About the author: As everyone knows (or should know), Carter Dickson and John Dickson Carr are one and the same. Creator of two of the most famous sleuths in contemporary fiction — Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale (H.M.) — John Dickson Carr grows in stature with each passing year. Long ago the English critic who calls himself Torquemada rated Mr. Carr as “one of the Big Five.” Torquemada probably meant “one of the Big Five” among English writers; actually it is true among all writers of the detective story, past and present. And still John Dickson Carr keeps growing... Born in 1905 at Uniontown, Pa., John is the son of Wooda Nicholas Carr, formerly a United States Congressman. “At the age of eight,” writes John, “I was hauled off to Washington. While my father thundered in Congress, I stood on a table in the members’ anteroom, pinwheeled by a God-awful collar, and recited Hamlet’s Soliloquy to certain gentlemen named Thomas Heflin and Pat Harrison and Claude Kitchin.” At the same tender age John sat on “Uncle Joe” Cannon’s knee listening to ghost stories, learned the great American game of crap-shooting from the legislative page boys, and met Woodrow Wilson. John’s earliest fictional heroes were Sherlock Holmes, d’Artagnan, and the Wizard of Oz, and all three exerted subtle influences on his later creative development. J. B. Priestley has said that John possesses “a sense of the macabre that lifts him high above the average run of detective story writers.” Your Editor once wrote that “despite his preoccupation with Anglo-materia, Mr. Carr is in no sense an expatriate. Rather, he occupies the enviable and eminent position of being our first literary lend-lease: he is the perfect example in the field of the modern detective story of Anglo-American unity.” In April 1947 we published John’s first book of short stories about Dr. Fell. Now we bring you John’s first short story about H.M. ever to appear in print — one of the most distinguished “firsts” it has been your Editor’s privilege to introduce to American readers. “The House in Goblin Wood” won the Special Award of Merit in EQMM’s Second Annual Contest — an honor it literally created for itself because of its outstanding excellence. It is safe to predict that “The House in Goblin Wood” will become one of the anthological favorites of all time.

In Pall Mall, that hot July afternoon three years before the war, an open saloon car was drawn up to the curb just opposite the Senior Conservatives’ Club.

And in the car sat two conspirators.

It was the drowsy post-lunch hour among the clubs, where only the sun remained brilliant. The Rag lay somnolent; the Athaneum slept outright. But these two conspirators, a dark-haired young man in his early thirties and a fair-haired girl perhaps half a dozen years younger, never moved. They stared intently at the Gothiclike front of the Senior Conservatives’.

“Look here, Eve,” muttered the young man, and punched at the steering wheel. “Do you think this is going to work?”

“I don’t know,” the fair-haired girl confessed. “He absolutely loathes picnics.”

“Anyway, we’ve probably missed him.”

“Why so?”

“He can’t have taken as long over lunch as that!” her companion protested, looking at a wrist-watch. The young man was rather shocked. “It’s a quarter to four! Even if...”

“Bill! There! Look there!”

Their patience was rewarded by an inspiring sight.

Out of the portals of the Senior Conservatives’ Club, in awful majesty, marched a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit.

His corporation preceded him like the figurehead of a man-of-war. His shell-rimmed spectacles were pulled down on a broad nose, all being shaded by a Panama hat. At the top of the stone steps he surveyed the street with a lordly sneer.

“Sir Henry!” called the girl.

“Hey?” said Sir Henry Merrivale.

“I’m Eve Drayton. Don’t you remember me? You knew my father!”

“Oh, ah,” said the great man.

“We’ve been waiting here a terribly long time,” Eve pleaded. “Couldn’t you see us for just five minutes? — The thing to do,” she whispered to her companion, “is to keep him in a good humor. Just keep him in a good humor!”

As a matter of fact, H.M. was in a good humor, having just triumphed over the Home Secretary in an argument. But not even his own mother could have guessed it. Majestically, with the same lordly sneer, he began in grandeur to descend the steps of the Senior Conservatives’. He did this, in fact, until his foot encountered an unnoticed object lying some three feet from the bottom.

It was a banana skin.

“Oh, dear!” said the girl.

Now it must be stated with regret that in the old days certain urchins, of what were then called the “lower orders,” had a habit of placing such objects on the steps in the hope that some eminent statesman would take a toss on his way to Whitehall. This was a venial but deplorable practice, probably accounting for what Mr. Gladstone said in 1882.

In any case, it accounted for what Sir Henry Merrivale said now.

From the pavement, where H.M. landed in a seated position, arose in H.M.’s bellowing voice such a torrent of profanity, such a flood of invective and vile obscenities, as has seldom before blasted the holy calm of Pall Mall. It brought the hall-porter hurrying down the steps, and Eve Drayton flying out of the car.

Heads were now appearing at the windows of the Atheneum across the street.

“Is it all right?” cried the girl, with concern in her blue eyes. “Are you hurt?”

H.M. merely looked at her. His hat had fallen off, disclosing a large bald head; and he merely sat on the pavement and looked at her.

“Anyway, H.M., get up! Please get up!”

“Yes, sir,” begged the hall-porter, “for heaven’s sake get up!”

“Get up?” bellowed H.M., in a voice audible as far as St. James’ Street. “Burn it all, how can I get up?”

“But why not?”

“My behind’s out of joint,” said H.M. simply. “I’m hurt awful bad. I’m probably goin’ to have spinal dislocation for the rest of my life.”

“But, sir, people are looking!”

H.M. explained what these people could do. He eyed Eve Drayton with a glare of indescribable malignancy over his spectacles.

“I suppose, my wench, you’re responsible for this?”

Eve regarded him in consternation.

“You don’t mean the banana skin?” she cried.

“Oh, yes, I do,” said H.M., folding his arms like a prosecuting counsel.

“But we... we only wanted to invite you to a picnic!”

H.M. closed his eyes.

“That’s fine,” he said in a hollow voice. “All the same, don’t you think it’d have been a subtler kind of hint just to pour mayonnaise over my head or shove ants down the back of my neck? Oh, lord love a duck!”

“I didn’t mean that! I meant...”

“Let me help you up, sir,” interposed the calm, reassuring voice of the dark-haired and blue-chinned young man who had been with Eve in the car.

“So you want to help too, hey? And who are you?”

“I’m awfully sorry!” said Eve. “I should have introduced you! This is my fiancé. Dr. William Sage.”

H.M.’s face turned purple.

“I’m glad to see,” he observed, “you had the uncommon decency to bring along a doctor. I appreciate that, I do. And the car’s there, I suppose, to assist with the examination when I take off my pants?”

The hall-porter uttered a cry of horror.

Bill Sage, either from jumpiness and nerves or from sheer inability to keep a straight face, laughed loudly.

“I keep telling Eve a dozen times a day,” he said, “that I’m not to be called ‘doctor.’ I happen to be a surgeon—”

(Here H.M. really did look alarmed.)

“—but I don’t think we need operate. Nor, in my opinion,” Bill gravely addressed the hall-porter, “will it be necessary to remove Sir Henry’s trousers in front of the Senior Conservatives’ Club.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

“We had an infernal nerve to come here,” the young man confessed to H.M. “But I honestly think, Sir Henry, you’d be more comfortable in the car. What about it? Let me give you a hand up?”

Yet even ten minutes later, when H.M. sat glowering in the back of the car and two heads were craned round towards him, peace was not restored.

“All right!” said Eve. Her pretty, rather stolid face was flushed; her mouth looked miserable. “If you won’t come to the picnic, you won’t. But I did believe you might do it to oblige me.”

“Well... now!” muttered the great man uncomfortably.

“And I did think, too, you’d be interested in the other person who was coming with us. But Vicky’s — difficult. She won’t come either, if you don’t.”

“Oh? And who’s this other guest?”

“Vicky Adams.”

H.M.’s hand, which had been lifted for an oratorical gesture, dropped to his side.

“Vicky Adams? That’s not the gal who...?”

“Yes!” Eve nodded. “They say it was one of the great mysteries, twenty years ago, that the police failed to solve.”

“It was, my wench,” H.M. agreed sombrely. “It was.”

“And now Vicky’s grown up. And we thought if you of all people went along, and spoke to her nicely, she’d tell us what really happened on that night.”

H.M.’s small, sharp eyes fixed disconcertingly on Eve.

“I say, my wench. What’s your interest in all this?”

“Oh, reasons.” Eve glanced quickly at Bill Sage, who was again punching moodily at the steering wheel, and checked herself. “Anyway, what difference does it make now? If you won’t go with us...”

H.M. assumed a martyred air.

“I never said I wasn’t goin’ with you, did I?” he demanded. (This was inaccurate, but no matter.) “Even after you practically made a cripple of me, I never said I wasn’t goin’?” His manner grew flurried and hasty. “But I got to leave now,” he added apologetically. “I got to get back to my office.”

“We’ll drive you there, H.M.”

“No, no, no,” said the practical cripple, getting out of the car with surprising celerity. “Walkin’ is good for my stomach if it’s not so good for my behind. I’m a forgivin’ man. You pick me up at my house tomorrow morning. G’bye.”

And he lumbered off in the direction of the Haymarket.

It needed no close observer to see that H.M. was deeply abstracted. He remained so abstracted, indeed, as to be nearly murdered by a taxi at the Admiralty Arch; and he was halfway down Whitehall before a familiar voice stopped him.

“Afternoon, Sir Henry!”

Burly, urbane, buttoned up in blue serge, with his bowler hat and his boiled blue eye, stood Chief Inspector Masters.

“Bit odd,” the Chief Inspector remarked affably, “to see you taking a constitutional on a day like this. And how are you, sir?”

“Awful,” said H.M. instantly. “But that’s not the point. Masters, you crawlin’ snake! You’re the very man I wanted to see.”

Few things startled the Chief Inspector. This one did.

“You,” he repeated, “wanted to see me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what about?”

“Masters, do you remember the Victoria Adams case about twenty years ago?”

The Chief Inspector’s manner suddenly changed and grew wary.

“Victoria Adams case?” he ruminated. “No, sir, I can’t say I do.”

“Son, you’re lyin’! You were sergeant to old Chief Inspector Rutherford in those days, and well 1 remember it!”

Masters stood on his dignity.

“That’s as may be, sir. But twenty years ago...”

“A little girl of twelve or thirteen, the child of very wealthy parents, disappeared one night out of a country cottage with all the doors and windows locked on the inside. A week later, while everybody was havin’ screaming hysterics, the child reappeared again: through the locks and bolts, tucked up in her bed as usual. And to this day nobody’s ever known what really happened.”

There was a silence, while Masters shut his jaws hard.

“This family, the Adamses,” persisted H.M., “owned the cottage, down Aylesbury way, on the edge of Goblin Wood, opposite the lake. Or was it?”

“Oh, ah,” growled Masters. “It was.”

H.M. looked at him curiously.

“They used the cottage as a base for bathin’ in summer, and ice-skatin’ in winter. It was black winter when the child vanished, and the place was all locked up inside against drafts. They say her old man nearly went loopy when he found her there a week later, lying asleep under the lamp. But all she’d say, when they asked her where she’d been, was, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

Again there was a silence, while red buses thundered through the traffic press of Whitehall.

“You’ve got to admit, Masters, there was a flaming public rumpus. I say: did you ever read Barrie’s Mary Rose?”

“No.”

“Well, it was a situation straight out of Barrie. Some people, y’see, said that Vicky Adams was a child of faerie who’d been spirited away by the pixies...”

Whereupon Masters exploded.

He removed his bowler hat and made remarks about pixies, in detail, which could not have been bettered by H.M. himself.

“I know, son, I know.” H.M. was soothing. Then his big voice sharpened. “Now tell me. Was all this talk strictly true?”

“What talk?”

“Locked windows? Bolted doors? No attic-trap? No cellar? Solid walls and floor?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Masters, regaining his dignity with a powerful effort, “I’m bound to admit it was true.”

“Then there wasn’t any jiggery-pokery about the cottage?”

“In your eye there wasn’t,” said Masters.

“How d’ye mean?”

“Listen, sir.” Masters lowered his voice. “Before the Adamses took over that place, it was a hideout for Chuck Randall. At that time he was the swellest of the swell mob; we lagged him a couple of years later. Do you think Chuck wouldn’t have rigged up some gadget for a getaway? Just so! Only...”

“Well? Hey?”

“We couldn’t find it,” grunted Masters.

“And I’ll bet that pleased old Chief Inspector Rutherford?”

“I tell you straight: he was fair up the pole. Especially as the kid herself was a pretty kid, all big eyes and dark hair. You couldn’t help trusting her story.”

“Yes,” said H.M. “That’s what worries me.”

“Worries you?”

“Oh, my son!” said H.M. dismally. “Here’s Vicky Adams, the spoiled daughter of dotin’ parents. She’s supposed to be ‘odd’ and ‘fey.’ She’s even encouraged to be. During her adolescence, the most impressionable time of her life, she gets wrapped round with the gauze of a mystery that people talk about even yet. What’s that woman like now, Masters? What’s that woman like now?”

In the delicate balance between romance and reality, the detective story mirrors at least one-phenomenon of our present civilization. This is the Age of Specialization, and many private detectives in fiction, especially the amateurs and pure-in-heart, achieve some of their most brilliant deductions through the use of specialized knowledge. For example, Victor L. Whitechurch’s Thorpe Hazell is a wizard at solving railway crimes. Percival Wilde’s Bill Parmelee, a reformed card-sharp, is consultant par excellence in any kind of gambling mystery. Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados, the first modern blind sleuth, has leaned more than once on his expert knowledge of numismatics to crack peculiarly difficult cases, and it is merely a matter of criminological record that Dorothy L. Sayers’s ineffable Lord Peter Wimsey owes some of his most glittering successes to his astonishing familiarity with rare boobs and rare wines. But perhaps the most unusual expert of all is Margery Allingham’s Mr. Albert Campion. He has a special bloodhound bailiwick all his own. As Superintendent Oates himself expressed it, Campion is Scotland Yard’s Society Expert, and in the case that follows (never previously published in the United States) Mr. Campion proves again that while the upperworld is far from being an immovable object, the underworld is equally far from being an irresistible force. The clash is never a detectival deadlock so long as Albert Campion, the talented toff’tec, remains Society Expert Extraordinary.

Mr. Albert Campion was one of those useful if at times exasperating people who remain interested in the world in general at three o’clock on a chilly winter’s morning. When he saw the overturned car, dark and unattended by the grass verge, therefore, he pulled up his own and climbed out on to the road.

His lean figure wrapped in a dark overcoat was rendered slightly top-heavy by the fact that he wore over it a small traveling-rug arranged as a cape. This sartorial anachronism was not of his own devising. His dinner hostess, old Mrs. Laverock, was notorious both for her strong will and her fear of throat infections, and when Mr. Campion had at last detached himself from her husband’s brandy and reminiscences she had appeared at the top of the Jacobean staircase, swaddled in pink velvet, with the rug.

“Either that young man wears this round his throat or he does not leave this house.”

The edict went forth with more authority than ever her husband had been able to dispense from the bench, and Mr. Campion had gone out into the night for a fifty-mile run back to Piccadilly wearing the rug, with his silk hat perched precariously above it.

Now its folds, which reached his nose, prevented him from seeing that part of the ground which lay directly at his feet, so that he kicked the ring and sent it wheeling down the moonlit road before he saw it. The colored flash in the pale light caught his attention and he went after it. It lay in his hand a few minutes later, as unattractive a piece of jewelery as ever he had been called upon to consider. It was a circle of different-colored stones mounted on heavy gold, and was certainly unusual, if not particularly beautiful or valuable. He thrust it absently into his coat pocket before he resumed his investigation of the abandoned car.

He had just decided that the departed driver had been either drunk or certifiably insane in the moment of disaster, when the swift crackle of bicycle wheels on the frost behind him made him swing round, and he found himself confronted by another caped figure who came to a wobbling and suspicious halt at his elbow.

“Now, now, there’s no use you putting up a fight. I ain’t alone, and if I were I’m more’n a match for you.”

The effect of these two thundering lies uttered in a pleasant country voice rendered unnaturally high by what was no doubt, excusable nervousness, delighted Mr. Campion, but unfortunately the folds of his hostess’s rug hid his disarming smile and the country policeman stood gripping his bicycle as if it were a weapon.

“You’re caught!” he said, his East Anglian accent bringing the final word out in a roar of triumph not altogether justified. “Take off your mask.”

“My what?” Mr. Campion’s startled question was muffled by his drapery, and he pulled it down to let his chin out.

“That’s right,” said the constable with a return of confidence, as his prisoner appeared so tractable. “Now, what have you been a-doing of? You’ll have to come down to see the Inspector.”

Mr. Campion’s astonishment began to grow visible and convincing, for, after all, the country bobby is not as a rule a night bird of prey.

“Look here,” he said patiently, “this pathetic-looking mess here isn’t my car.”

“No, I know that’s not.” The triumphant note crept into the constable’s voice again. “I seen the number as soon as I come up.”

“Since you’ve observed so much,” continued Mr. Campion politely, “would it be tasteless to inquire if you’ve noticed that?”

He swung round as he spoke and pointed to his own car, a few yards down the road.

“Eh?” The Law was evidently taken by surprise. “Oh, you ran into him, did you? Where is he?”

Campion sighed and embarked on the slow process of convincing his captor that the car ahead belonged to him, his license was in order, and that he was properly and expensively insured. He also gave his own name and address, Colonel Laverock’s name and address, and the time at which he had left the house. Finally he was conducted to his own vehicle and grudgingly permitted to depart.

“I don’t really know as how you oughtn’t to have come along to find the Inspector,” said the constable finally as he leaned on the low nearside door. “You didn’t ought to have been masked. I’ll have to report it. That rug might have been to protect your throat, but then that might not.”

“That cape of yours may be buttoned up against the cold or it may be worn simply to disguise the fact that your tunic is loosened at the throat,” retorted Mr. Campion, and letting in the clutch, he drove away, leaving a startled countryman with the conviction that he had actually encountered a man with X-ray eyes at last.

On the bypass Mr. Campion ran into a police cordon, and once again was subjected to a searching inquiry concerning his license. Having been, in his opinion, held up quite long enough while the police fooled about looking for stolen cars, he said nothing about the overturned one, but drove peacefully home to his flat in Bottle Street and went to bed. His ridiculous encounter with the excitable constable had driven all recollection of the ring from his head and he thought no more about it until it appeared on his breakfast table the following morning.

His man had discovered it in the coat pocket and, deducing the conventional worst, had set it out with an air of commiseration not altogether tactful; anxious, no doubt, that his employer should remember first thing in the morning any lady who might have refused him on the night before.

Campion put aside The Times with regret and took up the ring. By morning light it was even less beautiful than it had appeared under the moon. It was a woman’s size and was heavy in the baroque fashion that has returned after fifty or sixty years. Some of the stones, which ran all the way round the hoop, were very good and some were not; and as he sat looking at it his eyebrows rose. He was still admiring it as a curio rather than a work of art when his old friend Superintendent Stanislaus Oates rang up from Scotland Yard. He sounded heavily amused.

“So you’ve been running round the country in disguise, have you?” he said cheerfully. “Like to come in for a chat this morning?”

“Not particularly. What for?”

“I want an explanation for a telephoned report which has come in this morning. We’ve been called in by the Colnewych police on a very interesting little case. I’m going over the stuff now. I’ll expect you in half an hour.”

“All right.” Mr. Campion did not sound enthusiastic. “Shall I wear my mask?”

“Come with your head in a bag, if you like,” invited the Superintendent vulgarly. “Keep your throat wrapped up. There’s nothing like an old sock, they say. Place the toe upon the windpipe and...”

Mr. Campion rang off.

Half an hour later, however, he presented himself at the Superintendent’s office and sat, affable and exquisite, in the visitor’s chair. Oates dismissed his secretary and leaned over the desk. His gray face, which was usually so lugubrious, had brightened considerably as Campion appeared and now he had some difficulty in hiding a grin of satisfaction.

“Driving round the country with a topper over your eyes and a blanket round your neck at three o’clock in the morning,” he said. “You must have been lit. Still, I won’t go into that. I’ll be magnanimous. What do you know about this business?”

“I’m innocent,” announced his visitor flatly. “Whatever it is, I haven’t done it. I went out to dinner with a wealthy and childless godparent. When I left, my godparent’s wife, who once had tonsilitis as a child and has never forgotten it, lent me a small rug. As she will tell you, if you ask her, she safety-pinned this firmly to the back of my neck. On my way home I passed a very interestingly overturned car, and while I was looking at it a large red-faced ape dressed up as a policeman attempted to arrest me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“Then you don’t know anything about the crime?” The Superintendent was disappointed but unabashed. “I’ll tell you. You never know, you might be useful.”

“It has happened,” murmured Mr. Campion.

“It’s a case of robbery,” went on Oates, ignoring the interruption. “A real big haul. The assessors are on to it now but, roughly speaking, it’s in the neighborhood of twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelery and little boxes.”

“Little boxes?”

“Snuff-boxes and patch-boxes, enamel things covered with diamonds and whatnot.” Oates sounded contemptuous and Campion laughed.

“People of ostentatious tastes?” he ventured.

“No, it’s a collection of antiques,” said Oates seriously, and looked up to find Campion grinning. “You’re a bit la-di-blinking-dah today, aren’t you?” he protested. “What is it? The effects of your night on the tiles? Look here, you pay attention, my lad. You were found nosing round the wreckage of a car thought to have been driven by the thief or thieves, and the very least you can do is try and make yourself useful. Last night there was a bit of a do at St. Brede’s Priory, about five miles away from your godpapa’s place. It was a largish show, and the place, which seems to be about as big as the British Museum and rather like it, was full to bursting.”

Campion stared at him.

“You’re talking about the Hunt Ball at old Allenbrough’s private house, I take it?” he put in mildly.

“Then you do know about it?”

“I don’t know about the robbery. I know about the Ball. It’s an annual affair. Old Porky Allenbrough’s ball is almost an institution, like the Lord Mayor’s Show — it’s very like that in general effect, too, now I come to think of it. I used to attend regularly when I was young.”

Oates sniffed.

“Well, anyway, there seem to have been close on five hundred people gathered together there,” he said. “They were all over the house and grounds, cars going and coming all the time. A real party, the local Super says it was. All we know is that about two o’clock, just when the crowd was thinning a bit, her ladyship goes up to her room and finds her jewelry gone and her famous collection of antiques pinched out of the glass-fronted cupboard in the boudoir next door to her bedroom.

“All the servants were downstairs watching the fun, of course, and hadn’t seen a thing. The local police decided it must have been a professional job and they flung a cordon round the whole district. They figured that a crook had taken advantage of the general excitement to burgle the place in the ordinary way. They were very smart on the job, but they didn’t lay hands on a single ‘pro.’ In fact, the only suspicious character who showed up during the whole of the evening was a lad in a top hat with a plaid blanket—”

“What about that overturned car?” interrupted his visitor.

“I’m coming to that,” said Oates severely. “Wait a minute. That car belonged to a very respectable couple who went to the dance and stayed at it. They were just going to leave when the alarm was given and it was then they discovered the car had been stolen. The gardeners who were acting as car-park attendants didn’t remember it going, but then, as they said, cars were moving in and out all the evening. People would drive ’em off a little way to sit out in. It was a real old muddle by the sound of it. The Super told me on the ’phone that in his opinion every manservant on the place was as tight as a lord the whole evening.”

“And every lord as tight as a drum, no doubt,” added Mr. Campion cheerfully. “Very likely. It sounds like the good old days. I see. Well, the suggestion is that the car was pinched by the burglar, who used it to escape in. What did he arrive in? A how-dah?”

Oates scratched his chin.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s the trouble. The police are in a bit of a difficulty. You see, her ladyship is howling for the return of her valuables, but neither she nor her husband will admit for an instant that one of their guests might be the culprit. That was the awkward thing at the time. A watch was kept on those guests who left after the discovery of the theft, but no one was searched, of course.”

Mr. Campion was silent for a moment.

“These shows are done in parties,” he remarked at last. “People take a party to a ball like that. Porky and his missis would invite a hundred friends or so and ask them each to bring a party. It’s a private affair, you see, not an ordinary Hunt Ball. Allenbrough calls it the Whippersfield Hunt Ball because he likes to see a pink coat or two about. He’s M.F.H. and can do what he likes, and it’s a wealthy hunt, anyway. Yes, I see the trouble. I don’t envy the local super if he has to go round to all old Allenbrough’s pals and say: ‘Excuse me, but did you include a professional jewel-thief in the party you took to the ball at St. Brede’s?’ ”

“I know. That’s what it amounts to.” Oates was gloomy. “Got any ideas? You’re our Society Expert.”

“Am I? Well, in that capacity let me advise you that such a course would provoke endless correspondence both to the Chief Constable and the heavier daily Press. You’re sure this was a professional job?”

“Yes. The jewelry was in a wall-safe which had been very neatly cracked and the show cupboard had been opened by an expert. Also there were no fingerprints.”

“No trademarks, either, I expect?”

“No, it was a simple job for a ‘pro.’ It didn’t call for anything sensational. It was simply far too neat for an amateur, that’s all. We’re rounding up all the likelies, of course, but with such a field to choose from the right man may easily slip the stuff before we can get round to him.”

Mr. Campion rose.

“You have all my sympathy. It’s not what you yourself would call a picnic, is it? Still, I’ll ferret round a bit and let you have any great thoughts that may come to me. By the way, what do you think of that?”

He crossed the room as he spoke and laid the many-stoned ring on the desk.

“Not very much,” said Oates, turning it over with a dubious forefinger. “Where did you get it?”

“I picked it up in the street,” said Mr. Campion truthfully. “I ought to take it to a police station, but I don’t think I will. I’d rather like to give it back to the owner myself.”

“Do what you like with it, my lad.” Oates was mildly exasperated. “Keep your mind on the important jewelry, because now Scotland Yard has taken over the case it means the Metropolitan area pays for the inquiry; don’t forget that.”

Campion was still looking at the ring.

“Anyway, I showed it to you,” he said, and wandered towards the door.

“Don’t waste your time over trifles,” Oates called after him. “You can have that ring. If anybody asks you, say I said you could.”

From the book “Les 13 Mystères”, copyright, 1932, by A. Fayard et Cie.

Mary threw her golf bag into the rumble of the roadster. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Jerry. Whatever is the matter with Valerie? She looks like a perfect hag.”

“Is that so?” I slipped the clutch into second and jerked the car brutally around the curve beside the clubhouse. Mary’s my sister.

When the jerks stopped and we straightened out on the drive at about forty-five, she managed to sit up. “You’re such a mooing calf about Val you can’t see how terribly she looks. What is wrong with her, anyhow?”

“I don’t know.”

“And just after she’s got into that darling house. How long has she been there? A couple of months, isn’t it? Probably,” Mary considered, “it’s simply your hanging around so much. Your face at the window twice a day, darling, would give any girl jitters.”

For once in her life, though, Mary was right. Something was desperately wrong with Valerie and I couldn’t find out what it was. She wouldn’t tell me, and if I pressed the question, she got so upset that I had to stop.

Valerie Mopish had come to Norrisville with her brother five years ago when she was eighteen. Although they were orphans and nobody knew them, they were so pleasant, especially Valerie, that they made friends everywhere; within a year they were in all the clubs and on intimate terms with the crowd to which Mary and I belonged. Why she liked me, heaven only knows, but she did, from the start. Why I liked her, is easy; she is the loveliest-looking girl that ever got into a one-piece bathing suit. She has golden-blonde hair and violet eyes — violet, mind you — and she’s sweet and sort of fragrant; and she always wears high-heeled shoes and her ankles give you a feeling as if you were tied to a roller coaster.

After lunch I hung around for an interminable hour until I thought it would be all right to walk over and see Val. I came out of the woods and across the field just as she stepped onto the terrace that runs along one side of her new house. I vaulted over the low, stone railing and said, “ ’lo, Val. Marry me?”

She looked pale and there certainly were little circles under her eyes, but she smiled. “Sorry.” And then the smile went out like a light, leaving just trouble. “Oh, Jerry, go away and forget about me. I... I... I can’t.”

We were pretty close together when she began; when she ended, we were a good deal closer. As my arms went around her, she sort of collapsed and lay back in them. Then she raised her face and kissed me.

“Jerry, let me go... Please.”

I felt foolish, standing there all alone, so I sat down on the railing. Valerie had taken one of the big, wicker chairs and was patting at her hair.

“I called up Dr. Beckenforth yesterday and he’s coming out to see me this afternoon; any minute now.”

“Huh? Who’s he?”

“He’s the man who treated me when I had the nervous breakdown, before we moved to Norrisville. He’s a psychiatrist.”

“A who?”

“A whoozie-doctor, I suppose you’d call him. He got me over a lot of complexes and things once... I know you care for me, Jerry, and I’m going to tell you about this. I think I ought to... Before John and I moved out to Norrisville, I had what they call a nervous breakdown. You know that, but you don’t know how bad it was. I felt terribly and I got morbid and it went on and on and got worse instead of better. Finally I began to hear things—”

“Hear things?”

“Things that weren’t there. Oh, Jerry, it was awful. I knew I was going crazy and there wasn’t anything I could do about it... Then, finally, I had Dr. Beckenforth and he showed me how these hallucinations came out of my unconscious mind, and after about six months or so, he helped me to get rid of them. One of the things I heard was someone following me; he showed me why I heard that — because I wanted to — and that went away first. Bye and bye all the other horrors went, too, and I was cured. I never thought another thing about it or worried at all until just recently.”

“Why worry now?”

She said simply, “I’ve got ’em again.”

“Oh come on, Val. If—”

“No,” she hurried on, “there’s no use saying it isn’t so when it is. About a week after I moved in here, the day after John sailed in fact, I began to get frightened of nothing; that’s the way it started before. And it’s got worse and worse. And I’m so tired of trying to hide it and not tell anyone, and they all see it anyhow. I know there’s nothing really to be afraid of, but I am. And now, now I’ve begun to hear the footsteps again.”

A reasonable explanation occurred to me. “Of course you get nervous all alone here,” I offered, “no one within a mile of you at night. Why don’t you have Annie stay with you instead of going back to the big house every night? Or better yet, go back yourself for a while.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t run away from it, or I’d be licked for the rest of my life. Don’t you understand, Jerry? I’m not afraid of tramps prowling around or anything like that. It’s just because I know there’s no one here that it’s so awful. When someone follows me up the stairs and there just isn’t anyone there and I can hear him as plainly as I hear you now, I get so that I nearly scream. And then there are other things, too. It hasn’t anything to do with living here alone; it would happen to me anywhere.”

“Then it’s only imagination,” I remarked inadequately. “You’ll be O.K. again in a jiffy. If you’d only marry me, I’ll bet you’d never think of this stuff again. We’d go for a swell, long trip and—”

“I told you this, Jerry, so you’d know why I can’t marry you. I can’t get married until I’m absolutely sure there isn’t something funny about me. And I don’t see how I can be sure; maybe I’ll never be sure...”

I got up and crossed over to her chair. I said, “Listen, lady. Sooner or later you’re going to marry me. Sooner is best, but later is a lot better than never. I don’t care if you’re goofy as a loon, which obviously you’re not.” I pushed her over into a corner of the big chair and perched on the edge...

When I left, I was sure that Valerie, in spite of her obstinacy, was feeling a lot better.

About the author: Much too little has been written about the background of Lawrence G. Blochman. He spent the early 1920 s in the Far East — first on the “Japan Advertiser,” an American newspaper in Tokyo, then barnstorming through China as a sleight-of-hand performer. (It is surprising, by the way, how many magicians have turned into detective-story writers — and vice versa) Eventually Mr. Blochman wearied of pulling hats out of rabbits in the Chinese hinterland and went back into journalism, taking a position with the “South China Morning Post” in Hongkong. Still later he accepted a roving assignment for the “Far Eastern Review” of Shanghai, enlarging his knowledge of the Orient by working in the Philippines, North Borneo, Java, British Malaya, and Siam. He gave up this interesting job when he discovered that his employer was in reality a Japanese propagandist, and returned to his first love, newspaper work, this time on “The Englishman” of Calcutta, the oldest English-language periodical in India. And all through the years Mr. Blochman was learning more and more about the art of writing, as he proved by the ever-increasing quality of his work. Some of the most authentic tales of the East have come from his peripatetic typewriter. Then, during World War II, the soft-spoken, conscientious Mr. Blochman — by now an exceedingly clever diplomat in the ways of the Orient — unselfishly placed his knowledge and experience at the disposal of his country, serving as Chief of the Radio Program Bureau of the OWI, Overseas Branch. And when, in the early summer of 1947, circumstances compelled the Board of Directors of MW A (Mystery Writers of America, Inc.) to declare the office of Vice-President vacant, Mr. Blochman was unanimously elected to fill that important national post.

It is surprising how many famous miters studied hard and, long to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers — only to give up their chosen professions, sometimes at the height of their careers, to follow their real hearts-desire. Arthur Somers Roche prepared for the bar, graduated from Boston University in 1904, practiced law for nearly two years — and in 1906 switched, never to turn back, from his vocation to his avocation. He started writing professionally as a newspaperman; in 1910 he challenged the magazine field; in 1917 he broke into “The Saturday Evening Post”; and by the time he died, in 1935, he was one of America’s most popular and successful slick-magazine writers. His special literary bent expressed itself in a long series of stories about “emotional life among the exceedingly rich” — thematic material which he derived from first-hand experience. During the fabulous boom days of the ’twenties Mr. Roche was a familiar figure at Palm Beach, on sleek ocean-going yachts, and in the aristocratic clubs of New York.

Occasionally Arthur Somers Roche indulged in a little literary slumming — he tried his hand at the detective story. And it is curious that these excursions, in which Mr. Roche revealed his conception of how the other half lived, usually found favor with the editors of slick magazines. For example, take the story we now bring to you: “Put Him on a Spot” is particularly interesting on two counts — one, the manner in which the tale is written, and two, the date it was first published in “Collier’s.” The date was July 6,1929. At that time the hardboiled detective story was just about coming into its own, exerting a powerful influence on all American crime writers. In the early ’twenties “Black Mask” had launched the tough, hard-bitten, shocking style of such pioneers as Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett, and by 1929 (the year in which, if memory serves, THE MALTESE FALCON appeared serially in “Black Mask”) the new type of story and the new style of its telling had penetrated even into the fashionable haunts of slick writers. It is your Editor’s impression that in “Put Him on a Spot” Arthur Somers Roche was actually trying to write a hardboiled detective story — but according to such sweet and sentimental standards as would earn the approval of a slick-magazine editor! In other words, “Put Him on a Spot” is a deliberate attempt to wed the pulp story to the slick story, to mix sugary slickness with tart toughness. Can it be done? Read Mr. Roche’s “noble” experiment and judge for yourself. Note especially Mr. Roche’s “realistic” dialogue. Can a story be half hardboiled and half slick without in the end becoming neither fish, flesh nor fowl?

“I won’t touch it,” I said.

“Oh, you won’t touch it, eh?” said Murdock.

“You heard me,” I told him.

“Sure I heard you,” he said.

“Then that’s that,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s that.” He lighted another cigarette.

“I’ll be getting back to my job,” I told him.

“Good job?” he asked. “Sitting all day at a desk?”

“Better than sitting in the chair.”

“Aw, be yourself, Curtis,” he said. “Who mentioned the chair?”

“I mentioned the chair,” I said.

“You never used to think about the chair,” he said.

“I never did anything to make me think about it,” I said.

“What makes you think about it now?” he asked.

“Your talk,” I answered.

“Oh, my talk, eh?” He lighted another cigarette. I never noticed before how many cigarettes he smoked. “Why, you brought the subject up, didn’t you, Curtis? Grown kind of jumpy, haven’t you?”

“Grown straight, that’s all,” I said.

He threw his cigarette away.

“Kenney won’t like it so much when I tell him you’re putting on the high hat,” he said.

“He’d rather have me put on those headpieces they clamp on your dome up in the death-house,” I answered.

“Ever hear of any of Kenney’s lads taking that morning walk?” he inquired.

“I ain’t one of Kenney’s lads,” I said.

“But you were,” he said.

“But I ain’t,” I told him.

“What you making here — forty per?” he asked.

“Thirty — all clean,” I said.

“Yeah, you must be clean by Monday morning,” he sneered. “You can buy your girl a lot of pretties with what’s left from thirty bucks.”

“I haven’t got a girl,” I told him.

“You used to have one,” he said. “Seems to me I remember something about her. Nice li’l jane, from uptown somewhere. I was noticing her out the other night.”

“What’s a fighting word to put before liar, Murdock?” I asked.

“Meaning?” he said.

“You know what I mean,” I told him. “I want to call you the kind of a liar that would make you sore enough to go for your rod.”

“Meaning you want to bump me off, eh?” he asked.

“Meaning that if you mention her I will bump you off,” I said.

“Well, all right, Curtis, if you feel that way about it. But she was out with the Digger only night before last.”

He had his rod in his hand as he spoke, and I didn’t have any rod. But it wasn’t that that stopped me. What stopped me was that I knew he told the truth.

My Susie! Out with the Digger! Why, she didn’t even know him!

“Murdock, put away your rod. I ain’t going to kill you,” I said.

He knew me. He’d taken one big chance in the hope that he’d make me believe him. Kenney must need me a lot.

“I thought you’d see it our way, Curtis,” he said. “Well, what about it?”

“What about what?” I asked.

I wanted him to go away. I wanted to go away myself. My Susie out with the Digger! And me working for thirty bucks a week because she didn’t want me crooked. Me never seeing her! Me dropping right out of her life, never letting her know where I am or anything. Me spending half the night looking at her photograph while the Digger was looking at her real self.

I wanted to cry, that’s what I wanted to do.

“You know Mallasson,” he said.

“You want me to take him for a ride, eh?” I asked.

“We’ll put him on a spot,” he said.

“Go to hell,” I said.

I got up from the one-armed lunchroom where he’d found me, and started to go.

He grabbed my arm.

“If I take that back to Kenney, he won’t take it,” he said.

“Well, what the hell’s he going to do about it?” I asked.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Curtis,” he said.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m off all that. I’m getting me thirty bucks a week and liking it, see?”

“You used to tip a waiter more than that,” he said.

“Them birds are overpaid,” I said.

I broke loose from him, walked to the cashier and slipped her sixty cents. Sixty cents! It woulda’ made me laugh if it didn’t come nearer making me cry.

A sixty-cent lunch when I used to pay that for my melon.

I stopped outside the store of Murgatroyd & Williamson. What the hell! Eight in the morning until five at night. Put a packing-case on; take a packing-case off. Smoke two cigarettes at lunch because the package must last until night. A bum dinner and a bum movie. A rotten room in a cheap lodging-house... And my Susie out with the Digger!

Women! Look you right plumb in the eye and talk teary. No, I couldn’t love a man that had a racket. No, I wouldn’t want the things that kind of money pays for.

Well, what sort of money did she think the Digger spent? God, if she wouldn’t stand for a racketeer, what made her go for the Digger? I was outside the law, but the Digger was outside everything.

And sweet my Susie was and all of that, but she knew her way around. Show me a girl nowadays that doesn’t. Clean and straight and all that, but she knew what it was all about. And one look at the Digger would tell her everything about him.

And she was out with him only the other night! Couldn’t go out with me because my dough wasn’t made square. Gave me the air because I did a little of this and a little of that; because I played the races, and ran a little hooch, and did a little fixing of the right people once in a while. Me out in the cold and the Digger in where it was nice and warm.

I tried to laugh that one off and couldn’t raise a chuckle. One o’clock struck. If I wasn’t inside that big double door before the note died away a big fat stiff would bawl me out. He’d dock me fifty cents. Fifty cents. I used to give it to a newsboy for a late edition, and now it meant breakfast. Fifty cents!

“Well, what about it?”

I turned and there was Murdock at my elbow. I just stared at him and didn’t see him. All I could see was my Susie, and she was close to the Digger, looking up at him... God, she had the bluest eyes...

“I never killed anyone,” I said.

“That’s the point,” said Murdock.

“And I don’t know Mallasson,” I said.

“Kenney thought of that one, too,” he said. He lighted another cigarette. “It’s like this, Curtis—”

“They dock me fifty cents every five minutes I’m late,” I interrupted.

He peeled a bill off a big roll. It was a grand. He handed it to me.

“Take the whole afternoon off,” he said.

A thousand berries! I used to bet that much that I’d make my point, and now I couldn’t even shoot craps for dimes.

“That’s big money for an afternoon’s talk,” I said.

“There’s nine more waiting for you the minute Mallasson is croaked.”

“Why pick on me?” I asked.

I could see Susie! She liked life. What nice girl doesn’t? The theaters, the night clubs... And the Digger could spend, too. He didn’t mind paying any price for what he wanted. Six months of sticking around the house and she’d had plenty. And I’d ’a’ bet my life that I’d ’a’ quit before she would have.

“You read the papers, don’t you?” I heard Murdock’s voice from ’way, ’way off.

“Lay it on the line,” I told him.

“The whole town’s jake that Mallasson is out to get Kenney. Him just promoted to Chief of Detectives and out to make a record. The papers hollering that Kenney can’t be touched by anybody, that he owns the police and the D. A. and all. Well, Mallasson is out to get Kenney.”

“Well, he can’t do it, can he?” I asked. “What’s Kenney sweating about?”

“Well, he’s sweating,” said Murdock.

I sort of whistled.

“This Mallasson must be quite a man,” I said, “if he’s got Kenney sweating. What’s he got on Kenney?”

Murdock’s teeth showed. “What do you care what he’s got on him?”

“Not a dime,” I told him. “But I’d like to know what Kenney thinks he’s got on me.”

“Ten grand’s a lot of dough,” he said.

“I’ve lost it on one race,” I told him.

“That was last year,” he said. “This is another June, Curtis.”

“I told you to lay it on the line,” I said.

Another June. Just a year ago I’m out at Belmont. I have my Susie with me. She’s wearing one of them blue hats with a tiny yellow flower on the left side, and she’s standing on tiptoe, in a pair of shoes so small that I could use them for cuff-links. I have five grand on the Heenan entry and I don’t even watch the race.

“All right, here it is,” he said. “Mallasson’s gotta be put on the spot.”

“You said that before,” I told him.

“I’m saying it again,” he said. “Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

I took a look at the big open doorway. Inside there were hundreds of packing-cases. Lift ’em off; put ’em on. Now that was a swell racket for Tom Curtis, wasn’t it? I looked down at the grand in my mitt.

“Shoot the piece,” I said.

“If Mallasson’s bumped, the District Attorney will be using a fine-tooth comb on Kenney,” said Murdock.

“Go on,” I said.

“Suppose I gave that big stiff of a copper the works? Suppose the Digger did? Suppose any one of the lads did it. We couldn’t get an alibi air-tight enough.”

“Why doesn’t Kenney import a couple of lads from Chi or Philly?” I asked.

“You ain’t read the papers very careful, have you?” he said. “And you ain’t been around for six months. I tell you, Curtis, Mallasson’s got this town all sewed up. He’s got even Kenney so he’s afraid to move. Kenney’d be tied up with any gangsters from Chi or Philly like prohibition is with graft. It’s got to be an outsider.”

“Like me, eh?” I sneered.

“Yes, like you,” he said.

“Just in a friendly way I walk up and put a couple of bullets into the copper, eh?” I said.

“You’ve got it,” he said. “We plant him, Curtis. He’s waiting right on the spot where we put him. All alone. You go by. Wham! He gets it. We got your alibi.”

“I thought you just said alibis weren’t so hot these days,” I said.

“For you they’re O.K. You ain’t got a record. You’re working at a regular job. You never were out in the open with Kenney. Why the hell should anyone suspect you’d settle Mallasson?”

“You asked it; you answer it,” I said.

“Well, no one would.”

“Well, no one will,” I said. “Because I won’t go for it. I’m no killer.”

“You said that before,” he reminded me. “And that makes it still better. Every killer in town will be rounded up within twenty-four hours after we put Mallasson on a spot. Who’ll think of you?”

“Kenney must be in a hell of a state,” I said.

“Well, all right. You said it. Let it go at that. Are you on?”

I stuffed the grand right in his mitt.

“Got fifty cents?” I asked.

“Why, sure,” he said, bewildered like.

He handed me half a dollar.

“Much obliged,” I said. “It’s only fair you should pay for my being docked.”

With that I started for the door of Murgatroyd & Williamson. I was ten feet from him before he got over his surprise. Then he called to me.

“Well,” I said.

“About the Digger,” he said. “And Susie Turner,” he said. “Why don’t you give her a ring?”

I walked through the big double doors.

“You’re late, Curtis,” said the foreman. “That’ll cost you just one buck.”

I handed him a five-dollar bill.

“Keep the change, feller,” I said.

“You’re fired,” he yelled.

I left him picking himself up. Fired, was I? Well, wasn’t that too bad?

And my Susie was out with the Digger, was she? Theater seats at eighteen a brace; cover charge at a night club for two; taxis; and, well, orchids and...

Give her a ring, Murdock said. Telephone, eh? Yeah, what could you say to a doll over the telephone? I couldn’t say the things I wanted her to hear. She’d cut me off. But if I backed her against a wall she’d listen. I’d make her listen. Oh, God, if I had to get the double-cross why couldn’t I get it from a man? Why did I have to get it from Susie?

I walked from the store to my room. I climbed three flights of stairs and tossed myself on a bed.

They’d be off at Belmont in a couple of minutes. I could see the grandstand with the bookies underneath. One year ago, and a nod from me and I’d have a grand on some baby’s nose. And the racketeers would give me the nod, and there’d be a date for the evening...

But gambling wasn’t exactly honorable. And running hooch was immoral.

Yes, sir, she’d rather cook her own meals and do her own laundry than live off dishonest money.

So she says good-bye to me. And I... well, wouldn’t I be a sucker to make a lot of promises that I didn’t know I could keep? So I drop right out of her life. In a year or two I’ll be making good; I’ll come back to her... And she couldn’t stand it for six months. Out with the Digger!

But why did Murdock tell me that? Then I got it. He wanted to show me what a sap I was to play it straight on account of a girl. Well, he was right, damn him.

But Kenney must be in a considerable jam. To bring up my girl’s name, to send for me... Well, a lot I cared for Kenney. He could burn twice a day and I should worry.

I got up from the bed, straightened my tie and started uptown. One talk with Susie — so help me, she’d never forget it — and then — well, I didn’t look that far ahead. There are some things you don’t want to look beyond.

I rang the bell, and her mother let me in. She stared like I was a ghost.

“Where’s Susie?” she cried. “What have you done with her?”

I gave her back her stare.

“I haven’t seen Susie for six months,” I said.

With that she keeled right over backward, and I’m twenty minutes bringing her out of the faint, and an hour longer getting her story.

Susie, two nights ago, got a phone message, and she thought it was from me. She went out to meet me. And she never came back.

“And you,” said Mrs. Turner, “a decent lad if I ever met one, so I thought — well, my Susie and Tom Curtis they went off and got married, and maybe the telegram got missent or something. A mother can’t think the worst so she hopes for the best. But Susie loved you—”

“She did?” I said.

“Why else would she send you away?” asked the mother. “Sure, a girl can’t be asking every lad if the money he spends for theater tickets is honest come by, can she? And she had faith. When she didn’t hear from you, she’d say to me that you were off somewhere, living straight and decent — oh, my God, Tom, can’t you bring back my Susie?”

“I’ll bring back your Susie,” I said to her.

So that was why Murdock had said to telephone my girl. He gave me the hint that she was out with the Digger. He didn’t know that Susie had told her mother she’d gone out to meet me. I’d think she’d decided to do the best she could, and then I’d be ripe to quit the sucker game of holding down a job...

I went to Kenney.

“I’m not a killer,” I said.

“Go on,” he said.

“The Digger’s got my girl,” I said.

“Get another girl,” he advised.

“She didn’t go willingly with the Digger,” I said.

“They all say that,” he said.

“She hasn’t said it. I’m saying it.”

“Get on with it,” he said.

“Give me my girl or I’ll kill you, me that isn’t a killer,” I said.

“If I don’t have Mallasson nailed to a tree within twenty-four hours I’ll fry,” he said. “Now shoot. Bullet or burn, it’s fifty-fifty with me.”

I looked him over. He hadn’t got to be the king of all the racketeers by quitting in a pinch. There wasn’t any yellow in him. He wouldn’t scare.

He’d picked me for the Mallasson job, and if I wanted my Susie back...

“I never did any killing, Kenney, but if I do one I’d as soon do two,” I said to him. “And I don’t mean the Digger, Kenney. I mean you. If my Susie ain’t right as rain—”

“If she ain’t, Curtis,” he said, “I’ll hand you the gun to give it to me with. But — I got to get Mallasson.”

“Shoot it,” I said.

“He gets a message. An old pal of mine is sore and will give up everything. But Mallasson’s got to come alone. Furthermore, Mallasson’s got to give his word that he won’t tell any one who he’s going to meet. One thing about that copper — his word is good.”

“It’s good,” I said.

“Well, you meet him. You give it to him. You walk to where you live and take a smoke. Then you go call upon your girl. She’ll be there.”

“And the Digger?” I asked.

“Not the weight of his finger on her. My life for that,” said Kenney.

“Your life for that,” said I.

I smoked a pack of cigarettes while he made his plans. What the hell? Why be economical about a butt any more?

“Your alibi’s planted,” Kenney finally said. “There’s three good lads up in your room playing penny ante and you’re with them. Mallasson’s given his word he’ll not tell a soul you’re to meet him.”

“Oh,” I said, “you gave him my name?”

“Sure I did,” said Kenney. “He knows you used to be one of the mob. He knows you’ve gone straight—”

“If he should tell his men that he went to meet me—” I began.

“He gave his word,” said Kenney.

“Then he’ll keep it,” I said.

“Here’s a rod,” said Kenney. “Monument and Lincoln, right by the statue. You walk up to him. You shake hands and let him have it. Seven-twenty exact. The nearest cop will be three blocks away.”

“My Susie—”

He cut me short.

“She’ll be home before Mallasson hits the curb. So long.”

I go out on the street, I look at my watch. I’ve got fifteen minutes to walk ten blocks. A minute and a half to a block. My Susie! In the Digger’s hands. And the Digger backed by Kenney. And Kenney never showed mercy to man, woman, or beast. What was a girl to Kenney? If the Digger wanted her... And wasn’t my Susie just the girl the Digger would want? The Digger, the rottenest, foulest... What was Mallasson? Just another copper. And what did I care for coppers? What was the life of the best copper that ever lived compared to a hair on my Susie’s head?

Fifteen minutes. There’s Mallasson.

“You, Curtis. Spill it,” he said.

I look at him. Just as easy. My Susie back at home. My Susie loving me, belonging to me. I hitch my left shoulder forward; easier to get my rod out. I’ll jam it against his belly, let him have it...

Goddlemighty, am I crazy? Would my Susie let me kill an innocent man to save her from — to save her from even the Digger? God knew she wouldn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t.

“You’re on a spot, Mallasson,” I said to him. “Kenney’s got my girl — it was her or you, and I thought it was you—”

“Get it out,” he yells. His own gun is in his hand.

I turned. A machine was careening down the street. They’re shooting from it. Mallasson’s down. I’m kneeling over him, letting them have it, letting them have it...

We’re in the same room at the hospital, Mallasson and I. He’s all bandaged and so am I. He sends everyone out of the room.

“Thought you wasn’t coming to, Curtis,” he said.

I let out a groan. “I wish I hadn’t,” I said. “My girl—”

“You got the idea, didn’t you?” he asked. “You were to croak me, and the gang was to settle you, and the District Attorney would think it was a private killing that you planned, and Kenney’s mob might be blamed for you, but they wouldn’t be blamed for me—”

“My girl,” I said.

“One of us couldn’t have stood them off. Both of us did. We got them all, Curtis. Nice hunting.”

“Susie,” I said.

“You with a gun in your hand; me with bullets from your gun in me. No tie-up between you and Kenney. What could be sweeter for Kenney? But we got Kenney. Your word to me gave me him.”

“To hell with Kenney. I want my girl — the Digger—”

He rang the bell and a nurse comes in.

Mallasson grins at her.

“Fetch the lady,” he said.

It’s Susie, and she’s by the bed, her arms around me. God, but she hurt my shoulder, right where the bullet got me, and I wish it would always hurt like that, hurt from her arms around me...

“My lights didn’t go out, Curtis,” said Mallasson. “I got them all. Kenney, the Digger — and the lady. Kenney told where the lady was. My men found her, locked in a room in an uptown hotel, with the Digger standing guard outside. You’d told me that Kenney had your girl, and my men — they weren’t gentle with Kenney. They made him come through. They weren’t gentle with the Digger, either, if that helps. But the girl had come to no harm — just scared—”

I hardly heard him. Susie was moaning.

“Tom... Tom, why did you go away?”

“He wanted to go straight, I guess,” said Mallasson. “Wanted to quit the racket. Wanted to get a decent job.”

“I was fired today,” I said.

“The Magrath people want a good man to handle their race-track protection,” said Mallasson. “They got to keep the crooks off the tracks. Twelve grand a year and I can name the lad to get the job. But he has to be a married man.”

I looked at Susie and she blushed.

“That’s me, Mallasson,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Say,” he said, “I think one of them damn’ bullets hurt my ear. I wouldn’t be able to hear you kids if you kissed each other.”

We call to the stand that grand old tale-teller, Frederick Irving Anderson, to introduce his own story. The author writes: “This yarn is the first in which Deputy Parr and Oliver Armiston got together on whodunits. More than a hundred stories were to follow. In fact, they horned in on just about everything I put on paper from 1920 on.

“Bibliotrivially, I don’t know what makes a story viable: ‘The Phantom Alibi’ went through scores of reprints, here and abroad, including, believe it or not, the Scandinavian. I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t the title — which really didn’t fit — nor in my opinion was the story itself exceptional. Yet it went on for years and years — just wouldn’t sink.

“If it fits in with EQMM...”

It fits.

Indeed, it is a great pleasure to bring you the very first combined operation of Armiston-and-Parr — a significant “first” in more ways than one.

“No! no!” said Armiston, the extinct author, with the air of a sorely tried man doing his best to be civil. He turned to his desk, made a great to-do of being busy and interrupted. He had an impulse to rise and dismiss the persistent visitor with a bow. But he hesitated to be so abrupt.

“Murder,” said the author, “is distinctly not in my line.”

Oliver Armiston’s visitor smiled, throwing a look of secret understanding at the fat Buddha who reposed among folds of flesh in one corner of the elegant room.

“You turned it to very good account once,” he said mildly.

“I recollect your crew did me the compliment to tell me I was guilty,” nodded Armiston.

“The guiltiest man unhung!” retorted the visitor, with relish. “You procured that crime! Our moderation on that particular occasion still astonishes me.”

He was a man of fierce aspect, but his eyes had the habit of merriment. Parr, the deputy commissioner, for it was that exalted policeman himself, was recalling an incident in Armiston’s career several years gone by, when the famous author of thrillers was gulled by a clever stranger into solving as fiction what proved to be a problem of fact. The fertile author not only contrived (on paper) to rob the unprincipled wife of a diplomat, but when the tale was published, tasted the bitter triumph of finding the clever stranger had executed the crime according to printed direction, not even eliding the murder which to Armiston, engrossed in the plot, had seemed unavoidable. This atrocity, succeeded as it was by a mysterious gift from the grateful perpetrator, had created such a sensation as to drive Armiston into retirement. No! Decidedly murder was not in his line!

Parr rose. Armiston forbore to look up for fear of detaining him. But Parr was not departing. He removed his top coat, remarking it was warm, and sat down again, smiling.

“You inspired that crime,” said Parr easily.

“Your moderation on this occasion astonishes me!” broke in Armiston testily. “You arrest a reputable citizen for murder. You admit that the mere statement of the known facts, to any sane jury, would convict him. And then, as an officer sworn to uphold the law, you come privately to me, and say: ‘Please, sir, as a personal favor, prove my prisoner innocent.’ Is the man innocent, then?”

“Yes.”

“Then why arrest him, why accuse him of murder, if you know that he is not guilty? Does the law require a victim? Do you intend to prosecute him?”

“Certainly. I have no option.”

“Even if you know he is innocent?”

“Facts, my dear boy. Facts. I can’t go behind facts. I can’t. You can.”

“How do you know he is innocent?” In spite of himself, Armiston was giving heed. Nevertheless he was determined to smash Parr by logic, if insolence failed.

“How does a bird know North, in spring?” answered the imperturbable policeman, to whom nobody, not even his best friend, would have ascribed the smallest touch of imagination. He dealt with facts, as such; he was incapable of going beyond facts. He believed in shoe-leather and elbow-grease, not divination. Thus he had made his reputation as the very Nemesis of the law. And yet today he had come privately to the extinct author, whom he had not seen since that lamented circumstance of long ago, and said, somewhat astonished at his own words: “I am about to convict an innocent man of murder. Indeed I will, I must, unless you can find some way to prevent me.” It was a tribute to the cogency of Armiston’s fiction mind.

“Just what are the facts?” said Armiston, softening. And Parr, finally convinced that he had struck fire in his quest for subtlety of imagination to oppose his facts, hitched his chair nearer.

“Fingerprints—” he began...

“Bosh! Fingerprints are not facts!” cried Armiston, now fairly in the saddle. “Anybody can counterfeit fingerprints. It’s merely a process of photography.”

“There you are!” exclaimed the deputy, beaming on Buddha. “I didn’t know that. I don’t know it yet. Can it be done?”

Armiston daubed his thumb with the ink-bottle cork, and stamped it on a sheet of paper, making his own thumbprint.

“Photograph that, life-size,” said Oliver. “Print it on a pellicle of gelatine sensitized with bichromate of potash. Soak the gelatin in cold water. What have you? You will find on that pellicle of gelatine, in relief, the exact duplicate of the lines of my thumb. The lines stand up like type. Smear it with ink, grease, blood, anything — leave the imprint any place you want to — on a revolver handle, safe door, window — any place.”

“Marvelous!”

“Not at all. Elemental,” corrected Armiston dryly. “So much for your fingerprints! It’s as old as the art of photography — it’s used as a commercial process, to imitate photogravures. The trouble with you, Commissioner, is that you don’t recognize a fact when you see it. You accept somebody’s say-so. A fingerprint is gospel to you. It isn’t to me. It’s the first thing I suspect. I wonder how many poor devils you’ve sent up, with your facts.” He paused, rather pleased with himself. “Now trot out some more facts.”

“The murdered man was Sauer — J. H. Sauer,” said the deputy.

“A reputable party?”

“No, I believe not. He had a process for making gold out of aluminum. It can be done, I am told.”

“Did he do it?”

“Well, he did, and he didn’t,” said Parr. “He quietly interested a few people — good people — Brown, president of the Elm Park Bank, and Westcott, a technical man employed in the Assay Office, as another. Why is it,” asked Parr, “that the clever crook selects the expert for his boob? This one did. Imagine Brown and Westcott, of all men in the world, falling for that sort of thing — the two men who above all others should have been wary. He demonstrated his process for them, and they were convinced he had what he claimed. There would be a pot of money in it, of course. But it meant a costly plant, to start. Well, when he found he had these two hog-tied, when they were willing to back him to the limit, Sauer got cold feet.”

“Sauer? That’s a new line, for a crook.” Armiston, idly whittling a pencil, looked up.

“Wait.” Parr was warming up. “After he had convinced the experts, the inventor himself began to have doubts. They were willing to go ahead, but he wasn’t. He got the queer idea that he had been fooling himself, that there was a flaw somewhere. There was quite a row, I believe; but he wouldn’t go ahead. They repeated that they were satisfied. He told them he didn’t think their opinion was worth two whoops. Finally Brown, the banker, who saw riches slipping away from him, asked Sauer if he would be content to call in an umpire and let him decide. Well, Sauer backed and filled, and finally he said if they would call in an expert of unquestioned authority, all right. He would abide by the verdict. He didn’t seem to be worrying over the fact that he might be fooling them. That was their lookout. He was afraid he was fooling himself.”

The functionary of police chuckled softly to himself.

“Armiston,” he said, “you told me once you were interested in electrolytic work. Didn’t you study at the Polytechnic?”

Armiston nodded. He indicated a file of electrolytic journals on the bookshelf as indication that this branch of science was one he pursued from day to day, as a hobby.

“You know the big men in that line,” said Parr. “Whom would you pick for umpire? Is there one outstanding man?”

“Pettibone — Dean Pettibone,” said Armiston, without hesitation.

Parr nodded, as if he had expected this answer.

“They picked Pettibone,” he said.

“And he took one look, and gave them the laugh,” put in Armiston. “I know just how he would do — without batting an eyelash. But what has this to do with murder? And your executing a man who didn’t commit it?”

“Patience! I am coming to that,” said Parr mildly. “Well, they made several dates. Pettibone agreed to come, not because he took any stock in it, but just to humor Brown. Then our friend Sauer contracted a jumping tooth. And for about three weeks he groaned in a dentist’s chair, more concerned about saving that tooth, than he was about his million dollars. Finally the tooth was fixed up, and they had a session. Pettibone handed Sauer some aluminum, and Sauer went ahead with his usual hocus-pocus. When the thing was cooked, or pickled, or whatever there was to be done, he opened up the crucible to show the gold. Not a trace!”

Armiston grinned.

“Count on Petty for that!” he said.

“Well, they tried it again, and again. Nothing doing.” Parr regarded Armiston with his dry smile. “It seems Sauer had been furnishing his own aluminum, hitherto. Salted it, I suppose. Those two experts never suspected him. You can get a trace of gold out of any sample of commercial aluminum — not enough to pay, but you can show it. Pettibone suspected what had happened. He handed Sauer a piece of chemically pure aluminum. And he didn’t give him a chance to dope the brew. Then he laughed at him. There was quite a blowup. Brown quit cold, feeling as if he had been made a fool of. So did Westcott. They left in a huff. But Petty stayed behind, Sauer buttonholing him. The last Brown heard, Pettibone was explaining to Sauer, in words of one syllable, what kind of a crook he was.”

“He’d do that — make it a point of honor,” agreed Armiston. He yawned. “This is all very thrilling, Commissioner,” he said. “But when do you produce the corpse?”

“We don’t,” said Parr, grimly.

“What? You can’t execute a man for murder in this state, without a corpus delicti.”

“We can’t produce it,” repeated Parr. “And yet, we are going to send Pettibone to the chair.”

“Pettibone!” ejaculated the extinct author, now sitting up stark. “You’re going to execute Pettibone?” he repeated. “Oh, my dear fellow! Come, this is too much of a good thing—”

“Pettibone was the last man seen with Sauer, alive,” went on Parr. “Something happened. Nobody knows just what. The engineer in the basement was roused by a racket. Then water began coming through the ceiling as if there was a flood upstairs. He called up the office, and with the nightman broke into Sauer’s rooms, and found—”

“What?” exploded Armiston, for Parr had paused, smiling queerly.

“Nothing,” said Byrnes. “Nobody there. The safe was open, a lot of papers were scattered about the floor. A chair or two was upset and broken; and the city water was pouring out of a broken pipe, from a connection that Sauer had had put in for his experiments. There had been a three-foot length of galvanized pipe over a lead sink. This pipe had been twisted off at the elbow, and there it lay on the floor. Somebody had been bludgeoned with it. On one end there was blood and hair. Otherwise — nothing.”

“But the body — what became of the body?” demanded Armiston.

“What becomes of a lump of sugar in a glass of water?” retorted Parr. “It dissolves.” He said in the same odd tone: “Well, that’s what happened to Sauer. He dissolved.”

“ ‘Dissolved?’ ”

“Pettibone’s fingerprints were on one end of that pipe,” said the policeman.

“Fingerprints, bah!” cried Armiston, angrily. To think that even police bungling would lay a sordid crime of this sort at the door of a man of Dean Pettibone’s prestige was maddening.

“I will allow you that,” said Parr. “But they led us to Petty. We searched his place. Why, I don’t know. Only a fool would expect to find anything there. Still, he was the last man seen with Sauer alive — and something had happened to Sauer. In his laboratory Petty had a big lead tank full of liquid. We asked him what it was. He said it was residues. We drained that tank, and we found — this!”

He pushed his chubby fingers into a vest pocket and drew out a tiny ball of tissue paper, which he unwrapped carefully. He laid this small object of irregular shape on the desk. Armiston stared at it.

“It’s gold, isn’t it?” he said, puzzled. Parr nodded.

“It’s the residue of our friend Sauer,” he said coldly. “It is the corpus delicti that’s going to convict Pettibone. It is the gold filling out of Sauer’s tooth — the sole mortal remains of Sauer, that Pettibone couldn’t dissolve in his vat.”

Armiston sat down dumbstruck.

“Remember,” continued Parr, with painful certitude, “it was only three weeks before, that the dentist made that filling. He used the amalgam process in making the pattern. He has the matrix — and it fits to a crossed T and a dotted I. Furthermore,” said the policeman as he watched Armiston with keen eyes, “the dentist happens to have the preliminary rubber impression he took of Sauer’s jaw. You won’t tell me you can counterfeit that. Those are the facts, Armiston,” he concluded, and he leaned back in his chair to await the verdict.

In his schooldays Dean Pettibone had been Armiston’s kindly guide and friend, one of those rare teachers who achieve something like saintship in the memory of their students.

“It’s — preposterous—” Armiston began, and halted. “Are you going to maintain in court that dear old Petty — why he doesn’t weigh a good hundred pounds — carried the dead body of Sauer across town, in the middle of the night, to get rid of him in his vat?”

“ ‘Preposterous?’ ” said Parr. “Not at all. It was midnight. Sauer’s apartment was on the ground floor — with a private entrance in the side street. Pettibone admits he came and went in his coupe, alone. Nobody saw him leave Sauer’s rooms. His laboratory is on a lonely road — I believe there was an element of danger in his research work, and a bad smell — and he had to get off by himself. Now do you say ‘preposterous?’ ”

“Cobwebs!” cried Armiston contemptuously. “Use a little reason.”

“ ‘Reason?’ ” said the deputy. “There is no reason in a crime of violence. But that! — ” He pointed to the tiny fragment of gold, every accidental irregularity of whose surface testified incontrovertibly to its identity. He turned fiercely on Armiston. “What are you going to do about that?”

“You can’t establish a murder, with only a gold tooth to show,” muttered Armiston.

“Can’t I? Take the classic Webster-Parkman case as an example.”

The deputy commissioner rose and pulled on his coat slowly. “The jury won’t leave its seat,” he said absently. “Regrettable, yes, to balance a man like Petty against a cheap trickster.” He picked up the particle of gold and restored it to its tissue paper and as he put it back in his pocket, he murmured, “It will send your friend Petty to the chair.”

Without a leave-taking he stalked out. In the street the police functionary permitted himself a complacent smile as he looked up at Armiston’s windows. Unless he was very much mistaken, he had started a fire.

Some superstitions die hard, particularly the superstition that a man can possess “hypnotic eyes,” capable of compelling others to do his will — with special reference to women of property. This was said of Joseph Smith, who drowned various brides in their bath: more recently, of Heath, who savagely murdered two women within a month.

It was said in the mid-nineteen-thirties of James Gleddy, an ill-mannered little bounder who exploited his sex appeal. The hypnotic nonsense was dragged in to explain his success in marrying a girl of distinguished family, who apparently thought he was of her own class.

In their honeymoon there was a gap of six months while the bridegroom purged his offense in the matter of a worthless check. But his minor knaveries need not detain us. We can best contact the couple in the third year of their marriage — on a Saturday morning in May 1934, in the offices of the Domestic Animals Charitable Association, of which Margaret Gleddy was the president’s secretary: for by this time Gleddy had run through her money and she was supporting the home.

The Association rented a basement suite in one of the best blocks off Parliament Square. On Saturday the staff were not required to work, with the exception of the president and his secretary. The president would leave at eleven-thirty during the summer for his weekend cottage in Dorsetshire. Margaret would generally work on until one, when the porter would enter to sign on the cleaners.

On this particular Saturday, when the porter entered the suite, he smelled chloroform. He ran into the secretary’s office where he found Margaret lying on the floor near the big safe, which was shut. A duster hung over the door of the little wall safe, which was open and empty. Over the girl’s face was another duster, tied in a simple knot at the back. The porter untied the duster and whipped it away — with it, a wad of cotton wool on which chloroform had been poured. There was a cut on her chin from which a trickle of blood had stained her jumper.

The porter shouted to a constable on point duty at the corner. Margaret was carried on a stretcher the hundred odd yards to Westminster Hospital. In half an hour she recovered consciousness, to be dimly aware of a police sergeant at her bedside.

“Police! That’s a good thing!” she exclaimed. “It was my fault, really. I ought to have known it would happen. I ought to have taken special precautions on Saturdays.”

“Jest so, Miss! Can you remember anything of what happened?”

“Everything. Until he bumped my face on the back of the chair, and then I passed out. I feel awful. You might call a nurse, will you?”

Some ten minutes later the conversation was resumed.

“It must have been a little after half-past twelve when it happened. I made the mistake of threatening to scream, instead of screaming at once. He collared me from behind and put his hand over my mouth. He’s much stronger than you’d think. I’d have bitten his hand if I could, but he had my chin squashed up. I landed a good back-kick with my heel, and I think that toppled him on to the back of the chair — with my face underneath. Ugh! Speaking hurts all over.”

She began to laugh.

“If he had come six weeks ago,” she explained, “he would have found about a hundred and fifty in that little safe. This morning it was empty.”

“The little safe?” echoed the sergeant. “What about the big safe?”

“It’s only used as a cupboard. There’s nothing in it but photographs and gramophone records.”

“We shall want to open it, so as to make a complete check-up. Would the key of that big safe be in your possession, Miss?”

“You’ll find it in my desk — the one with the typewriter — top right-hand drawer. But you’ll only waste your time.”

“Matter o’ routine, Miss. You always have to open everything after a robbery, just to make sure.”

“On my desk,” said Margaret, “there were nine pounds in notes, clipped together, and a four shilling postal order. And he won’t even be able to keep that!” She frowned in sudden doubt. “You have caught him, haven’t you?”

“Not yet. Who is he, Miss? I can see you know.”

“Yes, I know who he is!” She sighed with vast weariness. “He is my husband — James Gleddy. He has been to prison before. I’ve done my best and I’ve failed. I’m giving evidence against him, turning on him, betraying him — what’s the word crooks use? — ratting on him.”

“What’s your home address, please?” She gave it, and added: “If you wait until about four, you’ll find him lying on his bed in a drunken sleep. Oh God, I’m all in! Don’t think me rude, Sergeant, but please go away.”

The Sergeant went back to the suite to report to the local superintendent who had taken charge.

About the author: Stuart Palmer, creator of Hildegarde Withers, has been an iceman, supercargo, publicity man, newspaper reporter, special feature writer, apple-picker, advertising copy writer, taxi driver, literary ghost, poet, editor, and Hollywood script writer — and all his varied vocations and avocations have exerted strong influences on his work. He was born in the little town of Baraboo on June 21, 1905, the youngest son of Jay Sherman Palmer, a prominent Wisconsin fruit grower; Baraboo is otherwise famous as the birthplace of two circuses, Ringling Brothers and Gollmar’s. He was educated at local schools, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin. One year he was awarded the Lewis Prize for the best prose composition and with this feather in his cap, he left the University without a degree to become supercargo aboard the Alaska Steamship Company’s “Victoria,” which brought back Amundsen and Ellsworth after their flight over the Pole in the “Norge.” A long series of different jobs prepared him for the typewriting trade, but it is interesting to note that he was dismissed as a publicity writer for Samuel Insull, the public utility magnate, for daring to contribute to “The American Mercury,” and that he replaced Thorne Smith, the creator of Topper, as the chief copy writer for the advertising agency of Doremus & Company. Mr. Palmer’s chief hobby is collecting statuettes of penguins — his collection is second only to that of Roland Young, the movie actor. Stu (as most of his friends call him) is six-feet-two, owns one of the readiest smiles this side of paradise, and can read faster than anyone except the late Theodore Roosevelt. His first Hildegarde Withers novel in six years was published in May 1947 as the Crime Club Selection of the Month — it is called MISS WITHERS REGRETS: and in case you missed it (which would be a pity) we published his first book of Hildy short stories in February 1947 under the title THE RIDDLES OF HILDEGARDE WITHERS. As one of the great female detectives of fiction, Hildegarde Withers will not perish from the earth...

The trap — though the policemen who were setting it would have called it a “stake-out” — was set around noon. It was a little before two in the afternoon when a soft knock came at the front door of the little adobe cottage, and then another.

Before either of the two detectives could make up his mind about answering, the knob started to turn — hopefully but without result. Then there was the sound of footsteps scrunching around through the bedraggled little cactus garden to the rear of the place.

Young Rankin snorted. “This is going to be good!” He was a beefy man who bulged his blue serge, and he had a way of speaking faster than he thought. “It says in the book—”

Detective Tom Macy had been on the Las Vegas force for twenty-one years, and for his money nothing was any good except keeping out of trouble, getting off duty, and going home for supper. “All right, all right. So it says in the book they always return to the scene of the crime. Relax, eager-beaver.”

Yet he too was alert, his gnarled red hand hovering near his holster, as there came the soft sound of scratching at the lock of the kitchen door. He caught Rankin’s arm and drew him into the hall closet. They listened as the kitchen door opened and closed. There was the creak of light, cautious steps on the linoleum, then tinware rattled and cupboard doors opened. After a while the footsteps came past the breakfast nook and into the living room, and then stopped.

“Now!” Macy said, and they pounced. Rankin had his lead-heavy sap in the air, and narrowly managed to bring it down without damaging their prisoner, who turned out to be an angular spinster of uncertain years. She had no other weapon than her tongue, and needed none.

“I am Miss Hildegarde Withers!” she announced. “Take your big clumsy hands off me at once! What if I did enter this place? I have as much right in this cottage as you have, and perhaps more.”

Rankin said that they would see about that. But Macy elbowed him firmly aside. “Lady, we’re listening. But give it straight. We’re Las Vegas police.”

“In that case,” Miss Withers said acidly, “I shall try to speak clearly and in words of one syllable. I am here, having interrupted a train journey from New York to Los Angeles, because a girl named Eileen Travis is supposed to be living here. For more than five weeks she has been establishing residence for a Nevada divorce. Her family back East has considerable influence with the powers that be, and they called on the New York police at Centre Street. You see, they were very worried about her—”

“Oh, so you claim to be a policewoman?” Rankin cut in.

“Nothing of the kind. My I.Q. is much too high, for one thing. I am a schoolteacher. But once in a while I fall heir to problems which are too far off the beaten track for Centre Street to bother with. Some friends of mine at Headquarters knew that I was en route to California for a vacation, so after Eileen’s mother put the pressure on, she was told to telegraph me, and—”

Macy cleared his throat noisily. “Just why was the girl’s mother worried about her?”

“I don’t quite know. It was about some threats that George Travis, the girl’s husband, was supposed to have made. The King’s County Grand Jury recently indicted him for violation of OPA rules — some sort of Black Market practices — and he felt that his wife was rushing through the divorce so that she would be able legally to testify against him at his forthcoming trial. On top of that, Eileen’s mother phoned her long distance last week, and the girl acted strangely — she refused to talk.” Miss Withers sniffed again. “Now you know as much as I do. By the way, where is the body?”

“Ah, ha!” cried Rankin jubilantly. “How’d you know about that?”

“I didn’t, until you told me. But I suspected it. There’s an odor of perfume, stale alcohol, tobacco, and cordite in this room. Besides, why should there be two detectives lurking in the house?”

Macy sighed, and indicated the bedroom door. “She’s in there. Around midnight last night, close as we can figure, somebody let her have it with a shotgun, right smack in her pretty face. We’re waiting for the ambulance now — only two in town, and both pretty busy.” He gestured. “Sorry, but you’ll have to come down to the station.

“Illegal, but to be expected. Meanwhile, of course, the real murderer is making tracks out of town. Never fear, I shall go quietly.”

“I wish!” Rankin muttered fervently.

“But first,” insisted the schoolteacher, “I think I ought to look at the body. Or has it been identified?”

Macy hesitated, and then said “Come on.”

In the bedroom there was the grotesquely pitiful remains of a plump, tanned girl in a black negligee, sprawled all akimbo on a white goatskin rug. A lightweight shotgun lay nearby.

“That her?” Macy demanded. “I mean as far as you can tell, without any face.”

Miss Withers knelt over the body. “New nylons. Shoes from I. Miller, New York. Negligee from Altman’s — the expensive kind that you can draw through a ring. And speaking of rings—”

“We want to know, is that her or isn’t it?” Rankin cut in.

“She must have been pretty,” Miss Withers said. “Once.”

Rankin sighed. “Sure musta. Don’t see a figure like that once in a coon’s age, even in this town.”

“He’s an expert,” Macy said dryly. “These bachelors! Sure you never were out with her, Rank?”

“No such luck.” Rankin was oddly blushing. “Well, ma’am?”

“I don’t know if it’s Eileen Travis or not,” the schoolteacher admitted. “I never saw the girl. I just wanted to find out if there were any clues you’d missed.”

Rankin looked angry, but Macy almost laughed. “And were there?”

“Only that her ring is missing.” Miss Withers pointed to the narrow pale line around the ring-finger of the dead girl’s left hand.

“Pretty sharp,” Macy said. “Only there was a ring there when we found her. This one.” From his pocket he produced a heavy white-gold wedding ring. “It says ‘From G T to E H Jan 20 ’44’.”

“From George Travis to Eileen Hampton,” Miss Withers said. “He gave himself top-billing, as they used to say in vaudeville. That tells us something about George, does it not?”

“You mean because he put his own initials first?” Macy looked at her with a new respect.

“Uh hmmm.” The schoolteacher had opened the closet door and was looking at the rows of expensive clothes, the big leather bag of golf clubs — everything well cared-for and expensive.

“Nothing in here,” Macy said, “but the shotgun. And that’s just an ordinary 16-gauge, not new, not old.”

“Everybody around here has one,” Rankin put in. “We use ’em for shooting doves and prairie jacks. Jack-rabbits, that is.”

They went back into the living room, and Macy showed Miss Withers the bottle of Scotch, part-full, which had been found on the coffee table, beside two glasses. There was also an ashtray with some cigarette butts and ashes, and a half-smoked perfecto, unchewed and still bearing the band decorated with the head and plump bust of a senorita.

“A fifty-center,” Rankin said. “Boy, could I go for a box of those!”

“We figure,” Macy explained, “that the girl had a caller. She gave him a drink—”

“The cigar means it was a man. A man she knew, or she wouldn’t have had a drink with him dressed in that flimsy nightie,” Rankin said.

“Yeh? Some of the tomatoes you run around with on your off time would—” Macy gestured broadly. “Sorry, ma’am. Anyway, we figure that this visitor puffs on his cigar and drinks his drink and then—”

“And then he pulls the shotgun out of his vest pocket and shoots his hostess smack in the face, is that it?” Miss Withers sniffed very dubiously. “Obliging of him to leave fingerprints. By the way, you’re welcome to take mine, although I don’t drink, smoke cigars, or shoot shotguns.”

Rankin guffawed. “Oh, they’re not women’s prints. Mostly just fragments, but we got a complete thumbprint on one of the glasses, and it was a big one, even for a man. Too bad that dame’s husband is in jail back East, or this would be duck soup.”

“A man with Black Market connections,” pointed out Miss Withers, “could arrange to have someone commit murder for him.”

Macy shrugged. “Well, ma’am, we’ll look into all that at the proper time. Let’s go downtown.” He led the way out through the back door, then stopped short. “What were you doing here in the kitchen when you came in?” he demanded.

“Looking for clues. You can tell a lot about a person by her garbage can, and her shelves. Notice the ham, and biscuit dough, and cans of black-eyed peas? A hearty eater, that girl. And if you’ll look in her garbage—”

“I don’t see any sense in pawing through old orange rinds and coffee grounds,” Macy protested.

“That’s the point. There weren’t—”

But he hurried her along to the battered sedan which had been parked in the alley. Macy drove around to the front and down the street, while Officer Rankin looked after them wistfully from a front window. “Guess this is the first time Rankin’s been squeamish about being left alone with a blonde,” Macy said as they drove.

The schoolteacher was staring back toward the lonely cottage. “If I were you I shouldn’t worry to much about his solitude,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I just saw a man step out from behind a billboard across the street heading for the cottage.”

Macy drove on automatically for half a block, and then made a quick U-turn which bumped Miss Withers severely against the door. They roared up the street again, brakes screeching as they stopped. “If you’re playing tricks—” Macy warned.

But then he saw the cottage door open. They hurried in, Miss Withers no more than three feet behind, and found Rankin rolling on the floor in an undignified but very realistic wrestling match. His opponent turned out to be a pale, unshaven gentleman of about thirty, dressed in a neat, dark, pin-stripe suit which had mopped up a great deal of dust from Eileen Travis’s floor.

Seeing that the odds were now three to one against him, he stopped wrestling. But he wasn’t talking.

“I do believe it’s Mr. George Travis!” Miss Withers exclaimed. And as they all stared at her, she continued: “Elementary. The pallor of his face is the typical night-club tan of Manhattan. The clothing suggests Brooks Brothers. Besides, if you will notice the signet ring on his finger, you’ll see the initials ‘G T’.”

The stranger didn’t deny it. “I want to see my wife... alone. That’s why I waited until I thought you’d gone. Where’s Eileen?”

“In here,” Macy said softly, and showed him. “This is just the way the cleaning woman found her this morning. Not pretty, huh?”

Travis came out of the bedroom looking pale around the gills. “I... I flew out here to see her,” he admitted. “I walked in and this hot-head jumped me. I didn’t know she was dead.”

“You know it now,” Macy said. “Let’s go. All of us.”

“You’re not going to leave her alone like that?” Travis protested.

“She won’t mind,” Rankin told him. “You worry about yourself.”

The house was locked up tight, with a note on the door to the coroner which read “Back in twenty minutes” and they all rode downtown in the police car. Nobody did any talking, although Miss Withers wished that she could be alone with Travis for a moment. He looked like a sulky schoolboy, and she knew how to handle them. Once at the station a mousy but excited little secretary was called in to take down his statement that he had just got off the Los Angeles plane, that he had come out here in an effort to get his wife to postpone the divorce until after his trial, and that he knew nothing about her murder.

“I risked forfeiting my bond just to talk to her,” he went on. “Not that it would have done much good. She was bitter because I made her sell most of her jewels to raise cash so I could hang on to my property. She figured this was her chance to get even. Eileen had a rotten temper — no maid ever stayed with her more than a month, and she even went after one of them with a riding crop.”

“Okay, okay,” Macy said. “We’re holding you. Not for murder, not yet. But if you’re wanted in New York—” They took him away.

Miss Withers confidently expected the same fate, but the officers only took her fingerprints, made a few notes, and let her go. “Don’t leave town, though,” Rankin warned her.

Macy smiled. “Try the Mesa — it’s a pretty fair hotel.”

Miss Withers nodded, and went to La Mesa. In a little corner room, ornamented with a spittoon and a reproduction of The End of the Trail showing a dejected redskin on a more dejected cayuse, she sat herself down and thought her own thoughts. Finally there came a knock at the door.

She opened it, facing a slick-haired young man who introduced himself as “Larry Koontz — I work down at the Wheel of Fortune.” Miss Withers told him that she had not come to town to gamble—

The young man winked at her, lighted a cigarette, and said that he knew very well why she had come to town. “You’re out here on this Travis case,” he said. “You represent her family—”

“Do I?”

“Sure, I know. I got connections. You want to know the real lowdown?”

“Curiosity,” admitted Miss Withers, “is my besetting sin.”

“Huh? Well, anyway, I got the dope. I met Eileen down at the place I work. I’m a sort of shill — that means I play the dice games with the house money whenever there’s a lull at the table. I can tell you all you want to know—” here he licked his thin lips — “if I get mine. I figure two grand would be about right.”

Miss Withers had to admit that she was not in a position to lay any such honorarium on the line. He smiled. “You could get it from her folks, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to have some idea—”

Mr. Koontz pondered. Then he opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the telephone interrupted. The schoolteacher answered it, to hear the voice of the desk clerk. “Two gentlemen to see you.”

“Sorry, but I’m busy at the moment,” she said.

“They’re on their way up. It’s the police.”

“Police? But—”

Miss Withers heard the door close, and when she looked around Mr. Koontz had disappeared. She had barely time to adjust her hair and assume an innocent expression, when Detectives Macy and Rankin came into the room. They looked grimly unpleasant. “Now don’t tell me you found that my fingerprints matched those on the murder gun!”

They didn’t tell her anything. “We want to know why you got into town yesterday and only went out to the Travis girl’s apartment this afternoon,” Rankin demanded.

“Very simple. I hadn’t her address, only the phone number. It took some time to get any information out of the telephone company.” She sniffed. “If you gentlemen would turn your suspicions upon Mr. George Travis — after all, he could have committed the murder last night, driven back to Los Angeles, and then flown in on the first plane this morning.”

“We thought of that,” Macy said wearily.

“But his prints didn’t match the ones on the gun and glasses,” Rankin finished.

“Fingerprints!” retorted Miss Withers scornfully. “Police put so much faith in technicalities like that that they forget to study motives and personalities. Not to speak of wedding rings.”

They both stared at her. “Come, come!” Miss Withers chided, “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that the ring you took from the dead girl’s finger was too wide for the mark it was supposed to have left!”

“Go on,” Macy said.

“You might start wondering why somebody took a narrow wedding ring off Eileen’s finger and put on a wide one,” the schoolteacher snapped. “In my opinion the girl wasn’t wearing her own wedding ring while she was here waiting for her divorce. Or else—” Here she stopped short. “If it’s not asking too much, could you tell me whether or not you’ve officially announced the murder of Eileen Travis?”

They shook their heads.

“Then,” continued Miss Withers, “I suggest that you don’t. Give out the story that the body has tentatively been identified as somebody else — any girl on your list of missing persons. You can always issue a corrected statement later.”

Macy nodded. “So the killer will think he got the wrong girl maybe?”

Miss Withers smiled. “Sometimes it helps to toss a monkey wrench into the machinery.”

“Could be, if Sheriff Kehoe will go for the idea.” Macy seemed friendlier now. “You know, ma’am, we phoned New York about you, and they said at Centre Street that once in a while you made a lucky guess.”

“Bless Inspector Piper’s black Irish heart,” murmured Miss Withers. Then she shrugged. “Well, here’s another guess. Do you know a man named Larry Koontz, who is a shill at the Wheel of Fortune?”

Macy frowned and shook his head, but Rankin brightened. “Sure we do, Tom. That’s Molly’s husband — the girl who works in the sheriff’s office. They busted up over some dame, and she’s been crying her eyes out.”

“Really? Things like that make me resigned to my state of single blessedness. Do you know where Mr. Koontz lives?”

They didn’t, but said that they could easily find out. “We’ll give you a ring,” Macy promised.

Alone again, Miss Withers went down to dinner, came back again, and finally was in the midst of giving her hair its requisite hundred strokes preparatory for bed when the call came.

“Hello? Hello, Detective Rankin? Well, did you find Mr. Koontz’s address?”

“Why, yes, ma’am, we did.” There was an unpleasant overtone in the voice of Detective Rankin. “He was living out at the Iris Apartments. But he moved — a few minutes ago. Or rather, they moved him. Over to Callahan’s Mortuary.”

“What?”

“Acting on your tip, Macy and I went out there. The door was open, the lights were all on, and there was Koontz in the kitchenette with an ice-pick between his shoulder blades.”

There was a moment of silence. “Oh, dear!” said Miss Withers.

“Oh dear is right. You can say the rest at the station. We’re downstairs, so get a move on.”

Miss Withers moved, getting into her dress again and taking two aspirins, fancying that this might be a hectic night. Neither Macy nor Rankin had much to say on the way to the station. “It seems odd to me that none of the neighbors heard or noticed anything,” the schoolteacher finally offered.

“Lady, nobody in this town is ever home between ten o’clock and two or three in the morning. The visitors are playing, and the natives are working in the joints.” Rankin pulled the car up outside police headquarters. In spite of all the haste Miss Withers found herself cooling her heels in a shabby outer office for some time.

At last the inner door opened and she was beckoned inside, where she faced Detectives Macy and Rankin, a beak-nosed sexagenarian with a sheriff’s star pinned to the front of his Stetson, and a thin, freckled woman with red eyes whom she recognized as the one who had transcribed her statement earlier that day. “This is Molly Koontz,” the sheriff said. “Ma’am, suppose you tell us why you were so interested in her late husband just before he got stabbed.”

“Gladly,” answered the schoolteacher, “If you’ll answer a question for me, or have Mrs. Koontz answer it.” Taking silence for consent, she told of her brief meeting with the shill who worked at the Wheel of Fortune, and who had had so little good fortune himself. “He knew the answer to all this, or he thought he did,” she concluded.

The sheriff nodded noncomittally. “Now,” said Miss Withers, “it’s my turn. Forgive me, Mrs. Koontz, for prying into your family troubles but I understand that you and your husband separated over another girl.”

“Girl! You mean girls. Larry played the field.”

“Was one of those women Eileen Travis?”

Molly Koontz shrugged. “I dunno. We broke up a couple of months ago. Only we stayed in touch, sort of. Larry used to take me to dinner now and then, or borrow a few dollars when he got to gambling.”

“Well, can you name any girl he was interested in?”

“No — only there was one little number who kept phoning him — one of those southern girls who say ‘honey-chile’ and ’lil ol’ me’. Her name was Thelma something.”

“Thelma Pringle,” Detective Rankin put in. “She’s on our Missing Persons list.”

“Maybe,” Molly said. “I can tell you one thing. Any girl Larry went for was on the zoftig side — you know, plump. And well-dressed. Larry went for the dressy ones.”

Sheriff Kehoe yawned and stood up, signaling that the session was concluded. “By the way,” pressed Miss Withers, “did anyone happen to check Koontz’s fingerprints with those on the murder gun?”

“We did,” Macy said. “And they weren’t. But the prints on the icepick matched the prints on the shotgun and glasses.”

“Of course!” Miss Withers cried. “Then—” But the sheriff gestured, and she found herself propelled toward the door by Macy.

“Thanks for trying to help,” he said, as he led her down the hall, unlocking the door of another office. “You better spend the night here. That couch in the corner isn’t too bad.”

“But you can’t—”

“Lady, whenever a cop hears anybody say anything about ‘you can’t do this to me!’ he just laughs. Now take it easy. Maybe you’ll go to sleep and dream up a solution to this case.” He started out, then came back to remove a spare .38 pistol and a pair of handcuffs from the desk drawer. He indicated the door of the washroom, and went out, locking the door firmly from the outside.

Miss Hildegarde Withers sat herself down indignantly upon the rickety couch, and then caught sight of the telephone on the desk. She lifted the receiver and said, “I want to call New York City, collect!”

But the operator, stationed at a switchboard somewhere in the building, said genially but firmly, “Take it easy, ma’am. Tomorrow is another day.”

“Really!” Miss Withers slammed down the phone. Leaving the harsh overhead light burning, she flung herself down on the couch, closing her eyes in order to concentrate better.

In her mind’s eye she saw the partially-smoked cigar which had left no ashes in the tray, the thin white line around the dead girl’s finger. She saw the two whiskey-stained glasses, the Scotch bottle, the shotgun, the icepick planted between the dapper shoulders of the man who thought he knew two thousand dollars worth about the crime. But these clues kept mixing themselves up with other things that didn’t matter, like the dead cactus around the adobe cottage, the black-eyed peas in the kitchen, the garbage can without any orange rinds, the golf clubs with the heads in their neat socks, the nylon hose, and the wedding ring...

Then she jerked awake at the sound of rapping at the door. She realized that she had a stiff neck and that daylight surprisingly filled the room. But the puzzle was all neatly solved. She knew the name of the murderer — and why. It was as easy as that. She was smiling pleasantly when she opened the door to Detective Macy.

“Mornin’, ma’am,” he said. “After you get fixed up a little, could you join us in the sheriff’s office, please? Somebody we want you to meet.” He waited patiently while Miss Withers washed her face and did what she could to straighten her hair. Then he led the way down the hall.

“When did the Travis woman give herself up?” the schoolteacher asked.

Macy stopped dead in his tracks. “How’d you know that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It was clear from the beginning that it was not her body in the bedroom, in spite of the New York clothes. The girl who lived in that cottage had stocked the kitchen with the makings of meals preferred south of the Mason-Dixon line. New Yorkers breakfast on coffee and orange juice, and there was no sign of an orange or an orange peel in the place.”

Macy nodded. “I get it. Well, Eileen Travis read about the murder in the Los Angeles papers last night, and she hopped in her car and drove up here. She confessed—”

“Not to the murders?”

Macy laughed jovially. “No, ma’am. But here we are. Come in.”

Sheriff Kehoe still sat at his desk, with his Stetson on the back of his head. Officer Rankin leaned against the window, and in the one comfortable chair sat a lovely, lush girl in a bright purple jacket and flannel slacks.

“Mrs. Travis,” said the sheriff, half-arising, “this is the lady your mother hired to look you up and see if you were all right.”

Eileen said coolly, “You may tell mother that I’m fine.”

“Are you?” asked Miss Hildegarde Withers. “I wonder.”

“We’re sorry, Miss Withers, that we had to keep you here all night,” the sheriff went on. “But we didn’t want any more killings, and the New York police asked us to take special care of you.”

“Thank you so much. And now, what is all this about Mrs. Travis’s confession?” Miss Withers beamed brightly at them all.

“I simply admitted,” Eileen burst forth, “that I’d taken a cottage here to establish legal residence, and then hired a girl I met in a gambling house to live there in my name.”

“A girl with a southern accent, named Thelma Pringle?”

Eileen nodded. “I knew it wasn’t strictly legal, but I didn’t want to be stuck here when I could be in Los Angeles. And besides, I had good reason to believe that George would stop at nothing to keep me from getting my decree — to keep me from being able to testify against him legally later on.”

“You said ‘stuck here’?” questioned the sheriff ominously.

“I didn’t mean that.” Eileen flashed her soft dark eyes at him. “It’s just that I don’t gamble, and I love ocean swimming...”

“We got pools,” the sheriff said glumly. He looked at Detective Macy. “Better get George Travis up here, right away.”

Eileen was open-mouthed. “You mean my husband is actually in town? Then that proves—”

Sheriff Kehoe wasn’t listening to her. “And ask Molly to come in with her notebook,” he called after the departing detective. There was a long, tense period of waiting, during which Miss Withers saw that Officer Rankin was having difficulty in keeping his eyes off Eileen’s slim, bare, brown ankles.

Finally George Travis, even more disheveled and unshaven than before, was ushered into the room. He glared at his wife.

“Hello, George,” she said, in a low voice that dripped with acid. “Isn’t it a shame that your hired hoodlum shot the wrong girl?”

Travis said nothing, but sank down quickly on a hard chair, his head in his hands. A moment later Detective Macy came in with Molly, who was still puffy-eyed. But she had her pencil and notebook.

“Now that we are all here, nice and cosy-like,” began the sheriff, “we’ll start at the beginning and see if we can straighten this out.”

“I suggest,” Miss Withers interrupted pleasantly but firmly, “that we start at the end instead. It will save a lot of time. You see, I know who the murderer is.”

She met their blank stares with a bright smile. “It all came to me when I was asleep.”

“Dreams, yet!” Detective Rankin muttered softly.

But the schoolteacher had the floor. “It’s obvious that Mr. Koontz was killed to cover up the first murder, so when we solve the killing of Thelma Pringle we solve them both. Shall we take up the most important clue — the cigar?”

Rankin moved as if to silence her, but Detective Macy was nodding slowly, and the sheriff made no move. “The cigar,” went on Miss Withers, “was obviously a plant. It was left as a false clue, having been smoked beforehand. Moreover, the killer was not used to cigars, for he forgot to remove the band and he held it in his lips, like a cigarette, leaving no teeth marks as real cigar smokers do. I’ve watched Inspector Piper, back home, mangle a cigar so that I didn’t know if he was chewing or smoking it.”

The sheriff nodded, looking at his own well-filled ashtray. “Moreover,” Miss Withers continued, “Thelma Pringle was not killed by mistake, in place of Eileen here. She was killed by somebody who knew her and who wanted her dead. She was shot in the face with a shotgun, either by someone who wanted to spoil her looks or who wanted to prevent identification, at least temporarily—”

There was a brief period of silence, broken when Molly Koontz dropped her pencil and had to grope for it on the floor.

“Now look here,” the sheriff said, “you’re trying to tell us that the killer walked in with a shotgun, had a drink with the girl, and then—”

“The drinks could have been set up afterward,” Miss Withers pointed out. “There was a distinct reek of whiskey in the garbage.”

“But the girl would have yelled for help if she saw somebody come at her with a shotgun,” Detective Rankin put in.

“Who would have heard her? The murder was committed at an hour when almost everybody in Las Vegas is away from home. I have my own theory as to how the gun came into the house. It could have been butt-down in a golf bag, with a golf-club stocking over the muzzle. But never mind that for a moment. The point is — the murderer of Thelma Pringle was a woman!”

“A woman who left a man’s full-size fingerprints?” Rankin argued.

“Some women have large hands.” Miss Withers looked at Molly Koontz, who had forgotten to take notes. The woman suddenly jumped to her feet.

“I didn’t do it, I didn’t! You can take my prints—”

“Relax, Molly,” the sheriff said. “We already got ’em off the compact in your desk, and you didn’t do it.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that she did,” Miss Withers said, “even though her husband had been mixed up with Thelma Pringle. However, I think that they got the idea of blackmail separately. You see, the murder was well planned — designed to throw an even heavier weight of guilt on George Travis. The killer did not know that Travis was out on bond, but she did know that if a body identified as that of his wife was found in Las Vegas, he would be suspected of having instigated the murder. Even if the identity of the corpse came to light, it would still appear that his agents had merely struck down the wrong woman. Only one person had a motive to involve George Travis in more trouble than he was already in — and that person came into the cottage with a shotgun and killed the girl who was trying to blackmail her, thus killing two birds with one stone.”

“Very neat,” the sheriff said. “But it you’re—”

“I certainly am,” Miss Withers cried breathlessly. “Eileen Travis, I accuse you of a double murder.”

It should have been a rousing climax, but it fell flat as a pancake. Eileen was shaking her head, almost pityingly. Macy’s expression was sorrowful, and Rankin was almost laughing. The sheriff smiled a weary, patient smile. “All done, ma’am?”

“Isn’t... isn’t that enough?”

“Plenty. Very ingenious, too. Only I think that you ought to know, ma’am, that when she came in Mr. Travis insisted we take her fingerprints, and they don’t match the ones on the gun, glasses, or ice-pick!”

Miss Withers felt slightly faint. “But they have to!”

“Officer Rankin here is our fingerprint expert,” the sheriff said. “He’s read all the books.”

Rankin beamed.

“But there must be some mistake!” cried Miss Withers.

“There is, and you’ve made it.” The sheriff looked at a big silver watch the size of a teacup. “Miss Withers, there’s a plane out of here at nine o’clock, which gives you just half an hour. Macy you see that she gets packed and on that plane and out of my hair!”

Sheriff Kehoe was standing up now, his voice rising to a deep baritone roar. Miss Withers, the bitter taste of defeat in her mouth, backed hastily out of the door.

There was a long silence. The sheriff sat down again, lighted a cigar, and mopped his forehead. “Now, like I said, we’ll start at the beginning, and see if we can straighten this out. You first, Mrs. Travis. We’ll take your statement, and Molly will type it out so you can sign it and go.”

Eileen spoke carefully and slowly, for some time. Her statement was in the typewriter when the telephone on the sheriff’s desk rang shrilly. He picked it up. “Kehoe. What? Oh, Macy. What’s the matter, did you let her miss the plane?”

There was a short pause, and then the sheriff heaved a deep sigh of relief. “Good, good. I’m glad you reported — it’s a load off my mind.” He started to hang up, and then jammed the instrument against his ear “What? What final request?”

The others in the room all strained their ears, but they could hear only a jumble of sounds from the other end of the line. At last the sheriff put down the phone, and said, “Rankin!”

“Yes, sheriff?”

“You’re supposed to be our fingerprint expert. This case is at a dead end because we can’t find any suspect whose prints fit those on the murder weapons and the drinking glass. Tell me, is there any way a person could deliberately leave false prints?”

The burly young detective swallowed. “There... there’s a photographic process on gelatin, but it’s easy to detect because it doesn’t leave pore marks...”

But the sheriff wasn’t listening. He turned slowly toward Eileen Travis, who still leaned back in the one easy chair, her bare brown ankles crossed, a cigarette dangling from her full lush mouth. She stared back at him, letting the ashes fall to the floor.

“Mrs. Travis,” he asked with ceremonious politeness, “would you mind very much if I asked you to take off your shoes?”

She opened her mouth, but no words came.

“It’s been suggested by the lady who just left,” continued Sheriff Kehoe, “that fingers are not the only portions of the human body that have distinctive skin patterns. With your permission — or without it — we’d like to take your toeprints!”

About the story: Your Editor’s first reaction on finishing Stuart Palmer’s “Fingerprints Don’t Lie” was one of sheer disbelief. If a criminal leaves impressions of her toes on a shotgun, an ice-pick, and a drinking glass, is it possible that the police, trained observers, would assume the prints to be fingerprints? — big ones, even for a man. We sat and thought about it, and the more we stewed in the juice of our own thoughts, the more incredible it seemed. Yet we realized that the entire validity of the story stood or fell on this vital point.

Being realistic, and blessed with a passionate curiosity, we took off one of our shoes and socks and tried to examine the underparts of our own toes. Not being a contortionist, the results of our investigation were inconclusive. So we decided to send out an S.O.S. (Save Our Story): we telephoned the one person in whose expert knowledge of practical police procedure we have complete confidence — the dean of true crime writers, Ed Radin, whose latest book is TWELVE AGAINST THE LAW and who is currently doing a weekly series for King Features Syndicate called “Secrets from the Archives of Crime.”

We posed the problem to Ed.

Ed said: Boy, that’s hard to swallow.

We said: Well, here’s your golden opportunity. You beep preaching that truth is stranger than fiction. Is it? Can the print of a toe be mistaken for an unusually large print of a thumb?

We could feel Ed scratching his head: I don’t know. Wait a minute—

We interrupted: Don’t look at your own toe — we’ve already tried that. How about checking with the police lab?

Ed said: I’ll do that little thing.

And what do you know? It could!

Yes, unbelievable as it may seem at first shock, a toeprint looks exactly like a large finger- or thumbprint. A toeprint has all the proper characteristics — pattern, ridges, whorls.

Your Editor goes on record here and now that never again will we be skeptical: truth is stranger than fiction — that’s why fiction only seems stranger than truth. And all detective-story writers and detective-story readers should doff their collective hats to Stuart Palmer for thinking up a factually accurate and brand-new wrinkle on the old fingerprint chestnut — a neoclassic clue, and “one for the books”...