Inspector Queen’s Own Case

3 And Then the Lovers

The fat man looked different dead. He looked like a jumbo balloon with the air leaking out. He was wedged in the swivel chair, head flopped over, flippers dangling. The chair was half turned from the desk, as if he had been struggling to get up. His whole left side was soaked with blood.

The metal handle of a knife stuck out of his chest. Jessie recognized it as the handle of the steel letter-knife she had seen on his desk Thursday.

“Stay where you are, Jessie,” Inspector Queen said. He had shut the door. “And hold your purse with both hands. That’ll keep them out of trouble. You don’t have to look at him.”

“I’ve seen a homicide case or two in my time,” Jessie said. She was holding on to her purse for dear life.

“Good girl.”

He went around the desk, looked under it, rose, looked out the window.

“It’s a cinch nobody saw anything.” The vista from the window was a tall blank wall, the rear of a photoelectric plant on the next street.

“Key-ring on the floor behind the desk. Torn from loop on his pants. Key still in the lock of the filing cabinet. Somebody was in a hurry, Jessie. But careful, careful.”

“Maybe we ought to—”

“Don’t move from that spot.”

Forty-eight hours ago the fat man had been sitting in that same chair, wearing the same suit and a shirt just as gray with damp, and now it was half-dyed with his heart’s blood and he looked like nothing so much as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon with the paint running and a knife stuck in it. So there would be no more under-the-counter arrangements for babies, and the unmarried mothers would have to seek elsewhere. And how many satisfied customers would read about the fat man and look at their wives or husbands and clutch their purchases tight? And would Mrs. A. Burt Finner erect a headstone saying “HUSBAND AND FATHER” and weep for the vanished provider? And how many nightclub girls would shed a blackened tear over the baby-made five-dollar bills that would invade their nylons no more?

Jessie stifled an impulse to laugh.

The Inspector wrapped a handkerchief around his right hand and went to the swivel chair again and leaned over Finner. When he drew up straight there was a wallet in his swathed hand. He flicked it open.

“Crammed with bills, Jessie.”

He put the wallet back as carefully as he had taken it out.

“Not robbery.” Jessie’s voice was as tight as his had been.

“No.”

He looked over the top of the desk. There was an afternoon newspaper folded back to the sports section, a well-pen, a telephone with a memorandum pad clipped to it, a pack of filter cigarettetes almost empty, a pocket lighter, and a cheap glass ash tray with chipped corners. The ash tray was filled with half-smoked butts and ashes. The old man squatted to desk level and squinted along the surface of the memo pad. Then he turned some of the butts in the tray over with one fingernail.

“Nothing written on a torn-off sheet of pad. No lipstick on any of the butts. And the basket under the desk is empty except for an empty cigarettete pack, same brand as this one. All Finner’s. This was a cool operator, Jessie. Clue-conscious.”

“How about the desk drawers?” Jessie wet her lips.

He grinned. “I’ll leave those to Homicide. Finner wouldn’t have kept anything in this desk. No locks on the drawers.” He glanced at her. “Just at a guess, Jessie — seeing that you’re in the respectable branch of this business — how long would you say he’s been dead?”

“That’s very hard to say.”

“Say it anyway.”

“It’s a hot day. The window is shut... At the least, I’d have to touch him.”

“Without touching him.”

“I’ve handled dead bodies, Richard. I’ll do it.”

“Without touching him.”

“Not long.” Jessie considered. “From the appearance of the blood maybe an hour. I don’t know. I could be way off.”

He placed the back of his left hand lightly against the dead man’s cheek, nodded. Then he went over to the filing cabinet and tugged at the handle of the top drawer. The drawer slid out with a rasp that made Jessie’s teeth ache.

The drawer contained file envelopes with identifying plastic tab holders containing white slips of cardboard on which names had been hand-printed in red ink. The first envelope in the drawer was marked ABRAMSON, the last DUFFY. He shut the top drawer and opened the drawer below it. The file envelopes were separated slightly about two-thirds of the way in. The tab on the exposed envelope said HYAMS. The tab on the envelope immediately preceding it said HUGHES.

There was no envelope in between.

“No Humffrey,” Richard Queen said softly.

“Maybe the names on the tabs are of the mother,” Jessie mumbled. “Not the adopter.”

He looked at her. “You’re a smart woman, Jessie.” He checked a file at random, using his swathed hand. “However, you’re wrong. The names are of the adopters.”

He replaced the file and ran his eye over all the tabs on the envelopes. He shut the drawer and checked the tabs of the third drawer, then of the bottom one.

He shut the bottom drawer and rose.

“No doubt about it, Jessie. Finner’s kill is tied in with the Connecticut case. Finner used our Thursday visit to try to screw some inside information about Michael’s death out of one or both of the real parents. So they’ve shut his mouth about the parentage and walked off with the whole file on the case. Finner probably was the only outsider who knew at least who the mother was, the hospital Michael was born in, and every other fact that might have led to an identification.”

“The same one who murdered the baby,” Jessie said slowly. “That means we’re on the right track.”

“We’re stranded on a siding in Podunk,” Richard Queen said grimly. “With the contents of that envelope destroyed we’re at another dead end. The question is, where do we go from here?”

He gave A. Burt Finner a glum look. But Finner wasn’t talking.

“I think, Jessie—”

The telephone rang.

Jessie’s heart landed in her mouth with a bump.

He moved nearer the desk, eying the telephone thoughtfully.

“You’re not going to answer it?” Jessie said in terror. “Richard, for heaven’s sake!”

“Shh.”

His right hand was still bound round with the handkerchief. He used it to lift the phone from its cradle.

He said hoarsely, “Yes?” in a fair approximation of Finner’s voice.

Jessie shut her eyes. She heard a phone operator’s unmistakable cadence. The old man said, “Yes?” again in the same hoarse voice and the operator said something back and then there was silence.

He muffled the speaker against his chest.

“New Haven calling,” he told her.

“New Haven?” Jessie opened her eyes wide.

“Always play a hunch. This may foul me up with my old friends, but I’m here and they aren’t — yes?”

The man’s voice was clipped, successful-sounding. “This is Dr. Samuel Duane calling. Is Mr. Alton K. Humffrey there?”

“Humffrey?” Richard Queen said in the Finner voice. “What do you want him for?”

“It’s confidential.” The doctor’s tone had an urgent, almost a harried, vibrato. “I must speak to Mr. Humffrey.”

“You’ll have to tell me what it’s about, Dr. Duane.” He glanced over at Jessie, winking.

“I’m Mrs. Humffrey’s physician. She’s... worse, and I must find her husband. Do you know—?”

“How bad is she?”

“See here, is Mr. Humffrey there, or isn’t he?”

“Well, no, Doctor, but maybe I can find him for you. Did you call his summer place in Connecticut?”

“Good lord, man, do you think I’m an idiot? His housekeeper tells me he left Nair Island yesterday driving the small car and saying he wouldn’t be back till tonight or tomorrow. Is—?”

“Didn’t he say where he was going?”

“No! She gave me the phone numbers of all the places he might be — clubs, Park Avenue apartment, his home in Concord, even Mrs. Humffrey’s relatives in Massachusetts. But I haven’t been able to trace him. Have you any idea where he might have gone? I understand you’ve done some confidential legal work for him.”

“Who told you that?”

“The chauffeur, I think, suggested your name. What difference does it make?” Dr. Duane sounded at the point of explosion. “Will you give me something definite or won’t you? I tell you this is urgent!”

“Well, Doctor, I guess I can’t help you at that, Doctor. But if I should hear from him—”

Dr. Duane slammed his receiver.

Richard Queen looked at Jessie as he hung up. “Queer...”

“What did he say, Richard?”

He told her.

“But I don’t see anything queer about it. Except the coincidence of calling here just when...”

He was shaking his head, frowning, staring at Finner.

Finally he said, “Jessie, I want you to go home.”

“And leave you holding the bag?”

“I’ve got to notify the police.”

“Why?” Jessie protested. “Why can’t we just leave? He’ll be found by a cleaning woman, or a watchman or somebody. Nobody saw us come in.”

He was smiling. “You can’t teach an old police dog new tricks. A homicide has to be reported as soon as it’s discovered.”

“Then why didn’t you pick up the phone and call the minute you walked in here?” Jessie retorted.

“You’re a hard woman, Jessie,” he murmured. “All right, maybe I’ve come to feel that this is my case. Mine and yours... You and I know the two homicides are connected, but with the Humffrey envelope gone, there’s no reason for them to link Finner’s murder up with a Connecticut baby-smothering case that’s been written off as an accidental death. Not right away, anyway. Meanwhile, we’ll have some room to stretch in.”

“Why don’t you ask for reinstatement, Richard?” Jessie asked quietly. “If they knew you’d been in on this from the start, perhaps they’d give you a special assignment to take charge of the case.”

He shook his head again. “Things don’t work that way. The New York Police Department has two thousand detectives working out of precincts and Headquarters, not to mention some twenty or so thousand men and women in other police jobs. They don’t need old man Queen. Come on, Jessie, I’ll see you out of the building. I don’t want some night man to spot you.”

Jessie looked back just before he shut the door.

The fat man was still sitting there like an abandoned balloon.

It was after eleven that night when the phone rang.

“Jessie?”

“I’ve been losing my mind,” Jessie exclaimed. “Richard, where are you? Why haven’t you called before? Is everything all right?”

“Fine, fine” he said. “I’m down at Headquarters chewing the fat with the boys. Going to bed?”

She understood that he couldn’t talk freely and wouldn’t be able to come over.

“You can’t see me tonight, is that it?”

“Right. I’ll ring you in the morning.”

“Good night, Richard.”

Jessie hung up and surveyed the table she had set. She had bought minute steaks, frozen French frieds, and some salad vegetables in a delicatessen on 72nd Street, thinking to treat him to a home meal when he came. So that’s what policemen’s wives’ lives were like...

What am I thinking of? Jessie thought guiltily. And she turned on Gloria Sardella’s TV set and watched the Late Show. It was an old British film about a Scotland Yard detective and a master London criminal. The master London criminal was an enormously fat man. He didn’t look anything like A. Burt Finner, but after fifteen minutes Jessie snapped the set off with a shiver and went to bed.

She was still in curlers and an old wrapper Sunday morning when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to the width of the latch chain, wondering who it could be.

“Richard!”

“Thought I’d surprise you,” he grinned. “I’ve got the Sunday papers, frozen juice, fresh rolls, eggs — got any ham? I forgot the ham. Jessie? Where are you?”

“You mustn’t do things like this,” Jessie moaned, flat against the door. “Don’t you know how a woman looks first thing in the morning? I’ll undo the chain, but don’t you dare walk in till you finish counting ten!”

“All right,” he said, stricken.

When she came out of the tiny bedroom, he was sitting on the edge of a chair with the paper sack in his lap.

“Richard Queen, I could strangle you. Is anything more hideous than a woman in curlers? Don’t just sit there. Let me have that bag.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked so deflated that Jessie laughed. “Anyway, I thought you looked fine. It’s a long time since I saw a woman in curlers.”

“Yes, I suppose it is at that,” Jessie said. She took the bag to the kitchen alcove and got busy.

“Did I say something wrong, Jessie?” he asked anxiously.

“Heavens, no. Make yourself useful. I don’t have any ham, but you’ll find a couple of minute steaks in the fridge and a box of French frieds in the freezer drawer. How does that sound?”

“Oh, boy!”

It was not until she was pouring his second cup of coffee that Jessie asked, “Well, what happened yesterday?”

“Nothing much,” he said in a careless tone. “The first men there were a patrolman and sergeant, radio patrol car, 17th Precinct — I know both of them pretty well. Then a couple of detectives from the 17th I know very well, and after that a lot of old buddies of mine — Deputy Chief Inspector Tom Mackey in charge of Manhattan East, Chief of Detectives Brynie Phelan, the Homicide boys — it was like Old Home Week.”

“And when they asked their old buddy how he happened to stumble over a corpse,” Jessie said, “what did their old buddy say?”

He set his cup down, smiling. “You know, Jessie, the longer I know you the more I wonder why you’re wasting your time in a nurse’s uniform.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He shrugged. “All right, I lied. The going was rugged for a while. I think I pulled it off, though.” He sounded grimly ashamed. “I suppose an honourable lifetime in and out of uniform counts for something, especially when the men you’re lying to are friends of yours.”

“What was your story, Richard?” Jessie asked quietly. “I have to know, Richard, in case they get to me. So I can back you up.”

He glanced at her with admiration. Then he stared at the floor. “I said I’d been going crazy doing nothing, began thinking about some rats I’d known in harness whom we’d never been able to collar, and remembered Finner and his vicious racket. I said I thought it would be nice to get something on him — he doesn’t even have a yellow sheet down at the B.C.I., no record at all. So I dropped in on Finner Thursday, I said, and let him think I was still on active duty and that we’d come up with something on him at last... on the theory that if you rattle a rat, he’ll panic. I said Finner hinted at a payoff to keep the boys off his back, and I said I pretended to play along and made a date to visit his office again Saturday afternoon, and I said when I got there I found him dead. That’s what I said, Jessie, and may the Lord have mercy on my soul.”

“That wasn’t really a lie, Richard,” Jessie said quickly. “It’s not so far from the truth.”

“Only about a million miles,” he snarled. “It’s the worst kind of lie there is. It doesn’t tell them a single thing I know that could help them. Jessie, I think I’ll have another cup of coffee.”

She emptied the pot into his cup in silence.

“So they’re off to the races,” he said, swishing the coffee around. “They figure the killer’s somebody who wanted to get at Finner’s files for blackmail purposes but was maybe scared off. They don’t discount the possibility that the answer may lie in one of the night spots Finner patronized. So they’re checking all the babes he’s fooled around with, some of them linked with some pretty tough characters. They’ve got every angle covered except the right one.” He nudged the Sunday papers, which were lying on the floor, with his toe. “Read all about it.”

“Don’t feel so bad, Richard.” Jessie leaned across the table to put her hand on his.

He gripped it and held on.

After a moment, pink-cheeked, she withdrew it and began to collect the dishes.

“What do we do now?”

He got up and began to help her. “Well, the problem is still to find out who the baby’s parents are.”

“I don’t see how we possibly can, now.”

“There’s a way.”

“There is?” Jessie stared. “How?”

“Isn’t every child born in a hospital hand-printed for identification purposes?”

“Or footprinted.” Jessie nodded. “Most hospitals take footprints these days.”

“Knowing Finner’s methods, it’s likely he had the mother give birth in a hospital. What we’ve got to do is get hold of Michael’s prints. It means an exhumation, of course—”

Jessie said, without turning from the sink, “What would you say, Inspector, if I told you I have his footprints?”

“What!”

“Mrs. Humffrey’d bought one of those baby books put out by the Chicago Lying-In Hospital — you know, where you keep a record of feeding, teeth growth, and so on. There’s a place in them for recording the footprints. I pressed his feet on that page myself.”

“And you have it?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes. After the funeral I asked Mrs. Humffrey where she wanted me to put the book. She got hysterical and told me to take it away, she never wanted to see it again. So I appropriated it,” Jessie said defiantly. “He was a lot more my baby than hers... Wait, I’ll get it for you. It’s in one of my bags.”

She hurried into the bedroom and came out with an oversized book with a baby-blue cover.

“Of course, we couldn’t fill in the birth data except for the date of birth—” Jessie gasped. “The date of birth!”

“This is going to be a cinch,” he chortled. “With these footprints and the birth date, it’s only a question of locating the hospital. Finner brought the baby to that Pelham meeting in the morning, so the odds are he picked him up in a New York hospital. I’ll have these prints photostated first thing tomorrow, and... Jessie, what’s the matter?”

She was staring blearily down at the tiny black feet impressions. “Nothing, Richard.” She fumbled for a handkerchief, turning away.

He started to touch her, withdrew his hand awkwardly. “It’s a brutal business, Jessie...”

“He was so little,” Jessie sobbed. “That perfect body... his feet... I used to kiss his toes one at a time reciting Piggy, and he’d gleep...” She blew her nose angrily. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happened to me lately.”

“You’re a woman,” he muttered. “Maybe you haven’t had time to find that out before, Jessie.”

She kept her face averted. “What do I do, Richard?”

“The first thing you do is recognize the spot you’re in.”

“The spot I’m in?” She swung about at that.

“If I’d known about your having this baby book, I’d never have let you get into this. It’s a dangerous thing for you to have. Finner was murdered because he was a link in the chain leading to little Mike’s mother. This book, with his footprints, is another such link. Who knows you’ve got it?”

Jessie sank into a chair, staring at him. “Only Sarah Humffrey, I suppose. For all I know, maybe even she doesn’t know. She may have assumed I destroyed it.”

He scowled. “Maybe the killer’s assumed the same thing. Or doesn’t know it exists. All the same, Jessie, you’re going to have to watch your step. In fact, the more I think of it the less I cotton to the idea of your living in this apartment alone. I wish—”

“Yes?” Jessie said.

“Well, I can be your bodyguard in the daytime, anyway.” He smiled down at her. “What would you like to do today?”

Before they set out Monday afternoon with the photostats, Richard Queen said, “It’s going to be a long pull, Jessie. There must be seventy-five or eighty hospitals in Manhattan and the Bronx alone, not to mention Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester, Long Island, and nearby Jersey.”

“Why not start off with the maternity hospitals?” Jessie suggested. “Those would be the logical places.”

“Which is why Finner would have avoided them. And he’d certainly not use places like the New York Foundling Hospital or the Shelter for Unmarried Mothers. No, I think he’d figure a big general hospital would give his brood mares a better chance of getting lost in the shuffle. Let’s start with those.”

“All right, suppose we make a list and split it up. That would halve the time.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he said firmly. “Besides, I doubt if you could get access to hospital files, even in the places where they know you. I’ve got a natural in with this shield.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the third day of their hunt, they were leaving a hospital in the East 80’s when Jessie said, “What’s wrong, Richard? You’ve acted strange all day. You said yourself it’s going to be a long search.”

He steered her across the street to her coupé. “I didn’t think it showed,” he said dryly.

“You can’t fool me. When you’re worried about something you get all tight and quiet. What is it?”

“Watch. In the rear-view mirror.”

He started the Dodge and moved out into traffic, heading north. Jessie slid over close to him and kept her eyes on the mirror. As they passed a corner, a black Chrysler sedan badly in need of a washing moved out from the side street and turned in after them. For a moment it was just behind them and Jessie caught a glimpse of the driver’s face. It was all jaw and cheekbone in sharp angles, hard and gray. The man was alone.

Then the Chrysler fell back, other cars intervened, and Jessie lost sight of it. But when the Inspector turned west a few blocks north of the hospital, Jessie saw the gray-faced man turn west, too.

“We’re being followed.” Her mouth felt sticky.

“He’s been on our tail all day.”

“A city detective?”

“City detectives generally work in pairs.”

“Then who is he?”

“A small-time private detective named George Weirhauser. Fleabag office near Times Square. Mostly divorce evidence jobs. He rates pretty low downtown — he’s pulled plenty of shady stuff — but he’s always managed to steer clear of open violations. Enough to hold on to his license, anyway.”

“But what’s he doing watching us?”

“I don’t know.” Richard Queen looked grim. “Well, there’s no point trying to shake him with what he’s seen today already. A tail can work two ways — he keeps an eye on us, we keep an eye on him. Maybe we’ll find a use for him.”

“He looks awfully hard.”

“That’s Weirhauser’s stock-in-trade,” he said contemptuously. “It’s all front, Jessie. Don’t worry about him.”

Weirhauser tailed them until after ten o’clock, when they put Jessie’s car away for the night in the garage on 70th Street where she had arranged for a month’s parking. When they walked over to 71st and stopped before Gloria Sardella’s walk-up, the Chrysler drove past, picked up speed, and did not come back.

“Thank goodness,” Jessie said. “He makes me nervous. Won’t you come up, Richard? I’ll make some coffee.”

“No, you’re going to bed, Jessie.”

“I am a little weary,” Jessie confessed. “And you’re a dear to have seen it — Richard.” She clutched his arm.

“Yes?”

“There’s another one!”

“Another what, Jessie?” He seemed calm.

“Another man following us! I noticed him lounging around near the garage when we drove in. And now he’s across the street in a doorway!”

“You certainly missed your calling,” he said.

“Richard, what are you doing—?”

He was guiding her by the elbow across the street toward the offending doorway. The man who had been watching them retreated into the dimness of the vestibule. To Jessie’s consternation, Richard Queen marched her right in after him.

“Shame on you, Wes,” he said, chuckling. “Jessie, this is Wes Polonsky, ex-detective first grade, Automobile, Forgery, and Pickpocket Squad, retired.”

“Good heavens,” Jessie said. “How do you do, Mr. Polonsky.”

“Glad to meet you, Miss Sherwood,” the man said sheepishly. “Or maybe not so glad. I’m sure rusty.” He was a massive old man with a mashed nose and white hair and innocent blue eyes. He looked as if he had once been powerful, but his chest was sunken and Jessie noticed his puffy hands trembling as he lit a cigarettete. “You going to take me off, Inspector? This is the first kicks I’ve had in eight years.”

“Don’t be silly. This woman has eyes in the back of her head.” Richard Queen sounded proud. “Wes, we were tailed today.”

“I noticed a black Chrysler sedan ambling after you just now,” Polonsky said, “but I couldn’t get a good look at the driver.”

“He wasn’t around here last night, was he?”

“No. At least not in that car.”

“It’s George Weirhauser.”

“That crum.” Polonsky made a disgusted sound. “Want me to run him off if he shows again?”

“Let him be. Just don’t let him get near Miss Sherwood.”

“Okay, Inspector.”

“But what is all this?” Jessie demanded. “I don’t understand, Richard!”

“Now don’t get mad, Jessie,” he said placatively. “I ran into Wes Sunday night while I was walking home from your place — he lives in this neighborhood — and, well, Wes was saying how sick he was of being idle—”

“I’d get me a job,” Polonsky said apologetically, “but it’s impossible for a man my age to find anything.”

“So,” Richard Queen said, “one thing led to another, and before I knew it Wes was begging me to declare him in.”

“And that’s how Mr. Polonsky came to be my guardian angel, is it?”

“Since Sunday night,” the ex-detective said, beaming.

“It’s only for the night trick, Jessie. The times when I’m not with you.”

“It’s very sweet of you, Mr. Polonsky,” Jessie said in a low voice.

The second old man said, “It’s my pleasure, miss.”

Jessie slept soundly that night.

They struck the trail in the seventh day of their search.

It was at one of the big general hospitals on the West Side, in midtown. The old man was going through a file of baby footprints when Jessie felt him stiffen. He turned a pocket magnifying glass from the hospital record he was examining to the photostat and back again several times.

“We’ve found it, Jessie,” he muttered.

“I don’t believe it! Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

The name identifying the set of footprints was “Baby Exeter.”

“Let’s see what they have on the mother.”

He came back with some scribbled notes, and they sat down on a sofa in the waiting room.

“Mother’s name Mrs. Willis P. Exeter, maiden name Lois Ann Edwards. Phonies, of course. Address... this house number on East 55th is misleading, Jessie. It’s actually a small residential hotel. My guess is Finner maintained a room there under the name of Willis P. Exeter — probably had a number of such rooms around town under different aliases — and simply assigned one of them with a ‘Mrs.’ attached to every girl he did business with, for purposes of hospital registration.”

According to his notes “Mrs. Willis P. Exeter” was twenty-four years old, white, with blond hair and hazel eyes. She had been admitted to the hospital on May 26th at 9.18 a.m., the baby had been born on May 27th at 3.56 p.m., and mother and baby had been discharged on June 3rd as of 10.15 a.m. The woman had occupied a semi-private room in the Maternity wing.

“I wonder if the doctor was in on it,” Jessie said balefully. “What’s his name?”

The old man shook his head. “Finner worked through legitimate doctors who never knew he existed. He simply sent the girl during her pregnancy to this doctor under the name of Mrs. Willis P. Exeter, armed with a phony background, and the doctor took care of her in good faith. All Finner had to do was use a different doctor for each girl, and he was all right. No, this tells us nothing.” He squinted at Jessie. “Ever work this hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d probably know the floor nurses in Maternity.”

“Some of them.”

“Why don’t you go up and scout around? Maybe you’ll run into one who remembers this girl. It’s only three months back.”

“What excuse do I give?”

“You’re helping to trace Mrs. Exeter for a lawyer. She’s come into an inheritance and the lawyer can’t locate her.” He grinned. “That one never fails.”

When Jessie came back her eyes were sparkling. “Genevieve Fuller. She’ll meet us in the Coffee Shop in ten minutes.”

“I certainly do remember Mrs. Exeter, Mr. Queen,” Nurse Fuller said. Jessie’s friend was a small lively woman with gray hair and inquisitive eyes. “She was so sad all the time. Hardly said a word. The other patient in her room thought she was a drip, but I knew there was something special about her. Pretty girl in a kind of hard way. She had the sweetest baby. A little boy.”

Jessie took a gulp of coffee.

“Did she ever tell you anything about herself, Miss Fuller?” Richard Queen asked.

“No, and I didn’t press her. I knew she’d had some tragedy in her life. Do you know her husband never showed up once?”

“Really?”

“Some men! I’d drop in on her when she was in heavy labor, and she’d grab my hand and cry, she was so glad to see a sympathetic face. No one showed up. No parents, no sister, no brother, no friends — what kind of family she comes from I can’t imagine. They must be animals.”

“Didn’t she ever say anything that might give us a clue to her present whereabouts, Miss Fuller?”

“No.” The nurse looked around the Coffee Shop, lowering her voice. “But I’m practically a hundred per cent sure Exeter wasn’t her real name!”

“Is that so?” Inspector Queen said. “Well, now, that may account for it. Why did you think that?”

“Because from the second I laid eyes on her I knew I’d seen her somewhere before. Only I couldn’t place her. Then one morning she gave herself away.”

“How?” Jessie exclaimed.

“Oh, I didn’t let on that it meant anything to me. Just made an offhand remark about what a nice voice she had. You know.”

“But I don’t, Gen! What’s her voice got to do with it?”

“One morning,” Genevieve Fuller looked around again “—it was the day before she was discharged — I was passing her room when I heard somebody singing in a low, sweet, sexy voice. It really gave me a turn. I looked in, and darned if it wasn’t this Exeter girl. The screen was around her bed and they’d brought her the baby for a feeding — that’s another thing I liked about her, a girl in her line insisting on nursing her own baby, not like some of the parasite sluts we get around here who sit around Schrafft’s all day in their minks while strangers prepare their children’s formulas. They seem to think God gave them breasts for just ornaments—”

“In her line, Miss Fuller?” Richard Queen prompted.

“I started to tell you. She was nursing her baby and singing to him. Well, you can’t fool me about voices. You know, Jessie, what a bug I am on pop singers. Well, I’d have recognized that voice anywhere. You can have your Rosemary Clooneys and Dinah Shores and Jo Staffords and Patti Pages and Doris Days — oh, they’re very good, of course, and they’re a thousand times better known than this girl, she’s only made a few recordings, but she’ll hit the top one of these days, you mark my words, she’ll be the biggest seller of them all instead of just somebody a few people rave about.”

“And her real name is—?”

“I’m not sure it’s her real name, Mr. Queen. Her professional name is Connie Coy.” And Nurse Fuller leaned back, narrowing her eyes to get the full effect of her revelation. She seemed disappointed. “Anyway, I figured she was incognito, and I wouldn’t have let on for the world. Besides, as I say, I knew she was in some kind of trouble. But I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that was Connie Coy, the nightclub singer. And you say she’s come into money! I think that’s wonderful. God bless her. Too many people with real talent wither away on the desert air unseen. When you find her, Mr. Queen, will you tell her I’m her absolute number one fan? And what a darling baby she has!...”

When Genevieve Fuller had left, the old man said, “Connie Coy. Ever hear of her, Jessie?”

Jessie said, “I haven’t been inside a nightclub since December 18, 1943. No, Richard.”

But he ignored her sally. “If it wasn’t Sunday, I could get her address in any one of a dozen ways. As it is, we’ll have to hold it over till tomorrow.”

“I know a thirteenth way,” Jessie murmured.

“What’s that?”

“Look in the phone book.”

He stared at her. “Sometimes, Jessie,” he said solemnly, “I wonder what I ever did without you. Excuse me!”

When he came back he was waving a slip of paper.

“It’s up on 88th near West End Avenue,” he said exultantly. “After you, Commissioner!”

“Still no sign of Mr. Weirhauser,” Jessie remarked as Inspector Queen started the car. They had not caught a glimpse of the black Chrysler all day.

“Funny,” he muttered.

“Maybe he doesn’t work Sundays. Or he’s been called off the job.”

The old man said nothing. But he kept stealing glances in his rear-view mirror all the way uptown.

The apartment house was turn-of-the-century, a fancy production of stone scrollwork and false balconies, cracked and weatherstained, with bleached awnings that had once been striped, scabby iron-grilled doors, and a sidewalk chalked over with hopscotch squares. The whole building cowered as if it were ashamed.

They entered a lobby powerful with food odors. At a wall switchboard, doubled up on a three-legged stool under a 25-watt light, sat a skinny pimpled youth in a uniform too large for him, reading a comic book.

“Who you want?” The boy did not look up.

“Miss Connie Coy.”

“She ain’t in.”

“When do you expect her?”

“I dunno.”

Jessie suggested, “There’s a door there says Superintendent.”

The old man grunted. They went over to the door and he rang the bell.

A heavy-set man in a collarless shirt, with a green paper napkin stuck in the neckband, opened the door.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for some information about one of your tenants, Miss Connie Coy.”

“I can’t give out information about my tenants.” The man began to shut the door, but it refused to shut. He glanced down coldly. “Guys can get their feet knocked off that way. You want I should call a cop?”

The gold shield flashed in Inspector Queen’s palm.

“That’s a hot one,” the man grinned. “Come on in.”

“We can talk here. By the way, what’s your name?”

“McKeown. Joseph N.”

“Do you know where Miss Coy is, McKeown?”

“Out of town. She left three weeks ago Friday. She was supposed to be gone only a week, but she didn’t come back so I guess they held her over.”

“Oh, a professional engagement?”

“Yeah, she’s a club singer. You know, a shantoose.” McKeown glanced sidewise at Jessie.

“Then she might be back any day?”

“I’d say so.”

“She live here long?”

“Seven-eight months.”

“Where’s she singing?”

“Chicago.” McKeown peered over at the switchboard boy and lowered his voice. “Wha’d she do, Cap?”

“Nothing. She may have to be a witness in a case.”

“Glad to hear it,” the superintendent said. “Nice quiet gal. Too bad about her husband.”

“Oh,” the old man said. “She’s got a husband?”

“A GI. He’s in Korea. And he never even got to see his kid. He’s still over there.” McKeown looked sad. “Hard lines getting your wife pregnant and having to ship out, then she has the kid all alone and loses it in childbirth in the bargain. Came back from the hospital all broke up.”

“I see,” Richard Queen said. “What hospital was she at, do you know?”

“Some Army hospital over in Jersey, she said. She was just beginning to show when she moved in here. Tough.”

“It certainly is,” Jessie murmured.

“Does she use her married name here in the building?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Arthur Dimmesdale.”

“How do you spell that, McKeown?” He took out a ballpoint pen and a wrinkled envelope with an Italian postmark. McKeown spelled the name, and the Inspector wrote it down on the back of the envelope.

Arthur Dimmesdale... Jessie thought, Where have I heard that name?

“Then I take it, McKeown, since Miss Coy — Mrs. Dimmesdale — didn’t move in here till after her husband shipped out to Korea, that you’ve never seen him?”

“Never laid eyes on him.”

“Any idea of his branch of service? Rank?”

“I think she said he’s a second looey in the Army.”

The old man made a note. “Couple more questions, McKeown, and I’ll let you get back to your Sunday dinner. What’s Miss Coy’s apartment number?”

“5-C. That’s on the top floor.”

“Apartment C, fifth floor. She live alone?”

“All by her lonely, Cap.”

“She ever have anybody sleep over?”

McKeown grinned. “This ain’t the Barbizon, my friend. We don’t keep a check. She don’t run no brawls, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Don’t mention this to Miss Coy when she gets back, McKeown.”

“I get you, Cap.”

As they walked toward Broadway, Jessie said, “But where are we going, Richard? Why didn’t we get into the car?”

“You’ve got to have your dinner, Jessie. There’s a nice restaurant on Broadway and 87th—”

“That’s not the reason. What is it?”

“I can’t keep anything from you, can I? We were wrong about Weirhauser. I just spotted him in a parked car as we came out of the apartment house. He was trying to hide behind a newspaper, but I got a look at him.”

“I don’t understand it,” Jessie exclaimed. “I’ve kept on the lookout for his Chrysler all day.”

“So have I. That’s why we didn’t see him. Don’t turn around, Jessie. He’s about to go into the apartment house.” Richard Queen steered her around the corner into Broadway. “He pulled a fast one today. Ditched the old Chrysler and tailed us in a new Ford.”

“How clever of him.” Jessie tried to keep her tone amused. “Then he’s finding out right now that we’ve been asking for Connie Coy. If McKeown doesn’t tell him, that pimply boy will.”

“More important, he knows we’ve found her. And by tonight, whoever’s paying him to tail us will know it, too.” He was preoccupied as they entered the restaurant.

“What are we going to do, Richard?”

He squeezed her arm. “Have dinner.”

He took a table commanding a view of the door. But the private detective did not appear.

Over the chicken noodle soup Jessie said, “Do you think she’s really married?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe that’s why she had her baby under the name of Exeter, Richard. And told the super she’d given birth in a New Jersey hospital when she actually had the baby in New York. If she’s married and her husband wasn’t the baby’s father...”

“She’d use a phony name at the hospital if she wasn’t married, too. I’ll check Washington first thing in the morning on a Lieutenant Arthur Dimmesdale.” He stopped talking until the waiter removed the soup plates. “Either way we slice this, Jessie, it comes out the same. If Connie’s married, Dimmesdale isn’t the father. If she’s an unmarried mother, and invented Dimmesdale to make life simpler for herself at the apartment house, we’ve still got to look for the man who got her pregnant.”

“And for the other man,” Jessie said grimly.

“Which other man?”

“The man who’s hired that private detective to shadow us.”

He buttered a roll and remarked, “They might be the same man.”

Jessie looked surprised. “That’s so, isn’t it? Or... Richard! Do you suppose Weirhauser’s client could be Arthur Dimmesdale?”

“From Korea?”

“Don’t smile. Suppose the husband does exist. Suppose Dimmesdale knew he hadn’t left his wife pregnant. Then some snoopy ‘friend’ writes to Korea that Connie’s having, or had, a baby. He’s furious. He goes AWOL, or wangles a leave or something — anyway, gets back to the States. First he traces the baby to the Humffreys and murders him—”

“That would make him a psycho, Jessie. And what about Finner’s murder?”

“When Michael was murdered, Finner might have figured the husband did it, pussyfooted around, and decided he was right. If Finner then tried to blackmail Dimmesdale—”

But the Inspector was shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure, from the way Finner reacted, that he’d had no idea the baby was murdered. Hold it. — Fine, waiter. Yes, just the way I like it. Jessie, dig into this roast beef.”

There was no sign of George Weirhauser when they left the restaurant. They walked back up to 88th Street, where they had parked Jessie’s coupe, and Richard Queen rubbed his jaw.

“He’s gone.”

There was no sign of Weirhauser’s new Ford, either.

“Well!” Jessie said. “That’s a relief.”

“Is it?” he said oddly. “It probably means that instead of his client knowing tonight that we’ve located Connie Coy, he’s learning it right now.”

When he came downstairs from Jessie’s apartment that night he strolled up the street a way and then suddenly pulled open the door of a blue Studebaker parked at the kerb and climbed in.

“Evening, Inspector,” Polonsky said.

“See anything of a gray-and-salmon Ford this evening, Wes?”

The retired officer looked concerned. “I thought Weirhauser was driving a black Chrysler.”

“He switched on us today.”

Polonsky swore. “Somebody’s been teaching that punk his trade. I couldn’t say I didn’t, Inspector. I wasn’t watching out for Fords.”

“Neither was I.” The Inspector began gnawing on his mustache. “Wes.”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever happened to Pete Whatzis? You know, the Pete you used to team up with.”

“Pete Angelo? Pete’s wife died two years after he retired. His married daughter’s husband got transferred to Cincinnati, the younger daughter is away at college, and his son’s a Navy career man. Pete worked for a protection agency a few years and then quit.” Polonsky sighed. “At least he tells everybody he quit. He was fired on account of his age. Age! Pete Angelo could still wade into a gang of street corner hoodlums and stack ’em like cordwood.”

“Ever see Angelo?”

“All the time. He lives here on the West Side. We meet in the cafeteria, have four cups of coffee apiece, and tell each other how good we used to be.”

“Then Angelo’s not doing anything?”

“Just going nuts, like the rest of us.”

“Do you suppose I could get Pete to handle a plant for me?”

“Inspector, he’d throw his arms around your neck and kiss every hair on your mustache.”

“Can you think of any other retired cop who’d be willing to team with Angelo? I’d need them both right away.”

The ex-detective pondered. Then he smacked the wheel. “Murph! I ran into him this past week. You remember Sergeant Al Murphy, Inspector — he used to be on radio car patrol in the 16th. Murph was retired this past June, and he told me he’s still undecided what to do with himself. Never saw a guy so itchy.”

“Anybody else you can think of, Wes? I’d like two teams, one for the night trick, one for daytimes.”

“I’ll bet Pete or Murph’ll come up with a couple. When do you want them for?”

“If possible, starting tonight.”

Polonsky climbed out of his Studebaker. “You take this stakeout for a while, Inspector. I’ll be right back.”

When he slipped behind the wheel again Polonsky was grinning. “Pete Angelo and Al Murphy’ll meet you in the cafeteria on 72nd in fifteen minutes. Pete says not to worry, he can get you ten teams. Your problem, he says, is going to be to fight off the ones you can’t use.”

Richard Queen sat there in silence. Then he pressed Polonsky’s arm and got out. The old man in the car watched the old man on the sidewalk stride toward Broadway like a very young man indeed.

On Monday morning Richard Queen phoned to tell Jessie he had started the ball rolling on Lieutenant Dimmesdale with a connection of his at the Pentagon, and that he would have to stick close to his phone all day.

“What are your plans, Jessie?” he asked anxiously. “I haven’t got you covered daytimes.”

“Oh, I’ll be all right. I have some laundry and a few other things to do, and then I thought I’d hop a cab and give that bachelor’s sty of yours the thorough housecleaning I promised. If you wouldn’t mind my coming, I mean.”

“Mind,” he said in a fervent tone. “And here I was all gloomed up. But be careful on the way, Jessie!”

Jessie arrived a little past noon. At her ring he bellowed that the door was off the latch, and she went in to find him on the phone in Ellery’s study, waving at her through the study doorway.

“Richard Queen, why didn’t you tell me your Mrs. Fabrikant had been here? Or is this your work?”

He grinned and went on talking.

“Not that it still doesn’t need doing,” Jessie sniffed. She hung her taffeta coat and her hat in the foyer, prepared to take her handbag into the bathroom, change into a housedress, and sail in. But when she got further into the living room, there was the gateleg table set for two with winking silver and fancy paper napkins. He had decorated a big platter artistically with assorted cold cuts, deviled eggs, potato salad, parsley, and tomato slices, and the aroma from the kitchen told her the coffee was perking.

Jessie turned the gas down under the coffeepot with the strangest thrill of proprietorship.

So they lunched tête-à-tête, and he told her that he had just finished arranging for an around-the-clock watch on Connie Coy’s apartment.

“But who’s watching?” Jessie asked, astonished.

“Four retired members of the Force,” he grinned. “Al Murphy and Pete Angelo signed up last night. Pete got Hughie Giffin for me this morning, and that was ex-Lieutenant of Homicide Johnny Kripps just now trying to climb through the phone. Murphy and Angelo for daytime duty, Giffin and Kripps for dark-to-dawn. And four better officers you couldn’t find between here and the west forty.”

“Connie Coy is back, then?”

“No. That’s one of the reasons I want the building covered. This way I’ll know the minute she gets home.”

When Jessie came out of the bathroom after lunch, in a housedress and with her hair bound in a scarf, she found him washing the lunch dishes.

“Here, Richard, I’ll do those.”

“You go on about your business. I’m a pearl diver from way back.”

But afterward he trailed her around the apartment in a pleased way, making a nuisance of himself.

“Haven’t you anything to do?” She was washing the living-room windows, and she suspected she had a dirt smudge on her nose. “Goodness!”

“I’ll go call Abe Pearl,” he said hastily. “Been meaning to do it all day.”

“Are you going to tell him about Finner’s death and how it ties in with the baby?”

“I called Abe on that early last week.”

“You never told me. What did he say?”

“I couldn’t repeat it.”

“Then Chief Pearl’s not so sure about my optical illusions,” Jessie couldn’t help saying.

“I’m afraid Abe’s not sure about anything any more.”

He went into the study and called Taugus police headquarters.

“Abe? Dick Queen.”

“Dick!” Abe Pearl roared. “Wait a minute.” Richard Queen heard him say, “Borcher, shut that door, will you?” and the slam of a door. “Okay, Dick—”

“I thought you were going to call me back last week.”

“Call you back? I’ve called that damn number of yours two dozen times. Don’t you ever stay home? What’s going on, Dick? Honeymoon — or something — with the Sherwood number?”

“Don’t be funny,” the old man said huffily.

“All right, all right. But you’ve tied my hands, I don’t dare buzz Centre Street for information — I’m sitting out here like a bump on a log. Come on, Dick, give!”

He told Abe Pearl about their success in tracking down the mother of the dead baby.

“I’m waiting now for the girl to get back to town, Abe. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get a line on this alleged husband of hers, Dimmesdale. What did you find out about the Humffreys? How is Mrs. Humffrey?”

“I can’t get to first base on that. This Duane is closer-mouthed than the FBI. I even got a friend of mine, a New Haven doctor who’s sent patients to the Duane sanitarium and knows Duane well, to make some wild heaves from left field, but all Jerry could learn was that they’d called in some big specialist for her.”

“How about Alton Humffrey, Abe? When did he get back from that mysterious fadeout weekend before last?”

“A week ago Sunday night, late. The help must have told him about Dr. Duane’s trying frantically to get hold of him, because my information is Humffrey turned right around and drove up to New Haven. He was back Monday morning.”

“That was Monday a week ago? The 22nd?”

“Yeah. The next day — last Tuesday — he closed up the Nair Island house and went into New York for good. The only one left is the gardener, Stallings.”

Richard Queen was silent. Then he said, “Abe, were you able to find out where Humffrey was during his two-day disappearance?”

“Nope. What the devil is this all about, Dick? It’s a lot of fog to me.”

“Move over,” the old man chuckled.

But he looked worried as he hung up.

At 4.12 p.m. the phone rang. It was the operator with a call from Washington.

“This is it, Jessie,” Richard Queen shouted. “Hello?”

Two minutes later he hung up.

“The Pentagon says that no such person as Arthur Dimmesdale — either as officer, enlisted man, draftee, or even civilian employee — is carried on the rolls of the United States Army, in Korea or anywhere else.”

“So she did make him up,” Jessie said slowly. “Poor girl.”

“I wish your poor girl would show,” he snapped. “I wish something would show!”

Something did. At 4.25 he answered the doorbell to find himself staring into the hard blue eyes of his old friend, Deputy Chief Inspector Thomas F. Mackey in charge of Manhattan East.

If Inspector Mackey’s eyes were not affable, the rest of him was. He remarked how long it had been since his last visit to 87th Street, asked after Ellery, complimented his old friend on his taste in cleaning women (Jessie, hurriedly taking her mops into the study at a glance from her confederate, felt a shiver wiggle up her spine), and did not get down to business until he was offered a drink.

“Thanks, Dick, but I’m on duty,” Inspector Mackey said awkwardly.

The old man grinned. “I’ll go quietly, Tom.”

“Don’t be a jerk. Look, Dick, you and I can talk frankly. We’re up a tree on the Finner homicide. Just a big nothing. We’ve run down hundreds of leads, mostly from those files of his. His night-spot romances have pretty much washed out. There’s something wrong. Not a whisper of anything has come in from the stools. Wherever we turn — in a case that should have been cracked in forty-eight hours — we run up against a blank wall. Dick, are you sure you told us the whole story a week ago Saturday?”

The Queen face got red. “That’s a funny question to ask me, Tom.”

His friend’s face got red, too. “I know. I’ve been debating with myself all week should I come up here. The damn thing is, I got the queerest feeling that day that you were holding something back.” He was miserable, but his glance did not waver. “Were you, Dick?”

“I’m not going to answer that, Tom!”

They stared at each other. For a moment the old man thought his equivocation had been unsuccessful. But Chief Deputy Inspector Mackey misread the emotion in his friend’s voice.

“I don’t blame you. It was a rotten question to ask a man who’s given the best part of his life to the City of New York. Forget I ever asked it, Dick. And now, before I shove off, I think I’ll take that hooker!”

When Inspector Mackey had left, Jessie came out of the study. She went over to Richard Queen, slumped in his big armchair, and put her hand on his shoulder.

“You couldn’t do anything else, Richard.”

“Jessie, I feel like a skunk.” His hand crept up and tightened over hers. “And yet I can’t turn this over to the Department. The minute I do I’m through with the case. It’s our case, Jessie, yours and mine. Nobody else wanted it...”

“Yes, Richard,” Jessie murmured.

They had had dinner and were in the living room watching television when the phone rang again. Jessie snapped off the set and glanced at her watch as the old man hurried into the study. It was almost 8.30.

“Inspector? Johnny Kripps.”

“Johnny. Did Giffin turn up to help you take over from Angelo and Murphy?”

“Hughie’s watching the front right now. I’m phoning from a drugstore on Broadway. She’s back, Inspector.”

“Ah,” the old man said. “You’re sure she’s our gal, Johnny?”

“She pulled up in a cab full of luggage about ten minutes ago, alone. Her bags have the name Connie Coy on them. And Giffin overheard the night man in the lobby call her Mrs. Dimmesdale. What do we do?”

Richard Queen said quietly, “Keep your eyes open and stay under cover. I’m on my way.”

They walked over; it was only a few blocks. The night was hot and humid, but Inspector Queen set a quick pace. There was no sign of George Weirhauser.

“I wonder why,” Jessie panted. Her girdle was killing her, but she would have died rather than ask him to slow down.

“Either his job is done or our staying in all day’s fooled him.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

The kerbs on both sides of 88th Street were packed with cars. How he knew Jessie could not imagine, but he stopped suddenly near one of the parked cars to light a cigarette, and a man’s voice from inside the car said, “Okay, Inspector.”

“Where’s Giffin staked out, Johnny?”

“Up there on the floor somewhere. If you don’t want the lobby man to see you, there’s a side service entrance. This side of the building. Delivery elevator is self-service.”

“You’re clairvoyant, Johnny.”

Kripps laughed. Jessie wondered what he looked like.

The Inspector strolled her slowly toward a shadowed area near the service entrance. The entrance had a weak caged bulb over it. He stopped her in the shadow. A car was cruising by, and a portly man in a Hawaiian shirt was trudging toward them from West End Avenue followed by a woman who was walking as if her feet hurt. The woman was jabbering a steady stream; the man kept wading on, deaf. He turned into the apartment house entrance and the woman went in after him.

“Now, Jessie.”

Jessie found herself stumbling down three steps into a sort of tunnel. Ahead was darkness. He took her hand and led the way, trailing his other hand along the inner wall.

“Here’s the door.”

They entered a cluttered, sour-smelling basement, dimly lit. There was a trash can in the elevator.

The elevator went up creaking and groaning. It seemed to Jessie it was making enough noise to be heard over on Broadway. But the old man merely watched the floors move by.

“Why are we sneaking in this way, Richard?”

“We’re not exactly in a position to operate openly. What the lobby man can’t see won’t hurt us.” He sounded grim.

The elevator stopped, swaying. He opened the door and they stepped into a dingy rear hall. He shut the elevator door noiselessly.

There were four apartment doors, lettered A, B, C and D. He went over to the fire stairway to look down into the well. Then he moved over to the stairs leading up, and peered. They were on the top floor. This flight undoubtedly led to the roof exit, but the whole upper part of the staircase was in darkness.

“Giffin?”

“Yeah, Inspector.” The ex-detective’s voice sounded a little surprised. “I thought with Kripps covering the street, I’d cover the back stairs.”

“Okay.”

He went to the door lettered C and put his forefinger on the bell button. C was one of the two rear apartments.

Jessie held her breath. Little Michael’s mother at last...

A latch chain rattled. The door opened a couple of inches.

“Who is it?”

She had a deep, slightly hoarse voice. Jessie caught a glint of gold hair, a slash of lipstick.

“Miss Connie Coy?”

“Yes?”

Richard Queen held his shield-case up for her inspection. “May we come in?”

“Police?”

Just the merest tremble of fear, Jessie thought, in that sugared voice. One large hazel eye, heavily mascaraed, shot a glance in Jessie’s direction.

“What do you want with me?” She made no move to open the door.

“Let us in, please, Miss Coy,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you want the neighbors in on this.”

She undid the latch chain then, stepping back with the door fast.

Connie Coy was clutching a green terry cloth housecoat about her, glancing from Richard Queen to Jessie and back again. Jessie saw now that her gold hair had greenish roots and that the makeup did not entirely conceal tired, biting lines. She was wearing dark green sandals. Her toenails were painted gold.

The old man shut the door and hooked the chain back.

“Sorry to barge in on you this way, Miss Coy, but it couldn’t be helped. I’m Inspector Queen, this is Miss Sherwood. Where can we talk?”

“But what’s this all about?” She was openly frightened now.

“Is that your living room in there?”

He went swiftly through the neat little kitchen into a big studio room.

“Don’t be afraid, Miss Coy,” Jessie said in her soft voice.

The girl gave her a puzzled look. Then she laughed and poked at her hair. “I’ve never had a visit from the police before,” she said. “Are you a policewoman?”

“I’m a trained nurse.”

She seemed rooted to the floor. But then she said, “Won’t you come in?” and stepped aside.

They went into the studio room. Richard Queen was in the bedroom, looking into the bathroom. Open suitcases were strewn about the bed and the floor. Evening gowns lay everywhere.

“What are you looking for, Inspector?” the girl asked nervously.

“Just making sure we’re alone.” He came back, frowning.

It was a gay room in a theatrical way. The furniture was nondescript modern, but the upholstery was brightly colored and there was a striking batik throw over the back of the sofa. An ivory-and-gilt Steinway stood to one side of a big studio window. She had thrown the window wide open to the humid night, and through it Jessie could see the starlit roofline of an apartment building on the other side of a narrow inner court, no more than twenty feet away. The window hangings were of dramatic red velvet. The walls were covered with inscribed theatrical photographs, mostly of jazz musicians, but there were several Degas reproductions of ballet dancers, an airy Dufy, and two small Japanese prints of subtle coloring that looked old. From an Egyptian copper vase on the mantelpiece over the false fireplace drooped some dead red roses. Half of one wall held floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books and recordings. There was a hi-fi player, a television set, a tiny bar.

“I’d offer you folks a drink,” Connie Coy said with a strained smile, “but I’m out of everything and I only just got back tonight from out of town. Please sit down.”

Jessie seated herself on the sofa near an iron-and-glass end table. A book lay open on the table. She wondered what it was.

The girl sat down in a wing chair, stiffly.

“Well?” she said. “I’m ready.”

Inspector Queen went over to the fireplace, fingered a dry rose petal that lay on the brass knob of the andiron, suddenly whirled.

“Miss Coy, when did you see your baby last?”

The brutality of his question struck Jessie like a blow. She gave him an angry glance, but he was looking at the blonde girl. Jessie looked at her, too.

She was pale, but under control. She’s been expecting it, Jessie thought. She took it better than I did.

“Baby? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Miss Coy.” His voice was perfectly flat. “Seven or eight months ago you leased this apartment under the name of Mrs. Arthur Dimmesdale. There is no Arthur Dimmesdale. Some time between then and May of this year you were approached by a lawyer named Finner. You were pregnant, and he offered to see you through in safety to yourself providing you turned the baby over to him. He was in the adoption business, he told you, and he would see to it that your child was placed in a very good home with foster-parents who couldn’t have children of their own and wanted to adopt one. All expenses would be paid; you would receive a large sum of money; Finner would take care of all the ‘legal’ details. You were desperate, and you agreed. Finner sent you to a reputable gynecologist who knew you only as ‘Mrs. Willis P. Exeter,’ a name Finner provided, and when your time came you entered the hospital Finner designated under that name. The date was May 26th. On May 27th you gave birth to a male child. He weighed six pounds thirteen ounces, was nineteen centimeters long, had blue eyes and blond hair. On June 3rd you and your baby were discharged from the hospital and you turned him over to Finner. He paid you the promised fee and took the baby away. Are you ready to answer my questions now?”

“I threw the money in his fat face!”

The girl was trembling violently. She buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

Jessie made an instinctive move toward her. But the Inspector shook his head emphatically, and she sank back.

“I’m sorry.” The Coy girl stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun. “Yes, I was desperate, all right. That slug Finner hung around a club I was singing at. I don’t know how he knew I was pregnant. I suppose one of the girls suspected and sold him the information. What do you want to know?”

“Was that morning — June 3rd — the last time you saw your baby?”

“Yes.”

She was twisting her hands in her lap, biting her lip.

“Now tell me this. Where were you on the afternoon of August 20th? That would be Saturday a week ago.”

“I was in Chicago,” she said dully. “That’s where I just got back from. I did a three-week singing engagement at the Club Intime.”

“Do you remember what you were doing that Saturday afternoon?”

“Sure. I was working a TV show. The club press agent arranged it.”

“You were in a TV studio in Chicago all afternoon?”

“All day. We went on the air at 4.30.”

For the first time his face softened. “That’s an alibi nobody can improve on. I’m glad for your sake.”

The girl was staring at him. “What do you mean, Inspector? Alibi for what?”

“On Saturday mid-afternoon, August 20th, A. Burt Finner was murdered in his office on East 49th Street in New York.”

“Finner... murdered?”

“Didn’t you know that, Miss Coy?”

“No! Finner murdered... Who did it?”

“That,” the old man said gently, “is why we’re here.”

“I see,” she said. “You thought I murdered him... I hope you never get the one who did! She ought to get a medal. Maybe you didn’t know Finner the way I got to. He was the lowest thing that crawled. He was a creep, a fat creep. This baby racket wasn’t just business with him. He got kicks out of it. The filthy bastard.”

He let the bitter voice run on. His silence finally stopped her.

“You’re keeping something from me,” she said slowly. “Does Finner’s murder have something to do with my baby?”

“Miss Coy.” He stopped. Then he said, “Miss Coy, don’t you know about the baby, either?”

“Know? About my baby?” The girl clutched the arms of her chair. “Know what, Inspector?”

“Don’t you know who bought your baby from Finner?”

“No. That was part of the deal. I had to sign all kinds of papers Finner pushed in front of me. Promise never to try to find out who the adopters were. Promise never to look for him.” She jumped up. “You know who they are! Who are they? Tell me! Please?”

“A millionaire Massachusetts couple with a summer home in Connecticut and an apartment in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Alton K. Humffrey.”

Her mascara had run, and she kept blinking at him, blinking as if she could not stop. Suddenly she went over to the end table and snatched a cigarettete from an open box. Her gesture pushed the book lying there into Jessie’s lap. The girl turned away, thumbing a table lighter savagely.

“Tell me more,” she said. “These Humffreys. They bought my baby from Finner, and what happened? Because something happened, I know it. What was it, Inspector?”

He glanced at Jessie.

“Well, Miss Coy, I’ll tell you—”

“I’ll tell her, Richard.” Jessie got up, holding the book, and went close to the girl. “Take a good drag, Miss Coy. This is going to be very hard. I was your baby’s nurse in the Humffrey household. He’s dead.”

She touched the girl’s shoulder.

Connie Coy turned around. Her lips were apart and the smoldering cigarette was dangling from her lower lip. Jessie took it from her mouth and put it in an ash tray.

“You may as well hear the rest of it,” Richard Queen muttered. “Your baby was murdered.”

“Murdered...?”

Jessie lunged, and he bounced forward. But the girl pushed their arms blindly aside, went over to the wing chair, sat down on the edge with her hands clasped between her knees, staring.

Jessie hurried into the kitchen. She came back with a glass of water.

“Drink this.”

Connie Coy sipped mechanically, still staring.

“No, that’s enough. Murdered. When did it happen?”

“August 4th, a Thursday night,” the old man said. “Over three weeks ago. Didn’t you read about the death of a child named Michael Stiles Humffrey up on Nair Island, in Connecticut? It was in all the papers.”

“So that’s the name they gave him. Michael. I always called him just Baby. In my thoughts, I mean. Michael...” She shook her head, as if the name meant nothing to her. “Papers? No, I guess I didn’t. Thursday night, August 4th... I left for Chicago on the 5th. I was busy packing, I didn’t get a paper that Friday. I didn’t see a New York paper all the time I was away.” She shook her head again, violently this time. “It’s so confusing. You know? Getting hit this way... Murdered... All this time I’ve kept kidding myself it was for his good, the advantages he’d have, and never knowing he was illegitimate. How he’d grow up tall and happy and well adjusted, and... And he’s murdered. At two months old.” She laughed. “It’s crazy, man, crazy.”

She threw her head back and laughed and laughed. Jessie let her laugh it through. After a while the girl stopped laughing and said, “Can I have a cigarette?”

“I wish I had a good stiff drink to give you,” Jessie said. She lit a cigarette and put it between the girl’s lips. “How about some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m all right.” She seemed completely composed, as if the laughter, the enormous hazel stare, had never happened. “Let’s get this straight. A rich couple named Humffrey bought my baby from Finner. The baby was murdered. A couple of weeks later Finner was murdered. I don’t see the connection.”

“We don’t know yet why the little tyke was murdered, Connie.” The Inspector dragged a chair over to her and sat down eagerly. “But the way we see it, Finner got it because he was the only outsider who knew the baby’s real parentage. A while ago you said you didn’t know how Finner found out you were pregnant — you supposed one of the girls at the club you were singing in suspected and sold him the information. Did you have any real reason for believing that?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I never let on to anybody, and it certainly didn’t show at that time. But it’s the only way I can imagine Finner got to know it.”

“It isn’t likely. But there’s one way Finner could have found out that is likely. Connie, tell me: Did the man who got you pregnant know it?”

Her eyes flickered.

“Yes,” she said. “I told him. He wanted me to go to some dirty abortionist. But I was afraid. So then he bowed out.” She shrugged. “I didn’t blame him. It was my own fault. I thought I loved him and found out I didn’t when it was too late. I knew all the time he was married.” Then she said, “Pardon me for going into my memoirs. You were saying?”

“Three people knew it,” Richard Queen said. “You, the man, Finner. You didn’t tell Finner. Then how did Finner find out? The man must have told him.”

“That’s real touching,” Connie Coy murmured. She got up and ground the cigarette out in the ash tray on the end table. She ground it hard. “Keep going, Inspector.”

“So Finner knew the identity of both parents. If he was killed because he knew—” the old man rose, too — “then you’re in danger, Connie.”

“Me?” She swung about to face him, expressionless. “How do you figure that?”

“The only ones with reason to shut Finner’s mouth for good about the child’s parentage are the parents themselves. You’re one of them, but you have a solid alibi for the day of Finner’s murder. That leaves the other parent. It’s my belief, Connie, that Finner was murdered by the baby’s real father, and if that’s so he may well come after you, too. With Finner dead, you’re the only one left who can expose him. That’s why I want you to tell us who the father is.”

The blonde girl walked over to her grand piano. She ran her left hand soundlessly over the keys.

“Certainly you can’t have any sentiment left about him.” The Inspector spoke softly from the center of the room, above Jessie’s head. “You say he’s married. Am I right in supposing he’s also somebody prominent — someone who might be ruined if a story like this came out? A certain type of man will run amok under a fear like that. Your protection is to share your information, Connie. The more people know who he is, the safer you are. He can’t kill us all. Who is he? Tell us.”

There was another cigarette box on the piano, and the girl took a cigarette from it and put it to her mouth. She looked around. He picked up the lighter from the end table and walked over to her.

“Tell us,” he said again. He held the lighter up, but he did not finger the flint lever. She took the lighter from him and worked the lever herself.

“Arthur Dimmesdale,” Jessie said from the sofa.

The flame remained an inch from the cigarette.

“What, Jessie?” Richard Queen said, puzzled.

The book from the end table was still in Jessie’s hand. She tapped it. “I thought it sounded familiar, Richard. Arthur Dimmesdale is the name of Hester Prynne’s lover in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.”

“Oh, that.” Connie Coy laughed. “I picked the book up one day in a secondhand shop. I’d always meant to read it. And I’d just found out I was pregnant. A for Adultery... Hester’s lover’s name seemed like just the thing when I had to invent a husband. My mother always warned me my romantic streak would get me into trouble.”

“Only a person who’s married can commit adultery, Connie,” Jessie said. “You’re not the adulterer. He is. And now it seems he’s a murderer, too. That’s the thing to remember, isn’t it?”

“So,” Inspector Queen repeated, “who is he?”

“All right,” the blonde girl said suddenly. “I’ll tell you.”

She brought the flame of the lighter to the tip of the cigarette.

The flame seemed to explode with a sharp crack, and a black hole appeared in the middle of her forehead.

Then the hole gushed red, and the lighter fell, and the cigarette fell, and the girl fell.

She fell sidewise, glancing off the piano keys. She crashed to the floor before the brilliant clang of the keys stopped.

“Get down, Jessie!”

Jessie found herself in a crouch on the floor, with the sofa between her and the studio window. The old man was skittering like a crab toward the wall switch. Jessie heard two more explosions. Something shattered behind her.

The room plummeted into darkness.

He was pounding through the kitchen now. Undoing the latch chain.

The service door opened and closed. The sounds were definite but not loud. Before the door closed she heard the voice of the ex-detective, Giffin. And soft running steps.

Then silence.

Jessie Sherwood sat up in the dark, rested her head against the sofa seat. Her ears were ringing and it bothered her.

She shut her eyes.

But even with her eyes shut she could see him.

He had shot a gun off from the roof of the house twenty feet on the other side of the court, through the open window. The flame of the lighter had made Connie Coy’s blonde head a perfect target. A blurry-black figure against the glow of the city sky. As the girl fell. With a glinting something held in front of him. A figure vaguely male. Then she had tumbled off the sofa.

Amazing how quiet everything was.

Not really quiet. Just normal-quiet. As if there had been no man on the roof, no sharp crack, no hole in a human head. It wasn’t quiet. TV sets were going all over the place. The court was full of them. Auto sounds from the streets. Buses going by on Broadway. Not the kind of sounds they would make if they knew a girl had been shot. Not the rasp of windows, cries, questions, doors, running.

Girl shot.

Jessie came alive.

The girl...

She crawled toward the window, reached up, got hold of the short end of the drape pull, and yanked. Before she climbed to her feet she felt for the drapes to make sure they were drawn.

She located the lamp on the piano, felt for the button, found it. The lamp remained dark. Why didn’t it turn on? The wall switch. It controlled all the lights in the room.

She groped toward where Richard Queen had scuttled at the first shot. After a while she located the switch.

Connie Coy was lying between the Steinway and the pulled-out piano bench, on her back. Her robe had twisted open in her fall. She was wearing nothing underneath.

The blonde girl was staring intently at the ceiling, as if something were written there that she could not understand.