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

The Detective’s Dilemma

He sent his card in to me. We don’t get much of that down at headquarters. Any, you might say. They’re either dragged in, or, if they come of their own accord, they just say who they arc by word of mouth. What was on it made me raise my brows.

With a crown over it. We don’t get much of that either, down at headquarters. I was so impressed I even talked it over with Crawley, who happened to be in the room at the time, before I did anything about having him shown in. Sort of trying to get my bearings.

“What the hell do you suppose a blue blood like this could want? And he comes to us in person, yet, instead of sending for us to come to him!”

“I suppose the family rubies have been stolen,” Crawley snickered.

“In the first place, is he a real prince or is he phony?”

“There is a party by that name,” Crawley told me. “I’ve seen it in the papers once or twice. Wait a minute. I can check, so we’ll be that much ahead.”

He seemed to know how to go about it; I wouldn’t have known myself. He called some book or magazine called Who’s Who, and also some very swank club, and managed to find out what we wanted, without letting on we were the police. “Get a description while you’re at it,” I said over his shoulder.

When he got through he said, “The genuine article is about twenty-nine, nearly six feet tall, lean and light haired; looks more English than Latin.”

The cop who had brought the card in nodded vigorously and said, “That’s who’s waiting out there right now!”

“All right, then we don’t have to worry about phonies,” I said, relieved.

“Here’s a thumbnail sketch of the rest of it,” Crawley said. “His own country don’t exist any more; it was annexed by another country. He’s married to an American girl, the former Marilyn Reid. Scads of dough. Her grandfather first invented chocolate bars with peanuts in ’em. They live out at Eastport.”

“That ought to do. I hate to have to ask a lot of fool questions with a guy like this. Better not keep him waiting any more, O’Dare.”

I was almost stage-frightened by this time. I straightened the knot of my tie, polished the toe of my shoe against the opposite trouser leg, sat down and arranged a lot of papers in front of me, like I was up to my cars in work. “How does this look?” I asked Crawley nervously.

“Phony as hell — to me,” he grinned. “But he won’t know the difference.”

The cop held the door open and there was one of those breathless waits, like in a play on the stage. He came in on a cane. For a minute I thought it was just swank, but then I could see he seemed to need it. A little shaky on his legs.

I didn’t know how to address him, so I didn’t. Just nodded.

Maybe he didn’t know how to address me either, because he nodded back. He said, “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m not — very strong.”

Crawley slid a chair up, and I said, “Sorry we kept you waiting like that—”

“I don’t mind. You see, I had to come to you myself. If I’d sent for you, it would have defeated the very purpose — for which I’ve come to you.”

I said, “What can we do for you, your highness?”

He shook his head. “There are no highnesses here. I am taking out my first papers next month. But, of course, I won’t live to become a full-fledged citizen—”

I looked at Crawley and he looked at me.

Iveria had taken out a hammered gold cigarette case, with a sapphire clasp. I thought to smoke, but he didn’t open it, just passed it to me. “I may not be able to prevent it coming out that I stopped in here. In which case I shall say that I came in to report the loss of this very case. So suppose you keep it in the meantime, as an excuse. Let us say some honest person found it and turned it in. You arc holding it for me. That will explain my visit here. Is that all right with you?”

I could have told him that I was a homicide man, and not the lost-and-found department, but I didn’t. “If you want it that way, yes,” I said uncertainly. Again Crawley and I exchanged a look.

“Now, as to what I have actually come here about—” he looked from one to the other of us — “I am sorry, but I don’t intend to speak about it before more than one person. I want this held confidential between myself and just one detective or police official. Until the time comes for this one official to act upon what I have told him today. Then let the whole world know. I will be gone by then anyway. Now — can that be arranged?”

I didn’t answer him right away.

He went on, “It is very painful; it is very personal; it is so subtle it will require a man of acutest perception and greatest tact.”

I said, “Well, would you care to tell Crawley here? He’s very perceptive and tactful—”

He took just one look at him, then he turned back to me. “You have just shown yourself to be the more tactful of the two, by the very fact that you recommended him, he did not recommend you. You arc the man I want. You are the man I would like to tell this to, if I may.”

“I’m at your disposal,” I said.

Crawley took it in good part. He said. “See you later,” and eased out.

“And now—”

“Inspector Burke,” I supplied.

“And now. Inspector Burke—” He opened his fluffy llama’s wool coat, took a thick manila envelope soldered with sealing wax out of its inner pocket. “This is an affidavit, duly notarized, which, however, merely restates what I am about to tell you verbally. It will bear more weight later than a verbal accusation, particularly after I am no longer alive. You will put it away please until the time comes for you to make use of it. Write your own name on it; show it to no one.”

I scrawled “Burke, in re Iveria” across it, went over and put it in the safe, along with the cigarette case. Then I came back and waited for him to begin.

He made a steeple out of his hands. “Now it is a very simple matter. Stated in its simplest form — which, however, does not do it justice — it is merely this: I am about to be killed by my wife. But without me, you will not be able to prove that she did such a thing.”

“I won’t have to prove it, I’ll prevent it—” I started to say vigorously.

He flexed his hand at me almost indifferently. “No, neither you nor I will be able to prevent it. It will surely happen. Nothing will be able to prevent it. For it is coming in such a small way. So, for all practical purposes, let us say I am already dead.”

“We don’t acquiesce in things like that over here—” I started to say, but again he overrode me. “But it is not right that she should do such a thing and remain unpunished, isn’t it so? Or at least, enjoy the fruits of her crime, enjoy peace of mind afterwards — with him. That is why I have come to you ahead of time. Even so, you will have a very difficult time proving it. Without me, you would never even be able to establish it was a murder.”

I just sat there eying him unblinkingly. Whatever else I was, I wasn’t bored. He had the verbal gift of holding you spellbound. Once the desk phone rang, and I switched the call into another room without even trying to find out what it was.

“Here is the background, so you will understand the thing fully,” he went on. “You must realize that it is difficult for me to speak of these things to another man. But for present purposes you are not a man, you are a police official—”

I considered that a dubious compliment at best, but I let it go.

“—So I will hold nothing back. I am descended from a branch of the ruling house of what was formerly Iveria. I therefore bear in my veins both the assets and the liabilities of royalty.” He smiled ruefully when he said that, I noticed.

“I met my wife, the former Marilyn Reid, three years ago in St. Moritz, and we were married there. She was supposedly enormously wealthy; both parents dead, sole heiress to the Reid peanut-bar fortune. I have seen American papers which thought it was one of those usual fortune-hunting matches, and didn’t hesitate to say so. I gave her the title, for what it was worth; she gave me the use of her money. As a matter of fact it was quite the other way around. I was the wealthier of the two by far, even at the time of our marriage. On the other hand, through bad management and her own extravagance, the enormous estate that had come down to Marilyn from her grandfather was already badly depleted at the time I first met her, and since then has dwindled away to nothing. Naturally, that isn’t commonly known. Even if it were, it wouldn’t be believed. Say ‘exiled aristocracy’ to people and they immediately think of poverty.

“The point is, I did not marry Marilyn for her money. When you see her face, you won’t have to be told why I did: she was the most beautiful girl in Europe and she still is the most beautiful in America today. Try to keep in mind — when the time comes — that she murdered me. It won’t be easy to.

“The rest is rather shabby. I will hurry over it as quickly as I can. I am ill; she married only a shadow of a man. But when a thing is once mine, I keep it. If she wanted freedom only for herself, I would give it to her. But she wants it for this — automobile speed-racer.

“In Cannes we met this Streak Harrison. She’d always had a mania for breakneck driving herself, so that gave him a good head start. What is there about boxers, airplane pilots, dirt-track racers, that makes women lose their heads? After we’d been back six months and he had ‘casually’ turned up over here himself, she asked me for her freedom. I said no.

“She was tied hand and foot, the decision rested with me, and it has brought murder into her heart. She could not buy me off; I had the fortune and she no longer had a dime of her own by that time. She could not get a divorce, because divorce is not recognized in Iveria and my entire estate is there. Nor could she have it annulled on the grounds of my hereditary disability. I took pains to warn her of that before our marriage, and there are documents in existence that will prove that. She went into the marriage with her eyes open.

“I am the last of my line. As my widow — but only as my widow — she would be sole inheritor under Iverian law.

“Now we come to my imminent murder. My affliction is hemophilia, the disease of kings. You know what that is.” I did, but he went on to illustrate anyway. “Once the blood begins to flow, there is no checking it. There is imminent death about me all the day long. Things which to you are simply an ‘Ouch!’ and a suck at the finger, to me can mean death. For instance. I am sitting here in this office with you. There is a nail on the underpart of this chair. I touch it — so — and accidentally make a little puncture on the pad of my finger. Within a few hours, if they can’t find a way of stopping it, I am done for.”

“Don’t do that again, will you?” I gasped, white-faced. I knew that chair, and there was a nail under it; Crawley had torn his pants on it once.

He smiled; he saw that he’d gotten his point across.

“But are you sure she contemplates actual murder, Iveria?”

“If I weren’t, do you think I would be here?”

“Let me ask you something. Is she a very stupid woman, your wife?”

“She is one of the most keen-witted, diabolically clever women there are to be met with.”

“Then why should she need to risk murder? Granting that she wants to be rid of you, wants to marry this Harrison and at the same time enjoy your ancestral fortune, all she needs is a little patience. As you yourself said a few minutes ago, you bear imminent death about with you all day long. All she has to do is sit back and wait—”

“You forget something. I have lived with this blood curse all my life. I know how to guard against it, take care of myself. If you or anyone else were suddenly afflicted with it, you would probably do something that would cause your death within the first twenty-four hours, you wouldn’t be used to taking precautions against it. That is the difference between us. I avoid angles and sharp-edged or pointed things. I have my hair singed instead of clipped, my nails sandpapered instead of filed, I don’t dance on waxed floors nor walk about my bedroom in carpet slippers, and so on. My father lived to fifty, my grandfather to sixty-four, and both had it. I have lived twenty-nine years with it. What is to prevent my living another twenty-nine? Another thing: she knows that so far, until now, she stands to inherit automatically, under Iverian law, in case of my death. She cannot be sure that tomorrow, I will not give away my entire estate to charity or deed it to the state, a privilege which is mine while I am still alive. She cannot afford to wait, as you think. It is a matter of days, of hours.”

That did put a different slant on it; he was winning me over. But I still had to be sure. “In this set-up you have outlined,” I said, speaking slowly, “there is invitation enough to murder. But what actual proof have you that she intends doing so?”

“I thought you would ask that, as a police official,” he smiled wryly. “I cannot give you phonograph records on which she says at the top of her voice ‘I will kill him!’ I can only give you little things, which show the way the wind blows. Tiny, trifling things. Each one in itself meaning nothing. But added to one another over a period of time meaning — murder. That is why I said I wanted to tell this to someone who was acutely perceptive, who does not need a brick wall to fall on his head before he senses something. Well, at random, here are some of these trifling things. And I am leaving out as many as I am recalling. When this Streak first came back here from Europe, he seemed very anxious to enjoy my company. He kept asking me to go out driving in his car with him. Since they loved one another, I couldn’t understand why he should be concerned with my being present. I unexpectedly agreed one day, simply to find out what it was about. At once a sort of tension came over the two of them. She quickly gave some lame excuse at the last moment, to get out of going with us; apparently it was not part of their plan for her to endanger herself.

“I figured the route he would take, stepped back in the house a moment just as we were ready to leave, and phoned ahead to a gas-station attendant that Marilyn and I both knew. When we reached there he was to tell Streak there’d been a call for him — from a lady — and he was to wait there until she called back. He’d think it was Marilyn of course.

“The mechanic flagged us and Streak fell for it. While he was in the office waiting, I said to the attendant, ‘Check over this car thoroughly and find out what’s the matter with it.’ And I got out and stood clear while he was doing it.

“He went over it quickly but expertly, and when he got through he said, ‘It’s in fine condition, I can’t find anything wrong with it.’ Then he took his handful of waste and, from long habit, began polishing up the windshield. It fell through the frame intact and shattered all over the front seat where I’d been until then. The little clamps that held it to the frame had all been unnoticeably loosened, so that any unusual pressure or impact— He would have braked abruptly somewhere along the way, or grazed a tree or a wall or another car — just enough to give it that little shaking out. He would have been with me, of course. Maybe he would have even been more hurt than I was. He could afford a few bloody nicks and gashes. I couldn’t have. I went back to our place on foot and left him there in the office still waiting for that non-existent call. I didn’t say a word to her; simply that I was not used to being kept waiting at the roadside by anyone and had changed my mind. They couldn’t tell if I knew or didn’t know.

“But that ended his participation, gave him cold feet. He never came around again. I’ve never seen him since. I know he’s lurking there unseen in the background, waiting for her to do the job and give him the all-clear signal. He may be reckless on the speedway, but he has no stomach for murder.

“All the remaining attempts have come from her. More trivial even than that, as befits the feminine genius. So subtle that — how shall I repeat them to you and make them sound like anything?”

“Let me be the judge.” I murmured.

“The other night she attempted to embrace me, wound both arms about my neck. A caress, surely? But the gesture is false, has no meaning any more between us, so I quickly ward it off in the nick of time — for that reason alone. What death lurked in that innocent sign of affection? Then I noticed a heavy slave bracelet, a bangle, that doesn’t seem to close properly on her wrist. Its catch is defective, sticks up like a microscopic spur, needs flattening. What could it do to anyone else but graze them, inflict a tiny scratch. ‘Ouch!’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear, I’ll kiss it away.’ ‘Forget it.’ But to me it would have brought death. Strange, that only on the night she was wearing that particular ornament did she try to hug me tightly around the neck. The night before, and the night after, she didn’t come near me.”

He stopped and looked at me. “More?”

“A little more. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“In a hundred ways she has tried to draw the single drop of blood from me that will eventually bring death in its wake. She introduced a cat into the house, a pedigreed Persian. Yet I happen to know that she hates the animals herself. Why a cat, then? I soon found out.” He shrugged. “You know the feline propensity for stalking, and finally clawing, at anything moving? I sat reading one night before the fire, with the cat there, and finally dozed off, as she must have hoped I would sooner or later. I opened my eyes just in time to find the cat crouched at my feet, tail lashing warningly back and forth, about to spring. My arm was hanging down limp over the side of the chair. Its claws would have raked it in a half-dozen places. A loose piece of string was traveling up my arm, drawn from behind the chair. Luckily there was a cushion behind me. I just had time enough to swing it out in front of me, use it as a buffer. The cat struck it, gashed it to ribbons. When I stood up and turned, she was behind me, holding the other end of the string she had used to bait it. What could I say? ‘You tried to kill me just then?’ All she seemed to be doing was playing with the cat. Yet I knew she had tried; I knew she must have kept flinging out that piece of string again and again until it trailed across my arm as she wanted it to.

“Whom could I tell such a thing to — and expect to be believed? What bodyguard, what detective, can protect me against such methods?”

He was right about that. I could have sent someone back with him to protect him against a gun, a knife, poison. Not against a woman playing with a cat or twining her arms about his neck. “Why don’t you leave her, then? Why don’t you get out while there is still time? Why stay and wait for it to happen?”

“We Iverias don’t give up the things we prize that easily.”

That left me kind of at a loss. Here was a man who knew he was going to be murdered, yet wouldn’t lift his little finger to prevent it. “Any more?”

“What is the use of going ahead? I have either already convinced you by the few samples I have given, or else there is no hope of my ever convincing you.”

“And now just what is it you want me to do?”

“Nothing. When it happens — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week — I will call you, while I still have the strength left, and say ‘This is it.’ But even if I fail to, be sure that it is ‘it.’ You will read in the papers, within a day or two after that, that the Prince of Iveria died from hemophilia. Some slight mishap in the home. A pin had been left in his freshly laundered shirt.

“There isn’t a living soul in the whole world, physician or layman, will believe such a thing could have been murder. But you will know better, Inspector Burke, you will know better after what I have told you today.

“Take my affidavit out of your safe, go up there, and arrest her. Force the issue through, so that she has to stand trial for it. Probably she will never be convicted. That doesn’t matter. The thing will be brought out into the open, aired before the whole world. His name will be dragged into it. Convicted or acquitted, I will have succeeded in what I set out to do. She cannot marry him nor go near him, after I am gone, without branding herself a murderess in the eyes of the whole world.”

“So that’s it,” I said softly. What a revenge.

“That’s it. He can’t have her and she can’t have him. Unless they are willing to go through a living hell, become outcasts, end by hating one another. In which case they have lost one another anyway. I am a Prince of Iveria. What once belonged to me I give up to no other man.”

He’d said his say and he had no more to say. He stood up and stretched out his hand to me.

“Good-bye, Inspector Burke. We shall probably not see one another again. Your job is to punish murder. See that you don’t fail to. You’ll do what I’ve asked you to?”

What could I do? Go up there and arrest her, to prevent it? On what charge? Wearing a bracelet with a catch that needed repairing? Playing with a pet cat in the same room he happened to be in? True, he was almost seeking the thing instead of trying to ward it off. But I couldn’t compel him to move out of his own home, if he didn’t want to. If murder was committed, even though he made no move to avoid it, even though he met it halfway, that didn’t make it any the less murder.

He kept looking at me, waiting for my answer.

I nodded gloomily at last, almost against my will. “I’ll do — whatever the situation calls for.”

He turned and went slowly out through the doorway with the aid of his cane, stiffly erect, just leaning a little sidewise. I never saw him alive again.

It came quicker than I’d expected it to. Too quickly for me to be able to do anything to prevent it. I’d intended paying a visit up there in person, trying to introduce myself into the establishment in some way, to see if I couldn’t size up the situation at first hand, form my own conclusions. He hadn’t given me any physical evidence, remember, that she was attempting to murder him, only oral. All right, granting that he couldn’t give me physical evidence, the very nature of the set-up forbade it, he still hadn’t convinced me a hundred percent. My own eyes and ears would have helped. But before I had a chance, it was already too late, the thing was over.

The second day after his visit, at nine in the morning, just after I’d gotten in to headquarters, I was hailed. “Inspector Burke, you’re wanted on the phone.”

I picked it up and a woman’s voice, cool and crisp as lettuce, said, “Inspector Burke, this is the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital at Eastport. We have a patient here, the Prince of Iveria, who would like to speak to you.”

I waited, squeezing the life out of the thing. There were vague preparatory sounds at the other end. He must have been very weak already. I could hardly hear him at first. Just a raspy breathing sound, like dry leaves rustling around in the wind. They must have been holding him up to the phone. I said, “I can’t hear you!”

Then he got words through. Four of them. “Burke? This is it.”

I said, “Hello! Hello!” He’d hung up.

I called right back. I couldn’t get him again. Just got the hospital switchboard. They wouldn’t clear the call. The patient was in no condition to speak further to anyone, they told me. He was — dying.

“You’ve got to put me through to him again! He was just on the line, so how can an extra thirty seconds hurt?”

Another wait. The hospital operator came back again. “The patient says — there is nothing further to be said.” Click.

If ever a man embraced death willingly, you might say exultantly, it was he.

I grabbed my hat, I grabbed a cab, and I went straight out there to the hospital myself, then and there. Again the switchboard operator down on the main floor blocked me. She plugged, plugged out again. “Sorry, no one can go up. The Prince of Iveria is in a coma — no longer conscious — sinking fast. I’m afraid there’s not much hope left.”

That cooled me off. If he couldn’t talk, there wasn’t much use going up. I said, “I’ll wait,” and hung around down there in the lobby for the next two hours, having her ring up at intervals to find out. There was always a chance he might rally. What I wanted to hear from him was: had she done it or hadn’t she. True, the implication of “This is it,” was she had; he’d warned me that was all he was going to say when the time came, but I had to have more than that. Probably the only material witness there would ever be against her was slipping through my fingers. I didn’t have a nail intact left on my ten fingers, the marble flooring on my side of the reception foyer was swimming with cigarette butts, by the time the two hours were up. I must have driven the poor switchboard girl half-crazy.

Twice, while I was waiting, I saw rather husky-looking individuals step out of the elevator. They were both too hale-looking to be hospital cases themselves. One was counting over a small wad of bills, the second one hitching at his sleeve as though his arm were tender. Without knowing for sure, I had a good hunch they were donors who had been called on to infuse their blood into him.

The operator tried his floor once more, but he was still unconscious so it looked as though it hadn’t helped. Even my badge wouldn’t have gotten me up — this was a hospital after all — but I didn’t want to use it, in any event.

At ten to two that afternoon the elevator door opened and she came out — alone. I saw her for the first time. I knew it must be she. He’d said she was the most beautiful girl in Europe or America. He needn’t have left out Asia or Africa. She was the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen anywhere in my life. The sort of a face that goes with wings and a halo. She was all in black, but not the black of mourning — yet — the black of fashion. She wasn’t crying, just looking down at the floor as if she had a lot to think about. So at least she was no hypocrite, I gave her that much.

As she moved through the foyer the nurse at the switchboard followed her with her eyes, a pair of question marks in them that couldn’t be ignored. She — Iveria’s wife — felt their insistence finally, looked over at her, nodded subduedly, with a sort of calm sadness. About the same degree of melancholy introspection that would go with the withering away of a pet plant in one’s garden, say, or the receipt of bad news from one’s stockbroker.

So he’d died.

I didn’t accost her, didn’t do anything about it right then. She wasn’t some fly-by-night roadhouse hostess that you grab while the grabbing’s good; she would always be where I could reach her. The patrimony of the House of Iveria, immovably fixed in the ground in mines, farms, forests, castles, would see to that. If she’d done it, plenty of time. If she hadn’t, even more time than plenty.

She went on out through the revolving door to a car waiting for her outside. Nobody else was in it but the driver. It skimmed away like a bolt of satin being unrolled along the asphalt.

The switchboard operator turned to me, and whispered unnecessarily, “He’s dead.”

It was up to me now, I was on my own. All I had was the valueless memory of a conversation and an almost equally valueless affidavit, deposed before the event itself. And my own eyes and ears and good judgment, for whatever they were worth.

There had been a pyramidal hierarchy of medical experience in attendance on him, as was to be expected, but I didn’t bother with the lower strata, took a short-cut straight to the apex, and singled out the topmost man. I did it right then and there, as soon as I’d seen her leave the hospital.

His name was Drake, and he’d treated everyone prominent who’d ever had it, which meant he got about one patient every ten years. And could live nicely on it, at that, to give you a rough idea.

I found him in some sort of a small, pleasant retiring-room reserved for the doctors on the hospital staff — it was a private institution after all — on the same floor Iveria had just died on, but well-insulated from the hospital activities around it. He was having a glass of champagne and bitters and smoking a Turkish cigarette, to help him forget the long-drawn-out death scene he’d just attended. A radio, tuned down almost to the point of inaudibility, was whispering away.

I didn’t make the mistake of thinking this was heartlessness. I could tell it wasn’t, just by looking at him. He had a sensitive face, and his hands were a little shaky. The loss of the patient had affected him, either professionally or personally or both.

He thought I was a reporter at first, and wasn’t having any. “Please don’t bother me right now. They’ll give you all the necessary details down at the information desk.” Then when he understood I was police, he still couldn’t understand why there should be any police interest in the case. Which didn’t surprise me. Whatever the thing was, I had expected it to look natural, Iveria had warned me it would, so natural I might never be able to break it down.

I didn’t give him an inkling what my real purpose was. “This isn’t police interest in the usual sense,” I glibly explained. “His Highness took me into his confidence shortly before this happened, asked me to have certain personal matters carried out for him in case of his death, that’s my only interest.”

That cleared away the obstructions. “Wait a minute, is your name Burke?” He put down his champagne glass alertly.

“That’s right.”

“He left a message for you. He revived for a moment or two, shortly before the end, whispered something to us. The nurse and I jotted it down.” He handed me a penciled scrap of paper. “I don’t know whether we got it right or not, it was very hard to hear him—”

It said on it: “Burke. Don’t fail me. This is a job for you.”

Which was a covert way of saying murder. “Yes, you got it right,” I assented gloomily and put it in my pocket. “Was his wife present when he whispered this?”

“Not in the room itself, in the outside room.”

“Did she see it afterwards?”

“No. He muttered something that sounded like ‘Nobody but him,’ so we took that to mean he didn’t want anyone but you to see it.”

“That’s right, he didn’t.”

“Sit down. Have some?” I shook my head. “Swell fellow, wasn’t he? Practically doomed from the beginning, though. They always are with that. I tried five transfusions, and I even tried this new cobra-venom treatment. Minute doses, of course. Very efficacious in some cases. Couldn’t stop the flow this time, though. You see, that’s the worst part of the hellish thing. It’s progressive. Each time they’re less able to resist than the time before. He was too weak by this time to really be pulled through—”

He’d been under a strain, and he was going to work it off in garrulousness, I could see, if I didn’t stop him; so I stopped him. I wasn’t interested in the medical aspects of the case, anyway. There was only one thing I wanted. “What brought it on this time?”

“The lesions were all over his forehead and scalp. An unfortunate chain of trivialities led to an accident. They occupied adjoining bedrooms, you know. The communicating door was faced with a large pier glass, a mirror panel. There was a reading chair in Iveria’s room with a large, bulky hassock to go with it, on which he habitually rested his feet. There was a bedside light, which should have cast enough light to avoid what happened. At any rate, he was awakened from a sound sleep by his wife’s voice crying out a name; evidently she was being troubled by a bad dream. There was such terror and grief in her voice, however, that he could not be sure it was just that and not possibly an intruder. He seized a small revolver he habitually kept bedded under his pillow, drew the chain pull of the bedside light. It refused to go on, the bulb had evidently burned itself out unnoticed since the last time it had been in use. The switch controlling the main overhead lights was at the opposite side of the room, far out of reach. He therefore jumped up without any lights, made for the mirror door by his sense of direction alone, gun in hand. The reading chair and hassock should have been far offside. The chair still was; the hassock had become misplaced, was directly in his path. It threw him. There was not enough space between it and the mirror-faced door to give the length of his prostrate body clearance. His forehead struck the mirror, shattered it; it was only a thin sheeting after all.

“It would have been a serious accident with anyone. It would not have been a fatal accident with anyone else. None of the numerous little gashes were deep enough to require stitches. But he and his wife both knew what it meant, they didn’t waste any time. She telephoned me in Montreal where I was attending a medical convention, and I chartered a plane and flew right back. But I doubt that I could have saved him even if I had been right in the same room with him when it happened. I had them remove him to the hospital and summon donors before I even started down. I gave him the first transfusion ten minutes after I arrived, but he failed to rally, continued sinking steadily—”

I wasn’t interested in the rest, only in what the original “mishap,” the starting point, had been. I thanked him and I left. This was going to be a tricky thing to sift to the bottom of, if there ever was one. Acutely perceptive? You needed to be a magnetized divining rod to know what to do!

I opened the safe and read over his affidavit before I went out there to tackle her. The affidavit didn’t bring anything new to bear on the case, simply restated what he had said to me that day in the office, only at greater length and in more detail. The incident of the loosened windshield was there, the cat incident, and several others that he hadn’t told me at the time.

With that final postscript tacked onto it, it was going to be damned effective. Plenty enough to arrest her on, book her for suspicion of murder, and hold her for trial. What went on after that, in the courtroom, was none of my business. I was a detective, not a lawyer.

I put it in my pocket and left to interview the party of the second part — the murderess.

He’d been buried in the morning — privately — and I got out there about five that same afternoon. There was no question of an arrest yet, not on this first visit anyway, so I didn’t bother looking up the locals, even though I was out of jurisdiction here. She could slam the door in my face, if she wanted. She wouldn’t, if she was smart. It wouldn’t help her case any.

It was a much smaller place than I’d expected it to be. White stucco or sandstone or something. I’m not up on those things. I turned in along the driveway on foot. It was dusk by now, and a couple of the ground-floor windows around on the side were lighted, the rest of the house was blacked-out.

There was a high-powered knee-high foreign car outside the entrance. It wasn’t the one she had driven away from the hospital in. It looked like the kind of a job that would belong to a professional auto racer — if he could afford it. I whistled soundlessly, thought: “Whew! Already?” It was almost too good to be true. Maybe this case wasn’t going to be such a tough baby to crack after all. One sure thing, she was writing herself up a bad press, if things ever got as far as a jury, by doing this sort of thing. They should have at least let Iveria cool off overnight before they got together.

It was probably the sight of the car that kept me from ringing for admittance right away, sent me on a little cursory scouting expedition around to the side those lighted windows were on. She’d probably be sitting there all in black trying to look sorrowful, with him holding her hand trying to look consoling, and each one of them knowing the other was a damn liar.

When I got in line with them. I moved in close enough for what was behind the gauze, or whatever it was backing them, to come into focus. Just close enough, no closer. To try and take a little of the ignominy out of snooping like that, I suppose. Then I stood stock-still there on the well-kept lawn. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

It was her, all right. She was dancing around the room in there, without a partner. The way you do when you’re overjoyed, can’t contain yourself. Arms stretched out wide, in a gesture of release, waltzing, or at least swaying around. She was in a light tan dress, and it billowed out all around her as she went.

He was sitting there, watching her. I got my first look at him. He was dark haired and broad-shouldered, that was about all I could tell from out where I was. I couldn’t see much to him, just something to hang a Stetson on. Iveria’s words came back to me. “What is there about boxers, plane pilots, auto racers, that makes women lose their heads?” He was holding his head cocked at a slight angle, with an air of proud ownership, as if to say, “Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she cute?” To which my own commentary would have been, “She’s the cutest little murderess I’ve seen in an age.”

If this was how she was the very afternoon of the day he’d been buried, I couldn’t help wondering what she would have been like a week — or a month — afterwards. Probably eating picnic lunches on his grave. Why, there was no difficulty about this case, it was a pushover. I was only sorry I hadn’t brought out a warrant with me, made arrangements with the Eastport locals, and gotten it over with then and there. Whether the crime could ever be proven or not was beside the point. She was begging for arrest if anyone ever was, just on grounds of public decency.

I strode around to the front and rang. Peremptorily. A maid opened the door. I said, “I want to see the princess, or whatever she calls herself.”

She’d received her orders ahead of time. “She’s not at home to anyone—”

I felt like saying, “No, except to Barney Oldfield, Jr., in there.” Instead I elbowed her aside without another word and walked down the hall to where they were. The open doorway of the room cut an orange notch across the corridor, and I turned right at it.

She’d just finished her solo dancing. She’d come to a stop before him, but her filmy tan skirt was still swinging around from before. She was leaning her face down toward him, a hand resting on either arm of his chair. Their lips were only inches apart, and in another minute...

I just stood there taking it in. Did I say she was beautiful, before? Double it in spades, and you’re still short-suited. I couldn’t understand why nature should go to town so, all over one face, and let the others all go hang.

She became aware of me, shot up and back like something released from a bowstring. He reared his head and turned and looked at me, around the back of his chair. She said, “Who’re you?” with a sort of unintentional matter-of-factness, that came from not raising her voice high enough to suit the situation.

“Sorry to intrude,” I said. “I’ve come out here to see you. You’re d’Iveria’s widow, I believe?” I eyed the light tan dress she had on, meaningfully.

“Yes, but people don’t just walk in here—” She made an abortive gesture toward some service pushbutton or other.

“That won’t do any good,” I said. “I came here to have a talk with you, and I’m having it.”

The Harrison fellow got up at this point, ready to take part in the matter. He was taller than I’d thought. He must have had a hard time tucking away those legs under a racing car hood. He was just a kid, really. I mean, a kid of about twenty-seven. He was pretty clean-cut looking, too, for a — well, call it home wrecker or whatever you want. I was surprised. He looked like he drank milk with his meals, and when he wanted to paint the town red, went to a movie with a bag of salted peanuts in his pocket.

He started toward me, biting off something about, “You’ll have the talk when she’s ready, and not when you feel like it—”

Suddenly, something made her change her mind. Some second look at me, or more likely, some unspoken thought in her own mind. She wanted the talk right away, it couldn’t come fast enough. But without him; she didn’t want him to have any part in it, you could see that. Her arm shot out before him, barring his way. “Don’t, Streak,” she said. “I think I know what this is. You go now, will you? Call me later.” And then to me, almost pleadingly. “It’s myself you want to speak to, isn’t it? Not the two of us. It’s all right if — if he goes now, isn’t it?”

“Yourself’ll do nicely,” I said ominously.

Harrison, who wasn’t very alert at grasping nuances (a sign of honesty, they say), couldn’t get off anything better than: “Well, but—”

She went into high gear, edging and propelling him toward the room door. She kept throwing me appealing looks, as if begging me to keep quiet just a minute longer, until she could get him out of the way. At least, that was the way I translated them; I couldn’t be sure. Meanwhile she was almost crowding him out into the hall before her, saying disconnectedly, “You go now, I know what this is. It’s all right, it’s nothing. Call me later. About ten?”

The only way I could figure it was, either she wanted to hang onto his good opinion of her as long as she could, or she wanted to keep him in the clear and, ostrich-like, thought that by getting him out of here that would do it, or she thought she could handle me better if he wasn’t around to cramp her style. One thing was plain, she already knew what was coming up. And if she wasn’t guilty, how the hell could she have known? How should such an idea ever enter her head?

I let him go. It made the issue more clear-cut just to deal with her alone. He hadn’t been in the picture at all since the windshield incident, according to d’Iveria’s own affidavit. I could always get him later, anyway.

The last thing I heard her say, when she got him as far as the front door, was, “Get home all right. Don’t drive too fast. Streak, I’m always so worried about those intersections along the way.” That was sure love, to be able to think of such a thing at such a time. Well, I suppose even murderesses love someone.

She didn’t come right back to the room. She called, “I’ll be right with you, Officer!” and then ran up the stairs before I could get out there and stop her. By the time I did, she was already making the return trip down again. She hadn’t been up there long enough to do any damage. She was holding some sort of small black folder in her hand. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, except that it was no weapon of any sort.

We went back into the room where they had been originally. She was breathing rapidly from the energy she’d used just now in maneuvering him to the door and then running the stairs — or maybe it was from some other cause entirely, I don’t know. People’s breathing quickens from fear, too.

She began with beautiful directness. “I know what you’re going to say. I wanted to get him out of here before you said it. He would have come to blows with you, and gotten in trouble. I can handle it more tactfully. You’re going to say I killed Arnold, aren’t you? You’re the police, aren’t you? Only a detective would crash into a room like you did just now. I suppose you looked through the windows first and saw me dancing, because I was happy he was gone. Well, if you didn’t, that’s what I was doing just before you got here, so now you know anyway. May I see your credentials?”

I showed her my badge.

“I knew he was going to do this to me,” she said. “Yes, I’m not wearing black. Yes, I’m glad he’s gone; like a prisoner is when his term is up.” She had opened the little black folder while she was speaking, torn out a light blue tab. She was writing something on it. “Do you mind giving me your name?” she said, without looking up.

“The name is Nothing-doing-on-that-stuff.” I hitched the light blue tab out from under the midget gold fountain pen she had point-down on it, so that the last zero — there were three after the “1” — streaked off in a long diagonal ink line across the face of it. “Keep it up,” I said. “You’re saving some lawyer-guy lots of hard work.” I put it in my pocket; the blank check had Iveria’s name printed across one edge in lieu of written endorsement, so it was as incriminating as if she’d signed it.

“Then there’s nothing I can do or say that will — avert this thing, this thing that he wanted to happen to me?”

“Not along those lines. What you can do and say, for the present, is sit down quietly a minute and answer a question or two about your husband’s death. Would you mind giving me the exact circumstances, in your own words?”

She calmed herself with a visible effort, sat down, lit a cigarette and then forgot to smoke it. “I was asleep—”

“Do you recall having an unpleasant dream that caused you to cry out?”

She smiled. “One often doesn’t, even if one did. The unpleasant dream, in my case, was during my waking hours, you see—” Trying to gain my sympathy, I thought warily. “That has nothing to do with it. Please go on.”

“I heard a breakage sound that waked me, I lit the light, I saw the communicating door move slowly inward and his hand trail after it on the knob, to gain my help. It opened inward, and he kept it locked on his side—” Her eyelids dropped. “—as if afraid of me at night. I found him attempting to pick himself up, in a welter of glass shards. I saw a gun there on the floor behind him that had spiraled from his hand when he fell. I took it into my room and hid it in my dressing table—”

“Why?”

“We both knew he was doomed, instantly. I was afraid, to avoid the pain, the lingering death, that was a certainty, he would take a quicker way out.”

Which would not look quite so much like an accident? I addressed her silently.

“That’s the whole sum and substance of the matter?”

“That’s the whole sum and substance.”

“May I see this room it happened in?”

“Of course.”

I followed her up the stairs. “The local authorities have already examined it?”

“The local authorities have already examined it.”

I looked at her. Meaning, “You didn’t have much trouble convincing them, did you?” She understood the look, she dropped her eyes.

The only vestiges remaining of the “accident” were the spokes of emptiness slashed out of the mirror panel, in sun-ray formation. His head had struck it low; the upper two-thirds were still intact. The inclined reading chair was far out of the way, a good two to three yards offside. The hassock, now, sat directly before it, where it belonged. “Is this the habitual position of this chair?” But I didn’t really have to ask her that. The carpet was a soft plush that showed every mark; the chair had stood there a long time, its four supports had etched deep, ineradicable indentations into the nap where it now was. This was a mark against, not for, her. How could a bulky thing like that hassock travel three yards out from where it belonged — unaided?

I asked her that. I said I wondered.

“I don’t know,” she said with an air of resigned hopelessness. “Unless he may have kicked it away from him, in getting up from the chair to go to bed.”

I sat down in it, arched my legs to the hassock. I had to try it three times, myself, before I could land it all the way out in a line with the mirror door. And I had stronger leg muscles than he; he’d had to walk with a cane. Still, he could have done it, in a burst of peevishness or boredom.

I looked the bedside light over next. It was just a stick with a bulb screwed in at the top and a shade clamped over that. I hitched the chain pull; the bulb stayed dark.

“How is it he would not have noticed this bulb was defective before getting into bed?” I wondered aloud for her benefit. “Isn’t that what bedside lights are for, to be left on until the last?” The wall switch controlling the overheads was all the way across the room, beside the door leading out to the hall.

“I don’t know, maybe he did,” she shrugged with that same listless manner as before. “What would he want a new bulb for at that hour, if he was on the point of retiring for the night? He would have had to go downstairs for it himself, the help were all in bed by then. Or perhaps it was still in working order up to the time he turned it off. Bulbs have been known to expire passively between the time they were last used and the next time they are turned on.”

I removed the clamped shade. I tested the pear-shaped thing gingerly. It vibrated slightly beneath my fingertips, I thought. I gave it a turn or two to the right. It responded. There should have been no give there, if it was fastened as tightly into the socket as it would go. Brilliant light suddenly flooded it.

The bulb was in perfectly good condition; it had simply been given a half-turn or two to the left, sufficient to break the current.

I looked at her, keeping my hand still in it for as long as I could stand the increasing heat. Her eyes had dropped long before then.

“You say the communicating door was kept locked. Was the outside-door, to the hall, also kept locked by your husband, do you know?”

“I believe it was,” she said lifelessly. “I believe the butler, in whom my husband had the greatest confidence, used a special key to let himself in the mornings. We were — rather a strange household.”

I noticed an old-fashioned bellpull there by the bed. I reached for it. She stopped me with a quick little gesture. “I can give you the answer to what you are about to ask him, right now, myself; it will save time. He forgot his key that night, left it standing in the outside lock of the door, after he had concluded his duties for the night and left my husband. I noticed it there myself and returned it to him the next day.”

“Then anyone else in the house could—”

She wouldn’t let me finish. “Yes, anyone else in the house could have entered my husband’s room after he had gone to sleep. To do what? Give a bulb a half-turn so it wouldn’t light? Shift a hassock out of place? Don’t you think that would have been a foolish misuse of such an opportunity?”

“No. I don’t!” I crackled at her. I couldn’t have made it more emphatic if I’d tried. “If a knife had been left sticking in him, or a fine wire tightened around his throat, that would have been murder. But he died of an ‘accident.’ One little mishap led to another, as inevitably as in a Rube Goldberg freak invention.” I drove the point home viciously. “You and I are agreed on that, he died of an ‘accident!’ ” I dropped my voice. “And I’m here to find out who caused it.”

She twined and untwined her fingers a few times. “And I cannot defend myself,” she shuddered. “It is not that the charge is so hard to prove; it is that it’s so hard to disprove. This is what he intended to happen. I saw the smile on his face, even when I first found him lying there in the litter of glass. As if to say, ‘This time I’ve got you.’ I beg of you to do this much at least. Send for the maid that cleans this room. Don’t ask her any questions about the bedside light, just test her. Just — well, let me do it, may I?”

I nodded, more on guard than ever. She hitched the bellpull a certain number of times, had me replace the lampshade, lit a cigarette and flicked ashes over it.

Within a few minutes a maid appeared, not the same one who had admitted me to the house originally. “Will you dust off this little bedside light?” Iveria’s wife said casually. “Don’t take extra pains, just do it as you would ordinarily.” I noticed her wrists were both trembling slightly.

The girl took a cloth from her waistband, took a swipe around the stick part. Then she began to swivel the cloth around the shade. She was left-handed, she moved the cloth from right to left. Not only that, but she held the little appliance by the stick to steady it, so that the shade was not held fast at all, began to slip unnoticeably around a little under her ministrations. And the wire cleats that gripped the bulb moved with it of course, turning the bulb a little in its socket.

“That will do.” The girl stepped back. Iveria’s wife said to me, “Try it now.”

I jerked the chain pull. The bulb failed to light up.

She looked at me animatedly, hopefully.

“Very interesting,” I said dryly. “You were pretty sure it would happen just that way, though, weren’t you?”

I saw the hopefulness ebb out of her face little by little; her former listless resignation came back. “Oh, I see,” she said quietly, “I’m supposed to have rehearsed her to do it just that way—” She stood up, smiling wanly. “Will you excuse me for a moment? You’ll want to question her alone, I’m sure. And even if she tells you I haven’t coached her about this lamp at all, you won’t believe I didn’t anyway. There isn’t really anything I can do or say. Arnold has won; he won in life, and now he’s won in death.”

She opened the marred mirror panel, stepped through to her own room, closed it behind her.

I said to the maid, “Do you always dust off lamps that vigorously?”

She looked undecided for a moment, finally snickered, confessed, “Only when someone’s around to see. When no one’s around—” She flicked the edge of her cloth at the lampshade and back to show me.

“Tell Mrs. Iveria I’d like to see her again, if she doesn’t mind.” The girl opened the door, went in there after her, closed it again.

I creased my eyes dissatisfiedly to myself. Every new fact that appeared on one side of the ledger, brought its corollary with it on the opposite side. To a chartered accountant it might have been heaven, to a detective it was hell.

I wondered why she was taking so long to come out. I crossed to the mirror, threw it open without waiting, even though it led to a lady’s room. You couldn’t knock on the thing any more without risking bringing the rest of the glass down out of its frame.

I didn’t see them for a minute; they were over on the side of the room screened by the door, engaged in a breathless, utterly silent, almost motionless hand-to-hand deadlock over a winking little gun — I suppose the one she had taken from him the night of the accident.

I jumped in at them, caught the wrist holding it, turned the skin cruelly around. She dropped it and I caught it in my open palm. The maid stepped back, began to snivel.

I said, “Why didn’t you call me, you little fool!”

“I did call you,” she snuffled. “Pity you wouldn’t come in and find out what was the matter!”

I pocketed the revolver, said to the girl, “We don’t need you any more.” And to Iveria’s wife, “Come on downstairs.” She followed me, white as a ghost but calm now once more.

“Do we go now?” she asked at the foot of the stairs.

“You don’t suppose I’m going to leave you behind out here, after what you just tried to do.”

“That was a momentary impulse. It won’t happen again. It wouldn’t be fair to Streak, I see that now. It would be giving Arnold his victory too cheaply.”

We’d gone back to the room in which I’d first spoken to her.

“Sit down,” I said curtly. “Give yourself time to quiet down first.”

She looked at me hopelessly. “Is there anything I can do or say that will make you believe me? I had nothing to do with Arnold’s death.”

I didn’t answer — which was answer enough.

“I don’t suppose you believe that, do you?” I didn’t answer. “You’re positive that I meant to kill Arnold, aren’t you?” I didn’t answer. “He saw to it that you would be. He went to you and told you the story, didn’t he? Told it his way.”

I didn’t see any point in denying that; it was self-evident, by the mere fact of my being here. “Yes, he did.”

She let her head slowly droop forward, as if in admission of irretrievable defeat. But then she raised it again a moment afterwards, refusing the admission. “May I have the same privilege? May I tell the same story my way?”

“You’re going to have that privilege anyway, when the time comes.”

“But don’t you see it’ll be too late by then? Don’t you see this is a special case? The mere accusation in itself is tantamount to a conviction. One wisp of smoke, and the damage has been done. Streak and I can never live it down again — not if every court in the land finds insufficient evidence to convict us. That’s what he wanted, don’t you see? To blast the two of us—”

“But I’m just a detective; I’m not a judge or State’s attorney—”

“But he only told it to you, no one else at the time—”

This did get a rise out of me. “How do you know that?” I said sharply.

“Dr. Drake showed me the dying message he had them take down; it had your name on it — ‘Burke’ — it was addressed to you personally, no one else. It was easy to see he’d made you the sole repository of his confidences — until the time came to shout the charges from the roof tops. The evidence was too nebulous, there was no other way in which to do it.”

“Tell it, then,” I assented.

She didn’t thank me or brighten up; she seemed to know it would be hopeless ahead of time. She smiled wanly. “I’m sure the external details are going to be the same. He was far too clever to have changed them. He selected and presented each and every one of them so that I cannot deny them — on a witness stand for instance — unless I perjure myself. It’s their inner meaning — or rather, the slam of the story — that he distorted.”

I just sat and waited, noncommittal. I’d been through this once before. Now I was going to get it a second time. But make no mistake, I wanted to hear it. Just to see what she could do with it.

“I met Arnold in St. Moritz, and I felt vaguely sorry for him. Pity is a dangerous thing, you so often mistake it for love. No one told me what was the matter with him.”

Here was the first discrepancy. He’d said she knew ahead of time. But he’d said he had documents to prove it.

“He proposed to me by letter, from hotel to hotel — although we were both at the same resort. He used the word ‘hemophilia’ in one of them, said he knew he had no right to ask me to be his wife — I’m not a medical student. I’d never heard the word before. I thought it was some minor thing, like low blood pressure or anemia. I felt the matter was too confidential to ask anyone; after all, the letter was a declaration of love. I wrote back, using the strange word myself; I said it didn’t matter, I thought enough of him to marry him whether he was in good health or poor health.

“By the time I actually found out, it was too late. We’d already been married eight months. I stick to my bargains; I didn’t welsh. I was married to a ghost. That was all right. But then I met Streak and — I found out my heart was still single. I went to Arnold and I said. ‘Now let me go.’ He just smiled. And then I saw I hadn’t married any ghost, I’d married a devil.

“You don’t know what torture really is, the mental kind. You may have beaten up suspects at times. You don’t know what it is to have someone hiss at you three times a day: ‘You wish I was dead, don’t you?’ Until finally you do wish they were dead.

“We didn’t want a cheap undercover affair. If that was all we’d wanted, it could have been arranged. Streak was born decent, and so was I. He wanted to be my husband and I wanted to be his wife. We were meant for each other, and this ghost had to be in the way, this specter.

“Finally I couldn’t stand it any more. I said, ‘It would be so easy: why should we go on letting him do this to us?’ Streak said. ‘Don’t talk that way. We don’t want to get together by building a bridge over someone’s dead body.’ Streak’s not a murderer. Streak’s out of this entirely.”

Which didn’t prove a thing, except how much she loved him.

“They say the female of the species is more deadly than the male. I toyed with the idea. I let it grow on me. Finally it took hold, became decision. Arnold wouldn’t give me a chance to change my mind, he kept it at boiling point himself.

“Streak came around in his car, to see if he couldn’t win Arnold over by having a man-to-man talk with him alone. I knew he didn’t have a chance. I knew what a venomous, diseased mind he was up against. I was the one loosened the clamps on that windshield, with a little screwdriver, while they were both inside the house. But it missed fire.

“I tried in one or two other ways. And then suddenly I came back to my senses. I saw what it was I’d been trying to do all those weeks and months. Take away someone’s life. Murder. No matter what a fiend he was, no matter how he’d made us suffer, I saw that that was no solution. I’d only have it on my conscience forever after. Dead, he would keep me and Streak apart far more effectively than he had when alive.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? When I wanted to kill him, nothing I tried would work. Then suddenly, after I’d stopped trying, he goes off—” she snapped her thumbnail “—like that!”

I said, “D’you realize what you’ve just been saying? What you’ve just admitted? That you actually did try to murder him several times without succeeding. And now you want me to believe that this last time, that finally did succeed, it wasn’t you but an accident!”

“Yes, you’ve got to — because it’s true! I could have denied that I ever had such an idea altogether. But I don’t want to mix part truth and part falsehood. What I’ve told you is all truth from beginning to end, and I want you to believe it. I did intend killing him. I did try; then I changed my mind, gave up the idea, and an accident for which I was not responsible took his life.

“All right, now you’ve heard my side of it, as well as his. If you want me to go with you, I’m ready to go with you. Only think well what you’re doing, because once the damage is done, there’s no undoing it.”

“Suppose I go back to town now without doing anything — for the present. Say just overnight. What will you do?”

“Wait here — hoping, praying a little, maybe — until I hear from you.”

“How do I know that?”

“Where can I go? Running away won’t help; it’ll just fasten guilt on me. It’ll just bring on the ignominy he wanted Streak and me to suffer, all the faster. If we were going to run away now, we could have run away while he was still alive.”

She was right about that, of course. I speared my finger at her. “Then wait here in this house until you hear from me. Consider yourself in the custody of your own conscience. I’m going back to town now, alone. I want to think this whole thing out — by myself, away from here. I can’t think clearly when I’m this close to you. You’re very beautiful, you know. I’m a human being, I’m capable of making a mistake, and I don’t want to make a mistake. As undeniably as you arc beautiful. Iveria is just as undeniably dead.”

“It’s going to be awful,” she said, “to have it hang suspended over my head like that. Will it be very long before I know?”

“As soon as I know myself; sometime tomorrow maybe. Don’t leave the house. If the doorbell rings, and you see me standing out there — you’ll know I’ve come to take you back to face a charge of murder. If the telephone rings — that means you’re in the clear, it’s over, you can forget all about it.”

Crawley looked in at me at midnight on his way out, said. “What’s the matter, haven’t you any home?”

I motioned him on his way. “I’m trying to think something out,” I said. “I’m going to sit here if it takes all night.”

I had the deposition on the table in front of me, and the cigarette case, and the deathbed note he’d left for me. It all balanced so damnably even, his side and hers. Check and double-check. Which was the true one, which the false?

The crux of the whole thing was that final incident. That was where my dilemma lay. If it was murder, Iveria’s death demanded reparation. If it was an accident, then it proved him the devil she claimed him to be, for he himself must certainly have known it to be an accident, yet before he died he deliberately phoned me from the hospital and dictated that deathbed message emphasizing that it was murder, in order to fasten the guilt on her inextricably, wreak a lifelong revenge on her in that way after he was gone.

I reviewed the whole case from start to finish. He had walked in to us at headquarters and left an affidavit in my hands telling me he expected his wife to kill him, in the guise of a trivial accident; telling me he would say “This is it” when it happened, if she had. He’d had a trivial accident and he’d said “This is it” before he died. I went out to question her and I found her dancing for joy in the presence of the man she loved. She admitted she had tried to kill Iveria several times in the past. She denied she had tried to kill him this last time. But — she had tried to bribe me not to pursue the investigation any further. What was the evidence? A bedside bulb loosened a little in its socket so it wouldn’t light, a hassock misplaced from where it belonged.

She had left me, as if overwhelmed by this gossamer evidence, that was no evidence at all. She didn’t come back. I sent the maid after her. I went in there and I found the two of them grappling in desperate silence over a gun she had tried to use on herself. As a guilty person who felt that she had been found out might have. Or an innocent person who despaired of ever satisfactorily clearing herself. I calmed her down, listened to her side of the story, and finally left to think it over alone, telling her I would let her know my decision by coming back for her (guilty) or telephoning (exonerated).

And here I was.

And I’d finally reached one. Even though the scales remained as evenly balanced and counterbalanced as ever, to the last hairbreadth milligram. One little grain more had fallen on one side than on the other, I found when I’d concluded my review.

In the cold, early daylight peering into the office I picked up the phone and asked the sleepy headquarters operator to get me the number of the Iveria house up there in the country, where she was waiting to know.

I hadn’t heard the maid call out, from that adjoining room, and I had been fully awake. But he claimed he had heard his wife cry out in there, and he was supposedly asleep.

No; he had actually been on his way in there at the time, gun in hand, to take her life, when a combination of unexpected little mischances turned the tables on him.