The Four Johns

Chapter 4

Above all, he must not panic.

He shivered as he thought how easy it would be to do something foolish. His first impulse on finding the body, for instance, had been to tumble it out on the ground and drive away at top speed... He looked down at his hands on the wheel. The knuckles shone white.

He forced himself to relax; he could do anything — anything — if he had to. But what?

His first thought was to report to the police. His stomach flopped like a fish. To do that would involve him up to his neck. The car was his. Madera was his old home town. He had unsuccessfully wooed Mary. And his alibi for the night of her disappearance was nonexistent. It was not as if Mary Hazelwood were nondescript or drab. Mary Hazelwood was beautiful, a girl men fruitlessly pursued — the kind that often wound up as the central figure in a crime of passion.

Who killed Mary Hazelwood? the newspapers would ask. And they would mention his name in as close proximity to the question as they dared. Should the police fail to establish the guilt of someone else, his name would enter the conversation whenever the case was brought up. It was even conceivable that he might be openly accused. How could he prove he was not guilty? Outside the courts the burden of proof was on the accused.

Inevitably would come the appointment with Professor Burton. In his mustard tweeds, Professor Burton resembled an irascible old Airedale. He would rise when Mervyn entered, motion toward a straight-backed chair, sit down stiffly. There would be conversation:

 PROFESSOR BURTON: Mr. Gray, undoubtedly you know why I have asked you to drop by today.

 MERVYN GRAY: I’ve got a strong suspicion.

 PROFESSOR BURTON: We must face the crisis. It’s no use to pretend that it doesn’t exist. This wretched publicity is the poorest sort of thing for the department.

 MERVYN GRAY: I realize this, Professor Burton. Unfortunately I can’t do anything about it.

 PROFESSOR BURTON: Then — unfortunately, as you put it — I must. Blameless as you well may be, we simply can’t tolerate this sort of thing in connection with the university.

 MERVYN GRAY: You mean that I’m fired?

 PROFESSOR BURTON: I mean that you will not be rehired for the fall semester. For your own good I suggest that you resign. After this affair has been forgotten, there is no reason why you should not seek a similar post at another institution. If you choose to do this, you can look to me for references.

 MERVYN GRAY: And if not?

 PROFESSOR BURTON (rising): That aspect need not be considered. Surely you’ve thought the matter over.

 MERVYN GRAY (desperately): Naturally, Dr. Burton. But my whole career is at stake. I’ve even been hoping for an assistant professorship—

 PROFESSOR BURTON (like steel): That, I fear, is no longer remotely possible. The regents would be outraged at the mere suggestion, and rightly. These are the facts, Mr. Gray. May I have your resignation?

So much was academically inevitable. But that could be by far the least of it. For what if the police refused to believe that he had no knowledge of how Mary’s body had come to be found by him in the Chevy trunk? That could be a matter not of his academic career but of his life... He forced himself to think coolly.

Mary Hazelwood had been murdered. And someone had stolen his car and stuffed her body into the trunk. This someone was almost certainly an acquaintance, because he knew all about the trick ignition switch. A sickening thought... Well, now was the time to fish or cut bait...

Going to the police was out.

Once he had made the decision, his next step was clear. And this was too exposed a spot to do it. Mervyn started the car and drove off.

He turned at Ardly Avenue and then took Perkins Road to the Freeway, heading north.

After a few miles he drove off into a side road, and presently left-turned into another.

He stopped the car between a vineyard and a field barren except for a few sheds and farmhouses in the distance. The hot breeze sighed through the grapevines; grasshoppers sang.

Mervyn got out. He was alone on the road.

Steeling himself, he flung open the trunk. She was still there, in sky blue, stiff and curled. Poor Mary, thought Mervyn, poor innocent friendly Mary.

He stooped. Her suitcase lay half under her body. Her right temple showed a great dent that had pushed her features askew. Apparently she had been killed by a blow from a heavy object. The area of contusion showed a pattern of secondary marks, grouped in a semicircle, where the skin had been broken. Mary’s bones were delicate; the blow might not have done such damage to a heavier skull.

The muscles of his arm quivering, he reached behind the body and pulled out the suitcase. The body bumped to the floor of the trunk. The blazing sun, the vineyard smelling of hot leaves and sulphur, the dust-colored road, the car: in such a context the corpse seemed absurd as well as pitiful.

Mervyn lugged the small suitcase around to the front seat and opened it. He was poking around when a faint clatter brought his head up and around sharply. Behind him at the crossroads a toy truck was growing larger. He hurried around to the rear of the car and slammed down the trunk lid, breathing hard. The toy became a noisy, dilapidated pickup. Three pairs of expressionless adult eyes swiveled to stare at him from the front seat as the pickup passed. In the rear crouched four bedraggled children with dirt-colored hair and fox faces; they too stared at Mervyn until the pickup dwindled to nothing behind a cloud of dust.

Mervyn went back to the front seat and finished exploring the suitcase; it contained only the usual feminine clutter. He took it back to the trunk, unlocked the trunk again, stowed the suitcase away... He frowned. Wasn’t something missing? Her purse! Suitcase but no purse... He lifted the body, looked underneath. No purse.

Mervyn shut the trunk. His hands tingled. He went to the side of the road, scooped up another handful of the hot, dry sand from between a pair of small tumbleweeds. He rubbed his palms with it nervously. Then he climbed into the car and turned it around and drove back to the crossroads and presently onto the Freeway.

The sun was dropping low over the flatlands. Through the haze in the west the golden hills of the Coast Range loomed serenely above it all. Mervyn strove to capture some of their aloofness. He could not afford to handle his problems, he kept telling himself, on an emotional level... Automatically checking his gas gauge, he was reminded that when he had reclaimed the car at the Madera garage the gauge had stood at the quarter mark. Significant fact? One that deserved thinking about? The week before, John Boce had borrowed the convertible and made much of the fact that he had returned it with a full tank. Mervyn had not used the car since. Three-quarters of sixteen gallons — the capacity of the tank — was twelve. At highway speeds the old convertible usually made about fifteen miles to the gallon. Approximately 180 miles, then 190 perhaps, for the gauge was a bit below the one-quarter mark. Madera was something over 150 miles from Berkeley. Which left thirty-five, maybe forty miles to be accounted for.

All this was very strange. And he still had to decide what to do with Mary...

He looked to the left, toward the mountains. After a few miles the farms thinned out as the barren foothills began. He knew places where no one came, not even to graze cattle.

Mervyn grimaced. He’d have to make sure there were no witnesses... Wheels within wheels. A single certainty: someone wanted him tagged for the murder of Mary.

He reverted to Mary’s handbag. Why was it missing? Accident? Or design? The possibilities were alarming.

He began to drive faster. Sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five. The rush of the wind recalled him to his senses, and he decelerated; thereafter he drove cautiously, well below the speed limit. It would not do to be arrested. Or, even worse, to become involved in an accident and have the trunk fly open.

At Merced he gassed up. He discovered that he was famished; he had eaten nothing since breakfast. He considered. The time was now six o’clock. If he drove straight through he would arrive in Berkeley about eight, or half past. For a reason which he could not identify, this seemed too early. So he turned into a drive-in.

But now he found that, hungry or not, he could not eat with Mary Hazelwood curled up dead in the trunk. It seemed monstrously unfitting. Committed, he ordered a milk shake, drank it without tasting it. Then he called for black coffee and sat brooding... If only he could dump the entire business — anonymously — into the hands of the police! Why should he be in this miserable position? To have to choose between disposing of a murder victim and destroying his career! Or even having to take the rap for the whole thing...

Suddenly nervous, Mervyn paid up and started north once more. And again that niggling disinclination to get back too early. He chewed at it and finally identified the cause. Night was what he was after. He did not want to be seen. He was feeling guilty!

The thought enraged him; he drove faster. But then he slowed again. After all, he did have something to slink about — he was carrying a corpse in the trunk of his car, and he was planning to dispose of it where it would never be found. He thought of the police and again, in frustration, rejected the idea. It was simply too damn suicidal... If only he knew the identity of that someone, if he could manage to tuck poor Mary’s corpse into that someone’s bed, for instance... that would be poetic justice... He spent the rest of the trip — through Modesto, Manteca, Tracy, north to Walnut Creek and over the hills to Berkeley — in a series of fantasies, all darkly disastrous to the someone who had planted the corpse in his car.

It was a quarter to ten when he finally stole to a stop at the curb around the corner from the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments.

Mervyn got out of the car just as an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt came heel-and-toeing along the walk pulling a leash, at the other end of which a little white dog jerked and jumped. Mervyn froze. Would the mutt start acting peculiarly when it passed the car? Dogs were supposed to be able to smell death...

The man and the dog passed.

Mervyn felt like praying.

He walked swiftly to the corner and down Perdue Street to the stucco urns that marked the entrance to the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments.

Stealing into the court, he paused. Lights showed here and there. His own apartment was dark, as were the three second-story apartments to his right — Numbers 12, 11 and 10, occupied respectively by Susie Hazelwood, Mrs. Kelly (now in the hospital) and Harriet Brill. Apartment 1, John Boce’s, was brightly lit and through the windows came talk and shrill feminine laughter. Mervyn recognized the cackle of Harriet Brill, and John Boce’s easy rumble, then a harsh staccato tenor, vaguely familiar... He went on. Boce’s parties were the least of his concerns.

As he passed, the drapes at one of Boce’s open windows flickered. A moment later, the door opened and John Boce lurched out. “Mervyn!” he bawled. “Hey, Mervyn!”

Mervyn drew a deep breath; he halted and turned. Boce was reeking of bourbon. “Mervyn, old boy, you’re home at last. Where the hell have you been?”

“Here and there.”

Boce seized his arm. “Come on in for a drink. Or two or three. Everything top quality. That’s old Bocey’s style, eh, what?”

Mervyn tried to detach his arm. “I’ll drop in later, John.”

“Mervyn, I insist. Susie insists. Harriet insists. Everybody insists.”

“Fine, John. Later. Let go.”

“Mervyn, can this be the real you? Standing first on one leg, then the other? Come onnnnn...” He tugged; Mervyn tugged back.

Susie peered out. “Why, if it isn’t Mervyn, back from his tomcatting.” Her hair hung loose and fluffy, as if it were freshly washed; her voice was light. She kept looking at him.

Boce complained, “He’s trying to give me the freeze, Susie. Say, look. Mervyn. You don’t know Blake Callahan, do you?”

“No.”

“Or his wife? Estelle?”

“No.”

“Aha, just as I thought! Then you better come on in and meet ’em.” Mervyn’s arm was growing numb; he winced, and Susie smiled sweetly and went back into the apartment. In his enthusiasm Boce sprayed him with bourbon. “Aw, come on, buddy-boy. I offer you beautiful women and whiskey flowing like water. You know me, pal. I never do things halfway. You name it, we got it, or we know where to get it. Which reminds me. I had to borrow a fifth of your bourbon. I’ll replace it, natch.”

“How did you get into my apartment?” asked Mervyn furiously.

“The usual way. Through the front door.”

“Meaning that you picked the lock, or removed the hinges?”

“Hell, no. I just turned the knob, and the door opened.”

Mervyn blew out his breath and permitted Boce to drag him into Apartment 1.

John Viviano, pacing back and forth across the room, proved to be the source of the harsh voice. He stopped dramatically in midstride as Mervyn entered, nodded a regal quarter of an inch, and continued. Harriet Brill leaned languidly against a wall, wearing a yellow-green-and-red Benares print skirt, a long-sleeved black jersey blouse and brass hoop earrings four inches in diameter.

The couch was occupied by a couple wearing the uneasy expressions of people who find themselves trapped in the grizzly pit at the zoo; the man was a physicist answering to the name of Mike, and the woman, Charlotte, was his wife. Mervyn vaguely gathered that they were connected with the university. The preadvertised Blake Callahan turned out to be a little man wearing big black-rimmed glasses, his wife, Estelle, a huge woman in a tight brown-satin dress; they sat in two of Boce’s orange canvas sling chairs. Just who they were Mervyn did not learn; his host forgot to follow through.

Susie, in slacks and sweater — both her favorite gray — sat on the couch beside Mike the physicist. She was being vivacious tonight, an aspect of her personality Mervyn had not suspected. Susie was a continual surprise. The slacks exhibited her slight, supple figure to its optimum; the softness of her hair gave her a softer, more feminine look than usual. Mervyn sat down beside her; she gave him a cryptic side glance, started to say something, then changed her mind.

Mervyn slumped back on the couch, relieved not to have to make small talk. John Viviano, in any event, left him little choice. The fashion photographer held forth with majestic vehemence, marching back and forth, his hands flying about.

“It is not in the nature of the human animal,” declared Viviano. “It is unnatural. We live in an unnatural age. Consider Felis leo. Who wears the mane? The lion, not the lioness. Consider the Siamese fish. Who carries the magnificent fins? Again the male. And the male iguana with his ruff. Spectacular! Today everything is upside down.”

He gestured toward his black slacks and tan hound’s-tooth jacket. “Observe me. I am the unobtrusive one.” He pointed a long, tense forefinger at Harriet. “And she, she is the lion, the Siamese fish, the male iguana! Is it a wonder the mental hospitals are full? Sad to relate, I contribute to the madness. It is I who bedizen these women, these cannibals, when I should better give them a bucket and mop and say, ‘Here, woman, wash the floor.’ But such is the case.”

Harriet Brill, who had been making a series of fretful gestures, at last was able to interrupt. “I certainly don’t think you’re making a fair case.”

Viviano whirled like a dancer. “I am now unfair?”

“You are, Viviano. People dress to express their personalities. Just because you’re repressed—”

“I am now repressed, Brill?”

“You are!”

The little man named Blake Callahan said in a voice surprisingly deep, “I have an idea that should satisfy everyone. As I see it, John Viviano resents the neutrality of his clothing, while Harriet correctly attacks his pose of masculine martyrdom. The controversy can easily be resolved. Why don’t you two simply exchange clothes? Viviano will then be clad in garments colorful enough, God knows, for any strutting male, while Harriet, in his sober costume — sharing his virtu, so to speak — will be assured that his antifeminism is merely a polemic device.”

Harriet and Viviano both spoke at once, in voices equally passionate. Mervyn turned to Susie. “Who is Blake Callahan?”

“Something to do with the university press.”

Charlotte leaned across her physicist-husband, Mike. “I didn’t see Mary at the gym today, Susie. We’re keeping the class going, you know, during summer session and intersession both.”

Mervyn remembered now that Mary had been studying fencing; Charlotte must be the instructor. John Boce lumbered over with a highball for Mervyn. “Haven’t you heard? Mary’s eloped, or has been abducted. By John Viviano.”

“That is not the case,” said Viviano quickly. “It was an opportunity not extended to me.”

Harriet Brill made a contemptuous noise. “You men are all so glandular. You assume that Mary went off on some cheap adventure—”

“A trained psychologist should be surprised at nothing,” said Viviano.

“I’m not surprised. I merely understand the difference between romance and vulgarity.”

“Who can escape destiny?” The photographer raised his glass and drained it. “Everything that has been, and is, and that is to be, is ordained. If vulgarity be my fate, I embrace it!”

“The secret of a contented life,” said little Callahan in his big voice.

Harriet snorted. “I can’t accept that, Viviano. Scientists don’t believe in predestination. There’s a very important principle opposed to it — something about uncertainty.”

“Ah,” said Viviano. “But one moment. Boce, be a good fellow and replenish this glass with some of your splendid whiskey. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, uncertainty. Utter drivel. Provide me a sufficiently complex computer sufficiently programmed, and I guarantee to predict the future!”

“You know I don’t have access to any such computer,” Harriet whined. “And anyway, I don’t think it’s possible.” She turned to the man sitting beside Susie. “Mike, you’re a physicist. Which of us is right?”

Mike looked embarrassed. “In essence the universe itself is just such a computer. By the interaction of its parts it solves the equations of its own future. But a man-made computer...” He shook his head. “As for uncertainty, it’s a figure of speech, although I admit there are transcendentalists in the profession who claim that uncertainty is a built-in factor of reality. I personally feel that the easiest way to learn the future is to watch it happen.”

Everyone digested this wisdom, uncertainly.

“What of precognition?” asked Harriet. “I know a marvelous woman, a Negro with orange hair. She can look at some object you own and tell you the most amazing things about your past — what you’re thinking, what’s going to happen to you.”

“Heh, heh!” snickered Viviano. “Now who believes in predestination!” He strode into the kitchen, from which he could be heard accusing John Boce of niggardly bartending.

“What a volatile man,” sighed Harriet.

Calm descended on the room. Mervyn sat limply, staring into his highball glass. The conversation receded; a sense of fantasy overcame him.

Something tugged at his mind. The urgent unpleasantness that had brought him back to Berkeley. Recollection came as a shock. He glanced toward the kitchen, where Boce was still occupied. So he rose, mumbled an all-inclusive farewell and left in a hurry.

At his own apartment he found, as Boce had claimed, that the door was unlocked. This was not unusual; he frequently neglected to lock his door. Still, it made him uneasy. He locked it now, switched on the light, pulled the drapes. Standing in the middle of the living room, he looked around carefully. The room seemed normal, but to Mervyn’s abraded senses it felt wrong.

Moving stealthily, as if something dangerous were asleep nearby, he looked under the couch. Nothing. He went to the bookcase, felt behind his books. Nothing. He walked into his bedroom, braced himself, and switched on the lights. The room, which Mervyn maintained in monastic neatness, looked undisturbed.

Nevertheless, he peered under the bed. Nothing. He turned to his chest of drawers, but the sliding doors of the wardrobe caught his eye. There was a dark gap at the right-hand side. Had he left it that way? He hesitated. It was as if there were another personality in the room, broadcasting malice. Well, he could not stand there all night... He strode forward, slid the door aside, ready for anything.

The light shone on his clothes. Below, a rack held his shoes. The shelf above held oddments, a glint of white. Unfamiliar... Mervyn reached up with a leaden arm.

A white purse.

Mary’s purse.

So.

He filled his lungs. The pattern was now clear.

It had been assumed that when the green convertible was picked up, the police would find the body. They would naturally question Mervyn, seek to establish his movements. They would search his apartment, find the purse. Mervyn would be arrested, probably put on trial, possibly convicted, conceivably sentenced to the gas chamber. Mervyn shuddered.

For a moment he stood looking at the purse. Then he opened it and peered inside. Lipstick, mirror, comb, change purse, wallet with various cards. No money. Mervyn’s lips tightened: suppose his enemy had marked Mary’s money in some fashion and also hidden it on the premises? The idea was ridiculous, oversubtle; still, Mervyn looked around, even went into the kitchen to investigate the coffee can where he tossed small change. Nothing. His imagination was running away with him. He smiled sadly. Rather hard for his imagination to run faster or farther than events themselves.

One matter at least was straightened out: the fate of his few lingering qualms. Mary Hazelwood was dead and gone. A pity, but his own life was now on the line.

He opened a kitchen drawer and took out a twist of plastic clothesline, which he put in his pocket. Mary’s purse he tucked into the front of his trousers, then he buttoned his jacket and stepped out into the court.

He walked quickly past Apartment 1, but not quickly enough. Before he could reach the street, the door opened and people spilled out.

“Mervyn!” John Boce bawled. “Hey, Mervyn, hold up a minute!”

Mervyn managed to resist the almost irresistible desire to punch the accountant in the nose.

“How about taking Mike and Charlotte home?” Boce asked. “It’s just over on North Side.”

Mervyn could think of nothing to say. He waited while Boce affably conducted the physicist and his wife to the entrance.

“I hope we’re not putting you out, Mr. Gray,” Mike said.

“Of course not!” Boce declared heartily. “It’s a pleasure for Mervyn.”

“Thank you so much, John,” Charlotte said.

“Think nothing of it. Good night!”

“My car is up the street,” Mervyn said. “Around the corner.”

“This is very good of you, Mervyn. Our car is out of commission, but John insisted that we come.”

“I don’t mind in the slightest.”

Mike and Charlotte lived a mile away. Mervyn dropped them at their apartment house and drove back around the campus. He turned east along Ashby Avenue, and presently swung into the Contra Costa Freeway. Something pressed against his stomach, something large and uncomfortable: Mary’s purse. He had forgotten about it. He yanked it out and tossed it to the seat beside him.

A new thought occurred to him and he stopped the car under an overhead light. He opened the purse and went through it until he found a small black address book. He flicked through the pages.

Name after name after name, in Mary’s neat, erect handwriting. He hunted for Johns. Under B, John Boce. (Under G he found Mervyn Gray.) The next John was under P: John Pilgrim. John Thompson was not listed. John Viviano was there, with a San Francisco address and telephone number.

There were no other Johns noted.

Mervyn replaced the book in the purse, drove on.

The road led through forested rolling hills and sleeping suburbs, north around the foot of Mount Diablo. The Freeway came to an end, the hills dried out and became mineral in the moonlight. He crossed them and came down into farmland, with a line of small cities spaced along the shores of the mingled San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers. The country turned quieter, more rural; vineyards and orchards closed in along the road.

Then the country changed again. The land became flat, the air smelled of swamp: willow trees, rushes, damp peat. The road, now narrow and potholed, twisted to the right and swung up steeply.

He was now driving along a levee, water glinting on his left.

The air was still and bland; not far away, six lonesome lights marked a harbor for pleasure craft and fishing boats. He crossed a timber-and-plank bridge. He drove for miles along the levee, and now there were no lights. When he came to another bridge, also of timber and plank, he stopped the car. The only sounds were the tick of his engine, the hissing of crickets, the occasional burp of a frog.

He got out and walked slowly across the bridge; the moon, now riding the zenith, laid oily cusps and crescents on the water. He climbed down the bank, brought up a thirty-pound chunk of riprap.

Now came the worst part of the job. The terrible part.

Mervyn drove to the middle of the bridge, got out, unlocked the trunk. Below, the dark water waited in puddles of moonlight. He braced himself, pulled the body out. In spite of his efforts, it dropped to the planking with a thud. Wincing, he made a bundle of the purse and the rock, wrapping them in the mat from the floor of the trunk and tying the whole thing securely with the plastic clothesline. Then he ran a short length of the line from the bundle to the neck of the dead girl...

Now.

But he hesitated. How undignified, how graceless an end for one so sweet and vital! Mervyn’s eyes filled with tears. He looked up at the moon, down at the water. It can’t be helped, he whispered. Forgive me, Mary.

He rolled the whole thing off the bridge. It made a huge, helpless splash. Ripples circled swiftly out, exciting sparks of moonlight. They quieted. They disappeared.

And the river ran darkly again.

He walked slowly back to the car. The thing was done. The car seemed empty. He felt empty, too. Mechanically, with a flashlight, he explored the trunk compartment. He found nothing.

The thing was done. He climbed into the car. The water flowed black as ink, and Mervyn said aloud, “Goodbye, Mary.”

He started the car, pulled off the bridge, swung around and drove back the way he had come, west, toward the black mountains, toward the glow of the cities circling the bay. Who or what was waiting for him, malignantly, over the hill?

It would be harder now, he thought. The evidence linking him to Mary was gone... But something gnawed at the back of his mind. He could not identify it. What had he overlooked? The car trunk? He’d give that a good cleaning in the morning. Something else? He jerked his head in irritated failure.

Mervyn got home at two in the morning. He parked the convertible in the garage, went quietly by the back way into the court. All the apartments were dark. Mervyn looked up at Apartment 12 for a moment. Susie must be feeling so lonely...

He had the wild impulse to wake her up, soothe her, let her soothe him. Impossible, of course. Harriet Brill, that human sonar, would hear him as he passed; and then, Susie was likely to be tart and sarcastic rather than soothed or soothing. He wondered how it would be to have Susie for a wife, and wondered at himself for wondering.

When he stole into his apartment and flicked on the light, he searched the rooms. He was only half convinced that nothing was wrong.

He stood uncertainly in his living room, swaying with fatigue. But he knew he could not sleep. So he went into the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet. John Boce had lifted the fifth of bourbon, but there was still some Scotch, and he made himself a Scotch and soda, took it back into the living room and slumped down on the couch.

He sipped, brooding.

Something was missing. Something he had neglected.

He reviewed the entire affair, from Friday night to the present moment. Mary Hazelwood in a rumpled blue suit, stiff, contorted, life gone. He saw again the area of the blow, the odd semicircular contusion. And suddenly, heart pounding, he jumped up and ran into his bedroom and yanked his wardrobe open and snatched from its top shelf his ski boots. He took one of the boots by the toe and dashed over to his bed and swung the boot viciously. The heel struck the white spread with great force, leaving a crescent-shaped indentation in the spread... He thought he would faint. But he nerved himself and examined the heel of the boot closely. He could find nothing, and he tossed it aside and peered at the heel of the other boot, the left one. Was that a dark stain on the cogs? Yes! And a wisp of blond hair caught in a roughened cut mark. A blond hair... like Mary’s.

Mervyn ran back through the living room to his kitchen, carrying both ski boots. His head was a jumble of thoughts: That stain... blood... must be blood... hair... Mary’s... maybe others they’ll find under a microscope... they can test for blood... establish blood type... test for hair... identify...

At the kitchen sink, he washed and washed and washed the heel of the left boot. He used scouring powder, he scrubbed, he polished, he rinsed. Then he rubbed with vinegar. Then he rubbed with salt. Then he rubbed with more scouring powder. Then he dipped the heel in ammonia, rinsed again. But those police-laboratory tests were fantastically sensitive, he told himself. He turned on one of the burners of his range; he held the heel over the clean blue flame and scorched it over and over. And then, once more, he scoured the heel and rinsed it; and finally he dried it.

And then, for good measure, went through the entire process again with the right ski boot. Just in case, he told himself.

He was gasping when he returned to the living room, as if he had run five miles. His eyes felt as if they were full of hot sand.

Sleep was out of the question.

He dropped like a sack of feed on the couch.

So he had caught and balked another trap laid by his enemy. Were there others? There must be others...

And suddenly his neck prickled, at the nape.

He was being watched! He knew it... There! Wasn’t that a slight sound?

Mervyn slewed about on the couch, glaring at his front door, biting his lower lip, flexing his fingers, scarcely breathing. You damn patsy, he said to himself, get up and go over to that door and open it and find out once for all... Suddenly he was in a rage. He jumped off the couch, dashed to the door, jerked it open...

No one.

He peered out, right, left.

No one.

He actually stepped out into the court and took a deliberate look around. Nothing stirred. The fountain tumbled in the slanting moonlight.

Mervyn stood stock still, listening. All he heard was the fountain and his own râling breath.

So he went back into his apartment and locked his door and snapped off the living-room light and went into his bedroom and undressed quickly in the dark and crept into his bed and pulled the sheet over his head, like a child.

And presently he fell asleep.