After he went out, I picked up a razor, shaving cream, and a towel from the bureau. The door opened a second time. This time it was Papa Joe.

He slammed the door. He beat the tip of his cane against the floor. He carried the cane more like a weapon than an aid to his crippled right knee. He was a small man with pale blue-eyes, sparse gray hair always plastered to his narrow skull, and bitterness written all over him. He came from an old Southern family, the kind that used to have colonels.

“Steve, you stinker! You rotter!”

“I’ve been drunk before.”

“Not at a time like this. Look at you! Did you let Vera see you?”

“Vera?”

“Harold’s wife. A nice impression you’d have made. I hope you crawled in the back way.”

My face went hot. “I did. You make Vera sound pretty important.”

“Harold has done quite well for himself. But you wouldn’t understand much about a wife, would you?”

I had to sit down. “You’re hitting low.”

He laughed, a sound filled with sadistic pleasure. I looked at him. A sudden chill grabbed my spine.

“How long have you hated me this way?” I asked.

“Hated you? I don’t. I despise you, as I despise all weakness. Weakness in Government, in men, in theories. Unfortunately the weak number many, and are able to usurp power rightfully belonging to their protectors.”

“You’re telling me to get out?”

“Not at all. I rather enjoy the spectacle of you.”

He was not only my senior by twenty-eight years; he was the man who had raised me. I could not strike him. He had spoken his exit line. I kept my face turned until I heard him leave the room.

I got my shaving stuff together again. “Nuts to you,” I told the Old Seaman bottle. Like many women, the bottle would not keep its promises.

I shaved without my mind being on the task. I was stunned at the feelings I’d uncovered in Papa Joe. Something pretty excruciating must have happened to have shattered his control. I didn’t wonder much about it. There remained for me to leave as much like a gentleman as possible.

Now that I’d discovered his feelings, fragments of memories out of my youth came back — his treatment of me, little actions and words dropped here and there. I’d never thought too much of it before. I’d long been conditioned to accept the status of orphan in the household. Now I began to question Papa Joe’s purpose. Perhaps my status, my failures, had been food for years for his sadism.

I went downstairs. My head was pretty clear, though a dull ache was working on the base of my skull. I was beginning to get hungry.

The strange car was gone from the driveway. I threw my cigarette over the porch railing, went back in the house, and turned into the heavy, gloomy, overstuffed parlor. A woman was sitting in a mohair wing chair. She was thumbing through a magazine without seeing it.

When she looked up, I said, “How do you do? You must be Vera.”

“Why, yes, and I suppose you are Steven.”

She was beautiful. Her hair was a soft blonde mane. She had wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and good legs, and full breasts with a promise of lushness not hidden by her plunging neckline.

I offered her a cigarette. She took it, and as I held a light for her I had a close-up of her face. Natural, unplucked even brows, gray eyes, a mouth that was full without seeming large.

“Do you plan to be in Asheville long?” I asked her.

“I don’t know.”

I caught the cloud that shadowed her eyes for an instant. Maybe she had made the trip against her will. Or perhaps she just didn’t like it here.

“How do you like our natural wonders — Chimney Rock, the Smokies, the Vanderbilt house?”

“I couldn’t say. I haven’t seen any of them.”

I thought it over after Wilfred was gone. The big question in my mind was the man who’d been across the street watching the house from the shadows of the tree. I wondered who he was and why he was following Harold — if he was. It was possible that Wilfred’s imagination was exaggerating things. If something really serious was afoot, Harold should — and was able — to go to the police.

Mind your own knitting, Martin.

I went back downstairs.

Dinner was a quiet meal. I saw that Vera noticed the way Ellen hovered at Harold’s elbow to serve him. The beautiful blonde smiled quietly. She was pretty sure of her man.

Papa Joe related incidents out of Harold’s childhood in an attempt to bring humor to the dinner. Nobody laughed much. It was obvious that Papa Joe was pleased with his son’s marriage. Vera brought an air of sophistication, poise, charm, even into a dining room that seemed to have been designed for glum eating.

Papa Joe was no less expansive about his son. “He was touched with something different, perhaps near genius, from his boyhood,” Papa Joe told Vera. “Not much like Steve, who cut classes when he got the chance and seemed determined to get mixed up in one scrape after another.”

I met his eyes with a smile. I hadn’t eaten much of his bread since I’d been able to shift for myself. But less than a month ago, after grogging myself up and losing my job in Charleston, I’d returned to Asheville. I hadn’t figured I was sponging on him, for I believed myself just about even with Papa Joe. Money that I’d saved during the war had been partly responsible for keeping his business from going under, and I’d been paying my own way since I’d come back this time for a visit.

And this would be the final time. I knew I would never return. Already I felt that heavy sense of loss that comes with any final departure. I had spent a good part of my childhood in this house. I had shoveled snow from the front walks, and careened down the hill before the house on my first bicycle. From its rear upstairs windows I had potted at sparrows with a bean-shooter.

Papa Joe’s wife had been my mother’s dearest friend. She had taken me in after I had lost my mother, and she had loved me like her own son. I’d eaten cookies baked by her in the same range that Ellen used today. When she, my foster mother, had died the soul had gone from Papa Joe’s home.

After dinner Vera and I wandered toward the parlor, talking idly.

“I noticed you called Mr. Cranford ‘Papa Joe,’ ” she said. “Why is that?”

“With my own parents dead,” I explained, “I felt that I shouldn’t call him ‘Papa.’ childish notion. So I tacked the name ‘Papa Joe’ onto him, and soon everybody was using it, including grown-ups.”

“He doesn’t like the name, does he?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I suppose he doesn’t.”

She laughed. “I’m glad I’m getting to know you, Steve. You’re refreshing. You accept things at face value, in perfectly good faith. You’re resilient. You keep right on acting in good faith even when life lets you down.”

“I really appear that way to you?” I was surprised.

“Of course. Did I say something wrong?”

I grinned wryly. “You might have done something easy, like swatting me with that vase over there. I’ve acted with less faith than anybody I ever had the displeasure to meet. Sometimes I think I’m the most decayed one of the whole tribe.”

“You mustn’t think such things about yourself!” she chided.

“It isn’t healthy, normal, is it?”

“No,” she said distantly.

I was sorry our talk had been routed into this channel. She was a nice kid. She loved Harold. If she would bear the selfishness I knew to run deep in him, she would enjoy a nice life as the wife of a successful artist.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know I have a wife, don’t you? Harold told you what I did to her?”

“No, I didn’t know. Now it’s my turn — I’m sorry.” She offered her hand and I shook it. We were friends again, and I was glad.

From upstairs, Harold called to her. After she had gone, I lighted a cigarette and went out on the porch to smoke it.

I was finishing the cigarette when the stranger came. I was instantly almost sure it was the same man I’d seen watching the house. Short, blocky, dressed in a baggy suit.

I turned back to the window. It was dark out there now, as dark as if a thunder squall were in the making. Then in the glow of the street light at the intersection of Hickory street and Northland avenue, I saw my man. He was turning west on Hickory.

“I’ll look around outside,” I said. “Likely he decided a short walk would relax him more than a drink.”

She looked up at me. “I hope you’re right,” she said in a low voice. “But Harold is armed.”

Papa Joe and I entered the hall at the same moment.

“What’s up?” he demanded. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t have time to answer his questions. I took the stairs down two at a time.

By the time I reached the intersection of Hickory and Northland, Harold had vanished. I stood in indecision. He hadn’t been heading uptown toward the business district. His turn west on Hickory, the last move I had seen him make, removed the possibility of that. Northland ran straight into the business section. He wasn’t going far, either, or he would have taken his car.

I started west on Hickory, walking rapidly under the dark canopy of the maples that lined the sidewalk. The terrain changed in a few blocks. Houses became fewer, weed-grown fields more prominent. And a few more blocks further on the street would begin twisting downhill toward a settlement of large old houses that had been converted into tenement dwellings for Negroes.

I could surmise only one destination for Harold. About midway between Northland and the Negro district stood an empty cottage on Hickory that Papa Joe owned. If I did not find Harold there, I had lost him completely.

The bungalow stood forbidding and dismal, its windows like black mirrors. I passed the weathered, lopsided “For Sale” sign at the corner of the yard. The unkempt grass chopped at my ankles.

Just as I was deciding that my hunch had been wrong, I saw a flash of light in the bungalow. I moved to the window that had reflected it.

Harold and McGinty were inside the bungalow, McGinty crouched in the beam of the flashlight in Harold’s hand. McGinty’s eyes were distended, his face mottled with fear. He was holding one hand out before him, saying hoarsely, “No!”

Then Harold began shooting. McGinty whirled, knowing in that final instant that death was coming. He plunged through a doorway behind him, into the yawning black emptiness of the room beyond. Harold fired five times, as rapidly as he could pull the trigger. At the distance, I knew it was impossible to miss. I knew the slugs were hammering squarely in the Irishman’s broad back between the shoulder-blades.

The impetus of his motion kept McGinty moving for a second or two. He crashed into something — a door or piece of discarded furniture — in the dark room beyond. And then stillness. Just as suddenly as the whole thing had started, it was over.

Still holding the light and gun, Harold raised his hands to his face. His features were contorted, white, ghastly. He pressed the backs of his hands against the sides of his face.

“McGinty?” he queried. And when no sound came from the adjoining room, a sob broke in his throat. He let the flashlight fall from his nerveless fingers, and bolted.

He chose the back way out of the cottage, a short-cut across weed-grown fields back to the house on Northland. He plunged into the brush and by the time I reached the edge of the yard he had crashed his way out of sight.

I returned to the cottage. A moment’s pause there. Then I went back out on Hickory street.

The nearest house was about a block’s distance away. It was dark, and remained so. Then I saw a lone man hurrying down the street. The shots, then, had been heard. For a moment I had entertained the hope that they had gone unnoticed. The gun was small; the shots had been muffled by the empty cottage.

I faded into the shadows of a tree; heard the quick snapping of the approaching man’s heels against the sidewalk. He paused at the edge of the walk leading to the cottage porch. The man was Papa Joe.

The scuff of my foot startled him, swung him about, swinging up his cane for a quick blow. He lowered the cane slowly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked shortly. “When you ran out of the house, I followed you. Was that shooting I heard?”

“I’m afraid it was.”

“Inside the cottage?”

“Yes.”

“Who was in there?”

“Harold and a man called McGinty. They were apparently keeping an appointment made earlier this evening.”

Papa Joe’s mouth was a tight, thin line, yet his voice quaked, “He — shot Harold?”

“No, it was the other way around.”

Some of the sudden, tortured agony was dissipated from Papa Joe’s bleak features. “He hurt McGinty badly?”

I hesitated. Yet to evade the question and have him learn the truth later would be more cruel than giving it to him now.

I said, “He shot McGinty until the gun was empty. He was hysterical. I don’t think he knew fully what he was doing. But it’s certain he killed a man in there.”

Papa Joe’s whole body shook as if with a chill. But his voice came flat, controlled. “What are you going to do now?”

“Get back to the house as fast as I can, knock my stomach in place with a stiff slug of Old Seaman, then call the police.” Instantly I wondered if I’d sounded flippant. I hadn’t wanted to.

“No,” Papa Joe said, “you’re not calling the police.” The shaking was gone now. As he faced me he was like a tight steel spring.

“What else can we do?” I demanded. “We can’t conceal the fact that the man followed Harold here to Asheville. If we try to hide this, it’s going to make matters worse. Let’s shoot it clean. That’s Harold’s only chance.”

“Steve, Harold is my own son, my only son. Do you think I’ll allow him to be sacrificed to a whim of yours?”

I experienced an upsurge of impatience. It was not a moment to be governed by whims, even his.

I took a step toward the cottage. Papa Joe’s cane moved with the speed of a’ striking snake. I managed to get my face out of the way, but the cane crashed on my shoulders. Before he could strike again, I tore it out of his grasp.

He stiffened, breathing thickly through his nostrils, the glitter in his eyes a challenge.

“Because of the years Harold and I spent together as children,” I said, “I’ll do what I can to help him. Otherwise, the feelings you and I have for each other are such that we can’t stay under the same roof much longer. Now go back to the house. I think Harold went there. Try to get him calmed down. He’s going to need a sound, steady grip on himself. I’ll see if there’s anything at all that can be done for McGinty, then we’ll call the police.”

I handed the cane back to him. He strode stiffly away.

The back door of the cottage was still standing open, as Harold had left it in his headlong flight. I groped my way into a dark hall.

I could feel damp sweat on the palms of my hands. If McGinty was alive I didn’t want him thinking I was Harold, and start shooting.

I said, “McGinty, this is not Cranford. I’m Steve Martin. I’ve come to help you.”

There was no answer. The silence became stifling. A wan glow of light was just ahead — the flashlight that Harold had dropped.

I entered the room where the shooting had taken place. The smell of gunpowder was still strong. I picked up the flashlight and moved to the room where McGinty had crashed down.

The room was empty! McGinty had gone down in this room. I had heard him fall. But he was not there now!

Silence fell over the room. Vera’s mouth worked. She cried suddenly, “What is this about bullets and blood?”

Harold set the whisky on the bureau and moved quickly to take her in his arms. But she was almost herself. She backed away from him, hysterical tears spilling down her cheeks.

“No, don’t try to wheedle me into submission! Tell me what happened to McGinty!”

“Darling, please—” Harold slipped his arm about her. She shrugged it off quickly, turning to me.

“Then Steve will tell me!”

Over her shoulder I glimpsed Harold’s anxious face. The plea in his eyes was urgent, unmistakable. It might have influenced me more than I thought but at the moment I believed I was thinking only of the lovely, distraught girl who was his wife.

I gripped her shoulders, kept my voice even and gentle as possible. “Tonight Harold met McGinty and fired a gun at him. Fortunately, he did not shoot straight.”

She murmured a broken, thankful sounding word and sank in a chair. Harold poured a small drink of straight whisky for her. She took it.

I crossed the hall to my room. I pulled my scuffed gladstone out of the closet, opened it on the bed, and began tossing clothes into it. I had the bag half-filled when the door opened. I threw a glance over my shoulder. Harold closed the door, came across the room.

“What’s the idea of the bag, Steve?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

He lighted a cigarette. His fingers were still shaking. “I know you had a run-in with Papa Joe this afternoon. He told me. Now you’re peeved at me. I can’t say that I blame you.”

I said nothing, but went on packing.

“What you did tonight was decent, Steve. I appreciate it. I really do.”

“Why don’t you take this McGinty trouble to the police, whatever it is, and be done with it?”

His smile was sly. “There’s no need for that now, is there?”

Some inkling of what he was thinking slipped into my consciousness. I snapped the gladstone closed before lifting my gaze to meet his. I saw the expression in his eyes that I was afraid I would see.

“You’re thinking,” I said, “that I carried McGinty out of the cottage, that I’ll chuck him some place for you.”

“I could hardly ask you to take such a risk, could I?”

I was angered at his growing confidence. I swung the bag off of the bed. “I didn’t lie to Vera. McGinty really did vanish, even though he couldn’t have left the cottage. If you missed him, the walls of the cottage would have stopped the bullets. The walls showed not a single bullet mark. McGinty took all that lead, and still did not bleed.”

The sincerity of my tone caused a momentary shadow of doubt to cross Harold’s face. He was struggling to believe what he wanted to believe, and he won.

“I hope you don’t tell that tale to any police inspectors, Steve. I’ll side you in anything you say, provided you’ll keep it plausible.” He turned to leave, then paused. “If they find McGinty in a culvert it’s possible they’ll learn that he knew me. So it’s a regrettable coincidence that he ran into trouble from another source. I’ll see to it that the gun disappears — and I’ve not left the house all evening.”

The door closed behind him. I turned to pick up the bag. I felt exactly as if I had been talking to Papa Joe.

When I reached the hallway, Ellen was just topping the stairs. She said, “There’s a lady down in the parlor to see you, Mr. Martin.”

I deposited the bag outside the parlor door, entered the gloomy room, and drew up short. Lucy Quavely was standing near the center of the room, casually lighting a cigarette.

She looked at me over the tip of the flame dancing on the tiny gold lighter.

“Do you intend to come in, Steve?”

“Yes, of course.” I stepped forward. “Nice to see you, Lucy.”

“You’re a liar. Will you ask me to sit down?”

I allowed myself to feed on my anger as I walked up Northland into the business district. I found a cheap walk-up hotel. I had come out of my binge with nearly twenty dollars left, plus a watch I could pawn tomorrow morning. Any kind of job would do until I could manage the proper appearance for the right kind of employer. There was still the Atlanta sales office of the firm turning out big shovels, ditch diggers, and bulldozers. Perhaps it would be wise to return to the point where evil had begun and turn it into good.

Lucy, I accept the challenge.

After I had breakfast the next morning, I returned to the hotel. Two men in the dusty lobby left their lumpy chairs and started up the stairs behind me. I reached the third floor corridor, stopped at my room, slipped the key in the lock.

The two men came down the hallway and stopped, one on either side of me. The man on my left reached in his inner pocket, took out a small leather case, opened it, showing me a small, gold badge.

“I’m Captain Hagan,” he said. “This is Lieutenant Conroy. Police Headquarters. You’re Mr. Steven Martin?”

“Yes.”

“May we speak to you?”

“Of course.”

Opening the door, I motioned them into the room. Hagan was a large man, solidly built, with a wide, placid face. He looked as if he would enjoy quiet Sunday drives with his wife and kids. Conroy I judged to be ten years or so younger, about thirty-five. He was as big as Hagan, but on him it was stretched to a horizon six inches higher.

I thought, Watch it, Steve. They’ve found McGinty.

Hagan said, “You’re the foster son of Mr. Joseph Cranford, I believe.”

I waited.

He continued, “You’ve been staying with Mr. Cranford for a time?”

“The past week or so.”

“Before that?”

“I worked in Charleston. South Carolina.”

“What kind of work?”

“In Charleston I operated a bulldozer.”

“Make out pretty good?”

“You know the cost of bulldozing, grading work. I made enough to keep me for the time.”

“Prior to your return here, had you lived in your former home for some time?”

“No, it’s been several years since I lived in Asheville.” This, I thought, was a queer lead up to McGinty. Or maybe they always got some background information with their first questions.

Hagan spoke again in his molasses and corn pone accent. “You’ve been doing some drinking since your return?”

I gave him a quick glance. It seemed he already had tapped some source or other for background information.

“Yes,” I said

“Relations were of the best between Mr. Cranford and you?”

I hesitated. “Would you mind telling me if this line of questioning is relevant to whatever brought you here?”

“I assure you that it is. Will you answer my question?”

“I haven’t seen too much of Mr. Cranford since my return. Only at meal times, now and then in the evenings. And not at those times every day.”

“You’re evading what I asked you, Mr. Martin. Was there any ill feeling between you and Mr. Cranford?”

“A certain measure, I suppose.”

“You’ve argued with him?”

“To a certain degree.”

“And that’s why you left his home last night?”

“Partially. How do you know when I left, or where I came?”

“Your foster brother told us you had packed a bag and left. It doesn’t take long to check the hotels in a town of this size. Now, tell me, Mr. Martin, were you drinking when you returned home yesterday afternoon?”

“No.”

“But you do admit a heated argument with Mr. Joseph Cranford? And you were in a high state of nerves from previous drinking?”

“Both statements are partly correct. Will you tell me what this is all leading up to?”

She lowered her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“If he gets in touch with you, you’ll let me know?”

She was silent.

I said, “I promise you that I’ll do everything I can for Wilfred.”

She nodded.

“Harold will help too. You know Harold would never let anything happen to Wilfred, feeling as he does about you.”

My stab found its mark. She was too simple to control her feelings, but not simple enough to miss the meaning of my statement. Her face went scarlet. She turned quickly and busied herself at the stove.

Harold, you stinking tramp.

Harold stayed in his room with Vera for the most part, leaving me to speak to sympathetic callers as news of Papa Joe’s death spread. I made the necessary arrangements for the time when the coroner should release Papa Joe’s body.

Lucy Quavely phoned me about eleven o’clock, a brittle quality in her voice.

“I have just suffered a frightful indignity,” she informed me.

“We all do, at times,” I murmured.

“You didn’t have to send that policeman to my hotel with his questions, Steve.”

“I didn’t.”

“You told him I was in the Cranford home last night.”

“I told him you talked to me a few minutes in the parlor. By the way, Lucy, how did you happen to locate me?”

“It took a week or two,” she said sharply, “tracing you from job to job. Your last employer in Charleston said you’d left for Asheville. I came up, since Mr. Cranford’s home seemed to be the logical place to start looking for you here.”

I drawled thoughtfully, “Did you ever consider that Papa Joe might be a powerful ally for you, Lucy — for a monetary consideration, of course?”

I expected a violent reaction. Instead, she said calmly, “Naturally I did. I knew his wife had insisted on adopting you, and that he considered you too unimportant even to be a necessary evil. I also knew that he was in constant financial difficulties. He was entirely too superior and insulting and short-tempered to be a business success.”

“So you made a deal with Papa Joe?”

“I did not! I thought him too unreliable.” She suddenly chuckled. “If I had made a deal with him Hagan would love that. It would just about fix things for you, Steve. Say you were determined to hang onto the Quavely money. Papa Joe was about to queer it. Such a grave obstacle had to be removed.”

“They call that perjury, Lucy.”

“Do you think the captain would believe you? Or believe me? I’m smart enough to make it good, Steve, to make it stick.” She laughed again. “So I don’t have to spend thirty thousand dollars on you at all, do I? You’ll be sensible and agree to Bryanne’s freedom now, I’m sure.”

She hung up. I stood with the dead phone in my hand. A ridge of sweat had formed across my forehead. Lucy had neatly turned my suspicions of her and Papa Joe into a trap. I told myself that she was bluffing. But my heart was beating hard, with fear — and hatred.

I slammed the phone into its cradle and turned to the window. A man was idling across the street. For an instant my scalp went tight as I thought he might be McGinty. But he was too tall. A stake-out of Hagan’s, probably, watching the house.

Then a taxi rolled to a stop before the house, and a woman got out. Without hesitation, she came up the walk toward the house. The same black hair. The same softly angular face. The slender body was thinner now; the long legs took short steps.

I rushed into the hall and jerked the front door open. My wife was lifting a slim finger to ring the bell!

We looked at each other and it was all I could do to control my feelings. She smiled.

“Hello, Steve.”

“Hello, Bry.”

Hagan made the pointed suggestion that none of us should entertain the thought of leaving town, no matter how urgent the business, until Papa Joe’s death was cleared up. When I left him I had the distinct feeling that he had struck a dead end. I was still his man, but the hole was still a trifle square for the peg. He was playing out rope, waiting for a break, for someone to hang himself.

In the afternoon paper, the murder hit the front page. The heading was heavy and black, but the story was barren of real details.

Vera and Harold came downstairs and we formed a restless trio in the parlor until Harold excused himself. I caught his glance. He was going to see Ellen.

I kept Vera occupied with small talk. She was not at all reluctant to tell me about herself. She came from a small town in Michigan, she told me. After finishing college, she’d gone to New York with an eye on the publishing business. Nothing unusual. A girl of her beauty might have led a more exciting life.

When Harold returned, he gave me a short nod over her shoulder. After a while, he mentioned Papa Joe’s financial affairs. “I wonder,” he suggested, “if we’ll find anything of value in that cottage Papa Joe owned on Hickory Street.” The glance he gave me was meaningful.

I relaxed. There was nothing to do now but wait until darkness was heavy enough to cover my trip to the cottage.

I let an hour or more elapse after our quiet, desultory dinner before I set out for the cottage. Before leaving the house I turned off the light in the rear hallway, and opened the door to the back porch.

Standing in the shadows of the porch my gaze searched until it found Hagan’s back yard stake-out. I was sure he would have one. The man was lounging on a stone bench near an old rock pool that was filled with leaves and dirt. Ellen would have seen the man and had not dared take a chance on slipping out. Wilfred was doubtless a hungry boy, waiting for food that would not arrive.

A light summer breeze rushed across the yard. I let the sound of it in the trees cover any slight sounds I might have made as I eased off the porch, clinging to the shadow of the house.

I had one strip of side yard to cross between the house and trees. Once in the trees I made better speed, skirting the yard, taking to the weed-grown lots that lay between me and the cottage.

The cottage, when I reached it, was dark. I tried the back door and found it unlocked, giving me no purpose for the ring of keys I had filched from the pantry.

The floor creaked once as I entered. I stopped, listened, gripping the flashlight I’d picked up in Wilfred’s room. I moved forward again, and there was a sudden burst of movement before me.

The light flared, catching Wilfred as he flung a desperate look over his shoulder while he lunged for the door across the room.

As he yanked the door open my fingers grabbed his collar. I jerked him back and he stood breathing thickly. His face was as white as dough, his eyes jutting in an oblique angle.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. He stood quivering like a beaten pup and watched me warily as I removed my hand from his collar and stepped back from him.

“Now let’s sit down and talk this over like gentlemen.” I found a ramshackle, dusty chair and pushed it toward him. He let his body come in stiff sitting contact with the edge of it.

“It was foolish of you to run, Wilfred.”

He shook his head, breathing through his mouth.

“Let’s go back over what happened,” I said. “Last night Harold rushed into the house on Northland. A few moments later Papa Joe arrived. He spoke to Harold; then went to his room. A little while after that, Papa Joe called for you and you went up to him. After that — a blank, until Papa Joe was found this morning. What did Papa Joe want you for, Wilfred?”

“To get him a drink of whisky.” He stopped, as if the words had expended all his energy.

I waited, and said finally, “Did you get it for him?”

Wilfred nodded. “I went downstairs first, but the bottle was gone from the buffet. It was the only bottle in the house, I thought. I remembered then that young Mr. Cranford took it to his room earlier in the day. When I went up to get it, I heard him and his wife wrangling, so I didn’t go in.”

“Why not? Were you more afraid of breaking in on Harold than of refusing Papa Joe’s request?”

“I’ll say not! But I happened to think of the pint of Old Seaman you put on your bureau when you came home yesterday. I’d brought me a glass from downstairs and a bottle of ginger ale. Instead of going to young Mr. Cranford’s room for the whisky, I went to yours. The pint was still on your bureau.”

The effort to bring his ego into the battle revealed itself on his face. The effort failed, and he said in a limp voice, “It’s the only way out. I can’t go on with things as they’ve turned out to be. You’ll guarantee your help?”

“All I’m able to give. Now for a few details. First, the girl. The one you painted after she tried to commit suicide off a dock one night.”

“McGinty rescued her,” he said.

“That much I know. He brought her into the café where you were eating and you saw the girl. Was it for the first time?”

“Yes,” he said, speaking like a robot. “I asked her to come to my studio, and gave her the address. I didn’t really expect her to do it, but she came. I started the portrait. I suppose she felt she was entering a brand new world. We — kidded around—”

He glanced at Vera, and a slow flush spread over his pallor. He looked at her, at her lovely blonde beauty, the swelling curves of her beautiful young breasts as emotion quickened her breathing, he looked at her slender waist and the smoothly turned thighs under her clinging frock — and he didn’t know what to say, what he could say. Here was beauty and purity, the woman he wanted always to hold in his arms as he must now be remembering to have held her — how could he go on with a sordid story?

Suddenly he blurted, “Must we go into that, Steve? You’re a man — you know how it is, h-how things can happen. I... I—” My silence was his answer, for he drew a long, hard breath and said, “Well, after that I introduced her to some of the people I knew. She was taken with the idea of being a model, and annoyed two or three artists who gave her an opening. All of them knew — they told me — that she was a wild little thing. Completely primitive, she was, but... but she could grip a man. Sex was her whole existence.”

He stopped, his eyes alive with memories. He deliberately avoided looking at Vera now, though I had a feeling from a glance at her face that all this was no new story to her, though there might be something new in the telling.

“And where does McGinty re-enter?” I prompted.

“He fell in love with the girl. Probably it started for him when he found her there on the dock. He worshiped her. He married her.”

“Is that so bad?”

“She was going to have a baby. My baby.”

In the silence that crimped on the room only Harold’s breathing was audible. I managed words after several seconds.

“And then?”

“She must have told McGinty about us — her and me, I mean. She hated me wildly after she had to tell him. She threatened all sorts of crazy things. Her last phone call was a demand that I see her. I went to the apartment where she and McGinty lived. She had worked herself into a half crazed state. I was there alone with her when she jumped — from a tenth story window.”

His voice choked him. After a moment, he was able to go on.

“I’d been careful not to be seen entering the apartment, walking up all ten flights. I was even more careful when I left. McGinty found a cigarette stub in the apartment. She didn’t smoke, and he smoked cigars. His suspicions fastened on me immediately. When he found out the brand of cigarettes I smoked, he was certain I’d been in the apartment. Of course, he took it to the police and they dragged me in. But the cigarette is a common brand and they had no proof that I’d been near the place. McGinty was different. He decided to force it from me — a confession of murder.”

He brought his haggard gaze up. “Steve, I swear it was suicide, but you see the spot I was in? I thought McGinty would cool off. He showed no disposition to do so, making my life hell with phone calls, following me on the streets. If I pulled the police back into it there was too strong a possibility of their discovering I had been in the apartment. Perhaps some pair of unknown eyes had seen me and would remember if circumstances were arranged just the right way. Perhaps they would call it murder. I thought I had shaken loose of McGinty when we drove down from New York, but he was following, and must have been only an hour or so behind us.”

For an instant fire gleamed again in his eyes. “You see what this has cost me? My work, my peace of mind, everything!”

That blow hit Vera the hardest. It hadn’t cost him entirely everything until this moment when he had voiced the thought, reducing her love to nothing.

He said, “I was no more to blame than the girl from the wharf was. And I was wholly blameless for her death. She was destined for suicide. It was a part of the very fibers of her mind. She had tried it once, hadn’t she?” A long silence followed his words. Then he said, “What will you do now to help?”

“I’ll help you face it. It’s the only way you’ll ever get free of McGinty. Papa Joe’s death was a mistake. The poison was intended for me — to insure my silence. Papa Joe killed himself.”