more brains than whoever did this to this book, I don’t care who they are! I can get out whatever meaning they put into it, if I just keep cool and keep at it.” She closed the window, sat down once more.

She studied the carbon-scored page intently, and presently a belated flash of enlightenment followed. The very arrangement of the dashes showed her what her mistake had been this time. They were too symmetrical, each one had its complement one line directly under it. In other words they were really double, not single lines. Their vertical alignment didn’t vary in the slightest. She should have noticed that right away. She saw what it was now. The words hadn’t been merely underlined, they had been cut out of the page bodily by four gashes around each required one, two vertical, two horizontal, forming an oblong that contained the wanted word. What she had mistaken for dashes had been the top and bottom lines of these “boxes.” The faint side lines she had overlooked entirely.

She canceled out every alternate line, beginning with the top one, and that should have given her the real kernel of the message. But again she was confronted with a meaningless jumble, scant as the residue of words was. She held her head distractedly as she took it in:

“The text around them is what’s distracting me,” she decided after a futile five or ten minutes of poring over them. “Subconsciously I keep trying to read them in the order in which they appear on the page. Since they were taken bodily out of it, that arrangement was almost certainly not meant to be observed. It is, after all, the same principle as a jig-saw puzzle. I have the pieces now, all that remains is to put each one in the right place.”

She took a small pair of nail scissors and carefully clipped out each boxed word, just as the unknown predecessor had whose footsteps she was trying to unearth. That done, she discarded the book entirely, in order to be hampered by it no longer. Then she took a blank piece of paper, placed all the little paper cut-outs on it, careful that they remained right side up, and milled them about with her finger, to be able to start from scratch.

“I’ll begin with the word ‘fifty’ as the easiest entering wedge,” she breathed absorbedly. “It is a numerical adjective, and therefore simply must modify one of those three nouns, according to all the rules of grammar.” She separated it from the rest, set to work. Fifty health — no, the noun is in the singular. Fifty honey — no, again singular. Fifty instructions — yes, but it was an awkward combination, something about it didn’t ring true, she wasn’t quite satisfied with it. Fifty grand? That was it! It was grammatically incorrect, it wasn’t a noun at all, but in slang it was used as one. She had often heard it herself, used by people who were slovenly in their speech. She set the two words apart, satisfied they belonged together.

“Now a noun, in any kind of a sentence at all,” she murmured to herself, “has to be followed by a verb.” There were only two to choose from. She tried them both. Fifty grand wait. Fifty grand cure. Elliptical, both. But that form of the verb had to take a preposition, and there was one there at hand: “to.” She tried it that way. Fifty grand to wait. Fifty grand to cure. She chose the latter, and the personal pronoun fell into place almost automatically after it. Fifty grand to cure her. That was almost certainly it.

She had five out of the eleven words now. She had a verb, two adjectives, and three nouns left: wait, your, poor, honey, health instructions. But that personal pronoun already in place was a stumbling block, kept baffling her. It seemed to refer to some preceding proper name, it demanded one to make sense, and she didn’t have any in her six remaining words. And then suddenly she saw that she did have. Honey. It was to be read as a term of endearment, not a substance made by bees.

The remaining words paired off almost as if magnetically drawn toward one another. Your honey, poor health, wait instructions. She shifted them about the basic nucleus she already had, trying them out before and after it, until, with a little minor rearranging, she had them satisfactorily in place.

There it was at last. It couldn’t be any more lucid than that. She had no mucilage at hand to paste the little paper oblongs down flat and hold them fast in the position she had so laboriously achieved. Instead she took a number of pins and skewered them to the blank sheets of paper. Then she sat back looking at them.

It was a ransom note. Even she, unworldly as she was, could tell that at a glance. Printed words cut bodily out of a book, to avoid the use of handwriting or typewriting that might be traced later. Then the telltale leaf with the gaps had been torn out and destroyed. But in their hurry they had overlooked one little thing, the slits had carried through to the next page. Or else they had thought it didn’t matter, no one would be able to reconstruct the thing once the original page was gone. Well, she had.

There were still numerous questions left unanswered. To whom had the note been addressed? By whom? Whose “honey” was it? And why, with a heinous crime like kidnaping for ransom involved, had they taken the trouble to return the book at all? Why not just destroy it entirely and be done with it? The answer to that could very well be that the actual borrower — one of those names on the book’s reference card — was someone who knew them, but wasn’t aware what they were doing, what the book had been used for, hadn’t been present when the message was concocted; had all unwittingly returned the book.

There was of course a question as to whether the message was genuine or simply some adolescent’s practical joke, yet the trouble taken to evade the use of handwriting argued that it was anything but a joke. And the most important question of all was: should she go to the police about it? She answered that then and there, with a slow but determined yes!

It was well after eleven by now, and the thought of venturing out on the streets alone at such an hour, especially to and from a place like a police station, filled her timid soul with misgivings. She could ring up from here, but then they’d send someone around to question her most likely, and that would be even worse. What would the landlady and the rest of the roomers think of her, receiving a gentleman caller at such an hour, even if he was from the police? It looked so... er... rowdy.

She steeled herself to go to them in person, and it required a good deal of steeling and even a cup of hot tea, but finally she set out, book and transcribed message under her arm, also a large umbrella with which to defend herself if she were insulted on the way.

She was ashamed to ask anyone where the nearest precinct house was, but luckily she saw a pair of policemen walking along as if they were going off duty, and by following them at a discreet distance, she finally saw them turn and go into a building that had a pair of green lights outside the entrance. She walked past it four times, twice in each direction, before she finally got up nerve enough to go in.

There was a uniformed man sitting at a desk near the entrance and she edged over and stood waiting for him to look up at her. He didn’t, he was busy with some kind of report, so after standing there a minute or two, she cleared her throat timidly.

“Well, lady?” he said in a stentorian voice that made her jump and draw back.

“Could I speak to a... a detective, please?” she faltered.

“Any particular one?”

“A good one.”

He said to a cop standing over by the door: “Go in and tell Murph there’s a young lady out here wants to see him.”

A square-shouldered, husky young man came out a minute later, hopefully straightening the knot of his tie and looking around as if he expected to see a Fifth Avenue model at the very least. His gaze fell on Prudence, skipped over her, came up against the blank walls beyond her, and then had to return to her again.

“You the one?” he asked a little disappointedly.

“Could I talk to you privately?” she said. “I believe I have made a discovery of the greatest importance.”

“Why... uh... sure,” he said, without too much enthusiasm. “Right this way.” But as he turned to follow her inside, he slurred something out of the corner of his mouth at the smirking desk sergeant that sounded suspiciously like “I’ll fix you for this, kibitzer. It couldn’t have been Dolan instead, could it?”

He snapped on a cone light in a small office toward the back, motioned Prudence to a chair, leaned against the edge of the desk.

She was slightly flustered; she had never been in a police station before. “Has... er... anyone been kidnapped lately, that is to say within the past six weeks?” she blurted out.

He folded his arms, flipped his hands up and down against his own sides, “Why?” he asked noncommittally.

“Well, one of our books came back damaged today, and I think I’ve deciphered a kidnap message from its pages.”

Put baldly like that, it did sound sort of far-fetched, she had to admit that herself. Still, he should have at least given her time to explain more fully, not acted like a jackass just because she was prim-looking and wore thick-lensed glasses.

His face reddened and his mouth started to quiver treacherously. He put one hand up over it to hide it from her, but he couldn’t keep his shoulders from shaking. Finally he had to turn away altogether and stand in front of the water cooler a minute. Something that sounded like a strangled cough came from him.

“You’re laughing at me!” she snapped accusingly. “I come here to help you, and that’s the thanks I get!”

He turned around again with a carefully straightened face. “No, ma’am,” he lied cheerfully right to her face, “I’m not laughing at you. I... we... appreciate your co-operation. You leave this here and we... we’ll check on it.”

But Prudence Roberts was nobody’s fool. Besides, he had ruffled her plumage now, and once that was done, it took a great deal to smooth it down again. She had a highly developed sense of her own dignity. “You haven’t the slightest idea of doing anything of the kind!” she let him know. “I can tell that just by looking at you! I must say I’m very surprised that a member of the police department of this city—”

She was so steamed up and exasperated at his facetious attitude, that she removed her glasses, in order to be able to give him a piece of her mind more clearly. A little thing like that shouldn’t have made the slightest difference — after all this was police business, not a beauty contest — but to her surprise it seemed to.

He looked at her, blinked, looked at her again, suddenly began to show a great deal more interest in what she had come here to tell him. “What’d you say your name was again, miss?” he asked, and absently made that gesture to the knot of his tie again.

She hadn’t said what it was in the first place. Why, this man was just a common — a common masher; he was a disgrace to the shield he wore. “I am Miss Roberts of the Hillcrest Branch of the Public Library,” she said stiffly. “What has that to do with this?”

“Well... er... we have to know the source of our information,” he told her lamely. He picked up the book, thumbed through it, then he scanned the message she had deciphered. “Yeah” — Murphy nodded slowly — “that does read like a ransom note.”

Mollified, she explained rapidly the process by which she had built up from the gashes on the succeeding leaf of the book.

“Just a minute, Miss Roberts,” he said, when she had finished. “I’ll take this in and show it to the lieutenant.”

But when he came back, she could tell by his attitude that his superior didn’t take any more stock in it than he had himself. “I tried to explain to him the process by which you extracted it out of the book, but... er... in his opinion it’s just a coincidence, I mean the gashes may not have any meaning at all. For instance, someone may have been just cutting something out on top of the book, cookies or pie crust and—”

She snorted in outrage. “Cookies or pie crust! I got a coherent message. If you men can’t see it there in front of your eyes—”

“But here’s the thing, Miss Roberts,” he tried to soothe her. “We haven’t any case on deck right now that this could possibly fit into. No one’s been reported missing. And we’d know, wouldn’t we? I’ve heard of kidnap cases without ransom notes, but I never heard of a ransom note without a kidnap case to go with it.”

“As a police officer doesn’t it occur to you that in some instances a kidnapped persons’ relatives would purposely refrain from notifying the authorities to avoid jeopardizing their loved ones? That may have happened in this case.”

“I mentioned that to the lieutenant myself, but he claims it can’t be done. There are cases where we purposely hold off at the request of the family until after the victim’s been returned, but it’s never because we haven’t been informed what’s going on. You see, a certain length of time always elapses between the snatch itself and the first contact between the kidnappers and the family, and no matter how short that is, the family has almost always reported the person missing in the meantime, before they know what’s up themselves. I can check with Missing Persons if you want, but if it’s anything more than just a straight disappearance, they always turn it over to us right away, anyway.”

But Prudence didn’t intend urging or begging them to look into it as a personal favor to her. She considered she’d done more than her duty. If they discredited it, they discredited it. She didn’t, and she made up her mind to pursue the investigation, single-handed and without their help if necessary, until she had settled it one way or the other. “Very well,” she said coldly, “I’ll leave the transcribed message and the extra copy of the book here with you. I’m sorry I bothered you. Good evening.” She stalked out, still having forgotten to replace her glasses.

Her indignation carried her as far as the station-house steps, and then her courage began to falter. It was past midnight by now, and the streets looked so lonely; suppose — suppose she met a drunk? While she was standing there trying to get up her nerve, this same Murphy came out behind her, evidently on his way home himself. She had put her glasses on again by now.

“You look a lot different without them,” he remarked lamely, stopping a step below her and hanging around.

“Indeed,” she said forbiddingly.

“I’m going off duty now. Could I... uh... see you to where you live?”

She would have preferred not to have to accept the offer, but those shadows down the street looked awfully deep and the light posts awfully far apart. “I am a little nervous about being out alone so late,” she admitted, starting out beside him. “Once I met a drunk and he said, ‘H’lo, babe.’ I had to drink a cup of hot tea when I got home, I was so upset.”

“Did you have your glasses on?” he asked cryptically.

“No. Come to think of it, that was the time I’d left them to be repaired.”

He just nodded knowingly, as though that explained everything.

When they got to her door, he said: “Well, I’ll do some more digging through the files on that thing, just to make sure. If I turn up anything... uh... suppose I drop around tomorrow night and let you know. And if I don’t, I’ll drop around and let you know that too. Just so you’ll know what’s what.”

“That’s very considerate of you.”

“Gee, you’re refined,” he said wistfully. “You talk such good English.”

He seemed not averse to lingering on here talking to her, but someone might have looked out of one of the windows and it would appear so unrefined to be seen dallying there at that hour, so she turned and hurried inside.

When she got to her room, she looked at herself in the mirror. Then she took her glasses off and tried it that way. “How peculiar,” she murmured. “How very unaccountable!”

The following day at the library she got out the reference card on Manuela Gets Her Man and studied it carefully. It had been out six times in the six weeks it had been in stock. The record went like this:

Being a new book, it had had a quick turnover, had been taken out again each time the same day it had been brought back. Twice it had been kept out overtime, the first time nearly a whole week beyond the return limit. There might be something in that. All the borrowers but one, so far, were women; that was another noticeable fact. It was, after all, a woman’s book. Her library experience had taught her that what is called a “man’s book” will often be read by women, but a “woman’s book” is absolutely never, and there are few exceptions to this rule, read by men. That might mean something, that lone male borrower. She must have seen him at the time, but so many faces passed her desk daily she couldn’t remember what he was like any more, if she had. However, she decided not to jump to hasty conclusions, but investigate the list one by one in reverse order. She’d show that ignorant, skirt-chasing Murphy person that where there’s smoke there’s fire, if you only take the trouble to look for it!

At about eight thirty, just as she was about to start out on her quest — she could only pursue it in the evenings, of course, after library hours — the doorbell rang and she found him standing there. He looked disappointed when he saw that she had her glasses on. He came in rather shyly and clumsily, tripping over the threshold and careening several steps down the hall.

“Were you able to find out anything?” she asked eagerly.

“Nope, I checked again, I went all the way back six months, and I also got in touch with Missing Persons. Nothing doing, I’m afraid it isn’t a genuine message, Miss Roberts; just a fluke, like the lieutenant says.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with you. I’ve copied a list of the borrowers and I intend to investigate each one of them in turn. That message was not intended to be readily deciphered, or for that matter deciphered at all; therefore it is not a practical joke or some adolescent’s prank. Yet it has a terrible coherence; therefore it is not a fluke or a haphazard scarring of the page, your lieutenant to the contrary. What remains? It is a genuine ransom note, sent in deadly earnest, and I should think you and your superiors would be the first to—”

“Miss Roberts,” he said soulfully, “you’re too refined to... to dabble in crime like this. Somehow it don’t seem right for you to be talking shop, about kidnapings and—” He eased his collar. “I... uh... it’s my night off and I was wondering if you’d like to go to the movies.”

“So that’s why you took the trouble of coming around!” she said indignantly. “I’m afraid your interest is entirely too personal and not nearly official enough!”

“Gee, even when you talk fast,” he said admiringly, “you pronounce every word clear, like in a po-em.”

“Well, you don’t. It’s poem, not po-em. I intend going ahead with this until I can find out just what the meaning of that message is, and who sent it! And I don’t go to movies with people the second time I’ve met them!”

He didn’t seem at all fazed. “Could I drop around sometime and find out how you’re getting along?” he wanted to know, as he edged through the door backward.

“That will be entirely superfluous,” she said icily. “If I uncover anything suspicious, I shall of course report it promptly. It is not my job, after all, but... ahem... other people’s.”

“Movies! The idea!” She frowned after she had closed the door on him. Then she dropped her eyes and pondered a minute. “It would have been sort of frisky, at that.” She smiled.

She took the book along with her as an excuse for calling, and set out, very determined on the surface, as timid as usual underneath. However, she found it easier to get started because the first name on the list, the meek Mrs. Trasker, held no terror even for her. She was almost sure she was innocent, because it was she herself who had called the library’s attention to the missing page in the first place, and a guilty person would hardly do that. Still there was always a possibility it was someone else in her family or household, and she meant to be thorough about this if nothing else.

Mrs. Trasker’s address was a small old-fashioned apartment building of the pre-War variety. It was not expensive by any means, but still it did seem beyond the means of a person who had been unable to pay even a two-dollar fine, and for a moment Prudence thought she scented suspicion in this. But as soon as she entered the lobby and asked for Mrs. Trasker, the mystery was explained.

“You’ll have to go to the basement for her,” the elevator boy told her, “she’s the janitress.”

A young girl of seventeen admitted her at the basement entrance and led her down a bare brick passage past rows of empty trash cans to the living quarters in the back.

Mrs. Trasker was sitting propped up in bed, and again showed a little alarm at sight of the librarian, a person in authority. An open book on a chair beside her showed that her daughter had been reading aloud to her when they were interrupted.

“Don’t be afraid,” Prudence reassured them. “I just want to ask a few questions.”

“Sure, anything, missis,” said the janitress, clasping and unclasping her hands placatingly.

“Just the two of you live here? No father or brothers?”

“Just mom and me, nobody else,” the girl answered.

“Now tell me, are you sure you didn’t take the book out with you anywhere, to some friend’s house, or lend it to someone else?”

“No, no, it stayed right here!” They both said it together and vehemently.

“Well, then, did anyone call on you down here, while it was in the rooms?”

The mother answered this. “No, no one. When the tenants want me for anything, they ring down for me from upstairs. And when I’m working around the house, I keep our place locked just like anyone does their apartment.So I know no one was near the book while we had it.”

“I feel pretty sure of that myself,” Prudence said, as she got up to go. She patted Mrs. Trasker’s toil-worn hand reassuringly. “Just forget about my coming here like this. Your fine is paid and there’s nothing to worry about. See you at the library.”

The next name on the reference card was Lucille Baumgarten. Prudence was emboldened to stop in there because she noticed the address, though fairly nearby, in the same branch-library district, was in a higher-class neighborhood. Besides, she was beginning to forget her timidity in the newly awakened interest her quest was arousing in her. It occurred to her for the first time that detectives must lead fairly interesting lives.

A glance at the imposing, almost palatial apartment building Borrower Baumgarten lived in told her this place could probably be crossed off her list of suspects as well. Though she had heard vaguely somewhere or other that gangsters and criminals sometimes lived in luxurious surroundings, these were more than that. These spelled solid, substantial wealth and respectability that couldn’t be faked. She had to state her name and business to a uniformed houseman in the lobby before she was even allowed to go up.

“Just tell Miss Baumgarten the librarian from her branch library would like to talk to her a minute.”

A maid opened the upstairs door, but before she could open her mouth, a girl slightly younger than Mrs. Trasker’s daughter had come skidding down the parquet hall, swept her aside, and displaced her. She was about fifteen at the most and really had no business borrowing from the adult department yet. Prudence vaguely recalled seeing her face before, although then it had been liberally rouged and lipsticked, whereas now it was properly without cosmetics.

She put a finger to her lips and whispered conspiratorially, “Sh! Don’t tell my—”

Before she could get any further, there was a firm tread behind her and she was displaced in turn by a stout matronly lady wearing more diamonds than Prudence had ever seen before outside of a jewelry-store window.

“I’ve just come to check up on this book which was returned to us in a damaged condition,” Prudence explained. “Our record shows that Miss Lucille Baumgarten had it out between—”

“Lucille?” gasped the bediamonded lady. “Lucille? There’s no Lucille—” She broke off short and glanced at her daughter, who vainly tried to duck out between the two of them and shrink away unnoticed. “Oh, so that’s it!” she said, suddenly enlightened. “So Leah isn’t good enough for you any more!”

Prudence addressed her offspring, since it was obvious that the mother was in the dark about more things than just the book. “Miss Baumgarten, I’d like you to tell me whether there was a page missing when you brought the book home with you.” And then she added craftily: “It was borrowed again afterward by several other subscribers, but I haven’t got around to them yet.” If the girl was guilty, she would use this as an out and claim the page had still been in, implying it had been taken out afterward by someone else. Prudence knew it hadn’t, of course.

But Lucille-Leah admitted unhesitatingly: “Yes, there was a page or two missing, but it didn’t spoil the fun much, because I could tell what happened after I read on a little bit.” Nothing seemed to hold any terrors for her, compared to the parental wrath brewing in the heaving bosom that wedged her in inextricably.

“Did you lend it to anyone else, or take it out of the house with you at any time, while you were in possession of it?”

The girl rolled her eyes meaningly. “I should say not! I kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of my bureau the whole time; and now you had to come around here and give me away!”

“Thank you,” said Prudence, and turned to go. This place was definitely off her list too, as she had felt it would be even before the interview. People who lived in such surroundings didn’t send kidnap notes or associate with people who did.

The door had closed, but Mrs. Baumgarten’s shrill, punitive tones sounded all too clearly through it while Prudence stood there waiting for the elevator to take her down. “I’ll give you Lucille! Wait’ll your father hears about this! I’ll give you such a frass, you won’t know whether you’re Lucille or Gwendolyn!” punctuated by a loud, popping slap on youthful epidermis.

The next name on the list was Florence Turner. It was already well after ten by now, and for a moment Prudence was tempted to go home, and put off the next interview until the following night. She discarded the temptation resolutely. “Don’t be such a ‘fraid-cat,’ ” she lectured herself. “Nothing’s happened to you so far, and nothing’s likely to happen hereafter either.” And then too, without knowing it, she was already prejudiced; in the back of her mind all along there lurked the suspicion that the lone male borrower, Dermuth, was the one to watch out for. He was next but one on the list, in reverse order. As long as she was out, she would interview Florence Turner, who was probably harmless, and then tackle Dermuth good and early tomorrow night — and see to it that a policeman waited for her outside his door so she’d be sure of getting out again unharmed.

The address listed for Library Member Turner was not at first sight exactly prepossessing, when she located it. It was a rooming house, or rather that newer variation of one called a “residence club,” which has sprung up in the larger cities within the past few years, in which the rooms are grouped into detached little apartments. Possibly it was the sight of the chop-suey place that occupied the ground floor that gave it its unsavory aspect in her eyes; she had peculiar notions about some things.

Nevertheless, now that she had come this far, she wasn’t going to let a chop-suey restaurant frighten her away without completing her mission. She tightened the book under her arm, took a good deep breath to ward off possible hatchet men and opium smokers, and marched into the building, whose entrance adjoined that of the restaurant.

She rang the manager’s bell and a blowsy-looking, middle-aged woman came out and met her at the foot of the stairs. “Yes?” she said gruffly.

“Have you a Florence Turner living here?”

“No. We did have, but she left.”

“Have you any idea where I could reach her?”

“She left very suddenly, didn’t say where she was going.”

“About how long ago did she leave, could you tell me?”

“Let’s see now.” The woman did some complicated mental calculation. “Two weeks ago Monday, I think it was. That would bring it to the 17th. Yes, that’s it, May 17th.”

Here was a small mystery already. The book hadn’t been returned until the 18th. The woman’s memory might be at fault, of course. “If you say she left in a hurry, how is it she found time to return this book to us?”

The woman glanced at it. “Oh, no, I was the one returned that for her,” she explained. “My cleaning maid found it in her room the next morning after she was gone, along with a lot of other stuff she left behind her. I saw it was a library book, so I sent Beulah over with it, so’s it wouldn’t roll up a big fine for her. I’m economical that way. How’d you happen to get hold of it?” she asked in surprise.

“I work at the library,” Prudence explained. “I wanted to see her about this book. One of the pages was torn out.” She knew enough not to confide any more than that about what her real object was.

“Gee, aren’t you people fussy,” marveled the manager.

“Well, you see, it’s taken out of my salary,” prevaricated Prudence, trying to strike a note she felt the other might understand.

“Oh, that’s different. No wonder you’re anxious to locate her. Well, all I know is she didn’t expect to go when she did; she even paid for her room ahead, I been holding it for her ever since, till the time’s up. I’m conshenshus that way.”

“That’s strange,” Prudence mused aloud. “I wonder what could have—”

“I think someone got took sick in her family,” confided the manager. “Some friends or relatives, I don’t know who they was, called for her in a car late at night and off she went in a rush. I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t no one who hadn’t paid up yet, so I opened my door and looked out.”

Prudence picked up her ears. The fatal curiosity of hers was driving her on like a spur. She had suddenly forgotten all about being leery of the nefarious chop-suey den on the premises. She was starting to tingle all over, and tried not to show it. Had she unearthed something at last, or wasn’t it anything at all? “You say she left some belongings behind? Do you think she’ll be back for them?”

“No, she won’t be back herself, I don’t believe. But she did ask me to keep them for her; she said she’d send someone around to get them as soon as she was able.”

Prudence suddenly decided she’d give almost anything to be able to get a look at the things this Turner girl had left behind her; why, she wasn’t quite sure herself. They might help her to form an idea of what their owner was like. She couldn’t ask openly; the woman might suspect her of trying to steal something. “When will her room be available?” She asked offhandedly. “I’m thinking of moving, and as long as I’m here, I was wondering—”

“Come on up and I’ll show it to you right now,” offered the manager with alacrity. She evidently considered librarians superior to the average run of tenants she got.

Prudence followed her up the stairs, incredulous at her own effrontery. This didn’t seem a bit like her; she wondered what had come over her.

“Murphy should see me now!” she gloated.

The manager unlocked a door on the second floor.

“It’s real nice in the daytime,” she said. “And I can turn it over to you day after tomorrow.”

“Is the closet good and deep?” asked Prudence, noting its locked doors.

“I’ll show you.” The woman took out a key, opened it unsuspectingly for her approval.

“My,” said the subtle Prudence, “she left lots of things behind!”

“And some of them are real good too,” agreed the landlady. “I don’t know how they do it, on just a hat check girl’s tips. And she even gave that up six months ago.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Prudence absently, deftly edging a silver slipper she noted standing on the floor up against one of another pair, with the tip of her own foot. She looked down covertly; with their heels in true with one another, there was an inch difference in the toes. Two different sizes! She absently fingered the lining of one of the frocks hanging up, noted its size tag. A 34. “Such exquisite things,” she murmured, to cover up what she was doing. Three hangers over there was another frock. Size 28.

“Did she have anyone else living here with her?” she asked.

The manager locked the closet, pocketed the key once more.

“No. These two men friends or relatives of hers used to visit with her a good deal, but they never made a sound and they never came one at a time, so I didn’t raise any objections. Now, I have another room, nearly as nice, just down the hall I could show you.”

“I wish there were some way in which you could notify me when someone does call for her things,” said Prudence, who was getting better as she went along. “I’m terribly anxious to get in touch with her. You see, it’s not only the fine, it might even cost me my job.”

“Sure I know how it is,” said the manager sympathetically. “Well, I could ask whoever she sends to leave word where you can reach her.”

“No, don’t do that!” said Prudence hastily. “I’m afraid they... er... I’d prefer if you didn’t mention I was here asking about her at all.”

“Anything you say,” said the manager amenably. “If you’ll leave your number with me, I could give you a ring and let you know whenever the person shows up.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t get over here in time; they might be gone by the time I got here.”

The manager tapped her teeth helpfully. “Why don’t you take one of my rooms then? That way you’d be right on the spot when they do show up.”

“Yes, but suppose they come in the daytime? I’d be at the library, and I can’t leave my job.”

“I don’t think they’ll come in the daytime. Most of her friends and the people she went with were up and around at night, more than in the daytime.”

The idea appealed to Prudence, although only a short while before she would have been aghast at the thought of moving into such a place. She made up her mind quickly without giving herself time to stop and get cold feet. It might be a wild-goose chase, but she’d never yet heard of a woman who wore two different sizes in dresses like this Florence Turner seemed to. “All right, I will,” she decided, “if you’ll promise two things. To let me know without fail the minute someone comes to get her things, and not to say a word to them about my coming here and asking about her.”

“Why not?” said the manager accommodatingly. “Anything to earn an honest dollar?”

But when the door of her new abode closed on her, a good deal of her new-found courage evaporated. She sat down limply on the edge of the bed and stared in bewilderment at her reflection in the cheap dresser mirror. “I must be crazy to do a thing like this!” she gasped. “What’s come over me anyway?” She didn’t even have her teapot with her to brew a cup of the fortifying liquid. There was nothing the matter with the room in itself, but that sinister Oriental den downstairs had a lurid red tube sign just under her window and its glare winked malevolently in at her. She imagined felt-slippered hirelings of some Fu-Manchu creeping up the stairs to snatch her bodily from her bed. It was nearly daylight before she could close her eyes. But so far as the room across the hall was concerned, as might have been expected, no one showed up.

Next day at the library, between book returns, Prudence took out the reference card on Manuela and placed a neat red check next to Mrs. Trasker’s name and Lucille Baumgarten’s, to mark the progress of her investigation so far. But she didn’t need this; it was easy enough to remember whom she had been to see and whom she hadn’t, but she had the precise type of mind that liked everything neatly docketed and in order. Next to Florence Turner’s name she placed a small red question mark.

She was strongly tempted to call up Murphy on her way home that evening, and tell him she already felt she was on the trail of something. But for one thing, nothing definite enough had developed yet. If he’d laughed at her about the original message itself, imagine how he’d roar if she told him the sum total of her suspicions was based on the fact that a certain party had two different-sized dresses in her clothes closet. And secondly, even in her new state of emancipation, it still seemed awfully forward to call a man up, even a detective. She would track down this Florence Turner first, and then she’d call Murphy up if her findings warranted it. “And if he says I’m good, and asks me to go to the movies with him,” she threatened, “I’ll... I’ll make him ask two or three times before I do!”

She met the manager on her way in. “Did anyone come yet?” she asked in an undertone.

“No. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll let you know; don’t worry.”

A lot of the strangeness had already worn off her new surroundings, even after sleeping there just one night, and it occurred to her that maybe she had been in a rut, should have changed living quarters more often in the past. She went to bed shortly after ten, and even the Chinese restaurant sign had no power to keep her awake tonight; she fell asleep almost at once, tired from the night before.

About an hour or so later, she had no way of telling how long afterward it was, a surreptitious tapping outside her door woke her. “Yes?” she called out forgetfully, in a loud voice.

The manager stuck her tousled head in.

“Shh!” she warned. “Somebody’s come for her things. You asked me to tell you, and I’ve been coughing out there in the hall, trying to attract your attention. He just went down with the first armful; he’ll be up again in a minute. You’d better hurry if you want to catch him before he goes; he’s working fast.”

“Don’t say anything to him,” Prudence whispered back. “See if you can delay him a minute or two, give me time to get downstairs.”

“Are you sure it’s just a library book this is all about?” the manager asked searchingly. “Here he comes up again.” She pulled her head back and swiftly closed the door.

Prudence had never dressed so fast in her life before. Even so, she managed to find time to dart a glance down at the street from her window. There was a black sedan drawn up in front of the house. “How am I ever going to—” she thought in dismay. She didn’t let that hold her up any. She made sure she had shoes on and a coat over her and let the rest go hang. There was no time to phone Murphy, even if she had wanted to, but the thought didn’t occur to her.

She eased her room door open, flitted out into the hall and down the stairs, glimpsing the open door of Florence Turner’s room as she sneaked by. She couldn’t see the man, whoever he was, but she could hear the landlady saying, “Wait a minute, until I make sure you haven’t left anything behind.”

Prudence slipped out of the street door downstairs, looked hopelessly up and down the street. He had evidently come alone in the car; there was no one else in it. He had piled the clothing on the back seat. For a moment she even thought of smuggling herself in and hiding under it, but that was too harebrained to be seriously considered. Then, just as she heard his tread start down the inside stairs behind her, the much-maligned chop-suey joint came to her aid. A cab drove up to it, stopped directly behind the first machine, and a young couple got out.

Prudence darted over, climbed in almost before they were out of the way.

“Where to, lady?” asked the driver.

She found it hard to come out with it, it sounded so unrespectable and fly-by-nightish. Detectives, she supposed, didn’t think twice about giving an order like that, but with her it was different. “Er... would you mind just waiting a minute until that car in front of us leaves?” she said constrainedly. “Then take me wherever it goes.”

He shot her a glance in his rear-sight mirror, but didn’t say anything. He was probably used to getting stranger orders than that. A man came out of the same doorway she had just left herself. She couldn’t get a very good look at his face, but he had a batch of clothing slung over his arm. He dumped the apparel in the back of the sedan, got in himself, slammed the door closed, and started off. A moment later the cab was in motion as well.

“Moving out on ya, huh?” said the driver knowingly. “I don’t blame ya for follying him.”

“That will do,” she said primly. This night life got you into more embarrassing situations! “Do you think you can manage it so he won’t notice you coming after him?” she asked after a block or two.

“Leave it to me, lady,” he promised, waving his hand at her. “I know this game backwards.”

Presently they had turned into one of the circumferential express highways leading out of the city. “Now it’s gonna be pie!” he exulted. “He won’t be able to tell us from anyone else on here. Everyone going the same direction and no turning off.”

The stream of traffic was fairly heavy for that hour of the night; homeward-bound suburbanites for the most part. But then, as the city limits were passed and branch road after branch road drained it off, it thinned to a mere trickle. The lead car finally turned off itself, and onto a practically deserted secondary highway.

“Now it’s gonna be ticklish,” the cabman admitted. “I’m gonna have to hang back as far as I can from him, or he’ll tumble to us.”

He let the other car pull away until it was merely a red dot in the distance. “You sure must be carryin’ some torch,” he said presently with a baffled shake of his head, “to come all the way out this far after him.”

“Please confine yourself to your driving,” was the haughty reproof.

The distant red pin point had suddenly snuffed out. “He must’ve turned off up ahead some place,” said the driver, alarmed. “I better step it up!”

When they had reached the approximate place, minutes later, an even less-traveled bypass than the one they were on was revealed, not only lightless but even unsurfaced. It obviously didn’t lead anywhere that the general public would have wanted to go, or it would have been better maintained. They braked forthwith.

“What a lonely-looking road.” Prudence shuddered involuntarily.

“Y’wanna chuck it and turn back?” he suggested, as though he would have been only too willing to himself.

She probably would have if she’d been alone, but she hated to admit defeat in his presence. He’d probably laugh at her all the way back. “No, now that I’ve come this far, I’m not going back until I find out exactly where he went. Don’t stand here like this: you won’t be able to catch up with him again!”

The driver gave his cap a defiant hitch. “The time has come to tell you I’ve got you clocked at seven bucks and eighty-five cents, and I didn’t notice any pockybook in your hand when you got in. Where’s it coming from?” He tapped his fingers sardonically on the rim of his wheel.

Prudence froze. Her handbag was exactly twenty or thirty miles away, back in her room at the residence club. She didn’t have to answer; the driver was an old experienced hand at this sort of thing; he could read the signs.

“I thought so,” he said, almost resignedly. He got down, opened the door. “Outside,” he said. “If you was a man, I’d take it out of your jaw. Or if there was a cop anywhere within five miles, I’d have you run in. Take off that coat.” He looked it over, slung it over his arm. “It’ll have to do. Now if you want it back, you know what to do; just look me up with seven-eighty-five in your mitt. And for being so smart, you’re gonna walk all the way back from here on your two little puppies.”

“Don’t leave me all alone, in the dark, in this God-forsaken place! I don’t even know where I am!” she wailed after him.

“I’ll tell you where you are,” he called back remorselessly. “You’re on your own!” The cab’s taillight went streaking obliviously back the way they had just come.

She held the side of her head and looked helplessly all around her. Real detectives didn’t run into these predicaments, she felt sure. It only happened to her! “Oh, why didn’t I just mind my own business back at the library!” she lamented.

It was too cool out here in the wilds to stand still without a coat on, even though it was June. She might stand waiting here all night and no other machine would come along. The only thing to do was to keep walking until she came to a house, and then ask to use the telephone. There must be a house somewhere around here.

She started in along the bypath the first car had taken, gloomy and forbidding as it was, because it seemed more likely there was a house some place farther along it, than out on this other one. They hadn’t passed a single dwelling the whole time the cab was on the road, and she didn’t want to walk still farther out along it; no telling where it led to. The man she’d been following must have had some destination. Even if she struck the very house he had gone to, there wouldn’t really be much harm to it, because he didn’t know who she was, he’d never seen her before. Neither had this Florence Turner, if she was there with him. She could just say she’d lost her way or something. Anyone would have looked good to her just then, out here alone in the dark the way she was.

If she’d been skittish of shadows on the city streets, there was reason enough for her to have St. Vitus’ dance here; it was nothing but shadows. Once she came in sight of a little clearing, with a scarecrow fluttering at the far side of it, and nearly had heart failure for a minute. Another time an owl went “Who-o-o” up in a tree over her, and she ran about twenty yards before she could pull herself together and stop again. “Oh, if I ever get back to the nice safe library after tonight, I’ll never—” she sobbed nervously.

The only reason she kept going on now was because she was afraid to turn back any more. Maybe that hadn’t been a scarecrow after all—

The place was so set back from the road, so half hidden amidst the shrubbery, that she had almost passed it by before she even saw it there. She happened to glance to her right as she came to a break in the trees, and there was the unmistakable shadowy outline of a decrepit house. Not a chink of light showed from it, at least from where she was. Wheel ruts unmistakably led in toward it over the grass and weeds, but she wasn’t much of a hand at this sort of lore, couldn’t tell if they’d been made recently or long ago. The whole place had an appearance of not being lived in.

It took nearly as much courage to turn aside and start over toward it as it would have to continue on the road. It was anything but what she’d been hoping for, and she knew already it was useless to expect to find a telephone in such a ramshackle wreck.

The closer she got to it, the less inviting it became. True, it was two or three in the morning by now, and even if anyone had been living in it, they probably would have been fast asleep by this time, but it didn’t seem possible such a forlorn, neglected-looking place could be inhabited. Going up onto that ink-black porch and knocking for admittance took more nerve than she could muster. Heaven knows what she was liable to bring out on her; bats or rats or maybe some horrible hobos.

She decided she’d walk all around the outside of it just once, and if it didn’t look any better from the sides and rear than it did from the front, she’d go back to the road and take her own chances on that some more. The side was no better than the front when she picked her way cautiously along it. Twigs snapped under her feet and little stones shifted, and made her heart miss a beat each time. But when she got around to the back, she saw two things at once that showed her she had been mistaken, there was someone in there after all. One was the car, the same car that had driven away in front of the residence club, standing at a little distance behind the house, under some kind of warped toolshed or something. The other was a slit of light showing around three sides of a ground-floor window. It wasn’t a brightly lighted pane by any means; the whole window still showed black under some kind of sacking or heavy covering; there was just this telltale yellow seam outlining three sides of it if you looked closely enough.

Before she could decide what to do about it, if anything, her gaze traveled a little higher up the side of the house and she saw something else that brought her heart up into her throat. She choked back an inadvertent scream just in time. it was a face. A round white face staring down at her from one of the upper windows, dimly visible behind the dusty pane.

Prudence Roberts started to back away apprehensively a step at a time, staring up at it spellbound as she did so, and ready at any moment to turn and run for her life, away from whomever or whatever that was up there. But before she could carry out the impulse, she saw something else that changed her mind, rooted her to the spot. Two wavering white hands had appeared, just under the ghost-like face. They were making signs to her, desperate, pleading signs. They beckoned her nearer, then they clasped together imploringly, as if trying to say, “Don’t go away, don’t leave me.”

Prudence drew a little nearer again. The hands were warning her to silence now, one pointing downward toward the floor below, the other holding a cautioning finger to their owner’s mouth.

It was a young girl; Prudence could make out that much, but most of the pantomime was lost through the blurred dust-caked pane. She gestured back to her with upcurved fingers, meaning, “Open the window so I can hear you.”

It took the girl a long time. The window was either fastened in some way or warped from lack of use, or else it stuck just because she was trying to do it without making any noise. The sash finally jarred up a short distance, with an alarming creaking and grating in spite of her best efforts. Or at least it seemed so in the preternatural stillness that reigned about the place. They both held their breaths for a wary moment, as if by mutual understanding.

Then as Prudence moved in still closer under the window, a faint sibilance came down to her from the narrow opening.

“Please take me away from here. Oh, please help me to get away from here.”

“What’s the matter?” Prudence whispered back.

Both alike were afraid to use too much breath even to whisper, it was so quiet outside the house. It was hard for them to make themselves understood. She missed most of the other’s answer, all but:

“They won’t let me go. I think they’re going to kill me. They haven’t given me anything to eat in two whole days now.”

Prudence inhaled fearfully. “Can you climb out through there and let yourself drop from the sill? I’ll get a seat cover from that car and put it under you.”

“I’m chained to the bed up here. I’ve pulled it over little by little to the window. Oh, please hurry and bring someone back with you; that’s the only way—”

Prudence nodded in agreement, made hasty encouraging signs as she started to draw away. “I’ll run all the way back to where the two roads meet, and stop the first car that comes al—”

Suddenly she froze, and at the same instant seemed to light up yellowly from head to foot, like a sort of living torch. A great fan of light spread out from the doorway before her, and in the middle of it a wavering shadow began to lengthen toward her along the ground.

“Come in, sweetheart, and stay a while,” a man’s voice said slurringly. He sauntered out toward her with lithe, springy determination. Behind him in the doorway were another man and a woman.

“Naw, don’t be bashful,” he went on, moving around in back of her and prodding her toward the house with his gun. “You ain’t going on nowheres else from here. You’ve reached your final destination.”

A well-dressed, middle-aged man was sitting beside the lieutenant’s desk, forearm supporting his head, shading his eyes with outstretched fingers, when Murphy and every other man jack available came piling in, responding to the urgent summons.

The lieutenant had three desk phones going at once, and still found time to say, “Close that door, I don’t want a word of this to get out,” to the last man in. He hung up — click, click, clack — speared a shaking finger at the operatives forming into line before him.

“This is Mr. Martin Rapf, men,” he said tensely. “I won’t ask him to repeat what he’s just said to me; he’s not in any condition to talk right now. His young daughter, Virginia, left home on the night of May 17th and she hasn’t been seen since. He and Mrs. Rapf received an anonymous telephone call that same night, before they’d even had time to become alarmed at her absence, informing them not to expect her back and warning them above all not to report her missing to us. Late the next day Mr. Rapf received a ransom note demanding fifty thousand dollars. This is it here.”

Everyone in the room fastened their eyes on it as he spun it around on his desk to face them. At first sight it seemed to be a telegram. It was an actual telegraph blank form, taken from some office pad, with strips of paper containing printed words pasted on it.

“It wasn’t filed, of course; it was slipped under the front door in an unaddressed envelope,” the lieutenant went on. “The instructions didn’t come for two more days, by telephone again. Mr. Rapf had raised the amount and was waiting for them. They were rather amateurish, to say the least. And amateurs are more to be dreaded than professionals at this sort of thing, as you men well know. He was to bring the money along in a cigar box, he was to go all the way out to a certain seldom-used suburban crossroads, and wait there. Then when a closed car with its rear windows down drove slowly by and sounded its horn three times, two short ones and a long one, he was to pitch the cigar box in the back of it through the open window and go home.

“In about a quarter of an hour a closed car with its windows down came along fairly slowly. Mr. Rapf was too concerned about his daughter’s safety even to risk memorizing the numerals on its license plates, which were plainly exposed to view. A truck going crosswise to it threatened to block it at the intersection, and it gave three blasts of its horn, two short ones and a long one. Mr. Rapf threw the cigar box in through its rear window and watched it pick up speed and drive away. He was too excited and overwrought to start back immediately, and in less than five minutes, while he was still there, a second car came along with its windows down and its license plates removed. It gave three blasts of its horn, without there being any obstruction ahead. He ran out toward it to try and explain, but only succeeded in frightening it off. It put on speed and got away from him. I don’t know whether it was actually a ghastly coincidence, or whether an unspeakable trick was perpetrated on him, to get twice the amount they had originally asked. Probably just a hideous coincidence, though, because he would have been just as willing to give them one hundred thousand from the beginning.

“At any rate, what it succeeded in doing was to throw a hitch into the negotiations, make them nervous and skittish. They contacted him again several days later, refused to believe his explanation, and breathed dire threats against the girl. He pleaded with them for another chance, and asked for more time to raise a second fifty thousand. He’s been holding it in readiness for some time now, and they’re apparently suffering from a bad case of fright; they cancel each set of new instructions as fast as they issue them to him. Wait’ll I get through, please, will you, Murphy? It’s five days since Mr. Rapf last heard from them, and he is convinced that—” He didn’t finish it, out of consideration for the agonized man sitting there. Then he went ahead briskly: “Now here’s Miss Rapf’s description, and here’s what our first move is going to be. Twenty years old, weight so-and-so, height so-and-so, light-brown hair—”

“She was wearing a pale-pink party dress and dancing shoes when she left the house,” Rapf supplied forlornly.

“We don’t pin any reliance on items of apparel in matters of this kind,” the lieutenant explained to him in a kindly aside. “That’s for amnesia cases or straight disappearances. They almost invariably discard the victim’s clothes, to make accidental recognition harder. Some woman in the outfit will usually supply her with her own things.”

“It’s too late, lieutenant; it’s too late,” the man who sat facing him murmured grief-strickenly. “I know it; I’m sure of it.”

“We have no proof that it is,” the lieutenant replied reassuringly. “But if it is, Mr. Rapf, you have only yourself to blame for waiting this long to come to us. If you’d come to us sooner, you might have your daughter back by now—”

He broke off short. “What’s the matter, Murphy?” he snapped. “What are you climbing halfway across the desk at me like that for?”

“Will you let me get a word in and tell you, lieutenant?” Murphy exclaimed with a fine show of exasperated insubordination. “I been trying to for the last five minutes! That librarian, that Miss Roberts that came in here the other night — It was this thing she stumbled over accidentally then already. It must have been! It’s the same message.”

The lieutenant’s jaw dropped well below his collar button. “Ho-ly smoke!” he exhaled. “Say, she’s a smart young woman all right!”

“Yeah, she’s so smart we laughed her out of the place, book and all,” Murphy said bitterly. “She practically hands it to us on a silver platter, and you and me, both, we think it’s the funniest thing we ever heard of.”

“Never mind that now! Go out and get hold of her! Bring her in here fast!”

“She’s practically standing in front of you!” The door swung closed after Murphy.

Miss Everett, the hatchet-faced librarian, felt called upon to interfere at the commotion that started up less than five minutes later at the usually placid new-membership desk, which happened to be closest to the front door.

“Will you kindly keep your voice down, young man?” she said severely, sailing over. “This is a library, not a—”

“I haven’t got time to keep my voice down! Where’s Prudence Roberts? She’s wanted at headquarters right away.”

“She didn’t come to work this morning. It’s the first time she’s ever missed a day since she’s been with the library. What is it she’s wanted—” But there was just a rush of outgoing air where he’d been standing until then. Miss Everett looked startled at the other librarian. “What was that he just said?”

“It sounded to me like ‘Skip it, toots’!”

Miss Everett looked blankly over her shoulder to see if anyone else was standing there, but no one was.

In a matter of minutes Murphy had burst in on them again, looking a good deal more harried than the first time. “Something’s happened to her. She hasn’t been at her rooming house all night either, and that’s the first time that happened too! Listen. There was a card went with that book she brought to us, showing who had it out and all that. Get it out quick; let me have it!”

He couldn’t have remembered its name just then to save his life, and it might have taken them until closing time and after to wade through the library’s filing system. But no matter how much of a battle-ax this Miss Everett both looked and was, one thing must be said in her favor: she had an uncanny memory when it came to damaged library property. “The reference card on Manuela Gets Her Man, by Ollivant,” she snapped succinctly to her helpers. And in no time it was in his hands.

His face lighted. He brought his fist down on the counter with a bang that brought every nose in the place up out of its book, and for once Miss Everett forgot to remonstrate or even frown. Thank God for her methodical mind! he exulted. Trasker, check Baumgarten, check; Turner, question mark. It’s as good as though she left full directions behind her!”

“What was it he said that time?” puzzled Miss Everett, as the doors flapped hectically to and fro behind him.

“It sounded to me like ‘Keep your fingers crossed.’ Only, I’m not sure if it was ‘fingers’ or—”

“It’s getting dark again,” Virginia Rapf whimpered dragging herself along the floor toward her fellow captive. “Each time night comes, I think they’re going to... you know! Maybe tonight they will.”

Prudence Roberts was fully as frightened as the other girl, but simply because one of them had to keep the other’s courage up, she wouldn’t let herself show it. “No, they won’t; they wouldn’t dare!” she said with a confidence she was far from feeling.

She went ahead tinkering futilely with the small padlock and chain that secured her to the foot of the bed. it was the same type that is used to fasten bicycles to something in the owner’s absence, only of course the chain had not been left in an open loop or she could simply have withdrawn her hand. It was fastened tight around her wrist by passing the clasp of the lock through two of the small links at once. it permitted her a radius of action of not more than three or four yards around the foot of the bed at most. Virginia Rapf was similarly attached to the opposite side.

“In books you read,” Prudence remarked, “women prisoners always seem to be able to open anything from a strong box to a cell door with just a hairpin. I don’t seem to have the knack, somehow. This is the last one I have left.”

“If you couldn’t do it before, while it was light, you’ll never be able to do it in the dark.”

“I guess you’re right,” Prudence sighed. “There it goes, out of shape like all the rest, anyway.” She tossed it away with a little plink.

“Oh, if you’d only moved away from under that window a minute sooner, they wouldn’t have seen you out there, you might have been able to—”

“No use crying over spilt milk,” Prudence said briskly.

Sounds reached them from outside presently, after they’d been lying silent on the floor for a while.

“Listen,” Virginia Rapf breathed. “There’s someone moving around down there, under the window. You can hear the ground crunch every once in a while.”

Something crashed violently, and they both gave a start.

“What was that, their car?” asked Virginia Rapf.

“No, it sounded like a tin can of some kind; something he threw away.”

A voice called out of the back door: “Have you got enough?”

The answer seemed to come from around the side of the house. “No, gimme the other one too.”

A few moments later a second tinny clash reached their tense ears. They waited, hearts pounding furiously under their ribs. A sense of impending danger assailed Prudence.

“What’s that funny smell?” Virginia Rapf whispered fearfully. “Do you notice it? Like—”

Prudence supplied the word before she realized its portent. “Gasoline.” The frightful implication hit the two of them at once. The other girl gave a sob of convulsive terror, cringed against her. Prudence threw her arms about her, tried to calm her. “Shh! Don’t be frightened. No, they wouldn’t do that, they couldn’t be that inhuman.” But her own terror was half stifling her.

One of their captors’ voices sounded directly under them, with a terrible clarity. “All right, get in the car, Flo. You too, Duke, I’m about ready.”

They heard the woman answer him, and there was unmistakable horror even in her tones. “Oh, not that way, Eddie. You’re going to finish them first, aren’t you?”

He laughed coarsely. “What’s the difference? The smoke’ll finish them in a minute or two; they won’t suffer none. All right, soft-hearted, have it your own way. I’ll go up and give ’em a clip on the head apiece, if it makes you feel any better.” His tread started up the rickety stairs.

They were almost crazed with fear. Prudence fought to keep her presence of mind.

“Get under the bed, quick!” she panted hoarsely.

But the other girl gave a convulsive heave in her arms, then fell limp. She’d fainted dead away. The oncoming tread was halfway up the stairs now. He was taking his time, no hurry. Outside in the open she heard the woman’s voice once more, in sharp remonstrance.

“Wait a minute, you dope; not yet! Wait’ll Eddie gets out first!”

The man with her must have struck a match. “He can make it; let’s see him run for it,” he answered jeeringly. “I still owe him something for that hot-foot he gave me one time, remember?”

Prudence had let the other girl roll lifelessly out of her arms, and squirmed under the bed herself, not to try to save her own skin but to do the little that could be done to try to save both of them, futile as she knew it to be. She twisted like a caterpillar, clawed at her own foot, got her right shoe off. She’d never gone in for these stylish featherweight sandals with spindly heels, and she was glad of that now. It was a good strong substantial Oxford, nearly as heavy as a man’s, with a club heel. She got a grasp on it by the toe, then twisted her body around so that her legs were toward the side the room door gave onto. She reared one at the knee, held it poised, backed up as far as the height of the bed would allow it to be.

The door opened and he came in, lightless. He didn’t need a light for a simple little job like this — stunning two helpless girls chained to a bed. He started around toward the foot of it, evidently thinking they were crouched there hiding from him. Her left leg suddenly shot out between his two, like a spoke, tripping him neatly.

He went floundering forward on his face with a muffled curse. She had hoped he might hit his head, be dazed by the impact if only for a second or two. He wasn’t; he must have broken the fall with his arm. She threshed her body madly around the other way again, to get her free arm in play with the shoe for a weapon. She began to rain blows on him with it, trying to get his head with the heel. That went wrong too. He’d fallen too far out along the floor, the chain wouldn’t let her come out any farther after him. She couldn’t reach any higher up than his muscular shoulders with the shoe, and its blows fell ineffectively there.

Raucous laughter was coming from somewhere outside, topped by warning screams. “Eddie, hurry up and get out, you fool! Duke’s started it already!” They held no meaning for Prudence; she was too absorbed in this last despairing attempt to save herself and her fellow prisoner.

But he must have heard and understood them. The room was no longer as inky black as before. A strange wan light was beginning to peer up below the window, like a satanic moonrise. He jumped to his feet with a snarl, turned and fired down pointblank at Prudence as she tried to writhe hastily back under cover. The bullet his the iron rim of the bedstead directly over her eyes and glanced inside. He was too yellow to linger and try again. Spurred by the screamed warnings and the increasing brightness, he bolted from the room and went crashing down the stairs three at a time.

A second shot went off just as he reached the back doorway, and she mistakenly thought he had fired at his fellow kidnapper in retaliation for the ghastly practical joke played on him. Then there was a whole volley of shots, more than just one gun could have fired. The car engine started up with an abortive flurry, then died down again where it was without moving. But her mind was too full of horror at the imminent doom that threatened to engulf both herself and Virginia Rapf, to realize the meaning of anything she dimly heard going on below. Anything but that sullen hungry crackle, like bundles of twigs snapping, that kept growing louder from minute to minute. They had been left hopelessly chained, to be cremated alive!

She screamed her lungs out, and at the same time knew that screaming wasn’t going to save her or the other girl. She began to hammer futilely with her shoe at the chain holding her, so slender yet so strong, and knew that wasn’t going to save her either.

Heavy steps pounded up the staircase again, and for a moment she thought he’d come back to finish the two of them after all, and was glad of it. Anything was better than being roasted alive. She wouldn’t try to hide this time.

The figure that came tearing through the thickening smoke haze toward her was already bending down above her before she looked and saw that it was Murphy. She’d seen some beautiful pictures in art galleries in her time, but he was more beautiful to her eyes than a Rubens portrait.

“All right, chin up, keep cool,” he said briefly, so she wouldn’t lose her head and impede him.

“Get the key to these locks! The short dark one has them.”

“He’s dead and there’s no time. Lean back. Stretch it out tight and lean out of the way!” He fired and the small chain snapped in two. “Jump! You can’t get down the stairs any more.” His second shot, freeing Virginia Rapf, punctuated the order.

Prudence flung up the window, climbed awkwardly across the sill, feet first. Then clung there terrified as an intolerable haze of heat rose up under her from below. She glimpsed two men running up under her with a blanket or lap robe from the car stretched out between them.

“I can’t; it’s... it’s right under me!”

He gave her an unceremonious shove in the middle of the back and she went hurtling out into space with a screech. The two with the blanket got there just about the same time she did. Murphy hadn’t waited to make sure; a broken leg was preferable to being incinerated. She hit the ground through the lap robe and all, but at least it broke the direct force of the fall.

They cleared it for the next arrival by rolling her out at one side, and by the time she had picked herself dazedly to her feet, Virginia Rapf was already lying in it, thrown there by him from above.

“Hurry it up, Murph!” she heard one of them shout and instinctively caught at the other girl, dragged her off it to clear the way for him. He crouched with both feet on the sill, came sailing down, and even before he’d hit the blanket, there was a dull roar behind him as the roof caved in, and a great gush of sparks went shooting straight up into the dark night sky.

They were still too close; they all had to draw hurriedly back away from the unbearable heat beginning to radiate from it. Murphy came last, as might have been expected, dragging a very dead kidnapper — the one called Eddie — along the ground after him by the collar of his coat. Prudence saw the other one, Duke, slumped inertly over the wheel of the car he had never had time to make his getaway in, either already dead or rapidly dying. A disheveled blond scarecrow that had been Florence Turner was apparently the only survivor of the trio. She kept whimpering placatingly, “I didn’t want to do that to them! I didn’t want to do that to them!” over and over, as though she still didn’t realize they had been saved in time.

Virginia Rapf was coming out of her long faint. It was kinder, Prudence thought, that she had been spared those last few horrible moments; she had been through enough without that.

“Rush her downtown with you, fellow!” Murphy said. “Her dad’s waiting for her; he doesn’t know yet, I shot out here so fast the minute I located that taxi driver outside the residence club, who remembered driving Miss Roberts out to this vicinity, that I didn’t even have time to notify headquarters, just picked up whoever I could on the way.”

He came over to where Prudence was standing, staring at the fire with horrified fascination.

“How do you feel? Are you O.K.?” he murmured, brow furrowed with a proprietary anxiety.

“Strange as it may be,” she admitted in surprise, “I seem to feel perfectly all right; can’t find a thing the matter with me.”

Back at the library the following day — and what a world away it seemed from the scenes of violence she had just lived through — the acidulous Miss Everett came up to her just before closing time with, of all things, a twinkle in her eyes. Either that or there was a flaw in her glasses.

“You don’t have to stay to the very last minute... er... toots,” she confided. “Your boy friend’s waiting for you outside; I just saw him through the window.”

There he was holding up the front of the library when Prudence Roberts emerged a moment or two later.

“The lieutenant would like to see you to personally convey his thanks on behalf of the department,” he said. “And afterward I... uh... know where there’s a real high-brow pitcher showing, awful refined.”

Prudence pondered the invitation. “No,” she said finally. “Make it a nice snappy gangster movie and you’re on. I’ve got so used to excitement in the last few days, I’d feel sort of lost without it.”