Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 21, No. 115, June 1953

The Betrayers by Stanley Ellin

All the writers we have ever known (at least, all of them with a spark of “romance” in their creative souls) have had a compulsion to do a story based on the theme of chivalry — perhaps for no other reason than to prove, in modem terms, that chivalry is not dead. Stanley Ellin is no exception to this general rule, and his romantic spark was vital enough to ignite something in his mind that eventually became an Idea. It all started one day when he and his daughter were discussing knighthood and deeds of derring-do and that golden age when knights in shining armor rode off to battle for their ladies’ honor. It was in that man-to-woman talk that “The Betrayers” was born.

Of course, the plot went through many changes before it took final shape. But through all its transformations the protagonist — a modern knight — remained true to Mr. Ellin’s original conception: “a ghost of all the Galahads before him.” Thus one modem detective story evolved: it had begun in Mr. Ellin’s memory of an ancient castle, dating back to 800 A.D., and ended in a contemporary apartment house, dated 1952 A.D. — more than a century of transition to achieve a ’tec theme!

Between them was a wall. And since it was only a flimsy, jerry-built partition, a sounding board between apartments, Robert came to know the girl that way.

At first she was the sound of footsteps, the small firm rap of high heels moving in a pattern of activity around her room. She must be very young, he thought idly, because at the time he was deep in Green Mansions, pursuing the lustrous Rima through a labyrinth of Amazonian jungle. Later he came to know her voice, light and breathless when she spoke, warm and gay when she raised it in chorus to some popular song dinning from her radio. She must be very lovely, he thought then, and after that found himself listening deliberately, and falling more and more in love with her as he listened.

Her name was Amy, and there was a husband, too, a man called Vince who had a flat, unpleasant voice, and a sullen way about him. Occasionally there were quarrels which the man invariably ended by slamming the door of their room and thundering down the stairs as loud as he could. Then she would cry, a smothered whimpering, and Robert, standing close to the wall between them, would feel as if a hand had been thrust inside his chest and was twisting his heart. He would think wildly of the few steps that would take him to her door, the few words that would let her know he was her friend, was willing to do something — anything — to help her. Perhaps, meeting face to face, she would recognize his love. Perhaps—

So the thoughts whirled around and around, but Robert only stood there, taut with helplessness.

And there was no one to confide in, which made it that much harder. The only acquaintances he numbered in the world were the other men in his office, and they would never have understood. He worked, prosaically enough, in the credit department of one of the city’s largest department stores, and too many years there had ground the men around him to a fine edge of cynicism. The business of digging into people’s records, of searching for the tax difficulties, the clandestine affairs with expensive women, the touch of larceny in every human being — all that was bound to have an effect, they told Robert, and if he stayed on the job much longer he’d find it out for himself.

What would they tell him now? A pretty girl next door? Husband’s away most of the time? Go on, make yourself at home!

How could he make them under-stand that that wasn’t what he was looking for? That what he wanted was someone to meet his love halfway, someone to put an end to the cold loneliness that settled in him like a stone during the dark hours each night.

So he said nothing about it to anyone, but stayed close to the wall, drawing from it what he could. And knowing the girl as he had come to, he was not surprised when he finally saw her. The mail for all the apartments was left on a table in the downstairs hallway, and as he walked down the stairs to go to work that morning, he saw her take a letter from the table and start up the stairway toward him.

There was never any question in his mind that this was the girl. She was small and fragile and dark-haired, and all the loveliness he had imagined in her from the other side of the wall was there in her face. She was wearing a loose robe, and as she passed him on the stairway she pulled the robe closer to her breast and slipped by almost as if she were afraid of him. He realized with a start that he had been staring unashamedly, and with his face red he turned down the stairs to the street. But he walked the rest of his way in a haze of wonderment.

He saw her a few times after that, always under the same conditions, but it took weeks before he mustered enough courage to stop at the foot of the stairs and turn to watch her retreating form above: the lovely fine line of ankle, the roundness of calf, the curve of body pressing against the robe. And then as she reached the head of the stairs, as if aware he was watching her, she looked down at him and their eyes met.

For a heart-stopping moment Robert tried to understand what he read in her face, and then her husband’s voice came flat and belligerent from the room. “Amy,” it said, “what’s holdin’ you up!” — and she was gone, and the moment with her.

When he saw the husband he marveled that she had chosen someone like that. A small, dapper gamecock of a man, he was good-looking in a hard way, but with the skin drawn so tight over his face that the cheekbones jutted sharply and the lips were drawn into a thin menacing line. He glanced at Robert up and down out of the corners of blank eyes as they passed, and in that instant Robert understood part of what he had seen in the girl’s face. This man was as dangerous as some half-tamed animal that would snap at any hand laid on him, no matter what its intent. Just being near him you could smell danger, as surely the girl did her every waking hour.

The violence in the man exploded one night with force enough to waken Robert from a deep sleep. It was not the pitch of the voice, Robert realized, sitting up half-dazed in bed, because the words were almost inaudible through the wall; it was the vicious intensity that was so frightening.

He slipped out of bed and laid his ear against the wall. Standing like that, his eyes closed while he strained to follow the choppy phrases, he could picture the couple facing each other as vividly as if the wall had dissolved before him.

“So you know,” the man said. “So what?”

“...getting out!” the girl said.

“And then tell everybody? Tell the whole world?”

“I won’t!” The girl was crying now. “I swear I won’t!”

“Think I’d take a chance?” the man said, and then his voice turned soft and derisive. “Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “Where else could I get it? Digging ditches?”

“Better that way! This way... I’m getting out!”

His answer was not delivered in words. It came in the form of a blow so hard that when she reeled back and struck the wall, the impact stung Robert’s face. “Vince!” she screamed, the sound high and quavering with terror. “Don’t, Vince!”

Every nerve in Robert was alive now with her pain as the next blow was struck. His fingernails dug into the wall at the hard-breathing noises of scuffling behind it as she was pulled away.

“Ahh, no!” she cried out, and then there was the sound of a breath being drawn hoarsely and agonizingly into lungs no longer responsive to it, the thud of a flaccid weight striking the floor, and suddenly silence. A terrible silence.

As if the wall itself were her cold, dead flesh Robert recoiled from it, then stood staring at it in horror. His thoughts twisted and turned on themselves insanely, but out of them loomed one larger and larger so that he had to face it and recognize it.

She had been murdered, and as surely as though he had been standing there beside her he was a witness to it! He had been so close that if the wall were not there he could have reached out his hand and touched her. Done something to help her. Instead, he had waited like a fool until it was too late.

But there was still something to be done, he told himself wildly. And long as this madman in the next room had no idea there was a witness he could still be taken red-handed. A call to the police, and in five minutes...

But before he could take the first nerveless step Robert heard the room next door stealthily come to life again. There was a sound of surreptitious motion, of things being shifted from their place, then, clearly defined, a lifeless weight being pulled along the floor, and the cautious creaking of a door opened wide. It was that last sound which struck Robert with a sick comprehension of what was happening.

The murderer was a monster, but he was no fool. If he could safely dispose of the body now during these silent hours of the night he was, to all intents and purposes, a man who had committed no crime at all!

At his door Robert stopped short. From the hallway came the deliberate thump of feet finding their way down the stairs with the weight dragging behind them. The man had killed once. He was reckless enough in this crisis to risk being seen with his victim. What would such a man do to anyone who confronted him at such a time?

Robert leaned back against his door, his eyes closed tight, a choking constriction in his throat as if the man’s hands were already around it. He was a coward, there was no way around it. Faced with the need to show some courage he had discovered he was a rank coward, and he saw the girl’s face before him now, not with fear in it, but contempt.

But — and the thought gave him a quick sense of triumph — he could still go to the police. He saw himself doing it, and the sense of triumph faded away. He had heard some noises, and from that had constructed a murder. The body? There would be none. The murderer? None. Only a man whose wife had left him because he had quarreled with her. The accuser? A young man who had wild dreams. A perfect fool. In short, Robert himself.

It was only when he heard the click of the door downstairs that he stepped out into the hallway and started down, step by careful step. Halfway down he saw it, a handkerchief, small and crumpled and blotched with an ugly stain. He picked it up gingerly, and holding it up toward the dim light overhead let it fall open. The stain was bright sticky red almost obscuring in one corner the word Amy carefully embroidered there. Blood. Her blood. Wouldn’t that be evidence enough for anyone?

Sure, he could hear the policeman answer him jeeringly, evidence of a nose-bleed, all rights, and he could feel the despair churn in him.

It was the noise of the car that roused him, and then he flew down the rest of the stairs, but too late. As he pressed his face to the curtain of the front door the car roared away from the curb, its tail-lights gleaming like malevolent eyes, its license plate impossible to read in the dark. If he had only been an instant quicker, he raged at himself, only had sense enough to understand that the killer must use a car for his purpose, he could easily have identified it. Now, even that chance was gone. Every chance was gone.

He was in his room pacing the floor feverishly when within a half hour he heard the furtive sounds of the murderer’s return. And why not, Robert thought; he’s gotten rid of her, he’s safe now, he can go on as if nothing at all had happened.

If I were only someone who could go into that room and beat the truth out of him, the thought boiled on, or someone with such wealth or position that I would be listened to...

But all that was as unreal and vaporous as his passion for the girl had been. What weapon of vengeance could he possibly have at his command, a nobody working in a...

Robert felt the sudden realization wash over him in a cold wave. His eyes narrowed on the wall as if, word by word, the idea were being written on it in a minute hand.

Everyone has a touch of larceny in him — wasn’t that what the old hands in his department were always saying? Everyone was suspect. Certainly the man next door, with his bent for violence, his talk of ten thousand dollars come by in some unlikely way, must have black marks on his record that the authorities, blind as they might be, could recognize and act on. If someone skilled in investigation were to strip the man’s past down, layer by layer, justice would have to be done. That was the weapon: the dark past itself, stored away in the man, waiting only to be ignited!

Slowly and thoughtfully Robert slipped the girl’s crumpled handkerchief into an envelope and sealed it. Then, straining to remember the exact words, he wrote down on paper the last violent duologue between murderer and victim. Paper and envelope both went into a drawer of his dresser, and the first step had been taken.

But then, Robert asked himself, what did he know about the man? His name was Vince, and that was all. Hardly information which could serve as the starting point of a search through the dark corridors of someone’s past. There must be something more than that, something to serve as a lead.

It took Robert the rest of a sleepless night to hit on the idea of the landlady. A stout and sleepy-eyed woman whose only interest in life seemed to lie in the prompt collection of her rent, she still must have some information about the man. She occupied the rear apartment on the ground floor, and as early in the morning as he dared Robert knocked on her door.

She looked more sleepy-eyed than ever as she pondered his question. “Them?” she said at last. “That’s the Sniders. Nice people, all right.” She blinked at Robert. “Not having any trouble with them, are you?”

“No. Not at all. But is that all you can tell me about them? I mean, don’t you know where they’re from, or anything like that?”

The landlady shrugged. “I’m sure it’s none of my business,” she said loftily. “All I know is they pay on the first of the month right on the dot, and they’re nice respectable people.”

He turned away from her heavily, and as he did so saw the street door close behind the postman. It was as if a miracle had been passed for him. The landlady was gone, he was all alone with that little heap of mail on the table, and there staring up at him was an envelope neatly addressed to Mrs. Vincent Snider.

All the way to his office he kept that envelope hidden away in an inside pocket, and it was only when he was locked in the seclusion of his cubicle that he carefully slit it open and studied its contents. A single page with only a few lines on it, a noncommittal message about the family’s well-being, and the signature: Your sister, Celia. Not much to go on — but wait, there was a return address on the stationery, an address in a small upstate town.

Robert hesitated only a moment, then thrust letter and envelope into his pocket, straightened his jacket, and walked into the office of his superior. Mr. Sprague, in charge of the department and consequently the most ulcerated and cynical member of it, regarded him dourly.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Robert, “but I’ll need a few days off. You see, there’s been a sudden death.”

Mr. Sprague sighed at this pebble cast into the smooth pool of his department’s routine, but his face fell into the proper sympathetic lines.

“Somebody close?”

“Very close,” said Robert.

The walk from the railroad station to the house was a short one. The house itself had a severe and forbidding air about it, as did the young woman who opened the door in answer to Robert’s knock.

“Yes,” she said, “my sister’s name is Amy Snider. Her married name, that is. I’m Celia Thompson.”

“What I’m looking for,” Robert said, “is some information about her. About your sister.”

The woman looked stricken. “Something’s happened to her?”

“In a way,” Robert said. He cleared his throat hard. “You see, she’s disappeared from her apartment, and I’m looking into it. Now, if you...”

“You’re from the police?”

“I’m acting for them,” Robert said, and prayed that this ambiguity would serve in place of identification. The prayer was answered, the woman gestured him into the house, and sat down facing him in the bare and uninviting living room.

“I knew,” the woman said, “I knew something would happen,” and she rocked piteously from side to side in her chair.

Robert reached forward and touched her hand gently. “How did you know?”

“How? What else could you expect when you drive a child out of her home and slam the door in her face! When you throw her out into the world not even knowing how to take care of herself!”

Robert withdrew his hand abruptly. “You did that?”

“My father did it. Her father.”

“But why?”

“If you knew him,” the woman said. “A man who thinks anything pretty is sinful. A man who’s so scared of hellfire and brimstone that he’s kept us in it all our lives!

“When she started to get so pretty, and the boys pestering her all the time, he turned against her just like that. And when she had her trouble with that man he threw her out of the house, bag and baggage. And if he knew I was writing letters to her,” the woman said fearfully, “he’d throw me out, too. I can’t even say her name in front of him, the way he is.”

“Look,” Robert said eagerly, “that man she had trouble with. Was that the one she married? That Vincent Snider?”

“I don’t know,” the woman said vaguely. “I just don’t know. Nobody knows except Amy and my father, the way it was kept such a secret. I didn’t even know she was married until all of a sudden she wrote me a letter about it from the city.”

“But if your father knows, I can talk to him about it.”

“No! You can’t! If he even knew I told you as much as I did...”

“But I can’t let it go at that,” he pleaded. “I have to find out about this man, and then maybe we can straighten everything out.”

“All right,” the woman said wearily, “there is somebody. But not my father, you’ve got to keep away from him for my sake. There’s this teacher over at the high school, this Miss Benson. She’s the one to see. And she liked Amy; she’s the one Amy mails my letters to, so my father won’t know. Maybe she’ll tell you, even if she won’t tell anybody else. I’ll write you a note to her, and you go see her.”

At the door he thanked her, and she regarded him with a hard, straight look. “You have to be pretty to get yourself in trouble,” she said, “so it’s something that’ll never bother me. But you find Amy, and you make sure she’s all right.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “I’ll try.”

At the school he was told that Miss Benson was the typewriting teacher, that she had classes until 3, and that if he wished to speak to her alone he would have to wait until then. So for hours he fretfully walked the few main streets of the town, oblivious of the curious glances of passers-by, and thinking of Amy. These were the streets she had known. These shop windows had mirrored her image. And, he thought with a sharp jealousy, not always alone. There had been boys. Attracted to her, as boys would be, but careless of her, never realizing the prize they had. But if he had known her then, if he could have been one of them...

At 3 o’clock he waited outside the school building until it had emptied, and then went in eagerly. Miss Benson was a small woman, gray-haired and fluttering, almost lost among the grim ranks of hooded typewriters in the room. After Robert had explained himself, and she had read Celia Thompson’s note she seemed ready to burst into tears.

“It’s wrong of her!” she said. “It’s dreadfully wrong of her to send you to me. She must have known that.”

“But why is it wrong?”

“Why? Because she knows I don’t want to talk about it to anyone. She knows what it would cost me if I did, that’s why!”

“Look,” Robert said patiently, “I’m not trying to find out what happened. I’m only trying to find out about this man Amy had trouble with, what his name is, where he comes from, where I can get more information about him.”

“No,” Miss Benson quavered, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” Robert said angrily. “A girl disappears, this man may be at the bottom of it, and all you can do is say you’re sorry!”

Miss Benson’s jaw went slack. “You mean that he — that he did something to her?”

“Yes,” Robert said, “he did,” and had to quickly catch her arm as she swayed unsteadily, apparently on the verge of fainting.

“I should have known,” she said lifelessly. “I should have known when it happened that it might come to this. But at the time...”

At the time the girl had been one of her students. A good student — not brilliant, mind you — but a nice girl always trying to do her best. And well brought-up, too, not like so many of the young snips you get nowadays.

That very afternoon when it all happened the girl herself had told Miss Benson she was going to the Principal’s office after school hours to get her program straightened out. Certainly if she meant to do anything wicked she wouldn’t have mentioned that, would she? Wasn’t that all the evidence anyone needed?

“Evidence?” Robert said in bewilderment.

Yes, evidence. There had been that screaming in the Principal’s office, and Miss Benson had been the only one left in the whole school. She had run to the office, flung open the door, and that was how she found them. The girl sobbing hysterically, her dress torn halfway down; Mr. Price standing behind her, glaring at the open door, at the incredulous Miss Benson.

“Mr. Price?” Robert said. He had the sense of swimming numbly through some gelatinous depths, unable to see anything clearly.

Mr. Price, the Principal, of course. He stood glaring at her, his face ashen. Then the girl had fled through the door and Mr. Price had taken one step after her, but had stopped short. He had pulled Miss Benson into the office, and closed the door, and then he had talked to her.

The long and the short of what he told her was that the girl was a wanton. She had waltzed into his office, threatened him with blackmail, and when he had put her into her place she had artfully acted out her little scene. But he would be merciful, very merciful. Rather than call in the authorities and blacken the name of the school and of her decent, respectable father he would simply expel her and advise her father to get her out of town promptly.

And, Mr. Price had remarked meaningfully, it was a lucky thing indeed that Miss Benson had walked in just in time to be his witness. Although if Miss Benson failed him as a witness it could be highly unlucky for her.

“And he meant it,” Miss Benson said bitterly. “It’s his family runs the town and everything in it. If I said anything of what I really thought, if I dared open my mouth, I’d never get another job anywhere. But I should have talked up, I know I should have, especially after what happened next!”

She had managed to get back to her room at the far end of the corridor although she had no idea of where she got the strength. And as soon as she had entered the room she saw the girl there, lying on the floor beneath the bulletin board from which usually hung the sharp, cutting scissors. But the scissors were in the girl’s clenched fist as she lay there, and blood over everything. All that blood over everything.

“She was like that,” Miss Benson said dully. “If you reprimanded her for even the littlest thing she looked like she wanted to sink through the floor, to die on the spot. And after what she went through it must have been the first thing in her head: just to get rid of herself. It was a mercy of God that she didn’t succeed then and there.”

It was Miss Benson who got the doctor, a discreet man who asked no questions, and it was she who tended the girl after her father had barred his door to her.

“And when she could get around,” Miss Benson said, “I placed her with this office over at the county seat. She wasn’t graduated, of course, or really expert, but I gave her a letter explaining she had been in some trouble and needed a helping hand, and they gave her a job.”

Miss Benson dug her fingers into her forehead. “If I had only talked up when I should have. I should have known he’d never feel safe, that he’d hound her and hound her until he...”

“But he isn’t the one!” Robert said hoarsely. “He isn’t the right man at all!”

She looked at him wonderingly. “But you said...”

“No,” Robert said helplessly, “I’m looking for someone else. A different man altogether.”

She shrank back. “You’ve been trying to fool me!”

“I swear I haven’t.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “If you say a word about this nobody’ll believe you. I’ll tell them you were lying, you made the whole thing up!”

“You won’t have to,” Robert said. “All you have to do is tell me where you sent her for that job. If you do that you can forget everything else.”

She hesitated, studying his face with bright, frightened eyes. “All right,” she said at last. “All right.”

He was about to go when she placed her hand anxiously on his arm. “Please,” she said. “You don’t think unkindly of me because of all this, do you?”

“No,” Robert said, “I don’t have the right to.”

The bus trip which filled the remainder of the day was a wearing one, the hotel bed that night was no great improvement over the bus seat, and Mr. Pardee of Grace, Grace, & Pardee seemed to Robert the hardest of all to take. He was a cheery man, too loud and florid to be properly contained by his small office.

He studied Robert’s business card with interest. “Credit research, eh?” he said admiringly. “Wonderful how you fellas track ’em down wherever they are. Sort of a Northwest Mounted Police just working to keep business healthy, that’s what it comes to, doesn’t it? And anything I can do to help...”

Yes, he remembered the girl very well.

“Just about the prettiest little thing we ever had around here,” he said pensively. “Didn’t know much about her job, of course, but you got your money’s worth just watching her walk around the office.”

Robert managed to keep his teeth clenched. “Was there any man she seemed interested in? Someone around the office, maybe, who wouldn’t be working here any more? Or even someone outside you could tell me about?”

Mr. Pardee studied the ceiling with narrowed eyes. “No,” he said, “nobody I can think of. Must have been plenty of men after her, but you’d never get anything out of her about it. Not with the way she was so secretive and all. Matter of fact, her being that way was one of the things that made all the trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Somebody was picking the petty cash box every so often, and what with all the rest of the office being so friendly except her it looked like she might be the one. And then that letter she brought saying she had already been in some trouble — well, we just had to let her go.

“Later on,” continued Mr. Pardee pleasantly, “when we found out it wasn’t her after all, it was too late. We didn’t know where to get in touch with her.” He snapped his fingers loudly. “Gone, just like that.”

Robert drew a deep breath to steady himself. “But there must be somebody in the office who knew her,” he pleaded. “Maybe some girl she talked to.”

“Oh, that,” said Mr. Pardee. “Well, as I said, she wasn’t friendly, but now and then she did have her head together with Jenny Rizzo over at the switchboard. If you want to talk to Jenny go right ahead. Anything I can do to help...”

But it was Jenny Rizzo who helped him. A plain girl dressed in defiant bad taste, she studied him with impersonal interest and told him coolly that she had nothing to say about Amy. The kid had taken enough kicking around. It was about time they let her alone.

“I’m not interested in her,” Robert said. “I’m trying to find out about the man she married. Someone named Vincent Snider. Did you know about him?”

From the stricken look on her face Robert realized exultantly that she did.

“Him!” she said. “So she went and married him, anyhow!”

“What about it?”

“What about it? I told her a hundred times he was no good. I told her just stay away from him.”

“Why?”

“Because I know his kind. Sharp stuff hanging around with money in his pocket, you never knew where it came from. The kind of guy’s always pulling fast deals, but he’s too smart to get caught, that’s why!”

“How well did you know him?”

“How well? I knew him from the time he was a kid around my neighborhood here. Look,” Jenny dug into a desk drawer deep laden with personal possessions. She came out with a handful of snapshots which she thrust at Robert. “We even used to double-date together, Vince and Amy, and me and my boy friend. Plenty of times I told her right in front of Vince that he was no good, but he gave her such a line she wouldn’t even listen. She was like a baby that way; anybody was nice to her she’d go overboard.”

They were not good photographs, but there were Vince and Amy clearly recognizable.

“Could I have one of these?” Robert asked, his voice elaborately casual.

Jenny shrugged. “Just go ahead and help yourself,” she said, and Robert did.

“Then what happened?” he said. “I mean, to Vince and Amy?”

“You got me there. After she got fired they both took off. She said something about Vince getting a job downstate a-ways, in Sutton, and that was the last I saw of them. I could just see him working at anything honest, but the way she said it she must have believed him. Anyhow, I never heard from her after that.”

“Could you remember exactly when you saw her last? That time she told you they were going to Sutton?”

Jenny could and did. She might have remembered more, but Robert was out of the door by then, leaving her gaping after him, her mouth wide open in surprise.

The trip to Sutton was barely an hour by bus, but it took another hour before Robert was seated at a large table with the Sutton newspaper files laid out before him. The town’s newspaper was a large and respectable one, its files orderly and well-kept. And two days after the date Jenny Rizzo had given him there was the news Robert had hoped to find. Headline news emblazoned all across the top of the first page.

Ten thousand dollars stolen, the news report said. A daring, lone bandit had walked into the Sutton Bank and Trust, had bearded the manager without a soul around knowing it, and had calmly walked out with a small valise containing ten thousand dollars in currency. The police were on the trail. An arrest was expected momentarily...

Robert traced through later dates with his hands shaking. The police had given up in their efforts. No arrest was ever made...

Robert had carefully scissored the photograph so that Vince now stood alone in the picture. The bank manager irritably looked at the picture, and then swallowed hard.

“It’s him!” he told Robert incredulously. “That’s the man! I’d know him anywhere. If I can get my hands on him...”

“There’s something you’ll have to do first,” said Robert.

“I’m not making any deals,” the manager protested. “I want him, and I want every penny of the money he’s got left.”

“I’m not talking about deals,” Robert said. “All you have to do is put down on paper that you positively identify this man as the one who robbed the bank. If you do that the police’ll have him for you tomorrow.”

“That’s all?” the man said suspiciously.

“That’s all,” Robert said.

He sat again in the familiar room, the papers, the evidence, arranged before him. His one remaining fear had been that in his absence the murderer had somehow taken alarm and fled. He had not breathed easy until the first small, surreptitious noises from next door made clear that things were as he had left them.

Now he carefully studied all the notes he had painstakingly prepared, all the reports of conversations held. It was all here, enough to see justice done, but it was more than that, he told himself bitterly. It was the portrait of a girl who, step by step, had been driven through a pattern of betrayal.

Every man she had dealt with had been an agent of betrayal. Father, school principal, employer, and finally her husband, each was guilty in his turn. Jenny Rizzo’s words rang loud in Robert’s ears.

Anybody was nice to her she’d go overboard. If he had spoken, if he had moved, he could have been the one. When she turned at the top of the stairs to look at him she might have been waiting for him to speak or move. Now it was too late, and there was no way of letting her know what these papers meant, what he had done for her...

The police were everything Robert had expected until they read the bank manager’s statement. Then they read and reread the statement, they looked at the photograph, and they courteously passed Robert from hand to hand until finally there was a door parked Lieutenant Kyserling, and behind it a slender, soft-spoken man.

It was a long story — Robert had not realized until then how long it was or how many details there were to explain — but it was told from start to finish without interruption. At its conclusion Kyserling took the papers, the handkerchief, and the photograph, and pored over them. Then he looked at Robert curiously.

“It’s all here,” he said. “The only thing you left out is why you did it, why you went to all this trouble. What’s your stake in this?”

It was not easy to have your most private dream exposed to a complete stranger. Robert choked on the words. “It’s because of her. The way I felt about her.”

“Oh.” Kyserling nodded understandingly. “Making time with her?”

“No,” Robert said angrily. “We never even spoke to each other!”

Kyserling tapped his fingers gently on the papers before him.

“Well,” he said, “it’s none of my business anyhow. But you’ve done a pretty job for us. Very pretty. Matter of fact, yesterday we turned up the body in a car parked a few blocks away from your place. The car was stolen a month ago, there wasn’t a stitch of identification on the clothing or anything; all we got is a body with a big wound in it. This business could have stayed up in the air for a hundred years if it wasn’t for you walking in with a perfect case made out from A to Z.”

“I’m glad,” Robert said. “That’s the way I wanted it.”

“Yeah,” Kyserling said. “Any time you want a job on the force you just come and see me.”

Then he was gone from the office for a long while, and when he returned it was in the company of a big, stolid plainclothesman who smiled grimly.

“We’re going to wrap it up now,” Kyserling told Robert, and gestured at the man.

They went softly up the stairs of the house and stood to the side of the door while Kyserling laid his ear against it for some assurance of sound. Then he briskly nodded to the plainclothesman and rapped hard.

“Open up!” he called. “It’s the police.”

There was an ear-ringing silence, and Robert’s mouth went dry as he saw Kyserling and the plainclothes-man slip the chill blue steel of revolvers from their shoulder holsters.

“I got no use for these cute little games,” growled Kyserling, and suddenly raised his foot and smashed the heel of his shoe hard against the lock of the door. The door burst open, Robert cowered back against the balustrade of the staircase—

And then he saw her.

She stood in the middle of the room facing him wildly, the same look on her face, he knew in that fantastic moment, that she must have worn each time she came face to face with a betrayer exposed. Then she took one backward step, and suddenly whirled toward the window.

“Ahh, no!” she cried, as Robert had heard her cry it out once before, and then was gone through the window in a sheet of broken glass. Her voice rose in a single despairing shriek, and then was suddenly and mercifully silent.

Robert stood there, the salt of sweat suddenly in his eyes, the salt of blood on his lips. It was an infinity of distance to the window, but he finally got there, and had to thrust Kyserling aside to look down.

She lay crumpled on the sidewalk, and the thick black hair in loose disorder around her face shrouded her from the eyes of the curious.

The plainclothesman was gone, but Kyserling was still there watching Robert with sympathetic eyes.

“I thought he had killed her,” Robert whispered. “I could swear he had killed her!”

“It was his body we found,” said Kyserling. “She was the one who did it.”

“But why didn’t you tell me then!” Robert begged. “Why didn’t you let me know!”

Kyserling looked at him wisely. “Yeah?” he said. “And then what? You tip her off so that she gets away; then we really got troubles.”

There could be no answer to that. None at all.

“She just cracked up,” Kyserling said reasonably. “Holed up here like she was, not knowing which way to turn, nobody she could trust... It was in the cards. You had nothing to do with it.”

He went downstairs then, and Robert was alone in her room. He looked around it slowly, at all the things that were left of her, and then very deliberately picked up a chair, held it high over his head, and with all his strength smashed it against the wall...