Inspector Queen’s Own Case

5 And Then... Justice

“Where is this woman?” Richard Queen snarled. “She’s half an hour late now.”

“She’ll be here,” Jessie said soothingly. “My, you don’t sound like an engaged man at all. More like a husband.”

He colored. “How about another cocktail?”

“I’d love another cocktail.”

He signaled the waitress hastily.

Jessie felt warm inside. It was not entirely the Pink Lady. Pretending to be engaged for Elizabeth Currie’s benefit had been his idea. He had insisted on coming along, and they had to have a reason for his presence.

“Dr. Duane saw you that night on Nair Island, when he came to take Mrs. Humffrey to the sanitarium,” he had said stubbornly. “I’d rather sit in on this.”

“But he hardly glanced at me,” Jessie had said. “Doctors never look at a nurse’s face unless she’s young and pretty.”

“Then he took a good look!”

Not that Dr. Duane was going to be present. It was an exploratory lunch in a Stamford restaurant with Jessie’s friend Elizabeth Currie, who had been on the nursing staff of the Duane Sanitarium for years. Approaching the problem of getting inside the sanitarium — and eventually inside Sarah Humffrey’s room — through Elizabeth Currie had been Jessie’s idea. Still, Richard had insisted. (“I want to feel this out, Jessie. I may still change my mind. After all, once you got in there you’d be cut off from me...”)

Elizabeth Currie turned out to be a tall Scotswoman with iron hair, steel jaws, and bone eyes.

“So this is the man, Jessie. Let me look at you... Well! He’s a little older looking than I expected, but then... I think it’s marvelous, two people of your age finding each other after all hope had fled, haha! However did you do it, Jessie?”

“It was love at first sight,” Jessie said lightly. “Wasn’t it... darling?”

“Smack between the eyes,” Richard Queen mumbled. “Cocktail, Miss Currie?”

“I’ll say! Double Manhattan.”

“Double Manhattan,” he said to the waitress. “Maybe we’d better order the food now...”

An hour later he nudged Jessie under cover of the tablecloth, desperately.

“Well, no, Elizabeth,” Jessie said, nudging him back. “As a matter of fact, our plans are a little vague. Richard’s firm is sending him abroad for a few months, and we probably won’t be... married till he gets back.”

“What a hor’ble idea,” the nurse said. “Why don’t you get married now, you fool, and go with him?”

“We... uh... we can’t afford it,” the Inspector said. “So Jessie’s looking around for something to do to while away the time—”

“I can’t face going back to private cases, Elizabeth. I wish I could find a staff job somewhere.”

“You’re crazy,” Elizabeth Currie said.

“Elizabeth, I just thought! Do you suppose there’s an opening at the Duane Sanitarium?”

“There’s always an opening at the Duane Sanitarium. Staff turnover is something terrific. But I still think you’re crazy, Jessie.”

“Could you find out? First thing tomorrow? I’d be ever so grateful.”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Duane myself.” Jessie’s friend giggled. “I’m tight, do you know? Don’t worry, I’ll fix it for you, but you’re absolutely balmy.”

“Maybe Elizabeth has something on this,” Richard Queen said. “What sort of place is it, Miss Currie? I wouldn’t want Jessie getting into something—”

“That’s just what she’d be doing,” the nurse said confidentially. “Oh, it’s a lovely place and all that — like a lovely prison, that is. Those patients. Phoo.”

“Pretty sick people?”

“Pretty sick my eye. Bunch of hypochondriacs, most of ’em. Drive a nurse to drink. Which reminds me. Could I have another Manhattan, you nice man?”

“Better not, Elizabeth,” Jessie said. “Talking about patients. You get some pretty important people up there, don’t you?”

“Filthy rich people. Could I—?”

“Isn’t the Duane Sanitarium where they took that wealthy society woman — what was her name? You know, Elizabeth — that woman from around here somewhere, tragic case of the baby that suffocated in its crib. Last month.”

“Huh,” the nurse said. “Mrs. Humffrey.”

“Mrs. Humffrey!” Jessie said. “She’s the one.” She thought, If Elizabeth remembers the newspaper stories, I’m sunk. She glanced at her confederate doubtfully, but he nodded for her to go ahead. “She had a nervous breakdown or something, didn’t she?”

“Absolutely no control over herself,” Elizabeth Currie nodded contemptuously. “‘Bereavement shock,’ they called it. All right, it was a ter’ble experience, but my God. She had everybody running around in circles.”

“Had?” Richard Queen said. “‘Had,’ Miss Currie?”

“Huh?” the nurse said owlishly.

“Doesn’t she still have everybody running around in circles?”

“No, indeedy, you nice man.”

“Why not?” Jessie didn’t dare glance at him this time. “Elizabeth, you talk as if she isn’t at the Duane Sanitarium any more.”

“She isn’t. Big private limousine with two husky nurses in it took her away last Friday morning. And was Dr. Duane glad to see the last of her.”

“I wonder where they took her.”

“Nobody knows. Big hush-hush. Who cares? Richard — I may call you Richard, mayn’t I? — just one more teeny Manhattan? He’s real nice, Jessie...”

It was late afternoon before they got rid of Elizabeth Currie, blearily bewildered at Jessie’s sudden decision not to apply for a nursing job at the Duane Sanitarium after all.

He drove in a fury. “Last Friday morning! And I was up there Thursday asking about her. Duane must have phoned Humffrey, or Humffrey called and Duane mentioned my visit, and bango! the next morning Humffrey hauls her out of there.”

“But Richard, he was being followed.”

“He didn’t go himself. Didn’t you hear, Jessie?” He honked savagely at a slowpoke driver. “Arranged the switch to a new hideout by phone, and drew us off while the transfer was made by the new people, who could be anybody, anywhere — maybe Arizona, for all we know. He’s smart, Jessie. Smart and quick on his pins.”

Jessie shivered. “What do we do now?”

“Who knows? It might take us months to locate her. If ever.”

He stared ahead.

A few miles later Jessie touched his arm. “Richard.”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t we give up?”

“No!” he said.

“But it seems so hopeless.”

To Jessie’s surprise, he smiled. “Maybe not, Jessie.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s his round, all right. But we’ve just learned something about Mr. Alton K. Humffrey.”

“We have?” Jessie sounded dubious.

“This business of snatching his wife out from under our noses confirms my belief that the murder of that baby is his weak spot. It’s not theory any more. We’ve learned something else, too. The way to get at Humffrey is to force his hand. If we can surprise him, get him off balance...”

“You’ve thought of something!”

He nodded. “If it works, it could finish this off at one stroke.”

“What is it, Richard?”

“Let me think it through.”

For some reason, Jessie felt no elation. The title of an old Robert Benchley book, After 1903, What?, crossed her mind. After Alton Humffrey, What? She slumped down and closed her eyes...

She opened them to see the airy span of the George Washington Bridge moving by on her right.

“I fell asleep,” Jessie murmured.

“And looked like a young chicken,” he said in a peculiar way.

Jessie grimaced and sat up. “I’d make pretty tough chewing, I’m afraid.”

“Jessie.”

“Yes, Richard.”

“Wasn’t it a funny feeling? Back there in Stamford, I mean?” He said it with a laugh.

“You mean when Elizabeth said Sarah Humffrey had been spirited away? I thought I’d die.”

“No, I mean you and me.” He was very red. “Pretending to be engaged.”

Jessie stared straight ahead at the traffic. “I didn’t see anything funny about it,” she said coldly. “I thought it was nice.”

“Well...”

Yes? Jessie thought. Yes?

But when he spoke again, it was to explain the plan he had worked out.

“It’s that one over there, Jessie,” Richard Queen said.

It was Wednesday evening, the 28th of September.

Jessie turned the coupé into the Pearl driveway and switched off her ignition. It was a spready old white clapboard house covered with wisteria and honeysuckle vines on a peaceful side street in Taugus. Great maples shaded the lawns, and on the old-fashioned open porch there were two rockers and a slide-swing.

He got out of the car, handling a large square flat package as if it contained eggs.

But Jessie was looking at the house. “What a lovely place for two people to live out their lives together.”

“It’s too big for two people, Abe says.”

“I’ll bet that’s not what Mrs. Pearl says.”

“You’d win,” he chuckled. “Becky’s children were born in this house, and to her that makes it holy. When Abe bought the beach shack, he had to fight to get her to go out there during the summer months. She isn’t really happy till they close it up in September and come back here.”

“She’s lucky.”

“So is Abe.” He added, “In more ways than one.”

Jessie sighed and got out. They went up on the porch, Richard Queen carrying the package carefully.

The door opened before he could ring the bell. “Richard, Jessie.” Beck Pearl embraced them enthusiastically. “Let me look at you two! Abe, they’re positively blooming. Did you ever see such a change in two people?”

“Well, get out of the way and let them come in,” Abe Pearl grumbled. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t let me go to the door till they came up on the porch—”

His wife’s glance withered him. “Let me have your things, Jessie. I can’t imagine why Abe didn’t insist on your coming for dinner. He’s so stupid about some things!”

She carted Jessie off, and Abe Pearl took his friend into the living room.

“I thought you’d never get here. What held you up, Dick?”

“Daylight.” The Inspector laid his package gently on the mahogany refectory table. “Mind if I pull the blinds?”

“You’re acting damn mysterious. What’s up?” The Taugus chief kept eying the package.

“Let’s wait for the women.” He drew all the shades down to the sills. Then he went back to the table and stood there.

The women came in chattering. But when Beck Pearl saw the old man’s face she stopped talking and sat down in a corner. Jessie took a chair near her and folded her hands in her lap.

Inspector Queen glanced over at his friend’s wife. “Is your girl in the house, Becky?”

“Florrie? No, she goes home nights.”

“Then we’re alone?”

“Yes,” Abe Pearl growled. “For the love of Mike, Dick, what’s this all about?”

“Abe, what would you say if I told you we’ve finally got the goods on Alton Humffrey?”

The Taugus policeman looked from him to the package.

“In that thing?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s back in my lap.” The big man came slowly to the table. “Let’s have a look.”

The Inspector undid the twine and removed the heavy wrappings with loving care.

Then he stepped back.

Abe Pearl said, “My God, Dick.”

The package contained two sheets of thick plate glass. Between them, spread flat but showing wrinkle marks, as if it had been found crumpled but had been smoothed out, lay a lace-edged pillowslip. The slip was of some dainty fabric; the lace was exquisite. By contrast the dirty imprint of a man’s hand, a trifle blurry but unmistakable, was an offense. The print lay just off-center, the impression of a right hand from which the tip of the little finger was missing to the first joint.

“Where did you find this?” Abe Pearl demanded.

“You like it, Abe?”

“Like it!” The chief bent over the glass, scrutinizing the pillowslip eagerly. “That missing fingertip alone—! Wait till Merrick sees this.”

“You owe Jessie an apology, Abe, don’t you?” Richard Queen said, smiling.

“I guess I do, Miss Sherwood! I can’t wait to see that iceberg’s face when he gets a squint at this,” Abe Pearl chortled. “But Dick, you haven’t told me where you got it.”

The old man said quietly, “We made it.”

The big man’s jaw dropped.

“It’s a forgery, Abe. And judging by your reaction, a successful one. That’s what I wanted to find out. If it’s fooled you, it’ll fool Humffrey.”

“A forgery...”

“We’ve been working on this for a week. Jessie went around from store to store in New York till she found a pillowcase exactly like the one that disappeared. What’s this lace called again, Jessie?”

“Honiton. The case itself is batiste.” Jessie glanced at the big policeman. “So of course, Mr. Pearl, I’ll let you take your apology back.”

He made an impatient gesture and turned away. But he turned back at once. “Tell me more, Dick.”

“One of the boys, Pete Angelo, went up to Boston. We figured because of Humffrey’s missing fingertip he’d likely have his gloves made to order, and we were right. Pete located his glovemaker, and got hold of a pair of gloves the old fellow’d made for Humffrey that Humffrey didn’t like. Then we enlisted Willy Kuntzman, who used to be one of the best men in the Bureau of Tech Services” — the old man grinned — “retired, of course — and Willy went to work on the right glove. He came up with a cast of Humffrey’s right hand in that plastic, or whatever it is, that looks and feels like flesh. Then, with Jessie describing the handprint she’d seen on the original pillowcase, Willy doctored the duplicate, and this is the result.”

“Isn’t this taking a hell of a chance?”

Richard Queen returned his friend’s look calmly. “I’m willing to take it, Abe. I was hoping you’d be, too.”

“You want me to pull this on Humffrey.”

“The preliminary work, yes.”

The big man was silent.

“Of course, Abe, it’s not absolutely necessary. I can do the whole thing. But it would have more of an effect if you set it up. The crime was committed in your jurisdiction. You’re the logical man to have found this.”

“Where?”

“You don’t tell him where. It won’t even occur to him to ask. The sight of this ought to throw him for a loop. If he should ask, toss it to me. I’ll be in on the kill.”

“Listen, Dick, you’ve got a rock in this,” the police chief said slowly. “All right, Humffrey left his right handprint on a pillowcase just like this, and disposed of it that night before we got there. How? It must have been burned up, we said. Or it was cut to pieces and flushed down a toilet. Humffrey knows how he disposed of it, doesn’t he? If he burned it, how could we produce it? If he cut it up, how come it’s whole again?” Abe Pearl shook his head. “It won’t work. He’ll know in a flash we’re trying to pull one.”

“I don’t think so, Abe.” The Inspector seemed unperturbed. “I didn’t agree with you and Merrick when you discussed it that night, although I didn’t want to put my two cents in with Merrick there. It’s highly unlikely that Humffrey’d have burned the pillowslip. It was a hot night in August. He’d hardly have risked making a fire that might have been seen or smelled by somebody in the house — Jessie here, a servant, Dr. Wicks, even his wife — and remembered later just because it was a hot night in August.

“As for cutting it to pieces, he didn’t have to, Abe. The material is so fine you can take this thing and crumple it into a small ball. He could have flushed it down a drain in one piece. A man who’s just taken the life of an infant and expects the police any minute — no matter what substitute for blood is flowing through his veins — isn’t going to go in for anything fancy. That only happens in my son’s books. Humffrey had only one thought in mind, to get rid of the pillowcase in the quickest and easiest way.

“Sure, Abe, I don’t deny the risk. But the way I see it, the odds are way over on our side.” He shrugged. “Of course, if you’d rather not have anything to do with it—”

“Don’t be a horse’s patoot, Dick. It’s not that.” Abe Pearl began to pull on his fleshy lower lip.

The old man waited.

“It is that, Abe.” It was Beck Pearl’s soft voice. “You’re thinking of me.”

“Now Becky,” her husband shouted, “don’t start in on me!”

“Or maybe I’m flattering myself. Maybe it’s yourself you’re thinking of. Your job.”

“Becky—” he thundered.

“The trouble is, dear, you’re going soft in Taugus. It’s a nice fat easy job, and you’ve gotten nice and fat and easy along with it.”

“Becky, will you stay out of this? Damn it all—!”

“How would you feel if that little boy had been Donny? Or darling little Lawrence?”

“You would throw my grandchildren up to me!” The big man hurled himself into the armchair with a crash that made the room shake. “All right, Dick! What’s your plan?”

The next morning two police cars shot across the Nair Island causeway, drove into the Humffrey grounds, and eight Taugus detectives and uniformed men, headed by Chief Pearl, jumped out.

Stallings, the caretaker-gardener, was on his knees in one of the flower beds, planting bulbs.

“Something wrong again, Chief?”

“Nothing that concerns you, Stallings,” Chief Pearl said gruffly. “Get on with your work. Borcher, you and Tinny take the house. You other men, fan out on the grounds — you know what we’re after. One of you go down to the beach and keep an eye on that dredger, in case they make the strike.”

“One minute,” Stallings said uneasily, as the officers began to scatter. “I’m responsible, Chief. What are you up to?”

“This is a search party,” the chief barked. “Out of my way.”

“But, Mr. Pearl, I got my instructions from Mr. Humffrey. He specially said I was to keep cops and reporters out.”

“He did, did he? Ever hear of a search warrant, my friend?”

“A warrant?” Stallings blinked.

Chief Pearl waved an official-looking document before the old fellow’s nose and immediately put it back in his pocket and turned away. “All right, men.”

He went into the Humffrey house on the heels of his two detectives.

Stallings waited.

When all the officers had disappeared, he stole up the driveway to the service entrance, slipped inside, shut the door quietly, and went to the telephone extension in the butler’s pantry. He gave the Taugus operator the Humffrey apartment number in New York City number.

“The Humffrey residence,” Mrs. Lenihan’s Irish voice answered.

“Lenihan,” Stallings muttered. “Is his nibs there?”

“Who is this?”

“Stallings. Got to talk to Mr. Humffrey. Shake a leg.”

“You old fool, what are you up to now?” the housekeeper sniffed. “Drunk again, like as not. Mr. Humffrey isn’t here.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. All he said was for Henry to have the limousine ready. They drove off early this morning.” Mrs. Lenihan lowered her voice. “Something doing?”

“Plenty. Cops all over the place. Chief Pearl with a search warrant. Don’t you have no idea where they went?”

“Mercy,” Mrs. Lenihan said faintly. “I don’t, Stallings. What are they looking for?”

“How should I know?” Stallings sounded disgusted. “Well, I done my duty.”

He hung up and returned to his bulbs.

In Alton Humffrey’s upstairs study, Abe Pearl replaced the study extension on its base softly.

At a few minutes past two that afternoon Stallings phoned Mrs. Lenihan again. This time he sounded agitated.

“Isn’t Mr. Humffrey back yet, Lenihan?”

“Not yet,” the housekeeper said. “What’s the latest?”

“They just left.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe not so good,” Stallings said slowly. “Maybe not so good, my fine Mrs. Lenihan.”

“Now what? You and the voice of doom! What did they do? What did they say?”

“Nothing. Wouldn’t tell me nothing. But Chief Pearl cracked me on the back, and do you know what he says to me?”

“What?”

“‘Stallings,’ he says, ‘I got the funniest feeling you’re going to be looking for a new job,’ he says.”

“He didn’t!” the housekeeper gasped.

“That’s what he says to me, Lenihan, word for word.”

“What do you suppose it means?”

“I don’t know,” the caretaker muttered. “But I don’t like it... You better make good and damn sure Mr. Humffrey calls me the minute he gets in!”

Abe Pearl began phoning the Humffrey apartment from his office in Taugus police headquarters at a little past 3 p.m. He called again at 3.30, and again at 4.00.

When he phoned at 4.15 Mrs. Lenihan answered in a voice shrill with tension. “No, he isn’t here yet, Chief Pearl. I told you I’d tell Mr. Humffrey the minute he comes in. Mercy!”

“Make sure you do, Mrs. Lenihan,” Chief Pearl growled. He hung up and said, “Well, that’s it. Let’s hope it works.”

“It’ll work, Abe,” Richard Queen said confidently.

It was almost 6 p.m. when Abe Pearl put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Here he is!”

Richard Queen hurried into the anteroom. The police operator handed him the earphones and he slipped them on and waved a go-ahead through the open doorway.

Abe Pearl removed his hand and said grimly, “Okay, Phil. Put Humffrey on.”

Alton Humffrey’s voice rasped in the earpiece. “Chief Pearl!”

The chief said coldly, “So you finally got my messages, Mr. Humffrey.”

“I’ve only just got in. May I ask what in the name of common sense has been going on today? My housekeeper is in tears, Stallings keeps babbling some nonsense about a police raid on my Nair Island property—”

“Oh, you’ve talked to Stallings.”

“Certainly I’ve talked to Stallings! He’s been calling all day, too. Is he out of his mind, Chief, or are you?”

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”

“Really? By what right do you invade my privacy, ransack my house, trample my flowers, put dredgers to work off my beach? By what right, Chief Pearl?” The millionaire’s twang vibrated with anger.

“By the right of any police officer who’s got the jurisdiction to search for evidence in a murder case.”

“Murder case? You mean the baby? Good heavens, are you people singing that tune again? Don’t you remember, Mr. Pearl? That case is closed. You closed it yourself.”

“An unsolved murder case is never closed.”

“It wasn’t an unsolved murder case! It was an accident.”

“It was a murder case, Mr. Humffrey,” Abe Pearl said. “And now we’ve got the evidence to prove it.”

There was a pause.

Then the millionaire said in an altogether different way, “Evidence, you say? What evidence?”

“I’d appreciate it if you came out to police headquarters in Taugus right away, Mr. Humffrey. Tonight.”

“Tonight? I’m not going anywhere, any time, until I have more information! What evidence?”

The chief glanced over into the anteroom. Richard Queen nodded.

“Well, you might say,” Abe Pearl said into the phone, “you might say it’s something we should never have stopped looking for in the first place.”

There was another pause.

“I see,” Humffrey said. “You wouldn’t be referring, by any chance, to that pillowslip the Sherwood woman — that nurse — kept babbling about?”

The police chief glanced over at Richard Queen again. The old man hesitated this time. But then, grimly, he repeated the nod.

“That’s right,” Abe Pearl said.

“You’ve found it?” The bitterness in Humffrey’s voice was startling.

“I can’t say any more over the phone. Will you come out here so we can have a talk about this, Mr. Humffrey? Voluntarily? Or—?” He deliberately left Humffrey dangling.

The wire was quiet.

“Very well,” the millionaire said slowly. “I’ll be out in an hour.”

The instant the connection was broken, Richard Queen snatched the earphones from his head and ran into Abe Pearl’s office.

“Convinced now?” he cried. “You heard the way he asked if you’d found it! He’d never have said it that way if he knew the pillowslip was gone beyond recall. He accepted the possibility that the slip could be produced! Look, let’s get that tape recorder hooked up. Better be sure you plant the bug where he won’t spot it... I tell you, Abe, we’ve got him!”

“Chief Pearl,” Alton Humffrey said.

“Who wants him?” The desk man kept writing.

“Alton K. Humffrey.”

The officer looked up.

“Humffrey?” he said in a hard voice. He rose. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand,” Humffrey said.

“That’s up to you.” The uniformed man disappeared in a hall beyond the water cooler.

The millionaire looked around the room. He was very pale. Several patrolmen and two detectives were lounging in silence, staring at him. Humffrey’s pallor deepened. He looked away, fingering his collar.

The burly figure of Chief Pearl appeared from the hall.

“I made good time, you see, Chief,” Alton Humffrey said. He sounded nervously friendly.

The chief said, “Reynolds, better fill in at the desk. Harris has to take stenographic notes. No calls of any kind. I don’t care if there’s a riot.”

“Yes, sir.” One of the patrolmen went behind the desk and sat down.

“This way, Mr. Humffrey.” Abe Pearl stepped back.

Alton Humffrey moved toward him slowly. The millionaire seemed puzzled as well as nervous now.

The two detectives got up and sauntered across the room after him. Humffrey glanced over his shoulder at them, looked ahead quickly.

“That door at the end of the hall,” Chief Pearl said.

Humffrey walked up the hall, the chief close on his heels. The two detectives followed.

At the door Humffrey hesitated.

“Go in and have a seat, Mr. Humffrey. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Abe Pearl turned his back and began to whisper to his two detectives.

Humffrey stepped into the chief’s office uncertainly. The man who had been on desk duty in the outer room was at one of the windows operating a pencil sharpener. On a chair beside the chief’s big swivel chair lay a stenographic notebook. The officer glanced at Humffrey, went to the smaller chair, picked up the notebook, flipped it open, and sat down, waiting.

There was only one other chair in the office. It was straight-backed and uncomfortable-looking. The millionaire hesitated again. Then he sank into it.

Chief Pearl came in alone. He went around his desk and seated himself. Humffrey stole a glance at the door. The shadows of the two detectives were silhouetted on the frosted glass.

“This is all very formidable, Mr. Pearl,” Humffrey said with a smile. “Anyone would think you were preparing to arrest me.”

The swivel chair squealed as the Taugus chief leaned back, scowling.

“Perhaps I should have brought my attorney,” Humffrey went on in a jocular way.

“There’s nothing your attorney can do for you tonight,” Chief Pearl said. “Tonight you’re going to be shown something, and I expect you to make a statement. After that you can call ten attorneys for all I care.”

“Shown something?” the millionaire said. “That would be the pillowslip, Mr. Pearl?”

The big man got up and went over to the door of the anteroom. He opened it and said, “All right, Dick.”

Humffrey half-rose.

Richard Queen came in with the glass-protected pillowslip. It was wrapped in brown paper.

“Queen,” Humffrey said. He was staring from the old man to the paper-covered object, fascinated.

“You, too, Miss Sherwood,” Abe Pearl grunted.

Jessie walked in.

The millionaire got to his feet.

“You remember Inspector Queen, Mr. Humffrey,” the chief said.

“I might have known,” Humffrey said slowly. “I might have known.”

“It’s your show, Dick. Take over.” The chief glanced at the uniformed man with the notebook. “Start taking notes, Harris.”

The sharpened pencil poised.

“If you don’t mind, Abe, I’ll set this down on your desk.” The Inspector laid the package on the desk. He loosened the wrappings, but did not remove them. Humffrey’s eyes were on the brown paper. The old man straightened up and faced the millionaire. “This is quite an exhibit, Mr. Humffrey. No wonder you didn’t want us to find it.”

Humffrey was all gathered in now, almost crouching. He could not seem to tear his glance from the brown paper.

“It’s a whole case by itself,” Richard Queen went on. “It not only knocks that inquest jury’s verdict of accidental death into the next county, it proves that Michael Stiles Humffrey was deliberately murdered, as Miss Sherwood insisted from the beginning. But it does even more than that, Mr. Humffrey. It not only proves the baby was murdered, it shows who murdered him.”

He whirled and whipped the paper off the glass.

“Miss Sherwood,” he said swiftly, “for the record I want you to identify this pillowslip. Is this the pillowslip you saw lying over Michael Stiles Humffrey’s face and torso on the night of August 4th, when you found the baby dead of suffocation?”

Jessie stepped up to the desk.

“It is,” she said in a stiff voice, and stepped back.

Humffrey quivered. His pallor was yellowish now. He moved toward Abe Pearl’s desk in a jerky way, slowly, and stared down at the pillowslip under the glass.

“You never thought we’d find it, did you?” Inspector Queen said softly. “There’s the dirty handprint — the dirty print of a right hand, just as Miss Sherwood said. But it’s not just the dirty print of a right hand, Mr. Humffrey, as you can see. It’s the dirty print of a right hand that has the tip of the little finger missing to the first joint!”

Abe Pearl reached over suddenly and seized the millionaire’s right hand in his big paw. He uncurled the little finger as if it were a child’s, exposing its deformity.

“You murdering louse,” Abe Pearl said. “A man who’d kill a two-month old baby, a kid he’d given his own name to, for God’s sake!... You won’t bull or buy your way out of this one, Humffrey. You’re through. With this pillowslip as evidence, you haven’t got a chance. The best thing you can do is sit down in that chair and start talking. I want a full confession, and I want it now.”

He flung the hand from him contemptuously and pointed to the straight-backed chair. Then he turned away.

“Congratulations, Chief, on a superb performance.”

“What?”

Abe Pearl swung about. Alton Humffrey was smiling. There was nothing uncertain in his smile. It was a smile without humor, angry and cruel.

“What did you say?” Abe Pearl said.

“I should have warned you about Queen, Mr. Pearl. Apparently his lunacy is contagious.” He began to stroll about the police chief’s office, glancing here and there with fastidious distaste, as if he were slumming. He ignored Richard Queen and Jessie Sherwood utterly. “Beautifully staged, I’ll grant you that. The meaningless raid on my property. The repetitious phone calls. The menacing summons. The policemen sitting about, waiting to pounce on the big bad wolf and cart him off to the pound. And finally” — the millionaire’s glance shriveled Richard Queen and Jessie Sherwood, shattered the glass-protected pillowslip — “finally, these two mountebanks, and the production of this work of art. Who manufactured it, Chief, you or Queen? I suppose it was you, Queen, and your West 87th Street Irregulars. It has the metropolitan touch. Unfortunately, you slipped. The moment I glanced at this I knew it was a fake. But you couldn’t have known that, could you? And so it’s all gone to waste. All this loving labor, the stage designing, the suspense, the superb acting, the extras in the wings...”

Alton K. Humffrey suddenly strode over to the hall door and yanked it open.

The two detectives looked around, startled.

Humffrey laughed.

“Do we haul him in now, Chief?” one of the detectives asked.

“Oh, get out of my way, you fool,” Alton Humffrey snapped; and he walked out.

“I don’t understand it,” Inspector Queen said. “I don’t, I don’t.”

Abe Pearl said nothing. Patrolman Harris was gone; the three were alone in the office.

“I never should have involved you in this, Abe. Or you, Jessie.”

“Please, Richard.”

“Up to a certain point he was our fish,” the old man muttered to the pillowslip on the desk. “He was hooked. Right through the gills. Then he takes one look at the slip and he knows it’s a frame-up. What did we do wrong? Could it be the pillowslip itself, Jessie? The wrong material, wrong lace, wrong size or something?”

“It can’t have been that, Richard. This is an exact duplicate of the one that disappeared. I’d seen the slip many times, told Mrs. Humffrey how lovely I thought it was.”

“Then it’s what we did with it. The position of the print?”

“To the best of my recollection, it was just about where I told Mr. Kuntzman to put it.”

“Maybe it’s what we didn’t do with it,” he said suddenly. “After all, Jessie, you did see it in a dim light for only a couple of seconds. Suppose there was some other mark on it, a mark you missed? Maybe a dirt streak, a smudge, a tear. Something you just didn’t notice.”

“I suppose that’s it,” Jessie said lifelessly. “You see how misguided you were to put any confidence in me. Look what I’ve got you into.”

“Let’s not talk about who got whom into what.” Richard Queen grimaced. “Here’s Abe, ready to strangle me—”

“You didn’t hold any gun to my head, Dick,” Abe Pearl said heavily. “I’m just trying to figure out what gives now. Think he’s going to make an issue of this?”

“Not a chance.”

“He could make it pretty hot for us.”

“He can’t afford to, Abe. The last thing Humffrey wants is to stir up a full-scale investigation.” The Inspector looked up. “You know, this isn’t a total loss. It’s confirmed two important points. One, that he substituted the clean pillowslip that night for the dirty one, otherwise he wouldn’t have spotted the discrepancy. Two, that he didn’t destroy the dirty slip — he was all ready to believe we’d found it. We’re not licked yet!”

Jessie stared at him. “Richard, you sound as if you’re going on with this.”

“Going on with it?” He seemed puzzled. “Of course I’m going on with it, Jessie. How can I stop now? We’ve got him on the run.”

Jessie began to laugh. Something in her laugh alarmed him, and he stepped quickly to her side. But she stopped laughing as suddenly as she had started. “I’m sorry, Richard. It just struck me funny.”

“I don’t see anything funny about it,” he growled.

“I am sorry.” She touched his arm.

“Aren’t you going on with it, Jessie?” he asked grimly.

Her hand dropped to her side.

“Richard, I’m so tired... I don’t know.”

Their return to the city was a strain on both of them. He seemed depressed, resentful, frustrated — a combination of things that Jessie with her throbbing head did not attempt to analyze. When he dropped her off at 71st Street, promising to park her car in the garage, he drove off without another word.

Jessie floundered all night. For once aspirin did not help, and tension made her skin itch and prickle unmercifully. Toward morning she took a seconal and fell into a heavy sleep. She was awakened by various bumps and crashes to find the clock hands standing at five minutes to noon and Gloria Sardella dumping various bags and packages on the living room floor.

Holy Mother! Jessie thought. It’s the 30th!

She decided then and there.

“I’m going home, Richard,” Jessie said over the phone.

“So you’ve made up your mind.” And he was silent.

Jessie thought, Is it possible this is the way it’s going to end?

“I’ve sort of had my mind made up for me,” she said, trying to sound chatty. “I’d forgotten all about Gloria’s saying when she left that she’d be back on the 30th. I guess I’ve lost track of time, along with everything else. Are you there, Richard?”

“I’m here,” he said.

“I felt like such a ninny when she walked into the apartment this morning. The least I might have done was meet the boat! Of course, Gloria was awfully sweet — said I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted—”

“Why don’t you?” He was having some trouble clearing his throat.

“It wouldn’t be fair to Gloria. You know how small her apartment is. Besides, what’s the point? The whole thing’s been a mistake, Richard.” Jessie stopped, but he didn’t say anything. “Last night in Taugus was the straw that broke the lady camel’s back, I guess. I’d better go home and back to being a nurse again.”

“Jessie.”

“Yes, Richard.”

“Do we have to talk over the phone? I mean — unless you’d rather not see me any more—”

“Richard, what a silly thing to say.”

“Then can I drive you up to Rowayton?” he asked eagerly.

“If you’d like to,” Jessie murmured.

He drove so slowly that irate cars honked and swooshed around them all the way up to Connecticut.

For a while he talked about the case.

“I went over some of the boys’ reports, from when they were tailing Humffrey. Couldn’t sleep last night, anyway. I noticed something that hadn’t meant anything at the time.

“That Friday morning when Humffrey’d had his wife removed from the Duane Sanitarium, the report said that his chauffeur left town early, alone, driving the big limousine. Remember Elizabeth Currie saying that Mrs. Humffrey was taken away in a big private limousine? My hunch is that Humffrey sent Cullum up to New Haven while he stayed in town to draw us off. Cullum must have picked up the two nurses on the way, and then gone up to the sanitarium. At least, it’s a possibility. I’m going to work on that right away — today.”

“Richard, you should have told me. I’d never have let you waste all this time driving me home.”

“It can wait till I get back to the city,” he said quickly.

“What are you going to do, pump Henry Cullum?”

“Yes. If I can find out through him where Sarah Humffrey is...”

But for the most part they were silent.

In Rowayton he carried her bags into the cottage, fixed the leaky kitchen faucet, admired her zinnias, accepted her offer of coffee; but it was all done on a note of withdrawal, and Jessie’s head began to ache again.

I won’t help him, she told herself fiercely. I won’t!

He refused to let her drive him to the Darien station. He phoned for a cab instead.

Then, at the last moment, with the taxi waiting outside, he said suddenly, “Jessie, I can’t go without... without—”

“Yes?”

“Without... well, saying thank you...”

“Thank me?” You’re overdoing it, old girl, she thought in despair. How do women manage these things? “What on earth for, Richard?”

He toed her living-room rug. “For just about the two most wonderful months of my life.”

“Well,” Jessie said. “I thank you, Mr. Queen. It hasn’t been exactly dull for me, either.” And there’s a brilliant remark.

“I don’t mean this Humffrey thing.” He cleared his throat twice, the second time irritably. “You’ve come to mean — well, a lot to me, Jessie.”

“I have, Richard?” Oh, dear...

“An awful lot.” He scowled at the rug. “I know I have no right...”

“Oh, Richard.”

“I mean, a man of my age—”

“Are we back to that again?” Jessie cried.

“And you so youthful, so pretty...”

My goodness, Jessie thought. Now if my stomach doesn’t start making blurpy bilge-pump sounds, the way it always does when I’m fussed... And there it goes!

“Yes, Richard?” Jessie said loudly.

The taxi man took that moment to start blasting away on his horn. Richard Queen flushed a profound scarlet, grabbed her hand, shook it as if it were a fighting fish, mumbled, “I’ll call you some time, Jessie,” and ran.

Jessie sat down on her floor and wept.

He’ll never call, Jessie assured herself. Why should he? I got him into it, and now I’ve run out on him. He won’t come back.

She swallowed the two aspirins dry, as a punishment, and resumed putting her clothes away.

Murdered babies.

My righteous indignation.

The truth is, Jessie Sherwood, she told herself pitilessly as she banged hangers about in the closet, you’re a hopeless old maid. You’re a hopeless old maid filled with hopeless guilt feelings, and don’t blame it on menopause, either. You’ve got plenty to feel guilty about, old girl. Not just running out on him. Not just acting like an irresponsible neurotic, throwing yourself at him, leading the poor man on till he began to feel young again, and then making it as hard for him as you could.

It’s that pillowslip.

When Jessie thought about the pillowslip, something inside cringed and curled up. She tried not to think of it, but the more she tried the faster it bounced back. She had been so positive the doctored slip was just like the one she had seen. But it hadn’t been. One look, and Humffrey had known it was a forgery. How could he have known? What hadn’t she noticed, or forgotten? Maybe if she could remember it now... That would be helping. That would be making it up to Richard!

So Jessie shut her eyes tight and thought and thought, right there in the closet, seeing the nursery again, seeing herself stooping over the crib in the nightlight, the pillow almost completely covering the motionless little body... the pillowcase... the pillowcase...

But she could not add anything to the pillowcase. It remained in her mind’s eye as she thought she had seen it that night.

She dropped the dress to the floor and went over to the chintz-backed maple chair near the window, where she could look out at her postage-stamp back garden. The morning-glories were still in bloom, and the petunias; the berries on the dogwood tree were big and shiny and red, and disappearing fast down the gullets of the birds; and Jessie thought, I will do it for him. I will. So she sat there and thought, desperately.

How had that monster disposed of the pillowslip? He hadn’t burned it, he hadn’t cut it to pieces... He had been under pressure, the pressure of his own guilt, the pressure of his wife’s hysterics, the pressure of Dr. Wicks’s presence, the pressure of the police-on-the-way... Pressure. Pressure makes people do things quickly, without much thought. Richard had remarked himself Wednesday night that Humffrey had had only one thought in mind, “to get rid of the pillowcase in the quickest and easiest way.”

Suppose I’d been the one, Jessie thought with a shudder.

Suppose I’ve smothered the baby and the baby’s body has been found by that nosy nurse and the house is in confusion and Dr. Wicks is there and the police are coming and suddenly, like a dash of seawater, I notice the pillow with my dirty handprint on the slip. It mustn’t be found... they’ll know it was murder... get rid of the slip quick, quick... is that someone coming? whose voice is that? I mustn’t be found in here... I’m in the nursery — I’ve got to get rid of it — got to hide it — where? where?

The laundry chute!

Now wait, Jessie said to her racing pulse, wait, wait, that came too easy....

Easy? But that’s just it. The easiest way! One step to the door of the chute, one flip of the wrist, one shove, another flip of the wrist... and the pillowslip is gone. Gone down into the basement, into the laundry-sized canvas hamper under the chute opening... gone to mingle with the rest of the household’s soiled laundry. The easiest, the quickest way to get rid of it.

At least temporarily.

Later — later I’ll get hold of it, destroy it. As soon as I can. As soon as I can get down into the basement plausibly, safely...

And suppose just then the police arrived. And you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t call attention to yourself by disappearing. Not with a hysterical wife needing attention, policemen’s questions to be answered, the dead little body in the crib... not with the awful guilt clamoring to be guarded... and the servants downstairs whispering over their coffee, in the path of anyone wanting to get to the basement unseen. And always and constantly the need to hear every whisper, to observe every change of expression, every coming, every going, to make sure you were still unsuspected...

Jessie frowned. It sounded fine — except for one thing. The police had searched the house thoroughly. “The laundry basement, the hampers...” Chief Pearl had ordered. And they hadn’t found the pillowslip. So maybe...

So maybe they overlooked it.

That’s what must have happened! Jessie thought exultantly. They didn’t find the slip somehow and Alton Humffrey must have died a thousand deaths while they were looking and was reborn a thousand times when they failed to find it, and kept waiting, waiting for them to leave so he could sneak down into the basement and rummage through the canvas hamper and retrieve the fateful piece of batiste. But dawn came, and daylight, and still Abe Pearl’s men were on the premises searching, and still he was afraid to risk being seen going to the basement.

And then, of course, Sadie Smith came, Sadie Smith from Norwalk, driving up in her 1938 Olds that made such a clatter early Tuesday and Friday mornings...

Sadie Smith to do the wash.

Jessie burrowed deeper in the maple chair, surprised to find herself shaking.

For of course after that Alton Humffrey thought he was safe. That day passed, a week, a month, and the pillowslip vanished into the limbo of forgotten things. Sadie Smith had washed the pillowslip along with the other hand laundry, not noticing, or ignoring, the dirty handprint; and that was the end of that.

The end of it.

Jessie sighed.

So much for “helping” Richard.

But wait!

Surely Sadie could not have been deaf and blind to what was going on in the house that Friday. Surely Mrs. Lenihan, or Mrs. Charbedeau, or one of the maids, must have told Sadie about the pillowslip the policemen were turning the house and grounds upside down for. Even if the police had missed it in the hamper, wouldn’t Sadie have been on the lookout for it?

Yes!

Then why hadn’t she found it?

It was still light when Jessie parked before the neat two-story brick housing development in Norwalk. She found Sadie Smith changing into a clean housedress. Mrs. Smith was a stout, very dark woman with brawny forearms and good-humored, shrewd black eyes.

“Miss Sherwood,” she exclaimed. “Well, of all people! Come in! I just got home from work—”

“Oh, dear, maybe I ought to come back some other time, Mrs. Smith. It was thoughtless of me to pop in just before dinner, and without even phoning beforehand.”

“We never eat till eight, nine o’clock. My husband don’t get home till then. You go on into the parlor and set, Miss Sherwood. I’ll fix us some tea.”

“Thank you. But why don’t we have it here in your kitchen? It’s such a charming kitchen, and I get so little chance to be in my own...”

Mrs. Smith said quietly, as she put the kettle on the range, “It’s about the Humffreys, Miss Sherwood, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” Jessie admitted.

“I knew it.” The dark woman seated herself at the other end of the table. “You don’t have to tell me you’re still all bothered about how that little child died. It’s a terrible thing, Miss Sherwood, but he’s dead, and nothing can bring him back. Why don’t you just forget the Humffreys? They ain’t your kind of people.”

“I’d very much like to, but there are reasons why I can’t. Do you mind if I call you Sadie?”

“Not you I don’t,” Mrs. Smith said grimly.

“Do you remember that Friday you came to do the wash, Sadie? The morning after little Michael was found dead?”

“I surely do.”

“Did you run across one of those batiste pillowslips with the delicate lace that day — a slip that was very dirty? In fact, that had the print of a man’s dirty hand on it?”

Sadie Smith cocked an eye at her. “That’s what the detectives kept asking me that day.”

“Oh, they did? Did anyone else ask you about it? I mean... people of the household?”

“Mrs. Lenihan mentioned it to me first thing I set foot in the house. Told me about the child, and said the policemen were turning the house inside out looking for a dirty pillowslip like that. I told her I’d keep an eye out for it, and I did.”

“Anyone mention the pillowslip to you besides Mrs. Lenihan and the detectives?”

“No.”

“I take it you never found it.”

“That’s right. Picked that wash over a dozen times, but it just wasn’t there. There’s the kittle!” The stout woman jumped up and began bustling about.

“Were there any pillowslips in the wash that day?” Jessie persisted.

“Nary one.”

“Not one?” Jessie frowned. “That’s queer.”

“I thought so, too. You take sugar and cream, Miss Sherwood?”

“Neither, thanks,” Jessie said absently. “No pillowslips at all...”

“Well, you’re going to taste some of these sweet buns I just got from the bakery, or I’ll take it real unfriendly of you. But about those pillowslips. First thing I thought was that snippety upstairs maid of theirs had stuffed too big a bundle into one of the laundry chutes. She’d done it a couple times, and the laundry’d got stuck, and we had to go fishing for it in the chute with a plumber’s snake they have in the basement.”

A stopped-up chute!

“Do you suppose that’s what could have happened to the pillowslip they were looking for, Sadie?” Jessie asked excitedly. “A chute already stopped up, and the slip just didn’t go all the way down?”

Mrs. Smith shook her head. “Wasn’t no stopped-up chute. I took some clothespins and dropped one down each chute that morning to see if they was clear, and they was. Then I remembered. Friday mornings was the upstairs maid’s day to strip the beds and change linen, and the way things was in the house that morning she just didn’t get to do it. You eat one of those buns, Miss Sherwood.”

“Delicious,” Jessie said, munching. “You checked all the chutes, Sadie? The one in the nursery, too?”

“Well, not the nursery one, no. First place, they wouldn’t let me in there. Second place, never was any stopping-up trouble in the nursery chute, ’cause you always slid the wash down from that room.”

Could that be it? Jessie thought hungrily.

But she had been the only one who used the nursery chute. She always stripped and remade the baby’s crib herself. And she had always been automatically careful to throw one piece down the chute at a time, even though the sheets were only crib size.

Jessie sipped her tea hopelessly.

“—though there was that trouble with the nursery chute when they was installing it,” the laundress was saying. “I’d forgot about that. Maybe ’cause nothing ever happened.”

“What?” Jessie looked up. “What did you say, Sadie?”

“When they was installing it. Before you came to work there, Miss Sherwood. Wasn’t no nursery or room off it — the one you slept in — till just before Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey adopted the baby. That all used to be an upstairs sitting room. They had it made over into two rooms for the baby and a nurse, and that was when they installed the chute in the nursery. Hadn’t been one there before.”

“But you said something about some trouble with the nursery chute during installation—”

“And it only just come to mind,” Mrs. Smith nodded. “Mr. Humffrey was fit to be hogtied. Seems after the chute was put in and all, and the man was testing it, throwing things down it, he found out there was a defect in it — it had a little piece of metal or something sticking out some place down the chute — and every once in a while something would catch on it. The man poked some kind of tool down in and felt around till he found the snag, and sort of sawed away at it. I guess he smoothed it down, ’cause you never had nothing stick in that chute, Miss Sherwood, did you?”

No, Jessie thought, I never did.

But suppose that was just luck!

Suppose the night Alton Humffrey dropped the damning pillowslip down that chute... suppose that time it caught on what was left of the snag?

So Sadie Smith hadn’t found the slip, and Alton Humffrey thought Sadie Smith had found it and washed it out, and all the time it was stuck in the nursery chute... and it was still there.

Jessie hung up, collected her coins, and sat in the telephone booth nibbling her nails. Richard’s phone in New York didn’t answer, so he must be out after Henry Cullum. Taugus police headquarters said that Chief Pearl had left for the night, and there had been no answer at the Pearls’ house — they must have gone visiting, or out to dinner and a movie.

Jessie sat there, frustrated.

I’ve got to know, she thought. And not tomorrow, but tonight.

Suddenly she thought, I can do it myself.

She accepted the thought instantly, and without attempting to think through the difficulties. If I think about it, she told herself, I won’t do it. So I won’t think about it.

She left the drugstore, got into her coupé, and set out for Taugus.

The electrified ship’s lantern over the gatehouse looked lost against the black bulk of Nair Island.

Jessie drove across the causeway slowly. Did they maintain guards after the season? If they did, she was sunk. The closer she got to the gatehouse the more foolhardy the project became.

A burly figure in a uniform stepped out of the gatehouse and held up his hand.

And the gate was down.

So much for private enterprise, Jessie thought.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “It’s Miss Sherwood.”

Charlie Peterson!

“Why, Mr. Peterson,” Jessie said warmly. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d quit. At least you said you were going to.”

“Well, you know how it is,” the big guard said. “It ain’t such a bad job, especially after the summer.”

“And when policemen aren’t driving you crazy,” Jessie smiled. What can I say to him? she thought.

“That’s a fact.” The guard planted his elbow on the edge of her window. “How you been, Miss Sherwood?”

“Just fine. And you?” I’ll have to think of a plausible excuse. But what?

“No complaints. Say, I never expected to see you again.” Peterson looked at her in the oddest way, and Jessie thought, Here it comes. “What brings you to the Island?”

Jessie wet her lips. “Well...”

He pushed his big face close to hers, exhaling an aroma of bourbon. “It wouldn’t be me, now, would it?”

Jessie almost laughed aloud. Problem solved!

“Why, Mr. Peterson,” she said archly. “And you a family man and all.”

He guffawed. “Can’t blame a red-blooded guy for a little wishful thinking! You going up to the Humffrey house? Nobody’s there.”

How lucky can you get! Jessie thought exultantly.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Nobody, Mr. Peterson? Where’s the caretaker?”

“Stallings had to drive up to Concord, Mass. tonight. Mr Humffrey phoned him to take some bulbs or something there for transplanting. That’s their winter place.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Jessie wailed. “Is Stallings going to be back tonight?”

“Tomorrow night, I guess.”

“I suppose I could come back tomorrow, but as long as I’m here...” She turned her eyes on him appealingly, hoping the bourbon hadn’t worn off. “Do you think anybody’d mind if I went up there for a few minutes? Like a fool I forgot some of my things when I packed, and I’ve just got to have them.”

“Well.” Peterson scratched his bulging jaw. You big oaf, Jessie thought, I’ll — I’ll vamp you if I have to. “Seeing it’s you, Miss Sherwood...” But then he said, with his hand on the barrier, “Wait a minute.”

Now what?

“How you going to get in?”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” Jessie said quickly. How, she had no idea.

“Hold it.” Peterson went into the gatehouse. In a moment he was back, flourishing a key. “Stallings always leaves the key with me in case Mr. Humffrey should show up while he’s off the Island. Need any help, Miss Sherwood?” he shouted after her gallantly.

“No, thanks,” Jessie shouted back, clutching the key.

She felt rather bourbonish herself as she drove up the Nair Island road.

Stallings had left the nightlight burning over the service entrance. Jessie parked in the driveway near it, turned off her ignition and lights, and jumped out.

Her feet crunched loudly on the gravel, and Jessie hesitated, her skin itching. What am I so nervous about? she thought. Nobody can hear me.

Still, she found herself putting her feet down as if she were in a bog.

She unlocked the service door and slipped thankfully into the Humffrey house.

But with her back against the door, thankfulness melted away.

She had never seen such dark darkness.

This is what comes of being an honest woman, she thought. Nobody here, nobody on the Island but Peterson, whose blessing I have, and yet... It seemed to her the house was full of furtive noises. As if the wood and plaster were breathing.

Remember Michael, she told herself rigidly. Remember that little dead body. She filled her lungs with air, deliberately, then let the air out.

Immediately the house became a house, the darkness friendly.

Jessie pushed away from the door and stepped confidently forward. Her hand touched the basement door. She opened it, felt for the switch, found it, and snapped it on.

The basement sprang at her.

She ran down the stairs. The steps were cushioned and carpeted and her descent was soundless.

At the bottom she paused to look around.

She knew where the outlet of the nursery chute was. She could see it from where she stood, with the big canvas laundry basket still in place under the vent. She had always done the baby’s diapers and undershirts herself, refusing to allow Mrs. Humffrey to employ a diaper service.

“I like to know what my babies’ diapers are washed in,” she had said to Mrs. Humffrey. “I’ve seen too many raw little bottoms.”

Funny the things you thought about when... Jessie forced herself to think about the problem at hand.

Sadie Smith had mentioned a “plumber’s snake.” Jessie had only the vaguest notion of what a plumber’s snake might be. She supposed it was some device for getting into clogged pipes and things that might choke up and be hard to clean. Where would such a thing be kept? Then she recalled that one of the basement walls was covered with shelving for the storage of tools, light bulbs, and odds and ends of housewares and hardware. The snake would probably be there. Wasn’t it at the far end of the basement, behind the oil burner?

Jessie walked past the set tubs where Mrs. Smith had done the hand washing, past the washing machine and dryer, around the burner...

There it was.

She found the snake on the bottom shelf among some wrenches, pipe elbows, and other plumbing accessories. It was unmistakable, a large coil of metal cable with a loopy sort of head on it.

She took the snake over to the vent of the nursery chute, set the canvas basket to one side, inserted the head of the cable in the opening, and pushed. As she unwound the snake, she kept pushing upward. The cable made a raspy, rattly sound going up. She kept wiggling it, shaking it, making it go from side to side.

It went up, up, up. Finally it banged against something far overhead, refused to go further. It had obviously struck the door of the chute in the nursery.

And nothing had come down.

Jessie sat down on the basement floor and laughed.

Exit Jessie Sherwood, Female Sleuth.

The only thing to do was return the snake to the shelf, turn off the light, get into her car, and go back where she belonged.

Still seated on the floor under the vent, Jessie began to coil the cable. It came down, scraping, as she rewound it. The head appeared.

And something crumpled and white appeared with it and dropped into her lap.

The material was batiste. It had a lace edging. Honiton lace.

With trembling fingers Jessie took the pillowslip by two corners and held it up.

The imprint of a dirty right hand showed plainly just off the center of the square.

“Why, I’ve done it,” Jessie said aloud in an amazed voice. “I’ve found it.”

A horribly familiar voice behind her replied, “So you have, Miss Sherwood.”

Jessie’s head screwed around like a doll’s.

Her eyeballs froze.

Alton K. Humffrey was standing at the foot of the basement stairs.

In his right hand there was a gun, and the gun was aimed at her heart.

The eye of the gun came steadily nearer, growing bigger and bigger.

Richard, Jessie thought. Richard.

“First, Miss Sherwood,” the horrible voice said, “I’ll relieve you of this.”

She felt the pillowslip jerked out of her hand. From the corner of her paralyzed eye she saw his left hand crumple it, stuff it into his pocket.

The gun receded.

Not far.

“You’re frightened, Miss Sherwood. I sympathize. But you have only yourself to blame. Not a particularly consoling last thought, I suppose. Believe me, I dislike this almost as much as you do. But what recourse have you left me?”

Jessie almost said, None. But she knew that if she opened her mouth, nothing would come out but a chatter of teeth.

Richard, Richard. You don’t even know where I am. Not you, not Chief Pearl, not anybody but Charlie Peterson, and what good is he? Alton Humffrey has seen to that, or he wouldn’t be here pointing a gun. You’re going to die alone, Jessie, like an idiot, sitting on a basement floor in an empty house on an empty island.

Die.

The voice was saying, without bite or pinch, “You must see that I have no choice. You’ve found the slip, you’ve examined it. You’re probably incorruptible. In any case, you’re too close to that busybody Queen. So I must kill you, Miss Sherwood. I must.”

This isn’t happening, Jessie thought. It’s just — not — happening.

“Not that the prospect pleases. I’m not a compulsive murderer. It’s easier to commit murder than one would think, I’ve found, but it isn’t pleasant. Your death is even dangerous to me. Peterson knows you’re here. I could shoot you as as intruder, saying that I fired before I realized who you were, but Peterson’s told me you were here. By the same token, he also knows I’m here. So I’m forced to take a great risk.”

I’m going to wake up any second...

“When you disappear, suspicion will naturally fall on me. After I row your body out and sink it in deep water, I shall have to concoct a story. They won’t believe the story, of course, no matter how plausible it is. But without a body, with no evidence of a crime, what can they do, after all? I think I’ll come out of it all right. This is a soundproof room, Miss Sherwood, and — forgive me — I shall be very careful about removing all traces afterward.”

It’s silly. He’s just trying to scare me. Nobody could talk as calmly as this and mean to take a human life. Nobody.

Richard, Richard.

“I still don’t understand what brought you here tonight.” The millionaire’s voice this time was slightly flavored with petulance. “I certainly had no idea I was going to run into anyone. I came for the very purpose you accomplished, to check the nursery chute. That farce in Chief Pearl’s office — before Queen produced the forgery — set me to wondering how they could possibly have found the pillowslip. And that reminded me of the obstruction in the chute when it was installed. How did you learn about that, Miss Sherwood?” Jessie stirred, and he said sharply, “Don’t move, please.”

“I have to,” Jessie heard herself say. “My legs have fallen asleep. My neck.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, as if he really were. “You may stand up.”

Jessie got to her feet. Her knees gave, and she leaned against the wall of the chute.

“In a way it was unfortunate for you that I employ a caretaker,” the millionaire droned on. “If not for Stallings’s being on the premises, I would have examined the chute last night. As it was, I had to go back to New York and find an excuse to send Stallings away. What did make you come here tonight to look the chute over?”

“Does it matter?” How light-headed she felt.

Jessie shut her eyes.

“I suppose not.”

She heard a click.

Her eyes flew open and she stared wildly. He was stepping back, his arm was coming up, it was extending, the gun was glowing softly blue at the end of it, she could see the stump of his little finger at the base of the grip, the index finger was beginning to whiten...

“Don’t kill me, Mr. Humffrey, I don’t want to die, please don’t kill me.”

“I must,” Alton Humffrey muttered.

“Don’t!” Jessie screamed, and she shut her eyes tight.

The basement rocked with the explosion.

Why, there’s no pain, Jessie thought. Isn’t that odd? There’s no pain at all. Just the roar of the gun and the smash of glass—

Glass?

She opened her eyes. Alton Humffrey’s right hand was a bloody pulp. His gun was on the floor and he was gripping his right wrist with his left hand convulsively. His mouth and nose were curled back in agony. A man’s hand, holding a smoking revolver, was just withdrawing from a broken window high in the basement wall and two other men were vaulting down the basement stairs to fling themselves on the wounded millionaire and bring him crashing to the floor.

Then an incredibly dear figure appeared at the head of the stairs and Jessie saw that it was he who had fired the shot through the basement window and he was running down the stairs like a boy with the smoking gun still in his hand and she was in his arms.

“Richard,” Jessie said.

Then she fainted.

Jessie found herself staring at a white ceiling. There was something familiar about the light fixture and the molding, and she turned her head and looked around. Of course. Her room. The nursery next door. The baby would be sleeping in a moment and the alarm would go off and she would jump out of bed...

Then she remembered.

Jessie sat up.

Mrs. Pearl was sitting in the rocker beside the bed, smiling at her.

“Beck Pearl.”

“How do you feel, Jessie?”

“All right, I guess.” Jessie looked down. Someone — she hoped it had been Beck Pearl — had removed her dress and girdle. “Did you...?”

The little woman nodded. She got up to switch off the nightlight and turn on the overhead lights.

“What time is it?” Her wristwatch was gone, too.

“About 3 a.m. You’ve had quite a sleep. Dr. Wicks gave you a needle. Don’t you remember?”

“I’m trying to, Becky. But how is it you’re here?”

“They located Abe and me at a friend’s home in Westport. When I heard about your terrible experience, I made Abe bring me along. Richard wanted to take you to a hospital, but Dr. Wicks said it wasn’t necessary. You’re sure you feel well enough to get out of bed?”

“Yes.” Jessie swung her legs to the floor stiffly. “Where’s Richard?”

“He’s still here. They all are. They don’t want to move Humffrey yet. He lost a lot of blood and they’ve got him in bed, under guard.” Beck Pearl’s soft mouth set hard. “It’s funny what good care they take of murderers. I’d have let him bleed to death.”

“Becky, you mustn’t say a thing like that.”

“You’re a nurse, Jessie,” the little woman said quietly. “I’m just a woman who’s had babies. And I have grandchildren. He murdered a baby.”

Jessie shivered.

“I’d better get dressed,” she said.

“Let me help you, dear.”

“No, please. You might tell Richard I’m up.”

Beck Pearl smiled again and went out.

It’s all over, Jessie kept telling herself as she wriggled into the girdle. It’s really all over.

He was waiting for her in the hall.

“Richard.”

He took her by the arms. “You’re sure you ought to be up?”

“You saved my life.”

“You’re so pale.”

“You saved my life, Richard,” Jessie said again.

He flushed. “You’d better sit down.”

He drew her over to the big settee opposite Alton Humffrey’s upstairs study.

How tired he looked. Tired and... something else. Disturbed?

“What were you doing here, Jessie? When I looked through that basement window and saw you standing down there facing Humffrey’s gun, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“I tried to phone you before I came, but I couldn’t get an answer. I couldn’t even locate Chief or Mrs. Pearl.” Jessie told him what she had found out from Sadie Smith, and how on impulse she had decided to investigate the chute when she was unable to reach him or the Taugus chief of police. “What I don’t understand, Richard, is what you were doing here. I thought you were in town chasing Henry Cullum.”

“I started to, but I ran into Johnny Kripps and Wes Polonsky.” He grinned. “They were watching Humffrey’s Park Avenue apartment on their own. That was luck, because Wes had his car. We sat around waiting for Cullum to show, so we could pump him about Mrs. Humffrey’s whereabouts, when we saw Humffrey trying to take a sneak. He was alone, and he was acting so queer we decided to tail him. He dodged around to his garage, got his car out, and headed for the West Side Highway. We tailed him all the way to Nair Island, and that was that.”

Jessie laid her head on his shoulder. “It’s all over, Richard.”

“No, it isn’t.”

His shoulder was rigid. Jessie sat up quickly.

“It isn’t?” she said. “It isn’t what, Richard?”

“Isn’t over.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I don’t know how much more you can take tonight, Jessie. Can you stand a big shock?”

“Shock.” Dear God, what is it now? Jessie thought. “What’s happened!”

“We sure picked a lulu when we stuck our noses into this one. I don’t know that I’ve ever run across a case like it.”

“Like what?”

He got up and took her by the hand.

“I’ll show you, Jessie.”

Chief Pearl’s two detectives, Borcher and Tinny, were in the study. Borcher was reading a copy of Plato’s Republic with a deep frown. Tinny was napping in a leather armchair.

Both jumped up when Richard Queen opened the door. When he waved, Borcher returned to his puzzled reading and Tinny sank down and closed his eyes again.

“Over here, Jessie.”

The dirty pillowslip was spread out on Humffrey’s desk. Everything else had been removed.

“I was the one who found it,” Jessie said. “I fished it out of the nursery chute. Then he — he came in and took it away from me.”

“Then you’ve seen it.”

“Just a glance.”

“Examine it, Jessie.”

Jessie bent over the pillowslip. Now that she saw it in strong light, at leisure, it was remarkable how well she had remembered the position of the handprint in supervising the forgery.

She shook her head. “I can’t see anything special about this, Richard. Is there something on the back? I never did see the back.”

“As a matter of fact, there is.” He took hold of the tip of the lace edging at the upper right corner of the slip and turned it back a little. Just below the reverse of the lace Jessie saw a small stain, rusty brown in color. “That’s a bloodstain, probably from a scratched finger. However, remember that Humffrey didn’t get a look at the back of our forgery. We had it face up on Abe’s desk under glass.” He flipped the corner back. “You still don’t see where we went wrong?”

Jessie stared and stared. “No.”

“Take another look at that handprint, Jessie. A real look this time.”

And then she saw it, and her mind leaped back to that August night in the nursery and her brief glimpse of the pillow over the baby’s face. And for the first time since that moment Jessie Sherwood saw the pillow as she had seen it then.

What she had forgotten until now was that the little finger of the handprint was a whole finger.

There was no missing fingertip.

“That’s how Humffrey knew the slip we showed him was a fake,” Inspector Queen shrugged. “We showed him a handprint with the tip of the pinkie gone. He knew that the original pillowcase had a handprint showing five full fingers.”

“But I don’t understand,” Jessie cried. “Alton Humffrey’s pinkie does have the tip missing. How could his right hand possibly have made this print?”

“It couldn’t.”

“But—”

“It couldn’t. Therefore it didn’t.”

Jessie gaped at him. The silence became so intense that Borcher looked up from his Plato uneasily and Tinny opened one eye.

“But Richard...”

“Humffrey didn’t murder the baby, Jessie. I guess they knew what they were doing when they retired me.” The old man sighed. “I was so sure Humffrey knocked off Finner and the Coy girl that I had to wrap it up in one neat package. One killer. But it wasn’t one killer, Jessie. Humffrey murdered Finner and Connie Coy, all right, but someone else murdered the baby.”

Jessie squeezed her forehead with both hands, trying to force some order into her thoughts.

“Humffrey never doubted for a minute that the baby was his — I was wrong about that, too. He knew it was his. That was the whole point. And when he spotted the pillowcase that night he knew his baby had been murdered, and he knew who’d murdered it. That’s when he got rid of the pillowcase. He was determined to make the death look like an accident. That’s what made him say he had put the ladder there, when he hadn’t touched the ladder. It was the baby’s killer who’d put the ladder there, thinking to make the murder look like the nephew’s work.

“And when Finner got in touch with Humffrey and told him to meet us in Finner’s office, Humffrey realized that unless he shut Finner’s mouth the story of Michael’s real parentage might come out and lead right back to Michael’s death. So he killed Finner and removed all the evidence from the file. And when we got to Connie Coy in spite of everything and she was about to name Humffrey as the real father of Michael, he killed Connie Coy.

“It was all cover-up, Jessie. Cover-up to keep us from learning the true reason for the baby’s murder. To keep the whole nasty story out of the papers. To protect the sacred name of Humffrey.”

“Someone else,” Jessie said, clinging to the thought. “What someone else, Richard? Who?”

“Jessie,” Richard Queen said. “Who had the best reason to hate Alton Humffrey’s illegitimate child? Who’s the only one in the world Humffrey would have a guilt feeling about, a compulsion to cover up? Whose exposure as an infant-killer would smear as much muck on the Humffrey name as if he himself were tagged for it? Who’s the one who kept hysterically insisting — until Humffrey got her out of the way and kept her out of the way — that she’d been ‘responsible’ for little Mike’s death?... only we all misunderstood her?”

He shook his head. “There’s only one possible candidate for the baby’s murder, Jessie. It’s Sarah Humffrey’s handprint on this pillowcase.”

Chief Pearl stuck his big head into the room. “Hi, Jessie. You okay now? Dick, he’s fully conscious and ready to make a statement. You’d better come.”

Jessie went as far as the doorway of the master bedroom. The room was full of men. Taugus police. The State’s Attorney’s man, Merrick, tieless again. Dr. Wicks. A lot of state troopers. Wes Polonsky and Johnny Kripps.

And Alton Humffrey.

Humffrey was lying on the great bed, propped on pillows, his right arm swathed in bandages. His skin was not sallow now. It was colorless. The narrow wedge of face was without expression or movement, a face in a coffin. Only the eyes were alive, two prisoners struggling to escape.

Jessie said faintly, “I’ll wait with Beck Pearl, Richard,” and she stumbled away.

“That,” Richard Queen remarked, leaning back in happy surfeit, “was the best darned Sunday dinner I’ve ever surrounded.”

“Delicious, Jessie!” Beck Pearl said, not without a slight mental reservation about the wine in the sauce. “She’s really a wonderful cook, Dick. Imagine being a trained nurse and having a talent like this, too!”

“It’s just a veal roast,” Jessie said deprecatingly, as if she were in the habit of standing over a hot oven every Sunday for hours and hours basting with an experimental sauce of garlic salad dressing, lemon juice, sauterne, bouillon, and Parmesan cheese, and praying that the result would be edible.

“But as I was saying,” Abe Pearl said, and he belched.

“Abe!” his wife said.

“Beg pardon,” Abe Pearl said.

It was Sunday, October 9th, a brisk and winy day, a day for being alive. Jessie had planned and slaved for this day, when Richard Queen’s two friends should sit in her little dining alcove in Rowayton and tell her — and him — what a marvelous cook she was. Only Abe Pearl insisted on talking about what Jessie had hoped and hoped would not be talked about.

“Wonderful,” Richard Queen beamed. “Just wonderful, Jessie.”

“Thank you,” Jessie murmured.

“—she’s as cold turkey as any killer I ever heard of,” Abe Pearl went on. “Match that big mitt of hers to the handprint on the pillowcase — a perfect fit. Analyze her perspiration — it gives the same lab result as the sweat traces in the slip. Analyze her blood — it’s just like the blood in the stain on the back of the slip, which got on there when she scratched her hand on the ladder. Dust on ladder same as dust on slip. And, by God, when they work over the slip and bring out some fingerprints left by the mixed dust and perspiration, they’re her prints!” Chief Pearl pressed his paws to his abdomen to discourage another belch. “And yet,” he thundered solemnly, “I tell you Sarah Humffrey will never go to the Chair. If she wasn’t as nutty as a fruit cake — I mean after they got the baby, when she overheard Humffrey talking to Finner over the phone and realized her saintly husband had palmed off his own bastard on her — if she wasn’t as nutty as a fruit cake then, she sure is now. She’ll get sent to a bughouse on an insanity verdict, and I don’t see how the State can stop it.”

“Abe,” Beck Pearl said.

“What?”

“Wouldn’t you like to walk off your dinner?”

So finally they were alone in Jessie’s little garden. Abe Pearl was wandering in Coventry somewhere along the waterfront, and his wife was in Jessie’s kitchen banging dishes around to show that she wasn’t listening through the kitchen window.

And now that they were alone together, there seemed to be nothing to say. That same peculiar silence dropped between them.

So Jessie picked some dwarf zinnias, and Richard Queen sat in the white basket chair under the dogwood tree watching the sun on her hair.

If he doesn’t say something soon I’ll shriek, Jessie thought. I can’t go on picking zinnias forever.

But he kept saying absolutely nothing.

So then the flowers were tumbling to the ground, and Jessie heard herself crying, “Richard, what in heaven’s name is the matter with you?”

“Matter?” he said with a start. “With me, Jessie?”

“Do I have to propose to you?”

“Prop...” The sound came out of his mouth like a bite of hot potato. “Propose?”

“Yes!” Jessie wept. “I’ve waited and waited, and all you ever do is pull a grim face and feel sorry for yourself. I’m a woman, Richard, don’t you know that? And you’re a man — though you don’t seem to know that either — and we’re both lonely, and I think we l-love each other...”

He was on his feet, clutching his collar and looking dazed. “You mean... you’d marry me, Jessie? Marry me?”

“What do you think I’m proposing, Richard Queen, a game of Scrabble?”

He took a step toward her.

And stopped, swallowing hard. “But Jessie, I’m an old man—”

“Oh, fish! You’re an old fool!”

So he came to her.

A long time later — the sun was going down, and the Pearls had long since vanished — Richard Queen’s arm shifted from Jessie Sherwood’s shoulders to her waist, and he muttered blissfully, “I wonder what Ellery’s going to say.”