Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1. Whole No. 284, July 1967

B as in Burglary by Lawrence Treat

Bankhart of the Homicide Squad was hobnobbing with “the four hundred”; he was also making a play for a gorgeous blue-eyed babe hanging on every thrilling word that Bank was improvising about a homicide that had never happened — and then it did happen! Not the murder case Bank was inventing — but a stunner just the same...

One of the most interesting investigations in Lawrence Treat’s new police procedural series — Mr. Treat has the true ’tec touch...

What with the blare of the orchestra out on the lawn, nobody even heard the shot, least of all big Jim Bankhart of the Homicide Squad. He was one of two hundred or so guests dining under the caterer’s tent on that rainy, summer evening. As far as Bank was concerned, somebody could have fired off a cannon and he wouldn’t have noticed it. He had other things on his mind.

He was wearing a formal white jacket, and he had his table partner spellbound. Her clear blue eyes gazed up with adoration at his busted nose and his tomahawk of a face. She was sitting next to a real live detective, and she was thrilled. She kept saying so.

She was definitely his dish. He had a romantic streak in him and he always dreamed of meeting beautiful blondes. Or brunettes or redheads or any other color they happened to dye their hair. The Homicide Squad usually kidded the pants off him, but if they could see him now, all dolled up and with this blue-eyed babe hanging on every word of his, they’d fall over backwards.

Occasionally he stopped thrilling her and scanned the faces of the bankers and brokers and yachtsmen and their bejeweled wives jabbering away at the other tables. It struck him that any first-class crook could have made a nice haul. The way the champagne was flowing, you could just pass the hat and they’d probably fill it up with diamonds, and not even care.

Still, that wasn’t Bank’s responsibility. He was here in high society because his friend, Vinny de Solo, was going to marry Vicky Hoskins. Vinny and Vicky — it even sounded like a love match, and the occasion called for a celebration. Bank, waiting for the next dance, figured out that the shindig probably set Peter Hoskins back around ten grand. Which didn’t bother Bank a bit. He was concentrating on romance.

Her name was Carol something-or-other. He hadn’t caught the rest of it or maybe she hadn’t told him, but in due time he’d find out. Meanwhile his soft, almost gentle voice gave no indication it could drown out a foghorn, and he had her practically mesmerized. He was telling her the story of a homicide that he was making up as he went along. He broke off when he heard an apologetic cough and became aware of the shadow of a man leaning forward, just behind his shoulder.

Bank swung around. The long humble face and the ingratiating manner belonged to no guest. “Butler” was written all over him.

“I beg your pardon.” he said. “Mr. Bankhart?”

“Yeah?” Bank said, telling himself there was only one reason for the interruption. There’d been a homicide somewhere, and Lieutenant Decker wanted him. Goodbye, romance.

“Could you come inside a moment?” the butler said. “Mr. Hoskins would like to see you.”

The blue-eyed angel piped up in surprise. “Jasper, what on earth can Daddy want?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Miss Carol.”

Which told Bank a lot. Carol was Hoskins’ younger daughter, and Bank was flying high. He put a big meaty paw on her bare arm and held it there long enough to watch the effect, which was promising.

“Be back,” he said, letting his fingers slide down a couple of inches. “Wait for me.”

“Forever,” she breathed.

He realized she was kidding him, but he took it in stride. He pursed his lips in the form of a kiss, gave her a broad grin, and stood up. He threaded his way between the tables and headed for the canvas corridor that connected the tent with the main house. It had been raining earlier, but he heard no sound on the canvas top, so he assumed that the storm had passed.

Inside the house, in the wide paneled hallway, Jasper halted. The two living rooms and the spacious dining room were empty now. Only the litter of cocktail glasses and cigarette butts remained as evidence of the crowd that had been here a half hour ago.

“If you’ll go upstairs,” Jasper said, “Mr. Hoskins is waiting for you.”

Bank nodded and headed up. The bedrooms — and there might be a dozen of them — were probably on the floor above. It crossed his mind that the jewel theft he’d thought about a few minutes ago might have been pulled off. Why else send for him?

Peter Hoskins, a somber, nervous, middle-aged banker of medium height, was waiting on the landing. His hands were rammed in his jacket pockets, and his attitude was grim.

“Mr. Bankhart,” he said, “would you come into my wife’s bedroom? There’s been a tragedy, a—” he hesitated, licked his lips — “a murder, and you’d better take charge.”

“Are you kidding?” Bank said.

“Hardly. And I hope you can handle this without spoiling the party. Vicky’s engagement — this is a terrible thing to happen now.”

“Let’s go see,” Bank said curtly.

Hoskins led him down the hall and opened a door at the far end, and Bank entered. He saw a large room lavishly furnished with a ritzy bed, a chaise lounge, a few comfortable chairs, a table, a color TV set, and a couple of bureaus. A jade lamp and one of the chairs had been knocked over, a bureau drawer and a wall safe were wide open, and a man lay sprawled on the floor. A cocktail glass was upended, just beyond his reach.

Bank walked over and stared down. The man was lying on his stomach, and his head was turned so that you could see one of his fixed, sightless eyes. A few drops of blood were barely visible on the light tan carpet, and the small rent in the back of his jacket might have been the exit hole of a bullet. The man was obviously dead.

Bank spun around. “Know him?” he asked Hoskins.

“Ronald Early,” Hoskins said. His tone was clipped, as if he were repressing a deep emotion, and doing it only with great effort. “An associate. One of my oldest friends.”

“Think he might have been committing larceny?”

“Impossible. I tell you, he was a close friend of mine. He had no financial troubles — I’m sure of it.”

“He might have surprised a burglar, struggled with him, and got killed. What was in the safe?”

“A substantial amount of jewelry. Besides that, I usually keep a few thousand in cash.”

“And the combination? Who knows it?”

“My wife had it written down on a piece of paper that she kept in her bureau drawer. She had a bad memory and—”

“See if the thing’s still there.”

Peter Hoskins bent down and rummaged in the drawer. After a few moments he straightened up. “No,” he said. “It’s gone.”

“I’ll notify the Homicide Squad,” Bank said. He lapsed into the stiff, formal language of police reports, which over the years he had somehow or other come to adopt whenever he was working with the public. “Meanwhile would you instruct your staff not to move any of the vehicles in which your guests arrived, and to permit no one to leave the premises?”

Hoskins nodded. “You’ll handle this as quietly as possible, won’t you?”

“This is a homicide,” Bank said. “Kindly carry out my instructions, and then return.”

Hoskins left. Bank slapped his palm with a clenched fist, frowned, walked over to the phone. He examined it from varying angles of light and then, holding it gingerly in his handkerchief, picked it up. After speaking to the despatcher at headquarters, Bank called Lieutenant Decker and gave him a short summary of what had happened.

With that done, Bank stood in the center of the room and gazed around intently, covering it section by section. When he reached the area near the south window he spotted the bit of metal. He strode over to it, bent down and picked up a spent bullet. It was in fair condition and probably a .38. The place where he’d found it meant that Early had been standing with his back to the window when he’d been shot. The bullet must have gone clear through him, hit the wall, and then dropped.

Bank studied the flowered wallpaper, scanning the pattern row by row until he found the small slash where the bullet had hit. It had apparently bounced back and fallen on the carpet.

Bank, satisfied that he’d doped out the basic physical facts of the murder, saw that the investigation was going to be complicated. The guests had been milling around downstairs and there had been a steady stream of traffic to this floor, where people had checked their belongings at the opposite end of the hall. What with the rain, everybody had been wearing some kind of coat and had made at least one trip upstairs — including himself.

The initial questions then were why Early had come into Mrs. Hoskins’ bedroom in the first place, and how come Hoskins had found the body, when he should have been out in the tent, being a host.

When Hoskins returned, Bank led with his first question. He did it obliquely, so as not to show what he was really after.

“Under what circumstances did you discover the body?” he asked.

“I didn’t. One of the maids came in to tidy up. She saw the body and screamed, and then she went for Jasper. He notified me, and I sent for you at once.”

“Get Jasper,” Bank said. “And the maid.”

Hoskins glowered as if he wasn’t used to being ordered around, but he made no protest. As he started to leave, Bank remarked offhanedly, “Do you own a gun?”

Hoskins swung around in surprise. “Me?” he asked. “Me?”

“That’s what I asked.”

Hoskins shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “And if I had one, I’d certainly keep it locked up.”

“All right,” Bank said. “Go ahead.”

While Hoskins was gone, Bank spoke to the coatroom attendants, a couple of elderly women who were bragging about their grandchildren when Bank interrupted. The two women had been inside the improvised cloakroom all evening and had not seen or heard anything. Pretty much the same went for Jasper and the maid, who appeared a few minutes later.

Full stop.

Bank was alone in the bedroom when Lieutenant Decker, Chief of Homicide, and Jub Freeman, laboratory technician, arrived. A few minutes later Inspectors Taylor and Balenky and Small showed up, and then the Medical Examiner and the rest of the Homicide Squad, plus a couple of policewomen to help check out the female guests.

Lieutenant Decker, tall and gray and efficient, examined the body and the room, and reached the same tentative conclusions that Bank had.

“Bank,” the Lieutenant said, “you’ve been hobnobbing with their majesties. What’s your angle?”

“Hard to say,” Bank answered. “Whoever opened the safe must have known the layout and where the combination was kept, but I don’t see how that helps much. It could have been somebody in the household or even one of the invited guests. On the other hand, one of the servants could have learned where the combination was kept and either taken the jewelry himself or else tipped off an accomplice. The accomplice could have lost himself in the crowd nothing to it. This was a crook’s paradise.”

“What were the arrangements for getting in here?” Decker asked “Have to show your invitation?”

“No. Hoskins owns about thirty acres. With the entrance to his estate almost a quarter of a mile from the house, you drove through the gates and a parking attendant took your car and gave you a ticket for it. There were station wagons waiting to take you from there up to the house, and you just walked in. Nothing formal, no receiving line or any of that jazz. I didn’t see Vinny when I arrived, so I introduced myself to Hoskins and then somebody handed me a drink.”

“Brother!” Decker exclaimed. “The catering staff, the orchestra, the parking attendants, and all the other flunkeys, besides a couple of hundred guests, and any one of them may be loping around with a pocketful of jewelry and a gun — if he hasn’t stashed the stuff somewhere.”

“It’s worse than that,” Bank said grimly. “Anybody wearing the right clothes and tipped off about the safe could have walked into the house, introduced himself to Vinny, and said he was a friend of Hoskins, or introduced himself to Hoskins and said he was a friend of Vinny’s, and then gone upstairs and simply turned to the right instead of the left. That is, come in here instead of going to the cloakroom.”

“The uninvited guest,” Decker said, grimacing. “You think Early got shot for interrupting him? Could be. The uninvited guest could walk upstairs carrying a coat — that would look normal; but if he came downstairs carrying it or wearing it and headed for the door, that wouldn’t look normal. He’d probably be noticed.”

“So he’d have to forget about his coat,” Bank said. “We’ll have to wait for everybody to leave, and then if there’s an extra coat, it’s his.”

Decker scowled. “There ought to be a quicker way. Bank, I’d like you to mosey around and pick up whatever information you can. I’ll find me a place to set up shop. Anything you hear, let me know.”

“Sure,” Bank said. “I got me a private pipeline. A real nice one.”

He went downstairs. Most of the guests had left the tent and congregated on the ground floor, which resembled a hotel lobby with three conventions going and all the delegates wandering into the wrong rooms. Bank, looking for Carol and hoping she’d see him in action and be duly impressed, strutted like the big-prize winner.

He picked up his first piece of information from Early’s supper partner. She was a middle-aged dowager and she was talking excitedly.

“He was supposed to sit next to me,” she said, “but he never came to the table. I was worried and I almost went looking for him because I knew he had a heart condition. He must have felt sick and gone to Mrs. Hoskins’ room to rest up. How terrible!”

Bank moved off, horned in on a few useless tidbits of gossip, and heard everybody discussing how many people were there whom they didn’t know. Which, to Bank, meant there was a pretty slim chance of picking out the uninvited guest — the man nobody knew.

He brought the news back to Decker, who had established temporary headquarters in a small cubbyhole just off the front door. The place was apparently a steward’s or butler’s office, and it had a tall antique secretary-desk with pigeonholes crammed with bills, menus, addresses, receipts, and all the other notes and papers pertaining to the complicated running of a large house. The phone was on a taboret next to the desk.

The Lieutenant listened glumly to what Bank had to report, and then brought him up to date on the investigation. The Medical Examiner had released the body, and it showed that Early had been shot at close range, practically a contact wound. The bullet — four lands with a right-hand twist — said .38 Smith & Wesson.

Although Decker had to check on a couple of hundred guests and almost a hundred workers, and was proceeding to do so, he was more interested in what he called the “in” group.

“This, for instance,” he said. He picked up an invoice from one of the pigeonholes. “A liquor bill of almost a thousand last month, including Richebourg at twelve bucks a throw. What was this guy Hoskins like, anyhow? How did he react when you first saw him?”

“Negative,” Bank said. “He’s a cold fish. Cash register type.”

“They all are,” Decker said. “This desk is Jasper’s, the butler’s, and there’s not a single personal item in it. Bank, I can’t get the feel of the case, which is where you come in. That bunch out there — find out what they thought of Early.”

“I’ll ask around,” Bank said.

“That gun bothers me, too. How did it get there? A society burglar or one of the guests toting it? Nuts. They don’t pack guns, and certainly not two-pound cannons that would pull their clothes out of shape. I’ll bet you two bucks to two bits that that gun was in the house before the party started, and that it’s still here.”

The odds were too good to pass up, so Bank pulled a quarter out of his pocket and put it on the desk. The Lieutenant placed a pair of bills next to it, and he grinned for the first time. “That quarter goes in the piggy bank for my grandson,” he remarked.

Bank stared sadly at his coin and figured it was lost. “Expect to search the house later on?” he said.

“We won’t find the gun,” Decker said cryptically. “We’ve got to make it find us.” And then he launched into one of his rhetorical flights, which meant he was all heated up. He used big words and said he refused to believe in a fortuitous concatenation of circumstances. Bank repeated the phrase a few weeks later to a dame he wanted to impress, and did. This, Decker went on, was the ineluctable outcome of individual forces working on each other to accomplish a preordained tragedy, and unless you grasped the Concept and proceeded from there, you were doomed to complete and total lack of success.

Bank summed up the speech in two words. “Inside job,” he remarked laconically.

Decker nodded. “Right,” he said.

Bank, inflating his chest and towering over the mob outside, continued his search for Carol, and this time he found her. She was in the middle of confiding to a sad young man that she knew one of the detectives, and her eyes lit up when she spied Bank.

“I was hoping you’d find time for me,” she said to Bank.

“Always have time for you,” he said. “How are you getting along?”

She sighed. “It’s so awful,” she said. “It spoils everything. Vicky’s party, Daddy’s big moment, Mommy’s trip—”

“Trip?” Bank said, interrupting. “Where to?”

“To Paris, just for a few days, for a reunion with some old friends.”

“And what was your Daddy’s big moment?”

“He’s due to get an honorary degree from his alma mater next week. He was so happy and proud, but this takes the pleasure out of it.”

Bank, trying to imagine Peter Hoskins enjoying anything except counting his money, blinked. “He and Early were pretty close, as I understand it.”

Carol nodded. “Yes. They went to college together, and ever since then Daddy has taken care of him — given him better and better jobs and almost made him part of the family. I called him Uncle Ron, although I never really liked him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

“Think he’d rob your mother’s safe?” Bank asked.

“You make it sound so ugly,” Carol said, shuddering.

“It’s plenty ugly, but you can help me a lot. Tell me, does Jasper know the combination of the safe?”

“Of course,” Carol said innocently. “He knows everything. He’s been with us for over ten years and he’s sweet. He used to find all my toys when I was a child. I have a habit of losing things, but Jasper always knew where they were. I used to hide them on purpose and pretend they were lost, just to see if he could find them. He always did. He knows every nook and corner of the house.”

“Valuable guy,” Bank said. “Maybe he knows where the stolen jewelry is.”

Carol’s blue eyes gave Bank a cool stare. “Please don’t joke,” she said.

“It’s no joke. Tell me more about Jasper, and about your Uncle Ron, too.”

“I’d rather not,” Carol said. “You make me feel like a stool pigeon.”

“That’s a strange thing to say. You want to see the case solved, don’t you?”

“Not if it means hurting people like Jasper.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were in love with him.”

“I’m not,” she said, and added flirtatiously, “I’m in love with you.”

“That’s mutual,” he said awkwardly, and he had a yen to do something sensational — like make an arrest, pull the jewels out of one of the potted plants, toss off a brilliant deduction — anything dramatic, to impress Carol.

“Look,” he said. “Mind if I stick around after everybody’s gone? A couple of things I’d like to talk to you about, in private.”

“About the case?” she said.

“Hell no. I just want to finish that story I was telling you at dinner.”

She gave him a dazzling smile. “Then wait for me here, in the hallway,” she said. “I just love your stories about crime and criminals.”

The roll of a drum calling for silence made them turn away from each other, and Bank watched Peter Hoskins climb up on a chair to make an announcement.

“My friends,” he said, “you’re all aware of the tragedy that has occurred, and I can only express my sorrow.” He seemed to choke up for a second, before going on. “That isn’t what I meant to say. I’ve been speaking to the police and they believe that the stolen jewelry may still be on the premises. I suggested that my guests would be willing to submit to a personal search on their way out. I’d like to apologize for the necessity, but—” He choked up again. “Well, that’s all.”

Bank grunted and found that Carol had left him. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder and he swung around to face Vinny. His usually bright, cheerful face looked haggard.

“Expect to find the jewels in somebody’s pocket?” Vinny asked.

“No, but we have to give it a try.” Bank patted his friend on the arm. “A hell of an engagement party for you,” Bank said.

Vinny nodded. “I know. Wrong time, wrong place, but Bank — it was the right guy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There was something about Early I never liked. He was a little too smooth. I wish I could spell it out for you, but I can’t.”

“Try,” Bank said.

“It’s chemical, I guess,” Vinny said. “Vicky’s chemical. From the first minute I saw her, I knew she was for me. With Early, it was the other way round. Nothing I can put my finger on. I just felt he was a heel.”

“Carol didn’t like him, either,” Bank observed.

“Neither did Vicky,” Vinny said. “But the old man — Hoskins, that is — you can’t fool him. He knows people, and he trusted Early.”

“Maybe he trusted him too much,” Bank said.

“Hoskins never trusts anybody too much,” Vinny said bitterly. “He’s shrewd, my friend. He trusts nobody.” Then Vinny’s face brightened into his normal, open smile. “I’m talking too much,” he said. “I’d better go find Vicky.”

The exodus started soon after that. People filed up to the cloakroom, collected their wraps, and stood submissively at the front door. There, Charlie Small and Ed Balenky frisked the men, while a policewoman searched the women. Hoskins and Vinny, at Decker’s request, checked off the names of all guests as they left.

Bank shouldered his way through the waiting line and entered the tiny room where Lieutenant Decker was still at work. Briefly, Bank repeated what Vinny and Carol had told him. Decker listened intently, then stood up.

“I’d like to talk to them, and have a look at this mob on their way out. You can take the phone a while. Donnegan, up at the precinct, will be calling in, and I asked Joe to get down to the Identification Room and run some M.O. cards to see what he can come up with.”

Bank took the chair that Decker had vacated, and for the next half hour Bank loafed, answered the phone and let his imagination paint pictures of Carol and himself. Nothing important occurred either on the phone or inside his mind, and he was leaning back and thinking of the dinner he’d never finished, when the Lieutenant returned.

“All present and accounted for,” he said. “No uninvited guest. Nobody trying to sneak out with a concealed pocket. Just a bunch of solid citizens cooperating with the police. Anything happen here?”

“Nothing much,” Bank said, and reported the minor business that he’d handled. Then the door opened and Mitch Taylor came in. He was carrying a coat and he had that smug look of having turned up something important, but not wanting to brag about it.

“Chief,” he said, “maybe we got something. This one coat — it’s left over.”

“Anything in it?” Decker asked.

“Some addresses in the pocket,” Taylor said, handing Decker a few crumpled scraps of paper. “But the thing is, everybody around here is loaded. None of them would wear a coat that didn’t set them back a hundred and fifty bucks at least, and this one—” He held it up to show the label. “Cheap, chain-store stuff.”

Decker grabbed the coat. “You think the killer left this behind?”

“Well,” Taylor said, “somebody did.”

Decker smoothed out the notes and read one of the addresses.

“Helen R. 54 Parkside,” He swung around abruptly and roared at Bankhart. “What the hell are you grinning at?”

“That’s my coat,” Bank said drily. “On my salary, where do you think I buy clothes?”

Decker burst out laughing. “Brother!” he said. “You and your harem!” He heaved the coat at Bank. “And take care of the thing before somebody swipes it.”

It was after one in the morning by the time the Homicide Squad finally cleared out. Decker posted a pair of precinct cops outside the house and gave Bank permission to stay behind. Decker himself, along with a couple of the squad, would go to work on the names of the orchestra and catering staff. Jub Freeman was due to stay up most of the night analyzing the physical evidence he’d collected. Later in the morning a weary bunch would dig in and hope for some good leads to work on.

Bank, waiting for Carol and wondering whether she’d really keep their appointment, sat down on one of the tapestried chairs in the entrance foyer. He wasn’t happy. With the “in” he had, he should have spotted some essential clue and hooked it up to the homicide. He felt he’d missed out somewhere; it left him restless and brooding.

He could hear the sounds of the household getting ready to retire for the night. A door slammed, a voice muttered something upstairs, water ran in a bathroom. A floorboard creaked, an electric motor vibrated faintly. After a while Carol came downstairs. She had taken off her party dress and was wearing a satin house-gown.

“Jim,” she said softly. It was the first time she’d called him by name. “What did you want?”

“This,” he said, and he took her in his arms and kissed her. She seemed to melt into him before she pulled away.

“Now,” she said, sighing, “tell me what you really want.”

He chuckled. “I’d like to look around the house. You know where things would be hidden — you said you used to hide your toys. Where?”

“Whom do you suspect?” she asked.

“A smart crook who was smart enough to park the stuff here for a while and who expects to come back.” And he explained the theory of the uninvited guest.

She listened with interest. “Maybe,” she said, “but you can’t use me to snoop. I told you that before.”

“I’ve got a job to do.”

“Then do it without me,” she said.

“Can’t. Carol, you’re holding out on me, and that’s all wrong. Tell me. You’ll feel better for it.”

“But it’s so much fun to hold out,” she said, frankly teasing him. “I just love the way you look at me, as if you weren’t quite sure what to make of me.”

“You’re a strange girl,” he said. “I can’t quite figure you out.”

“And you’re not going to. At least, not tonight. Because it’s late, and I’m awfully tired.”

“Tomorrow, then?” he said. But she merely smiled and led him to the door. There he kissed her again, and while her arms were around him, he slipped the latch. He went outside quietly.

The pair of precinct cops recognized him, and he spoke to them in a loud voice. “Boy, am I pooped! It’s been quite a night.” Then he signaled them not to ask questions, and he walked over to a clump of bushes and stationed himself there, concealed from the house.

After about ten minutes he stepped out, signaled the cops again, and tiptoed back to the house. He opened the door carefully and slipped inside. He had a feeling that something had to happen. Thinking back, something pulsed at the back of his mind — the recollection of something wrong, of something that somebody had said or done, which he’d only half noticed at the time and then, in the excitement of events, had forgotten.

He stood silently in the hallway. It was lit dimly by a night light. He frowned, uncertain what to do next. He wished he had his gun. According to regulations, he was supposed to carry it at all times, but who in hell would carry a gun at the Hoskins’ posh engagement party? Still—

He heard the creak of a board, the slight jar of someone colliding with the banister on the floor above. He moved back, ducked down behind a chair, and crouched there, out of sight.

After a few moments Carol came down the stairs. She was still wearing her house-gown, but she was barefoot and she walked stealthily. He watched her glide across the hallway and stop in front of the darkened doorway of Jasper’s office. She hesitated, as if she knew she was under observation.

She stepped back suddenly and looked around. The dim light splashed on her cheek, and she rubbed it gently. Then, in a quick change of mood, she raised her head defiantly, pushed open the office door, and stepped inside.

Bank stayed where he was. He heard the swish of Venetian blinds being drawn. A light snapped on and Carol came to the doorway for a final look around. When she went inside again, Bank crossed the hallway and stopped in plain view. She was too intent on what she was doing to notice him.

He watched her shovel papers out of the pigeonholes, reach inside, and rummage. At the third pigeonhole she found what she was looking for. A section of the desk swung out and revealed a secret compartment. Bank waited long enough for her hand to emerge with a fistful of jewelry and a very businesslike revolver. The Lieutenant had been right — Bank’s bet was lost.

Bank must have made a noise just then. Carol whirled, holding the gun and pointing it at him.

“You!” she exclaimed.

“Better put it down on the desk,” Bank said calmly. “It’s no use.”

“You think—” She broke off as he took a step forward. “Don’t!” she said sharply.

Bank forced himself to smile. “Going to shoot me, Carol?”

“If you take one more step — yes.”

“What do you expect to do?” Bank asked. “You can’t get away with this. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to drive out to the country and throw these things away where nobody can ever find them, and then I’m going to come back and go to bed, and nobody can prove I even left my room. If you claim I did, I’ll just laugh at you.”

“Go ahead,” Bank said.

There were two cops outside, and they’d grab her as she went out the front door. And even if there was an inside passageway to the garage and if she got past the cops, all Bank had to do was pick up a phone as soon as she left.

“And,” Carol said, as if she was reading his thoughts, “I’m going to lock you in a closet while I’m out. Now step back.”

She was quite a gal, and she had a fair chance of getting away with her scheme, for the time being, anyhow. She’d get caught eventually, but Bank thought of how the squad would ride him. The boob who got himself locked up in a closet. She’d double-talked him right from the beginning, played him for a sucker.

Romance!

It was more than his pride could take, and he stood in front of her and put his hands on his hips and laughed at her.

“I’ll give you exactly two seconds to move,” she said. “One—”

Her blue eyes were cold. This must have been the way she’d looked when she had killed Early, standing no more than a foot away from him, the gun almost touching his heart. Then—

Bank stepped back. “I wouldn’t want to stand in your way,” he said. “Impolite. So just tell me what to do.”

“Turn around and walk to that coat closet,” she said. “Over there.” She gestured with the gun and indicated with a toss of her head where she wanted him to go. The instant her eyes left him he dived.

The explosion of the gun practically burst his eardrums, and he felt something hot sear his scalp. But he had his hand on the barrel of the gun and was twisting it away from him when something crashed on his head and knocked him sideways. He went sprawling. The gun bounced out of Carol’s hand and he landed on top of her and knocked the breath out of her. She gasped, and her body squirmed. He rolled free, climbed to one knee, and whirled.

Peter Hoskins was standing a few feet away, and he had the gun. It was aimed directly at Bank.

“I was afraid of something like this,” Hoskins said.

Bank glared. Carol, with barely enough breath to speak, managed to say, “Daddy — what—”

“Let me handle things,” Hoskins said to her. “What brought you down here?”

“Him,” she said, pointing at Bank. “He kept saying the jewelry was hidden in the house and that the police would come back and look. I was afraid they’d look here, because it’s the best place to hide things, isn’t it?”

“Apparently not,” Hoskins said, “since it’s the first place you thought of.” He pursed his lips. “Get up, the pair of you.” He waited for them to stand up before he addressed Bank. “How did you figure things out?”

“We had you tagged right from the beginning,” Bank said, and he wondered why he hadn’t guessed right off. Hoskins and Early — best friends were always the ones who killed each other. Husbands killed wives and business partners killed each other. The closer people were to each other, the greater the likelihood of concealed and repressed hatred.

“The cocktail glass,” Bank said, voicing for the first time the clue that must have been there in the back of his mind. “Early wouldn’t have gone into the bedroom carrying a cocktail unless he expected a friendly chat with somebody he knew pretty well. Like you.”

“I shouldn’t have left it there,” Hoskins said. “Was that my only mistake?”

“Just tell me why you did it,” Bank said. “Why did you kill him?”

“Go out into the hall,” Hoskins said. “Both of you.”

They obeyed, and Hoskins, with the gun still on Bank, edged back into the doorway. One of Hoskins’ shoes trampled on a diamond bracelet. He swayed and almost tripped, then kicked the thing aside, as if it was so much junk.

“Why did you kill him?” Bank asked again.

“He was a rat,” Hoskins said bitterly. “We were friends in college, close friends, and it all goes back to that, when he took some exams for me. I was no good in sciences, and he took some chemistry and physics exams for me. A couple of other people knew about it, so Ron could prove it easily.

“I was always grateful to him. I took him into my firm and gave him a good job. I thought he was my best friend. Then, when I was offered an honorary degree, the greatest thing in my life, he threatened to tell about that old exam business. I know what that would have meant. Cancellation of the degree. Scandal and everybody laughing at me.”

“Daddy!” Carol exclaimed. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“It would have mattered to me,” Hoskins said coldly. “He wanted a million dollars to keep quiet — a million in stocks and bonds, and a full partnership. But nobody can do that to me. Nobody orders me around.

“I told him I’d give him my answer this evening. Luckily I had a gun that I’d bought many years ago, when we once had a robbery scare. It was a gun nobody knew about and that couldn’t be traced. So I told him to come upstairs to my wife’s room. There I shot him, opened the safe, took out the jewelry and cash so that it would look like a burglary, and then I brought the stuff down here, to the best hiding place I knew.”

“Daddy,” Carol said shakily, “put down that gun. You’ll—”

“Exactly,” Hoskins said. And still covering Bank, Hoskins edged back into the small room and slammed the door. Seconds later, the shot rang out.

Bank looked at Carol. She was standing stiffly, as if paralyzed. When he moved toward her, she shuddered and said in a choked-up voice, “Don’t touch me!”

Bank sighed. Then he stepped past her and opened the door.