The Impulse

After it was over, they wanted to find out more about the man who had done this thing. They wanted to know how the mind had become twisted, how one human could wish such a violent, shattering death on another — selecting the victim by whim, on impulse. But little could be learned about him after his death. Certain bald facts were ascertained, but they yielded no clue to what had transpired in the stilled brain.

His name was Howard Elser. He died three weeks before his forty-first birthday. For the nine years before his death he had worked as a machinist at Bacon-Held, a firm that made cheap automotive parts for sale through accessory stores. He was five feet, eight inches tall, and weighed a hundred and fifty-five pounds. He had a wide, colorless, unmemorable face, small features, black thinning hair, rather large hands.

He had no friends. He was known to the men he worked with as a silent, competent man. They called him Elser. He lived alone at 1881 Bernice Street, in a small frame house in a decaying neighborhood in the north end of the city. Some of his neighbors knew him by sight, and some knew him by name. He had no car. The house had a large sturdy garage.

The first man to enter the garage after Elser’s death was Patrolman George C. Holmar, age twenty-four, Fourth Precinct. He died instantly in the violent explosion that distorted the garage roof, shattered windows in neighboring houses, and put a hot, jagged piece of steel in the left thigh of the sergeant who was ten feet beyond the open garage door.

After the demolition experts made sure that a trip-wire booby trap had caused the explosion, the investigation proceeded. Ancient metalworking equipment, carefully restored to good condition, was bolted to the cement floor of the garage. It was a well-equipped shop, small and flexible.

Among Elser’s papers they found his service record. He had enlisted in 1942 in Dayton. Ohio, had been assigned, after training, to an Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Battalion, and had been honorably discharged in 1945 as a Technical Sergeant. Social Security and personnel records at Bacon-Held showed he had worked at several large plants before the war.

Also among his papers were found three patents taken out at considerable expense during the past nine years. They were for intricate jig and fixture arrangements for machine tools. There had apparently been no attempt to market the patents, though an expert said they seemed feasible, if somewhat too intricate.

His house was quite bare, extremely clean and neat. He had an extensive library of technical books. In a savings account he had a little over eleven hundred dollars. In his home there were no personal letters, no photographs, no pictures, no radio, no television set.

With just these facts there would be no clue, even for the clinical psychiatrists. In a lockbox under his bed, however, they discovered something which gave them an opportunity to use the convoluted words of their profession.

It was a large scrapbook. The first clipping had been neatly pasted into the scrapbook nearly five years before. The last clipping was from the Ledger-Record of the day before Elser’s death.

Every clipping was about Charles Walker Wylie. Many of the clippings, particularly those including cuts of Mr. Wylie, were decorated in colored crayon with obscene drawings. Charles Walker Wylie, ex-Mayor, Chairman of the State Democratic Committee, owner of Station KKTV, director of several local corporations, stated that he had never heard of Elser, and could not imagine why Elser should have borne him any ill will.

Yet Elser was undoubtedly the man who phoned Charles Walker Wylie at his home at 8 P.M. on Thursday, June 24, and stated that Mr. Wylie would be killed the next day. And hung up.

The psychiatrists said that Elser very probably had no logical basis for his hatred of Wylie. They said that Wylie, with his position in the community, had become a symbol to Howard Elser. They spoke of transference, of father-image.

But as far as Jane Ann Kimball was concerned. Elser did not even know her. He did not know her name. He had never seen her, until he stood close behind her in that elevator in the Shannon Building.

Some of it was known. Some of it could be guessed.

It was known that Howard Elser phoned Bacon-Held on that Friday morning at nine-thirty and reported himself sick. It was the first workday he had missed in nine years. A housewife, sweeping her front porch, saw Elser walking toward the bus stop shortly after noon.

He was next seen on the top floor of the Shannon Building at about ten minutes of five. His thoughts during that June afternoon will never be known. Perhaps he walked through the city. Perhaps you saw him. a subtly shabby man in a gray suit, a brown felt hat with sweat-stained ribbon, a white shirt with a collar a bit too large for him, a clip-on bow tie, blue with a small white check pattern, black shoes with a high shine, though cracked across the instep. His hands were large, the nails rimmed with the ineradicable black of the machinist. He carried death in his pocket.

Charles Walker Wylie’s suite of offices on the top floor of the Shannon Building was his base of operations. He had a second office on the other side of town, an office with a glass slot that ran the length of one wall through which visitors could look down on the floodlighted organized confusion of the main studio of KKTV. As an ex-mayor of the city he had the use of a third office in the City Hall. But the southwest corner of the top floor of the Shannon Building was his business home. He was a likable, ambitious, excusably ruthless man who had once been the youngest mayor in the city’s history, and thought of himself as one of the city’s leading citizens.

His accountant and bookkeeper was in the adjoining office on one side, with his confidential clerk in the next office beyond. One girl, a Miss Moyer, performed all their secretarial duties. On the other side of Wylie’s office was the office of Miss Caroline Principi, his private secretary, confidante, and friend.

At quarter of five on June 25, Miss Moyer, a sallow and nervous girl, came in to chat with Caroline Principi. Through the open door to Mr. Wylie’s office, both girls could see the studio technicians preparing for Mr. Wylie’s midnight television broadcast.

Miss Moyer said, “Caroline, do you think maybe it’s a gag, all this threat business?”

“It’s no gag, Betsy. He wouldn’t do anything that cheap. Besides, it kind of worried him. You can’t tell what some nut will do.” She giggled, then, and shook her dark curls. “Anyhow, I bet a lot more people will stay up and tune in just to see if he’s all right.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“I’m not. He called Chief Pepper last night. He’s had plain-clothes men with him all day long.”

“Who’d want to take a shot at him?”

Miss Principi looked darkly mysterious. “Oh, he’s stepped on a few toes.”

At that moment the corridor door opened and a man came in. brown felt hat in his hand.

Miss Principi surveyed the cheap gray suit, the cracked shoes, and. in half a second, had placed the man neatly in one of her many categories. “Yes?” she said.

The man pulled a package out of his pocket. “I’m supposed to put this on his desk,” the man said. Later Miss Principi described the package as being about the size of two packs of king-sized cigarettes laid side by side. It was in gray or pale blue paper, and tied with white string.

“Has it got something to do with the broadcast?”

“I guess so. They sent me over with it.”

“Well, go in and leave it, then.”

“Okay,” the man said. He trudged toward the open door to Wylie’s private office. Just as he reached the doorway, he turned and glanced at the two girls. Later Miss Principi said that his eyes looked wild when he turned.

She stood up behind her desk and walked to the office doorway. The technicians were in a corner on the floor arguing. The man had opened the shallow drawer in the middle of the desk. He was putting the package in the drawer.

“You said on the desk,” she said firmly.

“Did I? They told me in the middle drawer.”

“Who told you?”

“Over at the station.”

“Do you work there?”

“Sure, I work there.”

The two technicians had stopped to listen. “Does this man work over at the station?” she asked them.

They shook their heads. “I’ve never seen him.”

“Me either.”

“Let me see what you’ve got there,” Miss Principi asked boldly and walked toward the man, hand outstretched.

It was then five o’clock.

Miss Principi tried futilely and quite bravely to block the man’s way. He thrust her back against the desk. She screamed once as he went into her office and, running after him, screamed again as he hurried out into the corridor. She felt faint and had to sit down. She bent over with her head between her knees and kept saying, “That’s the one! That’s the one!”

When one of the technicians hurried out into the corridor, the elevator had already started down. By chance, the elevator had been there, waiting for him. At one minute of five the starter on the main lobby floor always sent one car to the top and two others to sixteen where the Transit Mutual Insurance Company offices were, so as to facilitate emptying the building at the five o’clock rush.

Patrolman Walter Conroy, Traffic Detail, stood in the lobby of the Shannon Building, waiting for a chance to have a word with his young wife, a pregnant keypunch operator who was working her last month with Transit Mutual.

He saw a man in a gray suit plunge out of the elevator, thrusting the office girls aside and knocking one sprawling on her hands and knees on the tile floor of the lobby.

“Hey, you!” Conroy roared, indignant at the thought that the jerk could just as easily have knocked down Marie Conroy. The man gave him a frightened look and sprinted for the big doors. To a cop that meant stop him. He hit the sidewalk ten feet behind the smaller man, holster unsnapped, Police Positive in his hand.

“Halt,” he yelled in approved fashion.

The man had run out from under his hat. A man picked it up and stood holding it. The running man looked back. Conroy aimed the revolver at him, not intending to fire, hoping that the visual effect would be impressive.

The man cut sharply to his left, ran between two parked cars and directly into the path of a panel delivery truck. The front right fender of the truck boosted him, and the right post of the windshield hit him solidly. The blow knocked the man into the row of parked cars. He sprawled across the hood of one and slipped back into the road.

The truck screeched to a stop. Conroy slowed oncoming traffic. People ran toward the scene from all directions. Conroy kept the crowd back, got his call in, quieted the truck driver down. He looked at the man, at the sickening distortion of the body, and knew that the man could live only through a miracle.

“He’s trying to say something,” the truck driver said, plucking at Conroy’s sleeve. Conroy went down on one knee.

The mouth worked in the ruined face. Conroy leaned closer. “Put it... in pocketbook... elevator... midnight.”

“What?” Conroy demanded.

“Midnight,” the man said. And could speak no longer.

Conroy stood up. “Out of his head,” he said officially. The ambulance came whining through the streets and stopped. The man was efficiently gathered up. Conroy took the truck driver over to the sidewalk to get the rest of the information.

An official car swung in and parked. Conroy recognized Sergeant Dumont from the Special Section.

Dumont marched up to them, eyes simian-deep under the harsh black brows. “What goes on here?”

“A guy came running out of the elevator, knocking a girl down. I tried to stop him and he ran right in front of that truck. The ambulance just took him away. He was hurt bad, may be dead already.”

“Who are you?”

“Conroy. Traffic.”

“I want to find you right here when we come back out of that building.”

“Okay.”

Dumont and his partner were gone fifteen minutes. Conroy made the nervous truck driver stay, too. Dumont, when he returned, planted himself in front of Conroy.

“Okay. Description.”

“Just... just a normal-looking guy. Gray suit. Brown hat.”

“Here’s the hat,” the truck driver said. “A fellow give it to me after the ambulance left.”

Dumont took it and looked at the band.

“I got his name and address off his wallet,” Conroy said. “It was Howard Elser, 1881 Bernice Street.”

“I’ll take that,” Dumont said. “I want to know about a package he had.”

“I didn’t see any package,” Conroy said.

“He didn’t have no package,” the truck driver said.

“Was it something he stole?” Conroy asked.

“Shut up. Did he have a chance to get rid of the package?”

“After he came out of the elevator? No. I had my eyes on him every minute. Wait a minute, Sergeant. He said something. I thought he was just talking nonsense, you know like they do.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“Something about putting something in a pocketbook in the elevator. It didn’t make much sense then, but if he had a little package like you say...”

Dumont looked beyond Conroy. Conroy thought the expression on the sergeant’s face was most peculiar.

“Did he say anything else?” Dumont asked him in a surprisingly soft voice.

“He said ‘midnight.’ He said that twice.”

“Mother of Mary,” Dumont said. He whirled and ran for the official car.

“Can I go now?” the driver asked.

“Yes. Go on. Get going.”

Conroy had missed Marie. He walked back to his corner, turned off the traffic signals, and took his position in the middle of the intersection. As he hustled the traffic along, one part of his mind was busy wondering what the hell was going on. He knew it had to be something special to unhinge the legendary poise of Sergeant Bernie Dumont. It was then quarter to six.

Lieutenant Brian Rome was the head of Special Section. He was an angular black-haired man of thirty, full of nervous, restless energy, with a gift of ingenuity and improvisation. In the Department of Public Safety and in the Police Department itself he was looked on as a man who would very probably head up the department at some time in the future.

When the department had been completely reorganized three years before, it had been Rome who had sold Chief Pepper and sold the Commissioner of Public Safety on the idea of creating a Special Section — a grab-bag section which would take on those one-shot duties which did not properly belong to the regular sections, such as Traffic, Homicide, Robbery, Vice, Identification, Lab, and so on. When a special project came up, Rome could take the necessary personnel from those sections which, at the moment, were best able to spare the men.

The threat made against Charles Walker Wylie’s life had been classified at once as a special project, and turned over to Brian Rome. He had talked with Wylie on Thursday evening, copied down Wylie’s schedule for the day, warned Wylie to adhere to it, and had requisitioned the number of men he felt necessary to guarantee Wylie’s safety. Though he did not tell Wylie, Rome was quite aware that if a determined man wanted to kill Wylie, he could probably manage it, no matter how much police protection was given him. Brian Rome felt that it was a crank threat. He anticipated no trouble on Friday. He would cut the protection on Saturday to two men, and, in view of Wylie’s position and importance, keep those two men on for a full week before taking them off.

Only Brian Rome’s dark eyes were alive as he listened to Bernie Dumont’s story. Bernie seemed agitated. Rome picked up his phone and called Central Hospital. He talked to Emergency and found that Elser was D.O.A. He told them to hold the body until either the family or the police contacted them.

“Dead,” Rome said superfluously to Dumont. “Have a car sent out to his house. No phone?”

“None listed.”

“Then come back in here and we’ll talk this out.”

While Brian Rome waited for Dumont to return to his small office, he felt a prickle of apprehension at the nape of his neck. He rubbed his neck vigorously.

Dumont came back in and sat down.

“Okay,” Brian said. “I guess we’ll both go along on the assumption that the package contains a bomb. But it sounds small.”

“Anything else is too fancy. And it wouldn’t have to be big. Where he was going to put it, it would have been six inches from Wylie’s belly.”

“Okay, if it’s small for a bomb, it certainly is small to include a timing device, too. Let’s get George Pell up here.”

Pell, the part-time demolitions expert, was a stocky, bald, crumpled, fearless little man.

“George, assume a bomb this big,” Rome outlined the dimensions with thin, strong fingers. “Can you get much of a bang out of it?”

“It won’t knock down any buildings, Brian. But it could kill five or six people if they were standing in a group.”

“Could it include a timing device?”

“Not mechanical. Chemical. During the war OSS had incendiary pencils with a timing device accurate to within a half hour, and you could set ’em twelve hours ahead. You won’t get the accuracy a mechanical timer will give you, but you get enough for all practical purposes. I’ve seen...”

The phone rang and Rome answered it. He listened carefully, murmured a few words, and hung up. “George, you’re back on duty. Better get Lew to help. Take what you need out to 1881 Bernice. Tell Lew to meet you there. I’ll be along later. A patrolman named Holmar just got blown to bits out there. It sounds like the place was booby-trapped. George, I think he made his bomb out there. See if you can find out what we can expect of it, how it was made, and so on.”

George asked. “Where is the bomb itself, the one you were asking about?”

“In some woman’s purse, somewhere in the city.”

George opened his mouth, then closed it, swallowed, and left.

“Holmar,” Dumont said softly. “Good man.”

“And Rice took some metal in the leg. He got back to the car and called in.”

Chief of Police Paul Pepper was a massive, white-haired man who rode a white horse in all parades. He looked hard, confident, competent. In his job he was soft, vacillating, timorous. Price Heard, the hard-driving Deputy Chief, ran the department and preserved the illusion of Paul Pepper’s authority.

Price Heard and Brian Rome held their conference with Pepper on the wide porch of Pepper’s old-fashioned house.

Pepper listened and said, dubiously, “Now I’m afraid a thing like that’ll cause a panic.”

Price Heard gave Brian Rome a meaningful look. Rome said patiently, “Chief, people panic when they’ve got something to run from, or run out of. Here’s the situation. We’ve got some woman walking around with a bomb in her purse. It’s due to go off around midnight. Maybe if she finds it and tries to open it, it will go off. If we don’t do anything, it’s going to kill some people, I’d like your permission to go ahead with my plan.”

Pepper looked at Price Heard. Price nodded. “Well then, I guess you got to.”

It was twelve minutes after seven.

Price Heard turned his larger office over to Brian Rome. The communications were better, and it was in a more central location.

Brian Rome had Charles Walker Wylie on the phone.

“Frankly, Mr. Wylie, I don’t give a damn about your commitments. The other television and radio stations have all agreed to play ball. After all, that bomb was intended for you. It’s going to look damn funny if everybody cooperates with the police but you. I want your people to break into the program and make an announcement. A bomb wrapped in gray paper in a flat package three or four inches square was slipped into the purse of a woman who rode down in an elevator in the Shannon Building at five o’clock. All women who left the building at that time should examine their pocketbooks and, if such a package is found, call the police immediately. Don’t touch the package. Put the purse out in the yard in some open space and keep people away from it until the police arrive. Got that? Good. And I want it repeated every half hour. We’ll let you know when we locate it. Thank you, sir.”

Rome hung up and made a face of disgust and annoyance at Sergeant Dumont. “Catch any of the announcements?”

“Heard WELP. They made a production out of it. The newspaper guys want to see you.”

“Keep them off me until I get this thing set. You got enough men?”

“Forty-two. That’s about all I got phones for. They’re waiting in 312. I told them the pitch. Here’s the list. It’s off the main floor directory, so I guess it’s up to date. We got one break. Transit Mutual is going to take care of their own gals. I talked to the personnel manager.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

They walked down to 312. The men were standing around, smoking, talking. They quieted down when Rome and Dumont came in. Rome said, “We had an officer killed today, blown up. We want to make sure nobody else gets blown up. Bernie here has a list of all the business offices in the. Shannon Building. He’s going to divide them up among you. You’ll each have a phone, a phone book, and some brains. Get hold of the guy in each office who can give you a list of the girls who work there and their home addresses. Find out if their girls leave at five or five-thirty. You can skip the girls who leave at five-thirty, unless some got off earlier. As you get lists of the girls that left at five, start contacting them. Where there are no phones, feed the names and addresses to Bernie and he’ll give them to the cars. We’re still trying to contact that elevator operator. He may remember the woman being knocked down and remember what stops he made to fill the car up. Until we get hold of him, we try to contact everybody. That’s a hell of a big building.” Rome looked at his watch. “It’s seven minutes after eight. At the most we have four hours. Okay, Bernie.”

Rome walked back to Heard’s office. George Pell was waiting for him.

“You didn’t get out to the house.”

“Too jammed up. What have you got?”

Pell looked tired and more rumpled than usual. He put a canvas zipper bag on the desk and opened it. “I got some components. Here’s the casing. An empty one. Hell of a nice machining job. Good tough steel. It’ll give the explosion a lot of compression. It ought to give pretty good fragmentation, too.”

Rome picked up the metal box. It was not very heavy. There was a threaded hole an inch in diameter in one end.

George said, “He loaded it through that hole. Here’s the timing device and detonator. Ingenious damn thing. The fulminate of mercury cap goes here. This is soft iron wire. It holds the firing pin up against the tension of this spring. It screws into the hole like this. Now here’s the cap that goes over this other hole in the timing device. You pour acid in here and put this cap on. He had run tests on the wire, using acid and holding it under the same tension. I saw his records. He had got it down so it was twelve hours, plus or minus fifteen minutes. At the end of twelve hours the acid has deteriorated the iron wire enough so it snaps. Boom. It’s a little intricate, but damn effective. I think he had a long list of people, too. There are enough components for about fifteen more of these little Christmas packages.”

Dumont came in and handled the components. “Mean-looking damn thing,” he said softly.

“They all on the phones?” Rome asked.

“By now. I better get back out there.”

At the door Dumont turned and said, “Maybe we can cover all the girls that work there. I got them asking about visitors, too, like to the law offices. But we can miss a visitor easy.”

“I know that.”

“So we miss her on the phone. She doesn’t hear a radio. She doesn’t hear it over TV. She doesn’t look in her purse.”

“Then we can’t help her.”

“And it will probably happen just like that,” Dumont said. “Just like that.”

Jane Ann Kimball had arrived at the eighteenth floor offices of the Miller, Hogan, and Brie Advertising Agency at three-thirty, and had told the girl behind the window that she was fifteen minutes early for her appointment with Mr. Walter Shambrun, the art director. She put her portfolio on the chair beside her and took one of the trade periodicals from a nearby table. She put her heavy shoulder bag on top of the portfolio, fixed the collar of her pale tan tailored suit. She wore an apricot scarf knotted around her throat. Her blouse and the heavy soft-leather shoulder bag were white. Her hair was a soft brown that was almost blonde, and cut quite short. She was a big girl, with striking shoulders, a look of cleanness and pride. She carried herself in a way that, in another woman, might have looked like arrogance. In Jane Ann Kimball it merely underlined the obvious fact that she was a handsome, desirable woman. It was a manner that was without consciousness of self.

She felt a sick nervousness about this interview. So very much depended on it. If it went well, it would be so much easier to explain everything to Bob. If it went poorly, he would have the winning gambit and he would make use of it.

It was twenty minutes after four when a man strolled into the waiting room. He had an abundance of thick gray hair and a deeply lined face.

“You must be Miss Kimball, my dear. I’m Walter Shambrun. Will you please come along with me?”

He herded her ahead of him down a corridor and through a big room where she received a confusing impression of many people working at desks and drawing boards. She was glad to sit down in the small office.

Shambrun smiled at her. “So Mamie Gilbraith says you have promise. How is the ancient toad, by the way? Don’t look so startled, my dear. Mamie and I are very old friends.”

“She’s fine, Mr. Shambrun.”

“Mamie told me over the phone that you’ve been doing some work for her. How did you make that mistake?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How did you happen to start working with Mamie?”

“I applied for a job in the advertising department at the store. They couldn’t take on anyone. But the man who interviewed me said I could go to work as a clerk and do some modeling, and when there was an opening, they’d transfer me to Miss Gilbraith’s department.”

“But of course they haven’t done that.”

“No, they haven’t.”

“And Mamie has been using your sketches and paying you nothing.”

“She couldn’t, because...”

“I know. Mamie, with her limited budget, was perfectly willing to use your work until her conscience began to hurt a bit. So she sent you to me.”

“She knows I want to get into commercial illustration and...”

“What is your training?”

“I took a Fine Arts course in college and majored in Design. I took commercial illustration courses. And for over a year I’ve been...”

“Giving work away at that store.”

“I guess you could call it that, Mr. Shambrun. But it’s been experience.”

Shambrun sighed, a bit too obviously. “Well, let me see what you’ve brought.”

She handed him the portfolio and he opened it in front of him. The work which had seemed to her to look so competent and professional at home now looked botched and amateurish. He flipped the drawings over much too rapidly. He closed the portfolio and handed it back.

Her heart left like lead. “Are they... bad?” she asked.

“You can draw, my dear. We get so many who can’t even draw, you know.”

“Thank you. I would like to work here, Mr. Shambrun.”

He smiled. “We’d like to have you. You’re highly decorative, Miss Kimball. But I’m very sorry. There’s no room.”

“When will there be room?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Shall I come back in three months?”

He looked at her for what seemed a long time and then shook his head. “Miss Kimball, I should brush you off politely. But Mamie likes you. Out of courtesy to an old friend, let me presume to give you some advice. You are a handsome young girl, obviously healthy and, I would say, well balanced. Why do you want so badly to get into this sort of rat race?”

“It’s what I want to do.”

“Do you want to do this work, or do you want to prove to yourself or somebody else that you can do it?”

“What difference would that make to you, if I can do it?”

“All right, I’ll tell you what difference it makes. One, I’m not sure you can do it. Two, if you’re just trying to prove something, you won’t be with us long. And really a new person is of very little real use to me for the first two or three years. Were you quite ugly, I might risk employing you.”

“You talk as if this was some sort of a... a game or something with me, Mr. Shambrun. I work for my living.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

She looked at him and knew that it was no good. Somehow he had formed his opinion of her and he would not change it. This was a temperamental, emotional man, who doubtless considered himself to be very logical and reasonable. Jane Ann knew she had been a fool to be so optimistic. She wished she had not told Bob she was certain to get the job.

“Thank you for talking to me, Mr. Shambrun,” she said politely.

“Perfectly all right, my dear. Sorry we have no room for you.”

She took the long lonely walk from his office door down through the big room where she had hoped to work. She found the corridor, the reception room, the outside corridor. Girls were coming out of other offices on that floor, homeward bound. Jane Ann had pushed the elevator button. The elevator stopped. She got in. A dozen girls followed her in.

The car stopped at seventeen. More office workers crowded on. Jane Ann was pushed back against the people who stood against the back wall of the elevator. When not one other person could be accommodated, the elevator took the long swooping drop to the lobby floor and the operator slid the door back. The man behind Jane Ann squirmed rudely by her, pushing her off balance, thrusting his way through the other girls who made shrill angry comments. Jane Ann felt a momentary annoyance, but it faded quickly, lost in the greater sadness of the lost job.

When she emerged from the elevator, one girl was helping another up. They both had flushed angry faces. “The nerve of that guy!” Jane Ann walked out of the building and turned west. Behind her she heard a screaming of tires and the blast of a policeman’s whistle. She did not look around.

It was too late to go back to the store. She knew she would have to tell Bob and she wanted to get that over with. She went to a phone booth in the back of a cigar store and phoned his office, asked to speak to Mr. Robert Larrimore.

“Jane Ann? How did it go, honey?”

“I... I didn’t get it,” she said.

“Gee, that’s a shame,” he said, and his voice seemed properly sympathetic, but Jane Ann thought she detected a half-hidden note of relief.

“You’re terribly sorry, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be like that! Of course I’m sorry. Where are you now?”

“Downtown. I’m about to go home.”

“You’re all depressed and upset. Why don’t you go to Angelo’s and wait there for me? We’ll have a drink and have some dinner. Maybe I can cheer you up.”

“Well...”

“I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

After she hung up, she wished she’d said No. It would be nice to go out with him this evening, but she knew she would have felt better if she had had a chance to go home and change. She found another dime and called her mother.

“Mom, I’m going to stay in town and have dinner with Bob.”

“All right, dear. How did your appointment go?”

“They don’t have any vacancies.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. But you’ll find something soon.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t be too late now.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Jane Ann walked four blocks to Angelo’s. She found a small semicircular bench against the back wall, a low cocktail table in front of it. She put the portfolio and her shoulder bag on the bench beside her. The smiling waiter recognized her and took her drink order.

She did not see Bob come in. She looked up and saw him as he walked toward her, smiling. Bob Larrimore was a big, vivid, personable man. She had met him at one of Mamie Gilbraith’s parties. He was the young eastern-division sales manager of a company which was one of the store’s big suppliers. Jane Ann liked him very much. Bob was trying to get her to convince herself that it was love. She was not yet willing to admit that. She knew only that she had fun when she was with him. He wanted badly to marry her, and so persistent was his campaign that he sometimes made her feel a bit trapped.

He sat beside her. “Honestly, how any man could be fool enough not to hire you...”

“Shambrun didn’t. I got off on the wrong foot somehow.”

“When you go after a job, honey, you’ve got to use the old psychology; you can’t beg. You have to make ’em want you.”

“You told me that before, and besides I didn’t beg.”

“Did he look at your work?”

“He looked at it.”

“Gosh, you are down, aren’t you, Waiter!”

When the waiter had left with his order. Bob took Jane Ann’s hand in his. “Honey, I don’t want to kid you. I feel bad because you do, of course, but I can’t help thinking it’s for the best.”

She removed her hand. “I knew you were going to say that.”

“I can’t help saying it. I think it’s fine that you want to do something with your art training. But marriage is a job, too. A damn important one.”

“I realize that. I want to be married, and I want to be a good wife.”

“Well?”

“Let me finish. I just want to know that I can do something else. That I could be good at it. You see, I have to prove that to myself. First.”

“But I know you can do it.”

“I haven’t proved it yet. And until I do, I can’t be that confident, thank you.”

He frowned. “Honey, if you’d gotten the job, I wouldn’t have said a word. But you didn’t get it. We have to face that. It just means that you’re going to keep on looking, and time is going to keep going by. I’ll be thirty next year. I’ve got a good job. A man in my job ought to be married. There are certain kinds of entertaining that can only be done in a home. I think we ought to...”

“Sometimes. Bob, you make me feel as if I have no face.”

“No face? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You seem to be in love with the idea of getting married, not with me. You think it’s time you got married. So I’m just the thing you’ve picked to marry. You make me feel as if I’m not me.”

“That’s the darndest thing I ever heard! It isn’t that way at all! I love you, Jane Ann. And I’m telling you that we’re wasting time just because you feel you have to prove something about yourself.”

“You make it sound juvenile.”

“Isn’t it? Just a little?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Today they sank me without a trace. And I need another drink.”

He looked uncomfortable. “That isn’t the solution, dear.”

“To drink too much? I hadn’t thought of it. But now that you bring it up, maybe I will. You never drink too much, do you, Robert? Have to keep your wits about you. Make good impressions.”

“Let’s not scrap.”

He looked so miserable she felt sorry for him. She touched his hand. “Okay.”

“Now I’ll tell you something. I have to make a swing through the territory. It’ll take about three weeks. I could take a week off before the swing starts. That would give us a week’s honeymoon, and then three weeks on the road which would be almost like having a full month. What do you say?”

“You just don’t give up, do you?”

“Not Larrimore. Not ever.”

“Larrimore, this evening I do not want to talk about marriage. Buy me a drink and tell me funny jokes or something. Make me laugh.”

It was five minutes to nine. Rome sat alone in Heard’s office. He got up restlessly from the desk and stood at the windows. Somewhere out there, in the city, was the bomb. The man who had made it was in a cold drawer at the city morgue. The ruined body of Holmar was at a funeral home. Somewhere out there a girl walked, talked, laughed — and her life was a thin gray wire weakening under the slow assault of the acid. Perhaps she sat in a movie with the purse on her lap. He snapped his fingers, hurried from the office. When he returned slowly to the office, he knew that within minutes the warning would come over the big speakers in all the movie houses of the city. It was one further precaution, probably as useless as all the rest.

He sat at the desk, head propped on his fists. He wondered if, during these last few years, he had been working too hard. This affair had unsettled him badly. He lived in a furnished room, ate in restaurants, had no outside interest beyond the job. Objectively he knew that his way of life was wrong. He sensed the distortion, and knew that it was not good. He had excused himself by believing that one day things would change. But things had not changed and the work load grew heavier rather than lighter.

He could not stop thinking of the girl, imagining how she was, how she looked. Through a trick of his mind she had become infinitely precious to him. She had become the girl he had not yet found, the girl who would have changed his life.

Rome knew that such imaginings were absurd. This girl would be no substitute for the Irene he had lost years ago. This would be no tall fine girl with level eyes and sober lips and hair that had the feel of silk. If they found her in time — and he had begun to doubt that they would — she would turn out to be a squat, acne-ridden, shallow-eyed, gum-chomping girl, with a shrill nervous laugh and a great dull-eyed hulk of a boy friend. Or she would be one of those women who seem to exist only in offices — figure like a milestone, geometrically corseted, face like a summons and eyes like flint. Or that other type, body made of sticks, vague eyes behind heavy lenses, a wardrobe embracing every possible shade and tone of mud.

He had been in police work long enough to know disillusion. It was a stupid and pointless mental game to endow this unknown girl with all the qualities of the lost Irene, of the girl he had hoped to find. Yet he could not help it. He could see her, walking alone. She would have a shoulder bag. It would brush lightly against her side in the cadence of her walk. The curve of her hip and waist was lovely, all the warm vulnerable aliveness of her. He shut his eyes and he could see her walking away from him down an empty, brightly lighted street, tall, quick, and graceful. He stood and watched her walk away from him. Then there would be a hard flash, a fist blow against the night. It would leave its after-image against his eyes, and, when he could see again, he would see the figure on the sidewalk, stilled and shattered and shrunken...

“Brian!”

He looked up at George Pell. George was looking at him curiously. “You all right?”

“I’m okay.”

“No luck yet?”

“Nothing. We’ve contacted the girl that was knocked down. She could remember six of the girls on the elevator. We got hold of them all. They gave us three more names. One of the three gave us one more name. And it ended right there. No descriptions of the ones they didn’t know. But that gave us one break. We know the elevator came right down from seventeen. We know it picked up passengers from twenty-two, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, and seventeen. Dumont has been able to quit on the lower floors. He’s concentrated the men on the top floor firms, and let some of them go. In another hour we ought to be fresh out of names.”

“How about people who visited the offices?”

“We’re doing what we can, George. We’ve got the appointment records, and we’re checking those, too. But in some cases there are no records.”

Pell had one of the bomb cases in his hand. He looked at it with distaste. “Now I want to give you some more happy news, Brian. That timing I told you about isn’t that accurate.”

“What do you mean?”

“It will only work that accurately if the bomb isn’t being moved around. Just as a guess I’d say that by about ten-thirty that wire will be weak enough so that any sharp blow might break it and detonate the bomb. And by eleven any quick movement might do it. And I’d guess that by eleven-thirty any movement at all will do the trick.”

“Fine!” Rome said hollowly. “Dandy!”

“Elser planned on its sitting still in a drawer. He didn’t figure on anybody carrying it around. If you’re going to find it and get it to a safe place, it had better happen before eleven.”

Brian Rome looked at his watch. It was sixteen minutes of ten.

They had stayed at Angelo’s too long. Jane Ann began to feel emotionally exhausted. Bob would be charming and amusing for a time and then quite subtly he would turn the conversation back toward marriage. Each time she forestalled the making of a decision it cost her a certain quota of emotional energy. She had threatened to go home several times, but Bob had apologized so gracefully that she had stayed. She sensed that he was quite aware of how heavy a toll this day had taken of her resources, and meant to take advantage of it. But even as she felt irritation toward him for this calculated bit of ruthlessness, it was an increasingly great temptation to give up, say “yes,” stop fighting. He would be a good husband, she thought. Protective and affectionate.

It was after nine when they left Angelo’s to drive over and have dinner at the Sutton Inn. The Sutton Inn was one of the best eating places in the city. She felt improperly dressed for the decor of the Inn, but Bob reassured her. Reassurance did not help very much when they walked in. She was certain that her suit was wrinkled in the back. Bob said he would wait at the bar while she went to the women’s room to freshen up.

Once she was in the women’s room, she sat down at one of the dressing tables. As she looked skeptically at her face in the mirror, she reached down into the shoulder bag and found her make-up equipment by sense of touch. There were bluish shadows under her eyes and she decided her color wasn’t good. Her hair looked dry and brittle.

Two women came in as she was fixing her hair, talking together. “... known Charles for years. He wouldn’t pull a cheap stunt like that, my dear. I’m positive the bomb exists. I don’t think it’s in somebody’s purse like they say. No woman could carry a thing like that around this long without finding it. Frankly, I’m getting quite sick of the whole thing.”

“It’s sort of exciting.”

“It’s dreadful! They’re getting so morbid about it. The next thing you know they’ll have people on the street grabbing purses and searching them.”

Jane Ann dropped her lipstick into her bag and left the room. The conversation had puzzled her. She was still wondering about it when Bob turned away from the bar and they were escorted back to their table.

“Some women in there were talking about a bomb.”

“I heard some men at the bar saying something about that. Somebody tried to plant a bomb in Wylie’s desk today.”

“They said it was in a purse, in some woman’s purse.”

“You’re confused, honey. Look. I’m sorry about the way I needled you back at Angelo’s. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

She smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“You’re an adult. You can make up your own mind. You know where I stand, I guess.”

“I certainly do!”

“One more cocktail? It’ll cheer you up. There’s no hurry about ordering. They serve here until midnight.”

“All right,” she said, “one more.”

At twenty after ten Sergeant Dumont walked slowly into the office where Brian Rome sat at the desk. Rome looked up at him. Dumont shook his head.

“How do we look?”

“The cars have about four no-phones left to track down. Four girls left town after work, two on long weekends, and two starting early vacations. We’ve gotten to three of them. We’ll get to the fourth at the bus station in Buffalo in...” he looked at his watch “... another six minutes. That will wind up every female employee on the top six floors. I’ve got two men still working on visitors.”

“Good work. How are they doing?”

“There’s five that can’t be checked at all. No names. They were on seventeen in a research bureau office, waiting to be interviewed. The job was filled at about quarter of five and the girl told them and they took off. They weren’t asked for their names. The girl is sure it was quarter of five. So maybe they got down and out of the way in time. And we’ve got three names we’re still trying to check. Two of them are from a law office on twenty-two and one is from an advertising agency on eighteen.” He looked at his sheet of paper. “A Mrs. Brown, a Miss Davids, and a Miss Kimball.”

One of the telephone men came in. “You can check off Brown. No answer on that phone for Kimball. Here’s the number. Joey thinks he’s got a line on the Davids girl.”

Dumont took the slip with the phone number on it. “I guess you can knock off now.” The man yawned and said “goodnight” and trudged out.

Just as he got beyond the door. Brian Rome called him back. “What’s the story on Kimball?”

“She was on the appointment book at an advertising agency on the eighteenth floor. Miller, Hogan, and Brie. She had a quarter-of-four appointment to see a man named... wait a minute... Shambrun. I got hold of Shambrun. He said she was after a job. He didn’t hire her. He didn’t know her first name. He said a woman named Gilbraith sent her around. He had Gilbraith’s number handy so he gave it to me. I phoned Gilbraith. Gilbraith told me the name was Jane Ann Kimball and she lived with her mother somewhere on West Adams. Kimball is a clerk and a dress model at Bloomington’s. I found a phone for Mrs. James Kimball on West Adams. There’s nobody home.”

“What time did she leave Shambrun?”

“He thinks it was five o’clock.”

The man left. Dumont went out to check on the remaining names. Brian Rome lit another cigarette. He thought about the Kimball girl. She would have to be attractive to be a model. He wondered what sort of job she was trying to get with an advertising firm.

Dumont came back in and reported that the girl had been contacted at the bus station in Buffalo and she could be crossed off. Three of the no-phones had been cleared. Miss Davids had been found at a roller rink.

“Now what?” Dumont demanded.

Rome leaned back, his eyes half shut. “How many times have you tried to find something and found it in the last place you looked?”

“You mean Kimball? I doubt it.”

“Until we check every last one we can possibly check, Jerry, it isn’t over, it isn’t done.”

“But don’t expect her to have it.”

Rome stood up. “I’m going nuts sitting around. You stay here. I’ll go on out there. What’s the address?”

“Twelve ten.”

“I’ll call in after I draw a car. Communications will have the car number. Let me know if we get anything.”

After he was six blocks from headquarters, and had called in, Brian Rome looked at his wrist watch, holding it so a streetlight touched the dial. Ten after eleven. He found 1210 West Adams without difficulty. It was a small brick apartment house. He parked in front and went into the unlocked foyer and found that the mother and daughter lived in 1 F. He pressed the button for a long time. There was no answer. He tried 1 E and again there was no answer. When he pressed the button for 1 D, the inner door buzzed. He opened it and went down the narrow hallway past the single elevator. The door of 1 D opened and a heavy man in a T shirt stepped out into the hall.

“Something you want, friend?”

“Police. I’m trying to locate Mrs. Kimball or her daughter.”

A slight woman appeared beside the heavy man. “If they aren’t in, I don’t know where they are. But maybe you could try 3 A. She goes up there lots of evenings and plays Scrabble with Mrs. Fisher. Is something wrong?”

“Just routine. Thanks.”

He went up in the elevator and knocked at the door of 3 A. A gray-haired woman opened the door. Another woman of the same approximate age sat at a card table. A Scrabble game was in progress.

“I’m trying to locate Mrs. Kimball.”

“I’m Mrs. Kimball,” the other woman said. “What do you want me for?”

Rome stepped into the room. “I’m a police officer, Mrs. Kimball. My name is Rome. I’m trying to locate your daughter, Jane Ann.”

The woman jumped up, her hand to her throat, eyes wide. “What’s the matter? What do you want with my Jane Ann?”

“Nothing’s wrong. This is just a routine check. Did you hear about the bomb which was placed in some woman’s purse today?”

“Yes. It’s been on the radio all evening. But what’s that got to do with Jane Ann?”

“She was in the Shannon Building today and she left at five.”

“The Shannon Building! She works at Bloom... wait a minute. She went to see about a job today. She got off from the store. But do you really think it could...” The woman bit her lip and sat down again suddenly. “Oh my goodness!”

“I’m just checking. Mrs. Kimball. Where is your daughter?”

“Why, I don’t have any idea! She’s out on a date with Bob Larrimore. I don’t know where she is. But she ought to be home soon.”

“Can you give me a description, please?”

“Well, she’s tall and has light brown hair, and she’s slim and very pretty. She’s a model, you know. She’s a very talented artist, too...”

“How was she dressed?”

“Let me see now. She had on her new tan suit. And a white blouse. She took her portfolio with her. And she had her white shoulder bag.”

“What does Larrimore look like?”

“He’s big and very handsome and lively, with black hair and blue eyes.”

“Do they go out often?”

“Oh, quite often. They’ve been going around together for nearly a year. He takes Jane Ann to nice places.”

“Can you name some of them?”

“Well, there’s Angelo’s, and the Princess Hotel, and the Sutton Inn. and... well, just about every good place.”

“Had she planned this date in advance?”

“No, she called up and told me she didn’t get the job and she was meeting Bob.”

“Where does he work?”

“Their offices are in the Farmers Union Building. Maybe she’s home by now. Agnes, I don’t believe I can finish this game. I’m too upset.”

He went down with the two women on the elevator. He thanked Mrs. Kimball and asked her what kind of a car Larrimore drove.

“I really don’t know. They all look alike to me. It’s big and dark-colored.”

As soon as Rome got in his car he called in and ordered a cruiser sent to 1210 West Adams as quickly as possible. The cruiser arrived five minutes later. Rome told them to wait there in case the Kimball girl showed up. He told them to get the man and the girl out of the car and not to let her touch her purse. He made a U turn and went back toward town. As he drove he thought of the location of the Shannon Building and the Farmers Union Building in relation to places where the two could have met. He decided on Angelo’s.

“Yes, Lieutenant, we know Mr. Larrimore in here. Yes, he was in this evening. With a tall girl in a tan suit. They stayed a long time, but they didn’t eat here. They left after nine. I couldn’t say where they went. The waiter? Billy, go get Luigi out of the kitchen.”

Luigi was a small man with a wide nervous smile and expansive gestures. He did not know Larrimore by name. Larrimore had to be described to him, along with the girl. “Ah yes! They were here a long time.”

“Where did they go from here? Did you hear them talking?”

“Let me think a minute. I remember this. The lady, she wished to eat here. I think. He did not wish to. I think they quarreled over something. The man looked angry. Wait a minute.” He hit his forehead with his fist. He beamed at Rome. “The Sutton Inn. I heard him say that.”

It was quarter of midnight when Rome ran to the car again. He had four miles to go. The night streets were reasonably clear of traffic. It felt good to hurl the car down the long cavern of the boulevard, to achieve maximum speed, knowing that he could do no more than he was doing at this moment. He could see the line of traffic signals far ahead. A car cut across in front of him; he swerved dangerously, teetering on the naked edge of control. The siren sound faded to a lower key and then welled up again as he put the accelerator to the floor. He knew that he risked too much on too small a chance, but he felt such an unwarranted certainty that this was the right girl that he could not slow the headlong pace of the car.

When he saw the sign of the Sutton Inn ahead, he lifted his foot from the gas pedal and touched the brake lightly. He pumped the brake, losing momentum rapidly, the siren sound dying, then hit the brake hard and, after a screaming skid, turned in between the gray stone pillars and fought the swaying car to a stop under the porte-cochère.

The parking lot attendant gaped at him as he ran into the Sutton Inn, ran through the big foyer with its cloak room and crystal chandelier. A man reached for him as he hurried by the bar but Rome thrust the thick arm aside and ran into the dining room. There were only four or five tables occupied. He saw a girl in a tan suit sitting with a man who had black hair. They sat side by side on an upholstered bench that ran along one wall. The girl was lifting a coffee cup to her lips, looking at the man over the rim of it. The man was smiling as he talked.

Rome knew that someone was following him, hissing at him. He went directly to the table. A white shoulder bag was on the bench beside the girl.

“Miss Kimball!”

She stared at him. “Yes?” she said uncertainly. He knew that he must be a startling apparition to her, dark hair tousled, eyes wild.

“I must ask you to come outside immediately.” He put a hard edge of command in his voice. As the girl reached instinctively toward her purse he caught her wrist. “Don’t touch your purse.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Larrimore demanded.

The man who had followed Rome grabbed his arm. “Police,” Brian Rome said and yanked his arm free. “We have reason to believe the bomb intended for Wylie was put in this girl’s purse when she left the Shannon Building. If so, it’s due to go boom.” He turned to the wide-eyed manager. “I want this room cleared at once.”

He turned back. The girl was getting out from behind the table, pale but calm. Rome saw Larrimore, after a frozen pause, run heavily for the arched doorway that led into the bar. He did not look back at the girl.

Rome took the girl’s arm and hurried her toward the door. He raised his voice. “Clear this room, folks. We may have an explosion in here. Get moving.”

Rome pushed the girl hurriedly toward the front door. He cleared the bar, herding everyone through the main door. They stood out in the night, awed, chattering, looking uneasily at the Sutton Inn.

A big man in a white jacket with a red carnation in the lapel took Rome aside. “I’m Proctor, the manager here. What’s the idea of this?”

“You heard about the bomb.”

“Yes, of course. Is it in that girl’s purse?”

“I didn’t look. It could be.”

“What kind of a police operation is this? Why didn’t you look?”

“My friend, if it’s there, it’s due to go. I couldn’t look without moving it. I couldn’t move it without helping it along. I’m no hero.”

“If this is a false alarm there’s going to be some trouble.”

Brian Rome walked away from him. He saw the Kimball girl and Larrimore standing a dozen feet from the others. He went over to them. “Miss Kimball, I didn’t want to waste time asking questions in there. Did you leave the Shannon Building at about five?”

“Yes, I did.”

Rome could hear Proctor apologizing to the ousted customers, telling them to forget about their dinner checks.

“Was a woman knocked down getting out of the elevator you were on?”

“Why, yes! Some man in an awful hurry knocked her down.”

“Do you know where that man was standing in the elevator?”

“I think he must have been standing behind me. He pushed me out of the way when he left.”

“Could he have put anything in your shoulder bag?”

“I guess he could have.”

Proctor came over. “Can we stop this nonsense now?”

“We’ll wait a while,” Rome said.

Larrimore moved closer to Rome. “I’d like to go in and take a look in that purse, officer.”

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Rome said.

“Somebody should make sure. Then we wouldn’t be standing out here like a bunch of...”

“We’re making sure by standing out here. Nobody is going in. If you’re trying to show off for the girl, forget it.”

Larrimore looked toward the main entrance. Rome saw that he was biting his lip. He looked tense and nervous.

“I think I left my lighter in there,” he said, much too loudly, and started toward the door. Brian Rome caught him just as he reached the door. Larrimore struggled, a bit weakly for so large a man. Just as Rome started to haul him back, the explosion came. It was like a deep heavy cough. It made a pressure on Rome’s ears. After it was over the tinkle of glass falling from the windows seemed to last a long time. Rome ran inside with the manager at his heels. The table and bench and wall were scorched and blackened. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in two small places. Every window was blown out.

The tablecloth and the upholstery of the bench smoldered. Proctor brought a heavy fire extinguisher and deftly trained the stream on the smoking fabric. When he was through he looked at Rome and smiled and flushed.

“Sorry I was such a damn fool.”

“I could have been wrong. I thought I was wrong.”

Brian Rome walked out to the car and called in. Then he hung the hand mike on the dash and just sat there. From the shadows he heard the heavy insistent voice of Larrimore. He got out of the car and walked toward the voice. Jane Ann Kimball stood with her back against the building.

“Look,” Larrimore said, “you’re upset. I’ll take you home.”

“Go away, Bob. Please. Just go away.”

“You haven’t any right to treat me like this! Okay, I was scared. But I didn’t stay scared. I was ready to go back in there.”

“Just go home, Bob. Go away.”

“You’re not going to get away with it,” Larrimore said. He took the girl’s arm and began to pull her forcibly toward the parking lot.

“Hold it,” Rome said. “I have some questions to ask Miss Kimball.”

“Well, ask them and get it over with.”

“I’m taking her downtown with me, Larrimore.”

“I’ll drive her down.”

“Sorry. You run along.”

“This is pretty damn high-handed.”

“Run along.”

Larrimore looked at them indignantly and then strode off. They heard his car door slam. He drove out of the lot onto the boulevard.

“Thank you,” the girl said.

“You better go back inside and phone your mother before the police reporters get here and tie the phones up. She’s worried about you.”

The girl went in obediently. He leaned against the car and smoked a cigarette. She came back out in three or four minutes.

“I shouldn’t have tried to tell her that it was in my purse. She gets confused. I’ll have to tell her when I get home. Do we go downtown now, Lieutenant?”

“No. No more questions. We know all the answers.”

“Except... except why a man would want to do that to me.”

“We won’t ever know that.”

“He didn’t even know me. I... I better call a taxi.”

“Get in. I’ll take you home.”

He turned out onto the boulevard, driving slowly. After a long time she said, “I haven’t even thanked you.”

“Then go ahead.”

“Well... thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now that’s over.” She laughed, with just the faintest afterimage of hysteria in her tone, and then became silent again.

When she spoke again her voice was defensive. “It wasn’t that I wanted him to shield me with his body or fall on the bomb or anything. It’s just... he talked all evening about undying love and so on. He wants to marry me. Then he ran like a rabbit. I ought to try to understand, instead of feeling... well, contemptuous.”

He stopped in front of the apartment. He felt as if a grayness, a lifelessness had slowly seeped through him. The girl was not a mystic creature, not the magic one he had imagined. She was tall and pretty, and she had her own troubles. They had merely met in this odd way, and it would properly end here. She would be grateful that he had saved her, and had in saving her taught her something about Larrimore that she had sensed but not seen clearly. He knew that he in turn would think of her — not often, and not as a special person, not as the very special person he had thought about before he had found her — but rather as a strange police problem solved during an evening when fatigue had distorted the look of everything.

They got out of the car and she said, “Thanks again, Lieutenant.”

He took her extended hand. “I’m glad we didn’t miss.”

“So am I. Well... goodnight.”

He said goodnight to her and watched her go into the lighted foyer. She stood silhouetted against the light. She stood there, alive and whole and unmarked.

He wished in that moment that it could come out a better way, that somehow this could be the girl to ease loneliness. He thought he might see her again, take her out. She could hardly refuse. Then he shrugged and got back into the car. When it happened, you should know at once. And it had not yet happened. He drove slowly down through the city toward headquarters, toward the reports to be filled out, toward the good time of leaving with Dumont and having coffee and sitting quietly and thinking with quiet satisfaction of how, once more, they had done a job.