Ellery had thought he was through with Wrightsville. He had even developed a nostalgia about it, like the man who looks back on his boyhood home through the filtering lens of a sentimental eye. He liked to say that, although he was born in New York City, Wrightsville was his spiritual birthplace � a town of complacent elms, wandering cobbles, and crooked sidestreets nestled in the lap of a farmers� valley and leaning against the motherly abdomen of one of New England�s most matriarchal mountain ranges. Here it was always forest green or immaculate with snow. Orderly fields to look at, spiced air to breathe, the unfolding satisfaction of the hills. The whole place glittered in his memory like a diamond, or an emerald.

Never a ruby, because the blood color was uncomfortably close to the mark.

The envelope cast a ruby glow.

Ellery examined it again, not touching its contents.

It was a long envelope of flawed slick bluish paper, the correspondence offering of every five-and-ten cent store in America. This one, he felt sure, came from the stationery counter of the High Village Five-and-Dime. A few doors away dozed J. C. Pettigrew, Real Estate, and at the Five-and-Dime�s Upper Whistling side glared Miss Sally�s Tea Roome, where the ladies of Wrightsville�s haut monde forgathered daily to sample Miss Sally�s celebrated caloric specialty, Pineapple Marshmallow Nut Mousse. O Wrightsville! If you sighted due west along Lower Main from the entrance of the Five-and-Dime you could just make out the limy bronze back of Founder Jezreel Wright lording it over the rustcaked horse trough in the center of the Square (which was round) and beyond, on the Square�s western arc, the new marquee of the old Hollis Hotel, in certain of whose rooms could still be found the forthright china receptacles which the management in an earlier generation had provided for the nighttime convenience of its guests. And if you looked across the street, next door to Louie Cahan�s Bijou you saw the cheap white glare of the Kut-Rate Drug Co. Thunder mugs and fluorescence � in focus, this was Wrightsville; and rather peevishly Ellery flipped over the envelope which had photographed his illusion.

There was no return address.

Of course there wouldn�t be. People who addressed an envelope in penciled capitals, deliberately crude, announced their passionate shyness in the act. An anonymous letter. Ellery was tempted to scale it into his April fire.

He slit the envelope with care.

It contained some newspaper clippings held together at their upper lefthand corners by an ordinary steel pin.

There was nothing else in the envelope.

The topmost clipping advertised the masthead of the Wrightsville Record, Wrightsville�s only daily newspaper, and the date: Wednesday, February 1.

Two months old, then. Ellery read the story through.

It reported the death from heart failure of Luke MacCaby, 74, of 551 State Street, High Village.

Ellery did not recall the name, but there was a one-column cut of the dead man�s house and he thought he recognized it.

It was a very large porched, peaked, gabled, and turreted building painted the inescapable Victorian dirty tan; it was fancy with wooden embroidery and stained-glass fanlights and it drooped against the dreary earth on which it had stood for six or seven decades. State Street, which is the northeast spoke leading from the Square�s hub, is the broadest thoroughfare in town, and for several blocks it is stately and beautiful. But farther up it goes seedy. This was the fashionable residential district of Wrightsville around the turn of the century, before the old families moved up to the Hill. Now the down-at-the-heel mansions are populated by the lower middle class; some of them are rooming houses. Porches sag everywhere. Latticework is broken-toothed. Walks are cracked and hairy. The entire district cries out for carpentry and paint.

If the MacCaby house was the one Ellery recalled, it stood on the corner of State and Upper Foaming and it was the largest house and it cried out in the loudest tones of any house in the neighborhood.

MacCaby, said the Record, had been The Town Hermit. He had rarely ventured from the dilapidated premises in which he crept mysteriously about; he had not been seen around the Square or Lower Main, testified High Village tradesmen, for many years. In the old days MacCaby had been thought a miser, gloating over hypothetical piles of gold and diamonds in the gaslit interior of his ancestral hovel; but this rumor, whether made of myth or matter, apparently lacked vitality, for it had faded and died off; and for a long time now The Town Hermit had been considered a pauper subsisting on crusts. This was obviously not true, since he employed a caretaker, or companion, or servant � the story was vague as to the man�s status; but that Luke MacCaby had been in poor circumstances was attested by his physician, the well-known High Village general practitioner Dr. Sebastian Dodd (of whom Ellery had never heard, either). Dr. Dodd, interviewed by the Record, reluctantly confessed that for years he had kept sending the old man bills, until �I realized the poor old codger simply didn�t have enough to live on decently, so I stopped dunning him.� Nevertheless, Dr. Dodd had continued to take medical care of MacCaby to the day of MacCaby�s death. The old man had been suffering from a chronic heart ailment. To relieve his attacks Dr. Dodd had given him certain tablets.

So far as was known, Luke MacCaby was the last of his line; his wife had died in 1909 and they had had no �issue,� according to the Record. He left behind only the questionable memories of his caretaker-companion-servant, Harry Toyfell. Toyfell had cared for MacCaby for fifteen years. He was an old man himself � another of the town characters, it seemed, for he was known as The Town Philosopher. Even better, Toyfell was often seen at Gus Olesen�s Roadside Tavern on Route 16 in the company of Tom Anderson and Nicole Jacquard. At the encounter with Tom Anderson, Ellery warmed; here at last was an old acquaintance, he who was known to Wrightsville not unaffectionately as The Town Drunk and/or The Town Beggar. Nicole Jacquard eluded him for a moment. Unless... By gar! Back in �40 or �41 Ellery had been told of a Low Village French Canadian (in Wrightsvillese, �Canuck�) family named Jacquard, the heads of which had specialized in the production of children; hadn�t there been something about �another� set of triplets...? If Nicole Jacquard was that Jacquard, as seemed likely, he was not exactly a model of Low Village deportment. That Jacquard � and Ellery hoped he was motivated by nothing more reprehensible than the necessity of keeping the innumerable little Jacquard mouths filled � had been frankly known as The Town Thief. Ellery felt a positive glow; it was like coming home again.

There was little more to the newspaper story. Toyfell and his queer employer had been known �to fight like a cat and a dog.� Asked why he had remained in the sour ruin for so many years tending a crotchety hermit who (presumably) paid him little or nothing, Toyfell had replied in four profound words: �He liked flowers, too.� Toyfell had green fingers; he had worked miracles in the MacCaby garden, the only vital spot on the premises, with cuttings allegedly raped from North Hill estates as his material. The MacCaby Giant Gladiolus was a seasonal feature of Andy Birobatyan�s Wrightsville Florist Shop on Washington Street.

Now that his employer was dead, Toyfell was asked his �plans.� He replied: �For five years Mr. John Hart�s been pesterin� me to take over his gardenin�. Guess I�ll do it now.� John Hart � John Spencer Hart � was the millionaire owner of �the old cotton mill� in Low Village, the Record reminded its readers. Knowing Wrightsville, Ellery was not astonished to learn that this was a locutionary tie with the past; no cotton had been milled in the old cotton mill for twenty years. Mr. John Spencer Hart�s millions came from dyes, and over the ugly plant at Washington and Lower Whistling ran the stainless steel legend, WRIGHTSVILLE DYE WORKS.

�So ends another romantic chapter in Wrightsville history. Services for the deceased will be conducted by Dr. Ernest Highmount, assistant pastor of the First Congregational Church on West Livesey Street. Interment will be at East Twin Hill Cemetery, in the MacCaby family plot.�

Requiescat in pace. And Harry Toyfell, may your new gardening job with Millionaire John Spencer Hart add material peace to your philosophy. But why in hell should anyone think I�d be interested?

Ellery glanced at the byline at the head of the clipping.

By Malvina Prentiss.

He shook his head and flipped the clipping back.

A second excerpt from the Wrightsville Record. A later one: Monday, February 13. And this second story was scareheaded. The Record had a sensation by the tail and it was shouting. (Somehow, it did not seem like the Record of Frank Lloyd�s day, or even of Diedrich Van Horn�s. It was blary. Under new publishership, apparently.)

The second clipping followed up the obituary story of February 1. Luke MacCaby, the eccentric old pauper, had been no pauper at all. He had died one of the wealthiest men in Wrightsville!

So there is matter in myth after all.

Secretly, MacCaby had been a full partner in the Wrightsville Dye Works.

Why MacCaby had chosen to remain a silent partner in a multi-million-dollar plant which had mushroomed during the war and had been spreading ever since �will never be known. According to Mr. Hart, Mr. MacCaby insisted that their business relationship be kept a secret without ever revealing his reason. Mr. Hart believes that Mr. MacCaby�s eccentricity,� etc.

It appeared that MacCaby had kept his stock, his dividends, virtually all his assets, in a large safe deposit box in the vaults of the Wrightsville National Bank; even the officers of the bank (said Mr. Wolfert Van Horn, president) had been ignorant of MacCaby�s partnership in the Wrightsville Dye Works. Hart had established a special account in a Connhaven bank; all partnership checks went into this account and MacCaby�s funds came to him � at his request, said Hart � in cash.

Sensation.

The story came out, said the Record, when Otis Holderfield, a local attorney, filed a will for probate with the County Surrogate which, said Holderfield, Mr. MacCaby had had him draw only a few weeks before the old man�s death.

But this was nothing compared with the revelation to come. Luke MacCaby had willed his entire estate to a well-known Wrightsvillian, a worthy man known for his good works; in fact � hold your breath, now � to none other than... Dr. Sebastian Dodd!

Sensation!

Dr. Sebastian Dodd�s fees were still two dollars �at the office,� three on house call. Dr. Sebastian Dodd�s patients were poor farmers, poor Low Villagers, poor High Villagers; he specialized in poverty. He was known to own only two suits and he ran an antediluvian �tin lizzie.� He could not have survived without the occasional Hill patient who, since Dr. Milo Willoughby�s death, came to him instead of to one of �the young men.� Dr. Sebastian Dodd�s waiting room was always full and his checking account always empty. He was so busy being a failure that he had even taken a young associate, Dr. Kenneth Winship, to help him stay poor.

This was the man who had come into an estate worth over four million dollars. The Record waxed ecstatic. Who said Virtue went Unrewarded?

Dr. Sebastian Dodd was flabbergasted. �Why, what can I say? I don�t know what to say. I never had the least idea... he never let on...� At first the elderly physician had insisted feebly that it must be a hoax. Four million dollars! But when Attorney Otis Holderfield cited him clause and codicil, and Mr. John Spencer Hart confirmed it, Dr. Dodd turned sparkly-eyed. He began to speak of the deplorable condition of the Wrightsville General Hospital. Until 1946, Dr. Dodd pointed out, Wrightsville�s only hospital had not even possessed a private pavilion. Its equipment was out-of-date and inadequate and its bed capacity far too small to cope with the medical needs of a community numbering ten thousand souls. ��When I took over as chief of staff from the late Milo Willoughby in �48,� said Dr. Dodd,� said the Record, ��I promised myself by golly I wouldn�t rest till the Wrightsville General got at least the modern children�s wing we need so awfully bad. Now, through Mr. MacCaby�s generosity, I can endow one.��

To Harry Toyfell, The Town Hermit had left exactly nothing.

The Town Philosopher came nobly to the support of his reputation when the Record reporter asked him how he felt about having been overlooked in the will of the old man he had served for so long. ��Thy money perish with thee,�� he said, the Record identifying the source of this wisdom as Acts VIII, 20. �The grave manured by gold grows weeds,� Toyfell had added, quoting himself this time (or the Record was unable to locate the quotation). �Money wouldn�t make me a better man, now would it? In the eyes of the Lord all men are equal. Read your Jesus. Read your Paine.� The Record commented on Toyfell�s Christian character and said there was a deep lesson for all its readers in this humble old man�s stern spirituality. The Record did a little quoting of its own, mentioning the needle�s eye.

No, Harry Toyfell had not suspected MacCaby�s affluence.

The story was bylined: By Malvina Prentiss.

Ellery, frowning, turned to the next-underlying clipping.

This one � it was the last � was dated Monday, February 20. One week later the story had shot up like the Beanstalk. John Spencer Hart had committed suicide.

This time Ellery read with naked devotion.

On learning that he was Luke MacCaby�s sole heir to some four millions of dollars, Dr. Sebastian Dodd had retained Otis Holderfield, the lawyer who had drawn MacCaby�s astonishing will, to watch over his legal interests. Accordingly, Holderfield had presented a letter for his new client�s signature which was addressed to Mr. John Spencer Hart, president of the Wrightsville Dye Works, requesting a preliminary accounting of the plant�s financial status. Dr. Dodd had signed the letter, Attorney Holderfield had mailed it to Mr. Hart by Registered Mail, Return Receipt Requested, the receipt had come back duly signed by addressee; and that night the millionaire had pleaded a grippey feeling, he had handed his wife into the Harts� town-and-country job, watched her drive off to a housewarming at the Hallam Lucks� � who had just moved from Hill Drive to a magnificent new house on Skytop Road � stepped back into his house, and he had dismissed the four inside servants for the evening. Hart had then gone into his library, locked the door, written a note to his wife, and blown his brains out.

This spectacular effect had obviously rocketed from a cause, which could only have been the slightly dangerous legal letter the late millionaire had just received. (To the Record, faithfully reflecting Wrightsville mores, all �lawyer letters� had a sinister undertone.) But what was the fireworks ingredient? Investigation soon isolated it. Unknown even to his wife, Hart had been gambling and speculating like a madman for years, his acumen apparently having been restricted to the dye business. His personal fortune had been consumed; his interest in the Wrightsville Dye Works was eaten away; he had even gnawed a chunk out of his silent partner�s interest. Hart had teetered on the brink of ruin and prison at the very moment when his new partner�s formal request for an accounting arrived. A well-placed bullet seemed the reasonable solution.

A report from Finegold & Izzard, Certified Public Accountants (108 Upham Block, on the Square), revealed that the Wrightsville Dye Works was still in sound shape despite Hart�s reckless inroads. ��No cut in personnel is contemplated, no,� says Dr. Dodd, now sole owner of the dye works,� said the Record, ��at least at present. As for management, I have had several long talks with George Churchward, who ran the plant under Mr. Hart since early in the war, and I�m convinced Mr. Churchward knows his business. As soon as the legal mess is cleaned up, Churchward becomes vice-president in full charge of plant operations. Meanwhile, he will continue in his present capacity.�� The Record pointed out that George Churchward had long been one of the most up-and-coming young plant managers in the industrial county and that he was 41, married to Angel Asperley Stone, popular daughter of Willis Stone (the well-known High Village mortician), and father of three of Wrightsville�s brightest �sun-suit set,� Charline Willis, 5, Love Asperley, 3, and George, Jr., 16 months. �Congratulations, George Churchward!�

John Spencer Hart was survived by his widow, Ursula Hart (nee Brooks), and their son Carver B., sophomore at Yale. ��I understand John Hart left very little insurance,� stated Dr. Sebastian Dodd today to the Record in an exclusive interview, �having borrowed the limit against his policies and let others lapse, so that Mrs. Hart and her son are being left practically destitute. I�m writing to her today. As soon as the dye works tangle and the MacCaby will are straightened out, Mrs. Hart will begin receiving a monthly income from the Works and this will continue for the rest of her life. And if young Carver wants a job, there�s one waiting for him.��

Plans for the MacCaby-Dodd Children�s Wing of the Wrightsville General Hospital were being held up, explained Dr. Dodd in this interview, pending clarification of �the state of the Works,� viewed in the light of the late J. S. Hart�s �unfortunate personal investments.�

A human interest footnote to this latest chapter in what Ellery had already entitled The Adventures of Sebastian Dodd was appended by the Record reporter. Harry Toyfell, who had scarcely had time to take up his duties as head gardener of the Hart estate on North Hill Drive, �now finds himself out of a job for the second time in less than three weeks through the scythe of the Grim Ripper. However, Harry is taking �the slings and arrows of fortune� like the grand old philosopher he is. He has already accepted a new job as gardener for one of Wrightsville�s leading citizens. We refer to none other than Dr. Sebastian Dodd.�

The story was signed: By Malvina Prentiss.

When the second envelope arrived by special delivery three nights later, Ellery tore it open with shameless eagerness. That the sender was the same required two glances. The size and paper of the envelope, the crudely penciled address, the Wrightsville postmark, the blank reverse were identical.

One clipping from the Record, dated Monday, April 3, floated to his desk.

The Town Drunk had disappeared.

Tom Anderson was no more.

Ellery glared.

Investigation by Chief of Police Dakin had established, �almost to a dead certainty,� that Anderson was dead. His coat and hat had been found early Sunday morning, April 2, at the edge of Little Prudy�s Cliff in The Marshes. (The Marshes, Ellery recalled, was a tangle of sulphurous swamp just outside the eastern boundary of Low Village; it was the bogeyland of Low Village�s young and the breeding place of a superior strain of mosquito.) There was �unmistakable evidence,� said Chief Dakin, �of a tussle at the edge of the cliff,� in the course of which Anderson must have toppled into the quicksand below. The Record pointed out that the quagmire at the foot of Little Prudy�s Cliff was �bottomless� and that any object was immediately sucked beneath the surface. Attempts to drag the bog had been abandoned as hopeless. �Who struggled with Tom Anderson at the edge of Little Prudy�s Cliff?� demanded the Record hotly. �Who hurled him over to his horrible end? This is the question Wrightsville wants answered right away!�

The deceased, concluded the Record, was survived by a daughter, Rima Anderson, 22 years of age.

Byline: By Malvina Prentiss.

Ellery laid the clipping down.

Here was puzzle compounded. What was the connection between The Town Drunk�s murder � if it was murder � and the saga of Sebastian Dodd?

For there was a connection. There must be. In the earliest clipping there was no correlation between Anderson and Luke MacCaby, the central figure of that story. And in the second and third stories Anderson was not even mentioned as background. Suddenly � in story number 4 � Anderson again, this time as protagonist. But isolated. No cross-reference to MacCaby, or Hart, or Dr. Dodd, or even to his crony Harry Toyfell.

Yet they were all related, perhaps even Nicole (The Town Thief) Jacquard. They were related by the fact that someone in Wrightsville had related them. Anonymous suspected, or had, inside information. Anonymous had reason to believe that Town Drunk Anderson was pushed to his death. Anonymous knew that Town Drunk Anderson�s murder arose from the events reported in the first three Record stories.

Was that it? Did Anonymous mean to convey that MacCaby and Hart were also murdered? Or one of them?

Then there was Tom Anderson himself. Anderson had clearly been a man of culture and respectability before his fall from sobriety. Even drunk as Chaucer�s ape, lolling on the rotten imitation-stone pedestal of the Low Village World War I Memorial � against a background of smutty red brick factories, stoop-shouldered two-story crackerbox houses, cramped shops with embarrassing pinchbeck fronts like Sidney Gotch�s General Store... in the humped and dingy shadow of the old cotton mill � now the Wrightsville Dye Works!�� even then The Town Drunk had aroused regret, not laughter or revulsion. Ellery could have sworn there was no evil in the derelict. If he was dead of violence, the evil lay elsewhere.

And the surprising news that Anderson had had a daughter. Survived by a daughter, Rima Anderson, 22 years of age, period. Bad reporting, Malvina. Was she a drudge in some High Village tourist home? Hired girl on one of the meaner valley farms? Or a regular in a four-bit bawdy house on Barking Street? But the name Rima... It irritated him, because it sounded and looked familiar and it kept just out of reach. And because, unoriented, it still refused to fit into his visual memory of the Wrightsville slums and sinks. It evoked an image of grace, solitude, greenery... But he was certain he had never met anyone in Wrightsville with such a name.

Well, he thought, this isn�t getting me anywhere. At all.

Ellery threw the second envelope into his catchall drawer.

I�ll sleep on it, he said to himself.

As Ellery was setting down his second cup of coffee the next morning his doorbell rang. He opened the door to find a child in the hall. The foyer and hallway were murky and he had to peer. It was evident that the little girl had put on a costume of her mother�s � who must be a character!�� and she was pluckily fighting off nervousness.

�Yes?� said Ellery with an encouraging smile.

�Ellery Queen?�

He squinted past her, searching the shadows. The voice had been a woman�s.

�Did you say that?� he asked sharply.

�My name is Rima Anderson. Could you talk to me?�

The next few minutes Ellery devoted to re-stabilization. The world of fiction is made up of heroines, he caught himself philosophizing, industriously contrived by their authors to be all that no woman ever is. Yet here was a girl, in flesh, with blood, who might have stepped out of a book. In fact, as Ellery soon discovered, Rima Anderson had stepped out of a book.

She had a special, unbelievable quality of... consistency. Women are made of skin, hair, muscle, sweat glands, ten thousand things; this girl had the harmony of a figurine. She was of one piece. He kept thinking of Tanagra and terra cotta, and of how breakable she seemed. Yet when she came in her step was soundless. He thought of elves and birds.

When he saw her in the full light there was nothing fragile about her. She was like a miniature fruit at its ripest. A child giving off a womanly disturbance. The child-woman paradox was most emphatic in her eyes. They were as serenely uncluttered, as without guile or guilty knowledge, as the eyes of any little girl; still, under scrutiny, they veiled themselves as no child�s eyes had ever done. The effect was enchanting and fresh, but it carried no conviction. You had to talk yourself into it.

Even her voice. It had a lilt, the music of something formless but significant in nature. The voice of a brook, or a dryad. That�s it, thought Ellery. She�s a nymph who lives in the heart of a tree. And then he remembered who �Rima� was. Rima was the child-woman, the bird-girl of the Venezuelan jungle, in a book he had not read for twenty years.

And here she sat.

But where was old Nuflo, her grandfather? And his dogs Susio and Goloso? One had a right to expect them, and the mora tree, and the hummingbird, and the little silkhaired monkey.

�Is Rima the name you were given when you were born?�

�Rima is the name I was given when I was born.�

By her father. By The Town Drunk. He had named her Rima by benefit of W. H. Hudson and he had made her Rima in fact. To shape a child in the mold of a name is brutal, but poetry. Ellery saw Tom Anderson in a suddenly altered light. Chief Dakin and the Record might still be wrong. Such a man could have poised himself on the edge of Little Prudy�s Cliff and, like Icarus, taken off.

No one in Wrightsville had known this girl well; perhaps she had been a sort of myth to the town, a creature of folklore in the making. The Town Drunk must have hidden her away, protecting the delicate product of his creative energy from the corrosive influences of the community. And Ellery knew without asking that Rima Anderson�s playmates had been birds and small animals, and that her playground had been the natural world in which Wrightsville squats � plain and hill and stream and wood, the wilder woods where hardly anyone ventured. And if her skin had a sheen, and if her hair was waved, and if her lips were as redly soft as young raspberries, it was because Rima had been taught to patronize the cosmeticians of nature, the sun and the wind and the rain. In the world of beauty parlors and cutrate toiletries she walked alone.

The girl wore a house dress of the cheapest cotton, black coarse stockings, flatheeled and papery-looking white �store� shoes, a shrieking bonnet. Everything about her added up to �country store� in some remote rural district; Ellery could recall no shop even in Low Village which carried such outlandish merchandise. She must have walked over to Fidelity, the very poor community west of Wrightsville, or down to Shinn Corners, deep in the southwestern farm country, to get them. Things would be cheaper there, and there would be fewer eyes. Like a bird, she was shy. There was a pallor under her brown skin which told him what contact with New York had done to her. Probably this was her first visit to a big city. Absurdly, he wished he had a finch, or a field mouse, to offer her... and wondered how he could manage to get her back to Wrightsville in some less outrageous costume. It was a problem; and he decided to let inspiration or opportunity solve it.

�How did you happen to come all the way to New York to see me, Miss Anderson?�

She laughed � the unprepared outburst of a bird. �Call me Rima!�

�All right. But why did you laugh, Rima?�

�Nobody�s ever called me Miss Anderson before.� When he repeated his first question, she said, �My father, Thomas Hardy Anderson, used to talk about you.� Thomas Hardy Anderson...

�Tom Anderson?� Ellery asked involuntarily.

�The Town Drunk.� She said it naturally. It was a fact, like the bad reputation of gophers; one stated it and passed on. She has the quick acceptance of all wild things, he thought; a fawn doesn�t question the morals of its father.

�What did he say about me, Rima?�

�Oh, that you were the kind of man who had a compulsion to look for the truth. He told me that if I was ever in trouble and he was gone, I was to come to you. And I�m in trouble.�

�So you�ve come to me.�

�Yes.�

Ellery got up and fiddled with the Venetian blind. When he turned around he said, �I know about his disappearance.�

�I think my father is dead.� It was hard to adjust to her directness. She did not question the source of his information; his knowledge did not surprise her.

�Apparently the Wrightsville police think so, too.�

�Chief Dakin told me that. And a woman from the newspaper. I don�t like her, but I like Chief Dakin.�

�And that�s why you think your father is dead, Rima? Because they�ve told you so?�

�I knew it before they told me.� She was up and over at the window.

�What do you mean, you �knew it before�? Do you know something the others don�t?�

�I just know it. If he were alive he�d come back to me, or write. He�s dead.� She kept looking down at 87th Street, with interest, as if the death of her father was of no importance. But again Ellery had to readjust. The rules didn�t apply to her. What seemed curiosity about a New York street was probably caution. The sparrow soars from the pavement crumb to a safe telephone wire, and from there he watches. His watching is mysteriously tied up with his wants.

�People have been known to go away, Rima. Without explanation or warning. Because � let�s say � they�re in trouble.�

�He may have been in trouble, but he would have told me if he had to go away. He�s dead.�

�The struggle on Little Prudy�s Cliff��

�He was pushed over. He was murdered.�

�Why?�

She fluttered about at that. �I don�t know, Mr. Queen. That�s why I�ve come to you.� Just as suddenly she returned to the sofa, tucked her legs under her, smiled at him. They had turned a corner. Or the sparrow had decided that the man on the pavement was harmless. �May I take off my shoes? They hurt.�

�Please do.�

She took them off, wiggling her toes. �I hate shoes, don�t you?�

�Can�t stand them.�

�Then why don�t you take yours off?�

�Well, I... think I will!� said Ellery, and he removed his shoes.

�I�m going to take off these stockings, too, if you don�t mind. They itch so. Mmmm...� Her legs were honey-colored, beautiful running legs covered with brisk scratches. But the soles of her feet were not at all beautiful; they were covered with a horny integument, like a coating of plastic. She noticed his glance and frowned. �They�re ugly, aren�t they? But I can�t abide shoes.� Ellery could see her flying through the woods. He wondered what she wore in her natural habitat. �At first I thought of talking with his two friends,� Rima went on. �But��

She makes no transitions, he thought. You follow her flight or you lose her.

�Nick Jacquard? Harry Toyfell?�

�But I don�t like them. Jacquard is no good. And Toyfell makes me...� She grew still.

�Makes you what, Rima?�

�I don�t know... They weren�t good for Daddy. Until a short time ago, they had a bad influence on him.�

�You think Jacquard, or Toyfell, or both, had something to do with what happened to your father?�

�Oh, no. They were really his friends. But I don�t want to talk to them. I don�t like them.�

And it seemed perfectly logical to Ellery at the moment not to question your father�s only close associates about his disappearance on the ground that you disliked them.

He got up and began that hungry patrol of his preserves which in Ellery follows uneasiness. Rima watched him trustfully.

�Tell me all about your father, Rima. Was he originally from Wrightsville? What did he use to do for a living?�

�He was born in Wisconsin somewhere. He never talked about his family. I think he�d had very strict, ignorant parents and they quarreled and he left home in his teens. He wanted to write poetry. He worked his way East and got into Harvard, tutoring to support himself. Some famous Harvard professor told him he�d never be anything but a third-rate poet but that he had the makings of a first-rate teacher. He took graduate courses in education and afterwards got a job teaching English literature at Merrimac University in Connhaven... Hardy wasn�t his real middle name. His real middle name was Hogg. He took Hardy when he enrolled in Harvard.�

Ellery nodded.

�He�d been teaching at Merrimac for eighteen years when he met my mother. She was a graduate student there. By this time he was a full professor and one of the most popular teachers in the university. He was 44, Mother was my age. Neither had ever loved anyone before. They fell in love.�

A bachelor over 40, with a background of family antagonisms and creative frustration, who was forced to sublimate his passion for verbal sound and shape in the teaching of literature, Anderson had poured everything into the first love of his life. Rima�s mother had been a beauty and a poet of promise. �Daddy used to say Mother got more poetry into a grocery list than he�d ever pounded into an ode.� Rima�s mother had come from the Middle West, one of the numerous daughters of a nouveau riche family. Her parents had social plans for her and violently opposed her alliance with a small-salaried college professor �stuck up in the New England woods.� Rima�s mother broke with her family and married her professor.

�They lived on the Merrimac campus and the next year I was born. Daddy named me Rima after the heroine in Green Mansions. When I was 2 he built a little house up in the hills near Connhaven and we moved there, away from everybody. Daddy went in to college every day, mother tended house and me and wrote poems on the backs of envelopes and on grocery sacks, like Emily Dickinson, and I played in the woods. On weekends we�d all three do it. We wore practically no clothes and at night we�d sleep on spruce boughs under blankets and we�d have wonderful times. I think we were the happiest family in the world. When I turned 5, Daddy drove me down to school every day and picked me up again in the afternoons. What I learned I learned from him and Mother and the woods, though... Then, when I was almost 10, Mother took sick and died. Overnight. I don�t know what it was � some rare disease. One day she was with us, the next day she wasn�t.�

Rima sat still.

�I�ll never forget what Daddy said at Mother�s grave, when everybody�d gone away. He hadn�t said a word since her death, just held my hand. �This is black wickedness, Rima. There�s no beauty or justice in it,� he said; and that night, after he put me to bed, he went down to Connhaven and came back very late, drunk.�

Rima�s recollections of those days were of staggering steps, shouts, whisky fumes, wild weeping in the night, and wilder tenderness. Anderson had periods of abstinence, when he would go about pale and silent, his hands trembling; at these times he often reread his wife�s poems to Rima. But the temperate episodes became less and less frequent, and finally they stopped altogether. For the most part Rima was looked after by friends, the wives of faculty members; later, there were threats of legal action if Anderson did not stop drinking or turn the child over to welfare authorities. But Rima herself thwarted all attempts to separate them. �I must have run away from various places a dozen times,� she told Ellery. �Daddy was always kind to me, even when he was very drunk. Nobody could keep me, and after a while nobody tried.� Then the last of a series of painful incidents in class and Professor Anderson was dismissed from the Merrimac faculty.

�That�s when we came to Wrightsville,� Rima said. �Somehow Daddy got an appointment to teach English at Wrightsville High. We lived in Mrs. Wheatley�s rooming house on Upper Purling Street. Mrs. Wheatley looked after me during the day. She�s dead now.�

Tom Anderson�s position on the high school faculty lasted eight months. When Principal Martha E. Coolye caught him with a glass of whisky on his desk during class, he was summarily discharged.

�Five weeks later Mrs. Wheatley put us out for nonpayment of rent. Daddy said, �Don�t blame her, Rima. She�s a poor woman and we�re taking up space she could get money for. We�ll find another place to live as soon as I straighten myself out and get a job.��

Rima�s next recollection was of the shack on the edge of The Marshes. It had been built by some engineers during a survey of The Marshes in one of the periods when public agitation for its drainage threatened to upset Wright County political applecarts. Its roof leaked and its tarpaper covering was all but peeled away. They managed to make it weatherproof and in the intervening years Rima had built an additional room onto it and a new floor from salvaged lumber, and she had grown ivy all over the outer walls. �It�s pretty now,� laughed Rima. �More like a flowerbox than a house.� And the mosquitoes of The Marshes? asked Ellery. �Mosquitoes don�t bite me,� said Rima.

And there they had lived ever since. The land belonged to no one, so far as Rima knew; at least, they had never been molested. In those earlier years repeated attempts were made by the Ladies� Aid and the town welfare authorities to separate the child from her father, but Rima always broke loose and came back to him. �He needed me. I knew that the day my mother died. He needed somebody who loved him and didn�t condemn him for being drunk all the time. He needed somebody to take his clothes off when he came home, or hold his head when he was more than usually drunk, or read to him, or put him to bed. Where did we get beds, furniture, a stove? I don�t know. Daddy managed to get everything we needed. We didn�t need much.� Finally the attempts to give the girl �a proper home� were abandoned and the Andersons were let alone. �They�ve forgotten all about me!� They had no money beyond the few dollars Tom Anderson earned occasionally doing an odd job and a small sum which arrived monthly, in cash, addressed to �Thomas Hogg Anderson� in care of General Delivery, Wrightsville, bearing the postmark �Racine, Wis.� but no return address. �I think it�s from a brother, or sister, of Daddy�s out there,� said Rima indifferently. �Daddy never talked about it but once that I recall. He said, laughing, �I�m the Pariah of the Anderson tribe, darling. Their blood boils from contact with the Untouchable, but they soothe their glossy souls by the payment of a pittance in conscience-money. It�s all for you, baby. I won�t touch a scummy cent of it.�� But he always did. They had made a ritual out of it. Each month her father walked to the post office at Lower Main and the Square, brought back the envelope, Rima opened it with ceremony, she hid the money in a cracker tin on a shelf above the stove while he turned his back; and later Tom Anderson � and the money � would disappear for a day or so. �It went on that way for years. He always insisted that I hide it, and I always did, just to please him. Sometimes he even made me hide it in a different place.� Occasionally, when the need was acute, Rima took a dollar or two from the box before the remittance vanished. But in general she got along very well without money. She raised her own vegetables in a little garden behind the shack, and her father had developed a skill that amounted to art in supplying their household with flour, fowl, fruit, bacon. �You know,� said Rima matter-of-factly, �they called him The Town Beggar just about as often as The Town Drunk. He always resented that. �I give them value for consideration,� he used to say. �I amuse them. In the Middle Ages I would have been a jester. I�ve never begged in my life.�� But he had, and she knew it. �It was for me,� she told Ellery. �If it was just for himself, he�d have starved first.� Silently, Ellery doubted this. The hard moral fiber of Tom Anderson had been buried with his wife. The flabby residue sagged to every whim, and most weakly to his craving for forgetfulness.

At times he killed rabbits and other small game in the woods north of The Marshes. Rima never touched them. �They�re my friends,� she laughed. �I couldn�t eat my friends.�

Rima spent her days in the hills and backwoods surrounding Wrightsville. There were sweet wild berries to be plucked, streams to bathe in, injured birds and animals to nurse, hot long-grassed meadows to lie on while her father sat crosslegged by her side lecturing and questioning, book in hand. For the School Board had discovered the uselessness of trying to keep Rima Anderson in a classroom, and there had been talk of a truancy proceeding which would have placed her behind the bars of the County Corrective Home for Girls at Limpscot, upstate. Tom Anderson had roused himself. He stopped drinking for forty-eight hours, Rima mended and brushed his clothes, and then he had marched into town to demand a special Board hearing. At the hearing he pleaded brilliantly his pedagogic qualifications and pledged that he would teach his daughter privately, following the curriculum prescribed by the State Regents. After a confused session the Board voted its assent to this unusual arrangement, on the condition that Rima present herself each semester for examinations in the prescribed high school courses of study, the penalty for failure being punitive Board action.

�We made them eat crow,� gurgled Rima, doubled over. �Daddy never let me get away with anything and I always passed their old exams with high marks.� Rima�s highest marks had come in English literature. �They called him names and sneered at him and said he wasn�t fit to be a father, and a lot of what they said was true, but Daddy never neglected my education and because I loved him and he was a wonderful teacher I learned more than most of the Wrightsville kids. In literature I think I could teach their teachers a thing or two! We had nothing � according to Wrightsville � and if we did have anything they said Daddy pawned it or sold it to get money for liquor. But he never touched our books, no matter how desperate he was, and if you come to Wrightsville, Mr. Queen, I�ll show you a library that will open your eyes.�

And now Tom Anderson was gone. Dead, Rima insisted.

�I want to know what happened to him. How it happened.� Her eyelids came down. �Who did it.� He saw that her hands were in perfect repose. She�s learned an animal discipline, he thought.

�Rima.� Ellery sat down opposite her again. �A few minutes ago, in talking about your father�s two friends � Nick Jacquard and Harry Toyfell � you said they�d exerted a bad influence on him �until a short time ago.� Exactly what did you mean by that? Had he stopped seeing Jacquard and Toyfell? Given them up?�

�He stopped drinking. He gave liquor up.�

Ellery looked at her.

�You think he didn�t. That he couldn�t have. I know he did. In all the years since Mother died he never once tried to give up drinking. Even when he stayed sober for two whole days that time when he had to see the School Board about me, it was for just those two days; he didn�t pretend he was reforming. About a month ago, without any warning, he told me he was through being The Town Drunk. I was surprised and I asked him what had happened. He wouldn�t tell me. �Let�s wait and see,� he said.

�He�d never said anything like that to me before. I suppose that�s why I believed him. At first I thought he just wanted to. But then, as the days and nights passed and he�d come home walking as straight as anybody else and with no whisky on his breath, I knew he was actually doing it. His hands would shake and he�d toss around half the night. There were times when he�d get almost wild and run around the shack as if he were crazy. Once when he thought I was asleep he crawled out of bed and lit a stub of candle and got a bottle of whisky out of a hole in the floor. He put it on the table next to the candle and pulled out the cork and he sat down with his hand on the bottle and looked at it. I could see a big artery jumping under his skin and the sweat was pouring down his face. He sat there that way for fully an hour. Then he put the cork back into the bottle, put the bottle back in the hole in the floor, replaced the floor board, and went to bed again.�

Ellery wondered why she was making such a story up. It couldn�t possibly be true. Not an alcoholic with such a long history of addiction as Tom Anderson. But then he saw the strange clarity of her eyes and he found himself doubting his own doubt.

�Maybe it wouldn�t have lasted,� said Rima calmly. �But it did last for a month. Until the night he died.�

�He continued to see Toyfell and Jacquard?�

�Yes. But he told me it was to test himself. He said that he still went to the Roadside Tavern with them and that while they drank he sat with an empty glass before him. Jacquard laughed at him, he said � he was angry about it. Maybe being angry helped him.�

�So when he quarreled with somebody on Little Prudy�s Cliff a week ago tonight, you think he was sober?�

�I�m positive he was.� She couldn�t possibly be, but she was. And, unreasonably, Ellery was, too.

�And he didn�t get around to telling you why he�d suddenly decided to give up drinking?�

�No. I knew he�d tell me in time. I didn�t want to press him. Daddy couldn�t take much pressure.�

And Ellery, nodding, began to drift about again. After a while he came to a decision. It was an uneasy decision, because Rima was an enigma he had not entirely solved. The case was difficult and called for improvisation. He said to her, �Rima, have you ever sent me a letter?�

It was a ridiculous question. But then Anonymous was always a shy bird, too. It seemed the right shot at the moment. It might flush a look, a tremor, a breath.

But Rima merely shook her head.

Ellery kept looking at her. �Did you know an old man in High Village named MacCaby?�

�Luke MacCaby? I�ve heard about him through Daddy. Harry Toyfell worked for him. But Luke MacCaby is dead. He died leaving a lot of money to a doctor in High Village named Dodd, Sebastian Dodd.�

�Did your father ever talk to you about MacCaby�s death?�

�He told me what he�d heard, especially from Toyfell. But everybody in town was talking about it, he said. Everybody was very excited.�

�Did he know MacCaby?� persisted Ellery.

�I don�t know. Why do you keep asking about MacCaby?�

�Do I ask you why you keep performing tonsillectomies on ailing meadowlarks, Rima? I manage to keep in touch with Wrightsville,� said Ellery manfully, �one way and another. Tell me: What do you know about John Spencer Hart?�

No flash or flicker. She was really trying to remember. �Hart... Wasn�t he connected with Luke MacCaby in some way? I think a man of that name died recently in town, too. I don�t know much about Wrightsville,� confessed Rima. �I hardly ever go into town. The only people I see are kids who wander off into the woods to pick berries and get lost and have to be taken back home. I know more Wrightsville dogs than people. There�s always a gang of them around the shack, scratching themselves and wagging their tails.�

�Did your father know John Spencer Hart?�

�Oh, I�m sure he didn�t! Because now I remember. Wasn�t Mr. Hart a very rich man who lived on a huge estate on North Hill Drive?�

�Did your father ever mention John Spencer Hart?�

�I don�t recall his saying...�

�Did your father know Dr. Dodd, Rima?�

�Dr. Dodd? I don�t know.� She was distressed now; her exquisite little hands fluttered. �You must think I�m stupid. But it�s just that I�ve had no interest in Wrightsville affairs and I never questioned Daddy about whom he knew or what he did or where he went. Not because I didn�t want to know but because he didn�t like being pushed. If he wanted to tell me something, I listened. If he needed my help, I gave it. Otherwise I let him alone. People were lecturing him all the time. I was the only one who took him as he was and respected his rights as a human being, even if according to Wrightsville he was a very poor human being... I just don�t know, Mr. Queen.�

�I understand Dr. Dodd does a great deal of work in Low Village, and I thought��

�But we�re never sick. I mean, we never were.�

�Not even your father?�

�He was a funny man in some respects. He thought going to a doctor was a sign of weakness. He�d fight off things that would put other people into bed.�

�Rima, you�re the world�s most unsatisfactory client. There�s nothing to go on.�

�I�m so sorry��

�I suppose you�ll tell me your father hadn�t an enemy in the world.�

�He hadn�t.�

�He must have had at least one!�

�No... Daddy charmed people. Even Mrs. Coolye, the principal who kicked him out of Wrightsville High � the day she dismissed him she cried. Chris Dorfman, the radio car policeman who was brought up last year on charges of breaking the nose of one of Big Tootsie�s girls in a drunken brawl, used to bring Daddy home instead of running him in; he�d tell me, �It�s a shame about your old man. He�s a great old guy.� Nobody�d want to hurt Daddy because of anything Daddy was.�

�What do you mean by that?� Ellery stared at her.

�Some people will kill a ladybug. Not because the ladybug is harmful but because it happens to get in their way. Nothing personal. Just a matter of convenience.�

Ellery kept staring.

�If there�s nothing to go on...� Rima got off the sofa, slowly this time. �You won�t take the case.�

�Rima, how much money do you have?�

The blood flooded her cheeks. �I�m stupid. Of course, your fee. Mr. Queen, I�m sorry. I��

�I didn�t say anything about my fee. I asked you how much money you have.�

She looked at him. Then, as suddenly as she did everything, she opened her imitation leather purse and held it out to him.

The purse contained a handkerchief, a railroad ticket, a box of wild cherry drops, and some coins. Perhaps fifty cents.

�It�s what I had left after I bought my ticket to New York and return, and paid my bus fare here from Grand Central Terminal. Daddy hadn�t touched the money from Racine last time. Otherwise I couldn�t have come.�

�Bad.� Ellery scowled.

�Bad?�

�It interferes with my plans.�

�Plans? I don�t��

�I wanted you to look big-cityish when we went back to Wrightsville.�

�You�re coming back with me!� That bird peal again.

�What? Oh, certainly,� said Ellery. �I mean to say, it�s important that you look... smart, Rima. Up-to-the-minute. New York chic, as it were��

�You want me to buy different clothes.� He blushed slightly as she glanced down at herself, up at him. �I know these are awful,� she said helplessly. �But I couldn�t afford any better. I have no wardrobe.�

�It�s a bother,� said Ellery with a fierce frown. Then his forehead cleared. �See here, I don�t see why we should endanger my plan of action merely because of the lack of a little money. Suppose I advance you a couple of hundred, Rima.�

�Dollars?�

�Why, yes.�

�But I couldn�t ever pay that much back.� She trilled at his childishness.

�Of course you could. You�re not going to keep living in that mosquito-infested flowerpot, are you?�

She was amazed. �Where else would I live?�

�I�m sure I don�t know. But you�ve got to get yourself a job of some sort��

�Why?�

�Why? Because... because you�ll owe me two hundred dollars!� He grasped her arm and was surprised to find it as pliantly tough as a gull�s wing. �Now we�ve had enough talk. We�re going out to get you a suit, blouses, hat, underthings, stockings, shoes, a hairdo, manicure, pedicure...�

It was the best he could muster on the moment.

They passed over another bridge or two before the weekend was out. The first crossing from formality proved to be their shopping excursion. Ellery smuggled Rima into Lachine�s on Fifth Avenue, where you may buy everything from a bobby pin to an ermine wrap and whose salespeople are never surprised by anything. He spent most of the afternoon worrying his thumbs and wondering what magics were being performed in the dressing room. At 4:30 he saw and was awed. Then there was an interminable session with Fran�ois on the fifth floor. Rima emerged at last, accompanied by an agitated Gallic male who kept wailing that one does not gild a lily and what should one do to improve such a complexion, Monsieur?�� but the hair, Monsieur, and the feet, Monsieur! Ellery replied hotly that the hair, Monsieur, and the feet, Monsieur, were as God had made them, Fran�ois retorted that if such was the case, Monsieur, why in the sacred name of a paper bag had Monsieur brought Mad�moiselle to his salon, and Rima sat down in her new clothes and put her manicured fingers to her made-up eyes and wept all over them, reducing both Fran�ois and Ellery to agonized silence. At this point a motherly saleswoman sent them both away, and when Ellery next saw Rima she was cool, and perfect, and she smiled a New York smile and said, �Am I according to plan, Pygmalion?� whereupon his shame melted in a warm gush of something and he found himself suddenly adoring her.

Then he took her off to dinner at the snootiest place he could think of.

He no longer thought of her as a child. Quite the contrary. In fact, he found himself glaring at the Van Johnson type at the next table. Afterwards, back on 87th Street, he saw the admiration in Inspector Queen�s eyes; and when the Inspector, who was an absolute Englishman about the inviolability of his room, actually offered Rima the use of his bed for the night, Ellery knew the worst. Hastily, he took her to a women�s hotel in the 60s, where it would be necessary to say goodnight under the frigid eye of an elderly female desk clerk.

He returned to 87th Street slightly damp under the collar.

He found his father waiting up for him.

�Back so soon?� asked Inspector Queen.

�The question answers itself,� said Ellery coldly. �What did you think I�d be doing?�

�Odd type, that girl,� said the Inspector in an absent way. �From Wrightsville, you said?�

�Yes.�

�And you�re going back with her tomorrow?�

�Yes!�

�I see,� said the Inspector, and he went to bed.

She was a nuisance all night.

On the train the next day, rather hollow-eyed, Ellery tried to analyze it. It wasn�t the clothes. All the clothes did was to point up what she was. But what was she? he thought as he felt her fingers withdrawn from his. After a moment he attacked the question negatively. She wasn�t a... She wasn�t a great many things, but when you added them all up you still had a positive something left that remained as irritating a mystery. In the end he decided that the secret of her lay in the child-woman dichotomy somewhere. She was neither, and she was both. Like a child, she took your hand; like a woman, she suddenly let go. At bottom it was probably � he winced � unbelievable innocence. You simply didn�t find innocence like hers. She had no tactile experience of the world. Of the world of books, yes; of nature, decidedly; but of man, none at all. It came of being brought up in the woods like a wild animal. Something Thomas Hardy Anderson hadn�t figured on. A girl like this could do devastating damage, to others as well as to herself. You couldn�t depend on either her actions or her reactions; she moved in other spheres. Where values were indecipherable. Normal contact with parents, friends, relatives, strangers, teachers, bigots, bullies, lovers � with terrestrial life � the contact of bruises and caresses which prepares the growing individual for maturity had been kept from her during her formative years. There were blank spaces in her, to an extent and of a nature no one could fathom, least of all Rima herself. You had to keep remembering how she had been brought up, how green she was, how alone.

And of a sudden Ellery saw the danger that she might attach herself to him like a motherless doe. There were signs. She had stopped calling him Mr. Queen and was addressing him as �Ellery� and �darling.� She had put her hand in his a dozen times. She was asking no questions; she seemed to have no concern about what he proposed doing with her when they got to Wrightsville; she had put herself utterly in his keeping. After lunch in the dining car she had kicked off her smart shoes, lain down on the long seat of their compartment with her head in his lap, burrowed for a moment like a puppy, and then fallen asleep with a happy sigh. As if she were Mowgli and he were the branch of a tree. The trouble was � and it was a trouble � he wasn�t the branch of a tree. He doubted if any normal man, similarly situated, could feel like the branch of a tree. Ellery found himself determining to marry her off to a deserving young poet � he would have to be a poet � just as quickly as one could be found. She simply couldn�t be allowed to run around loose.

When Rima woke up she yawned and stretched and wriggled, but she made no move to sit up.

�Hello, darling.� Her voice was sleepy, and her smile. He felt her hand in his again.

�Had a good nap?� Ellery tried to keep his tone on a fatherly level.

�Aery light, from pure digestion bred,� laughed Rima.

�What?�

�Didn�t you ever read Paradise Lost? You�re funny, Ellery.�

�Comical, or queer?�

She laughed again, throwing her head back. �My error! Oh, I like you so much.�

�I like you, Rima.� The skirt of her new suit had ridden up well over her knees and in spite of himself Ellery reached over to pull it down.

She watched him curiously. �Why did you do that?�

�Why did I do it?�

�Because my legs are ugly?�

�Because they�re not.�

�Then why cover them?�

�See here, Rima,� Ellery began angrily.

�I�ve never quite understood that. I�ve seen girls at Slocum Lake and the lake at Pine Grove parading around in bathing suits that made them practically naked. But when they got dressed they�d keep pulling their skirts down. Over the same legs.�

�Yes. Good point. Exactly. There�s a time and a place for everything, you see, Rima.�

�But we�re alone, Ellery. Don�t you want to see my legs?�

�No. I mean yes, very much. That�s why the rules say you mustn�t let me.�

�Rules?�

�Haven�t you ever gone to church?�

�No.�

�You should. You should, Rima.�

�But I don�t mind your seeing my legs, Ellery.�

�Perhaps I do!�

That was when she withdrew her hand. �You want to see my legs but you mind seeing them? What�s the matter with you?�

�Would you let any man see your legs who wanted to?�

�No...�

�Well, there you are.�

�I mean, it would depend on the man and why he wanted to see them. Which rules?�

�What? Oh! The rules of society, morality, good manners, er... any number of things.� Ellery said desperately, �Didn�t your father ever teach you anything but English literature?�

�He taught me everything.�

�Well, he appears to have left one or two things out��

�You mean about sex?�

�Look there, Rima! In another two weeks the countryside will be simply beautiful��

The problem of Rima Anderson, it seemed, was going to present even greater difficulties than the problem of her father.

In the morning Rima was pitifully interrogative. It was apparent that during the night life had crept up on her. Or the Monday morning austerity of Upham House, smelling of slop suds and floor polish, had settled over her like an uneasy dew. She no longer took the future on faith. Tomorrow was a question mark; even today. How long did he expect her to remain at Mrs. Upham�s? Didn�t he realize she was running up a debt to him it would take her years to pay back? When could she go back to The Marshes? Why did she have to stay at Upham House at all? What had the redheaded bellboy meant last night when he had said that if she was expecting anybody he�d be glad to leave the side door unlocked? Where had Ellery gone after leaving her last night? (So Rima was the one who had phoned the Hollis, leaving no message.) Did he find out anything? Did he see anybody? Her feet were swollen from these shoes; when could she take her clothes off? What were his plans? Were they getting anywhere? Where were they going this morning?

�To answer omega first,� sighed Ellery, �to breakfast. I can�t talk before I�ve had my coffee.�

On the walk over to Miss Sally�s Tea Roome, he thought furiously. He had had a bad night not entirely ascribable to Manager Brooks�s Himalayan mattress. And when he had fallen asleep, it had been not Anderson but the daughter of Anderson who darkened last in his consciousness. He could not improvise with twenty-dollar bills indefinitely. Sooner or later he would have to settle the question of Rima�s immediate future.

Miss Sally�s was providentially deserted. When they were seated, Ellery said: �Rima, if you had the problem of earning your livelihood, how would you go about solving it?�

�I don�t know,� said Rima coldly.

�Well, what can you do? I mean, besides doctoring birds?�

�Nothing.�

�I don�t suppose you can operate a typewriter or anything like that?�

�That�s right.�

�If worst came to worst, you might get a job as a salesgirl...?�

�And be cooped up in a stuffy store all day? I�d die.�

�How about a tutoring job? There must be children of well-to-do parents in town who�d��

�Cooped up.�

�But you�ve got to do something!�

�Oh, your money. It�s worrying me, too. But I�ll find a way of paying you back.�

Ellery ordered breakfast.

With the coffee, the questions began again. Ellery listened glumly. Finally he said, �See here, Rima. I have only one plan and you may as well get it clear now.

�Everything else is irrelevant.

�I have reason to believe that what happened to your father is connected with a series of events that began here in Wrightsville two months or so ago. The death of Luke MacCaby. His secret partnership with John Spencer Hart. MacCaby�s bequest to Dr. Sebastian Dodd.� Rima clutched a piece of cooling toast, a little pale. �How your father fits into that picture is, I think, the major question. If it can be answered, we may be able to figure out that business of Little Prudy�s Cliff.

�I saw Chief of Police Dakin last night,� continued Ellery, �and he hasn�t any idea that your father�s fate is tied up with these other matters. So Dakin�s no help. We�re on our own.

�I can see only one way to make a start. The man who treated Luke MacCaby for years, who signed MacCaby�s death certificate, is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man to whom MacCaby left his unsuspected fortune is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man who through MacCaby�s will became in effect the business partner of John Spencer Hart is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. The man whose sudden association with the Hart-MacCaby dye works resulted in Hart�s suicide is Dr. Sebastian Dodd. Dodd seems to be the great common denominator of all the events preceding your father�s disappearance. So the first thing we�ve got to do is try to find out if Dodd was in any way involved with your father, too.�

Rima nodded wordlessly.

�I phoned the Dodd house this morning and made an appointment for 11 A.M. at the doctor�s office. He�s expected back from the hospital then and it will be before his office hours, so we�ll have some time to reconnoiter.

�I don�t know what we�ll run into. Maybe nothing. Maybe a great deal. I�ll have to develop a strategy as we go along.

�That�s where we stand, Rima. Now finish your eggs.�

But Rima said, �I see. I see,� and Ellery was startled to see tears in her eyes.

He said gruffly, �What�s the matter?�

�I don�t really come into it at all.�

That made him think again of how alone she was, which was exactly the thought he had been dodging. He found himself melting like the butter on her toast, which made him think that she wasn�t eating, and he snapped, �You eat your breakfast!� Dutifully she crunched off a piece of toast and he reached over and took her hand, so that she looked at him, surprised. �Rima, I�ve always believed in being forearmed. You do come into it. How, I haven�t any idea. But I�ve got you ready. You�re Tom Anderson�s daughter. What involved him may involve you. By your existence you assert the emotional, if not the moral, right to enter the problem. No one�s going to question your intercession but the author of your father�s fate, whatever it was; but that�s exactly what we�re aiming at. And that�s the technical reason for our visit Saturday to Lachine�s, the reason why you�ve got to keep limping around in those shoes if they kill you.

�Something may come up. We may be able to wing an opportunity. Of course, it may be dangerous. I�ve got to emphasize that. In fact, it will almost certainly be dangerous. Do you know what you really want, Rima?�

She looked down at her plate, saying in a low voice, �Daddy and I were very close. Much closer, I think, than normal people. Yes, I know what I want.� She looked up, almost with anger. �Do understand. This has all been horribly new to me. You�ve been so patient... kind... I won�t give you any more trouble. I promise, Ellery. From now on I�ll do just what you say.�

The next morning, when Ellery called at Upham House, the desk clerk handed him a note.

She had sketched a route through Low Village. The shack was indicated by a black X.

Ellery walked down Washington Street, passed Crosstown Avenue � the dividing line between High Village and Low Village � and turned into Plum. Here he sought and found Homer Findlay�s garage, whose placard in the Hollis lobby advertised a Drive Urself service. He drove out in a 1939 Plymouth coup� (or �coop,� in Homer�s version) with 92,000-odd miles on its mileage meter.

Back uptown he found an empty space by a parking meter on Wright Street. He strolled up Washington toward Slocum, searching the shop windows. In the middle of the block he spied PURDY�S � DRY GOODS & FURNISH�GS, and he went in. He purchased two large bath towels.

�Anythin� else today?� asked Mr. Purdy.

Ellery hesitated. He was feeling not the least bit stuffy this morning. On the other hand... �Yes,� he said firmly. �A pair of swimming trunks.�

Mr. Purdy said he didn�t have his summer stock in yet, but he might fish out an odd pair... He returned with a dusty box which revealed three one-piece swimming suits seasoned with moth crystals. Mr. Purdy held one up.

�Left over from one or two seasons back,� he said.

Eying the long limp shanks, Ellery decided that Mr. Purdy�s mathematics were at fault and he said no, he didn�t think so. Mr. Purdy nodded gloomily.

�Might try the Waldo brothers next door. In the Granjon Block. They�re tailors, but ever since Otis Holderfield found himself a gold mine and began toggin� himself out like a movie star, the Waldos been getting ideas � puttin� in bathrobes, sport jackets, what-all... talkin� about carryin� a full line of gents� furnishings! Wouldn�t surprise me if they got just what you want. Direct from Paris, likely.�

There was no reason why the name Waldo in Mr. Purdy�s rather bitter accent should have startled Ellery. On the sidewalk, his package of towels under his arm, Ellery stared at the shop next door. It showed evidences of a new prosperity � freshly painted, one window draped elegantly with bolts of men�s suiting, the other displaying men�s furnishings of apparently good quality. There was a brand-new sign over the front: WALDO BROS. EXCLUSIVE TAILORS. Still, his scalp itched and the backs of his hands were fizzy. As if he were on the verge of a discovery.

Ellery entered the shop. Here prosperity had not yet penetrated: the fixtures were aged and few, the triple mirror was tarnished in streaks, and from what he could see of the workroom in the rear, past the calico curtain, it was dingy and miserably lit.

A very small man in his shirt sleeves, vest covered with snips of thread, a tape measure about his neck, appeared at the curtained doorway. �Yes?� Then he brightened. �Oh, you�re the gentleman was in Mr. Holderfield�s office yesterday afternoon. Something in a suit?�

Ellery could hear nothing from the workroom. Apparently David Waldo was alone in the shop.

�Would you have a pair of bathing trunks? Mr. Purdy next door said��

The itch and fizz were really pretty bad. And they seemed to get worse the longer he was in the shop. Or perhaps it was the soft touch of the little tailor�s hands as he measured Ellery�s waist. What was it?

�We�ve only just put in this line��

�Fine. Just what I want. By the way, did you know Tom Anderson?�

�Who? Oh! No, not to talk to. Too bad, the way he went. Got some fine-quality gabardine here��

�I�m not surprised. I mean, I imagine your clientele is a little more exclusive. Didn�t John Spencer Hart get his clothes made here?�

�Wish he had. But Mr. Hart had his tailoring done in Boston, I heard. That camel�s hair we�re making up for Mr. Holderfield��

�Maybe you�re lucky. Didn�t Hart die owing a lot of money? It�s a bad habit that partner of his didn�t get into, I understand � what was his name again?...�

�MacCaby.�

�That�s it. Wasn�t MacCaby the original miser?�

�I wouldn�t know. If you�re thinking of going swimmin� this early in the year, maybe a beach robe�?�

�Oh, you didn�t know MacCaby.�

�No. Will that be all?�

�I was saying to Dr. Dodd just the other day��

Waldo said quickly, �You know Doc Dodd?�

�Why, yes. Is he a customer of yours?�

�Say.� David Waldo smiled. �If we had to depend on Doc Dodd for a living, we wouldn�t stay in business long. Fine man, though. Six ninety-five.�

Ellery walked out with the trunks, still tingling.

What was it?

He crossed the street and went into Jeff Hemaberry�s Sporting Goods store, where he bought a picnic hamper and a Thermos jug. Then he visited The Delicatessen Caravansary, which lay between Logan�s Market and Miss Addie�s Anticipation Shop. Here he found food for digestion as well as reflection and when he came out he was weighted. It was all he could do to get back to Homer Findlay�s coup�.

After studying Rima�s map, Ellery drove down Washington Street into Low Village and turned left into Congress. The map instructed him to follow Congress across town as far as it went.

Congress Street rapidly turned more dilapidated, noisome, and depressing. It paralleled Polly, with the nasty trickle of Willow River between. Here the refuse of Low Village factories floated past the back doors of workmen�s barrows. There was an occasional blotch of green, chiefly weeds; there were no trees at all. Yet Ellery drove slowly. Tom Anderson had taken this route countless times, yawing along its broken walks; how many times had he run aground on the reefs of the jagged asphalt? And along about here was where Abe L. Jackson�s younger brother Garrison must have met him that Saturday night when Anderson was presumably sober and headed for his baffling rendezvous on Little Prudy�s Cliff. Whom had Rima�s father been meeting that night? The answer might lie on this crippled back street behind one of these shaky walls, in the undigested memory of some sodden millhand or his sagging wife or one of his wild children.

Or it might lie in the infinite land of chance. Nothing personal...

The narrow street came to an abrupt end in a mound of dirt, broken brick, tin cans, and assorted debris. The street fell away in a declivity to a deep gulley which was choked with the accumulated refuse of years. From this gulley rose a stench which turned Ellery pale. The thought of having to wade through its sour fumes on the rickety footbridge which spanned the chasm daunted him. Beyond the bridge stretched a skimpy belt of scrub, rubbish, and wasteland. Behind that glowered The Marshes.

Ellery locked the coup� and put a handkerchief to his nose. He was about to step onto the footbridge when he saw Rima Anderson running from a stand of crazily twisted trees a hundred yards down-gulley on the opposite side. She was barefoot and wore a sarong-like garment apparently sewn together from the remains of a man�s old suit. She sped across the bridge, hair streaming.

�I�ve been watching for you.�

It seemed to Ellery that she was tense and unhappy. �Anything wrong, Rima?�

�Wrong? Of course not.� But there was.

�These Congress Street kiddies look predatory. Is it all right to leave the car while we go over to your place?�

�We�re not going to my place.�

�What!� Rima walked to the coup� and Ellery followed her, protesting. �But why not, Rima? I want to see it.�

�Some other time.�

�But only last night you said��

�Why did you bring a car?�

�So we could go picnicking. Wasn�t that the idea?�

�We could have walked. I always do.�

�You mean you don�t swing through the trees, like Tarzan?�

�Who�s Tarzan?�

Ellery told her as he unlocked the car and they got in.

�Oh, a grownup Mowgli.� Rima�s voice was listless. �I�ve always loved Baloo and Bagheera. And hated Shere Khan. Turn right into Shingle Street, Ellery. That�s Route 478A. You follow it up to just before Twin Hill-in-the-Beeches, then you turn off.� She curled up beside him, staring ahead.

This was not humor, or even mood. Something painful had happened this morning. It had arisen on her return to the shack, not before; her Upham House note had told him to come. Was it that after a journey into the world she had come back to see her home for the pitiful hovel it was? Or...

He could not overlook the possibility that there might be something darkly different behind it.

He drove along in silence.

After a while Rima squirmed. �I read that book last night.�

�Oh? What did you think of it?�

�I laughed. Is that what�s known as a detective story?�

�One kind of detective story.�

�Detectives aren�t that way in life, are they? Kissing or slapping every girl they meet, beating up people, shooting off guns all the time?�

�Most detectives I�ve known have forty-eight waistlines, chronically sore feet, don�t handle a gun from one year to another, and can�t wait for the weekend to water their lawns.�

�And then that girl Ginger, the one Dave Dirk called �Gin� and �Gingivitis���

�His secretary.�

�She made me tired. Getting into one silly mess after another. And why did she keep calling Dirk �Chief? He wasn�t a policeman.�

�He was her chief.�

�Slang,� said Rima thoughtfully. �I wondered about that. Do all detectives� secretaries call them Chief?�

�All who have secretaries, I suppose.�

�Do you have one?�

�Not at the moment. But then, Rima, I�m not in a book.�

�You ought to be!� They both laughed, and the day brightened.

They were in the northeastern part of town now, climbing into the hills above High Village. The name �Shingle Street� on the signs had disappeared. Young cottages roosted above them. And when they rounded a curve, there were Twin Hills� big breasts straight ahead, below which twined the expensive girdle of Twin Hill-in-the-Beeches. Beyond Twin Hills lay exclusive Skytop Road, Wrightsville�s newest residential district; and far in the distance nodded the old head of Bald Mountain.

At Rima�s instructions Ellery turned the coup� into a narrow dirt road, little more than a firebreak, hacked, pitted, and ungraded. Three miles of this and the road ended at a boulder. As far as Ellery could see, they were walled in by thick forest. There was nothing in sight that resembled a trail except the road behind them.

�What now? Aviation?�

�Just plain walking.�

Ellery�s recollections of the hour that followed were a flicker of wicked bushes, nettles, emery-barked trees, ground that rolled underfoot; he was stabbed, flogged, and tripped. Rima flitted ahead, slipping by the malignant spirits of the woods as if she carried an aerial immunity. Occasionally she paused to hack a path with a machete-like knife which she carried at the waist of her sarong. At such times he embraced a tree, gasping. At the end of eternity, just as he was about to mutiny, he found himself staggering into the anteroom of paradise.

They were in a small glade which was carpeted with moss and pine needles and guarded on three sides by immense pines, hundred-foot beeches, red spruce, balsam, hemlock, birch, cedar. On the fourth side lay a clear pool. It was fed by a tiny waterfall which came frisking down a sluice of gleaming granite, replenished the pool, and disappeared somewhere in burbly darkness. The sun sparkled on the pool, but in the glade the air was washed and cool and full of wood and earth scents. Birds flashed and chirruped everywhere.

�Ytaioa.�

�Like it?�

Ellery lay back on the aromatic carpet and shut his eyes.

He opened them to catch the glint of a brown body splitting the surface of the pool. The knife, the tweedy sarong, lay on an outcropping of rock above the water.

Her head appeared and a wet brown arm came up and grasped the ledge.

�Aren�t you coming in?�

�If you�ll...�

�Oh, piffle.�

�Well, damn it all!� began Ellery, but she was gone again, laughing. He got into his swimming trunks behind a modest beech, feeling like a fool.

They splashed and dived and romped in the pool; they dried off on the ledge, Rima disdaining his towel for any purpose whatever so that, in all conscience, he had to close his eyes; and when he awoke Rima was squatting crosslegged � in the sarong � beside one of the towels, on which she had spread the contents of the hamper.

�Come on, Ellery, I�m hungry.�

They had a feast in the glade, after which Rima plaited a wreath of vine leaves for his hair while, like a lactic Bacchus, Ellery swigged the last of the milk in the Thermos jug.

�And now if you�ll be very still,� said Rima, �I�ll have some of my friends in for tea. There�s the loveliest doe��

�I�ll meet Bambi�s ma some other time,� said Ellery, lying back. �Make yourself into an audience, Rima. I feel a monologue coming on.�

It seemed to him the gladness went out of her; but she stretched out on the moss obediently, her head on his chest.

Ellery blew a smoke ring at the dappled ceiling.

�Rima,� he began, �a thing isn�t always what it seems. In fact, there have been whole schools of thought whose scholars have insisted that a thing isn�t ever what it seems. I choose the middle road: Truth and the appearance of truth. Some things are true, and some things merely seem true when they�re not.

�The smart investigator of a crime is always aware of this ambivalence, and it�s his job to separate the conflicting elements of a case and put his fingertip on what is true in them and what is false. Some cases are more two-faced than others, and I�m beginning to believe this one bears the stamp of Janus.�

�You and Daddy,� murmured Rima; and then she was silent, not explaining what she meant. But Ellery thought he knew, and for a moment he squinted at a squirrel racing for his hole, giving Rima time to come back.

�Three deaths,� he went on. �Or two and a probable. Luke MacCaby�s by heart disease � presumably; John Spencer Hart�s by a bullet in his brain � called suicide; your father�s in the quicksand below Little Prudy�s Cliff � again presumably, and presumably as the result of violence. A great many presumptions. Appearances of truth which may be truth and, on the other hand, may be quite otherwise.

�Now let�s follow up the premise laid down by my mysterious correspondent, Anonymous: that the three deaths, or rather the three events, are connected. If they are... if they are, is there evidence of the connection? Does some common factor exist in each event? Yes, Dr. Sebastian Dodd. Dr. Dodd proved to be MacCaby�s heir. Dr. Dodd became Hart�s business associate and, as a result, Hart died in a shooting. And Dr. Dodd presented your father with five thousand dollars a short time before your father�s disappearance.

�Truth and the appearance of truth. Either the three events are what they seem, or they�re not. Either Dodd, who figures importantly in all of them, is what he seems... or he is not.�

Ellery sighted along his nose. Rima�s eyes were turned on him, startled. �Dr. Dodd?�

�I didn�t say Dr. Winship. Why not Dr. Dodd? If all three events are what they seem, they were natural developments of natural means. If the three events are not what they seem, they were unnatural developments of contrived means � in other words, they were criminally brought about. And if we accept Dr. Dodd�s story in each instance as being the whole truth, then Dr. Dodd is what he seems, a good and kind and innocent man; and if we do not accept Dr. Dodd�s story in each instance as being the whole truth, or part of the truth, or any of the truth, then Dr. Dodd may be the reverse of what he seems: that is, an evil, scheming, guilty man. A criminal, Rima.�

�A criminal?�

�There were three deaths,� said Ellery. �Or two and a probable.�

�A murderer?�

Ellery relit his cigaret, which had gone out.

�Be careful of that match!� And Rima took it from him and buried it. Then she said, �But why should Dr. Dodd have murdered Mr. MacCaby? Or Mr. Hart? Or Daddy?�

�Well, let�s see,� said Ellery. �First MacCaby. Is Dodd what he seems in the MacCaby case � a good, kind, innocent man? Then it�s true, as Dodd states, that MacCaby died naturally � that is, of heart disease. Then it�s true, as Dodd states, that he, Dodd, was unaware before MacCaby�s death of MacCaby�s wealth. Then it�s true, as Dodd says, that he had no idea that with MacCaby�s death he, Dodd, would become a very rich man.

�But suppose Dodd is not what he seems? Suppose he�s an evil schemer, cleverly garbing his wickedness in the daily garment of straitened living and good works? Then shortly before his death MacCaby told Dodd he was a wealthy man and that Dodd would inherit MacCaby�s wealth. Then Dodd hastened MacCaby�s death. How? Dodd was MacCaby�s doctor; he was giving the old man certain tablets for his heart ailment. Then Dodd gave MacCaby a rather different box of similar-appearing tablets and, when the next attack occurred and MacCaby took a tablet, MacCaby died. And Dodd, who was called, took back his little box. Truth and the appearance of truth. The two faces of the coin. Look at the obverse and Dr. Dodd is innocence incarnate. Look at the reverse and he may be the devil himself.�

�I don�t believe it,� said Rima. �Not Dr. Dodd.�

�Belief has nothing to do with it,� said Ellery. �It seems to me I�ve said that before, but in my line of work you can�t afford to forget it. Cover yourself with the other towel if you�re cold, Rima. Now let�s take up the case of the late John Spencer Hart. Possibility the first: that Dodd is innocent. In this case, as he says, he sent Hart a routine request through Attorney Otis Holderfield for a preliminary accounting of the dye works�s financial condition, not suspecting that Hart had embezzled part of the assets of the business. Being unaware that Hart had stolen from the company, Dr. Dodd of course could not have anticipated that his request for an accounting would drive Hart to suicide.

�But � possibility the second: that Dodd is guilty. Suppose MacCaby had told Dodd not �only about his riches and Dodd�s heir-apparency, but also about one other matter. Because if MacCaby was shrewd enough to invest in a business that proved as successful as the Wrightsville Dye Works, and if MacCaby was as canny in money matters as his pennypinching indicated, then he may well have kept an eye cocked on his partner and found his own way of checking on Hart�s management of the Works. Then suppose MacCaby told Dr. Dodd that he knew of Hart�s wild gambling sprees, his reckless speculation, his embezzlement. In this case, once he had murdered MacCaby, Dodd would have known that his request for an accounting before Hart could cover his tracks might well come to Hart as a deathblow. This is a close-knit community and the character and personality of a man as prominent as Hart must have been common knowledge. So Dodd must have known that John Spencer Hart could not take exposure, disgrace, social ostracism; that to a man like Hart the prospect of trial, conviction, imprisonment was intolerable. So, if Dodd is guilty and has been lying about his actual relationship with Hart, his request for an accounting became as murderous a weapon as the gun which ended Hart�s life.�

�He drove Mr. Hart to suicide?�

�Only on the face of the coin we�re considering. And then � your father�s disappearance.� Ellery scowled. �Obverse: that Dodd is innocent. In that case, as he says, he gave your father five thousand dollars to help rehabilitate a man who needed and wanted rehabilitation. A kind, a generous, a magnificently unselfish act.

�But on the reverse, with Dodd lying... Suppose your father, Rima, had stumbled on some evidence that connected Dodd criminally with Luke MacCaby�s death. For example, the pillbox which should have contained heart tablets. We�ve surmised, if Dodd gave MacCaby a lethal box of tablets, that Dodd took the box away after MacCaby died. But suppose your father got to that box first? He was a friend of Harry Toyfell�s; he might well have been persona grata in the MacCaby house; a fortuitous visit, and something about MacCaby�s death may have excited his suspicions. Since he was an intelligent man, suspicion would lead him to the tablets. And there we have Tom Anderson in possession of the evidence which could send Sebastian Dodd to the electric chair. In this case Dodd�s investment in your father�s rehabilitation may not have been entirely altruistic. In fact, it may have been � impure and simple � hush money.�

�Blackmail?� What he saw in Rima�s eyes made him study an arrangement of branches overhead. �You mean my father blackmailed Dr. Dodd? Is that what you mean?�

�We�re only theorizing, Rima. A lot of ifs stand between the theory and the fact.�

�I don�t believe it!�

�In the end, your faith will probably triumph. I certainly hope it does. But at this stage of the game, Rima, we�ve got to stick to reason. And reason points to blackmail as one face of this particular coin.

�Let�s look at it for another moment.

�Tom Anderson has demanded five thousand dollars for not turning the box of tablets over to Chief Dakin, and Dr. Sebastian Dodd has paid it. Some weeks pass. And there�s Tom Anderson again, with a demand for more � no, Rima, listen. Blackmail is a disease which manifests itself in recurrent attacks. It�s an insatiable hunger. A second demand is inevitable if you postulate a first and a reason for the first.

�Now the victim of a blackmailer has three courses open to him: He can continue to pay, he can refuse to pay, or he can so arrange matters that he has to do neither. If Tom Anderson made a second demand so soon after his first, Dr. Dodd would be far less intelligent than he actually is if he did not get a grim preview of the future... demands at increasing frequency, perhaps increasing demands, and continued over as many years as were left to him or as he submitted meekly to the squeeze. This is a prospect that attracts no guilty man, most particularly one who has other plans for his money. But suppose Dodd refused to pay the second time. Anderson might take his evidence to the police; the threat of exposure is the blackmailer�s weapon. In this case exposure meant death. Defiance was therefore out of the question. That left the third way.�

�Murder.�

�According to this set of premises, the conclusion seems to follow that Sebastian Dodd arranged to meet your father at Little Prudy�s Cliff that night, presumably to hand over another payment for silence, actually to push him over the edge.�

Rima sat up, shivering. She looked so forlorn sitting there, so cold and bloodless and abandoned, that Ellery sat up too and put his arms around her.

�Remember, none of this may be true.�

�And all of it may be true.�

�Well,� said Ellery, �yes.�

Rima said passionately, �And maybe I don�t want to hear any more �truth�!�

�Maybe the decision, Rima, is no longer in your hands.� She twisted out of his embrace, resting far back on her heels, staring at him. �Once you take this kind of beast by the tail, you can�t let go. I can�t let go. Are you going to walk out on me?�

She dropped her glance to the moss. �I�d like to.�

�Run away?�

�Yes. But I won�t. You know I couldn�t.�

�I was hoping you couldn�t. All right, then.� Ellery got to his feet, tossing the wreath of vine leaves away. �Our job is to eliminate one of the two sets of possibilities. We�ve got to establish as a fact what Dodd is.�

�How would you go about doing a thing like that?�

�The proper study of Dodd is Dodd. He�s got to be watched, investigated, interpreted. If evidence exists � one way or the other � it has to be found. One of us, Rima, has to get into that Victorian antique on the corner of Wright and Algonquin and stay there. You�re indicated.�

�That�s why you said yesterday�!�

�My assistant. In the most romantic Dave Dirk tradition. I�ll even call you Gingivitis. And, in time, I�ll probably get used to your calling me Chief.�

But Rima failed to smile in return. �I never should have come to you. What you want is a spy and a lady liar. I�m sure I haven�t the talent to be either. And it all seems so silly. Just on the mathematical chance... Ellery, I don�t think I could do it.�

�Then don�t. I�ll find another way.�

�You�re angry with me.�

�Not at all.�

�You are. You think it�s because of... Dr. Winship, or something.�

�Isn�t it?�

�No!�

�It�s really too bad,� said Ellery, �because Winship�s the chink in Dodd�s armor. I mean, the way he went for you��

�Went for me? Where?�

�I forgot, yours is a classical education. Succumbed to your charms.�

�You�re reading so much into��

�And that beautiful Pinkle situation. Made to order. Well, forget it. Help me pack up, Rima, will you? Or do you want another plunge before we go? It�s getting kind of chilly.�

�I didn�t say I wouldn�t do it.�

�Plunge?�

�Be your spy. It�s just that...�

�It�s so hard � I know, darling. Murder is a hard business. And smelling it out is even harder. The Thermos jug?�

Rima drifted somehow to her feet. Like a snowflake in reverse. She looked miserably about to dwindle and vanish. �Ellery, what do you want me to do?�

Ellery failed to feel triumphant. He said carelessly, �Be my eyes, ears, and legs. It�s ten to one when I get back to the hotel I�ll find a message from Winship saying he�s arranged everything on the Gloria Pinkle business to Dr. Dodd�s satisfaction and that the job of office assistant is yours. If I�m wrong, I�ll do some more spadework on it. But I�ll work you in, Rima. Leave that to me.�

�And when I get in?�

�Watch for a chance to look over Dodd�s records on Luke MacCaby, his personal papers. Listen to what he says and to whom he says it. Find out from Winship � without giving yourself away � everything about Dodd that you can which may tie in with what we�re hunting for. And report to me whatever you run across. No matter how little it seems to mean.� Ellery said gently, �Don�t worry about Winship. He�s intense, and lonely, and I�m being very generous to him.�

Rima smiled. �And to me?�

Ellery flushed. �There�s a larger ethic. I�ll discuss it with you sometime. You�ve got to stop wearing your heart on your sleeve, Rima. Are you in love with him?�

�Love?�

�Your poets� glibbest word��

�I don�t know what love is. I�ve only seen him once.�

�Yes,� said Ellery. �Bear that in mind.� And for a moment he looked like a man who has lost something. But only for a moment. �At this point, baby, Dave Dirk usually grabs his doll, gets a half nelson on her, plants a few cynical smacks on her perfect mouth, and sends her off with a slap on the rump to the villain�s lair, so that ten pages later he can stroll in and cuff her from the jaws of somebody else�s lust. Ready?�

�Ellery, don�t be silly.�

�You don�t seem to get the point, babe. You never use my first name.� Ellery hissed, �Got that straight, Gingivitis?�

This time she laughed. �Got you, Chief.�

�With more humility.�

�Chief.�

�Yes. And don�t forget who is.�

�Who is what?�

�Head man.�

�Oh, you are, Chief.�

�I doubt it.� And Ellery looked so woebegone that Rima laughed and laughed, in a hysterical way.

Early on Wednesday afternoon, after a morning of coffee-nursing in the Hollis Coffee Shoppe, Record-reading, chair-warming in the lobby, haircutting in Joe Lupin�s chair in Luigi Marino�s Hollis Hotel Tonsorial Parlor, pavement-clumping through High Village � even book-hunting in the Carnegie Library on State Street; Dolores Aikin failed to recognize him from her sentrybox, and he was obscurely grateful � Ellery finally permitted himself a telephone call.

It was Rima who answered, and she sounded professional and secretive. Oh, yes, she was getting along just beautifully. Dr. Winship had been very helpful. He had spent an hour with her at the very beginning (over breakfast and later) explaining about the sterilizers and the routine with patients and so on, and then he had had to go to the hospital, but he�d found time to dash back well before office hours to take her over to the Square for a more appropriate office outfit than the Fifth Avenue suit; because of the diphtheria epidemic the Bon Ton was featuring nurses� nylon uniforms and she�d felt almost like the real thing. They dried in three hours, you know, and didn�t have to be ironed... and, yes, flat-heeled white shoes and white stockings and... Ellery said something snide, about not recalling Gloria Pinkle, Miss Anderson�s predecessor, in such trained attire, or did the nylon uniform come with a plunging neckline, and did Winship pay for it?�� but Rima laughed in his ear and said not to be silly, you paid for it, or rather I did with your money, which I�m going to start paying back next week, Dr. Winship had wanted to but I wouldn�t let him. How cosy, said Ellery, at which Rima stopped laughing and said coldly he needn�t be cynical, given half a chance people were human beings in the best sense, anxious to be friendly and even to extend themselves � even old Harry Toyfell had said an encouraging word this morning and Mrs. Fowler had given her the freedom of the icebox and shown her into the loveliest old-fashioned bedroom, ever so much nicer than the patriotic stereotypes at Upham House... in fact, she had learned a great deal today about life. Yes, said Ellery, no doubt you have, but have you learned�? But Rima, either because she was not alone or for some perverse female reason, refused to talk business and instead she said she wouldn�t have the least bit of trouble, except possibly with the typing, and Dr. Dodd was so nice, though she�d only seen him once before office hours, in the morning as he was leaving for the hospital, and... Dinner? Well, she�d try. Dr. Winship had mentioned... Anyway, her first day... And then the Pinkie girl had left things in such a mess, and she simply had to spend some extra time familiarizing herself with the filing system � �Yes, Dr. Winship! Goodbye, Ellery,� and Ellery was left holding the receiver.

He tried her again at 6:30. But when Essie Pingarn said Miss Anderson was eatin� with Dr. Winship, Ellery said never mind, to tell her Uncle Ellery had called, and he hung up.

He waited in his room at the Hollis until almost 10 o�clock.

The next day was equally unsatisfactory. He could get nothing out of her over the phone beyond a certain tarnishing of tone, as if the glitter of newness had worn off and she did not quite know how to rub it shiny again. At 5:30 he was in Dr. Dodd�s house.

Rima was alone in the waiting room. She was tapping painfully away at the typewriter keys with a puffy forefinger. She looked ill.

�The mountain comes to Fatima. Anything wrong?�

She said quickly, �I couldn�t very well talk to you over the phone...�

�How�s it going, Rima?�

�The work? All right.�

�I don�t mean the work.� He did not bother to lower his voice; from where he was standing, he could see Harry Toyfell watering the front lawn, and Essie and Mrs. Fowler were arguing in the rear somewhere. The doctors� offices were empty. �Found anything?�

�No.�

�Have you looked?�

�No!�

�I thought something of the sort was going on,� said Ellery. �Well, Rima, what do you suggest?�

�Ellery, I can�t.�

�Can�t what?�

�Sneak. Open drawers like a thief.�

Ellery said softly, �Anybody would think I was Fagin. Certainly I don�t have to go over the whole bloody works again. Have you overheard anything?�

�No...�

�Get anything out of Winship?�

She did not reply.

Ellery pursed his lips. �Rima, I�ll tell you what I�m going to do.�

�I�m sorry, Ellery.�

�I�m going back to New York.�

She was silent.

�This is the only course I can plot, and if you can�t follow it I�m helpless.� He took her hand. �I don�t blame you, Rima. It�s very hard. And I�ve been something of a brute. If you change your mind, wire me. Better still, phone. Give me a piece of paper... Here�s my phone number.�

She began to cry.

Ellery stood over her for a few moments, feeling angry and incompetent.

Then he tousled her hair as if she were a child and he went back to the Hollis and checked out.

Ellery�s department began functioning the next morning. He walked over to Algonquin Avenue shortly after 11. Harry Toyfell was manuring the lawn. The man did not look up.

�Morning. Doc Dodd in?�

�Don�t ye see his car over there?� Toyfell straightened, resting the heavy bag on his hip. �Long as you�re here...� he said slowly. �Find out anything about Tom Anderson?�

�Nothing conclusive, Toyfell. I don�t suppose you�ve run across anything?�

But the man was back at his manure scattering.

Ellery found Rima and Dr. Winship with their heads together over a stack of case cards. Through the doorway of Dr. Dodd�s office he could see Dodd getting into his white office coat. Ellery thought Rima and young Winship jumped up rather too quickly; there was a slight flush on Winship�s face.

�Rima said you were back,� he said, shaking hands. �She�s missed you.�

�I�ve missed her, Dr. Winship. But then I probably haven�t been as busy as you people. Hello, Dr. Dodd.�

The burly man had come in with his surprising stride. He was looking wretched. The twitches were continuous and his jowls had a steady underswell. But he sounded genial.

�Busy. We can barely keep supplied with diphtheria toxoid. Giving Schick inoculations all over the place and not getting too much sleep, I�m afraid. This little girl has been just fine, Mr. Queen. Wonderful help to Kenneth and me.�

Rima went scarlet and disappeared in Dr. Winship�s office with some cards.

�I was kind of surprised when Rima said you�d gone back to New York, Mr. Queen. Thought you�d given up.�

�No,� said Ellery, and he primed his big gun. �It�s hotels, Dr. Dodd.�

�Hotels?�

�Can�t stand �em longer than a night or two. Anything beyond that is insomniac torture. I�m not as lucky this time as I�ve been. On most of my visits to Wrightsville I�ve been able to avoid staying in a hotel � generally managed to bed down with some private family. But I haven�t seen Hermy Wright or the Foxes for years, and of course the Van Horns...�

He saw at once that he had misfired. Dr. Dodd�s tormented eyes blinked rapidly and he said, �Oh. That�s too bad,� in a vague way and immediately went on to ask, �Then you haven�t got very far in your investigation of Tom Anderson�s disappearance?�

�Haven�t got anywhere. Well, Doctor, I won�t take any more of your time��

�No, no, Mr. Queen. Does me good to see a foreigner once in a while��

�Seeing that he�s so crazy about your company, Mr. Queen,� grinned Dr. Winship, �maybe you can talk him into knocking off for a couple of days. Doc, why don�t you run up to Lake Pharisee?�

�This early in the year? Rot, Kenneth.�

�What�s at Lake Pharisee?� asked Ellery, as if he didn�t know.

�It�s north of Quetonokis Lake, Mr. Queen � high up in the Mahoganies,� said Dr. Dodd. �Summerin� place. Lots of us have summer cabins up there. If it was the fishing season...�

�You could open the cabin, Doc,� argued Dr. Winship. �Get her ready.�

�No, Kenneth��

�Must be beautiful up there this time of year,� said Ellery. �Especially having the whole place to yourself... Couldn�t you get away, Dr. Dodd? I�d like to invite myself to a day�s work with an ax.�

�Would be sort of a change,� muttered the doctor. �But I don�t see how... the hospital, clinic, my patients...�

�For a couple of days?� cried his young associate. �Who do you think you are, God? If necessary, I�ll get Walter Flacker to pitch in � he�s mildewing up in that rarefied Hill office of his, anyway. I�m not worried about your patients, Doc. Suppose you dropped dead from overwork? What good would you be to them then?�

It seemed to Ellery that Dr. Dodd�s vital machinery sputtered and stopped. For just a moment.

It was curious how yellow he got and how quickly he took hold of himself.

But perspiration stippled his bald skull and Ellery knew he would have at least one day in which to make a proper study of Dr. Sebastian Dodd.

Rima lay on the overstuffed waiting-room couch in the three-quarter darkness. A golden clear youth�s voice was singing something tender and longing in a queer language to the accompaniment of a native stringed instrument and beside her, through the song, she could hear Kenneth Winship breathing in masculine rhythm to the music and feel the still heat of his hand on her ankle, like a minor sun, strengthening but full of fiery danger. She did not know what time it was; she supposed it was close to midnight, and it was Saturday night, but what was time? A way of spacing things that happened, and she was in no statistical mood tonight. The day had been too full of pain and flushed faces, whistling breaths, high temperatures, submissive people at the clinic, the hiss of the sterilizer, the croak of sick children. She was so exhausted that she felt lightheaded. Or perhaps it was that odd antique music.

Or the burning place on her ankle.

The voice stopped and the heat lifted as she felt and heard him get up from the couch. The record was scratching away in the living room across the hall and she saw his big figure cross under the dim night light in the hallway chandelier and get lost in the darkness �beyond. A moment later the scratching stopped and then it began again. The same golden young voice accompanied by the same childish instrument was lifted in a grave and fervid plea of some sort; and Dr. Winship came back across the hall and took his place again.

�What was that, Ken?� Rima murmured.

�An Italian ballade of the fourteenth century. Remember the Decameron? Boccaccio�s young rakes who fled the plague of the city and found so much time on their hands in the country? That was one of the songs they sang to the accompaniment of the viol.�

�And this?�

��Gloria in Cielo.� Same period. It�s rather different, isn�t it?�

�Yes.�

Yes, thought Rima. This is all proper things and the other had been, had been... She felt her hand taken and she made a convulsive movement, half sitting up.

And suddenly he was saying the most absurd things. She heard his voice and she knew what the words meant but none of them seemed real; it was like the language of the ballade singer, incomprehensible but clear as the sun on leaping water, full of turbulent things in a dream.

�I loved you the second I saw you, Rima. I knew I couldn�t ever really be satisfied again unless you were in the same room. I�m a clumsy ox and you�re so little and wonderful, but I�ll try, I�ll try awfully hard, Rima, so awfully hard, Rima...�

And she was saying, as the record went round and his voice went round, �I love you, Ken, I love you. I don�t know what love is but whatever it is I�m full to the brim and it�s all for you, darling, it�s been that way since...�

And then only the record went round and round, although things in Rima�s head seemed to be doing it too in the same sweet unbearable rhythm.

It was hours or years later when the light sprang up in the living room across the hall and Rima heard Dr. Dodd�s voice saying, �Funny, this record on. Where�s everybody?� But now time was spacing things again and she found herself on her feet, the backs of her legs bracing her against the couch, and Ken�s big hand steadying her and his voice saying, �It�s all right, dearest. Just Doc and Queen back from Pharisee.� And then the light came on in the waiting room and there were Dr. Dodd and Ellery in the doorway, startled and aware in the same moment; and everything was over.

�What?� said Ellery. He was still hearing the carillon spiel of the First Methodist barker and Dakin�s axhead face was still blurry around the edges. He rubbed his eyes; Rima was there, too, seated on the edge of Manager Brooks�s bed, and without Ken Winship. �I thought Jacquard was dead. Or did I dream it all, Dakin?�

�I didn�t say Jacquard. I said Jacquard�s house. Y�know, Mr. Queen,� said the chief of police, �he lived in a house. More like a chicken coop than a house, with all those youngsters underfoot, but a house you�d have to call it even though it�s on Polly Street and the rats eat out of your hand.�

�Or your hand,� said Rima.

�The point is, I found Rima�s father�s five thousand dollars over there this morning.�

Now the last lingering bong was gone and Dakin was his proper hatchet self again, and Ellery said, �So,� like little Hercule Poirot, and he went over and shut one of the windows, shivering. It would happen on a cold Sunday in April. �So what, Dakin?�

�So I thought you�d be surprised,� said Dakin in a surprised voice.

�So did I,� said Rima.

�Really, you should have brought some coffee up with you,� said Ellery. �Where do you think Jacquard would hide money that didn�t belong to him?�

�Then why didn�t you look there?� Dakin was being awfully disagreeable so early in the morning, thought Ellery; a Sunday, too. �Now ask me why I didn�t look there. Well, sir, I didn�t look there because nobody bothered to tell me about Anderson�s coming back to Holderfield with Dodd�s five thousand in an envelope and turning it over to Holderfield with instructions to turn it over to Nick Jacquard if somethin� happened to him, and Holderfield�s doing so. That�s why I didn�t look there, Mr. Queen. And I�ve got a little business with Mr. Holderfield this morning, too, that�s goin� to make Mr. Holderfield remember me.�

�You�re so right, Dakin,� groaned Ellery. �It�s this damned zipper-mouth training I got in my youth. By the way, who did tell you?�

�I did,� said Rima. �I woke up early this morning after bad dreams and I went right to Chief Dakin. Didn�t tell Ken or Dr. Dodd or anybody � Ken had gone to the hospital and Dr. Dodd was still asleep.�

�Got me out of bed with it, bless her heart,� said Dakin, �and don�t give her that wait-till-I-get-you-alone look, Mr. Queen, �cause she�s a better friend of mine than you are. Or were you waiting for Jacquard to cash in so you could find that five thousand yourself?�

�This is unworthy of our long friendship,� said Ellery with dignity. �I really must have some coffee... Well, anyway, you�ve got it, and that�s the main thing, and now that you have, what are you going to do with it? Oh, did you find the envelope and the letter Tom Anderson told Holderfield he had enclosed with the money?�

�To the second question, no, Jacquard must have destroyed it. To the first,� said the police chief, �why, Dr. Dodd gave that money to Tom Anderson, and Tom Anderson no longer being with us...�

�That�s why I�m here,� said Rima, looking Ellery in the eye. �I don�t want that money. Dr. Dodd gave it to Daddy for a purpose and Daddy didn�t live long enough to accomplish the purpose, so the money ought to go back where it came from. And that�s just where it�s going.�

Dakin looked at Ellery hopefully. �Well,� he said after a moment. Then he went to the door and Rima followed him.

�Wait,� said Ellery. They both stopped. �Rima, I�ll meet you in the lobby. I won�t be five minutes dressing.�

Dakin looked reproachful as they went out.

He could have taken the key from the chain while Dodd was asleep under sedation, Ellery reflected, but there had been Ken, big brass and bridling, and Rima, little and loyal as the sergeant of his own conscience in her enlistment on the other side. Afterward, he had had to go to the Hollis for his suitcase, and when he got back to the Dodd house Ken, an ally who kept his weapons primed, made it impossible to be alone.

Sunday night, on the pretext of �looking the house over,� Ellery had maneuvered the young doctor to the attic floor, and they had opened doors and poked into cubbies stored with historic furniture and the opulent whatnots of the last century � these had been servants� quarters in the mansion�s heyday � until finally they had come to a narrow door with a modern lock, and this door did not open. �What�s in here?� Ellery had asked casually. �Darned if I know. The plusher Dodd family heirlooms, maybe. I don�t think Doc ever said,� and Ken had passed on. So that had been that; and later, when they looked in on Dr. Dodd, they had found him sitting up in bed like an aged frog in the stillness of some hopeless disease, a spready blotch against the lily pad of the wornout patchwork counterpane.

Their discussion with him, a tragic sonata in which the Winship and Rima variations were unsuccessfully lively, produced an unexpected coda. The doctor was grateful for Ellery�s interest and Ellery was more than welcome to stay, it seemed, but he had had time to think things out and he knew now that ordinary precautions were a waste of time. �I don�t need watching, Mr. Queen. I�m to die and it won�t be a hand that does it. Some things you can�t do a biopsy on. With all our sulfas and atomic bombs and electronic microscopes and two hundred inch telescope lenses we don�t begin to know the powers that fill the universe. Any more than the ameba in that glass of water knows what�s going on in this room. All we can do is wait and try not to be too afraid.� He had even managed a smile that was more depressing than the dreary burnside set of his jowls. And all the time he spoke his clothes lay on a chair beside his bed with that bit of watch chain peeping out, unattainable as the Little Dipper.

And when, at two in the morning, Ellery had crept down the hall in his naked feet, he had found Dr. Dodd�s door locked. In his peevishness it had struck him as an infantile defense against a Juggernaut, although effective enough against softer material. Ellery had crept back to bed cursing.

Which is how the indifferent dawn came to find him barefooted, pajamaed, and shivering, spreadeagled on the perilous pitch of the rearward Dodd roof and inching his way over to the armored eye of one of the dormers, the window of the little attic room that was locked. He had made up his mind about this after a predawn inspection � from the garden behind the house � of the mysterious dormer three floors above. The beam of his flashlight, a powerful one that occupied a permanent niche in his suitcase, had revealed a battered blind; and on this slender thread he had climbed to the top floor, entered the cubby next to the locked room, opened the cubby�s dormer window, and crawled out to the roof. Fortunately, there was a sound if ancient copper gutter along the edge of the eaves, and he was able to brace himself against this in getting over to the next dormer. Arrived at his goal, he found that the only rent in the blind of any promising size required him to hang on to the bulging eyelid of the dormer like a crooked lash, with half of him unsupported by anything more substantial than the heavy dawn air.

It was light enough by now, and the tear in the blind was sufficiently flapped away, to enable him to see most of the attic room. If he had expected dead bodies (or live ones), he was disappointed; what he could see of the room was unoccupied. It was small and meagerly furnished. There was a desklike table on the uncovered floor, a grayish mission �library table� of a previous generation, and an angular slatted armchair of the same style and period; on the interior shelf of the one end of the table which he could see stood some books; along the braceboard below the tabletop ranged an assortment of objects he could not identify; on the tabletop itself lay what appeared to be two decks of playing cards, stacked face down; and there was nothing else in the room that he could see except dust and spiderwebs.

Ellery drew back and sat down with his knees up and his bare heels in the copper gutter. He lit a cigaret from the pack he had cannily slipped into his pajama pocket and he smoked under the rising sun of Wrightsville on a crumbling roof watched by the northerly hills. He was filthy, and thoughtful. An elderly country doctor rose every morning and locked himself into a secret room in his attic and did... what?

Played solitaire? Read books? Prayed?

Nick Jacquard was down on all fours on the rocky ledge staring into the pool which seemed made of brown sugar and sparkled like a million fireflies under the moon, and Ellery peered over Jacquard�s thick back to see a face imbedded in the sugar below which was suddenly not sugar but writhing lava, smoke drifting over the face just in time to prevent identification although there had been a plea in it for recognition of some sort. At this the moonrays turned scarlet, pouring into the lava pit, and Nick Jacquard threw back his shaggy head, Ellery seeing that he was a dog howling in unfeeling agony at the incomprehensible nature of the night. There was such a piercing note in his canine grief that Ellery cried out and covered his ears. Now the howls muffled, and Ellery awoke to find himself pressing the ends of his damp pillow to his ears.

The dog still howled.

Ellery sat up in bed, blinking at his wrist. After three. His skin was still slick and he irritably got out of bed and lurched to the window, trying to rouse himself.

The dog was howling in or beyond the garden in the monotonous terror of the dream. There was no moon. The only light came from a window toward the other end of the house.

Dodd�s bedroom window.

And Dodd was at the window, his arms raised as he hung on to his drapes, a gross, supplicating silhouette.

The howling persisted.

The howling persisted and Ellery�s head cleared suddenly, his hairs prickling.

He kept staring across at the man in the window.

A dog howling in the night. And recently there had been an ace of spades, twice dealt.

The noise persisted. Ellery wondered how anyone could sleep. Dodd, at his window, never moved.

It stopped just before dawn and only then did Dr. Dodd come alive. The black arms dropped, the window was blank. A moment later the light went out.

Ellery crept back to bed, inviting sleep. But sleep was a sensitive plant tonight, shrinking from the breath of the dog. And there was always that infernal jingle. Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; doctor... Something Sisyphean about it; a stone he kept pushing endlessly toward a conclusion and which rolled endlessly back on him.

The household brightened quickly, snatching a half-portion as the whole. At the same time there was a common watchfulness which centered on Dr. Dodd, responsive to the slightest twitch of his jowls. But the doctor seemed really better. He was nimbly in and out on calls at all hours of the day and night; he went back to his clinic duties; he visited the hospital frequently. He even made little jokes about �Mrs. Kenneth Winship� and young Dr. Kildares in love. Rima worked and trilled and made them laugh, recounting Ken�s exasperated attempts to teach her to drive his car in the odd hours they were able to snatch together. Mrs. Fowler broke out in a rash of cookies and pies. Essie Pingarn unpacked her bag. Even Harry Toyfell looked less glum as he worked over his flats and transplanted seedlings; on Wednesday Ellery heard him rustily whistle a tune.

If Ken remained skeptical, he was at considerable pains to conceal it.

Still, there was something artificial in the doctor�s gaiety and their grateful responses. They were like people on a stage going through carefully rehearsed emotions.

Ellery lounged about the house. There was nothing to be done except to go over the same shifty ground retesting his footing. But he could find solidity nowhere. There was the past, and there was the jingle, and between them the mysterious quicksand. Dakin knew nothing. Nothing had happened, nothing had changed. A rich man was dead, a poor man was dead, a beggar-man was gone if not dead, a thief was indubitably dead; and there was the doctor, playing the scherzo of his tragic symphony. Who was composing what in purgatory?

As he dropped off to sleep Wednesday night, Ellery was thinking that he might as well give up and go home.

But that was Wednesday night.

On Thursday Dr. Dodd�s composition came to its end with a crash, double forte.

Ellery was at breakfast with Winship when Rima came hurrying down, yawning guiltily. �I am sorry, Kenny. Good morning, Ellery! Oversleeping, I mean��

Ken kissed her. �You and Doc. I�d have waited for breakfast, but I�m due at the hospital. Dr. Flacker has a tracheotomy scheduled and he�s a little touchy about it��

�Did you say,� said Ellery, ��you and Doc�?�

�What?�

�Dr. Dodd? Oversleeping?�

�Yes. He hasn�t been down yet.�

�He has been. I looked into his room on my way down and he�d been up and gone.�

�But Mrs. Fowler said�� And Ken stopped.

There was a little interlude.

�Don�t be silly,� said Rima gaily. �It was probably a night call, an emergency or something. He has an extension by his bed and now I remember I thought I heard a phone ringing during the night. Will you two,� cried Rima crossly, �stop looking that way?�

�Are you sure, Rima, you heard his phone ring during the night?�

�Of course I�m not sure. I may have dreamed it. Or he got up early and went out for a walk before breakfast. He�s done that twice since I�ve been living here. I don�t know why everyone has to be so... There he is now! Ringing the front door bell. Forgot his key. Essie? Is that Dr. Dodd?�

�It�s a policeman,� came Essie�s nasal voice. �Wouldn�t you be Mis� Gotch�s boy Dodie? That was in the navy? Sakes, how you�ve shot up.�

They were in the hall, not conscious of having run. Mrs. Fowler�s head was caught in the swinging door to the kitchen. Harry Toyfell, with egg on his chin, pushed it wider.

�Mr. Queen? Dr. Winship?� He was a young officer, tall and serious; the new crop. Ellery did not know him. �Chief Dakin�s sent me to get you.�

Ken said, �Something�s happened to Doc.�

�Yes, sir,� said Mrs. Gotch�s boy Dodie respectfully. �We found his jalopy over on Route 478 in a culvert. Just past the railroad tracks. He�d crashed through the concrete wall on the curve of the overpass there. Car�s a junk heap.�

�But Dr. Dodd,� said Ken. �Dr. Dodd!�

The young officer said with an awkward tact, �I guess, Doc, he�s pretty dead.�

�It was fear of the ultimate,� said Ellery.

�Fear of what?� said Kenneth Winship.

�Fear of death.�

They were sitting about in the Dodd living room waiting for Otis Holderfield. Until now they had avoided talking about the past four days � the police, the autopsy report, the inquest, the funeral, Mrs. Fowler�s lamentations, Essie�s hysterics, the dry and tasteless titbits of Harry Toyfell�s philosophy, the prying telephone, the visits of the curious, the demands of the Record... the house fuller of Sebastian Dodd now that he was gone than when he had clumped through its halls. But Attorney Holderfield, looking put upon, raised a petulant voice Sunday afternoon after the funeral, announcing that he would be over the next morning with the deceased�s will, which, Holderfield snapped, Dr. Dodd had drawn up only a few days before the accident; and this had brought a certain resurgence of interest in all quarters. Prosecutor Chalanski had indicated that he would be present; Chief Dakin had remarked that he�d likely be along, too. And Malvina Prentiss promised grimly that the press would not evade its responsibility to report the proceedings. In fact, her Monday edition � an advance copy of which lay on the living room floor, hurled there by Dr. Winship � cried the probability that with the reading of Sebastian Dodd�s will �the motive of his murderer� would be revealed. (Friday�s Record had merely raised the question of murder; by Monday � to the Record, at least � the question had been answered and was beyond dispute. Which was exasperating to Coroner Grupp and Prosecutor Chalanski, since nothing had come out in the interim to add a crumb�s weight to the evidence; in fact, Wesley Hardin, 54, truck farmer, whose farm was located on Route 478 roughly halfway between Wrightsville and Slocum, came forward with the statement that it was he who had telephoned Dr. Dodd a little after 4 A.M. Thursday to come right away as Calvin, 9, was delirious and he was afraid the boy�d caught the diphtheria; when Dr. Dodd failed to arrive, Mr. Hardin had phoned the hospital and they sent an ambulance and Calvin was placed in the isolation ward � diphtheria sure enough. So that had been that and the coroner�s jury had brought in a prompt verdict of �accidental death,� to which the Record paid no attention whatever.)

�Fear of death,� repeated Ellery as they sat waiting for Holderfield, Dakin, Chalanski, and the Record. �It had become a phobia. Unless you understand that... Didn�t you know, Ken, that Dr. Dodd was obsessive on the specific subject of death?�

�No! A doctor � who sees it all the time��

�Fears it all the more if there�s something wrong with him to begin with. Dodd was so terrified of death that he took steps regularly to thwart it.�

�To do what?� asked Rima bewilderedly.

�Well, the practice of divination is largely devoted to foretelling the future; and no diviner tries to foretell the future who doesn�t have the frantic hope that somehow he can forestall it.�

�Divination?�

�Only the practice of divination,� nodded Ellery, �explains the variety of things Dodd kept in that locked room I showed you this morning. A pile of pebbles, books, finger rings, flatiron and burner, salt, dice, playing cards, and so on. Divination is practiced in many forms and each form is respectable with tradition, to the point of having scientific names like �pessomancy,� for example, divination through the use of pebbles. Books, finger rings, redhot iron, salt, dice � and playing cards, of course � each has its prescribed divining uses and ritual, and each is represented in Dodd�s locked room. I haven�t seen anything like it in a long time.�

�But Dr. Dodd?� said Rima faintly.

�You doubt it. Well, take the arrows, seven of them. Our Christian world has no monopoly on the practice of divination; the Mohammedans, for instance, are old hands at it and one of their favorite forms employs arrows to the number seven. There are seven �divining arrows� in the great mosque at Mecca. Some authorities claim the Arabs actually employed only three. It doesn�t matter. What does matter is that with that bundle of arrows upstairs, on top of all the other objects � every one of which is used in some form of divination � you simply have to conclude that Dr. Dodd for a long time had been trying to find out what the future held for him, using numerous prescribed methods, including the Mohammedan. And since the most important question about anyone�s future is when and how he is going to die, it�s obvious that the subject of his phobia was death. I myself saw him knocked galley-west by a couple of aces of spades. A dog howled and he was up all night. A bird got into his study and he had hysterics. All death omens... if you believe that sort of thing. He believed. And when he was convinced death was coming, he stopped fighting. You saw how he acted the last couple of days.�

There seemed nothing to say, and no one said anything further until Essie Pingarn whined from the doorway, �They�re here.�

Rima and Ken were married after Ken�s office hours Tuesday afternoon in Burleigh Pendleton�s parlor, with Ellery and a beaming Mis� Pendleton to witness.

�It�s an omen,� chortled Ken as they walked back to his car. The homegoing Junction traffic was zipping joyously by. �Burleigh never has Mis� Pendleton to witness except when she�s sober. Did you hear that extra zing in his delivery? We�ve got a mighty good start, Mrs. Winship.�

�Bless them. Bless everybody.� Rima was hanging on to her husband�s arm as if she were afraid he might vanish.

�Get in, Ellery.�

�Not this time,� said Mr. Queen hollowly. �There�s a limit to every man�s endurance, and this marks mine. You two go on about your business and let me get quietly potted. I�ll notify the Record, so don�t bother to stop in town.�

�Oh, Ellery...�

�Oh Ellery nothing. I don�t even want to know where you�re going.�

�Up to Durkee�s Falls.�

�Just for overnight, but we thought you�d at least have our wedding supper with us.�

�There is a dreadful noise of waters in mine ears, as the poet says, and they hear not. God speed and bless your union and may neither of you ever scab. Now get the hell out of here before I break down and blub.�

�We�ll be back first thing in the morning!� shouted Ken as they drove off.

Ellery stood at the justice of the peace�s gate until the exhaust of Hymen�s chariot mingled with the haze of the hills.

He began to trudge up Route 16 with his hands in his pockets, wondering what it must feel like to be happy. Rima was happy, so happy she was numb. Ken was happy, with a masculine exuberance he had tried decently to control. Mis� Pendleton had been happy, perhaps in anticipation of the bottle she was reputed to keep stashed in her chicken coop. About dour Burleigh Pendleton Ellery was not sure; he was a Yankee of Scotch blood; but at least he dispensed happiness. Life went on in and about Wrightsville, working, drinking, quarreling, copulating; people died and people married, everybody exercised some function.

And here he was, about as useful as an extra appendix.

Ellery found himself before Gus Olesen�s Roadside Tavern. It was only a hundred yards or so up the road from Burleigh Pendleton�s, a juxtaposition both merchants had found profitable.

He went in.

O�Bannon disappeared, Rima and Ken came back, Malvina Prentiss went to town on the front page of the Record, O�Bannon returned; and Ellery simmered in the May sunshine like an emptying kettle or sulked in the gloomier parts of the Dodd house trying not to hear the music of the newlyweds. Rima reminded him of a newly mated bird busy with her nest. She shopped, tore down curtains, changed drapes, made diplomatic changes in Mrs. Fowler�s and Essie Pingarn�s routine, received patients, typed case cards, answered the telephone, hauled her books over from the shack, took her driver�s test in Ken�s aging but faithful Packard, announced that she was going to repaper the house herself and spent snatched hours at Whitby�s Paint Store poring over wallpaper books, overhauled her husband�s wardrobe � which she declared a disgrace � and at night dropped into bed tired and ecstatic. And Ken could be heard whistling at all hours, even when the record player Ellery had given them as a wedding present was silent. At other times the house was full of Mozart, Haydn, and Bach � good round geometric beauty which succeeded only in mocking the insoluble mathematics in Ellery�s head. Sometimes the music drove him into the garden with a hoe or the insecticide spray, but this invariably invoked the departed image of Harry Toyfell and from this it was but a frame to the picture of little Otis Holderfield; so gardening was no escape, either.

The Record recited its deadly rhyme and O�Bannon was avenged. Everybody howled. From the refuse heaps of Low Village to the cathedral aisle of the Hill Rich man, poor man raised its treble voice in glee. It became a proud Wrightsville property and strong businessmen took it into their councils whenever the moment called for hilarity. Floyd Lycoming set it to music and His Hollis Hummadours gave its premi�re at the annual May dance of Wrightsville High. The next day the whole town was singing it, and it was the feature of Lycoming�s broadcast over KWRI the following week.

The Record�s editorial retorted � against O�Bannon�s advice � that fiddling was an old custom but Rome burned just the same. The ineffable Malvina, it seemed, had a tarnish spot on her polished armor: she could let pique make her tilt at windmills. The laughter only infuriated her and Who Is the Lawyer? remained her stubborn head. Even the halls of the County Court House and the County Lawyers� Block rang, and Judge Lysander Newbold, presiding over the spring term, was heard for the first time within the memory of court attendants to utter a witticism: When an attorney for the defense failed to answer at the opening of court one morning, Judge Newbold smiled and said archly, �Cherchez l�avocat.�

Prosecutor Chalanski and Chief of Police Dakin were monotonously reported in the Record as declining comment. But one day Essie Pingarn called Ellery to the phone and he picked it up to hear Dakin�s bitter voice remark, �I suppose this is your doings, Mr. Queen. Who is this lawyer that�s tagged to be next?�

�Otis Holderfield, I think,� said Ellery humbly. �Maybe Holderfield will listen to you, Dakin. Or if he won�t promise to be careful, put him under guard.�

�I haven�t the time, manpower, or budget to play games, Mr. Queen,� rasped Dakin. �Got a town of ten thousand to police. Besides, Holderfield came to me and told me what you�d told him. He�s blaming you for this whole thing. Otis ain�t laughing, and I�m not either!�

�Well, I�m glad to hear he doesn�t find it funny any more.�

�Mr. Queen, I made up my mind about something and I may as well tell you right now.�

�What�s that?�

�This Rich man, poor man tripe did it. There�s not been a crime in the carload. I can�t go along with you any more on this.� And Chief Dakin hung up abruptly.

Ellery crept away.

The fire occurred eleven days later.

Ellery was awakened in the middle of the night by the sirens. He scrambled wildly for his robe and slippers, certain he could feel the heat of flames underfoot. The hiss of water under high pressure and the cry of the engines were very close by.

Rima and Ken were struggling into robes in the hall. Essie blubbered somewhere. From downstairs Mrs. Fowler was shrieking, �Fire! It�s a fire!�

From the glare and heat the whole street might have been going up. But when they joined Mrs. Fowler and Essie at the front gate they saw that the heart of the blaze was a small frame house directly across Algonquin Avenue.

�The Waldos,� cried Ken. He dashed into the street and Ellery ran after him, Rima screaming at them to come back.

Four engines were pumping away. The street swarmed with firemen and volunteers. But it was clear that they could only try to keep the fire from touching off the adjoining buildings. The Waldo house was unapproachable; the entire structure glowed with flame.

A smoke-blackened figure lay in the middle of the street.

�Here�s Dr. Winship!�

�This one�s smoked up bad, Doctor. Ambulance hasn�t come yet.�

Ken shouted at Rima and a few moments later she came racing from the house with blankets and his medical bag.

The little man was writhing and moaning.

�Which one are you?�

�David. Is my...?� He fainted.

Ellery ran over to Fire Chief Everitt Apworth, an elongated countryman who might have been Dakin�s brother. Chief Apworth was chewing tobacco mechanically and spitting in the direction of the fire.

�Where�s Jonathan Waldo, Chief?�

�Still in there. Couldn�t get to him. Lucky we got David. They were sleepin� �sthough they were drugged.�

A voice said, �They were,� and Ellery looked down at Rima.

�Drugged?�

�They were Dr. Dodd�s patients. I�ve seen their case cards in the file. They suffered from chronic insomnia and Dr. Dodd used to prescribe nembutal so they could sleep. They took it regularly.�

�So that�s it.� Chief Apworth ran off, swearing at one of his firemen.

When the ambulance took David Waldo away, Ken said, �He�s not bad at all. They didn�t get the other one out?�

At dawn they did. The little body was a cinder.

Decoration day it poured, but the annual exercises in Memorial Park were dampened by more than the heavens. Mrs. Holmes of Wrightsville High, who taught Comparative Lit., was heard to murmur something Hardyesque about the Greek unities. Other comments were less highfalutin. Some said the exercises had never been the same since 1939, which was the year Murdock Wheeler, Wrightsville�s last surviving veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic, passed away; others ascribed the flickering of the patriotic fire to more recent passings.

Everyone seemed glad to go home.

The weather turned nice the next day, but Wrightsville�s mood remained glum. No one knew why, but you could feel it all over town.

At least this was the litmus reaction of one outsider. Ellery admitted to himself that it might be his chemistry, not Wrightsville�s, which turned everything blue. He had taken to wandering about town at all hours, leaving the doves on Algonquin Avenue to their hearty cooing.

Nothing came up. Nothing.

One day Ellery hunted up the Anderson shack in The Marshes. He located it after blundering about in a state of growing excitement, as if at last he faced a clarifying issue. But all he found was a pretty hut, blackweathered and overgrown with roses, lilac, and lily-of-the-valley, complete with backhouse, mossy well, and vegetable garden. And inside Harry Toyfell with some of the books Rima had not removed.

The Town Philosopher was serene. �What more does a man need? Tell me I�m not the equal of the richest man on the Hill. What�s he got I haven�t? Worries. And what have I got he�ll never have? Liberty. Yes, sir, I couldn�t ask for better �n this... The Waldos? Too bad. Well, at least they can�t set the blame for that on me!�

On the way back Ellery detoured to Little Prudy�s Cliff. He spent a few minutes trying to read the soft mass at its foot. It remained illegible.

Another day, with a sudden yearning for the company of the late Otis Holderfield�s secretary, he walked over to the Granjon Block.

�Where does she live?� Ellery asked the old elevator man.

Buzz Congress chuckled. �With Flossie Bushmill ye have to work fast, Mr. Queen. She�s lit out.�

�Gone? From town?�

�Yep. With some drummer for a Boston, now, ladies� underwear company. I seen it comin�, Mr. Queen! And then she�ll ditch him and latch onto somebody else. Itchy feet, that Floss. Always had, �specially since her dad died. Jake Bushmill, the blacksmith. Real pioneer type, Flossie.� The old man cackled.

And still another day, learning from Ken Winship that David Waldo was on the mend, Ellery visited the Wrightsville General Hospital. But the intern on duty in the men�s ward shook his head.

�He gets hysterical when anyone tries to question him. Chief Apworth, a man from the Record, and the fire insurance people didn�t get a thing out of him. Better come back next week, Mr. Queen.�

When Ellery went back to the hospital the following Thursday, Waldo was gone. He had left the hospital three days before.

Rather annoyed, Ellery set about finding him. His annoyance soon vanished.

On Waldo�s release from the hospital on the morning of June 3 he had gone to Slocum Township. In Slocum he had sought out a tailor named Elbert Scolly who, it seemed, had been trying for a year to buy out the Waldos. Waldo had signified to Scolly that he was now willing to sell, but only for spot cash and provided the sale could be effected in twenty-four hours. Scolly, a down-Easter, had driven a smart bargain. Waldo had agreed to accept a sum far below the actual value of his stock, fixtures, lease, and good will and the two men had driven over to Wrightsville in Scolly�s delivery truck for a session with Sam Izzard of Finegold & Izzard, Upham Block, who were the Waldos� accountants. The papers were then drawn up at the Wrightsville National Bank, Scolly had returned to Slocum to arrange matters with his bank there, and David Waldo � after a short visit to his shop in the Granjon Block � had disappeared; Ellery could not discover where he had spent the night. However, he had turned up again on Tuesday morning, closed out his accounts at The Public Trust Company and the Wrightsville National, paid all his bills, met Scolly and the bank officials and consummated the sale, and at 2:30 P.M. he was driven by Ed Hotchkiss to the railroad station with a new suitcase and a considerable amount of cash in a wallet he had purchased from saleswoman Eppie Simpson at the leather goods counter of the Bon Ton, along with the suitcase. The settlement of his fire insurance claim he had left in the hands of Lyman Hinchley, the insurance broker in The Public Trust Company building.

Gabby Warrum, the stationmaster, could not recall David Waldo�s having appeared at the ticket window. �Saw him climb onto the southbound, though,� said Gabby. �Figure he bought his ticket on the train. The 3:12.�

The 3:12 was a Connhaven local, stopping at every station.

Waldo had left no forwarding address. He had told Lyman Hinchley, �I�ll get in touch with you in a few weeks.� Scolly, Izzard, Mr. Lorrie Preston of the Wrightsville National, Hinchley, Eppie Simpson, and everyone else who had been in contact with Waldo during those twenty-four hours agreed that he was �the most jittery man� they had ever seen. They ascribed it to the horror of his experience in the fire and the shock of his brother Jonathan�s death. �You know how it is with identical twins,� said Lyman Hinchley, whose aunt, Sara Hinchley of the Junction Hinchleys, had been a trained nurse. �Very delicate and sympathetic nervous systems.�

There was no evidence, however, that David Waldo had visited his brother�s grave in Twin Hill Cemetery before disappearing.

�Dakin, you�ve got to find Waldo for me,� Ellery said in the police chief�s office Thursday night. Ellery looked tired and sounded urgent.

�But why?�

�I can�t tell you why. I don�t know why.�

�You�ve got to have a reason!�

�Maybe it�s because I think Waldo knows something. Maybe he doesn�t even know he knows it��

Dakin held his head. �Doesn�t even know he knows what?�

�That�s what we�ve got to find out, Dakin, don�t you see?� said Ellery patiently. �Dave Waldo may be the key to the whole thing.�

The chief of police glared at Ellery like a paralytic confronted by a hornet. �You�re the man recites kiddie rhymes ending in �chief,�� he said bitterly. �But I�m still breathin� and Ev Apworth says he never felt better in his life. Why don�t you let me be?�

�If you won�t do it, Dakin, I�ll have to do it myself. But it�s going to take me a lot longer than it would take you, with your facilities, and by the time I got to him...�

In the end Dakin flung up his hands and agreed to look for David Waldo.

Rim a and Ken were at the Bijou seeing a movie, Ellery having begged off, and Ellery was alone in the living room listening to the Huddersfield Choral Society�s recording of Holst�s �Hymn of Jesus� � which seemed to him for the first time very distant music � when the telephone rang in the waiting room.

�It�s for you, Mr. Queen,� said Essie. �Long distance.�

He almost knocked her down getting by.

�Dakin?�

�Hello.� Dakin sounded weary.

�You�ve found him!�

�In a farmhouse in Huxton � that�s northwest of Connhaven. We talked him into coming with us and we�ve got him holed up in a room at the Hotel Dorcas in Connhaven.�

�Where is that?�

�It�s just as you pull into Connhaven on 478. Room 412.�

�Dakin, hang on to him. I�ll be there in two hours.�

�And then what?� said Dakin sourly; but Ellery hung up.

He turned off the record player, thrust Holst back between Haydn and Humperdinck, scribbled an explanatory note to Rima and Ken, and raced upstairs for his coat and hat. On his way out he halted; then he went back and opened his suitcase. Absolute rot, he kept saying to himself as he rummaged in the false bottom. He wondered if it was still there. It had been given to him years before by his father � a birthday gift which was a joke of long standing. It was there; and when he came out of the bedroom its weight made him feel silly.

Homer Findlay�s newest used car, a Buick Roadmaster, was waiting for him at the curb. It had been waiting there with a full tank since Friday morning.

In three minutes he was on Route 478, whistling in the wind and stretching his legs for the seventy-five mile run through Slocum, Bannock, Agunquin, Scottstown, and Fyfield to Connhaven.

�But we can�t get a thing out of Chalanski or Dakin,� said Malvina Prentiss. �If they know anything of importance, which I doubt.�

�The only one besides you,� said Francis O�Bannon in his most precise Harvard accent, �who can give us the whole story is Winship, and it seems he won�t talk even to his lawyer.�

�Why did he do it, Ellery, and how did you crack it? That�s what the Record wants to know � before AP and UP and INS get onto you � and if you think you�re sneaking off on that train...�

It was the hour of doldrums at the Roadside Tavern, midafternoon of a greengold day, when the saloon seemed becalmed on an empty sea, Gus reading a racing form on the bridge and over everything the cool smell of suds. There was simply no wriggling out. Ellery had played back to Chalanski, in adequate periods, the epitasis of the Winship tragedy; the legal business was all attended to; he would not be needed again until the trial; nothing had remained, it seemed, but to take the first train south. Still, a feeling of incompletion had made him linger. Rima, of course. For one thing, Rima�s predicament appalled him. What would she do? Where would she go? How would she live? She had nothing. When this was over she would have no home, no husband, no income, no money � no friends. Ellery had applied himself to the problem with ferocity. Finally he remembered the Natural History Museum in Slocum, and Dr. Josiah Bull. And afterwards, when he had come back from Slocum, he could not even communicate with her. She had locked herself in at the Dodd house, refusing to see anyone, refusing to come to the phone. So he had sent a note over to Algonquin Avenue by Hosy Dowling, the elderly messenger boy of the telegraph office in the Bluefield Block, and that was that, and Ellery had negotiated his departure. Only... he still lingered. How could he leave Wrightsville without a goodbye? He had even indulged in a brief fantasy in which he revisited Ytaioa with her. The delay had been fatal. Rosalind Russell and her man Friday had caught him at the station, and now he was in their hot clutch having to ransom himself like Scheherazade to get back to his checked suitcase and the next through train, which was the 6:02.

�The thing that threw me most of all throughout,� Ellery began with a sigh, �was the dull question of motive. The more I beat my everloving brains out over what was happening, the more convinced I became that the crimes were not the work of a homicidal maniac. The homicidal maniac makes no attempt to conceal his crimes � usually he flaunts them � but in these deaths there was never any certainty that it was murder at all; every death, until I was shot at, might have been natural or accidental. And when it became positive that the deaths were following a preconceived sequence, I was sure a rational mind was directing events. Because the homicidal maniac doesn�t kill in a precise, undeviating pattern, either.�

Ellery swallowed some of his beer without zest. O�Bannon was writing furiously in his notebook.

�I went over every conceivable motivation. Hate. Revenge. Jealousy. Fear of dangerous knowledge. Elimination of obstacles to what-have-you. Self-protection. Protection of another, or others. To every motive I thought of there were strong objections. Except one � gain.�

�Gain?� frowned Malvina Prentiss. �But��

�I know. But you couldn�t avoid that allover sheen of property, Miss Prentiss. There was money in everything, at least up to a certain point; either money, or the conspicuous absence of it. Gain seemed the reasonable theory.

�But when I broke it down gain didn�t make sense, either. MacCaby left a large fortune when he died and it went to Dodd. Carry Dodd. John Spencer Hart�s death left Dodd a clear field for the operation of the Wrightsville Dye Works. Carry Dodd again. As for Hart, he died not merely penniless, but bankrupt. Tom Anderson died possessed of five thousand dollars, given to him by Dodd, and this five thousand was appropriated by Nick Jacquard � through Anderson�s folly, incidentally � but Jacquard himself subsequently died and Anderson�s money was found by Dakin, refused by Rima, and made its way back to its original donor. Carry Dodd a third time. All right, there�s Dodd, who so far benefited from everything. But what happened to Dodd? He willed the bulk of his inherited estate to the Wrightsville General Hospital! Dead end. Holderfield? Died broke. Jonathan Waldo? His death benefited no one; his brother David owned the tailoring business and the house was in David�s name all the time. I had to reach the puzzling conclusion that while gain was the only plausible motive, still nobody gained from any of the seven deaths.

�There were other perplexities,� continued Ellery, slumping to his tail and addressing Gus Olesen�s measled tin ceiling. �Were the deaths all natural-or-accidental or were they all criminal? Were some of the deaths natural-or-accidental and others criminal? If so, which deaths were natural-or-accidental and which were criminal? There was no means of telling. There were no clues. If these were crimes, they were flawless.

�Then I got my first break in two months.�

�What was that?� asked Malvina Prentiss. O�Bannon�s pencil waited.

�Saturday night in a Connhaven hotel room David Waldo revealed to me a fact I hadn�t known before. The Waldo twins, who had been witnesses to Sebastian Dodd�s will, had acted in that capacity not once but twice, on two successive days � on the third day, and again on the second day, preceding Dodd�s death.

�To be called upon to witness the same man�s will twice within twenty-four hours could mean only one thing: in that twenty-four hours testator had changed his mind about the provisions of his first will and had had his lawyer draw up a new one.

�What did the new, or second, will provide? That we�ve known: except for a few trifles, Dodd left everything for the financing of a new hospital. What did the first, the superseded, will provide?�

�What?� asked O�Bannon sharply.

�Well, O�Bannon,� said Ellery with a faint smile, �I had no more information than you. But I felt that that first, discarded will concealed a fact of great importance. It was no use hammering away at Waldo; he�d merely witnessed Dodd�s signature. Only three people knew what was in that first will � Otis Holderfield, who prepared it; Flossie Bushmill, Holderfield�s �secretary,� who undoubtedly typed it; and Dr. Dodd. Holderfield and Dodd were dead, and Flossie�d run off heaven knows where with some salesman. So I had to puzzle over it.�

Ellery studied his suds. �Whatever the provisions of that first will were, I could be sure that they were different from the provisions of the later one. But that reopened the whole question of motive.

�In a rather odd way,� Ellery added, looking up. �Cui bono, future tense. Not who benefits, but who expects to benefit.�

He was silent, and after a moment Malvina Prentiss said intently, �I don�t entirely follow.�

�Dodd changed his will. We know what he changed it to � his chief beneficiary is a hospital. But what had he changed it from? Whose loss was the hospital�s gain? Who could have been Dodd�s chief beneficiary before his overnight change of mind?

�Only one person. Dodd left no family. The only one close to him was a young fellow whose career he had financed and sponsored, whom he had sent through medical school, whom he had taken into his home afterward as his companion, prot�g�, and professional associate. And then I remembered a remark of Ken Winship�s the day Otis Holderfield came to the house to read the will-in-force. After Holderfield left, Ken unwisely said to Rima that he couldn�t offer her as much as he�d �hoped� to be able to. It meant nothing at the time; in retrospect now, the remark took on a significant shade of red.

�There was no doubt in my mind, then, that it was Kenneth Winship whom Dodd had named in his first will. And it was equally obvious that, considering his sole and unique relationship with Dodd, Ken had every right to expect to be named in Dodd�s will. And that,� said Ellery, �was just about that.

�Why Dodd cut Winship off at the last moment? I really couldn�t say. There are possibilities. Toward the end Dodd wasn�t exactly stable. Or the hospital�s needs had grown to such proportions in his mind as to overshadow personal considerations. Or, in a flash, Dodd saw or suspected the truth.

�Anyway, I finally had a clear motive � the expectation of gain � and someone to pin it on.�

Ellery made rings with his beer glass. �Dr. Kenneth Winship wanted those millions of dollars, and he didn�t want to wait for them. Besides, Dodd was so free-handed. Planned a children�s wing for the hospital the moment he found out he was MacCaby�s heir. Gave Hart�s widow an income for life. Handed Tom Anderson five thousand dollars. Settled an income on Nick Jacquard�s widow and children. At that rate, even millions wouldn�t last long. It was apparent to Ken that if he was to get that fortune in anything like its original size, he had to hurry things a bit.

�But there was a rub here, too. Dodd had not made out a will. At all. You heard Holderfield that morning � he�d been after Dodd for some time to do that very thing. As it was, Dodd didn�t have it done until the week of his death.

�In law, if Dodd died intestate, Ken had no claim whatever; he and Dodd had no legal relationship. So while he was hurrying things along, Ken had to be sure Dodd left a will. The problem, in principle, must have seemed simple to Ken. If Dodd made his will, Ken would be the heir. Whom else did the childless country doctor have to leave his money to? Ken was as interested in medicine as he was; he looked on Ken as a son, and he was as proud of Ken as if he were Ken�s father.�

Malvina Prentiss looked disturbed, and O�Bannon looked sick.

Ellery growled, �But in practice the problem wasn�t simple at all. Ken knew all about Dodd�s death phobia, of course, long before I smoked it out. Naturally. He was a doctor and he lived in the same house. Ken knew all there was to know about Dodd.

�Now a man who morbidly dreads death rarely makes a will of his own volition; to such a man, the very act seems like tempting fate. That�s why Dodd kept putting it off. How could Ken force Dodd, in the face of that phobia, to go to a lawyer and have a will drawn? Ken found the answer; he was very resourceful. The man morbidly afraid to die resists the act of will-making because he is desperately hanging on to life and the hope of its indefinite continuance. But suppose he could be made to come to believe that the hope is nonexistent? That his death is not merely inevitable but imminent?

�As Ken saw it, he had to smash Dodd�s hold on hope. He had to convince Dodd beyond the quiver of a doubt that death was a matter of days and that nothing he or anyone else did could stop it.�

�My God,� breathed O�Bannon.

�And then Winship got one of the most diabolical inspirations in the history of murder. There had been two deaths in Wrightsville recently which involved and affected Sebastian Dodd: the death of old Luke MacCaby from heart disease and the suicide of John Spencer Hart. Winship noticed that MacCaby, always considered a pauper, died a rich man, and that Hart, always considered one of the town�s nabobs, died a poor man. The contrast struck him. Rich man-poor man. Rich-man-poor-man.

�Into Ken�s brain, sharpened by acquisitiveness, sickened by his war experiences � Dakin told me Winship went to pieces when he got back from overseas � into Ken�s mind leaped the old children�s jingle.

�Immediately,� said Ellery, �immediately Ken saw his implementation whole. Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief � and then doctor. If the death of MacCaby, who had willed his fortune to Dodd, and the death of Hart, which left Dodd in sole possession of the great Wrightsville Dye Works, should be followed by the deaths of a �beggar� and a �thief,� two people with whom Dodd also had a connection, and if that sinister progression were to be brought forcefully to Dodd�s notice, then Dodd would be convinced of two things: first, that a doctor would certainly be the next to die, and second, that he, Dodd, would certainly be that doctor. And if Dodd were so convinced, he would make a will.�

�And if he didn�t?� said O�Bannon.

�But he did, O�Bannon,� said Ellery dryly. �Anyway, that�s the chance a murderer takes. There�s at least one in every crime. Ken took his, and won.�

�Go on!� said Malvina Prentiss.

�Winship got going immediately. His first step was to find somebody in town who fitted the third character in the rhyme. He hadn�t far to look. Tom Anderson was known as The Town Beggar as well as The Town Drunk, and Dodd had given him a large sum of money. Winship arranged a meeting with Anderson at Little Prudy�s Cliff late one night and tossed Anderson into the quicksand below. And once Anderson�s disappearance was accepted as death, Ken mailed newspaper clippings concerning the three deaths � MacCaby�s and Hart�s, with which he had utterly nothing to do and which were exactly what they purported to be, and Anderson�s � to me, anonymously.�

�Why did he do that?�

�Oh, that was very nearly the most important part of his plans, Miss Prentiss,� smiled Ellery. �The key objective of his campaign was to convince Dodd absolutely that death was just around the corner. Ken knew my weakness for the bizarre and he reasoned that if I could be brought into it to expound the death rhyme to Dodd, the job was done. If I didn�t bite, or if I failed to see the death scheme, Ken could always �discover� it himself, or disclose the rhyme pattern through an unsigned letter to the Record. But I was the ideal instrument. Wrightsville knew me. I had reputation and authority. A disclosure by me to Dodd would insure Dodd�s acceptance of the inevitability of his early death... Of course, Ken couldn�t have known Rima would ask me to investigate her father�s disappearance. But I probably would have come to Wrightsville, anyway, on the strength of those three clippings he sent me. Once I showed up in Wrightsville he knew he was on the right track. And he prepared his next move.�

�Jacquard.�

�Yes. The problem there was to get Jacquard to break into the Dodd house. Exactly how he managed it I don�t know � it doesn�t matter. What matters is that Ken duped Jacquard into attempting a burglary. When Ken turned his head, ostensibly to hand me the gun so he could get some rope, it was not an act of carelessness. He was inviting Jacquard to jump him. Had Jacquard failed to do so, Ken would have tried something else � conned him into trying to make a break for it, perhaps. In any event, it�s perfectly clear what Ken�s plan was: to shoot Jacquard in cold blood, but under such circumstances that the shooting would seem an unavoidable and justifiable act. This was the most daring murder of them all, committed before three competent witnesses all of whom swore with perfect honesty that it was an act of self-defense. Ken must have got quite a kick out of that.�

Ellery lit a cigaret. �Now his stage was set. Four Wrightsvillians had died � a rich man, a poor man, a beggar, and a thief. All he had to do was wait for me to see it. And I saw it, as he�d schemed and hoped, and I rushed to Dodd to recite the doggerel and warn Dodd he was next on the list. Dodd accepted the idea of his doom at once. And how Winship must have preened himself on that.�

�This is,� said Malvina Prentiss, moistening her lips, �this is fabulous.�

�Yes,� said Ellery. �Only more so. Winship was a master of detail. I�d obligingly shattered the living hope in Dodd, but there might be fragments that still squirmed. Ken went methodically to work to destroy them. He turned Dodd�s own weapons against him... Which weapons? Oh, you don�t know about Dodd�s secret belief in divination, do you?�

�In what?�

�In divination.� Into their incredulous ears he poured the story of Sebastian Dodd�s attic room and its contents.

�You may be sure Ken knew all about that room and what went on there; in fact, his knowledge of Dodd�s superstitious practices may have been the spark that inspired Ken�s whole plan. He undoubtedly had a duplicate key to the room, unknown to Dodd. How many times he secretly watched Dodd probe the future in that room only he knows, but by the time he was ready to move he was perfectly sure of his ground.

�First, Ken engineered the illusion of the death card, the ace of spades, that grand old standby of bad omens � the double death card, because I myself watched Dodd cut two decks of cards and both times uncover the spade ace. How Ken managed this? Suppose it was your problem. The solution is obvious. You�d buy a hundred and four decks of cards of the same design as the decks Dodd was using, you�d remove the ace of spades from each deck, and with your hundred and four spade aces you�d make up two decks of fifty-two spade aces each. Can�t miss. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to get a workable duplicate key to the attic door, Ken had slipped into the room, removed the planted decks, and restored Dodd�s originals. Those perfectly normal decks of cards gave me rather a bad time.�

�Risky,� mumbled O�Bannon.

�No,� said Ellery. �Dodd never looked at the other cards when he cut for fortune, apparently. A habit is as predictable as a thing. Ken�s knowledge of Dodd was thorough.

�Having dealt Dodd the twin blow of the black pip, Ken followed it with the dog that howled in the night, another common omen of death. He wasn�t aware that he had already won the game, that Dodd had visited Otis Holderfield the morning after my revelation of the jingle and had made his will � the first will. Unaware of this, Ken kept hammering away. He planted a bird in Dodd�s study, still another omen of death.

�It may be,� said Ellery, dropping his cigaret butt moodily into his beer, �that Ken�s own perfectionism defeated him. He kept adding little artistic touches � the cards, the dog, the bird � when, as events proved, they weren�t needed. Under the added pressures, completely demoralized, Dodd not merely made a will � he made two. With one hand he gave, with the other he took away. For twenty-four hours, as it were, Kenneth Winship had his day and didn�t know it. Then it was the morning after. But he still didn�t know it. He must have learned of Dodd�s visits to Holderfield�s office after the bird incident, naturally assumed them to mean a single will, assumed that his objective had been won, and prepared himself for the last move, the mop-up. He waited until an emergency night call took Dodd into an outlying district and then he simply followed and forced Dodd off the road at a spot where death was sure. Or perhaps he listened on the extension, learned Dodd�s destination, went off in advance, waylaid Dodd, hit him on the head, and sent Dodd�s car spinning into the gulley. So it was done.

�It was done,� said Ellery, �and Ken Winship went through all the easy motions of dazed grief, and Dr. Dodd was buried, and the day came when the doctor�s will was read. And Winship, brilliant schemer, artist of crime, three-times murderer, learned that for his great exertions he was going to get his rent free for a few years � and that was all.�

And Ellery was silent again.

Malvina Prentiss stirred. �But the murders didn�t stop. Why, when he had nothing to gain�?�

�That�s true. He had nothing to gain, and he knew it better than anyone in the world. So at first Ken Winship did the only thing he could do: he accepted his defeat. He made the best of it. Wrote the past off. He had something powerful to help him over the hump. He�d fallen in love and he was loved in return. By some crippled ethic he may have consoled himself that his failure to win a fortune through murder was what made it morally possible for him to marry Rima. At any rate, he married her and settled down to the unexciting life of a country doctor. As far as Ken was concerned, considering his failure, he was in a pretty fair position. The fact that he gained practically nothing from Dodd�s death left him above suspicion. There was still the hanging loose end of the child�s rhyme, but he was quite content to let me break my head over it.

�And then a queer thing happened,� said Ellery, �and, O�Bannon, you might put this down in double pothooks, because it�s the really beautiful part of the story.

�Up to this time, Ken had manipulated events.

�Now events began to manipulate Ken.

�You know,� said Ellery, �every once in a while I�m caught up short. There�s no explaining some things in feet, minutes, or pounds. There are times when nature, fiddled with, cracks down with a sort of cynical intelligence. Determinism seems proved and fate seems to work in a dark humor. What Hardy called satires of circumstance. Certainly Kenneth Winship must have found himself in the grip of a force he didn�t grasp. He had brought a certain pattern of events into being. When he tried to stop, by a tremendous irony he found he couldn�t.�

�What do you mean?� asked Malvina Prentiss.

But Ellery went on talking as if he were alone. �Where does coincidence end and the force of circumstances begin? It�s a fine point. In the last analysis there may be no such thing as coincidence. At least it wasn�t coincidence that kept Ken�s pattern going. It couldn�t have been. It was too implacably right.

�What do I mean?� Ellery looked up. �I mean that the pattern, entirely aside from Ken, insisted on completing itself.

�Holderfield drew both of the Dodd wills. Therefore Holderfield knew that in the first � the revoked � will Kenneth Winship had been Dodd�s heir. Under his lard Otis Holderfield was a sharp, shrewd citizen. He solved the mystery. He saw that Winship, and Winship alone, had a motive for murder.

�At one point in this game,� said Ellery, �I played with the theory that Tom Anderson might have been blackmailing Sebastian Dodd. There was a blackmailer in the case, all right, only it wasn�t Anderson. After Dodd�s death Holderfield must have talked to Winship, told Winship what he knew, and promised silence on the damning fact of the first will � for a consideration.

�Ken had no money that would satisfy a blackmailer, but he had inherited Dodd�s practice, or most of it. It�s likely, therefore, that Holderfield proposed a steady bleeding, a share of Ken�s earnings on a businesslike basis. That�s why Holderfield, who on the morning he read Dodd�s will to us was angry and embittered, shortly afterward was all smiling heartiness again. He�d figured out his blackmail scheme... And there was Ken, with nothing to show for his crimes, and now he was in even a worse position: now he had to pay for them.

�Ken saw what he had to do. He was not the kind of man who submits meekly to blackmail, as Holderfield should have known. One murder more would hardly stop him. He stole into the Granjon Block late one Saturday afternoon, when the building was deserted, and tossed Holderfield out of his own window. If Holderfield had a copy of that first will in his office, as he undoubtedly did, Ken looked for it, found it, and destroyed it.

�Another murder, committed without hope of gain, entirely against his wishes, I�m sure, and only because of expediency. The murder of a blackmailer named Holderfield. The only thing was... in murdering a blackmailer named Holderfield, Ken murdered a lawyer, and a lawyer was what the pattern called for to follow the doctor. Coincidence? I can�t think so.�

�Kind of odd, at that,� muttered O�Bannon, scribbling away.

�If this had been the end of it, merely �odd� might have described it. But it wasn�t. Having eliminated Holderfield, Winship found he still couldn�t stop. The Waldo twins had witnessed that will, the will which established Winship�s sole motive. For all he knew, the Waldos knew its contents. But even if they did not, they knew there were two wills a day apart, and that knowledge was dangerous, too... The Waldos took nembutal to make them sleep, they lived directly across from the Dodd house, and their house was an old tinderbox. Ken set a fire in their cellar and went back to bed.

�He may have planned the murder, too, of Floss Bushmill, Holderfield�s secretary, who had been the third witness to the will � after all, if he got nothing out of all his work, the least he could do was remove all trace of his involvement. But then everything went to pot and by the time he was bogged down in stickier problems Floss had skipped Wrightsville for greener fields.

�Doctor, lawyer, merchant... He had planned to murder two brothers who possessed some dangerous knowledge. In setting that fire Ken may have overlooked the fact that tailors are merchants, but it�s obvious that some higher authority had not.�

�Incredible,� said Malvina Prentiss.

�The authority I�m referring to, Miss Prentiss,� said Ellery with a smile, �specializes in incredibilities. Only this doesn�t happen to be one of them. A law almost as natural as Newton�s controlled Winship�s �happening� to murder a merchant after a lawyer when the jingle called for precisely that sequence. For how did the �merchant� Waldos get on Winship�s list? They were called in by Lawyer Holderfield to witness Sebastian Dodd�s will. Now note that Lawyer Holderfield�s office was in an office building, and that the office building, like virtually all office buildings, contains retail stores on its ground floor, and that the building is in the heart of the business district of Wrightsville, which is largely composed of retail storekeepers. Nine out of any ten people Holderfield called in to witness Dodd�s will would therefore have been merchants of one sort or another. The two who were called happened to be merchant tailors. They might just as well have been Mr. Purdy of the drygoods store or Jeff Hernaberry of the sporting goods store. No, not incredible, Miss Prentiss; not coincidence.

�But to get on to the end of this. Fate was coming to enjoy the game. One of the Waldo brothers failed to die in the fire.

�At this point everything began to move rapidly. Ken realized that in David Waldo�s survival lay the very danger he had tried to stave off by setting fire to the Waldo house. He could hardly murder Waldo in the hospital � far too great a risk of detection. Then Waldo, frightened witless, got out, secretly cleaned up his Wrightsville affairs, and disappeared.

�Ken knew I was determined to find Waldo. If I did, I might pry out of him the story of that first will. When Waldo was found, therefore, and I left a note at the Dodd house telling Rima and Ken where I was going, Ken waited until there was a night call for his professional services, or more likely invented one for Rima�s benefit, got his car out, and followed me to Connhaven. All along, by the way, his profession gave him beautiful mobility. No one dreams of questioning a doctor�s going out in the middle of the night.

�He followed me, he set a trap, the trap worked, and he fired two shots at my heart from a distance of six inches.

�And fate had a good belly laugh at his expense. First, I was wearing, of all things, a bulletproof vest. And second, I was � and utilized in my countertrap � a �chief.� Winship must have thought he was having a nightmare � he certainly wasn�t trying to fill out the last line of that rhyme when he shot me!

�It�s true that �chief� didn�t die. But it�s also true that I was �chief� only in the most absurd and narrow of senses. The pattern is going to fulfill itself quite realistically. There�s still a death to come.�

O�Bannon�s pencil point snapped and Malvina Prentiss sat up very straight.

�Ken�s, for his crimes,� said Ellery. �And there, without a note of sophistry, you�ll have the supreme satire of circumstance. Because the truth is Ken was the chief of everything. The chief criminal, the chief planner, the chief of operations, the chief victim. The perfect ending to his rhyme, although I doubt that he�ll fully appreciate it until it�s too late. Are you people as dry as I am? I�d like another beer.�