We have never read a story by Ursula Curtiss that did not offer a �certain something� � something all her own. Here, in our opinion, is Ursula Curtiss� finest story in the shorter-than-novel length � a distinguished and impressive story, admirably conceived and artfully written, and with a truly memorable fillip � we doubt if you will ever quite forget the last scene, even if you try... Don�t miss this outstanding contemporary example of the literate � no, of the literary � detective-crime story...

He came back on a raw, darkly glistening day in March, but it was not at all the triumphant return he had planned. It was a hasty, off-balance thing, like being pushed rudely onto a stage before the raised trumpets had blown a single note.

Conlon�s letter � the letter that had brought him tumbling up from New York to this inhospitable part of the New England countryside � was still in his pocket. He had never liked Conlon, but the architect was Marian�s cousin and it would have looked odd, when he had the old barn remodeled, to have given the job to someone else. And now here was Conlon writing �...have been approached by friends about the possibility of renting your property here for the summer, with an option to buy. As they have a young child, they would like to drain the pond, and although I told them I was certain you would not permit this��

For a moment the typed lines had blurred before Howard Hildreth�s eyes � except for that one staring phrase.

Drain the pond.

Not yet, he thought lucidly � not after only six months. Anonymous in the 42nd Street Library, he had read up on the subject, and learned that under certain conditions � depth of water, amount of rainfall, and other climatic factors � this kind of soil might have sucked its secret under at the end of a year, provided there was no extensive digging.

But not yet. He had sat down at once to write a brief note of refusal, but another phrase struck up at him from Conlon�s letter. �...I was certain you would not permit this��

A deliberate challenge? Bill Conlon was Marian�s cousin, remember, and had been away at the time. Better go up there, stay a week or two, establish the impression of keeping the place as a country retreat upon which he might descend at any time. It was only necessary for Conlon; the townspeople, he was sure, accepted his remodeling of the barn as proof of his faith that his missing wife would some day return.

At that thought, alone in his comfortable apartment, Howard Hildreth shuddered...

Another heart-warming human-interest detective story by William Fay... about Fogarty, ex-cop and struggling young lawyer, recently defeated for public office, and Sarah Kearney, a beautiful young heiress � and about faith, that priceless ingredient without which no detective, amateur or professional, is worth his salt...

When Fogarty got to his office at half-past ten in the morning, carrying his breakfast in a paper bag, the door was unexpectedly unlatched. A girl named Sarah Kearney sat in the client�s chair next to his desk, looking at him with what he at first interpreted as blithe superiority. It was no way to look at Fogarty in his present mood or at this stage of his new career.

�Good morning, counselor,� Miss Kearney said.

�How are you?� His response was cautious. It was the first time they had met to speak in several years, or since the occasion when, as a policeman, he had almost locked her up for obstructing traffic willfully. �Do you carry a set of keys?� he said. �Or do you float over transoms like cigar smoke?�

�The superintendent let me in. I told him I had been sitting on the stairs for forty minutes.� She looked at him joylessly. �Your paper bag is dripping,� she said.

�Let it drip.�

He didn�t wish to be unpleasantly hostile, but she was here, like some polished apple out of Eden, and Fogarty, a principled man, felt entitled to self-defense. He found that his pride, much more than his privacy, was being dynamited by her presence. He had a container of coffee and a jelly doughnut in the bag. The tilted container was partly empty now and the doughnut looked like a wet, soggy softball.

It punished him to know she�d had the opportunity to gape around his office and conclude from firsthand evidence that, in addition to being a recently defeated candidate for public office, he was strictly a five-and-ten-cent counselor-at-law. The do-it-yourself testimony of a paint can in one corner and his old pants on a hook did not indicate prosperity any more than did his obvious lack of a secretary. He dropped the soggy doughnut into a receptacle.

�You care for some coffee?�

�No, thank you, Joe.�

It seemed to him she had a nerve to call him �Joe,� as though he were still a cop on the corner of Main and Sheridan Streets and she was breezing by in one of her old man�s Mohawk V�s, those six-to-eight thousand-dollar items (f.o.b. Detroit), for which they had the exclusive agency in town. He felt like reminding her that a man doesn�t go to college and law school for a couple of thousand nights to have some dumpling, after years of nose-in-the-air indifference, give him that �Joe� stuff with a patronizing smile.

�I suppose you came here for a reason?�

�A perfectly legitimate one,� she said. Then, very seriously, �Angelo Amato is in trouble.�

Fogarty leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. Something prompted him to say the next, unnecessary thing. �Before you go any further, I�m on Angelo�s side.�

She looked at him coolly. �Don�t be so aggressive.�

�I�ll be what I have to be.�

�Just because you lost an election,� she said.

�Never mind the election.�

Her simple statement, �Angelo Amato is in trouble,� was a phrase he hadn�t heard in a long, almost forgotten time. Angelo, who worked for the Kearney Mohawk Agency, was an ex-petty hoodlum, long reformed. Fogarty would not deny that Angelo had a hold on his affections that a Stillson wrench or a bond of blood could not more firmly secure.

�What kind of trouble is Angelo in?�

�I don�t know. He wouldn�t tell me.�

�Then how do you know he�s in any trouble at all?�

�The way he looked, the way he acted when he came in at half-past eight this morning. He was pale as bread and I�m sure he hadn�t slept. He�d cut himself below the elbow of his right arm and there was a soiled bandage around it. I tried to send him home.�

�Are you running the agency now?�

�In my father�s absence, yes. He�s in New Mexico on vacation.�

�Is that so?� Fogarty said. As a man of disciplined good manners, he did not suggest it was a good place for her father to be � out where the Indians might teach him to keep his big mouth shut � especially in matters of local politics. �Tell me more about Angelo,� he said. �Couldn�t the guy just have had a bad night? Tied one on?�

�It wasn�t that simple. He was troubled and evasive. All he said was �I�ll go to see Fogarty, but not right now.� He doesn�t know I�m here, but that�s why I came. I called his wife on your phone, if you�ll forgive me. All Rose did was weep and fail to make sense. Now � is that my imagining?�

�M�m-m,� said Fogarty. �I don�t like this at all.�

�He�ll talk to you. The Lord knows why, but you�re the only hero Angelo has. The least you could do is come back to the shop.�

�I can�t go now. I�m going over to Maxim�s Funeral Home � pay my respects to the cop who got killed out on Manion Road.�

�You mean Eddie Bernstein?�

�That�s right. Bernstein, the detective. He was a friend of mine. I worked with him when he was a patrolman.�

�What about Angelo?�

�I�ll see him later,� Fogarty said. �It�s hard to explain. You could call it an ex-cop�s intuition, but I don�t think I should go to see him at your place, unless he suggested it.�

�Why not?�

�Let�s put it this way,� Fogarty said. �Since Angelo is all we have in common, let�s agree that he didn�t rob a bank or slug anybody on the head. Now, if he�s in the only kind of trouble I can even imagine him being in, it might not help to have it appear as though he�s been looking around for me. Did he mention any of the crowd he was mixed up with years ago? Frank Savarese, for instance? Any of the others?�

�But you know that he doesn�t see them.�

�Does that mean they couldn�t see Angelo?�

�Well, no; I suppose that�s conceivable. And from the way Rose carried on, perhaps it could be.�

�Where does Angelo go to lunch these days?�

�O�Mara�s place, on Bridge Street, most of the time.�

�Tell him I�ll meet him there at half-past twelve.�

�Thank you,� Sarah Kearney said.

�No thanks at all.� He watched her stand up. She was tall and she was a queen and she was handsomer now than she had been in their high-school days, when the sight of her used to flip his heart like a dish. �You�re not as fresh or as hard to get along with as you used to be,� he said kindly. �It�s a great improvement.�

�I�d punch you in the nose,� she said, very calmly, �if it weren�t for Angelo.�

If we remember correctly, it was Ellery Queen who first wrote a series of sports detective short stories � murder and theft against the backgrounds of prizefighting, baseball, football, and horse racing. Since then other sports detective stories have appeared, but surely the theme has not been overworked. So when Julian Symons began a sports series (we have already brought you his story about tennis at Wimbledon), it seemed like a fresh approach all over again.

Now, here is a Julian Symons story about murder in a Sports Arena, during a fight for the bantamweight championship of the world � a murder planned to the smallest detail, so perfectly synchronized with the action in the ring that nothing could possibly go wrong. It is a story of tension, apprehension, and suspension � and of dimension too...

The lights went up all over Harringay Arena. People yawned, stretched, moved out of their seats, went along to the bars and had drinks. Girls in blue coats moved down the gangways, hopefully trying to sell programs, or books about Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano.

Billy Baxter, the promoter, removed the cigar from his mouth long enough to ask half a dozen people to come along and have a quick one with him in his private bar. People were suddenly relaxed and genial; yet mixed with the relaxation was a certain expectancy. The last of the preliminaries was over. The big fight was to come.

As the lights went up, a man in his late thirties, a pleasant-looking man, with nothing unusual about him except his curling reddish hair and his prawn-whisker eyebrows, slipped out of the end seat he occupied in Section N, conveniently near the Number 6 exit, and walked with a light but hurried step toward a telephone box. The man had been christened Max Hoven. Not so many years ago he had been an S.S. officer, in an administrative post at Auschwitz. Now he called himself Art Lancing.

He had come to Harringay that night to kill a man, and he had eight minutes in which to do it. He was now about to make the first move in an intricate but logical and, as he believed, foolproof plan.

A man was in the telephone booth. He stepped out when Lancing tapped lightly on the window. The red-haired man handed him a ten-shilling note, nodded, and went into the booth. The man was an attendant, who knew nothing more than that Lancing had asked him to keep the booth free when the last of the preliminaries was over, so that he could make an urgent telephone call.

Lancing dialed a Gerrard number. It rang once and then a voice said, �Yes.�

Lancing said, �Now, Buster.�

The man said, �Right away. Soon as you put the phone down.�

�You know what you have to do?� Lancing�s English was perfect, although a little mechanical He spoke with a slight American accent.

�Like a book. Ten minutes I�m to keep him talking. Easy. But listen, I don�t know what it�s all about.�

�It is not necessary that you should know,� Lancing said, and hung up.

Buster Marks, a small-time crook, had been paid ₤25 to make a telephone call. It made no sense to him, but it was a job and Lancing knew that he would do it.

He stopped to light a cigarette and walked slowly back to the Arena, showing his ticket to the attendants at the entrance. He stood for a moment watching the crowd of faces going up tier on tier, to the roof as it seemed. Then his light, impersonal gaze moved to a man in the front row by the ringside, a short, plump, baldish man smoking a fat cigar.

This was Jimmy Dain, the man to be killed.

A man sat on either side of Jimmy Dain. These men also were smoking fat cigars. They were his bodyguards.

Suddenly the lights went out, a fanfare played, and two spotlights in the roof played on a man who came out of an entrance to the right of where Art Lancing was standing. The spotlights followed this man as he walked up the gangway and ducked under the ropes into the ring.

The man held up his hands as the crowd roared its applause, clasped them together, and turned round, revealing the name on his dressing gown: Rangeri. This was Paul Rangeri; the thickset French Canadian who was bantamweight champion of the world.

Another fanfare, and the spotlights swung away to another boxer who performed the same ritual of walking up the gangway, ducking under the ropes, and clasping his hands. The cheers were thunderous, especially from the Irishmen in the audience. This was Billy Murphy from Eire, who was taking on what most people felt to be a forlorn hope in meeting the lightning-quick Rangeri. But young Murphy looked fit enough, and confident enough, as he raised his hands to the audience.

This evening Art Lancing was not interested in the boxing. He noticed that a leather-faced, bulky, smiling man had come up the steps and was standing beside him. This was Billy Baxter himself.

How would it be, Art Lancing � who prided himself on his sardonic sense, of humor � wondered, how would it be if he were to tap the promoter on the shoulder and say to him, �You don�t know me, but I�ve come here to kill a man. I do apologize in advance for causing a disturbance, but on this occasion it was unavoidable.�

Baxter would think he was crazy, but he would be making a mistake. Bubbling with suppressed mirth, Art Lancing moved to his seat.

Now the announcer was in the ring, bellowing that this was a ten-round championship fight between Paul Rangeri, bantamweight champion of the world and...

Jimmy Dain was watching the boxers and rolling the cigar between his blubbery lips. �He�s a lovely fighter, that Rangeri. This�ll be a massacre, Mike.�

The man on his right was a bony, hard-eyed Irishman named O�Hara. He said, �I still like the Irish boy. He�s fast and he can punch. If he can last the first couple of rounds I think he can win.�

�You want to express that feeling in cash, Mike?� Jimmy Dain was jovial. �One hundred dollars can win you three hundred.�

O�Hara shook his head. �I never bet except on certainties.�

�How about you, Joe?� Jimmy Dain turned to the man on his left.

Joe Moxon was a hulking, beetle-browed Nordic blond, who seemed to be bursting out of his suit. �What you say?�

�You like to make a little bet on Murphy?�

�I don�t feel like betting, Mr. Dain. I�m worried about Chrissie.�

�Ah, go on. Women have had babies before. It�s human nature, so they tell me.�

�But you don�t understand, Mr. Dain. Chrissie�s got this special sort of blood � you know what they call it, rhesus something or other � and this is her second baby. The doctor told me the danger is always with the second baby��

�Can it, Joe. This is a fight, not a mother�s meeting.� Jimmy Dain�s voice was sour.

Joe Moxon�s underlip quivered. He did not like to be spoken to harshly.

Mike O�Hara said, �Cheer up, Joe. Day after tomorrow you�ll be back in New York and seeing Chrissie in person.�

One of the blue-coated attendants was coming down the gangway. Lancing pushed his program under the seat and asked for another. As the girl gave it to him he said, �You know what to do.�

�Oh, it�s you.� She gave a little gasp. �Yes.�

�And when to do it.�

�Yes, after the announcement over the loudspeaker.� She said a little fearfully, �It�s only a joke, isn�t it? I won�t get into trouble?�

Art Lancing looked up at her from under the prawn-whisker eyebrows and smiled. �Why should you get into trouble? You�re only passing on a message.�

�That�s right. I�m not doing anything wrong, am I?� She brightened. �I�ll do it. It�d be a shame to spoil your joke.�

Especially when you�re getting �5 for it, you little fool, thought Art Lancing, as he smiled again at the girl. As he listened to the announcer giving details of the fight, he moved a little uneasily in his seat. It was time for Buster Marks to make that telephone call.

During these moments � while the boxers were being greeted by a fanfare, entering the ring, shaking hands, listening to the referee � Buster Marks was speaking to the telephone girl at the Arena switchboard.

�I have an urgent call from New York for Mr. Joseph Moxon.� Buster had been a small-part actor before he became a small-time crook, and he mimicked well enough the clipped impersonality of a telephone operator. �I have been in touch with his hotel and they inform me that he is in the Arena. Could you get a message through and ask him to come to the telephone, please? The name is Moxon � m-o-x-o-n.�

�Just a moment.� The switchboard girl wrote down the name and called an attendant. �Can you ask the announcer to make an announcement, and bring this gentleman here. It�s urgent � a call from New York.� To Buster Marks she said, �Hold on, please. I am trying to contact him for you.�

Buster was telephoning from a girl friend�s flat and the girl was stroking his hair. He winked at her and took a piece of Turkish delight from a box by his side.

It took the attendant thirty seconds to get down to the Arena. Another fifteen seconds, and the message had been handed to the announcer. Another fifteen, and the words boomed round the Arena over the loudspeaker system.

�Will Mr. Moxon, Mr. Joseph Moxon, please go to the main telephone switchboard, where an urgent call awaits him from New York. I will repeat��

Joe Moxon was on his feet. �New York. That means Chrissie.�

Jimmy Dain waved him away. �Good luck, boy. Love and kisses to that sweet little girl of yours.�

Introducing a new kind of detective � Richard Verner who calls himself a �heuristician.� Yes, we had to consult a dictionary too; we never even heard of the word, and certainly as detective-story writers we should have been familiar with it. Life is always exciting when you learn something new every day...

Richard Verner leaned back in his office chair with the alert look of a big cat as, across the desk, Nathan Bancroft, a quietly dressed man of average height, spoke earnestly.

�Last Saturday, Mr. Verner, a technician at one of our most highly classified research laboratories got away with the plans for a new and secret type of laser device. The scientist who invented the device evidently tried to stop him, and was stabbed to death.�

Verner nodded intently.

Bancroft went on. �To understand the situation that�s come about, you have to know that the region around this laboratory has a great many caverns. These are connected in a gigantic system of natural tunnels, rooms, crevices, and underground streams that have never been thoroughly mapped or explored.

�The technologist who stole the plans is an ardent speleologist � cave explorer. Possibly one reason for his hobby is that he suffers from hay fever, and cavern air is pure. In any case, over a period of years he�s spent entire days in an underground complex of branching tunnels known as the Maze of Minos. A number of cave explorers have been lost in there, and the local people shun it. The only known expert on this underground maze is the murderer himself.

�Now, there�s no question, Mr. Verner, but that this spy expected to be far away before the theft of the plans was discovered. But, by sheer good luck, the director of the laboratory discovered what had happened, and immediately notified the police. The police were lucky too � they spotted the technician�s car just after the call came in. But then we all ran out of luck. The technician, taking the plans with him, escaped into this cavern � this Maze of Minos.�

�And got away?� said Verner.

�Got clean away,� said Bancroft �The tunnels branch off in all directions, and of course it�s as dark in there as the blackest possible night. He simply vanished.�

Verner nodded again. �He�s still in there?�

Bancroft said glumly, �Yes, he�s still in there. We have a great many men on the spot, doing nothing but watch the known exits. But there�s always the chance that he�ll find some new way out, or knows of one, and get away. Meanwhile, we desperately need those plans. With the inventor dead, there are certain details we can clear up only from those papers. Yet, if we should get close, he just might take it into his head to destroy them. What we want to do is get to him before he realizes we�re near. But how? How do we even find him in there?�

�Is he starving?�

�Not likely. He probably has caches of food for his longer explorations. And there�s water in the caverns, if you know where to look.�

�You want to get him alive, and by surprise?�

�Exactly.�

�But he knows you�re hunting for him in the cavern?�

�Oh, yes. We�ve brought in lights, and before we realized what we were up against, we set up loudspeakers and warned him to give up, or we�d come in after him. If he understood what we were saying over all the echoes, this must have amused him immensely. We could put our whole organization in there and get nothing out of a grand-scale search but sore feet, chills, and a dozen men lost in the winding passages. The thing is a standoff, and he knows it.�

Verner asked thoughtfully, �And what brings you to me?�

Bancroft smiled. �We�ve consulted cave explorers, geologists, and all kinds of specialists without finding what we want. Then one of our men, who knows General Granger, remembered his saying he�d been helped in that mess at the hunting lodge by a �heuristician.� We got in touch with Granger, who recommended you highly. We didn�t know exactly what a �heuristician� was � but we�re prepared to try anything.�

Verner laughed. �A heuristician is a professional problem solver. I work on the assumption that nearly all problems can be solved by the same basic technique, combined with expert knowledge. Some of my cases are scientific, some involve business situations, and others are purely personal problems. The details vary, but the basic technique remains the same. If the case interests me enough to take it in the first place, and if the necessary expert help is available, I can usually solve any problem � though sometimes there�s an unavoidable element of luck and uncertainty.�

�Well,� said Bancroft, �we have plenty of experts on hand � all kinds. And I hope this problem offers enough of a challenge to interest you.�

Verner nodded. �And we�d better lose no time getting there.�

This is the 288th �first story� to be published by Ellery Queen�s Mystery Magazine... an interesting �first� with surprisingly �strong� subject matter, considering the author s background...

Mrs. Elizabeth Denslow Robinson (n�e Smart) was born in 1911 in Danville, Pennsylvania. She attended St. Mary�s School in Concord, New Hampshire � the school is now called St. Mary�s-in-the-Mountains and is located in Littleton, New Hampshire. The death of her father, an Episcopal minister, forced her to go to work at the age of 16 � for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. She married Wesley Robinson, a specialist in marine insurance, in 1932, and they have two daughters, both married now, and at the time of this writing, the Robinsons have four grandchildren. Besides raising children and, keeping house, Mrs. Robinson has sold women�s hosiery, has �worked as a demonstrator of cheese from all nations� (demonstrator of eating cheese?), has been a newspaperwoman briefly, has been in charge of publicity for the Detroit Girl Scouts � and, always, in between, she wrote stories. Her letter ended: �I hope to write forever.�

Al was worried. He guessed he ought to speak to Young Doc about Vera. Something was wrong.

The Siberian tiger lay stretched out beneath the overhanging rock ledge that formed the inner wall of her cage. The fur across her middle rose and fell evenly. She was richly marked, black and soft yellow-tan. Al was crazy about her. The grace and power of her body in motion always fascinated him. Normally, she was ready, waiting, and anxious for her food.

But again today she just lay there.

As usual, at 4:30, people gathered to watch the feeding, but now it was late in the season, so only a few stood together on the sunlit walk. Al selected a slab of red meat and threw it on the floor of the cage. It landed near enough to Vera and with a loud enough thwack. Vera stirred briefly, then settled down as before.

The watchers looked disappointed. Often the tiger put on a good show, ripping and gnawing the raw meat with mighty jaws in a befitting feral manner. �Ain�t that a riot!� said a fat woman in sausage-skin-tight slacks through a mouthful of popcorn. �The darn fool won�t eat!� And someone else said, �Must be sick.�

Yes, something must be wrong. Again today his sweetheart was drowsy and dopey, indifferent to the food. Al waited a few more minutes before taking Vera�s meat away, fishing it out through the bars with a long-handled hook. Then he moved along to feed the lions.

Al loved animals, even the warm beast-smell of them. He�d worked in zoo parks in different parts of the country and liked this one best. In addition to cages, these animals had the freedom of outdoor areas, safely separated from the public by deep moats.

Part of Al�s work was in the zoo gardens. With animals and flowers he could relax. With most people he couldn�t. Certain people had not been kind to him. Often he felt sorry for animals, but for many years he had avoided feeling anything for people. Lately, though, there was someone who kept creeping in to occupy a place in his thoughts.

The lions devoured their meat contentedly. One of the cages held a female and two cubs. A mother with her young. Al lit a cigarette and flipped away the match. He didn�t remember his own mother. She had died when he was four. But he remembered the frowsy quick-tempered woman whom Pa had married afterward. She�d kicked Al�s dog nearly senseless and thrown his cat in the lake.

Pa had never once taken Al�s part against her. After a while Al didn�t care � his heart just grew a hard coating. He didn�t even care when Pa got so sick; it just felt good that Pa couldn�t get out of bed to whip him, the way he�d done so often, sometimes for a little thing like leaving the yard without permission.

When Al was 18, he left the yard for good and found a job in another town delivering groceries. He hadn�t seen Pa or the woman since.

The girl he�d married � later on, after he�d done two years in the army � had been a dilly; she had squandered his money, stolen his savings, and left him for a sailor after six months. For nearly ten years now Al had given all his affection to animals. Until recently. He�d found someone he enjoyed talking to. It seemed kind of good.

All summer this tall round-shouldered guy � somewhere around 50, Al guessed � had come regularly to the zoo. Always alone, he stood for long periods by Vera�s cage, watching her. He and Al had spoken on and off. Then just lately, they�d talked a great deal about their mutual fondness for animals, especially for Vera.

�My name�s Al,� Al had told him.

�You can call me Joe,� the guy had said.

This past week Joe had been coming to the zoo every day. Al caught sight of him often, strolling slowly or relaxing on a bench. Sometimes he sat on the ground with his back against a tree, reading. With him he always had a large old-fashioned picnic hamper and he often stayed through the entire day, eating his meals in the park.

�It�s so peaceful here,� he told Al. �And what fine weather! Really superb!�

The guy talked like that � used words that Al would have felt silly if he said them. But coming out of Joe they sounded okay � not affected or anything. His own education having been slight, Al couldn�t help admiring Joe.

Yesterday he had asked Joe if he was married. Then, afterward, he guessed he shouldn�t have asked, because Joe took so long to answer. Finally Joe had said slowly, �No, I�m not married.�

Because of his lack of expression, Al couldn�t tell whether Joe was sorry about this or not. Anyway, he figured the guy was alone, like himself, and maybe sometimes wished he wasn�t.

The cigarette finished, Al turned from the lions and started toward the Administration Building. The park was deserted now. In mid-September, with kids back in school, people didn�t come around so much. Besides, it was almost five, closing time.

Well, not quite deserted. Pushing his cart along the wooded path, Al spied his friend, Joe, ahead on a bench. He had begun to think of him that way, as his friend. Joe was dressed as usual, somewhat oddly, in a rumpled gray suit, heavy shoes, and a stringy dark tie. His limp nocolor hair was mussed by the breeze. Beside him was the picnic hamper, its lid closed so he could use it as a table for his cup and thermos. He was eating a sandwich. As Al approached Joe said, �Good evening.�

�Hiya, Joe.�� Been a nice day.�

Joe�s eyes were washed-out blue behind his dark-rimmed glasses. �Yes. Yes, it has been. Extremely restful with so few about. I�ve waited all summer for the crowds to thin out so that I could enjoy it here.�� Perhaps I�m staying too long. In fact, I fear I must be. Is there time, I wonder, for me to finish my slight repast?�

The last of Joe�s sandwich looked good. Al was hungry himself. �Sure. The main gate�s closed now but you can go through the woods by Vera�s cage. You know the door in the wall back there? Just pull open the bolt. It locks itself when you close it. Of course you can still get out through the main gate but the back way�s closer.�

�Yes. I�ve used that exit before. It�s right across from my house, you know. That was the main entrance not so long ago.�

�Yeah � before they put in the new one. People still go out that old way a lot. Guess it really needs a better lock. Anybody could prop it open. One of these days they�ll probably take it away and fill in the wall.�� So you live in that big house opposite? Alone?�

�My mother was with me for a good many years, but now � yes, I�m quite alone.�

�What do you do?� Al hesitated a bit, asking this, but he really wanted to know.

�Do? Oh, you mean what sort of work? None, I�m afraid. Mother left me some money and I manage on that. Also, I�m considering writing a book � just to keep busy � about animals, I think. You might be of some help to me, Al, if you�re willing.�

No doubt about it, the guy sure was educated! Suddenly Al felt nervous. A fish out of water was what he was around books. He said, in an off-hand way, �Sure. Anything I can do.� Then, �Well, I�m going over to see Doc. Vera�s not acting right.�

Joe took a long drink from his cup. �I hope it�s nothing serious. I�d be most unhappy if anything happened to Vera. She�s a beauty. I believe she really knows me now. Lately, I feel certain she�s glad to see me.�

Al smiled. He was willing to share Vera�s affections with Joe.

Joe rose, screwing the top on his thermos. �Well, I�ve finished and I must be off.�

�See ya,� Al said.

Joe tucked the thermos under his arm. �Good night, Al. It�s always a pleasure to talk to you. I�ll be thinking about Vera and hoping she�s all right.� He picked up the hamper by its wooden handles and scuffed away through the leaves that the wind was swirling across the ground.

Al watched him go. A kind of pitiful-looking guy. For all his money. He needed someone to look after him, keep him tidy. Suit unpressed and baggy; spots all over the front of it. Needed a friend too.

Imagine his living in that big house all by himself! To Al, who had always lived in small quarters, it seemed ridiculous. No wonder Joe came to the park so often � probably needed to get out of that house.

Al surprised himself by actually feeling sorry for Joe. Maybe some night he�d ask the guy to go to a movie. There was usually a good double feature at the Palace. On the other hand, people who wrote books scared him. He�d have to think about it.

But right now he had Vera on his mind. He went along to find Young Doc.

A 24-carat detective thriller � and when we say �detective� we mean just that. Watch a real detective at work, investigating a chain of circumstances leading, step by step, to murder � from an unknown man to an unknown place to, eventually, a �room with singing walls.�

This is one of Cornell Woolrich�s finest short novels � high voltage suspense on every page and the special brand of Woolrich-lrish terror-by-night, and even more terrifying, terror-by-day...

I knew what it was like to wake up after being drunk the night before � everyone does, I guess � but that wasn�t in it compared to what this was like. This had all the same symptoms of the other, and then some new ones of its own. My mouth felt just as dry and my head felt just as heavy and my stomach felt just as bad. And then in addition, my eyes wouldn�t focus right � everything I looked at seemed to have rings around it; and my hands were cold and clammy, and my teeth were on edge, as though I�d been chewing lemons.

But worse than anything else was the mental conditioning it had left behind; I was afraid. I was as afraid as a seven-year-old kid in an old dark house. And when you�re afraid at one o�clock of a blazing bright afternoon, mister, you�re afraid.

And at that, the after-effects were nothing compared to what the symptoms had been like the night before, while I was still under it. I grabbed my eyes tight to shut out the recollection, and if I�d had an extra pair of hands I�d have stopped up my ears at the same time. But the images were inside, in my memory, where I couldn�t get at them. Blurred, but there.

He was a fellow I�d known slightly � so slightly that I didn�t even know his last name; just Joe. Joe said, �Aw, you need cheering up. Come on with me, I�m going somewhere that�ll cheer you up.� And then, probably an hour later, the parting hand on my shoulder. �Take it easy, be seeing you around, I�m blowing now.�

I remembered saying, �Well, just a sec, I�ll go with you. I came here with you after all.�

I remember the knowing wink he�d given me. �Naw, you better hang around a while; I�m taking that girl in green home. You know how it is, two�s company�� Exit Joe, whoever he was.

So I stayed on there, like a fool, in a strange place with strangers.

The rest of it came crowding back on me, all mixed up like what they call montage in the movies. The man with the white scar on his jaw. I kept seeing that white scar, hearing disconnected things he�d said. �Just enough to cover your thumbnail. Always remember that and you can never go wrong; just enough to cover your thumbnail. Then you bring it up the long way, like you were going to wipe your nose.�... �Nice-looking place, isn�t it? You want it, you can have it. Listen, I�d give away anything tonight. Make yourself at home, I�ll be right back.�... �What�d you do, have some trouble in here while I was gone? Look at that, look at the blood all over your shirt!�... �No, you can�t get out that way! That�s a dead window, you fool! Can�t you see by looking at it? It�s nailed down fast, it�s painted over. They built a house right up next to this, and the brick work sealed it up.�... �Aw, that�s nothing; you want that to go away? I�ll show you how to make that go away. Now hold steady. Just enough to cover your thumbnail. Watch and see how that makes it go away.�... �Don�t get excited, I�m not going anywhere. Just wait here for me, I�ll be right back��

And then it got worse and worse. At the end it was almost a frenzy, a delirium. Of fear and flight and pursuit. The very walls had seemed to whisper. �Look at him, sitting there waiting! They�ll get him, they�ll get him!�

They seemed to sing, too. Music kept oozing out of them. Ghost music. I could hear it so plain, I could even recognize some of the tunes, I could even remember them now! Alice Blue Gown, Out on a Limb, Oh, Johnny, and the Woodpecker Song.

And then the climactic madness, the straining, tugging trip to the closet along the floor; the frantic closing of the door; the locking of it, on what it held; the secreting of the key in my pocket; the piling up and barricading of it with a table, a chair, anything and everything I could lay my hands on. Then flight, through the labyrinth of the city, hiding in doorways, sidling around corners, hugging the shadows. Flight that went on forever. From � where? To � where? Then kindly oblivion at last.

All of it a junk dream, of course. But needles of cold sweat came out on my forehead even now, it was still so vivid, so haunting.

I didn�t know what to do for a hangover of this kind. But I figured water, lots of cold water inside and out, was good for almost anything under the sun, so it ought to be good for this too. At least it couldn�t hurt it any.

I staggered rubber-kneed into the bathroom and filled the washbowl and sloshed my eyes, and ducked my whole face in it, and slapped it across the back of my neck. After I got through, I felt a little better. Not a lot, though.

I went back to my room and combed my soaked hair and started to get dressed. If I�d had a job I would have been out of it by now, I�d overslept so long. But I didn�t have one anyway, so it didn�t make any difference.

Just after I�d got my shoes and trousers on, Mildred knocked on the door. She�d heard me moving around, I guess. I told her to come in. I was ashamed to look at her, but only I knew the real reason why; she didn�t. She looked in and said, �Hello, Tommy. I guess you had a drink or two too many last night.�

I thought, �I only wish it was that!� I was sorrier than ever the thing had happened.

�I understand how it is � it helps to take your mind off your troubles once in a while.� Then she rested a hand on my arm for a minute, to show she didn�t mean it for criticism. �But don�t do too much of it, Tommy. It doesn�t make it any easier to get a job. I�ll fix you some coffee, that�ll brace you up.�

She was my older sister. She was swell. I was not only living with her, but she�d even been keeping me in pocket money since I�d been out of a job. She went out again, and I went ahead with my dressing.

First I was going to put on a clean shirt, but I thought I better not be too extravagant while I was out of work, so I decided I�d stick to the old one a day more. The way it was folded or rumpled must have hidden the stain. I only saw it after I had the shirt on, and tucked into my belt, and was buttoning it down in front of the glass. It was brown, a sort of splashy stain in front.

I stared at it in a sort of paralyzed horror. I don�t think I moved for about two minutes. Finally I touched it, and where it was brown it was stiff. Good and stiff. �What�d you do, have some trouble in here? Look at the blood all over your shirt!� It rang in my ears again. So that part of it was real at least, it hadn�t been just a snow mirage.

All right, it was real. But it had to come from somewhere. It didn�t just appear from nowhere, like a miraculous stigmata. I pulled the shirt up out of my belt, and hoisted my undershirt, and scanned my body, all around the lower ribs. There wasn�t a scratch on me anywhere. I looked higher up, on my chest. I even rolled up my sleeves and looked at both arms. There wasn�t a nick anywhere on my skin. And whatever had bled that much must have been a pretty good-sized gash.

So it had come from someone else.

I finished dressing. I kept talking it into myself that it meant nothing. �Somebody you were with cut himself on something. You don�t remember it, that�s all. How�d it get on me, then? Well, maybe you were lurching around. You leaned up against someone, or someone did against you. You better quit thinking about it. You want to hang onto your self-control, don�t you? Then quit thinking about it.�

Which was a lot easier said than done, but I finished up my dressing, put on my coat. The last stage of all was what everyone�s last stage usually is. To put my change, matches, keys, whatever loose accessories there were, back into my pockets where they belonged.

Even in last night�s befogged condition, habit had been strong enough to assert itself. The stuff was dumped out on top of the bureau, the way I always found it every morning. I started collecting it item by item, dropping each category into the particular pocket where it belonged. Three nickels and a dime. (I�d started out with thirty-five cents last night, I distinctly remembered that, so I must have spent a dime sometime during the course of the night; I couldn�t remember doing it.) A withered pack that contained a last cigarette � broken into two sections from pocket pressure. I put one into my mouth, threw the other away. And last of all, my keys � one that Mildred and Denny had given me to the apartment here, and the other a little jigger that opened my valise.

This time I didn�t stand staring in frozen horror. The half cigarette fell from my relaxed lips to the floor, and I lurched forward, steadied myself by gripping the front edge of the bureau. I stayed that way, sort of hunched over, goggling down at it.

There was one key too many there.

There were three keys staring me in the face, and up to last night I had only two. There was a strange key there mixed up with my own two, a key that didn�t belong to me, a key I�d never seen before. Or at least, only in a � snow flurry.

It wasn�t one of these modern, brass, safety-lock keys; it was an old-fashioned iron thing, dun-colored, with an elongated stem and two teeth at the end of it shaped like a buzzsaw. The kind of a key used in an old-fashioned house, that has old-fashioned rooms with old-fashioned doors.

It was an interior key. I mean, you could see it wasn�t for an outside door, a street door, but for some door on the inside of a house � a room door or a closet door.

That gave me a shot in the arm, that last word. I straightened up from my leapfrog position and did things around the room fast. First, I gave it the benefit of the doubt � although I knew as sure as I was born I�d never seen it before in my life, that it didn�t belong around here. I went over to my own closet with it, to try it on that. It wouldn�t go in, because the closet�s own key was sticking out, blocking the keyhole. Then I went to my room door, but there wasn�t anywhere on that to try it. It had no lock at all; it closed on a little horizontal bolt run into a hole. There wasn�t any place else for me to match it up with.

It came from somewhere outside. Somewhere in a dope dream.

Then the panic came on again from last night, only now it was worse, because this was broad daylight and now I was in my right senses. I swung out my valise and kicked the lid up. I didn�t have much to pack, so it didn�t take long. But everything there was to pack, I packed.

I�d gotten halfway down the short little hall with my bag in my hand when Mildred looked out and saw me. She gave a little moaning protest, ran after me. �No, Tommy � what�re you doing?�

�I�ve got to go. Don�t stop me, I�ve got to get out of here.�

�No, Tommy � what is it?� She took the valise and set it down. I let her. I didn�t want to go myself, that was why I stood there undecided. But yet, I knew I couldn�t stay � not now.

�I�ve got to, I tell you!�

�But why? Where? You have no money.� She took me by the arm and coaxed me into the kitchen. �At least drink a cup of coffee before you go, don�t leave like this; I just made it fresh.�

It was just a stall, she only wanted to gain time. I knew that, but I slumped into a chair anyway, and cradled my head, and leaned way over my own lap, staring down at the floor.

I heard her slip out to the phone when she thought I wasn�t noticing, but I didn�t try to interfere. I heard her saying in a guarded voice, �Denny, will you come home right away? See if you can get relieved from duty and come home right away � it�s very important.�

He was a detective. In one way, I wanted to talk to him very much. In another way, I didn�t.

I guess I must have wanted to more than I didn�t want to, because I was still sitting there when he showed up. He got there quickly, not more than ten or fifteen minutes after she�d phoned him.

He came striding in looking worried, and tossed his hat onto the seat of a chair. He was a slow-moving, even-tempered guy as a rule, misleadingly genial on the surface, hard as nails inside. Mildred and I, of course, only saw him when he was off duty, we hadn�t had much chance to see the latter quality in him. I only suspected it was there, without being sure. I had him sized up for the kind of man who would give you a break if you deserved one, or crack down on you like granite if you didn�t.

He spoke to her first. �What�s the matter?�

�It�s Tommy,� she said. �He packed his things and wants to leave. You better talk to him, Denny. I�ll leave the two of you alone if you want me to.�

�No,� he said. �Come on, we�ll go in your room, Tom.� He brought the bag in with him and closed the door after the two of us.

He sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at me, waiting. I stayed up. Nothing came, so finally he said patiently, �What�s the matter, kid?�

I gave it to him right away. What was the good of paying it out slow? I said, �I think I killed a man last night.�

He churned that around in his mind, without taking his eyes off me. Then he said, �You think? Listen, that�s a thing you usually can be pretty sure of. You either did or didn�t. Now which is it?�

�I was kind of fuzzy at the time.� �Well, who was he?�

�I don�t know.�

�Where did it happen?�

�I don�t know that either.�

�You don�t know where or who or if�� He gave me a half-rebuking, half-whimsical look. �I don�t get it, Tom. You don�t look yourself today. You look a little funny. And you sure sound a whole lot that way.�

�Yes, that�s it,� I said bitterly. �I better start from the beginning and try to tell you as much as I can.�

�You better,� he agreed drily.

�There won�t be very much. At 11:30 last night I was standing on a corner waiting to cross with the light when a guy I knew by sight happened along. I don�t know who he is or where I knew him from � just that I�d seen his face some place before � fellow named Joe. I told him I was down in the dumps and he said I needed cheering up. He asked me to come with him and like a sap I went.

�I can remember that much clearly. He took me to some apartment where there was a big party going on. I don�t even know just where that was � down on one of the side streets off Kent Boulevard somewhere. I didn�t know anyone there, and I can�t remember that he bothered introducing me. They seemed a sort of free and easy bunch, no questions asked; it was almost like open house � new people kept showing up all the time and old ones leaving. He left, and when I tried to go with him, he gave me some excuse and shoved off alone, leaving me there.

�From then on it gets all woozy. It was late and there were fewer people. The lights got dimmer and the place got quieter, people talking in whispers. There was some guy with a white sear along his jaw. I remember he seemed to be watching me for a long while. Finally he came over and offered me something��

This was the part that was hardest to tell him, but I had to if he was to make any sense out of it.

�Offered you what?� he said.

�I thought it was a headache powder first. He told me to stick my thumb out, and he sifted it onto the nail, from a little paper.�

He just asked the question with his eyes this time. I looked down at the floor. �Coke,� I murmured half audibly.

�You damn fool,� he said. �You ought to have your head examined!�

�I was feeling low; I thought if it would make me forget my troubles for even half an hour it would be worth it. You don�t know what it�s like to be without a job for months, to mooch off your relatives��

�Well, get drunk then, if you have to,� he said scathingly. �Get so pie-eyed you fall down flat on your face � I�ll pay your liquor bill myself! But if you ever go for that stuff again, I�ll break your jaw!�

Again was good. There didn�t have to be a next time; all the damage had been done the first time. I finished up the rest of it. It came easier once I�d gotten past that point. ��and I piled stuff up in front of it, and I beat it out of there, and I don�t remember getting home.�

He hinged his palm up and down on his knee once or twice before he said anything. �Well, whaddya expect if you go monkeying around like that,� he growled finally, �to dream of honeysuckle and roses? It�s a wonder you didn�t imagine you stuffed six dead guys into a closet instead of just one.�

�But do you think that�s what got me rattled?� I expostulated. I held my head tight between both hands. �I found the key on the bureau when I got dressed a little while ago! And his blood on my shirt!� I hauled it out and waved it at him. I pitched the key down and it went clunk! and bounced once and then lay still.

And his face showed me I�d made my point. He picked the key up first and turned it over and over. You could tell he wasn�t so much looking at it as thinking the whole thing over. Then he traced a fingernail back and forth across the stain once or twice. Also absent-mindedly.

�A knife,� he murmured. �A bullet wound wouldn�t have bled that much � not on you. Can you remember a knife? Can you remember holding one? Have you looked � around here?�

I shuddered. �Don�t tell me I brought that back here with me too!�

He flipped up both thumbs out of his entwined hands. �After all, you brought the key, didn�t you?�

He got up from the bed to look for it around the room. And then he didn�t have to � it was there. His getting up had unearthed it.

The bedsprings he�d been pressing down twanged out, settled into place again. Something fell through to the floor with a small, soft thud. Something that had evidently been sheathed between them and the mattress all night.

He picked up a scabbard of tightly folded newspaper, with a brown spot or two on it. He opened it � and there it was. With one of those trick blades that spring out of the hilt. Not even cleaned off.

All he said was, �This don�t look so good, does it, Tom?�

I stared at it. �I don�t even remember slipping it under there. It isn�t mine, I never owned it or carried it�� I took a couple of crazy half turns around the room without getting anywhere. �You haven�t told me yet what I�m*going to do.�

�I�ll tell you what you�re not going to do; you�re not going to lam out. You�re going to stay right here until we find out just what this thing is.� He rewrapped the knife, this time in a large handkerchief of his own. �Here�s how it goes. There�s a possibility, and a damn good one, that there�s some guy stuffed in a closet, in some room of some house, somewhere in this city at this very minute � and that you killed him last night under the influence of cocaine. Now he�s going to be found sooner or later. But we�ve got to find him first � do you get that? We�ve got to know ahead of time, before it breaks, whether you did kill him or not.�

He stepped up and grabbed me hard by the shoulder. �Now if you did, you�re going to take the knock for it, I�m telling you that here and now. That�s the way I play. But if you didn�t�� He opened his hand and let my shoulder go. �We�ve got to get to him first, otherwise I�ll never be able to clear you.�

�I think I did, Denny,� I breathed low. �I think I did � but I�m not sure.�

�That�s a chance we�ll have to take. And I�m pulling for you � for Mildred�s sake, and yours � and even my own. I don�t exactly hate you, you know.�

�Thanks, Denny.� I gripped hands with him for a minute. �If it turns out it was me, I�m game, I�m willing to��

But he had no more time for loving cups. He was on a case now. He took out an envelope and a pencil stub so worn down that the lead point practically started right out of the eraser. He sat down, turned over one foot, and began to use his shoe for a writing board. He used the back of the envelope to jot on.

�What are you doing?� I asked, half terrified in spite of myself by these preliminaries to police activity, even though they were still confined to my own bedroom.

�I always plot out my line of investigation ahead of time.� He showed me what he�d written.

�See the idea? One leads into the other consecutively. Interlocking steps. It�ll save a lot of time and energy. �Joe� gives us the party flat, the party flat gives us the man with the scar, the man with the scar gives us the room with the singing walls. That gives us a closet with a dead man in it you either did or did not kill. A lot of dicks I know would try to jump straight from the starting point to the closet with the body in it. And land exactly in the middle of nowhere. My way may seem more roundabout, but it�s the surer and quicker way.�

He put the envelope away. �Now we disregard everything else and concentrate on �Joe� first. Until we�ve isolated �Joe,� none of the other factors exist for us. Now sit down a minute and just think about �Joe,� to the exclusion of everything else. His whole connection with it occurred before you were stupefied by that damnable stuff, so it shouldn�t be as hard as what comes later.�

It shouldn�t, but it was.

�You absolutely can�t place him, don�t know where you had seen him before?�

�Absolutely not.�

�Let me see if I can�t build him up for myself, then. What�d he talk about on the way over to this place? You didn�t just walk side by side in stony silence.�

�No.�

�Well gimme some of that. Maybe I can get a line on him from that.�

I dredged my mind futilely. Disconnected snatches were all that would come back; it hadn�t been an important conversation.

�He said, �Aw, don�t think you�re the only one has troubles. Look at me, I�m working but I might just as well not be. A lot I get out of it! Caged up all day, for a lousy fifty a week.��

�And didn�t you ask him what his job was?�

�No. He seemed to take it for granted I knew all about him, and I didn�t want to hurt his feelings by letting him see I hardly remembered him from Adam. Besides, I didn�t particularly care anyway, I had my own worries on my mind.�

�Well, is that all he said the whole way over?�

�That�s all that amounted to anything. The rest were just irrelevant remarks that people make to one another strolling along the street, like �Did you see that blonde just passed?� and �Boy, there�s a car I�d like to own!��

�Let me decide whether they were irrelevant or not,� he said impatiently. �I never throw anything away.�

�I�ve given you about all there were. Then when we got to this place, I heard him say, �Well, here we are,� and he turned in. So I went in after him without particularly noticing where it was. The flat turned out to be on the second floor; it was an elevator building, but the car was in use or something. I remember him saying, �Come on, let�s take the stairs for a change,� and he headed for them without waiting, like he was in a hurry to get up there, so I followed him.�

Denny drove fingernails into his hair. �Not much there, is there? Fifty a week. Caged up all day. We�ll have to try to figure him out from those two chance remarks. Caged up all day. Bank teller? They get more than that.�

�I�ve never had enough money on me at one time to go near a bank.�

�Cashier maybe, in some cafeteria or diner where you�ve been going?� He answered that himself before I had a chance to. �No, you�ve been taking your meals home with us since you�re out of work. Not a ticket seller in a movie house, they use girls for that. And you never go to stage shows, where they use men in the box office.�

�No,� I agreed.

�Caged up all day.� He kept saying it over to himself, trying to make it click. �Change booth on the transportation system maybe, on the station you used to use going to work every day?�

�No, I know both the guys on shift there, Callahan and O�Donnell.�

�Pawnbroker�s clerk, maybe. You�ve been patronizing them pretty frequently of late, haven�t you?�

�Yes, but that�s Benny, I know him real well � by now.�

�I can see where this Joe�s going to be a tough nut to crack.� He mangled the pinfeathers at the back of his head. �It might have been just an idle expression � it don�t have to mean he�s actually in a cage, literally behind some sort of bars or wicket. But it�s the only lead you�ve given me on him so far, and I�m blamed if I�m going to pass it up! Are you sure you can�t dig up something else, Tommy?�

I couldn�t have if my life depended on it. Well, it did in a way, and even so I couldn�t. I just eyed him helplessly.

He got tough. Tough with himself, I mean. I guess he always did, when something showed signs of getting the better of him. �Well, I�m gonna get it if I sit here in this room until cobwebs form all over me!� he snarled.

He raised his head alertly after a moment. �How�d they act at the door? What�d they say to him at the door?�

�Nothing. He thumped it, and I guess it was opened by whoever happened to be standing closest to it, a visitor there himself, just like we were. He didn�t say a word to us, and we didn�t say a word to him, just made our way in.�

�Pretty free and easy,� he grunted. He gnawed at it some more, like a dog with a bone. �You say he was kind of in a hurry to get up there?�

�No, not on the street he didn�t seem to be. We just ambled along, the two of us. He took plenty of time. He stopped and looked at some shirts in a window. Then another time he went in a minute and bought a pack of cigarettes.�

�But you said��

�That was after we got in the entrance. Like I said, the elevator was in use, or at least on its way down to us. I remember the little red light over the shaft was lit up, and the indicator showed it was already down past the second floor. It would only have taken a minute more for it to reach us. But he didn�t seem to want to bother waiting. He said, �Come on, we�ll take the stairs for a change���

�That don�t make sense. On the street he�s not in a hurry, but once in the building he�s in too much of a sweat to wait. Either a person�s in a hurry to get some place the whole time, or not at all.�

Suddenly he uncoiled so suddenly I jumped back from him. �I�ve got it!� he said. �I got something out of that! See, I told you it never pays to throw away anything.� He stabbed his finger at me accusingly. �Your unknown friend �Joe� is an elevator operator! I�m sure of it. Fifty a week would be right for that. And he wasn�t in a hurry when he took the stairs inside that building! He was just sick of riding in elevators, glad for an excuse to walk up for a change.�

He looked at me hopefully, waiting for my reaction. �Well, does it do anything to you, does it mean anything to you, does it click? Now do you place him?� He could tell by my face. �Still don�t, eh?� He took a deep breath, settled down for some more digging. �Well, you�ve evidently ridden up and down in his car with him more than a few times, and he took that to be sufficient basis for an acquaintanceship. Some fellows are that way, without meaning any harm. Then again, some could be that way � meaning plenty of harm. Now: where have you gone more than once or twice where you�ve had occasion to use an elevator?�

I palmed my forehead hopelessly. �Gosh, I�ve been in so many office buildings all over town looking for a job, I don�t think I�ve missed one!�

Right away he made it seem less hopeless, at least trimmed it down. �But it would have to be a place where you were called back at least a second time, probably talked to him about it riding up to the interview. Were there any?�

�Plenty,� I told him grimly.

�Well, here�s your part of the assignment � and take it fast, we haven�t got a hell of a lot of time, you know. You revisit every such place you can recall being in the past few months, where you nearly got a job, had to go back two or three times. Meanwhile, I�m going to get to work on this knife, slip it in at Fingerprints as a personal off-the-record favor, and see just what comes off it, how heavily it counts against you��

He took out a fountain pen, spattered a couple of drops of ink onto a piece of paper, and made an improvised ink pad by having me stroke it with my fingertips. �Now press down hard on this clean piece, keep them steady. Homemade but effective. I�ll make the comparison myself while I�m down there, without letting anyone in on it � for the present. I�ll probably be back here before you are � I�m going to get sick leave until we�ve broken this thing down. You call me back here at the house the minute you have any luck with this Joe. And don�t take too long, Tom; it�s almost mid-afternoon already. Any minute somebody�s liable to step up to a certain closet in a certain house, and try to open it, and do something about it when they find it�s locked��

I flitted out, on that parting warning, with a face the color of a sheet that�s had too much blueing used on it. He stopped me a minute just as I got the door open, and added, �Mildred�s out of this, get that straight.�

�I should hope so,� I said almost resentfully. What did he think I was?

I could remember most of the places I�d been around to fairly recently looking for openings. I mean, the ones where I�d been told to come back, and then when I had, somebody else had walked off with the job anyway. I revisited them one by one.

Some of them were old-fashioned buildings with just one rickety elevator; they were easy to cover. Others were tall modern structures serviced by triple and quadruple tiers of them, and a starter posted out front to give them the buzzer. In places like that I had to stand where I could command all the car doors and wait until they�d all opened to reveal the operators� faces. And even then I wasn�t satisfied. I�d ask each starter, �Is there anyone named Joe working the cars here?� He might be at home sick or he might be on a later shift.

I always got: �Joe who?�

�Just Joe,� I�d have to say. �Joe Anybody.�

Once I got a Joe Marsala that way, but he turned out to be an undersized, Latin-looking youth, not what I wanted. No sign of the vague, phanton Joe who had, voluntarily or involuntarily, led me into murder.

At five to four, or nearly an hour after I�d left Denny, I finally ran out of places where I could remember having been job hunting. I knew there must have been others, so to make sure of getting them all, I went back to the employment agency where I�d been registered for a time to see if a look at their files wouldn�t help my memory. I figured they must keep a record of where they sent their applicants, even the unsuccessful ones.

I phoned Denny from there, from a little soft-drink parlor on the ground floor, all winded from excitement. �I got him! I got him! I came back here to the employment agency to get a record of more places where I was sent to � and he was here the whole time! He runs the car right in this building!�

�Has he seen you yet?� he asked briskly.

�No, I got a look at him first, and I figured I better tell you before I��

�Wait where you are,� he ordered. �Don�t let him see you until I get down there.� I gave him the address and he hung up.

I kept walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, to make sure he didn�t give me the slip before Denny got there. He couldn�t see me from where he was � the elevator was set pretty far back in the lobby. I was plenty steamed up. Kind of frightened too. We were a step nearer to murder. A murder it looked as if I�d done. A murder I was pledged to take the rap for, if it turned out I had.

Denny came fast. �In here?� he said briefly.

�Y-yeah,� I stammered. �There�s only one car and he�s running it right now.�

�Stay out here,� he said curtly, �I�ll go in and get him.� I guess he wanted to catch Joe off guard, not tip his hand by letting him see me with him right at the beginning. Then with a comprehending look at my twitching face muscles, he threw at me: �Buck up. Don�t go all to pieces � too early in the game for that yet.� And went in.

They came out together in about five minutes, after he�d asked the first few preliminary questions.

It was him all right. He was in uniform now, and he looked pretty white and shaky. I guess the shock of the badge hadn�t worn off yet. Denny said, �This your acquaintance?�

�Yeah,� I said. I waited to see if he�d deny it. He didn�t. He turned and said to me querulously, �What�d you do, get me in wrong? I didn�t mean nothing by taking you there with me last night. What happened after I left, was there something swiped from the place?�

Which was a pretty good out for himself � I didn�t have to be a detective to recognize that. In other words, he was just an innocent link in the chain of circumstances leading to murder.

If Denny felt that way about it, he didn�t show it. He gave him a shake that started at the shoulder and went rippling down him like a shimmy. �Cut out the baby stuff, Fraser,� he said. �Now are you going to talk while we�re waiting for the van?� Which was just to throw a scare into him; I hadn�t seen him put in a call for a van since he�d gotten here.

Denny took out an envelope with his free hand and showed me the back of it. �Sorrell � 795 � Alcazar, Apt. 2 B,� he�d penciled on it. He�d gotten the name and location of the party flat out of Joe. I didn�t know what more he wanted with him. It seemed he just wanted to find out whether Joe�d been in on anything or not. �How many times had you been up there before last night?�

�Only once before.�

�How�d you happen to go up there in the first place?�

�My job before this, I was deliveryman for a liquor store near there. I was sent over with a caseful one night, and they were having a big blowout, and they invited me in. They�re that kind of people, sort of goofy. They used to be in vaudeville. Now they follow the races around from track to track. Half the time they�re broke, but every once in a while they make a big killing on some long shot, and then they go on a spree, hold sort of open house. People take advantage of them, word gets around, don�t ask me how, and before they�re through they�ve got people they don�t even know crashing in on them.�

�But how�d you happen to know there was going to be a party last night, when you took this fellow up there with you?�

�I didn�t for sure, I just took a chance on it. If there hadn�t been anything doing, I would have gone away again. But it turned out they had a bigger mob than ever. They didn�t even remember me from the time before, but that didn�t make no difference, they told me to make myself at home anyway. They were both kind of stewed by that time.�

�You make fifty a week chauffeuring that cracker box in there, right? How much did they charge you up there?�

�I don�t get you,� Fraser faltered. �They didn�t charge me anything. It isn�t a place where you pay admission��

Denny gave him a twist of the arm. �Come on, you knew what they were passing around up there. How were you able to afford it? Did you get yours free for steering newcomers?�

�I don�t know what you�re talking about, honest I don�t,� he quavered.

�You didn�t know that was a dope flat?� Denny slashed at him mercilessly.

Joe�s consternation was too evident to be anything but genuine. I think even Denny felt that. I thought he was going to cave in for a minute. I never saw a guy get so frightened in my life before.

�Holy smoke�!� he exhaled. �I never noticed nothing like that � I saw this girl in green and I took a shine to her, and the two of us blew the place after about fifteen minutes��

Denny only asked him one more question. �Who was the guy with the white scar?�

�What guy with what white scar? I didn�t see no guy with a scar. He musta come in after I left.�

Denny took his hand off Joe�s shoulder for the first time. He tapped his notebook meaningfully. �You may be telling the truth and you may not. You better pray you were. I know where you work and I�ve got your home address, and if you�ve been stringing me, I�ll know where to find you. Now get back in there and keep your mouth shut!�

He turned and slunk into the building, looking back mesmerized over his shoulder at Denny the whole way.

Exit Joe.

We got in a cab. Denny said, �I think he�s telling the truth, as far as you can be sure about those things. If he isn�t, I can always pick him up fast enough. If I did now, I�d have to book him, and that would bring the whole thing out down at Headquarters.�

�How�d... how�d the knife come out?� I asked apprehensively.

�Not good for you,� he let me know grimly. �Your mitts are all over it. And there�s not a sign of anyone else on it. It must have been cleaned off good before it was handed to you. It�s going to crack down on the back of your neck like a crowbar when I�ve finally got to turn it in.�

The cab stopped and we were around the corner from the party flat. We got out and headed straight for the entrance, without any preliminary casing or inquiring around. We had to. It was 4:30 by now, and the deadline was still on us � only it was shortening all the time. It was a kind of flashy-looking place, the kind that people who lived by horse betting would pick to live in.

I couldn�t help shuddering as we went in the entrance. We were now only two steps away from murder. There remained the man with the scar and the room with the musical walls. Getting closer all the time.

We didn�t have any trouble getting in. They seemed to expect anyone at any time of the day, and made no bones about opening up. An overripe blonde in a fluffy negligee, eyes still slitted from sleep and last night�s rouge still on her face, was waiting for us at the door when we got out of the self-service car. She was shoddy and cheap, yes, but there was something good-natured and likeable about her, even at first sight.

�I never know who to expect any more,� she greeted us cheerfully. �Somebody parked their gum on the announcer a few weeks ago, and you can�t hear anything through it ever since. So I just take potluck��

Denny flashed her the badge. She showed a peculiar sort of dismay at the sight of it. It was dismay all right, but a resigned, fatalistic kind. She let her hands hang limply down like empty gloves. �Oh, I knew something like this was going to happen sooner or later!� she lamented. �I been telling Ed over and ever we gotta cut out giving those parties and letting just anyone at all in. I already lost a valuable fur piece that way last year��

�Okay if we come in and talk to you?� He had to ask that, I guess, because he had no search warrant.

She stood back readily enough to let us through. The place was a wreck � they hadn�t gotten around to cleaning it up yet after the night before. �Is it pretty serious?� she asked nervously. �Who told you about us?�

Denny was trying to trap her, I could see. �Your friend with the scar on his jaw � know who I mean?�

She didn�t know, and she seemed on the level about it � as on the level as Joe Fraser had been about not knowing there was dope peddled up here. �I can�t place anyone with a scar on his jaw�� She poised a finger at the corner of her mouth and looked around at various angles in search of inspiration.

�Are you denying there was a guy with a scar on his jaw up here last night?� Denny said truculently. He had my word for that, and I was sure of that part of it, if nothing else.

�No, there could have been ten guys with scars. All I�m saying is if there was I didn�t see him. The excitement was a little too much for me, and I retired about midnight.� She meant she�d passed out, I guess. �He may have come in after that. You�d better ask my husband.�

She went through the next room and spoke into the one beyond. He was asleep, I guess, and she had to talk loud. �Ed, we�re in trouble. You better come out here and answer this man�s questions.�

Ed came out after her looking like a scarecrow in a dressing gown. Interest in the races had kept him thin around the middle, if it hadn�t prevented his hair from falling out. Denny woke him up with the same question he�d just given her.

�No, I didn�t notice anyone with a scar here last night. He might have been here and just happened to have that side of his face turned away from me each time I got a look at him. But even so, he wasn�t anyone I know personally. I don�t know anyone with a scar.�

�Some guy got in here, and you not only didn�t know him but didn�t even see him the whole time he was in your place. What kind of people are you anyway?�

�Well, that�s the way we live, mister. We may be careless but we have a helluva good time.�

Denny scanned him for several uncomfortable minutes. Suddenly he said, �Mind if I look around?�

�N-no, go ahead.� They were both frightened, but in the vague way of people who don�t know what to expect next.

I didn�t get what Denny was after for a minute. I trailed after him, and they trailed after me. In each room he went into, he only had eyes for the closet � when there was one. Or rather, the keyhole in the closet.

There was only one that didn�t have a key sticking out of it.

We got to it finally. It was painted white. It was in a little room at the back, a sort of spare room. My heart started to pick up speed.

It seemed to stand out from the walls, as if it was coated with luminous paint. My eyes almost seemed to be able to pierce it, as though they were X-rays, and make out, huddled on the inside � I looked around in cold, sick fear in the split second that we all stood there grouped in the doorway.

That mission-type table over there, didn�t it look like the very one I had up-ended against the locked closet? That window, with the dark shade drawn all the way down to the bottom � �No, you can�t get out that way, that�s a dead window, blocked with bricks.� I didn�t have the nerve to step over to it and raise the shade.

Denny had tightened up too, I could see. He didn�t take out the key I�d found on my bureau. Instead he said, �D�you mind unlocking that?�

Right away they both got flustered. They looked at each other helplessly. She said to him, �Where�d we put it this time?�

He said, �I dunno, you were the one put it away. I told you to pick the same place each time. You keep changing the place, and then we can�t find it ourselves!�

They both started looking high and low. She explained to Denny, �We call that closet The Safe. When we feel one of those parties coming on, we gather up everything valuable and shove it all in there, and lock it up till it�s over.�

Denny didn�t look convinced or relenting. I was leaning against the door frame � I needed support.

�It�s all our own stuff,� she said.

He gave her the stony eye.

The harder they looked, the more flustered they got. I kept wondering why he didn�t take out the key and try to fit it in. Why did he have to torture me this way? My chest was pounding like a dynamo.

Was he in there, whoever he was? Would he topple out on us when it was opened finally? But if they�d known about it, they would have smuggled him out long ago, wouldn�t they? Or else beat it away from here themselves. Or suppose they hadn�t known about it themselves and still didn�t? That wouldn�t make me any the less guilty.

The Sorrell woman suddenly gave a yelp of triumph, from the direction of the bedroom, where the ever-widening search had led her. She came running in with it, holding it up between her fingers. You could hardly distinguish what it was � it was all clotted with some white substance. �I hid it in my cold cream tin, I remember now!� she exulted. �Luckily I stopped a minute to rub a little on��

Denny wouldn�t let her get over to the keyhole with it; he took the key, inserted it himself, gave it a twist, and the door swung out. Furs, silverware, luggage � everything that predatory guests might have made off with was piled up inside.

But no dead bodies.

I had to sit down for a minute; I felt weak all over.

�It�s all our own stuff,� the woman said for the third or fourth time. �Did somebody tell you we had something in there didn�t belong to us?�

�No, just an idea of mine,� Denny said quietly. He handed the key back and turned away.

It was dusk when we left the Sorrell apartment. All day someone had lain murdered in a closet, and we were no nearer to knowing where. And now it was night again, the second night since it had happened.

We stood down there on the street outside the place. Because we didn�t know where to go now. There was a gap. The first step had led into the second, but the second had led into a vacuum.

�Well, my way didn�t pay off,� he said glumly. �The thing�s broken in two.� He turned and looked up at the lighted windows behind us. �And I�m inclined to give the Sorrells the benefit of the doubt. I don�t think they really know this man with the scar. I don�t think they really noticed him in their place last night. I don�t think they realized anyone had cocaine on him and passed some to you. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt � for the present. I can�t go after it the way I would ordinarily � have them watched, check their movements, track down as many people as I can who were at the party, in hopes of finally getting a line on him. We haven�t got time. We�ll have to jump the gap blindfolded and try for the third foothold � the room with the singing walls.�

We passed a cigar store and Denny went in, stepped inside the phone booth. I figured it was to Headquarters, without his telling me so. It was. He came back and said, �Well, our margin of safety still holds � they haven�t found him yet. I checked on all reported homicides, and there�s no one been turned up stabbed in a closet � as of 6:45 this evening.� He gave me a look. �But that don�t mean there�s no one in a closet still waiting to be turned up. We�ve got to hustle.�

Sure we did � but where?

�Can you remember leaving here at all?�

�No, there�s a complete blank. The next I knew was the room with the singing walls. Scarface reappeared in that sequence, so I must have left with him; he must have taken me there from here.�

�Obviously. But that don�t tell us where it is.�

It was strangely topsy-turvy, this thing. Ordinarily they get the murdered remains first, have to go out and look for the murderer. In this case, he had the murderer at hand from the beginning, and couldn�t find out where the remains were. Even the murderer couldn�t help him.

�About those so-called singing walls. Was it a radio or television you heard through them? That�s the first thing occurs to me, of course.�

�No, I�m pretty sure it wasn�t. There wasn�t a scrap of human voice, or of station announcement in between. If I was able to distinguish the tunes clearly enough to recognize them, I would have been able to hear the announcer too, wouldn�t I? And there�s at least a title given between numbers on any radio or television program.�

�You can�t remember how you got there? Not even the vaguest recollection? Whether it was on foot, or in a cab, or in a car with him, or by bus?�

�No. Any more than I can remember how I got away afterw� Wait!� I broke off suddenly.

�What is it?� he pounced.

�I just remembered a little detail I didn�t tell you before. I wonder if it�s any good to you or not.�

�I told you I never throw anything away. Let me have it.�

�I either spent or lost ten cents sometime during the course of the night. When I met Fraser on the street, I had thirty-five cents in my pocket. I can remember standing there jingling it just before he came up to me. This morning there was only twenty-five cents on my bureau. I was out a dime. D�you think I spent it making my way home � from wherever this was?�

He liked that right away, I could see; he liked that a lot. �It could be a yardstick, to measure just how far out this place was, if nothing else. It don�t give us the direction, but it might give us the approximate distance. Can you remember making your way back at all?�

�Yeah, partly; only the opening stages, though. I remember slinking along, hugging walls and doorways, scared stiff. I don�t remember what part of town I was in, though. And then the curtain came down again, and I don�t remember how I finally got back.�

�What kind of coins was this thirty-five cents in, when you had it last night � can you remember that?�

�Easily, I counted it over enough times. Three nickles and two dimes. And this morning there were only the three nickles and a dime left.�

�That�s important,� he said. �That fact that the three nickles were carried over eliminates the possibility that you paid a fifteen-cent fare. If you paid any fare at all, you paid an exact ten cents. It�s still possible you lost the dime, of course, but we can�t let that stop us. If you spent a dime fare, that eliminates taxis. Now the bus system here runs on a mileage basis, you know that. Ten cents for a certain distance, then fifteen, and so on. This missing dime seems to show you boarded an inbound bus at some point within the ten-cent zone and rode in toward our place.

�D�you see what I�m driving at? We�re looking for some place in that ten-cent bus Zone where there�s music playing late at night, until two or three in the morning. And not a radio or television � either a real band or a phonograph that changes its own records by automatic control. Some roadhouse or resort or even just a hole-in-the-wall taproom. And then we�re looking for a room right upstairs over it, or right next door to it, with a partition wall so thin it lets this music come whispering through. There�s our problem.�

�But it seemed to me I did a lot of this running away on foot first; my starting point might have been quite a distance off from this ten-cent bus zone.�

�It seemed that way. I doubt you did in your condition. Narcotics distort your time sense, for one thing. Just down the block and around a couple of corners, to you might have seemed like an endless flight that went on for hours. Then again, of course, you may be right about it; I wasn�t on your feet. The only way we�ll find out is to put it to the proof.�

There were two bus lines that passed the immediate neighborhood our own flat was in, the Fairview line and one that went out to the municipal beach at Duck Island. The routes were parallel this far in; they only diverged farther out. The double route was two blocks over from our place.

�We�ll take whichever one comes along first,� he said while we stood waiting.

A Fairview one hove into sight first, outward bound of course. We got on and he said, �Two ten-cent fares.� Then he stood behind the driver�s back and, company regulations to the contrary, asked, �How many stops do you make in the ten-cent zone?� They ran on fixed stops.

�Only three.� He gave us the intersection names. �After that, it jumps to fifteen.�

�Well, offhand, could you mention any inns or dance joints out that way, where the music plays late?�

�Try Dixie Trixie�s, that�s just out side the city limits��

Denny cut him short. �No, I�m asking about the ten-cent zone, between Continental and Empire Road.�

�Naw, I don�t think you�ll find many around there � one or two honkytonks maybe.�

�We�ll have to do our own scouting then,� Denny said to me. He led the way back to a seat and swore bitterly under his breath, �We�ll be at it all night.�

We got out at Continental, the first ten-cent stop, and he did a little surveying before we moved off the bus route. The task before us wasn�t as bad as it had threatened to be at first sight. It was no cinch by any means, but at least he was able to put physical limits to the terrain we had to finecomb.

The bus stops were eight blocks apart. A railroad embankment walled us off six blocks to the left, and a large park with a lake in it dead-ended the streets four blocks over the other way. He divided the difference between the two bus stops, multiplied it by ten crosswise blocks, and that gave us forty square blocks to canvass for each bus stop.

Naturally, it wasn�t a question of going into every doorway of every building along those forty blocks � that would have still been pretty much of a physical impossibility. A cop on the beat here, a storekeeper there, was able to speed us through by listing the places in his immediate vicinity that provided music late at night. That way we sometimes only had to make one stop in five or six blocks. We investigated several bars which had coin phonographs, but none had all four of the selections that I�d remembered hearing in their repertoire.

We went back and boarded the bus, rode one stop ahead, and started the whole thing over. Same lack of results. The closest we got to anything in this sector was when the harness cop told us there had been a lot of complaints about a Polish family playing their phonograph late at nights with all the stops out. But they didn�t own any of the records we were looking for.

We went back, caught another bus, got out at the third and last ten-cent stop, and finished the chore out. That fizzled too. We limped aboard an in-bound bus and rode back to where the Duck Island line diverged from this one. The thought of going through the same routine all over again, on a new bus route, was more than we could face without a breathing spell.

We dragged ourselves into the nearest resting place we could find, which happened to be a diner, and just sat there slumped over the counter, too tired even to hold our backs up straight, chins nearly dunked in our coffee cups, talking it over in low voices so the counterman wouldn�t overhear us.

�Even if I wanted to take you down with me and report it � and I don�t, God knows � I couldn�t until we�ve found out where it happened. They�d have to have that. And the longer it takes and the colder it gets, the harder it�s going to be to clear you.� He looked down at the wax-white, trembling hand I�d suddenly braked on his arm. �What is it?�

�Did you hear that, just then?�

He turned and looked over at the wire-mesh loudspeaker set on a low shelf near the coffee boiler.

�They just got through playing Alice Blue Gown and now��

He didn�t get me for a minute. �But this diner�s in the middle of a vacant plot, you saw that when we came in. There aren�t any adjoining��

�No, no, you haven�t been paying attention to the program, I have. They got through Blue Gown a minute or two ago; now they�ve gone into Out on a Limb. Listen, hear it? That�s the same order I heard them in last night � there.�

�That�s just a coincidence. There must be a thousand bands all over the country playing those two pieces day and night��

�The third one�ll tell. The third one was Oh, Johnny.� I could hardly wait for it to end; it never seemed to, it seemed to go on forever. I balled a fist and beat it into the hollow of my hand to hurry it up. He sat there straining his ears too; his back was held a little straighter now.

It wound up finally and there was a short pause. Then the tune itself. I grabbed him with both hands this time, nearly toppled him off the tall stool he was perched on. �Oh, Johnny! That�s not a coincidence any more. That�s the same sequence I heard them in last night. That�s the same band.�

�But I thought you said it wasn�t a broadcast, that you heard no station announcements. This is.�

�But there are no station announcements on this either � it�s evidently a program that only makes one every five or six numbers. I still don�t think it was a broadcast; this isn�t the same hour I heard them, and they wouldn�t broadcast twice in one night. But I think it was the same band, I�m sure of it. Maybe they broadcast first, and then play in person somewhere later on��

The Woodpecker Song had started in. I turned around to tell him that, riot sure if he knew tunes by ear as well as I did. But he�d had enough; the stool next to me was empty and he was already over at the pay phone on the wall. His coin chimed in along with the opening notes.

�What station you tuned at?� he called out. The counterman read the dial, gave him some hick station I�d never heard of before. He got its studio number from Information.

�Who�s that you got going out over the air now?� Then, �Bobby Leonard�s Band? Find out where they work about one to three or four every night. Hurry it up, it�s important. No, I can�t wait until they�re through broadcasting, this is police business. Write the question on a slip of paper and hand it in right where they are now.�

He had to wait until the answer was relayed back, evidently scribbled on the same piece of paper.

�The Silver Slipper, eh, out on Brandon Drive.� He hung up, bounced a coin on the counter, and ran out. We�d both stopped being tired, like magic.

�It�s all the way over on the other side of town,� he said to me in the cab. �God only knows how you found your way back to our place. It shows you what a wonderful thing the subconscious is, even under the influence of a drug.�

We got to it in about twenty minutes, paid off the cab, and stood there sizing it up. It was mostly glass, you could look in on three sides; it had a glass roof that could be pushed back in fine weather so they could dance under the open sky. The fourth wall was solid masoney. Only a scattered couple or two were dancing. They evidently used a radio to provide the incidental music, until this Leonard and his band came over and did a lick later on.

He snapped his head around to me. �Familiar?�

I shook mine. �Not a flicker of it comes back to me.�

On the fourth side it backed against two buildings, which in turn were set back to back, each one facing a different street. We cased them both, from their respective corners. One was a trim two-story cement garage, that looked as if it had only recently been put up. The other was a sort of rundown lodginghouse, with a milky lighted globe shining down over its doorway. It was the obvious choice of the two; garages don�t have closets. Nor furniture to pile up in front of them either.

We went in.

It couldn�t have been dignified by the name hotel. The �desk� was just a hinged flap across an alcove, within which sat a man in shirtsleeves reading a paper under a light.

One good thing, there was no question of a bell boy showing you up and looking on. You paid your fifty cents, you got a key, and you found your own way up. We didn�t want any witnesses � if it was in here.

He didn�t even bother looking up at us, just heard the double tread come in and asked: �Two-in-one or two singles?�

Denny said, �How many rooms you got here that back up against that place next door? We like to fall asleep to music.�

Even that didn�t get a rise out of him; he expected anything and everything. �One on a floor, three floors, that makes three altogether. I�ve got someone in the one on the second, though.�

So that was the one. My stomach gave a sort of half turn to the right, and then back again.

Denny said, �D�you have to sign when you get in here?�

�You got to put down something when you pick up your key, you can�t just walk in.� Meaning a place like this didn�t expect right names and didn�t care if it got them.

�Let�s see what was signed for that one you got taken on the second.�

�What�s all this to you?� But he was still too indifferent to be properly resentful about it.

�We might know the guy.�

We did. One of them anyway. It was a double entry. The cocaine had vibrated my handwriting like an earthquake but I could still recognize it. Tom Cochrane, 2228 Foster Street. For once they�d gotten a right name and a right address. It was probably the only one in the whole ledger � and it had signed for murder!

The second name, also in my handwriting, was Ben Doyle. No address given, just a wavy line. So I�d signed in for someone else too.

We just looked at each other. Then at him. Or rather, Denny did. I was afraid to.

�Were you here when this was signed?�

This time he did get annoyed, because the question touched him personally. �Naw, I go off at twelve, don�tcha think I gotta sleep sometime too?� That explained, at least, why he didn�t recognize me. But not why it hadn�t been found out yet.

�D�you give any kind of service here? Don�t you send someone in to clean these rooms in the daytime?�

He got more annoyed. �What d�ya think this is, the Ritz? When a room�s vacated, the handyman goes in and straightens up the bed. Until it is we leave it alone, for as long as it�s been paid for.� I must have paid for this one for two days in advance, double occupancy � there was the entry �$2,� after the two names. But I hadn�t had two dollars on me; I�d only had thirty-five cents.

�What�s all this talk about? Do you two guys want a room or don�t you?� We did, but we wanted that second-floor room that already had �someone� in it. Denny obviously didn�t want to use his badge to force him to open it up for us � that would have meant a witness to the revelation that was bound to follow immediately afterward, and automatic police notification before he had a chance to do anything for me � if there was anything he could do.

�Give us the third-floor one,� he said, and put down a dollar bill. The man hitched down a key with a ponderous enamel tag from the rows where they hung. The one immediately below was missing. The �occupant� still had it. If I�d taken it away with me, I must have lost it in the course of that mad flight through the shadows; only the closet key had turned up at our place this morning.

Denny, with unconscious humor, scrawled �Smith Bros.� in the registry (he told me later he wasn�t trying to be funny), and we started up the narrow squeaky staircase. He turned aside when we got to the second floor, motioned me to keep on climbing. �Scuffle your feet to cover me, I�m going to try to force the other door open.�

I shuffled my way up step by step, trying to sound like the two of us, while I heard him faintly tinkering at the lock with some implement. I unlocked the one we�d hired on the floor above, put on the light, looked in. Yes, there was something vaguely familiar about it; this was the end of the trail, all right. The closet in this one had a key in it, and had been left slightly ajar by the last occupant.

I crept back to the stairs and listened. The tinkering had stopped, so he must have forced the door. A curt �Sst!� sounded, meant for me. I eased down one flight.

The light from inside was shining out across the grubby passage. A half section of his face showed past the door frame, waiting for me; then it withdrew. I made my way inside, moving slow, breathing fast.

It was the right room.

He�d already taken down the stuff I�d barricaded the closet door with � a table, a chair, even a mattress.

He signed to me and I closed the door behind me. He gave the closet key I�d turned over to him a fatalistic flip-up in the hollow of his hand.

�Here goes,� he said. I got a grip on the back of a chair and hung on tight.

He fitted it into the lock. It went in like silk and turned the lock without a hitch. It couldn�t have worked easier. It belonged here. I said a fast prayer � that was all there was time for. �Make it turn out it was somebody else who did it!�

Denny�s body gave a hitch and there was no more time for praying. He�d caught it against him as it swayed out with the closet door.

It must have been semi-upright behind it the whole time. I hadn�t done a good job propping � it must have shifted over against the door instead of staying against the wall behind; and the way the knees were buckled kept it from toppling over sideways.

He let it down to the floor. It stayed in a cockeyed position from the way it had been jammed in. It was stiff as tree-bark. He turned it over on its back, made me come over.

�Remember him? Take a good look now. Remember him?�

�Yeah,� I said, dry-lipped.

�Remember him alive, that�s what I mean.�

�No, no, I only remember him lying there, only not so shriveled�� I backed away, nearly fell over a chair.

�Pull yourself together, kid,� he said. �This is something they would have put you through anyway. It�s a lot easier just with me in the room with you.�

He disarranged the clothing, peered down. �Sure, a knife did it,� he nodded. �Three bad gashes � one in the stomach, one between the ribs, and one that looks like it must have grazed the heart.�

He looked at the belt buckle. �B. D.,� he murmured. �What was that name down there � Ben Doyle?�

He started going through pockets. �No, he�s been cleaned out; but the name checks with those initials, all right.�

He drew back a little. I saw him scanning the corpse�s upturned soles. �He did a lot of walking, didn�t he?� The bottom layer of each was worn through in a round spot the size of a silver dollar. �But the heels are new, not worn down at all. What�d he do, walk around on tiptoes?�

He took something from his pocket and started to reverse a small screw that protruded like a nail-head. Then he pulled and the whole heel came off. It was hollow. Three or four folded paper packets lay inside.

He opened one into the shape of a little paper boat. I didn�t have to be told. I�d seen that white stuff before.

�He was a peddler,� he said. �But he wasn�t the guy that contacted you at the party. Where does he come in it? I wonder if the Narcotic Squad have heard of this guy before, can give me anything on him. I�m going to check with headquarters.�

Before he went out, he crossed to the window and raised the dark shade that shrouded it. The pane behind it was also painted dark, a dark green. You could see the heads of heavy six-inch nails studded all along the frame, riveting it down. Even so, he took that same screwdriver from his pocket and scraped away a tiny gash on the dried-paint surface. Then he held a lighted match close up to it.

�Solid brick backed up to it,� he commented. He started for the door. �You�re down on their blotter for this room � and in your own handwriting � along with this dead guy. I want to find out if he was seen coming here with you. Or if it was the guy with the scar. Or both. Or neither. I gotta dig up that other slouch that was in charge of the key rack here from midnight to morning � he�s the only one can answer all those things.�

I started out after him. I couldn�t help it. I couldn�t have stayed in there alone for a million dollars.

�All right, go back and wait in the one over this, if it gets you,� he consented. He closed the door on the grisly sight. �But keep your eyes and ears open; make sure no one gets in here until we�re ready to break it ourselves.� He went down and I went up.

I didn�t know how long to give him, but pretty soon it seemed to be taking longer than it should have. Pretty soon the room up here started to get me, just as bad as though I�d stayed down there. Try hanging around when you know there�s a dead body under your feet in the room below, a body you�re to blame for, and you�ll know what I mean.

The band showed up for work next door while I was in there, and instead of making it better, that only made it worse. It nearly drove me nuts, that whispered music coming through the walls; it brought last night back too vividly again.

Finally I couldn�t stand it in there another minute, I had to get out, wait for him down below by the street entrance. I almost lunged for the door, a cold panic on me. I got it open, poked the bilious light out.

Then I saw something in the darkness behind me. Something that made me hold the door at half-closing point and stand there on the threshold.

It should have been pitch-black behind me in there now. The place only had a dead window. It wasn�t. A late moon must have come up since we�d been in here. Three phantom silvery lines stood out around the drawn shade, like a faint tracing of phosphorus. There was moonlight backing it, only visible now that the room light was out.

My panic evaporated. I went back in again, leaving it dark. I crossed to the shade, shot it up. Moonlight flashed at me through the dust-filmed glass. There was no brickwork, no dark paint, blanking out the windows on this floor. Denny hadn�t been up here at all, or we might have found that out sooner. The garage was only two stories high, the rooming house three � that was a detail that had escaped our attention until now.

The frame wasn�t nailed. I lifted it and it went up. The garage roof was a bare four feet below me, plenty accessible enough to� But the fact remained the body hadn�t been in this room, but in the one below, where the window was blocked.

I scanned the roof; it looked like an expanse of gray sand under me. In the middle of it, though, there was dim light peering up through some sort of skylight or ventilator.

I didn�t have any theory; I didn�t know what I thought I�d find out or what I hoped I�d find out. I just went ahead on instinct alone. I sidled across the sill and planted my legs on the graveled roof. I started to pick my way carefully over toward that skylight, trying not to sound the gravel.

I got to the perimeter of it, crouched down on hands and knees, peered over the edge and down. Nothing. Just the cement garage floor two stories below, and a mechanic in greasy overalls down there wiping off a car with a handful of waste. No way to get up, no way to get down � except head-first.

I straightened up, skirted it, eased on. I took a look down over the front edge of the roof. Just the unbroken cement front of the garage; a fly couldn�t have managed it. I went around to the side, the one way from the Silver Slipper. There was a narrow chasm there, left between the garage and some taller warehouse next door. And midway down that there was something � a pale, watery, yellow reflection cast on the warehouse wall by some opening in the garage wall directly under-me, at second-floor level. And more to the point still, a sort of rickety iron Jacob�s ladder leading down to it. I could only see this at its starting point, up where I was; the darkness swallowed the rest of it.

I swung out on it, tested it with one foot. Narrow rungs. It seemed firm enough. I started down very slow. It was like going down into a bottle of ink. The reflection of the lighted square came up and bathed my feet. The ladder didn�t go any lower, it ended in a level �stage� of iron slats, no wider than the window.

I tucked my feet in under the last downward rung so they wouldn�t show in the light, leaned out above them, gripping a rung higher up backhand. It was a grotesque position. I slanted my head forward and peered into the lighted square.

It was an office connected with the garage. There were filing cabinets against the wall, a large flat-topped desk with a cone light over it. There was a man sitting there at it, talking to two ethers. Or rather going over some accounts with them. He was checking some sort of list on a sheet of paper he held.

There was money on the desk, lots of it � more money than any garage like this would take in a month. It was separated into several stacks. As he finished checking one list, he�d riff through one stack, rapidly and deftly thumb-counting it, then snap an elastic around it, and move it over to the other. Then he�d begin on a second list.

There was something vaguely familiar about the shape of his head, even seen from the back, and the cut of his shoulders. The other two I�d never seen before, I was sure of that. One was sitting negligently on an outside corner of the desk, the other standing up against it, hands deep in his pockets. They looked too well dressed to be hanging around the upstairs room of a garage.

I must have taken too much time to size them up. After all, a paring of a face is just as conspicuous against a black-out window as a full face would be. I didn�t even see the signal passed, nor which of the two gave it. Suddenly the checkmaster had twirled around on his swivel chair and was staring out at me eye to eye.

That white scar along the underside of his jaw stood out as visibly as a strip of court plaster. So there he was at last, the diabolus ex machina.

My position on the ladder was too complicated to make for a streamlined getaway, I had too many things to do simultaneously. I had to extricate my tucked-in feet, make a complete body turn to face the ladder, before I could start up. Even then, I missed a rung in my hurry, jolted down half a foot, and hit my chin on one of the upper ones. By that time the window had flashed up and a powerful grip had me around the ankle.

I was torn off the ladder, dragged in feet first, and the only thing that saved my skull from cracking in the bounce from window sill to floor was that it bedded against one of their bodies. I lay flat for a minute and their three faces glowered down at me. One of them backed a foot and found my ribs. The pain seemed to shoot all the way through to the other side.

Then I was dragged up again and stood on my own feet. One of them had a gun bared, brief as the onslaught had been.

The man with the scarred jaw rasped, �He�s the patsy I used last night I toldje about!�

�There goes your whole set-up, Graz!� the third one spat disgustedly.

The man with the scar they called Graz looked at me vengefully. His whole face was so livid with rage it now matched the weal. �What the hell, it still holds good! He was one of Doyle�s customers, Doyle cut off his supply, so he knifed him!�

�Yeah, but he ain�t up there in the room with him any more.�

�All right, he come to, lammed out through a third-floor window � like he did. He�ll be found dead by his own hand in Woodside Park, when morning comes. What�s the difference? It changes it a little, but not much. It�s still him all the way through. Him and Doyle took the room together to make a deal. He was seen going in where Doyle�ll be found. And you know how snowbirds act when they�ve got the crave on and are cut off. There�s a lake there in Woodside. We�re gonna dunk his head in it and hold it there until his troubles are over. Then throw the rest of him in. How they gonna tell the difference afterwards?�

�Suppose Doyle had already sang a note or two to the police, mentioning names, before you��

�He didn�t sing nothing, I stopped him before he had a chance to � the minute I seen that narcotics dick beginning to cultivate him, I cut out his tonsils! An operation like that in time saves nine. Come on, let�s get started.� He gathered up the money and lists from the desk. �And another thing,� he added, �we�re giving this joint up, it�s no good to us any more. We�re coming back as soon as we ditch this punk and move out all them filing cabinets, right tonight!�

His two subordinates wedged me up between them. He put out the light behind us, and the four of us started down a cement inner stair to the main floor of the garage. �Run out the big black one, Joe,� one of them said to the grease monkey I�d seen through the skylight, �we�re going out for a little air.�

He brought out a big sedan, climbed down, and turned it over to them. He must have been one of them, used for a front on the main floor; they didn�t try to conceal ray captivity from him.

They shoved me into it. It was like getting into a hearse. That�s what it was intended for, only it was taking me to the cemetery before death instead of after. I didn�t say a word. �Denny�ll come back to that room too late. He won�t know what happened to me; he�ll start looking for me all over town, and I�ll be lying at the bottom of the lake��

Graz and one of his two underlings got in with me and the other one took the wheel. We glided down the cement ramp toward the open street beyond. Just as our fenders cleared the garage entrance, a taxi came to a dead stop at the curb directly before us, effectively walling us in. The way it had crept forward it seemed to have come from only a few yards away, as though it had been poised waiting there. I saw the driver jump down on the outside and run for his life, across the street and around the corner. The sedan�s furious horn-tattoo failed to halt his flight.

The big car they had me in was awkwardly stuck there, on the slant, just short of the entrance. It couldn�t go forward on account of the abandoned cab, it couldn�t detour around it on account of its own length of chassis, and the mechanic had sent down a sort of fireproof inner portcullis behind us, without waiting, keeping us from backing up.

They weren�t given much time for the implications of the predicament to dawn on them. Denny suddenly straightened up just outside the rear window on one side and balanced a gun over its rim. The precinct harness cop did the same on the opposite side. They had them between a threat of crossfire.

Denny said, �Touch the ceiling and swing out, one on each side.�

But he and the cop couldn�t control the man at the wheel � he was a little too far forward and they were wedged in too close. I saw his shoulder give a slight warning dip against the dashboard as he reached for something. I buckled one leg, knee to chin, and shot the flat of my shoe square against the back of his head. His face slammed down into the wheel. He didn�t want to reach for any more guns after that.

It took a little while to marshal them back upstairs, and send in word to Headquarters, and clean out the files and all the other evidence around the garage. They found traces of blood on the cement inner stairs, showing where Doyle had been knifed as he was trying to escape from the death interview with Scarjaw, kingpin of the dope ring.

Denny said to me while we were waiting: �A guy on the Narcotics Squad recognized this Doyle right away, even from the little I was able to give them over the phone. They�d picked him up several times already, and they were trying to dicker with him to get the names of the higher-ups he worked for. When I got back to the room, that open window on the third tipped me off which way you�d gone.

�From what Officer Kelly here had just finished telling me a little while before, I figured there was something fishy about this garage. He�d seen people drive up at certain hours to try to have their cars serviced, and they�d be turned away. And yet it was never particularly full of cars. I figured the smart thing to do was arrange a little reception committee at the street entrance, where they weren�t expecting it.�

The final word, however, wasn�t said until several hours later. He came out of the back room at Headquarters, near daylight, came over to where I�d been waiting. �You didn�t do it, Tom. It�s official now, if that�ll make you feel any better. We�ve been questioning them in relays ever since we brought them in, and we just finished getting it all down.�

He waved a set of typed sheets at me. �Here�s how it goes. Graz and his two lieutenants killed Doyle in the garage about midnight last night just around the time you were arriving at the Sorrells� party with Fraser. That rooming house had already come in handy to them once or twice � it�s got a vicious name on the police records � so they used it again, for a sort of dumping ground.

�Graz sent one of his stooges around and had him take a room on the third floor, within easy access of the garage roof. That was just to obtain a convenient back way in. They smuggled the body across the roof and passed it in to the stooge through the window. But this stooge wasn�t supposed to take a murder rap, he was just acting as middleman. Graz himself went out looking for the real stooge, the stooge for murder � and that turned out to be you.

�Graz had been to those dizzy parties of the Sorrells before, so he knew all about them. He went there last night, picked you out, got you higher than a kite, brought you over to the rooming house in his car. He saw to it you were given a room on the second floor, directly under the one where the body lay waiting for transfer. Not only that, he had you sign for it for yourself and for Doyle, who was already dead. Doyle was supposed to be along in a minute or two.

�He got rid of the fellow in charge of the keys by sending him next door to the Silver Slipper for some coffee to �sober� you up. By the time he got back with it, Doyle was already supposed to have shown up. The original stooge on the third floor spoke loudly to you to show there was somebody up there in the room with you. Graz said, �His friend�s up there with him now; he�ll be all right, so I�ll shove off.�

�Doyle had shown up, but in a different way. They�d carried him down the stairs from the third-floor room to your room with the bricked-up window. They wiped off the knife handle and planted it on you; they smeared your shirt front with Doyle�s blood. You were dazed, in no condition to notice anything that went on around you. Graz was careful to carry the coffee up only to the door, pass it in to you, come right down again, and leave. Doyle�s �voice� still sounded up there with you in the room, for the fellow at the key rack to hear.

�You were given another whiff of coke to hold you steady for a while. Then the original stooge came down, presumably from the third floor, handed in his key, and checked out.

�You were left there drugged, with a murdered man in your room, his blood on your shirt, the knife that had been used concealed on your person in newspaper. You even helped the scheme out up to a point; you got the horrors, hid the body in the closet, locked it, and piled everything movable you could lay your hands on up against the door. Then you fled for your life.

�You got a small break, that wouldn�t have helped out in the end. The guy at the key rack must have been either dozing or out of his alcove again. I spoke to him just now, and he never saw you leave. That postponed discovery, but wouldn�t have altered anything.

�As I said, the subconscious is a great thing. In all your terror, and stupefied as you were, you somehow found your way back to where you lived. You didn�t wake up in the same room with the dead man, the way they were counting on your doing, and raise an outcry, and thereby sew yourself up fast then and there. You had a chance to talk it over with me first; we had a chance to put our heads together, without you being in the middle of it.�

It was getting light when we got back to our own place. The last thing I said to him, outside the door, was: �Tell the truth, Denny, up to the time it broke, did you really figure I did it?�

His answer surprised me more than anything else about the whole thing. �Hell, yes!� he said. �I would have eaten my hat that you did!�

�I did too,� I had to admit. �In fact, I was sure of it!�

This is the 289th �first story� to be published by Ellery Queen�s Mystery Magazine... and like so many stories that appear in EQMM, this one has an interesting background...

Mrs. Armstrong�s �first story� was sent to us by an old and valued friend, Dorothy Gardiner, author of WHAT CRIME IS IT? THE SEVENTH MOURNER, LION IN WAIT, and one of the towers of strength and common sense during the formative years of MWA (Mystery Writers of America). In her accompanying letter Dorothy Gardiner told us how she discovered one day that she needed a change in her daily living, a lift in her morale. Before she fully realized what she had done about it, she found herself involved (that�s the only word for it) in a truly wonderful project. To her surprise, and to the surprise of all others concerned, she became a volunteer worker in the Presbyterian Senior Services.

The PSS has a Center on Madison Avenue in New York City. Its program and objectives are to help elderly people, of both sexes and all religions and races � �senior citizens� whose lives have fallen apart and who are having difficulties adjusting to changed and still-changing conditions: women whose husbands have died and whose children are married and living their own complicated lives; men who have retired and are totally unprepared for leisure, suddenly having nothing to do with their time.

The PSS Center has as Director a young, energetic, and understanding clergyman, the Reverend Robert Armstrong, and under his general supervision the Center embraces all kinds of stimulating and therapeutic endeavors: classes, for example, in painting and piano playing for men and women who haven�t picked up a brush or sat down at a piano in 50 years, or who haven�t played the piano or painted all their lives.

Well, Dorothy Gardiner, that good and generous soul, undertook to teach a class in Creative Writing. She has nearly a dozen pupils � �Old Gals� mostly, a charming group, the oldest 81 and definitely �the belle of the ball.� Her youngest pupil is the wife of the Director; she has always wanted to write, but with two children, a busy husband, and a four-room apartment to take care of without outside help � well, there haven�t been too many spare hours to devote to the luxury of writing.

Dorothy Gardiner ended her letter by saying that her new work-interest has proved �the best thing in the world for me, whatever it may be doing to my pupils.� It is blessed to give; it is blessed to receive...

Mrs. Armstrong�s �first story� is written in a semidocumentary style that is particularly appropriate to the �case history� feeling of her subject matter � which is as it should be in this instance; even more important, the �case history� style projects a convincing authenticity: you believe, without question, that the author knows what she is writing about � knows the background, the procedures, and most promising in a new writer, the hearts and minds of her characters...

If the newspaper had not carried the picture of Angela Scarlatti, I probably would never have thought of her again. She would have stayed in the closed file of my mind, along with so many others. It is a strange thing, that one can feel so strongly for another human being, and yet forget her, often in a day or two, in the crowd of others.

But this time I heard the end of the story; in fact, it had several endings, and this is unusual, for those of us who worked in Intake seldom witnessed the endings of stories. Sometimes I felt as impersonal as a funnel, with my pen and my mimeographed interview form and the little scrap, of paper clipped onto the case record: Case Assigned.

I first met Angela Scarlatti in the way I met hundreds of other women � in a tiny pale-green cubicle called an Interview Room. She was only one of several appointments that morning; fall was a busy time for us in Adoption Intake because there always seemed to be a big crop of babies in late summer. The magazines and television portray the process of adoption as a lovely thing, with babies and prospective parents carefully matched; there is generally a tender scene at the end when the kindly social worker hands the eager parents their lovely six-month-old child.

That is all well and good, but I am here to tell you that most adoptions do not happen that way at all. Generally, the mother of the child hands the baby over to the adoptive mother or to an intermediary as she leaves the hospital. The doctor or the lawyer has made all the arrangements, and various fees have been paid out by the adoptive parents, most of which are legal, some of which are not. Then the natural mother is brought by her attorney to sign the papers giving her consent for the adoption, and giving up forever any claim to her child.

In our County, the Court has made provisions for the investigation of each adoptive home before granting the interview, and our agency was the one assigned to this task, thus affording both adoptive parents and infants the maximum protection under the circumstances. It is not an ideal arrangement, of course, but it is better than the �black market� practices it was designed to control and eliminate, and we prided ourselves on doing the very best possible job on behalf of the future of each infant.

Those of us who interviewed the natural mothers never saw the infants, and the home investigators never met the natural mothers. Our job in Intake was to elicit as much objective information as possible before turning the case over to an investigator.

Angela Scarlatti gave me all the objective information we needed, and a good deal of subjective information as well. I was considered very good at getting the facts despite emotional scenes and tears, and Natural Mother Scarlatti was full of tears, and in the end refused to sign the consent for adoption. When she went to court to demand the return of her child from the prospective adoptive parents, their attorneys and Angela�s parents accused me of having influenced her to keep her love child � which I righteously denied under oath, thereby committing perjury and concealing the fact that I had committed the cardinal sin of the social worker: I had got myself emotionally involved with a client.

I remember how little and scared Angela looked as she faced me across the table in that green room. The pale autumn sun washed the room and the girl with a milky light, softening the harshness of the surroundings and making her dark brown hair smoky-black. Her little sallow face was still blurred and indistinct with the softness of childhood, but her young figure already looked overripe, like a hothouse fruit forced too soon to maturity. I remember thinking that one day she would be a round fat dumpling of a woman, and I wondered what was in store for her: the rosy, cheerful life of an Italian wife with a houseful of children, or the blowsy, slatternly life of a semi-tramp, like the woman of Samaria at the well, who had �had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.�

According to the interview, Angela was 17, the youngest child in an old-style, patriarchal, Italian-American family. There were several brothers and sisters older than she, all of whom were married and busy producing grandchildren for their parents by the time Angela was graduated from high school. She was 16 then, and her family was duly impressed with her rapid journey through school, but distressed about her lack of boy friends.

Angela was a quiet, obedient daughter, and she told me that her many skills about the house had brought her offers of marriage from some of her father�s unmarried friends. These she had consistently refused, although her parents would have liked to see her settled down and raising a family of her own, and an older man has a great deal to offer. �The money and home were tempting,� she told me, �but I wanted to marry for love.�

Then she met the young man who was to become the father of her child, and found love, but without marriage.

Angela never told her parents where she had met him � she felt they would disapprove, and she desperately wanted their approval of Rip Phillips. She met him the night she went to visit a little Pentecostal Church which had just opened in the neighborhood; the Scarlattis were Catholic, but Angela sometimes attended the churches of her friends, with a feeling of wonder and sympathy for them.

Rip played his guitar for the service that night, and the congregation sang the ancient hymn-tunes. He was tall and good-looking, lean and sandy-haired, and he walked like a king. Perhaps it was because he was so different from the men she knew in the neighborhood that Angela was so attracted to him. �We were like night and day,� she said. �He was so fair and I am so dark.�

Rip began to call for her, to go to movies, to go dancing, to attend the little church where he played his guitar. At last her parents invited him to a meal, and soon he was spending a good deal of time at the Scarlatti home. Mr. and Mrs. Scarlatti made an honest effort to like this lanky stranger, and Angela was the first to admit this. But Rip disliked Italian cooking, laughed at their melodious songs, and sang his own mountain tunes in a loud nasal voice.

He argued with Mr. Scarlatti, and his gallantry toward Mrs. Scarlatti was of a kind to which she was unaccustomed, and by which she was offended. Furthermore, he drank, and drank hard. He disliked their homemade Italian wine, and brought his own whiskey, pro-claiming that his homemade whiskey, back home, was far superior to anything available here.

But it was Rip�s lack of responsibility that finally convinced the Scarlattis that their daughter should have nothing further to do with him. He changed jobs often, almost as frequently as he changed his shirt, and he had no intention of settling down to a steady job and a home. He had a farm, he said, back home in the mountains. He only wanted to earn some cash money, buy a car, go home, and pay off his mortgage.

He never suggested that Angela share his life with him; but Mr. and Mrs. Scarlatti were afraid he would make the offer and that Angela would accept, and they forbade him their home.

Angela and Rip continued to meet, however, and Angela became proud and defiant in the face of her parents� disapproval, until they ordered her not to see him again. Then they met in secret � in little bars and taverns where they spent their time drinking and singing with the other patrons. Angela became silent and withdrawn, and gave up looking for a job.

When she knew she was pregnant, she asked Rip to marry her and take her with him to his farm. He refused. �I�m free, and I can�t be tied down to no woman. I come and go as I please. I hunt, I fish, and I don�t wear shoes. It�s a good life for me, but it ain�t no kind of a life for a woman. Womenfolks get dried up and die, like my mother did. You have that baby, and you keep him, and you raise him up. When he gets big enough, I will come and fetch him, and teach him to live free, too.�

Angela was too proud to beg, but she began to cry, and Rip hated a woman�s tears. But he tried to comfort her. �He said the oddest thing to me,� she said. �He said, �You find a nice Italian boy to marry � a cop, a good cop � and one day your good policeman husband will kill my young son and me.� That gave me cold chills,� she went on, �and I asked him where he ever got such a notion. He told me it was from an old song, a real old one, but he wouldn�t sing it for me, or tell me the words. He just laughed,� � in a way she would never forget.

Rip went away, and Angela had to tell her parents about the baby.

Mr. Scarlatti beat her, of course � she had expected that � and her mother wept. Then they began to think of arrangements. She would, of course, give the child up for adoption. Angela wanted to keep the baby, but since she was legally a minor, her parents told her the choice was not hers to make.

Mrs. Scarlatti made all the arrangements with the doctor, and in time they were notified that adoptive parents had been found who were well-to-do, would pay all costs and fees, and maybe give a little extra to Mr. Scarlatti for Angela�s �living expenses.�

Angela�s baby was born healthy and beautiful with sandy hair and black eyes, and Angela named him Matthew because it was not an Italian name and because it meant �Gift of God.� On the third day she handed him over to a veiled woman on a street near the hospital, then came home with her parents and attorney to sign her consent to the adoption.

When I first heard the story of �a veiled woman on a street� or the �strange woman in the front seat of the attorney�s car,� I was skeptical, but years of experience had taught me that this is frequently the way it is done, and I accepted without question Angela�s account of handing over her son.

I went on with the interview. We covered all the usual questions: health of Natural Mother, health of Natural Father, physical characteristics of each, special talents, and so on. Then I asked, �Why did you decide to place the child in adoption?�

�It will be better for the child to have rich parents,� said Angela.

I always challenged that kind of answer. The tears began again, and I pushed a box of tissues toward her and waited. Finally she said that she would really like to keep little Matthew, but that it would be hard for her and for her parents. When she called her baby by name, I knew that she needed him more than the adoptive parents did.

Then I asked the printed question, �Is it your own desire to sign consent for this adoption?� and explained that although she was legally a minor, the law required that the decision be her own � that no one could coerce her into signing if she did not really want to. She dried her tears then, and smiled for the first time, a beautiful smile; she lifted her small pointed chin and refused to sign.

In the waiting room her parents stormed and wept when I told them of Angela�s decision, and they stormed and wept in the Supervisor�s Office, and in the Director�s Office, and in the lawyer�s office, and later, in the courtroom and in the Judge�s Chambers, but in the end Angela had her son and also a job as a night waitress, and a shabby room where the seedy old landlady would listen for the baby while Angela was at work.

We closed our file on the Phillips-Scarlatti case.

The Thanksgiving Day story in the CALENDAR OF CRIME... How Ellery and Nikki began to observe Thanksgiving in the traditional way � by giving; and how Ellery celebrated untraditionally � by receiving...

Edgar Gault found the solution to his personal problem in the detective novels of John Dickson Carr. Surely this is a dangerous precedent!... An amusing story which has all the earmarks of a potentially amusing series. Who will serve as the �inspiration,� the �source,� the �model� for the next story? Rex Stout? Erle Stanley Gardner? Agatha Christie?... Can we say at last that fiction is stranger than truth?

Although he did not realize it at the time, Edgar Gault�s life first gained purpose and direction when, at the age of twelve, he idly picked up a copy of John Dickson Carr�s The Problem of the Wire Cage at his neighborhood lending library. That evening after supper he sat down with the book and read until bedtime. Then, smuggling the book into his room, he finished it by flashlight under the sheets.

He returned to the library the following day for another of Carr�s books, The Arabian Nights Murder, which took him two days to finish � Edgar�s governess had confiscated the flashlight. Within a week he read every John Dickson Carr mystery the library had on its shelves. His gloom on the day he finished reading the last one turned to elation when he learned that his favorite author also wrote under the pseudonym of Carter Dickson.

In the course of the next ten years Edgar accompanied Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale, et al. through every locked room in the Carr-Dickson repertoire. He was exultant the day his knowledge of an elusive point in high school physics allowed him to solve the mystery of The Man Who Could Not Shudder before the author saw fit to give his explanation. It was probably then that Edgar made his momentous decision.

One day he, Edgar Gault, would commit a locked room murder which would mystify the master himself.

An orphan, Edgar lived with his uncle in a huge rambling house in a remote section of Vermont. The house was not only equipped with a library � that boon to mystery writers, but something few modern houses possess � but the library had barred windows and a two-inch-thick oak door which, opening into the room, could be locked only by placing a ponderous wooden bar into iron carriers bolted solidly to the wall on both sides of the door. There were no secret passages. The room, in short, would have pleased any of Carr�s detectives, and it suited Edgar perfectly.

The victim, of course, would be Edgar�s Uncle Daniel. Not only was he readily available, but he was a believer in Ralph Waldo Emerson�s philosophy of self-reliance, and in order to help Edgar achieve that happy condition, Uncle Daniel had decided to cut the youth out of his will in the near future.

Since Edgar was perfectly prepared to wallow in his uncle�s filthy lucre all the days of his life, it was up to him to do the old man in before the will could be changed.

All of which serves only to explain why Edgar, one bright day in early spring, was standing inside the library fireplace, covered with soot and scrubbing the inside of the chimney until it gleamed.

The chimney, of course, was Edgar�s means of escape from his locked room. It was just large enough to accommodate his slim body and had an iron ladder which ran up the inside for the convenience of a chimney sweep. The necessity of escape by chimney somewhat disappointed Edgar, since Dr. Gideon Fell had ruled it out during his famous locked-room lecture in The Three Coffins. But it was the only exit available, and Edgar had devised a scheme to make use of it that he was sure even John Dickson Carr would approve of. Maybe Edgar would even get a book written about his crime � like Carr�s The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey.

It didn�t worry Edgar that he would be immediately suspected of the crime. Nobody saw his preparations � Uncle Daniel was away on business, and the cook and gardener were on vacation. And at the time the crime would actually be committed, Edgar would have two unimpeachable witnesses to testify that neither he � nor, for that matter, any other human being � could possibly have been the murderer.

Finishing his scrubbing, Edgar carried the pail of water to the kitchen and emptied it down the drain. Then, after a thorough shower to rid his body of soot, he went to the linen closet, took out a newly washed bedsheet, and returned to the library. Wrapping the sheet around him, he got back into the fireplace and began to climb the iron ladder. Reaching the top, he came down again, purposely rubbing the sheet against the stones at frequent intervals.

Stepping back into the library, he walked to a window, removed the sheet, and held it up to the sunlight. Although wrinkled, it had remained gleamingly white. Edgar smiled as he put the sheet into a hamper. Then, going upstairs, he unlocked the window of a storeroom beside which the chimney rose. After that, in his own room, he dressed in clothing chosen especially for the crime � white shirt, white trousers, and white tennis shoes. Finally, he removed a long cavalry saber from the wall, took it to the library, and stood it in a shadowy corner.

His preparations were nearly complete.

Early that evening, from his chair in the music room, Edgar heard his uncle�s return. �Edgar? You home?� The nasal New England twang of Uncle Daniel�s voice bespoke two hundred years of unbroken Vermont ancestry.

�I�m in here, Uncle Daniel � in the music room.�

�Ayah,� said Daniel, looking in through the door. �That�s the trouble with you, young fella. You think more o� strummin� that guitar than you do about gettin� ahead in the world. Business first, boy � that�s the only ticket for success.�

�Why, Uncle, I�ve been working on a business arrangement most of the day. I just finished about an hour ago.�

�Well, I meant what I said about my will, Edgar,� Uncle Daniel continued. �In fact, I�m going to talk to Stoper about it tonight when he comes over for cards.�

Even the weekly game of bridge, in which Edgar was usually a reluctant fourth to Uncle Daniel, Lemuel Stoper, and Dr. Harold Crowley, was a part of The Plan. Even the perfect crime needs witnesses to its perfection.

Later, as Edgar arranged the last of three armloads of wood in the library fireplace � and added to the kindling a small jar from his pocket � he heard the heavy knocker of the front door bang three times. He took the opportunity to set his watch. Exactly seven o�clock.

�Take the gentlemen to the music room and make them comfortable,� said Uncle Daniel. �Give �em a drink and get the card table ready. I�ll be in presently.�

�Why must they always wait for you, Uncle?� asked Edgar, his assumed frown almost a smirk.

�They�ll wait forever for me and like it, if that�s what I want. They know where the biggest part of their earnings comes from, all right.� And still another part of Edgar�s plan dropped neatly into place.

Entering the old house, Lemuel Stoper displayed, as always, an attitude of disdain toward everything not directly involved with Uncle Daniel�s considerable fortune. �White, white, and more white,� he sneered, looking at Edgar�s clothing. �You look like a waiter in a restaurant.�

�Don�t let him get to you, boy,� said a voice from outside. �You look fine. Been playin� tennis?� Dr. Crowley, who reminded Edgar of a huge lump of clear gelatine, waddled in and smiled benignly.

�No need to butter the boy up any more,� said Stoper. �Dan�l�s changin� his will tonight.�

�Oh,� said Crowley, surprised. �That�s too bad, boy... uh... Edgar.�

�Yes, Uncle has already spoken to me about his decision,� said Edgar. �I�m in complete agreement with it.� Nonsense in providing too much in the way of a motive.

In a small but important change from the usual routine Edgar led the men to the door of the library on the way to the music room. �Uncle,� he called. �Dr. Crowley and Mr. Stoper are here.�

�I know they�re here,� growled Daniel. �Wait in the music room. I�ll be along in a few minutes.�

The two men had seen Uncle Daniel alive and well. Everything was now ready.

In the music room Edgar poured drinks and set up the card table. Then he snapped his fingers and raised his eyebrows � the perfect picture of a man who has just remembered something.

�I must have left the cards upstairs,� he said. �I�ll go and find them.� And before his guests could answer, he left the room.

Once through the door, Edgar�s pace quickened. He reached the door of the library eight seconds later. Ignoring his uncle�s surprised expression, Edgar took the saber from its corner and strode to the desk where Daniel sat, a newspaper still in his hand.

�Edgar, what in�� Without a word Edgar thrust the sword violently at his uncle. The point entered Daniel�s wattled neck just below the chin and penetrated the neck to the back of the chair, pinning the old man to his place. Edgar chuckled, recalling a similar scene in Carr�s The Bride of Newgate.

He held the sword in place for several seconds. Then he felt carefully for a pulse. None. The murder had been carried off exactly as planned � in seventy seconds.

Hurrying to the fireplace, Edgar picked up the small jar he had placed there earlier. Then, shuffling his feet through the generous supply of paper among the kindling and wood, he pulled the tall fire screen into place and began to climb up the chimney. Reaching the top, he glanced at his watch. Two minutes had gone by since he had left Stoper and Crowley.

Standing on the roof beside the chimney, Edgar removed several small pieces of blank paper from the jar. He had prepared the paper himself from a formula in a book on World War II sabotage operations. These �calling cards� were designed to burst into flame shortly after being exposed to the air. During the war they had been dropped from planes to start fires in fields of enemy grain. Edgar, who had shortened the time needed to make them ignite, knew the pieces of paper would start a fire in the library fireplace.

Dropping the papers down the chimney, he waited a few seconds, and finally was rewarded with a blast of warm air coming up through the opening. Three minutes and ten seconds. Right on schedule.

Edgar moved along the slanted roof to a large decorative gable in which was set the storeroom window. Carefully inching along the edge of the roof, he raised the window and scrambled inside, taking care not to get dust or dirt on his clothing. He went to his own room, took a fresh deck of cards he had left there earlier, then trotted loudly down the stairs to the music room. He rejoined the two guests a little less than five minutes after he had left them � again exactly as planned.

Edgar apologized for his short absence, privately gloating over the unsullied whiteness of his clothing. Surely he could not just have climbed up the inside of a chimney from which smoke was now issuing.

Soon Stoper became restless. �I wonder what�s keepin� Dan�l?� he grumbled.

�Mebbe we�d better fetch him,� said Crowley.

As they rose, Edgar attempted a yawn while his heart pounded wildly. �I believe I�ll wait here,� he said, trying to act nonchalant.

John Dickson Carr would be proud of me, thought Edgar as Stoper and Crowley left the room. He hoped that the investigation of his crime would not include any theories involving the supernatural. He remembered his disappointment at the ending in The Burning Court with its overtones of witchcraft.

Odd, he thought, that there was no shouting, no crashing sounds as the two old men tried to batter down the heavy library door. But there was no need to worry. The plan was perfect, foolproof. It was�

In the doorway of the music room appeared the figure of Lemuel Stoper, looking tired and beaten. In his hand he held a revolver from Uncle Daniel�s desk.

�Did his money mean that much to you, boy?� Stoper asked, his voice trembling with shock and rage. �Is that why you did it?�

For only a moment Edgar wondered how Mr. Stoper had got into the library so fast. And then suddenly he knew. For a fleeting instant he wondered if a plea of insanity would help. But then nobody would appreciate the perfect crime he had devised. What would Dr. Fell think of him now? What would H. M. think? What would John Dickson Carr himself think?

What could anyone think of a locked room murder in which the murderer had forgotten to lock the door?

Editorial Postscript: Well, what do you know! Before we could go to press with William Brittain�s The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr, the author sent in a second story. And which detective story writer do you think �inspired� Mr. Brittain to convert the first story into a series? The title of the second story tells...

To make the transition to institutional living easier, each resident of the Good well Senior Citizens Home was allowed to retain one item of personal property. Some of the old men kept their stamp collections, others preferred to treasure voluminous photograph albums. One senior citizen, Gregory Wyczech, had a 1907 ten-dollar gold piece which was almost as precious to him as life itself. Aside from the single personal item, all the necessities and luxuries � food, clothing, bedding, and recreational material � were furnished by the home.

The only thing that Arthur Mindy brought with him when he entered the Goodwell Home was a complete collection of books by Ellery Queen.

Shortly after his admittance, arranged by a daughter who had grown weary of ministering to the constant needs of an 80-year-old man, Arthur Mindy sat in his small room, discussing his choice with Roy Carstairs, the first-floor attendant.

�I read my first Ellery Queen mystery at the age of forty-five,� said Arthur, finishing his meager lunch. �It was at the beginning of the depression, and I had plenty of time for reading. For a long time I dreamed of solving a mystery just the way Ellery does.�

�What�s so different about the way he solves mysteries?� Carstairs asked.

�The pure logic of his solutions is beautiful,� Arthur answered. �He uses only the smallest wisps of evidence, and from these he is able to arrive at the only possible solution. Take The Roman Hat Mystery, Ellery�s first novel � I read it thirty-five years ago. It was solved when Ellery made deductions from an opera hat found near the body of the murdered man. In other books the pivotal clues have been things like a shoelace, a bottle of iodine, a collar, a packet of matches � all so insignificant! And sometimes the vital clues are things that should be there but aren�t � what Ellery calls �invisible clues.�

�It�s always been my ambition,� Arthur went on dreamily, �to solve a mystery using only the one or two seemingly vague clues that Ellery Queen finds sufficient.� He looked at the light brown walls of his tiny room and sighed. �But now I guess I�ll never get the chance.�

�Yeah, but Mr. Mindy,� Carstairs said, �you�ve got to remember that��

Whatever it was Arthur had to remember may never be known. At that moment a shout � the thin cracked voice of an old man � issued from the hallway outside the door.

Carstairs sprang from his chair and through the half-open door, followed at a more leisurely pace by Mindy. They were both brought up short by the scene in front of them.

In the middle of the thickly carpeted hall Gregory Wyczech, dressed only in the light green pajamas and robe which were almost a uniform at the home, was engaged in a boxing match with another similarly dressed resident. Although the sparring form of both men would have done mild credit to a Jack Dempsey or a Joe Louis, each man was standing well out of reach of the other.

While Carstairs stepped between the two combatants, Arthur Mindy looked at Wyczech�s opponent. Eugene Dennison had been admitted to the home some time before Arthur. After a short but unsuccessful attempt on the part of the other men to become friendly, Dennison had been classified as a �cold fish.� He never had any visitors, and his haughty manner repelled even the most amiable of advances. He refused to take part in any of the home�s recreational activities. Television bored him. In the crowded world of the Goodwell home he walked aloof and alone.

Dennison stood stiffly just outside Gregory Wyczech�s door while Wyczech circled him, chattering like an angry monkey. �He stole my eagle!� Wyczech repeated over and over.

�Your what?� Carstairs� eyebrows shot up.

�My eagle. My ten-dollar gold coin. He stole it!�

�Mr. Carstairs.� Dennison spoke for the first time. His imperious tone brought silence to the hallway which by this time was beginning to fill with old men. �Mr. Carstairs, I have not stolen his eagle or whatever it is. I was on my way to the dispensary to renew my supply of pills. I took the elevator down since at my age the prospect of three flights of stairs is appalling. Congratulating myself for not having picked up a sliver from the wooden floor of that infernal machine, I came out of the elevator door which, unfortunately for me, is next to Mr. Wyczech�s door. Then this idiot came around the corner, entered his room and burst out again, striking out at me. Naturally I fought back.�

�You stole it!� Wyczech said again.

�I didn�t.�

�You did!�

�I did not.�

�Wait a minute,� said Carstairs. �How do you know he stole it, Mr. Wyczech?�

�Here�s what happened,� said Wyczech, catching his breath. �I�d just gone down the hall and around the corner to wash my hands. My gold coin was in its envelope on the table, and I wanted to wash before handling it. When I got back, just a minute later, the gold piece was gone, and this � this thief in the night was walking away from the door of my room. So I took a swing at him.�

�You must have hit him fairly hard. I see you cut his cheek quite badly.� Arthur pointed to a rather long, deep wound on Dennison�s cheek from which fresh blood was now oozing.

�To lapse into the vernacular,� said Dennison, �he never laid a glove on me. That�s where I cut myself shaving this morning.�

�Could anybody else have taken the coin?� asked Carstairs.

�Nobody would have had time,� said Wyczech. �I wasn�t gone that long. And no one else was around.�

Dennison looked at the many pairs of accusing eyes turned in his direction. Then he opened the front of his robe and spread it dramatically. �If I submit to a search, will that satisfy everybody?�

Dennison shrugged off the robe and flung it at Wyczech. He removed the tops of his pajamas, loosened the bottom�s, let them fall to the floor, and shuffled out of them. He stood on the green carpet, naked as a jaybird, without losing a particle of his massive dignity.

The clothing was quickly searched � even the seams and buttonholes. Nothing. No gold coin.

�He must have swallowed it,� sputtered Wyczech.

�Mr. Carstairs, I leave it to you,� said Dennison in the manner of a parent speaking to a dull-witted child. �You know the condition of what�s left of my stomach. Considering that my diet for the past several years has consisted only of oatmeal and milk, could I have swallowed a piece of salami, much less a gold coin?�

�That�s true, Mr. Wyczech,� said Carstairs reluctantly.

Wyczech examined Dennison�s hair and the inside of his mouth without results. Then he shrugged. �I still say he stole it. He was the only one who could have.�

�Mr. Dennison,� said Carstairs, �You go back to your room. I�ll take care of Mr. Wyczech.�

With a shrug Dennison reclaimed his clothing and not bothering to put it on, shuffled to the carpeted stairway across from Wyczech�s room.

�Just a moment, please!� The men in the hallway looked to see who had spoken, and then Arthur Mindy stepped forward and faced Carstairs and Dennison.

�If you gentlemen would indulge me, I think perhaps I might be of some assistance. This case is reminiscent of �The Black Ledger,� a story in Q.B.J.�� Queen�s Bureau of Investigation. In that story Ellery kept a long list of known criminals on his person the entire time he was being minutely searched by some desperate individuals who were determined to find the list. Ellery was stripped to the buff, just like Mr. Dennison here.�

�Where did Ellery hide it?� asked Carstairs.

�That would be telling. I�ll lend you the book sometime.�

The attendant shook his head sadly. He was sure something had snapped in Arthur�s mind.

�Now,� Arthur continued, �if Mr. Dennison did take the coin, what did he do with it? Where did he hide it? Unless we can find that out, he�s innocent by default. Let�s see if the problem will yield to logic.�

�Like Ellery Queen?� asked Carstairs, attempting to humor Arthur.

�Precisely. Now I ask you to consider two pieces of evidence, Mr. Carstairs. The first is that long, deep cut on Mr. Dennison�s cheek.�

�So he cut himself shaving, Mr. Mindy,� said Carstairs. �What about it?�

�And the second is that Mr. Dennison is now preparing to climb the stairs to his room,� Arthur concluded.

�So what?� moaned Wyczech. �Come on, great detective. Where�s my coin?�

Arthur smiled. �You know,� he said, �in Ellery Queen�s earlier novels and in many of his short stories now, there�s a point at which the reader is challenged to solve the mystery using only the facts given in the story. I�m sorely tempted to use that device right now.�

Inspector Chafik, the slim dark Iraqi detective with the remarkable index-card memory, is one of the most popular characters ever to have been published in an American magazine. He began his distinguished career in �Collier�s,� where numerous Chafik stories appeared, many of which were reprinted in EQMM. We were privileged to publish only an occasional new tale of the compassionate and understanding little man with his compulsion for neatness and order and his irresistible habit of soliloquizing and philosophizing.

With �Collier�s� no longer in existence, EQMM hopes to continue the saga of Inspector Chafik. Here is the newest Chafik story � a tale full of Baghdad color and sharply observed Middle East detail and deeply felt human interest. But above all, the story reveals that Inspector Chafik is a maker of criminous carpets: the threads he uses in his weaving are the facts of a crime... and his carpets do not always have pleasing designs.

He was a small boy on a long road that crossed a desolate area at the back of the City of Baghdad.

The day was ending. The sun�s afterglow daubed the cheeks of the drab, flat-roofed buildings which crouched like mendicants in the shadow of the towers and domes of Baghdad�s many temples. Tigris, the sullen river bisecting the city, flamed beneath her mascaraed fringe of date palms. Yet nothing was so bright as the red hair of the boy on the road.

This was noticed by two men in an approaching police car.

�Observe, sir,� said the driver in Arabic.

His passenger, a slim dark man neat in a cool white suit, replied, �Even the blind beggar at the city gates to whom just now I foolishly gave alms could not fail to observe.�

The slim man broke the ash of his cigarette into the disposer on the car�s dashboard. The slant of evening light made a mirror of the windshield and he admired his reflection. He had high cheekbones, a straight nose, a long upperlip smudged by a mustache; his watching eyes were dun-colored, cynical, and as flat as the land of his birth.

The slim man was pleased with himself as he adjusted his sidarah, the black peakless hat that proclaimed Moslem faith, and then sat back with the arrogance of an enthroned king. His ancestors had walked in Babylon.

�This one is a foreigner,� he said about the boy on the road. �By costume and armament, American,� he added decisively.

The boy wore faded blue jeans and a once-white T-shirt. The strings of his battered sneakers were undone. He had a gunbelt looped about his narrow hips; sometimes he stopped and drew the gun to challenge playworld enemies.

At the back of the gunbelt dangled a sheathed hunting knife.

The driver of the police car admired the boy�s handling of the gun. �Very fast!� he said, and a rare smile cracked the mahogany veneer of his face.

�May he never draw anything but a toy!� said the passenger.

�Yes, sir. But this toy looks too real... and as you said, sir, he is an American � so undisciplined��

The slim dark man squared thin shoulders. �Sergeant Abdullah!�� the boy gives expression to his heritage of freedom!�

�Yes, sir.� Sergeant Abdullah accepted reproof with a salaam; the hand that curved to his forehead was a bear�s paw and with a bear�s growl he added, �And if our river Tigris was so permitted to express itself, Baghdad would be inundated��

The boy on the road was snub-nosed and freckled, and his grimed face was furrowed by tears. But he aimed a steady gun when the police car stopped.

�Bang!� he said.

Sergeant Abdullah�s passenger spoke in precise English, �My bold outlaw, do you mistake us for a stagecoach?�

The boy fanned the gun and gave suitable sound effects.

�Ah! That got us!� There was warmth in the drab eyes of the man in the police car. �Now it�s time,� he went on, �for all young outlaws to be in bed. I�ll take you home��

�Don�t want to go home! Never!�

The boy backed to the edge of the road which was built on a high embankment, precaution in season against the floods that bedeviled Baghdad. When Sergeant Abdullah, who was in uniform, eased his six-feet-two out of the car, the boy yelled, �Yah, cop!� and rode the slope of rubble to the wastes below the embankment.

The two men watched him run across the gray dusty land, leap the channels scoured by last year�s monsoon, and dodge the thorns of the skeleton bushes that would be resurrected when the next rains came. The sheathed hunting knife slapped his buttocks as he ran.

�Shall I pursue him, sir?� asked the Sergeant.

�Abdullah, neither your feet nor your dignity need be so uselessly wounded.�

They watched the boy vanish behind the rising wall of the night. Over there was a district of abandoned slums where rats and scorpions held court, as the small dark man knew.

He dragged at his cigarette, frowned at it, then spat it out and said in the shrill voice of self-reproach, �You should have permitted Abdullah to pursue him!� And as he got into the police car he added, �Are you not father to a boy of that age?�

The tactful Sergeant said nothing as he drove into Baghdad by way of Alwiyah, a district of fine villas and gardens. They went up Rashid Street and it was quiet because this was the hour of Magreb, the sunset prayer. The car stopped at an unpretentious building in the government quarter and the small dark man got out.

He took the salute of a guard and went up a worn stairway into the smells of old crimes � the smells of any police headquarters anywhere in the world.

At the end of a narrow corridor was a door which had the inscription CHAFIK J. CHAFIK in black lettering on the frosted-glass panel.

Chief Inspector Chafik entered his office.

Here is the third in EQMM�s new series about �The Double-C Man� � Rand, head of the Department of Concealed Communications... a classic story of espionage and counterespionage.

The girl was slender and dark-haired, and very pretty. �I feel like a fool,� she told Rand, gazing across the desk with uncertain eyes.

�Nonsense,� he reassured her. �You did the right thing in reporting it. Now suppose you start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened.�

�That�s the trouble. Nothing happened except that I saw this man taking a wax impression of the lock � the way they do in the movies, and��

Rand smiled slightly. �You haven�t even told me your name, or where you work.�

�What? I thought my boss phoned you.�

�I�d like to hear it all from you, if I may. From the beginning.�

She shifted in the chair and crossed her legs. �Well, my name is Audrey Fowler, and I�m a pool typist in the Foreign Office. I�ve been there nearly three years and I like it a lot. The girls are so friendly, and there are lots of handsome men��

Rand cleared his throat. �About yesterday.�

�Oh! Yes. I don�t usually work on Sundays, of course, but with all those television people around��

�What television people?�

�They�re filming a show about diplomats and they got permission to take some shots in the Foreign Office lobby. I guess then they go back to the studio sets for the office scenes. Some of us had to be there, anyway, to help out.�

�Are you an American, Miss Fowler?�

�No. Why do you ask?�

�You talk a little like one.�

�I was born right here in London. But I see a lot of American movies.�

�Go on,� he urged. �I�m sorry I interrupted.�

�Anyway, I was coming out of the office on the second floor when I saw this man. He was at the door to the restricted wing, where the Message Center is. He took something out of the lock and dropped it very carefully into a little plastic bag. Honest, it was just like in the movies!�

Rand nodded. �A wax-coated blank key, probably. Do you know what�s kept in the Message Center?�

�Lists of embassy personnel in various countries, teletype machines��

�Anything else?�

�Well, the diplomatic code � oh, the code book! I�ll bet that�s why they sent me to you!� She glanced over her shoulder at the frosted-glass door with the words Department of Concealed Communications neatly lettered on it.

Rand shifted in his chair and lit an American cigarette, one of his few vices. �What did the man do when you saw him?�

�He said good afternoon and went back downstairs, as if it was nothing at all.�

�Did you recognize him?�

�Of course I recognized him! That�s the whole point of it!�

�And who was he?�

�Barton O�Neill, the television actor. Why do you think Barton O�Neill would want to steal the diplomatic code?�

�That�s what we�re going to find out,� Rand said.