Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 1, 1960

Hugh Pentecost Murder in Manhattan

An outstanding short detective novel that you will discover to be jar more “real” than most of the highly touted “realistic” tough yarns. Hugh Pentecost is one of the most conscientious and crafty writers in the mystery genre today — and still growing in versatility and in technical virtuosity...

Breakfast was always at 11 in the morning. Mike asked only one thing of the two girls, and that was that they come to breakfast and be on time. Since he never went to bed much before 5 in the morning, himself, it wasn’t asking much. Joan usually had been up for quite a while and had only coffee at the 11 o’clock session. Erika was often with Mike on his morning rounds, and when she wasn’t, she was usually on some kind of tear of her own. She’d complain sometimes about having to get up at 11. Mike pointed out that he always took a nap in the late afternoon and there was no reason she shouldn’t do the same.

“Breakfast is the only time we have for any kind of family get-together,” Mike always said. “We’re going to have it if it kills us.”

That morning I was putting the personal mail alongside Mike’s place at the table in the dining-room when Kathy Adams came in. About thirteen or fourteen years ago Kathy came to New York to make her fortune as a secretary or a model. She’s 32 now and she could still do all right as a model, except that she’s probably the most fabulous private secretary in existence, working for the most fabulous boss, and, I might add, drawing the most fabulous salary for the job. The only thing that happened over the years to mar her model-like good looks is a fine line between her blond eyebrows that’s become engraved there from a frowning concentration on the general fabulousness.

“Fine thing,” she said, “Erika’s not home.”

“Been and gone, or never came back?” I asked.

“Her bed hasn’t been slept in,” Kathy said. “I looked on the telephone pad, but there wasn’t a message.”

“Maybe Mike took it when he came in this morning,” I said.

The little groove between Kathy’s eyes deepened. “I don’t think so. I spoke to William. He says he didn’t hear anything from her.”

William is a former club steward whom Mike picked up somewhere during his travels. William does all the cooking and general housework in the place.

You might say that everyone who works for Mike does a little bit of everything. I was a cub reporter on a small New England newspaper when he picked me up. Now I do leg work for him, write some items for “Off-Mike,” his column, act as bodyguard, advance agent on his trips out of town, and general handy man. I love it. I love him, and I mean it quite sentimentally.

At 52, Mike Malvern has more energy, more brains, and more courage than any guy I’ve ever met anywhere. He can be wrong about things, but never because he was too lazy to find out the facts. His opinions may not be the same as yours, but he arrives at them from thinking, not from irresponsible emotions, and he’s afraid of no man, no power, and no influence on earth.

He is probably one of the most widely read columnists in America. He believes in God, in his country, and in calling a spade a spade — to coin a phrase. A lot of people hate him for the spade-work, but not nearly so many as love him for it. He’s never been afraid of the haters for himself, but he worries about his daughters. His wife died when Joan was born and he’d brought the girls up himself. There was one standing rule in the household, and it went for us as well as for Erika and Joan: Stay out as long as you like, do what you want, but if you’re not going to be where you say you’re going to be, phone in! If you’re not coming home when you’ve said you were, phone in!

Erika hadn’t phoned in that day. She hadn’t come home and she hadn’t phoned.

If it had been Joan I’d have worried. Erika was another dish of tea. She forgot once in a while, and Mike would call her down for it, and she’d put her arms around him and snuggle up to him, and two minutes later she was forgiven. Joan always phoned, but if she hadn’t, the lightning would have struck, and good!

William came in with the hot dishes — eggs, sausage, bacon, broiled lamb chops. Mike ate breakfast and he ate again about midnight, and that was all.

William said Erika hadn’t called in during the evening. “Not at no time,” he said.

The front door bell rang while Kathy and I were talking to him.

“You keep on with the breakfast, William,” I said. “I’ll take that.”

There were two guys at the front door I’d never seen before. One was tall and thin and looked like an up-and-coming copywriter for a smart advertising agency. The other was short, fair, and my first impression was that he was the dreamy type. Then he looked at me out of the frostiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, and I changed my mind. This one flipped a police badge on me in a little black case.

“McCuller. Lieutenant. Homicide,” he said, and put the badge away.

“I’m John Rand, Assistant D.A.,” the other one said. “Is Mr. Malvern in?”

“He’s in, but he’s just getting dressed,” I said. “Our day starts late here. I’m Vance Taylor, his assistant. Can I help you?” I felt a faint prickling sensation at the back of my neck. These men meant business. Homicide and the D.A.’s office. Erika hadn’t phoned in!

“We’ll wait until he’s dressed,” McCuller said.

I took them into the library. “What’s up?” I asked them.

“I think I mentioned I’m from Homicide,” McCuller said.

“We haven’t killed anybody here,” I said, trying to make it sound light.

“Please,” McCuller said wearily. “I’ve been up all night.”

“A man named Waldo Layne has been murdered,” Rand said. “We believe Malvern can give us information about him.”

Mike could give you information about almost anybody in the country, or get it for you. Waldo Layne he knew all about, to his sorrow. Waldo was Erika’s divorced husband. And Erika hadn’t phoned in!...

Mike was at his place at the breakfast table when I came back from the library. Joan and Kathy were seated at the table. Mike, I saw at once, was in a foul temper.

“Oh, there you are,” he said to me. “Sit down.”

“There’s a couple of guys in the library,” I said.

“I don’t want to see a couple of guys in the library,” he said. “Sit down.”

“But these guys—”

“Sit down, Vance. What’s the matter with you?”

I sat down, and William brought me a cup of coffee. It’s hard to describe Mike. He has a kind of pixyish quality when he’s in a good mood. He is small and lithe and his hair is light brown without a touch of gray in it. His hands are graceful, and he uses them when he talks. He plays a very good nonprofessional piano, both hot and classical.

I watched him eat. He’s a gourmet, and he insists that everything be cooked for him just so, and then he eats it so fast you can’t imagine that he’s really tasted a mouthful of it. Besides, he talks while he eats, in short machine-gun blasts.

“You haven’t heard anything from Erika?” he asked me.

“No.”

I saw the shadow of worry cross his face. Everybody who knew Mike was aware of his almost heartbreaking devotion to Erika. When his wife died he’d concentrated all the love and affection he had on his older daughter.

Erika would give anybody something of a jolt the first time he saw her. She had everything. She had a perfect figure, naturally red hair, and gray-green eyes that glowed with an almost electrical excitement. Except for the brief period of her marriage to Waldo Layne, Erika was Mike’s constant companion. She made the rounds of the hot spots with him at night, she went on his holidays with him, she knew how to do all the things that flattered and pleased him. When he gave one of his rare parties she presided as hostess with dignity, charm, and just the right amount of casualness.

She knew her way around Mike’s world with a sure instinct. As far as I was concerned, she was as out of reach as the top ornament on the Christmas tree at Radio City — so far out of reach that I didn’t really want her. And also there was Joan. But I admired and respected Erika.

That morning, sitting at the breakfast table, still holding back the news about Waldo, I remembered a conversation I’d had with her one day. It came after a row with Mike over something that had gone wrong which he thought was my fault and I thought wasn’t. Erika was sitting in the library, which opened off Mike’s office, and I guess she couldn’t have helped overhearing the argument.

“Take it easy, Vance,” she said, as I came storming out of the office.

“That maniac!” I said. “He’ll never admit he’s wrong about anything.”

“And he never is,” Erika said. She took hold of my arm and pulled me down on the couch beside her. “He can be mistaken, Vance, but he’s never wrong in principle. That’s what’s so wonderful about him.”

“Right now he’s for the birds, as far as I’m concerned.” I said.

She looked past me with a kind of a dreamy light in her gray-green eyes.

“I get rebellious myself once in a while,” she said. “He’s so arbitrary about some things. But it’s never out of meanness, or cantankerousness, or vanity.”

“It’s all very well for you to talk,” I said. “All you have to do is ask for the moon and he’ll get it for you.”

She smiled. “Sometimes I wish that wasn’t true. There is so much to live up to! Still, it’s a wonderful thing to be loved like that, Vance.”

I remembered that now, as I saw Mike’s worry. He put his knife and fork down on his plate. “I won’t have the rules broken,” he said, “particularly now. I won’t have it from any of you.”

He said it straight at Joan. I saw her look down at her hands. Joan is a small, somewhat darker edition of Mike. Some people may not think she’s pretty. I think she’s beautiful. The trouble is she doesn’t know I’m alive. She treats me like the boy next door. She knew and I knew and Kathy knew what was eating Mike. He wished one of us, not Erika, had broken the rules. I never knew Mike’s wife, but they tell me Erika is a ringer for her. It kills him when Erika makes him worry, because he idolizes her. If it were Joan it wouldn’t matter so much.

“Why ‘particularly now’?” I asked.

He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “I don’t want to believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe it. But there’s a leak somewhere. Stuff that’s coming to me from confidential sources is getting out.”

“That’s impossible,” Kathy said quietly.

She’s the one who handles everything. Information comes to Mike from every conceivable source; from people he pays and from people who volunteer it. It comes from hat-check girls and society matrons, from bartenders and bank presidents, from punks and chiselers and ministers and statesmen. Some of it is usable and some of it isn’t. Some of it is fact and some of it is just plain filth. But all of it is on file.

To protect himself, Mike makes a record of every piece of information that comes his way, the exact hour and minute and place where he received it, and whom it came from. There’s material in that file that would blow thousands of people sky-high if it was ever released. The file was kept in a modern vault in his office off the library.

I don’t think the vault could be broken into. It certainly never had been. It was never left carelessly open, Kathy had access to it. I had access to it. Kathy knew everything that was in the file. I could find out if I wanted to. There was just us.

“All right, all right; stop looking sore,” Mike said to me. “If I can’t trust you and Kathy I’d better blow my brains out. But there has been a leak, all the same.”

“Look,” I said. “A guy gives you a piece of information. It gets out somehow. He blames you. But maybe he told other people, or maybe someone else knew.”

“Of course,” Mike said. “I figured that angle, Vance. I figured it had to be that way. Stuff has been getting out and I have been blamed for it, but I shrugged it off. Then last night I got it between the eyes from Joe Ricardo.”

Joe Ricardo is what the newspapers like to call an “Overlord of the Underworld.” He’s a smooth, tough guy who, so far as I know, has been able to keep clean of the law — but he’s not to be fooled around with, all the same.

“Ricardo has heard the rumor that I was leaking stuff,” Mike said. “Get this — he heard I was using private information for purposes or blackmail. He thought if the racket was big enough, he could give me protection. For a price, naturally.”

“Mike, how absurd!” Kathy said.

Joan just sat there, looking down at her hands.

“Ricardo framed me,” Mike said evenly. “He rigged up a story. It was an item on Ed Johnson, the producer. He and Johnson are friends. You know the item, Kathy. It’s in the file — about Johnson and Ricardo’s girl.”

Kathy nodded.

“Johnson was approached yesterday with a blackmail demand on the basis of that item,” Mike said.

“By whom?”

“A phone conversation. A man. Johnson couldn’t identify the voice. But you see where that leaves us? They planted the story with us to see if it would leak, and it did.” He looked around at us. “How?”

I didn’t have an answer. Neither did Kathy or Joan. It wasn’t possible.

“My whole life, my whole career, depends on my handling the information I get with integrity,” Mike said.

“The leak isn’t here,” I said. “The leak is at the source somewhere.”

“We have to prove that, Vance. We have to prove it or we’re in bad trouble.” He pushed back his chair. “And we aren’t going to do it sitting here.”

Then I remembered McCuller and Rand. “You’ve got to see those guys in the library,” I said. “A homicide dick and an assistant D.A.”

“What about?” Mike asked.

I took a deep breath. “It seems somebody caught up with your ex-son-in-law last night.”

“Waldo?”

I could see it all flash behind his eyes — the anguish Erika’s unhappy marriage had caused him, the way he hated Waldo Layne’s guts.

“I don’t know any of the details,” I said.

I saw Kathy look from Mike to Joan. Joan was staring down at her hands, motionless, almost as though she’d heard none of it.

Mike put out his cigarette in the ash tray on the table. “Let’s go talk to them,” he said. He started toward the door, and then turned back to Kathy, whose face had suddenly gone very white. “Find out where Erika is,” he said. “I’m worried about her.”

As nearly as I can make out, Waldo Layne had always been a heel. He grew up in a family with money, and he never went without anything he wanted until he was a grown man. He went to the best schools and to a famous Ivy college. He was an athlete of sorts, and might have been really good if he’d had the proper temperament. But he was a show-off from the word “go.” Once he intercepted a forward pass and ran 40 yards for a winning touchdown against Princeton. He would describe the play in detail without any encouragement whatsoever. Some remote disability kept him out of the Army. Then his family lost all their money and Waldo was on his own. He fiddled around, trying to be an actor, but he didn’t have the talent for it. He finally wound up being a kind of glamor-host for a night spot on the East Side. He carefully cultivated women with money.

It was in his capacity as host at the night spot that he met Erika. Mike took her there one night on his rounds. I don’t know what she saw in Waldo. She could pick and choose her men. Waldo had something for her, that’s all. The marriage came as about the biggest shock Mike ever had. He and I had gone to Chicago to cover a political convention, and when he came back Erika and Waldo met us at La-Guardia with their little announcement. Mike never showed them by the turning of a hair how he felt, but he took it hard when I was alone with him.

Waldo had no money. Mike put up the dough for a charming little apartment on the East Side. Waldo gave up his job and tried to chisel his way into Mike’s act. On that Mike wouldn’t give an inch. The truth was he couldn’t have anybody on his staff he couldn’t trust. Nobody trusted Waldo. He would turn up from time to time with items for Mike, obviously expecting to be paid for them. They were rarely usable, and, besides, every cent Waldo spent came indirectly from Mike.

It lasted about a year, until Erika began coming home in a state from time to time, once with a black eye. Waldo was drinking and he had begun to chase around after other dames. The marriage came to a breaking point and Mike whisked Erika out to Reno, where she got a divorce. Since then she’d been living at home again, and Mike was relatively at peace. He was never happy when she was very far out of his sight...

In the library it was Rand who told us what had happened. McCuller seemed satisfied to sit back and let the assistant D.A. do the talking. Waldo was living in a cheap theatrical hotel just off Broadway. About 3 in the morning the hotel clerk got a phone call from a woman, who wouldn’t give her name, saying there was something wrong in Waldo’s room. The clerk and the house detective went upstairs, and found Waldo lying on the floor with a bullet hole between his eyes. There was no gun, and the homicide squad hadn’t turned up anything in the way of a clue.

“The Wakefield hasn’t a very savory reputation as a hotel,” Rand said. “Layne could entertain anyone he chose at any time of day or night, as long as his bill was paid. Of course the management denies this, but it’s true. We figure the woman who made the phone call was someone who came to see Layne early this morning, found him dead, slipped away, and phoned from outside. We haven’t any kind of a lead to her.”

Mike stood during the whole recital, his hands locked behind him. His face was frozen in a fixed expression of detachment, almost as if he weren’t listening. But when Rand finished he spoke.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“Please!” McCuller said, speaking for the first time. “The man was a member of your family for a while. Who are his friends? Who had it in for him? Add him up for us, Malvern.”

“You’ve added him up for yourself,” Mike said. “He was a heel.”

McCuller sighed. “You don’t want to help?”

“Any way I can.”

“Incidentally, we’d like to talk to Mrs. Layne,” Rand said.

A nerve twitched in Mike’s cheek. “She’s not at home just now.”

“When do you expect her?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Mike said. He looked down at his fingernails. “She went out before I was up this morning. I don’t know where she is.”

“You’re not sorry Layne is dead,” McCuller said casually.

“I don’t wish any man a violent death,” Mike said. “I particularly and pointedly disliked Layne, if that’s what you’re asking.”

McCuller heaved himself up out of his chair. “Just routine,” he said, “but I suppose you can account for your movements last night and early this morning.”

Mike smiled faintly and nodded at me. “My perpetual alibi,” he said. “I never go anywhere without Vance.”

“I can write you out an itinerary,” I said. Then I glanced at Mike, wondering. There had been a period of nearly two hours last night when he’d gone up to Joe Ricardo’s apartment and left me waiting for him in a bar across the street.

“Write out the itinerary,” McCuller said. He turned to Mike: “I won’t wait for Mrs. Layne, but I want to see her as soon as you can get in touch with her.”

“Of course,” Mike said. McCuller started for the door, and Mike checked him. “I’m a newspaperman,” he said. “Because of Layne’s connection with me I can’t ignore this, although it’s not strictly my department. Would it be possible to see his room at the hotel?”

“Why not?” McCuller said. “We’re going there now.” He looked at me. “Bring along a piece of paper and you can write out that itinerary on the way in the taxi.”

Mike told Kathy where we were going and told her if Erika called she was to phone him at Layne’s room at the Wakefield. If he didn’t hear from her he’d check back with Kathy as soon as he left there.

I found out on the way to the Wakefield that McCuller wasn’t kidding about the itinerary. He even lent me his pen to write with. I had no chance to check with Mike, and I couldn’t get any kind of tip-off from him. He seemed to be studiously avoiding me. It wasn’t that there was any reason why he shouldn’t have visited Joe Ricardo. That sort of thing was part of his work. The point was that I couldn’t really alibi him for a two-hour stretch. I don’t know why it bothered me. The idea that he might have killed Waldo never entered my head.

I finally wrote everything down just the way it had happened, including a list of people we’d seen and talked with in various spots during the evening. When I handed it to McCuller he didn’t look at it. He just folded it up and put it in his wallet.

The Wakefield was a dingy place. There was something shifty about the manager, the clerk, and the house dick. It was hard to tell whether they had something to hide about Waldo, or whether they were afraid that general violations might be unearthed during the murder investigation. They were too greasily co-operative, somehow.

Waldo’s room was a mess. Clothes strewn around, the desk a mass of unsorted notes, letters, and papers, cigarette butts everywhere. The smooth, slick young man you saw at night clubs was revealed here as disorderly and unfastidious. Waldo himself was gone. I wasn’t sorry.

“The door has a snap lock,” Rand said, “and it hasn’t been forced. The house detective had to use a passkey to get in after they’d had the phone call from the woman.”

Mike stood looking around the room with an air of distaste. I imagined he was thinking that Erika had had to put up with this sloppy unpleasantness.

“The woman must have had a date with him,” Mike said, “came upstairs, found the door open, and went in. She probably ran out, closing the door behind her.”

“That’s the way we figure it,” McCuller said.

“The gun?” Mike asked.

“Small caliber,” McCuller said. “I haven’t the ballistics report yet. Probably the kind of gun a woman could carry in a handbag.”

“What makes you think a woman killed him?” Mike asked sharply.

“I don’t think anything,” McCuller said. “I just say it was that kind of a gun.” He shook his head. “A case like this you just check and check and check,” he said. “His friends, his acquaintances, everyone he saw yesterday, everywhere he went, his past, present, and what might have been his future. That’s where you and Mrs. Layne can help us, Malvern. I’d like to get at it.”

“He had no friends,” Mike said quietly. “He fed off people until they had no more to give, or couldn’t take him, and then he turned to others. That was his past and his present.” He raised his eyes to look directly at McCuller. “I think his future was always what happened here last night.”

“Somebody was bound to get him sooner or later?”

“Violence of some sort,” Mike said, and turned to the door...

You can’t go anywhere with Mike that he isn’t recognized. We left McCuller and Rand at the Wakefield, after promising to let them know the minute Erika showed up at home. We went across the street to a little bar and grill. The proprietor spotted Mike at once. He would have given Mike the joint, and he acted hurt when Mike said all he wanted was some plain soda with a half a lime in it. I ordered a cup of coffee. We went to a booth at the back of the place. Mike lit a cigarette and sat there staring at the table-top until the soda and coffee came and we were alone again.

He took a sip of his drink and looked up at me. “I’m not sorry about Layne,” he said.

“Why should you be?”

He took a deep breath. “Work has to go on just the same,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He took out a pocket notebook. There were some clippings in it. I cut them out every morning and leave them for him, along with the mail, on the breakfast table. They’re usually news items I think he might be interested in following up. He glanced through them quickly.

“How come we didn’t hear of this fire at the Hotel Spain while we were doing our rounds last night?” he asked.

“It happened while you were at Ricardo’s,” I said. “Nobody knew where we were.”

“Twelve people burned to death.” He shuddered. “Death by fire is the worst of all.”

“Not pleasant.”

“You’d better dig up what you can on it. There’s no list of the dead or injured here.”

“It was from an early edition,” I said. “Don’t you want to cover it yourself?”

He shook his head. “Check with the fire chief on the cause,” he said. “There are probably dangerous violations in places like that all over the city. It might make a running story.”

“Right.”

“When you’ve got all you can, come back to the house.”

“You’re going there?”

“I want to see Erika the minute she gets back,” he said. “Layne’s death will be a shock to her. She did love him once, you know.”

“Or thought she did.”

“What’s the difference?” he said. “I want to be with her when she hears about it. She’ll need me.”

So we separated, and I went to see what had happened at the Hotel Spain. Ordinarily, it would have been an interesting story to cover, but I couldn’t get over my feeling of uneasiness about Erika. Some months ago, when Mike was getting some anonymous letters threatening him and his family, he bought Erika and Joan each a small .22 revolver to carry, and got licenses for them. That was the first thing I’d thought of when McCuller mentioned the type of gun used to kill Waldo Layne.

The fire at the Hotel Spain had been pretty grim. It was an old family-type hotel about twelve stories high. The fire had started on the fifth floor, and it must have been a lulu, because the seven top stories had been completely gutted. The twelve people who had died in the fire had all been trapped above the fifth floor. Others had escaped, but those twelve had either been unable to get to safety or had not become aware of the danger until too late. Bodies had been taken to the morgue, and so far there had been no definite identifications. That is to say, the authorities had, by checking with the survivors, been able to tell who the twelve dead were, but the bodies themselves had been burned beyond recognition.

I looked over the list of the dead and saw no names there that meant anything to me. It’s cold-blooded, but my concern was with names that would mean something in the news. The fire department wasn’t prepared to make any sort of statement as to how the blaze got started, though they hinted someone might have dropped a lighted cigarette in some trash can. There was no suggestion of arson.

I had a look upstairs. My press pass and my connection with Mike got me most places I wanted to go. When I finally returned to the lobby the place was jammed with anxious people, checking on the safety of friends or relatives. I started to push my way through the crowd toward the front doors, and then I stopped dead. Standing in the center of the crowd was Joan Malvern.

She didn’t spot me until I’d worked my way over to her and put my hand on her arm. She swung around to face me and I was shocked by the look in her eyes. She was scared stiff.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I... I had a friend who lived here,” she said.

“Who?”

“A... a girl I know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Vance, what are you trying to do? Give me a third degree?”

“What’s the matter with you?” I said. “I happen to have a list of the casualties here in my pocket. What’s your friend’s name?”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Eloise Morton,” she said.

That was a facer, because I remembered the name. It was about third from the bottom on the list of the dead. I took Joan’s arm in a firm grip. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

She didn’t say anything till we got out on the sidewalk. Then she stopped and faced me. “Her... her name is on the list?”

“I’m sorry, Joan.”

Her legs started to buckle under her. I grabbed her and started looking for some place to take her, but she managed to get hold of herself.

“Would you buy me a brandy, Vance?”

I found a place a couple of doors down the street. She drank the brandy, choking a little on it, and I ordered her another. We sat at a little table, and she didn’t say anything. She just twisted and untwisted her handkerchief around her fingers.

There was no use not talking about it. “I never heard you mention this friend of yours,” I said.

“She... she was an old school friend,” Joan said.

“Oh.”

“Where’s Father?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the twisted handkerchief.

“He’s gone home to wait for Erika. The police want to talk to her. Waldo’s death will be a nasty shock.”

“Yes.”

“Look, Joan; we all have to die sometime. Maybe it comes easy or maybe it comes hard.”

“I know.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “I’m sorry about Eloise Morton, and I never heard of her till ten minutes ago. I knew Waldo well — and I’m not sorry.”

“The early afternoon papers have the story on Waldo,” she said. “The police say some woman who came to see him tipped them off.”

“That’s right.”

“Have they found out who she was?”

“Waldo had a million of them,” I said. “She called from outside. She didn’t give a name.”

Joan didn’t say anything more. She just sat and stared at the handkerchief.

“Joan,” I said, “you remember that little revolver Mike gave you a few months back.”

“Yes,” she said listlessly.

“You know where it is?”

“In my top bureau drawer at home. I never carried it, Vance. I couldn’t have shot anybody if my life depended on it.”

“Maybe I better take you home.”

“No,” she said sharply.

“You still look pretty rocky.”

“I... I better get in touch with Eloise’s family,” she said.

“Can I help?”

“No, thanks, Vance. No; thanks very much.”

She stood up, and I never saw anybody look so white. But she walked quite steadily out of the place...

We were getting it in reverse when I got back to the house. Reporters were hanging around the front entrance, along with a dozen or so photographers. They all crowded around me, demanding in:

“You know how it is, Vance. It’s a job we have to do.”

“I’ll see what I can work out for you,” I told them, and opened the front door.

Inside, I glanced at my wrist watch. It was nearly 4 in the afternoon. I went through the library into Mike’s office.

He was sitting at his desk, but he wasn’t working. His elbows rested on the desk and his face was buried in his hands. He lifted his head quickly as I came in. “Any news?”

“It was quite a fire,” I said. “Twelve known dead. It turns out one of them was an old school friend of Joan’s.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said impatiently. “Is there any news of Erika?”

“I haven’t been looking for Erika,” I said. “Haven’t you heard from her?”

“Would I be asking if I had?” Then he turned away. “I’m sorry, Vance. I am afraid I’ve gotten panicky. There hasn’t been any word from her. Surely she’d have heard about Waldo by now and gotten in touch.”

“That girl can sleep the clock around,” I said. “If she holed up with some friend for the night she may not be awake yet, not if they did a late turn.”

“Thanks,” he said drily.

“For what?”

“For not saying what you really think.”

“That is what I think.”

He brought his fist down hard on the desk. “There’s something badly wrong. We all know it. We just don’t want to admit it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s do something practical about it. We’ll start calling her friends. One of them will—”

“What do you think Kathy and I have been doing all afternoon?” he cut in. “We’ve called everybody we can think of that she knows. We’ve called every number in the address book on her telephone table. We’ve called the hospitals” — his voice cracked — “even the morgue.”

“Well,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, “if there hasn’t been an accident and she isn’t in the morgue, that ought to take part of the load off your mind.”

“She could have driven out of town with someone. There could have been an accident somewhere else — Jersey — Connecticut — Long Island. How can we begin to cover those possibilities?”

“Look, take it easy,” I said. “The best bet is that she tied one on last night with some of those crack-brained friends of hers. She rolled in at 5 or 6 in the morning somewhere and stayed overnight.”

“Why wouldn’t she call me?” Mike said. “She knows the rules. Even at 6 or 7 in the morning she should call.”

Ordinarily, he’d get sore if you suggested Erika might have been drinking. He was so worried now he almost preferred to think so.

“She knows you don’t like her to get tight,” I said. “It’s just after 4 now. If they rolled in, say about 6 this morning, it’s only ten hours. Erika’s just getting her second wind of sleep when it’s ten hours.”

He smiled, very faintly. “Erika’s sleeping jags were a family joke.”

“And let’s face it,” I said. “We don’t know all of her friends. You can easily have missed up on someone.”

He seemed to relax a little. He reached out for a cigarette in the box on his desk. “Thanks for the pep talk,” he said. He gave me an odd, narrowed look. “I don’t know how I’d have got on without you these last few years, Vance.”

I grinned. “I hope you never do find out how.”

“I hope not,” he said.

Somehow, the way he said it wiped the grin off my face. “There’s a mob of reporters outside, Mike. Don’t you think—?”

“No. Not till we hear from Erika,” he said.

“I’m going to grab off a sandwich from William. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Okay,” he said. I started for the door, and he called after me: “What was that you said when you first came in, about some friend of Joan’s?”

“Girl named Eloise Morton,” I said. “Joan went to school with her. She burned to death at the Spain.”

“Morton?” He frowned. “I don’t seem to remember her. Does Joan know?”

“I ran into her at the Spain, checking. She took it pretty hard. I bought her a brandy and she went off to see the Morton girl’s family.”

“This seems to be a rough day for a lot of people,” Mike said, and forgot I was there.

I went out through the library and started back toward the kitchen. Kathy hailed me. She was coming down from upstairs. She didn’t look herself, either. I guess the strain was telling on everyone.

“What do you make of it, Vance?” she asked.

“She’s asleep somewhere,” I said.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“It could be,” I said. “You’ve checked for accidents, Mike tells me. That makes it more likely.”

“Vance, I’m scared,” she said. “Mike dictated some notes to me on the Layne business. The gun — the small-caliber gun—”

“You, too?” I said. “I thought about those toys Mike bought the girls.”

“I just checked upstairs,” Kathy said. “I can’t find them.”

“Let’s face it,” I said. “Erika takes a pot shot at Waldo and goes into hiding!”

Kathy’s eyes widened. “But both guns are missing, both Joan’s and Erika’s,” she said...

McCuller showed up at the house about 5 o’clock. He looked shot and I realized he’d been on the go steadily since he’d been called to the Wakefield at three in the morning. He also looked as though his patience had frayed a little at the edges. He had another guy with him, an old man with a loose, twitching mouth. McCuller told him to sit on a chair by the front door. He didn’t introduce him.

“Mrs. Layne?” McCuller asked me.

“She hasn’t turned up yet,” I told him.

“Where’s Malvern?”

“In his study.”

“Let’s go.”

“I don’t think he wants to see anybody right now.”

“That’s too bad,” McCuller said.

Mike apparently hadn’t moved since I left him. He gestured to us to come in, and tried to make an effort to straighten up and be himself.

McCuller came over to the desk and stood looking down at Mike. “Let’s stop kidding around,” he said. “Where’s Mrs. Layne.”

Mike played it straight. “The honest truth is, I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he said.

“That’s better,” McCuller said. “She didn’t come home last night, did she?”

“No,” Mike said. “I’ve been trying to locate her. I’ve called her friends — I’ve checked hospitals — the whole routine.”

“You should have told me this morning,” McCuller said. “I’d have started a systematic search.”

“I didn’t think it was serious this morning,” Mike said. “It’s not unusual for her to spend the night with friends.”

“Without telling you?”

“That isn’t usual,” Mike said, “but it has happened. I expected to hear from her at any time.”

“Do you expect to hear from her now?” McCuller asked, his voice expressionless.

“Of course,” Mike said.

McCuller’s eyes moved slowly around the room. “Do you have a photograph of Mrs. Layne?”

“Yes. In my bedroom upstairs.”

“May I see it?”

“Vance—”

I went up to his room and got the leather-framed portrait of Erika that stood on his bedside table. It was one of those two-picture frames, and in the opposite side from Erika’s was a picture of her mother. They did look alike.

When I came back downstairs I noticed the old guy was no longer sitting on the chair by the front door. I found him in the study with McCuller and Mike.

The detective reached out for the photograph. He studied it a moment and then handed it to the old man. “The one on the right,” he said.

The old man stared at it with rheumy, frightened eyes.

“Night elevator man at the Wakefield,” Mike said casually. “He remembers taking a dame up to Waldo’s room about 2:30 this morning.” Mike didn’t seem worried.

“Well?” McCuller said.

The old man shook his head, first uncertainly, and then with more assurance. “It wasn’t her,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Positive,” the old man said. “I’m positive, Lieutenant.”

McCuller sighed. “We’ll check again in the flesh when Mrs. Layne turns up,” he said. “This is a good likeness, Malvern?”

“Excellent,” Mike said.

McCuller put the picture down on the desk. “What do you propose to do about finding her?”

“If she’s in New York I’ll know in the next two or three hours,” Mike said.

“How?”

Mike smiled faintly. “Every head-waiter, bartender, hat-check girl, and half the taxi drivers in town are my friends,” he said. “They’ll locate her if she’s around. I’ve already spread the word.”

“How about Missing Persons?” McCuller said.

“I’d rather hold off for a few hours,” Mike said. “I still think she’s with friends somewhere and hasn’t heard the news.”

McCuller looked at his watch. “At 8 o’clock I send out a general alarm for her,” he said. “I don’t know why I wait, except I need a couple of hours’ sleep, myself.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and wrote a phone number on Mike’s desk pad. “My home. Call me there the minute you hear anything.”

“I will, and thanks,” Mike said.

I walked out through the library with McCuller and the old guy. Just as we got into the entrance hall the front door opened and Joan came in. During the moment the door was open I could hear the reporters on the front steps still gabbing at her. She threw us a quick look and went straight for the stairway.

The old guy reached out and tugged at McCuller’s sleeve. “That’s her.”

“What?”

“That’s her — the one that came to the hotel last night.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure, Lieutenant. That’s her, all right.”

“Just a minute, miss,” McCuller called out.

Joan turned to face him, holding tightly to the stair rail...

Mike stood by the window in his study, his back turned to us, looking out at the darkening street. Joan was huddled in the big leather armchair beside Mike’s desk. McCuller prowled back and forth in front of her, firing questions at her. I stood off to one side, the inside of my mouth dry.

“You know I don’t have to give you the break of questioning you here in front of your father, Miss Malvern,” McCuller said. “I could take you down to headquarters and really put you through it.”

“I know.” Joan’s voice was small and far away.

“You went to see Waldo Layne at 2:30 this morning. Why?”

“Personal reasons,” Joan said.

“Miss Malvern, I’m not going to take that kind of answer. What personal reasons?”

“I... I wanted to see him,” Joan said.

“You don’t say!” McCuller was angry. “I didn’t suppose you had any other reason for going there. But why did you want to see him?” Joan didn’t answer, and he shouted at her. “Why?”

“I... I was in love with him,” Joan said.

I saw Mike’s shoulders sag, but he didn’t turn. My own world went floating off into space. Joan and Waldo!

“Were you in the habit of visiting him in the middle of the night?” McCuller asked.

“No.”

“What was the reason for this visit, then?”

“I... I hadn’t heard from him for days,” Joan said. She didn’t look at McCuller or me or Mike. She just stared straight ahead. “I was worried. I... I couldn’t stand it any longer so I went to see him.”

“At 2:30 A.M.?”

“It may have been,” Joan said. “I wasn’t concerned with the time.”

“You got to the hotel and went up in the elevator. You didn’t announce yourself?”

“No.”

“What made you think Layne would be in?”

“If he... he hadn’t been I’d have waited for him upstairs.”

“But he was?”

Joan’s eyes closed for an instant, and then opened in that fixed stare. “His door was half open. I knocked. When he didn’t answer I looked in and... and I saw him, lying on the floor.”

“You went in to the room?”

“No. I... I ran,” Joan said.

“You didn’t even stop to see if he was alive, if he needed help?”

“I didn’t think he was alive.”

“Why?”

“I... I don’t know. I just didn’t think so.”

“So you ran away and left him?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?” McCuller asked, as if he didn’t believe a word she’d said.

“I ran down the service stairs and out into the street.”

“You didn’t want to be found there?”

“No.”

“You loved this man,” McCuller said, his voice rising, “but you ran away, without making sure he was dead, without trying to get help for him?”

“About a block from the hotel I found a drugstore that was open,” Joan said. “I called the hotel from the coin box and told them something was wrong with Waldo.”

“And then?”

“I came home,” Joan said. McCuller paced back and forth for a moment. “Were you having an affair with this man while he was still married to your sister?”

“No!”

“It began after they were separated?”

“Yes.”

“And now he was tired of you?”

“I... I suppose so,” Joan said.

I felt sick at my stomach. I wanted to get out of there, but I couldn’t move. Joan, carrying on with that louse Waldo, and we’d never even dreamed of it.

McCuller went over it in earnest now. He made her describe the hotel lobby, the clerk, the old elevator guy, the color of the rug in Waldo’s room. It was as though he wanted to shake her story, but she had every detail of it cold. She didn’t miss up on a thing. And all the time Mike stood with his back to her, staring out the window. Finally McCuller came to the point I’d been waiting for and dreading:

“Do you own a .22 caliber revolver, Miss Malvern?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“In my bureau — in my bedroom upstairs.”

“Did you carry it with you last night?”

“I’ve never carried it,” Joan said. “My father gave it to me some months ago when we’d received threatening letters, but I never carried it.”

“You didn’t have it with you last night and you didn’t shoot Waldo Layne?”

“No!”

McCuller let his breath out slowly. “Let’s go look at it.”

Mike didn’t move. I hesitated, and then followed Joan and McCuller upstairs. McCuller didn’t seem to notice I was there. Joan went straight to the bureau and opened the top right-hand drawer. She reached into it, seemed surprised, pulled the drawer out farther and really searched. Then she turned to McCuller.

“It... it doesn’t seem to be here,” she said.

“It seems open and shut, Miss Malvern. Woman scorned — that’s the motive. You were there. You own the right kind of gun, which has disappeared. I don’t have any choice.”

“I... I can see that,” Joan said.

“For heaven’s sake, Joan, if you took the gun last night—!” I started to say.

“I didn’t take it, Vance,” she said. “I don’t know what’s become of it.”

“Joan,” I said, and I guess my voice cracked a little.

“I’m sorry, Vance,” she said.

After that McCuller took her away. As he said, he had no choice...

Mike never showed. He never came out of his study when McCuller left with Joan. I warned Joan not to do any more talking till we got our lawyer to her, and then I went to find Mike.

He was back at his desk when I went into the study, and he looked at me as though I were a stranger.

“McCuller’s taken her downtown,” I said. “Her gun is missing. You’d better call Charley Carson and get him down to her at once.”

“I’m through with her,” he said, slowly and distinctly.

“That’s no way to talk, Mike! She’s your daughter.”

“I’m through with her,” he said again. He got up and walked over to the window. He started to talk, with his back to me. “She killed her mother getting born,” he said, in a voice I’d never heard. “She has never brought me anything but tragedy. Now this! Waldo Layne! Sneaking out at night to see him! Loving him! Wasn’t what he did to Erika enough? So she killed him, because he got tired of her! Well, let her pay the price for it.”

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak for a minute. “No matter how you feel,” I said, “she’s your daughter and you can’t let her go undefended. Call Carson.”

“The courts supply lawyers,” he said.

“If you don’t call Carson, I will.”

He turned back from the window. “Let me remind you, Vance, you are an employee here. You’ll do as I say or you’ll go out the front door so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

“Are you going to call Carson?” I asked. I could feel the blood pounding in my temples.

“No,” he said.

“Good-by, Mike,” I said. “It was nice knowing you — up until tonight!”

I ran out of the room, and almost collided with Kathy, who was just outside the study door. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d heard. She didn’t say anything, but she took hold of my arm and walked out through the library with me into the entrance hall.

“Take it easy, Vance,” she said. “I’ve already called Carson.”

“Then you better go pack your trunk,” I said.

“A good secretary anticipates her boss’s wishes,” she said. “I assumed he’d want Carson on the job. He didn’t tell me not to call him.”

“What’s the matter with Mike?” I said. “He talks like a crazy man.”

“Find Erika,” she said, “and he’ll come back to normal. How much can a man take in one day?”

“I walked out on him,” I said. “That’s that.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Kathy said. “He’ll have forgotten it, and so will you in a couple of hours.”

“That he should hate Joan so much—” I said.

She looked up into my eyes. “Love and hate are back to back on a coin, Vance,” she said. “You haven’t been kidding me, buster. I know how you’ve felt about Joan. What do you feel about her now?”

“I guess that’s the $64 question,” I said. “Right now I don’t feel anything — about anything.”

“Go somewhere and cool off,” Kathy said. “Be on the job tomorrow morning. I’ll fight out the Carson thing with him.” She turned her head, that little frown between her eyes, to glance at the study door.

“Since you just let down my back hair,” I said, “how about I let down yours? You’ve been in love with Mike ever since you went to work for him.”

“Sure, I have,” she said quietly. “He’s the most wonderful guy in the world. But it doesn’t do me any good.” She patted my shoulder and then started off for the study...

I suppose every man who has ever gotten a sock in the teeth from the woman he loves has reacted foolishly about it, all the way from getting drunk to punching the wrong guy in the nose. I thought I would be smart and do neither of those things. I would keep busy. It was important, if anybody was going to act sanely, to find Erika. I knew all of Mike’s contacts in the city. I set out to check on who’d seen Erika last night and whom she’d been with. And it was at the sixth place that I came across my first lead. There was a young playwright around town named Austin Graves who had been giving Erika quite a rush, and I heard that they’d been having cocktails together in the bar in the Bijou Club around 7 o’clock.

I didn’t call Graves. I went to his apartment, a brownstone in the East Fifties. He opened the door to me, and when he saw me his face went the color of the chartreuse walls in his living-room.

“Vance!” He didn’t try to stop my coming in. There was a glass shaker of Martinis on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Our Austin had been drinking alone.

“What’s the matter with you? You look sick,” I said.

“Is there any news about Erika?” he asked.

“Would I be here if there was? When did you hear she was missing, and how? It hasn’t been made public.”

“Miss Adams called me.”

I should have known Kathy would be miles ahead of me.

“I told her all I know,” Austin said. “I bumped into Erika on Fifth Avenue around 6 yesterday, and invited her to the Bijou Club for a cocktail. We sat around for an hour or so. I... I tried to persuade her to have dinner with me, but she said she had another date.”

“Who with?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Why are your hands shaking?” I asked him.

He stuffed them in his pocket. “I’m worried about Erika,” he said.

“Why? She’s just gone off with some friends and forgot to let us know.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He just stood there, wetting his lips.

“You got a different theory than that?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Layne being murdered,” he said, “and then Erika not turning up.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Look, Vance; I—”

“You’ve been thick as thieves with Erika for months,” I said. “You must know where she went after she left you.”

“So help me, Vance, I don’t. We separated at the Bijou Club about 7 — and that’s the last I saw of her. This noon I read about Layne in the papers. I tried to call Erika at home but the phone was always busy. Finally Miss Adams called me, and I heard Erika hadn’t come home last night and was still missing.”

“What did you do after Erika left you last night?”

“I... I ate dinner at the Bijou and came back here.”

There was something about him I couldn’t put my finger on. Concern for Erika was natural, but he acted scared out of his wits.

“Listen, Austin; if I find out you’re not telling me everything you know, so help me I’m coming back here and take you apart, piece by piece.”

“Why shouldn’t I tell you everything I know?” he said.

“I’m darned if I know, Austin, but for some reason you don’t smell good to me.”

“I swear I’ve told you everything I know,” he said. For a minute I thought he was going to cry...

When I got out into the cool night air again I began to work on really big ideas — technicolor ideas. I started thinking about Joe Ricardo, and the leak from Mike’s files, and Ricardo’s little frame-up of the phony item. I wondered if Ricardo was playing rough. He might think he could use Erika as a means of twisting Mike’s arm, and was waiting for Mike to get good and worried before he put the twist on. My ideas were big, and I felt brave.

I went straight up to Ricardo’s hotel suite and asked to see him, which was not much less foolhardy than the Charge of the Light Brigade.

A smooth guy let me into the place and nobody acted tough at all. I had to wait only a minute or two before somebody took me into a small living-room where Ricardo was sitting at a desk going over some papers. Ricardo is strictly not a movie-type mobster. He has gray hair and a friendly face and you can tell he spends time at a gym keeping down his waistline.

“Hello, Vance,” he said; “you’re too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?”

“The cop beat you to it.”

“What cop? What are you talking about?”

He looked a little bored with me. “McCuller. What other cop?”

“Look, Joe; let’s start over,” I said. “And this time make some sense.”

Ricardo leaned back in his chair. “Tell Mike I’m surprised at him. He ought to know I always play it strictly on the level.”

“Joke,” I said, “but I don’t get the point.”

“I could get annoyed with you, Vance,” Ricardo said. “I would not frame an alibi for anybody, not even my mother. I might need to be believed some day on my own account, so I couldn’t risk a phony.”

“Frame an alibi?”

“Even if I would have done it, I’m not a mind reader, Vance. If Mike wanted me to say he was here for two hours instead of about 25 minutes he should have said so.”

It seemed suddenly very hot in there and Ricardo’s face looked blurred. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “Mike didn’t need you to say he’d been here for two hours last night. I said so. I know. I waited for him across the street.”

Ricardo’s shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t say you weren’t across the street for two hours, Vance. But Mike wasn’t here for more than 25 minutes and I’m not going to perjure myself to say so. I told McCuller the truth.”

“I want to get this straight,” I said. “I came in here with Mike. I saw him go up in the elevator. Then I went across the street and waited—”

“There are about five different ways out of this hotel, Vance.” He let that sink in for a long time and I swear there was a look of sympathy on his face.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Vance,” he said. “Confidential stuff has been leaking, and I’ve proved it. Mike has had a reputation for honesty. That’s why he gets away with what he gets away with. Now he offers the cops a phony alibi. His ex-son-in-law is murdered, one daughter is arrested for that murder, and the other daughter disappears. I don’t know what’s going on, as I said. But don’t stick your neck out too far, Vance, until you know what you’re sticking it out for. That’s just common sense.”

When I got down into the lobby of Ricardo’s hotel I was still trying to juggle times and motives in my head. It had been about midnight when Mike and I went to Ricardo’s the night before. That meant that from 12:30, roughly, until 2, when he picked me up in the bar across the street, Mike had been on the loose somewhere. He’d left me sitting in that bar for an hour and a half while he went somewhere he didn’t want me to know about. Somewhere like Waldo Layne’s room.

A blind anger swept over me. If that was it, then he was deliberately letting Joan take the rap for something he knew she hadn’t done! That wasn’t like Mike, though. He always played dead level, even with people he had no use for, and he couldn’t hate Joan that much! But suddenly I had to know what he’d been up to. I couldn’t spill anything until I had the answers.

I tried to put myself in his place after his talk with Ricardo, when he’d discovered, without any question, that someone was leaking the stuff out of his files. The story was that somebody had called up Johnson, Ricardo’s friend, and tried to blackmail him with the framed story. The somebody had been a man. If I’d been Mike, and I wanted to start checking, I’d have gone to see Johnson and asked him about the phone conversation.

Johnson is a threatrical producer and I knew he had an office at the theater where his production of Underdog is running. I went there to see him. It was about 40 minutes before curtain time and he was in his office on the second floor of the theater. He wasn’t too cordial, but he saw me. He was a nice-looking, fairly young man.

“If Malvern wanted any more information from me he should have come himself,” Johnson said.

“I’m here on my own,” I said. “If you’ve heard the news today you know things are pretty messed up in Mike’s life.”

“That’s the understatement of the week.”

“Mr. Johnson, did Mike come to see you last night?”

“I ran into him at Lindy’s around one o’clock,” Johnson said. “I don’t know that he was exactly looking for me.”

“You talked to him about the blackmail phone call?”

“Yes.” Johnson was smiling at me in an odd way.

“Would you repeat the gist of that conversation to me?”

The odd smile widened. “I got a distinct impression, Vance, that he was trying to find out if I’d recognized your voice over the phone.”

“My voice!”

“That was the gist of it,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t get too burned up about it. He’d just had it proved to him that there was a leak somewhere and that a man was involved. You, I take it, are the only man who has access to his confidential records. He’d have to check on you, no matter how much he trusted you, wouldn’t he?”

An hour after I left Johnson I went into a quiet little place off Broadway and ordered myself some food and coffee. I’d done some more checking and I began to understand why I’d been left sitting in that bar across from Ricardo’s hotel twiddling my thumbs. Mike had been investigating me! He must have had some idea of other items that had leaked. Two or three guys who were usually very friendly with me had acted queer and reserved. Mike’s questions had left them wondering about me.

It hit me hard to discover that Mike had doubted me so actively. Well, it didn’t matter. I was clean and he must know it by now. Also, though his two-hour alibi at Ricardo’s wouldn’t hold up, I’d discovered half a dozen places he’d been in that time. There were gaps in it — big enough to make a short visit to Waldo possible — but it was still a pretty good alibi.

Alibis made me think of Charley Carson, Mike’s lawyer. He should have seen Joan by now if he’d acted on Kathy’s call. I had his private number in my pocket notebook and I dialed it from a booth in the restaurant. Carson is one of the topflight boys in his trade, and his particular specialty, as far as Mike was concerned, was a vast knowledge of the libel laws. He worked on a retainer for Mike, and any time there was anything the least bit touchy in one of the columns, Carson saw it before the proof was okayed.

“Hi, Vance,” he said, over the phone. “You been talking to Kathy?”

“Not recently. Why?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you. Kathy said you were out on the town somewhere. Can you come over to my place for a few minutes?”

“Sure. How’s Joan? You’ve seen her?”

“I’ve seen her,” Carson said. “Get over here, will you, son?”

Carson lives on Central Park South, a fancy penthouse overlooking Central Park. He’s a big, fat, easygoing guy who likes the good things of life, and earns them by being sharp and hard as nails at his job. He let me in and took me into his library. He was wearing a silk lounging robe and smoking a cigar that smelled like about two dollars’ worth.

“I understand Mike has blown his top over this thing” he said, as he settled himself in the armchair back of his desk.

“Things are rough,” I said. “Erika missing. Joan charged with murder. Somebody stealing stuff from his files.”

Carson has the heavy, hooded eyes of a gambler. You can never read in them what he is thinking. “I didn’t know until after I’d seen Joan that he hadn’t wanted me called.”

“He was pretty hard hit about then. He’ll have calmed down when he hears about it.”

“He has heard about it. He told me to lay off.”

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“I told him to go fly a kite,” Carson said. “I told him Joan had retained me personally.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“Of course she didn’t. That’s where you come in, Vance. I want you to go see her and tell her I’m working for her, not her father.”

“What’ll she use for money?”

I said it bitterly.

“Who said anything about money?” The hooded eyes turned my way. “You ought to have your behind kicked,” Carson said amiably.

“I? What have I done?”

“You’ve been mooning around over Joan for a couple of years,” he said. “I had an idea you were really in love with her.”

“I was — only, she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

“Was?” His bushy gray eyebrows rose.

“I don’t know where I’m at right now,” I said. “Waldo Layne! When I think of her — and Waldo—”

“I’ll be glad to do that kicking right now,” Carson said. “You never loved that girl. If you did you’d know what kind of a person she is.”

“I thought I did.”

“Would the girl you loved have given Waldo Layne the time of day?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. But—”

“You wouldn’t have thought so! You fathead! What’s changed her?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“Nothing changed her!” he said emphatically. “She was no more in love with Waldo Layne than I am. And I handled his divorce and know just the special kind of louse he was.”

“But—”

“You sound like an outboard motor! But, but, but. Why don’t you use your heart and your head? Why is she telling this cock-and-bull story?”

“There’s no question that she went to the hotel,” I said.

“Who said there was? She was there, she found Layne dead, she ran away, she phoned in the alarm. All those things happened. But she hasn’t said why she went or what it was all about. Of course, you and Mike, who love her, are perfectly prepared to believe she could care for a heel like Waldo.”

I felt a lump in my throat. “Mr. Carson, you really don’t think she—?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” he said impatiently. “I’ve known Joan since she was toddling around in a baby-walker. I’m not in love with her, but apparently I know her better than those of you who are supposed to be.” He paused, and I had to look down, because my eyes felt hot and salty. Then he went on in a matter-of-fact tone: “Frankly, I couldn’t get anywhere near the truth from her, Vance. She kept repeating that silly story about Waldo. Maybe you can break her down.”

“I’d like to try,” I said.

“Good. I’m going to give you an authorization for her to sign, retaining me as her counsel. I’ll arrange for you to see her now. Okay?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “One thing, Mr. Carson — about the revolver. The fact that it’s missing is damaging, isn’t it?”

“Don’t tell me that along with your other asininities you think she shot Waldo?”

“No, of course not. All the same—”

“Until they find the gun and ballistics proves it was the one that killed Waldo it’s just a gleam in McCuller’s eye. Good heavens, do I have to tell you again? She didn’t kill Waldo. She wasn’t in love with him. She’s covering for someone, and I wonder if I have to tell you who that is, too?”

“Erika?”

“Dear, sweet, lovable, little Erika.” Carson’s voice dripped acid. “But you don’t know the girl you love, so how could you possibly know Erika?”

“I think I know her,” I said.

“A greedy, self-interested—” He jammed out his cigar in an ash tray on the desk. “She’s a cannibal, Vance. She been feeding off people all her life — off Mike, off Joan, off her friends, off Waldo. You know, I actually felt sorry for Waldo when he fell into that trap. It served his chiseling soul right, but I wouldn’t wish Erika on my worst enemy. She sucks you dry and leaves you for the Sanitation Department to collect with the morning trash. As I said, she’s a cannibal.” He smiled grimly. “Well, maybe this time she over-ate!”

“But what could Joan be covering?”

“Vance, you can’t read anything but the large print, can you? Who did kill Waldo?”

Carson had been a shot in the arm to me. Why hadn’t I relied on my certainty about Joan instead of accepting her story? Well, maybe it wasn’t going to be too late to make it up to her.

I picked up a paper on the corner and then took a taxi downtown to where they were holding Joan. I turned the ceiling light on in the cab and looked at the front page. Waldo had made it, with pictures. There was a background piece on his marriage to Erika and, of course, some mention of Mike. But there was nothing about Erika being missing. If McCuller had sent out a general alarm, as he threatened, it hadn’t been picked up by the newspaper boys, at least for this edition.

I was about to put the paper down when I noticed a follow-up story on the fire at the Spain. All but three of the twelve dead had been claimed by relatives or friends — two men and one woman. The unclaimed body of the woman was assumed to be that of Eloise Morton, Joan’s friend. That was odd, I thought, because Joan had been on her way to break the news to the Morton girl’s family when she’d left me at the Spain. The answer, I figured, was that the girl wasn’t Eloise Morton. Then I read the piece over again. No one had come forward to identify the body assumed to be Eloise Morton’s! The reporters must have slipped on that one.

Instead of the regular visiting cage at the jail I was ushered into a captain’s office.

“McCuller’s orders,” I heard one of the cops say.

Five minutes later they brought Joan in and left us alone. Poor darling, she looked all in. I didn’t say anything, but I did something I’d never dared do before. I walked over to her and put my arms around her, and the next thing I knew she was clinging to me and her whole body was shaken with sobs. I just hung on to her and stroked her hair and let her cry it out. Finally I gave her my handkerchief to blow with, and that made her smile a little; and then I moved her over and sat her down in the swivel chair at the captain’s desk.

“Listen,” I said. “For two years I’ve been wandering around like a smooch waiting for you to give me some kind of sign before I said anything to you. Well, I quit! I’m telling you, sign or no sign, that I love you, that I was a fool to believe that line of yours about Waldo, and that I’m going to keep on loving you whether you like it or not.”

“Oh, Vance,” she said shakily.

“Sign this,” I said, and put Carson’s authorization down on the desk in front of her. “It’s a technicality,” I told her. “Carson has to have this to show you want him on your side.” No use telling her Mike had walked out on her. Mike would be back, I told myself.

She signed the authorization and I put it in my pocket. I pulled up a straight chair and sat down.

“Now let’s start this thing over from the beginning,” I said. “Why did you go to the Wakefield to see Waldo last night?”

She turned her face away.

“Look, darling, I’m sure you have a reason for telling the story you did,” I said. “But I’m Vance, remember? You can tell me what the real reason was.”

“I can’t,” she said, her face still turned away.

My heart did a bump against my ribs. Those two words were an admission that she’d been lying.

“Where’s Erika?” I asked her quietly.

Her head turned quickly back to me and I saw that her eyes were wide with fright. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

She just stared at me, and I tried again: “She killed Waldo?”

“No!” It was just a whisper.

“What is it, darling? Did you suspect she was going to do it, and get there too late to stop her?”

“No. Erika didn’t kill him, Vance. She couldn’t have!”

“But you thought she might and you went there to warn him?”

“No.”

“Joan, for heaven’s sake, let me have it straight!”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t, Vance. I wish I could.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“With my life,” she said. She gave me a little twisted smile. “If you were to ask for it”

I kissed her on the mouth then. We didn’t say anything for quite a while.

“We’ll announce it right away,” I said. “That’ll kill this other story.”

“No, Vance. We’ll have to wait.”

“For what?”

“For things to be cleared up,” she said. “Please, darling, don’t keep asking me to tell you something I can’t.”

“If it isn’t Erika you’re protecting, who is it? Is it Mike? Because he’s got an almost foolproof alibi.”

“Please, Vance, it has to be this way,” she said.

I could see I wasn’t going to break her down then, at least. “You better get as much rest and sleep as you possibly can,” I said. “McCuller will probably start to work on you when he wakes up. Don’t talk unless Carson is here.”

“I won’t talk,” she said.

I reached in my pocket for a cigarette, and felt the folded newspaper. “Oh, by the way — there’s a piece in the paper tonight that mentions your friend, Eloise Morton.”

“Who?” Joan said.

“Eloise Morton, the girl at the Spain!”

“Oh.”

“It says no one has claimed her body. Didn’t you get in touch with her parents?”

“I?”

“You were going to get in touch with her parents when I left you this morning.”

Joan had been pale when I arrived. Now her face was the color of chalk.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“You saw them?”

“No... no, they’re out of town.”

“Look, honey; you better tell me where they live, so the department can get things straightened out.”

She just stared at me. She moistened her lips but she didn’t say anything.

“Darling, what is it? I know it’s hard for you, but if you’ll give me the Mortons’ address I’ll handle it for you.”

She twisted her body around in the chair as though she was suddenly in mortal pain.

Then it hit me, right between the eyes, and it had been there all day for me to see and I had been too stupid to see it. Eloise Morton — E. M. Erika Malvern — E. M. The grief and panic on Joan’s face when I’d met her in the lobby of the Spain. The death of a school friend could have shocked her that much, but surely it would have had to be a close friend, someone Mike or the rest of us would have heard of.

I took Joan by the shoulders. I had to push my breath out hard to make a sound. “Erika?” I asked her.

She didn’t have to answer. It was there in her eyes.

Joan didn’t cry. It would have been almost better if she could have. Now that it was out between us, she talked, dry-eyed. It wasn’t a pretty story.

Most of the people who stayed at the Spain were permanent residents, elderly, not too well off. There was no smart bar or cocktail lounge. You just wouldn’t go there unless you knew someone who lived there.

Joan had been doing some volunteer work at one of the hospitals and had made friends with one of the patients, a little old woman who lived at the Spain. When this woman was released from the hospital she made Joan promise to come and see her, and only yesterday Joan had kept that promise. As she was crossing the lobby to the desk she ran smack into Erika. They went through a “What are you doing here?” routine. It seemed they had both come to visit someone.

Erika was just starting out when a bellboy came up to her. “There’s a phone call for you, Miss Morton,” he said. “Do you want it in the booth, or shall I have them hold it till you get up to your room?”

I guess the way the boy said it, his smile, his ready recognition, made it impossible for Erika to bluff it out. She took Joan upstairs to her room and there, she told her:

“You and I are different, Joan. You’re satisfied to live the way we do — in a goldfish bowl. Because of father and his business everything we do is watched and commented on. You’re content to wait till the right man comes along, marry him, and live happily ever after. I’ve been married, and I can’t go back to be treated like a schoolgirl. I want some privacy. I want some independence. So I come here occasionally and stay under another name — Eloise Morton.”

She’d chosen a name with the same initials because her accessories, bags, handkerchiefs, were monogrammed. She said there was no harm in it. It was just that Mike insisted on choosing her friends for her, making her pIans for her. She wanted some part of her life, she said, where she could make her own friends and be out from under Mike’s supervision, loving as it might be.

Joan was shocked but, being Joan, she tried to understand. She could understand how, after a year of complete independence, Erika might find Mike’s chaperonage chafing from time to time. Erika tried to make her promise she wouldn’t say anything to Mike. Joan wouldn’t promise, but she did say she’d think about it and tell Erika before she went to Mike, if that was her decision.

“Last night I was in bed,” Joan said, “But I couldn’t get to sleep. Kathy had gone to bed. About one o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up quickly so the ringing wouldn’t disturb Kathy. It was Waldo. He sounded as though he’d been drinking. He wanted to talk to Erika. I told him she wasn’t home. Then he said, ‘I know I can count on you, Joan, to keep your mouth shut. Find her, Joan, and tell her I’ve got to see her. Tell her if she doesn’t get in touch with me within two hours — by three o’clock — I’m going to tell Mike Malvern she’s been using his confidential files for a cozy little racket. I have a hunch he might slap even Erika down for that kind of double-cross. And tell her that goes for her play-writing boy-friend, too.’

“I wanted to ask him more, but I heard, or thought I heard, the click of one of the extension phones. I didn’t want Kathy to hear what Waldo was saying... Oh, Vance, I knew then that Erika and Austin Graves must be using Mike’s confidential material for blackmail. Erika was with Mike so often when he picked up stories; she even made the records for his file. It wouldn’t have been too hard for her to discover the combination to the vault. And he loves her so, Vance. He loves her so that the possibility would never enter his head. He thought of you, he thought of Kathy — people whose loyalty is beyond question. He never thought of Erika.”

“Whose loyalty was even farther beyond question,” I said.

Joan nodded. “Excitement was like a disease to her,” Joan said. “Even as a little girl she’d do crazy things, just for the thrill of it. She didn’t need money — Mike would give her all she needs. But she would steal information from Mike and blackmail people with it — just because it was dangerous, and because she liked to control people. Mike has power, you know, but he uses it for good. Erika wanted it to use for excitement, for thrills.” Joan took a deep breath. “I knew Waldo wasn’t fooling, Vance. I didn’t know if Erika was still at the Spain, but I took a chance and called there. I couldn’t get a connection.”

“The fire,” I said.

Joan nodded. “Of course, I had no way of knowing whether she was there. I tried all the friends I could think of, without any luck. I tried her favorite night spots. Then, without any particular plan, I got dressed and went out on the town looking for her. Around half-past two I hadn’t found her. I was beginning to get panicky about Waldo. I called the Wakefield, but his room didn’t answer. He’d said Erika was to get in touch with him there by three, so I thought maybe he’d be there again. I... I went there just as I’ve told you, and found him. I just wanted him to hold off, not do anything crazy until we located Erika.”

“Poor baby,” I said.

“Then, this morning, there was no word from Erika — and all the talk from Mike about the leak. I’d read about the fire at the Spain, but there was no list of the injured or dead in the early editions. As soon as I could get free I went over there — as you know.”

“But, Joan, darling, why didn’t you just tell this as you’ve told it to me?”

For the first time her eyes filled with tears. “Vance, you don’t know what it’s like not to be loved by someone you love and need. Mike has never forgiven me because my mother died giving birth to me. He’s never been unfair, but he’s never loved me. It’s been Erika, always Erika, he adored. I couldn’t be the one to tell him the truth about her. He would hate me even more for knowing. When I knew this morning that Erika was dead I knew I’d never tell him. It may never have to come out now, Vance.”

“It’ll have to. I—”

“You’re not going to tell, Vance.”

“But, Joan—”

“I didn’t kill Waldo, so they can’t prove it. They’ll have to let me go after a while. The chances are they’ll never identify what’s left of Erika unless they’re given a lead, and they’re not going to get it from you or me. It’s better for Mike that she should just disappear. In time he’ll convince himself it was some underworld enemy of his who did away with her. Anything would be better than that he should know she never really loved him and that she quite calmly betrayed him.”

“And you’d let him go on thinking that you and Waldo—?”

“What does it matter? He can’t have less regard for me than he’s always had.”

I shook my head. I felt a little groggy. “Joan, how do you know Erika didn’t kill Waldo? You were so positive about it.”

She looked at me, her eyes wide. “But, darling, don’t you see? Waldo called at one o’clock. As soon as he hung up I called the Spain. It was on fire then, and she was there, trapped!”

It was about midnight when I left Joan. I felt as if I’d been beaten around the head. I remembered I’d promised Carson I’d call him when I got through talking to her. I went into a drugstore and rang him.

“I don’t know any more than I did when I left you,” I said.

“You’re lying,” he said cheerfully.

“Oh, she’s hiding something,” I said, “but I don’t know what it is.”

“Ought to have your mouth washed out with soap,” Carson said. “You talked to the woman for three hours and all you did was tell her you loved her?”

Three hours!

“You’re wrong about one thing, though, Mr. Carson,” I said. “Erika didn’t kill Waldo.”

“How do you know?”

“I can’t tell you,” I said, “but that’s one thing I did find out.”

“Was it Joan?”

“No, you idiot!”

“Okay, Romeo; have it your way,” Carson said. “But remember one thing: Joan is safe in Jail with her secret. You’re walking around loose with it. Somebody might not like that.”

“But I tell you she didn’t—”

“Tell it to the Marines,” Carson said.

So I took a cab uptown, nursing my headache and my secret, and thinking about what Carson had said. Someone — the someone who had shot Waldo — might be watching to make certain no one got on his trail. I know I had some weird ideas on the trip uptown. I thought first that maybe Ricardo had discovered that Waldo was in the know, and that Waldo had been making a nuisance of himself. So Ricardo had had Waldo rubbed out! It was a nice, clean, simple answer and didn’t hurt anybody I loved. But then I had a picture of one of Ricardo’s boys blasting someone with a woman’s toy revolver. With Joan’s revolver, because I was unpleasantly convinced that the missing gun was the one McCuller needed to convict her.

The whole thing kept coming back to us — to Mike, and me, to Erika, and Joan, and Kathy. We were the only ones who could have taken that gun out of Joan’s drawer and used it, and Erika had to be eliminated because she hadn’t had a chance to use it. She was being broiled alive when Waldo was killed. Not me. I knew that, if no one else did. Not Joan. And how on earth did Kathy fit into the picture? She loved Mike; she might have overheard Waldo’s phone call to Joan and she would protect Mike from hurt if she could, but to commit a murder just to protect the man you loved from having his feelings hurt — that was hard to take.

That left Mike.

As I thought about it I could feel the small hairs rising on the back of my neck. To begin with, Mike no longer had a real alibi. He could have been at the Wakefield. He certainly could have taken Joan’s gun, although he had one of his own that he was licensed to carry. Motive? Well, there were a dozen ways to figure that. There was one simple one: Suppose Waldo had gotten in touch with Mike last night — after he’d talked to Joan. Suppose Mike had gone to his room at the Wakefield and Waldo had said to him, “Mike, Erika is the one who’s been stealing your stuff and blackmailing people with it.” Mike hates Waldo, figures he can handle Erika himself, so he draws his gun and lets Waldo have it. But not his gun — Joan’s gun. The use of Joan’s gun suggested premeditation, a scheme.

I tried another tack: Waldo didn’t get in touch with Mike, but Mike, on his rounds, ran into something that convinced him Waldo was part of the blackmail setup. He could put two and two together. It would have to be Erika who was working with him. So he goes to the Wakefield and plugs Waldo, covering his tracks by using that little revolver which would have the police looking for a woman. And deliberately put Joan on the spot?

Oh, brother! But nonetheless, where could you go but Mike? Where could you possibly go but Mike?

The palms of my hands were damp when I paid off the driver and walked up the steps to Mike’s house. I had a key, of course, and let myself in. There was a light on in the library and I could see through into Mike’s study. There was a light on there, and though he would usually be out on the town at this time, it didn’t surprise me he was there now.

I remember I stood in the entrance hall and lit a cigarette. I was trying to figure out just what I’d say to him, just how I’d go about talking to him without involving Joan. Even then I wasn’t kidding myself about being a detective. There was probably something quite obvious that would clear Mike entirely. Actually, I hadn’t done anything like a complete check on his alibi. Maybe it would turn out to be airtight. McCuller had probably checked it already and found it was okay, or Mike wouldn’t be running around loose. Well, the first thing to do was find out if I was fired.

I walked through the library to the study. The door to the vault where he kept his files was open and I could hear him puttering around in there. I walked over to his desk, put out my cigarette, and lit another one. I could hear the file drawers open and close. He was hunting for something special, I imagined. Well, Kathy did the filing, not me.

I saw down in the chair beside his desk and closed my eyes. They felt hot and tired. It had been the longest day of my life, measured in stresses and strains.

Then I opened my eyes again and saw her standing in the vault door.

“Don’t move, Vance,” she said. “I’ve go to think this out.”

It was Erika! She was pointing the little .22 at me, her gray-green eyes as bright as diamonds.

The room began to do a slow, rhythmic spin. I’ve never fainted in my life, but I imagine I was as close to it then as I’ll ever be. The spinning stopped and Erika came back into focus. She had the gun in one hand and she had a small suitcase in the other.

“I counted on your being out with Mike,” she said. Her red lips moved in a smile. “Looking for me!”

“That’s what Mike is probably doing,” I said. I could feel anger beginning to rise up in me, hot, blind anger.

“Poor darling,” she said.

“I’ve seen Joan tonight,” I said. “She’s taking a rap for you, too.”

“My luck’s been so good up to now,” she said. “It seems to be changing. Joan told you things?”

“Joan told me things.”

“She’s protecting Mike, of course. How very noble and self-effacing.”

“She thinks you’re dead,” I said. “She’s not protecting you.”

The gray-green eyes narrowed. “She did tell you things.”

I began to think in terms of feet and inches then. I was about eight feet away from her. I wondered how accurate she could be with that popgun if I made a dive for her.

“Yes, my luck has gone very bad,” Erika said. “Sooner or later I knew she’d tell someone about the Spain. The fire was my first piece of luck. I wasn’t there, but someone died in my room — probably someone who got caught in the hallway and ran in there for safety. Joan would talk, I thought, and my passing would be duly mourned. You see, don’t you, how your coming home is very bad luck, Vance, darling?”

“You killed Waldo?”

“Waldo was far too greedy,” she said.

“I made a mistake tonight, myself,” I said. “I had a chance to break Austin Graves’ neck and I didn’t. He is your partner in blackmail, isn’t he?”

“Poor Austin, he’s probably half dead of fright by this time,” Erika said. “He started shaking last week when Waldo accidentally caught on to our little pastime.”

“I can understand why,” I said. “Who tipped you off that Waldo was going to spill to Mike?”

“I heard his chat with Joan on the library extension. I had just come in. I thought Joan and Kathy were asleep.” She smiled. “Needless to say, I went right out again to... to calm him down, shall we say?” Her eyes narrowed. “You know, Vance, perhaps your being here now is providential. I can tell Mike I found you rifling the vault, and when you tried to get away I shot you.”

“With the gun you used to kill Waldo? It will be hard to explain.”

She laughed. “Darling, I’m not a complete child,” she said. “I took Joan’s gun a long time ago, in case of emergencies. I used it to kill Waldo and it’s at the bottom of a Broadway sewer at this moment. This one hasn’t been used to kill anyone — until now.”

“And Joan? Are you going to kill Joan, too?”

“Why? Poor Joan — always behind the eight ball. I admit, Vance dear, to the horrible sin of leading a double life. I expose you as the double-crosser. Mike will forgive me, after he’s scolded me. He will be grateful to me for stopping the leak — by putting a bullet in you. It will be my word against Joan’s. Who does Mike always listen to?”

I tried getting my feet under me so I could make a fast move. Erika was thinking this out all too clearly.

“You’re a nice boy, Vance,” she said. “It’s really too bad for you it had to happen this way. But when you get into the kind of jam I’m in you have to get out of it.”

I made my move then, without much hope. Waiting would get me no place. I dived forward, as low and hard as I could. The gun went off, and the sound of it was much louder than I’d expected. I didn’t feel anything, except the jar of my shoulder against her knees, and then she went down, and I fumbled frantically for her right hand.

“Vance!”

It was Mike! I turned my head and saw him standing over me. At the same moment I heard a moaning noise from Erika, and I saw the little .22 lying a couple of feet away on the polished floor. I reached for it, and rolled clear of Erika and stood up. I saw her right hand, shattered and bloody.

Mike had a gun in his hand. It was his gun I had heard, not Erika’s. Mike’s face was the color of ashes, set in hard anger such as I’d never seen it. He made no move to help Erika.

She played it, right to the end: “Father, you don’t understand. Vance was in the vault. I found him there. I—”

“Call McCuller,” Mike said to me.

I went to the desk and started dialing police headquarters. William, attracted by the shot, came running from the kitchen.

“Get the first-aid kit from upstairs,” Mike said to him.

Erika, clinging to her injured hand, struggled up to her feet. Mike made no move to help her. I got police headquarters on the phone and told them to send McCuller.

“Father, you’ve got to listen to me,” Erika said.

“I have been listening to you,” Mike said, “for the last five minutes.”

William came in with the first-aid kit.

“Do what you can for her, William,” Mike said. Then he turned and walked slowly and steadily away into the library.

I went after him. He was standing by the fireplace, looking down into the dead coals in the grate.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” I said.

He didn’t answer, for a moment. Then he whirled around on me. “What’s the matter with me?” he cried. “People are my business! I’m supposed to know people — understand them! Until I heard her talking I’d never seen her before in my life.”

“Maybe you just saw her as a replica of somebody else,” I said. “Because you wanted it that way so badly.”

He reached out to me. “Vance, do you suppose Joan will ever understand? Is there any way I can ever make it up to her?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “She’s quite a girl.”