THE RED CARNELIAN
 Originally published as Red Is for Murder

        by Phyllis A. Whitney

     Copyright 1943 by Ziff-Davis
            Publishing Co.
       Copyright renewed 1971 by
         Phyllis A. Whitney
           All rights reserved.

      BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

          The Red Carnelian

  Chicago, 1943. Linell Wynn, a
copywriter for the Cunningham department store, is
happy with her job--but still feels hurt over a
failed affair with Michael Montgomery, the
company Casanova. The war is on, and good men
are hard to come by. It's bad enough when he runs
off and marries a younger employee, but it's
worse when the new bridegroom turns up dead
--his head crushed by a golf club.
  Everyone at Cunningham's had a motive for
killing Montgomery. Particularly Linell.
Realizing she's a prime suspect, she
resolves to do some sleuthing on her own.
  Linell soon discovers that some of her co-workers
are not what they appear to be; some very shady pasts
come to light. And when another corpse appears in
Cunningham's display window, Linell finds that
a red carnelian--a gemstone the color of
blood--holds the secret to cold-blooded


murder.

         "Skillfully concocted."
          --Sacramento Bee

           WINDOW DRESSING

  The window decorators were forever leaving props
about behind the scenes and I stepped behind past the
unclad half figure of a mannequin, ducked
to miss a pair of silk stockings which dangled from
a hanger hooked carelessly on a strip of
framework. I reached the alcove which contained the
switch box and came to a dead stop.
  This, I knew, was the moment toward which I had
been moving with dreadful certainty all day long.
All the wires which pulled me had been stretched
so taut that I had only to scream to snap them.
  But I couldn't scream. I could only stand there
staring at the man who lay at my feet beneath the
switch box. He was sprawled face down, and
beside him was the steel-clubbed head of a broken golf
stick.

















     To Max Siegel, fine bookman
         and good friend, and with grateful
     acknowledgement to Reed Schlademan
     who answered all my questions about window
                display.










         THE RED CARNELIAN

              CHAPTER 1

  Cunningham's department store is quiet again
now. Sylvester Hering still puts his head in the
door of my office whenever he goes by, to call
out, "Hi, Linell!" and perhaps to linger and study the
pictures on my walls, to speak briefly of the
past. But his days are given over to the humdrum of
catching shoplifters and petty thieves, instead of
trailing a murderer.
  He never mentions that one picture we hunted
down together, or the tragic denouement to which it led.
But now and then we cock an eyebrow at each
other because we are conspirators and know it.
  Not that the law was in any way defeated.
Payment in full was made for all those terrible
things that happened. But still, Hering and I know what
we know and the case as it broke in the papers told
only half the story.
  There are still things about Cunningham's that make
me shiver. I can never cross that narrow
passageway that leads past the freight
elevators into the display department without a feeling
of uneasiness. I cannot bear the mannequin room
at all, and I will go to any length to avoid
setting foot in it. But most of all I am
haunted by the symbols that came into being during the
case.
  The color red, for instance. I never wear it
any more, because it was the theme of those dreadful days.
It ran beneath the surface of our lives like a bright
network of veins, spilling out into the open now and then
to accent with horror. And there are the owls. Sometimes
in my dreams that eerie moment returns when I
stood there in the gloom with all those plaster
creatures crowding about me, cutting off my
escape.
  Nor will I ever again breathe the scent of pine
without remembering the way the light went out and those
groping hands came toward me. Strange to have your
life saved by the odor of Christmas trees.
  But the worst thing of all is when I imagine
I hear the strains of Sondo's phonograph.
For me, those rooms will never be free of ghostly
music and I break into cold chills in broad
daylight whenever a radio plays Begin the
Beguine.
  Yet, before that Tuesday afternoon in late March,
I'd never thought of myself as a particularly
jittery young woman. That was the day it began--the
day Michael Montgomery came back to
Cunningham's.
  I sat at the desk in my little eighth floor
office and stared helplessly at the sign copy before
me. I'd been under a strain since early morning
and it was beginning to tell.
  I didn't want to watch the door. I'd
been assuring myself all day that it wouldn't matter
in the least when the inevitable moment came and
Monty walked into my office. Why should it
matter? I wasn't in love with him. All my
feeling for him had died and left only a faint
bitterness. Even though this was his first day back from a
honeymoon with another girl, still it didn't
matter to me.
  But my eyes strayed to the door and my nerves
were keyed to a tense pitch of waiting.
  I wasn't alone in the office. Across the
room--no more than three paces--Keith Irwin
sat at his smaller desk shuffling papers and
watching me with moody dark eyes whenever he thought
I wasn't noticing. Keith was my office
force, often embarrassingly loyal to my interests,
but at that particular moment he was getting on my
nerves.
  Helena Farnham stood at the single small
window, staring down through drizzling rain at the strip
of alley that ran back of the store. She wore
black, as always, but with that big-boned frame of
hers she wore it with distinction.
  Helena and I had shared an apartment for several
months and I was fond of her. But I could tell
by the set of her dark, gray-streaked head that she was
in a disapproving mood, and the fact left me a
little defiant.
  I forced myself to scribble industriously for a
moment and then tossed down my pencil.
  "Listen to this, you two," I said. "Bold is
the word for new spring colors. Taunt windy
March in a green hat. Laugh at April
showers in a suit of yellow or rust."
  Keith's eyes flicked my way and then off
toward the window where a sickly yellow sun was
trying to break through the drizzle. Helena didn't
even turn around.
  I tore the sheet of paper across with a sharp
nervous gesture and dropped the pieces in the
wastebasket beside my desk.
  "Thanks," I said. "I agree with you.
Corn, pure unadulterated corn."
  I pushed back dark hair that had a tendency
to tumble into my eyes and leaned my head on my
hands. The small office was intensely quiet for a
few moments and then Keith coughed and rustled his
papers, and Helena turned away from the window where
that curious sulphur glow hung over
Chicago's Loop.
  "You shouldn't have come down today, Linell," she
said. "I told you this morning it would be a hard day
to get through."
  That was the trouble with sharing an apartment with an older
woman, I thought rebelliously. Sooner or
later she tried to mother you. Helena should have had a
comfortable husband, a suburban bungalowful of
children. But somewhere in the past there had been a
divorce, and unhappiness had left its stamp
on a face that was still handsome in a faded way, but
must once have been lovely.
  "I have to go through with it sooner or later," I
protested. "Michael Montgomery means to go
on being window display manager of this store, and I
mean to go on writing sign copy. Since we'll
have to meet, talk to each other, work together, I
don't see why we can't do it impersonally and
ignore the fact that we were engaged until--
until--"
  "Until Monty ran out on you and married
Chris Gardner," Helena said. "But you're
well out of it. It's Chris I'm sorry for.
She'll break her heart over him before she's his
wife a year. Your heart's still in one piece."
  What she said was true, I hoped. Maybe
my heart was a little frayed around the edges, but that was
all. Since Monty had come from an eastern
store some eight months before, life had been a
gradual disillusionment for me. A slow falling out
of what I knew had been a foolish infatuation.
So the worst hurt was over and done with.
  Why, then, had the gray drip of rain on the
window sill set my teeth on edge the moment
I'd entered the office that morning? Why did the
queer yellow glow against the window pane seem so
depressing?
  But I knew why. I sat at my desk,
aware of the defiantly bright splash of color I
made in my red and white striped blouse--no
sackcloth and ashes for me--pretending I could
work. And all the while I waited for the sound of
Monty's step, for the moment when I'd
meet him face to face.
  I hadn't told Helena or anyone else,
but I'd already seen him earlier in the day. I'd
come upon him by accident, and the shock of that brief
glimpse had left me disturbed and a little sick.
  It had happened when I'd gone on an errand
to the sign-lettering department that morning. The
corridor takes a turn and forms an alcove
that is shielded from view unless one is right upon it.
The man and woman who stood there were so engrossed
in each other that they didn't hear my approach.
He had his back to me and his hands were on the
shoulders of the woman, but I recognized them both
at a glance.
  The man was Michael Montgomery and the woman
who stood so intimately close to him was Carla
Drake, our most exotic dress model from the
fourth floor.
  They were talking in low, tense voices, but I
didn't stop to listen. I turned and hurried
back to my office, more disturbed than I cared to
admit. Even if what Monty did no longer
concerned me, there was still Chris to consider. I hated
to think he might already be carrying on a flirtation
with someone new.
  All this contributed to the tenseness of my
nerves, so that by now I was keyed to a dangerous
pitch, where only some explosive action would
relieve the tension. And I knew there mustn't be
an explosion. There must not be.
  I liked my job. I wanted to keep it.
  The letters on the door of my office read:
LINELL WYNN, SIGN PROMOTION--WHICH
meant that I wrote copy for advertising posters
used throughout Cunningham's and for what I modestly
considered the most cleverly sophisticated window
signs on the street.
  When I came to Cunningham's two years
before, my office had been a cubbyhole of a
place, and about as inspiring to the eye as a cell.
But Keith and I had worked evenings for a week
hiding those blank walls beneath pages torn from
Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. We picked all
the striking color photographs and the most
interesting black-and-whites and the change worked
wonders with the room, brought it to life, turned it
gay with color.
  Now, ordinarily, when my mind had a tendency
to go blank and ideas wouldn't come, I had only
to search those colorful walls for inspiration
and a new start.
  But today was different. Today was deadly.
  "It's being on a spot I hate," I
explained to Helena. "I was downstairs talking
to the handkerchief buyer this morning and every clerk at the
counter was watching to see how I was going to take it
with Monty back from his honeymoon today. And I
don't want to take it, or not take it. I just
want to go about my work and not be stared at and
pitied."
  Keith's somber eyes seemed to darken.
"I'd like to fix that Montgomery the way you'd
wipe out a rat."
  I glanced at him, startled by his intensity.
  "Never mind fixing anybody," I told him.
"I'll do my own suffering, thank you, and fight
my own battles. Here, these signs are ready for
lingerie. Take them down and don't hurry
back."
  I watched him go and Helena shook her head.
  "Be careful with that boy," she warned. "He's
crazy about you and he knows it's hopeless. At
nineteen that's dangerous."
  I tried to dismiss her words with a laugh, but the
look I'd glimpsed in Keith's eyes was
disturbing. I changed the subject hastily.
  "I wish Monty would walk in and get it over
with. It will be much worse if he feels guilty
and tries to avoid me."
  "I don't imagine a guilty conscience has
any part in our display manager's make-up,"
Helena said drily and glanced at her watch.
"I suppose I'd better get back on the
floor. That plastic jewelry ad Chris made
the drawings for has been pulling crowds all day.
I just wanted to stop in for a minute and see how
things were going with you."
  "Thanks," I said. "If I could get some
decent work done I'd be better off."
  But I was glad she was going and it made me
feel jumpy when she turned back at the door
as if she wanted to say something more. I didn't
want to be like Helena when I grew older--a
lonely woman working in a small, department store
job. That was why Monty's action had frightened me
a little.
  It had been an open secret for months that young
Chris Gardner, over in advertising, had a
crush on Michael Montgomery, but as far as
I knew, he'd never paid much attention
to her until that day two weeks before when he'd
run off and married her without any warning at all.
I kept wondering if it was something in me that had
made him do that. Even though we'd been moving
toward a break-up, he needn't have humiliated
me so. He needn't have--
  "Don't!" Helena said. "He isn't worth
it."
  I'm afraid the smile I gave her
wasn't a very happy one. I hadn't known my
face was giving me away and I didn't want
her to think I really cared. Perhaps I'd have tried
to explain, if there hadn't been an interruption just
then. Quick footsteps came down the corridor and
a girl slipped past Helena into the office.
  She stood for a moment with her back to the door and
her chin up defiantly. Her gray yellow
print frock was jaunty, but her eyes were
swollen from crying.
  "Hello, Chris," I said. "Won't you
sit down?"
  Chris Gardner--she was Chris Montgomery
now--went to the chair opposite me. But she
didn't sit down, she crumpled into it, her mouth
trembling childishly.
  "You've always been so good to me, Linell!" she
wailed. "You've helped me more than anyone
else in this store. And now I--I've treated you
like this. I've ruined your life and--"
  "Stop it!" I said, to check her rising
hysteria. "You haven't ruined anything. The
fault was Monty's. I think I know."
  Helena gave us both a dark look of pity and
slipped away from the door. Chris pulled off
her hat and her head went down on my desk in the
curve of her arm. I suppose, considering
everything, I should have been angry and resentful, but
I couldn't be angry with Chris.
  She was a big, sturdily built blond
girl, with wide shoulders that should have borne trouble
more capably, but she always crumpled at the first
sign of storm. That was her father's fault, the way
he had spoiled her.
  "You oughtn't to talk to me!" Chris's voice
came muffled from the crook of her arm. "You ought
to just throw me out for playing you such a rotten
trick."
  "If you don't stop crying," I said, "I will
throw you out. Sit up and blow your nose and
remember that you're a happy bride."
  She sat up, mopping futilely at her
eyes with a scrap of handkerchief. "That's just it!
I'm not a happy but-but-bride at all. I've
got to talk to you, Linell. I've got to tell
you."
  "It ought to be a pretty story," said a
voice from the corridor. "Mind if I listen,
Mrs. Montgomery?"
  I looked around at the girl in the doorway.
  "Hello, Sondo," I said, not very
cordially. "Come in and join the party. We're
having open house this afternoon."
  Sondo Norgaard was Monty's right hand over
in window display and the very sight of her gave me an
uneasy feeling. The girl was odd, with her
olive skin, tangled black hair, and thin,
clever fingers. But put a paint brush or a
pair of scissors in her hands and a lovely,
whimsical fairyland would result.
  She painted backgrounds for the Cunningham
windows. She added designs to signs. She
created fantastic paper creatures with shaving
curl manes and flirtatious eyes. In her
way she was a genius, sharp of temper and bitter
of tongue. Her presence in my office at that
moment probably meant just one thing. That Monty
had sent her.
  But at least the sight of Sondo had stopped
Chris's tears. The girl took out her compact
and made a feeble effort to cover the streakings left
by her outburst.
  Sondo regarded her efforts scornfully,
addressing herself to me. "Monty wants to see you.
Now. Do you think you could manage to be alone if
he comes over?"
  I didn't care for her tone or manner.
"Since he's waited this long, perhaps he might as
well wait till tomorrow."
  Sondo became a shade less bitter. She
stood there in the doorway, looking like a sexless
gnome in her straight, paint-smeared green
smock, her feet set well apart in sturdy
brogues. The big dark eyes that were her one good
feature held no particular enmity as she looked
at me, but they held no open liking either.
  "Better see him," she urged. "He
didn't want to just barge over without warning. That's
why he sent me. But you'd better get rid of
his--" her dark eyes moved to Chris, turned
vindictive again "--his charming little
wife."
  Chris pulled on her hat without regard for
appearance, her hands trembling.
  "I'm going now, Linell," she said. "I--
I'll talk to you some other time."
  She moved past Sondo as if she were a little
afraid of her, and then gathered momentary courage.
"I know you've never liked me, Sondo. But be
kind this once. Don't tell Monty I was
here. Please don't tell him."
  I looked at Sondo and saw the gleam in her
eyes. That was no way to deal with her, I knew.
She had too strong a sadistic streak, and
Chris was too soft and helpless and open to hurt.
Sondo was the kind who could indulge in a
particularly refined type of torture and I
knew I'd have to warn Chris never to ask for
quarter from her.
  But I said, "I'll see you later, Chris.
Run along. There's no need for Sondo to tell
Monty you were here."
  Chris gave me a grateful, beaten glance and
scurried down the hall toward the elevators.
Sondo stared after her for a moment, her wide,
scarlet mouth twisted derisively.
  "I hate mice," she said. "Nasty,
furry, frightened little beasts. God knows why he
wanted her. In fact, I don't think he
did. But there she is married to him and dissolving in
misery."
  There was something odd about her manner. Something I
couldn't quite put my finger on which left me
uneasy. I'd always been puzzled by the
relationship between Monty and Sondo. He treated
her more like a man than a woman, yet he seemed
to trust and rely upon her more than on anyone
else.
  Before I could speak, she went on.
  "You're the one who ought to be miserable and you've
been flying banners of courage ever since it
happened. I know. I've watched you."
  "Wouldn't it be nice," I said, "if we'd
all stop watching one another and just tend to our own
affairs? Suppose you go back and tell
Monty I'll give him five minutes if he
comes right away."
  Sondo grinned.
  "Okay," she said, "I'm put in my
place. Trouble is, I never remember to stay
there." She waved one small hand and
scampered off down the hall.
  I shivered. The girl was sometimes more animal
than human. I wondered how Monty could stand
to have her around. Tony Salvador, Monty's
assistant, hated her like poison and since
Monty had been away the two had been snapping
at each other and indulging in temperamental
clashes that echoed clear across the floor.
  I sighed and rubbed my fingers wearily against my
temples. A department store is too full of
temperament. Especially at the merchandising end.
Down in the selling sections only buyers can
afford the luxury, but upstairs there's always enough
talent and creativeness to drive any innocent
bystander crazy.
  Not that I was an innocent bystander, by any
means. I had a job I liked to do.
Ordinarily. And I tried to do it with a minimum
expenditure of temperament on my own part. The
trouble was everybody knew I was a good peace-
maker and I was always having to play buffer when
matters became too charged with dynamite.
  I didn't know what was wrong with Chris, or
what she'd wanted to tell me. I didn't know
what the whole miserable tangle was about. And I
felt charged with enough dynamite at the moment to set
off a few explosions in my own right.
  It was then I heard Monty's step in the
corridor. I raised my head, steeling myself for
resistance. I knew Monty. I knew those
charming ways of his and how his soft-spoken words could
sometimes disarm and betray, and this afternoon I wasn't
having any.
  This was the meeting I'd been dreading since
early morning. This was the moment.

              CHAPTER 2

  Michael Montgomery came into my office with
his usual assured stride. He came straight
to my desk and stood there, tall and blond,
looking down at me with a face that revealed both the
strength of tenacity and the weakness of sensuality. In
spite of his forty-three years, he had kept the
vitality of youth.
  "You wanted to see me?" I asked quietly.
  His brown eyes held a warm appeal. When
he looked at a woman like that she was apt to forget
that his chin had a softness of line and his mouth was a little
cruel.
  "I don't know how to begin," he said. "I've
spent hours during the last two weeks planning
what I'd say to you, and now that you're here before me,
I can't say any of it."
  "Do you have to say anything?" I asked. "Why not
just let the whole thing go? We both have our jobs
to do and there's no need for personalities to enter
in."
  But he had too much vanity to let me go as
easily as that. He didn't want me. He'd
married another woman. But he wanted to convince
himself that I was still properly subjugated.
  "There will always be personalities where you and I
are concerned," he told me, dropping his voice
to what I'm sure he considered a fascinating
huskiness. The sad part was there'd been a time when
I'd considered it fascinating too. Which didn't
flatter my intelligence. "You can't escape
me, any more than I can escape you, Linell.
I've hurt you cruelly, but--"
  I was a little surprised at the sharpness of my
own voice. "No! No, Monty. You haven't
it in your power to hurt me. My pride, perhaps.
But not me. You're very charming, when you want to be,
and for a little while I was foolish enough to believe in the
surface. But I'm quite free of you now. I
don't understand what you did, but I don't care
any more that you did it."
  He went right on, as if my words had no
meaning. "Linell, sweet, I think this is the first
time in my life I've loved a woman as I
love you."
  Gracious, I thought, was he going to stand there and
weave his spells until I was compelled to
believe him? He was really very good at it, but I
suppose he'd had a lot of practice.
  "One thinks that each time, I imagine," I
said. "About never having loved as one loves now.
But just how do you reconcile such a depth of
emotion with the fact that you dropped me without warning and
went suddenly off to marry Chris?"
  "That's what I want to tell you about,
Linell. That's why I'm here. To ask you to have
dinner with me tonight."
  I felt so strong an aversion that I pushed
back my chair and gathered up some papers from my
desk.
  "If you'll excuse me," I said, "there are
some things I must attend to."
  I walked by him to the door, but he
came after me and put a hand on my arm.
  "Linell! You've got to give me a chance to
tell you, a chance to--"
  I withdrew my arm with a shrug of distaste. "If
you won't think of Chris--of your wife--I will.
I'm very fond of her, very sorry for her. The last
thing I'd do would be to have dinner with her husband."
  He started to protest, and to stop him I said
something I hadn't meant to say.
  "While we're on the subject," I told
him, "knowing that you have a wife, I think it might be
wise to avoid being seen in intimate conversation with
women like Carla Drake."
  To my surprise, he didn't display his
usual swagger.
  "There's nothing between Miss Drake and me,"
he assured me. "I barely know the woman."
  But it seemed to me that he protested a little too
earnestly and I couldn't forget his hands upon her
shoulders. I didn't stay for further discussion.
  I went out the door and down the narrow
corridor to where the floor widened to meet the
elevators. I was shaking inside and I was
angry with myself for letting him infuriate me. But
what he was going to do to Chris, what he had
undoubtedly done to other women, was wicked and
cruel. And Chris was so young, so dreadfully,
agonizingly in love.
  It was then I realized something. The encounter
I'd been dreading all day had come and gone. There
had been no real explosion, only a cold
severing of last ties, yet my nervous tension had
not relaxed. If anything I was more taut than
before, as if thin strong wires drew me step by
irrevocable step toward something which lay in the
future.
  I shrugged impatiently and glanced at the
papers in my hands, copy I was planning for
signs which would be used throughout the store to advertise
the style show starting Saturday. I might as
well go down to fourth and talk to Owen Gardner about
the affair. Perhaps I'd find Chris there with her
father, and could discover what was troubling her.
  Fourth was my favorite floor. A floor
of luxury and fashion. Huge glass showcases
displayed rare furs and exquisite gowns.
Deep pile carpets sank beneath the lightest
step, lights were soft, cunningly arranged to
reveal the perfection of the merchandise, and to flatter
the beauty of women who came to buy.
  This floor was Owen Gardner's pride and he
gave to it all the creative genius of an artist.
Which was odd, considering that he looked like a dull
little man who would be more interested in Sunday golf
and week-day market reports, than in the
trappings of the fashion world. But I could remember
one day when I'd come upon him lovingly stroking
pudgy hands over a length of Chinese brocade.
In that moment he had ceased to be merely a hot-
tempered little man with a mind bent on bringing
dollars into his department, and I knew he had
made a success of the fourth floor because he loved
luxury and beauty as passionately as any
woman.
  Miss Babcock, the buyer for better
dresses, nodded toward the merchandise manager's
office. "His highness is in conference, but you go
right on in. It's only one of the models."
  Things were evidently not going well with Miss
Babcock today. But then, things were seldom going
well with Miss Babcock. She liked it that
way.
  I could hear a low, indistinguishable buzz of
voices as I approached the door of Owen
Gardner's office, but the buzz stopped at my
knock, as if the speakers did not want to be
overheard.
  I put my head in the door. "Miss
Babcock said you weren't too busy to be
interrupted. May--"
  "Come in, come in," Owen Gardner said a little
too hospitably. "Of course I'm not too
busy to see you, Linell. Uh--you know Carla
Drake, don't you?"
  I did indeed. Since her name had been so
recently on my tongue, I looked at her now
with more than ordinary interest.
  She turned toward me slowly, with fluid
grace that seemed to have little to do with prosaic
matters like joints and bone-structure.
  "Hello, Miss Wynn," she murmured in
a low, whispery voice.
  She was exotic, breathlessly lovely. Not
young, certainly. Ageless. Her face was as
unlined as a girl's, but her shining, shoulder-length
bob was silver-white and her body had a full-
blown maturity.
  Gardner went on, explaining where there was no
need. "I was just talking to Miss Drake about the
gowns she's to model for the style show. That
will be all now, Carla. I'll speak to you again
later."
  I found myself raising a mental eyebrow.
What went on here? Had I imagined it, or was
there a certain hurried uneasiness in the way
Gardner had dismissed the model? Carla merely
bent that startling, shimmering head submissively and
glided toward the door. "Flowed" was the word,
really, I thought, looking after her.
  It surprised me a little when the model turned
back for an instant at the door, one delicate
hand pale against the mahogany panel, her blue
eyes dark and sad as they rested briefly on
me. Then she was gone and the door had closed
softly behind her.
  There it was again, even from this woman I scarcely
knew--that look of pity beneath which I was beginning to
cringe.
  I went over and spread my papers on Owen's
desk. "I wish you'd glance through these suggestions
when you have time. Has Chris been here? I thought
I might find her."
  He looked up at me sharply and to my dismay
I saw cold fury in his eyes.
  "She was here," he said. "Crying."
  I could understand how he felt. The way Gardner
adored and spoiled his only daughter was obvious
to everyone. Sometimes I'd even been a little sorry
for Susan Gardner, his plump, self-effacing
little wife, because of the way all this affection seemed
to pour out on Chris. Owen's dislike of Michael
Montgomery, and the feud between fourth floor and
window display was already a legend in the store, so it
must have been a stunning blow to Chris's father when the
girl ran off with Monty. And now, if Monty
was making her unhappy, Gardner must be wild with
anger.
  "That's why I came down," I told him.
"I thought I might find her here. She wanted
to talk to me, but there were so many interruptions
upstairs. Do you know where she's gone?"
  "Down to the waiting room to meet Susan."
He closed his eyes andwiththe anger hidden, looked
a little gray and broken. But there was suppressed
violence in his words as he went on.
  "Montgomery's no good. He's rotten
clear through where women are concerned. And now he's
going to break up Chris's life the way he's
broken the lives of other women. If somebody
doesn't break him first."
  There was such hatred in his tone that I was alarmed.
  "Please be careful," I said. "You mustn't do
anything that would hurt Chris even more. Perhaps it will
work out. Nobody's bad all the way through. He
wouldn't have married her unless he cared something about
her--"
  "That's it!" Gardner pounded his fist hard against
the desk. "That's just it--he didn't give a
damn about her. It's my fault, but I didn't
dream--"
  He broke off and I turned hastily toward
the door. Everything I said seemed to excite and
upset him more.
  "You mustn't worry." I tried to sound
encouraging. "I'll see her as soon as I can.
I'll talk to her."
  He didn't hear me. He said, "I could
break him. I could end this once and for all. Perhaps
I will."
  His eyes were fixed blindly on the wall and I'm
sure he didn't notice when I left the
office.
  I went upstairs, more worried and concerned than
ever. What a day! One thing piling on top of
another, building up emotion and conflict until
it seemed that the lid must surely fly off.
Something had to explode under all this pressure.
I was beginning to feel that all I wanted was to be
out of the way when it happened.
  When I got back to my office I found a
tall young man with blue, humorous eyes sitting
on the corner of my desk. He grinned at me
engagingly and nodded toward Keith, who was answering
the phone.
  Keith grimaced and held out the phone to me.
"It's Tony Salvador and he's whopping
mad."
  This was life in a department store. I
suppressed a sigh and took the phone. Tony was
Monty's first assistant in window display.
  "Shut up, Tony," I said. "This is
Linell."
  I didn't expect him to shut up and I
wasn't disappointed. But at least he brought his
voice down a couple of octaves and slowed his
words to a more intelligible pace.
  "Look, Linell, I'm through. I quit.
I'm not taking any more from Montgomery. Not any
more at all. See?"
  "Yes, of course, Tony," I
agreed. "But you'd better go home and sleep on
it before you do anything drastic."
  "I don't need to sleep on this," Tony
went on furiously. "I'm through. For good."
  There was no use trying to talk to him over the
phone. Obviously he'd had a drink or two,
and he never made sense on a telephone
anyway.
  "Where are you now?" I asked. "Window
display? All right, you stay there. I've some work
to finish and then I'm coming over. I want to talk
to you."
  I hung up before he could protest and shoved the
phone away from me.
  "Oh, for a nice quiet madhouse," I
murmured. Then I looked up at the young man
who'd perched himself on my desk, "Hello,
Bill Thorne. Tony's scrapping with Monty
again and I suppose I'll have to go over and calm
everybody down."
  Bill transferred himself to a chair.
"Cunningham's little angel of mercy! I'll
bet it's that phonograph attachment I rigged
up while Monty was away that's causing the
trouble. Tony tell you about it?"
  I shook my head. "Not a word."
  "Well, Tony had a brainstorm. He
wanted a mechanical bird to sit on a tree
branch in the golf window. It moves around and
ruffles its wings, while a hidden phonograph
whistles Welcome, Sweet Springtime. A
loud speaker will broadcast it on State
Street. And don't look at me. I only
take orders."
  I wrinkled my nose. "For once I don't
blame Monty. Tony can pull some awful
stuff sometimes."
  "The trouble with window decorators," Bill
said, "is that they're such snobs. Now if Dana
O'Clare * did it at Lord and Taylor's,
stores out in Podunk would be copying next
week. Anyway, Tony has the courage of his
convictions."
      * Dana O'Clare is now a
    Corporal with the Army Air Forces First
    Fighter Command.
  "But we're not Lord and Taylor," I pointed
out, "and Tony isn't Dana O'Clare. Not that
I don't appreciate the spot he's been in
ever since Monty took over. Tony
expected to be put in as display manager when
Gregory left. He had a right to expect it.
But here he is still assistant, though he
produces most of the ideas while Monty takes
the glory. And Tony really is good most of the
time."
  "Have you seen Chris?" Bill asked without
warning.
  I glanced at him quickly. He was looking at
one of the color photographs above my head and
I had a chance to study him for a moment.
  I liked Bill Thorne. He had an
easy-going good nature, a friendly grin and swell
sense of humor. I liked the little kindnesses he
was always performing unobtrusively. He was tall,
compact, and well-knit. His blue eyes could
twinkle. And I liked the fineness of his long
slender hands.
  He was a little of everything, Bill Thorne.
Artist, sculptor, inventor, mechanic.
He'd inherited the Universal Arts Company out
on West Madison Street from his brilliant
father, and he supplied the million-and-one needs of
show windows all over the country. Anything from a
plaster fawn to a hundred-and-fifty dollar
mannequin could be produced at Universal
Arts. If a window decorator wanted a
Grecian column or a paper weight Bill
was there with the answer. On the side he had a little
electrical shop which flourished at Christmas
time when animated toys for show windows were in
demand.
  And Bill Thorne had been especially kind
to Chris Gardner.
  "She was up here just a little while ago," I
told him. "And feeling pretty miserable too."
  "I don't doubt it." Bill's voice was
dry. "She's a nice kid. Talented. She
had a real career ahead of her, I think. But I
suppose she won't be coming back to
Cunningham's now."
  I shook my head. I was remembering how
Bill had helped Chris so often with her drawings
when he dropped into the store, and how he'd sometimes
taken her out to lunch or dinner. And I was
wondering just how hard Chris's marriage had hit
Bill Thorne.
  "Well, I'll be running along," he said.
"I've a date with Montgomery, though he
doesn't know it. A date to punch his
head. I'll come back and let you know how it
turns out."
  This was getting almost funny. I left my
chair in a hurry and caught him at the door.
  "Bill, don't be an idiot! There are enough people
in this store mad at Monty. He'll get
what's coming to him sooner or later, without any
help from you."
  He grinned at me. "I should think you'd be
all for the idea. Though I must say you don't
look like any broken blossom to me."
  "I'm not," I told him. "And if I were,
I'd keep it to myself."
  "Good girl," he said, and I liked the way
he looked at me. There wasn't any pity in his
eyes. Just an acceptance of the fact that I could
take what I had to take.
  "When I get through," he went on, "I'm coming
back to take you to dinner."
  But I didn't want that. Not then.
  "No, Bill. This has been--well, quite a
day. I'm going home tonight and go to bed. If you
see Tony, tell him I'll come over as soon
as I finish here."
  "Okay," he said. "Another time maybe.
We, the jilted, ought to get together."
  He waved a hand at me and went off down the
hall.
  "We, the jilted"? Had he been so seriously
interested in Chris, then, I wondered? Or had
he, perhaps, been trying to make me feel that I
wasn't quite alone in what had happened to me? He
was a nice guy, Bill.

              CHAPTER 3

  I was tired. Achingly tired. While I'd
been talking to Bill, everything had returned almost
to normal, but now the tautness was back again, the
queer sense of momentum carrying me along. It
wasn't through yet. It wasn't ended.
  That horrid sulphur light still pressed against
my window, but it had started to rain again and the
drizzle came straight down through the yellow
glare. As I went back to my desk I was
conscious once more of Keith watching me
furtively, and I'm afraid I snapped at
him.
  "Get those letters typed and forget about me," I
told him.
  I pulled a sheet of paper across the desk and
looked at it wearily. It was the sign copy for the
series of red windows Tony had been planning for
State Street. He'd worked hard on those
plans, with Sondo doing the backgrounds and
contributing ideas of her own. I knew it was his
intention to put in something so spectacular while
Monty was away that he'd completely outshine
him. Now, no matter what Tony did, the
plans for those windows would have to go ahead.
  I stared without interest at the words I'd
written on the paper.

Red is the Color of the Year
  Red for Daring
  Red for Courage
  Red for--

  "Red for what?" I asked Keith.
  He looked up from his typewriter.
  "Blood, maybe," he said somberly.
  "Oh, go home," I told him. "It's
only a half hour or so till closing time and
I'm getting awfully fed up with people."
  I knew I'd hurt his feelings.
  "I'll feel better tomorrow," I called after
him as he left, but he went out the door without
replying.
  That was the trouble with department stores. You could
never get away from people. From different temperaments
and dispositions and sensitivities. Including your
own. Usually I liked it. I liked the rush and
excitement, the everlasting pressure of work. There
were always deadlines in my job, just as there were on a
newspaper. For a few weeks the theme song would be
spring. Then overboard with spring and on with hot
weather. Cotton for warm days ahead, while one
was still trailing through the puddles of April.
  But right now red. I had to think of a word. Just one
more word before I left the office.
  I looked about at the bright pages lining the
walls, but for once inspiration was a laggard. There
was scarlet and gold in a ballet picture of
Coq D'Or, there was a nail polish ad--
hands with blood-red nails arranging delicately
hued seashells on a dark table, there was a
crimson coat on a famous model. Red
everywhere--but no adjective to catch fire in my
tired brain.
  Let the word go. I'd get it tomorrow.
Now I'd run over to talk to Tony and then
I'd go home.
  The section of the eighth floor leading to the window
display department was deserted. A long corridor
ran past echoing store-rooms and closed doors,
ending in a strip of floor that was like a
drawbridge flung between stairs and freight
elevators. The rooms of window display lay
beyond.
  This was one of the days when the display people came down
early to work in the side windows before the store
opened. Nearly everyone had gone home in the
afternoon, and now the place was empty and quiet.
  Window display consisted of a series of rooms of
various sizes, separated by steel gray partitions
rising part way to the high ceiling. Monty and
Tony each had an office on the right, with a little
anteroom between, where Monty's secretary
usually stayed. It was empty now because the girl's
brother had become seriously ill and she had
taken a leave of absence to go down to her home in
southern Illinois.
  On the left, running along the window side,
stretched rooms, like a row of boxes, open above
the partitions, and open on the corridor they shared.
These included numerous prop rooms, Sondo's
workroom, the room in which the mannequins were kept.
  Tony's office was empty and for a moment I
thought he must have gone. I stood there wondering what
to do next, feeling again that strong sense of
predestination, of something I must do.
  I began to walk slowly down the corridor,
past the room where old sets were kept, past
shelves containing bolts of material and rolls of
wallpaper, past Sondo's workroom without
looking in. Above my head, like the intertwining
branches of a forest, hung artificial pine
boughs with long green needles and white-tipped
cones--decorations from last Christmas.
  The whole place had a touch of the fantastic.
It was a through-the-looking-glass world where anything could
be found, anything could happen.
  And then I heard Tony's voice and paused
for an instant, startled. Ringing suddenly through that
quiet place it had an eerie, insane sound.
As if Tony Salvador were talking loudly to
himself.
  But he wasn't talking to himself. I was still more
amazed as I caught the words.
  "Darling," he was saying, "I don't
know what I'd do without you. You're the only one
who ever listens. You know I'm good, honey. You
know I'm the best damn' window decorator on
the street. And then I have to be up against a louse
like Monty. You know why he won't let me get
ahead, honey? Because I'm better'n he is."
  I pulled myself together and walked quickly to the
door of the mannequin room. This was scarcely
discretion on Tony's part and it had to be stopped,
no matter who was with him. If Monty ever
overheard a conversation like that, Tony would be through
whether he wanted to be or not.
  The mannequin room was a huge jumble, with
Tony himself in the middle of it, waving a plaster
arm of feminine contour as he talked. Tony was
tall and very dark, with those Latin good looks which have
such a romantic appeal for women. But it was the
girl who sat in a chair with her back to the door
that interested me.
  She wore a hooded scarlet evening cape, and
her black lace formal draped gracefully over
crossed knees and fell to the point of one silver
sandal.
  "Come on in," Tony invited. "I don't
keep any secrets from Dolores."
  It was one of the window mannequins. The figure
was so amazingly lifelike that for just a moment I'd
been fooled.
  "Tony!" I cried in exasperation. "Do you have
to be such a fool? That voice of yours carries
all over the floor. What if Monty came in
and heard what I've just heard?"
  "What difference does it make?" Tony's
gesture with the arm was debonair, if grotesque.
"I'm through anyway." He chucked the mannequin
under her papier mach`e chin. "Going to devote
all my time to you now, gorgeous."
  "Do you think you could sober up long enough to tell
me what happened?" I asked.
  He grinned at Dolores. "She thinks
I'm tight. But I'm not half so tight as
I'm going to be an hour from now. Oh, well--
I'll tell her. It was that damn phonograph,
Linell. That bird attachment Bill Thorne
worked out. "It's a swell idea and I was ready
to put it across tomorrow in the golf window on State
Street. And what do you think happened?"
  "Let me guess," I said. "Monty
didn't like it."
  He leaned an elbow against a wall
cabinet labeled "Half Figures," and nodded
wisely. "Smart girl. He said he wasn't
going to have Cunningham's windows put on a
drugstore level. And he told me to go back
to the farm. Me!"
  "So you're going, is that it?"
  He glared at me. "No, I'm not going. But
we'll see what he can do on his own for a while.
He's got by on my ideas long enough."
  I was scarcely listening to Tony. The
mannequin room had always been the strangest,
most fascinating spot in the whole store. I
never could resist poking around in it to see what I
could find.
  All about the walls ranged deep cabinets,
each with its own closed door, containing
mannequins. In one corner was a collection of
unclad figures waiting to be carried down to the
windows, or put away for future use. While
down the middle of the room stretched a long table with
a scramble of hands and legs upon it, a wig or
two, some hair ornaments, artificial flowers,
and something that looked like a Flit gun. I picked
it up curiously.
  "Bothered by flies?" I inquired and squirted
the green spray experimentally out into the room. The
odor of pine needles was pungent.
  "There now!" Tony said. "That was one of my
ideas. Remember last Christmas when the whole
first floor smelled of pine trees? That was because
I sent somebody down to spray it every morning. But
I'm not going to think up anything more."
  I put down the spray gun. "Well, it's
your nose, if you want to cut it off. Aside from
the bird in the tree, is the window finished?
Nothing for me to look after?"
  Monty had said I had a good eye for
accessories and small details and lately
I'd been working more closely with the decorating end.
  Tony considered. "There's some new jewelry
that's supposed to be promoted for sport wear.
Lapel pins or something. Maybe you'd better
pick out some stuff. I'm not going back."
  "I'll take care of it," I assured him.
"And, Tony--sleep it off before you quit. The
rest of us appreciate you around here, if Monty
doesn't."
  Tony put out the plaster arm and shook hands with
me gravely. "Thanks, lady. But I think
I've had about enough of Sondo and
Monty."
  "All right," I said. "So long."
  The light was on in Sondo's workroom, but I
didn't stop to look in. It was getting on
toward the closing hour and I didn't want to go
home too late. There was a time later on when
I was to find myself wondering if it would have made
any difference if I had looked in.
  I stopped at my office to pick up a
smock for slight protection against the chill of the
display windows, and then went downstairs.
  The main floor was thronged with last minute
shoppers. Around the costume jewelry counters the
women were three deep. That ad of Chris's had
drawn business all right. It was the last thing
she'd written for Cunningham's.
  I pushed through to the counter and caught Helena
Farnham's eye.
  "I need some things for the golf window," I
told her. "Brown, maybe, to go with green. A
couple of lapel pins. Nothing dangly."
  It took more than a big sales day to destroy
Helena's outward efficiency, but there were lines of
fatigue about her eyes and as she brought out a
tray of pins and set them before me, her hands
trembled a little.
  "If I never see another piece of costume
jewelry it will be too soon," she murmured.
"My feet are killing me."
  "Bed for us both the minute we get home,"
I said. "I'll take that brown wooden
seahorse with the scarlet head. And maybe the gold
anchor."
  I filled out a borrow sheet and gave it to
Helena. Then, pins in hand, I crossed the
aisle to the long section of middle windows. Here
a stairway cut down to the basement, dropping
away below the paneled walls, so that no counters
ranged along the windows in this section.
  There were padlocks on all the doors that led
into the windows, but most of the time nobody bothered to
lock them. I put my hand on a door that
looked like a panel of the wall and then stood quite still,
waiting.
  Waiting because a curious sense of reluctance
had seized me. A reluctance that had to do with the
opening of that door beneath my hand.
  But that was nonsense and I shrugged the notion
aside. The door opened easily and I drew it
shut behind me as I stepped into the window.
It was cold and I shivered as I stepped between a
wing of compo board and the framework that held
Sondo's painted background.
  Everything was as it should be. There was nothing
strange or unaccountable about the scene. Heavy
homespun curtains were pulled across the plate
glass, shutting off the view from the street. I
went across and parted a fold to look out and see what
the weather was like.
  The yellow light was gone and rain was coming down in
earnest. The afternoon was stormy dark. Street
lights were on and people scurried by close to my
window, the lucky few with umbrellas, the rest with
heads bent against the rain.
  I dropped the curtain and turned back to my
little window-stage of a world. Above my head a
spotlight flung its beam upon four mannequins
grouped on an island of peat moss "earth."
  The idea had been to contrast old style golf
fashions with the new, and there were two swank,
modern mannequins wearing the sport clothes of the
moment and equipped with the latest in steel shafted
golf clubs. These two regarded with evident
amusement the two seated, long-skirted figures
with golf bags that were anything but streamlined, and old
wooden clubs.
  The background represented a rolling
expanse of grass with a country club in the
distance, and there was a cleverly contrived tree of
plywood with a slightly larger than life-size
bird on one of its branches. Wires ran
down behind the tree, so evidently the phonograph
was backstage.
  I smiled. Poor Tony and his welcome-
sweet-springtime!
  But the window was chilly and I didn't want
to stay. There's never any regulating the
temperature of the windows. In summer it's like being
in a hothouse behind the plate glass, and in winter
it's practically outdoors. But nobody seems
to care except the decorators.
  One of the mannequins wore a brilliant
scarlet sport jacket and the mere sight of that
color made me feel jumpy again. I either
wanted to get away from it, or else think of a word
to describe it and banish it from my mind. Something
sophisticated and challenging. "Blood," Keith
had said. Goodness knows that was challenging enough.
  I fastened the wooden seahorse on a green
lapel and stood back to view the effect.
Good. And the gold anchor would look stunning against
that scarlet. I moved gingerly so as not to step on
the peat moss and track it about the window. Someone
had already tracked it a little. Tony, probably,
mad and not caring. It would have to be vacuumed in the
morning before the curtains were opened. There was a
chipped fragment of something that might have been part of a
costume jewelry piece showing up dark against the
carpet. I put the scrap in my smock
pocket, meaning to drop it in a wastebasket
later. A window must be spotless before it is
uncovered.
  It was then I noticed the stick lying at one of
the mannequin's feet. Tony was getting
careless. The thing had simply been tossed down
there on the peat moss and nobody had bothered to
remove it. I bent and picked it up.
  It was the broken upper end of a wooden golf
club. Monty should see that! The boys in window
display had been known to indulge in horseplay
on occasion, but they seldom broke anything. Oh
well, it wasn't my problem. I thrust the
stick into a golf bag leaning against a
mannequin's knee and turned quickly.
  Turned with a queer chill running through me. A
chill that was more than the chill of the window. For
suddenly, eerily, I'd had the feeling that I was
being watched. It was as if someone, something, had
stood for an instant behind one of the fluted wings
peering out at me.
  Had there been a movement over there on the
left? Or was it only a trick of reflected
light?
  "Who's there?" I called in a low voice.
  But the words fell flat, without echo or
answer; the mannequins watched impassive,
empty-eyed. Nerves, I thought in annoyance.
This day had been too much for me and the sooner it
ended the better.
  I forced myself to stand quietly for a moment with my
back to the street, looking over the display for any
further flaws, considering the lighting. That baby
spot wasn't just right. I could go around to the switch
box at the back and adjust it. Then I'd be
finished.
  I slipped carefully between wings and background,
accustomed to the difficult task of moving in such
cramped quarters without knocking anything askew.
"Backstage" there was a narrow strip of
passageway leading to an intersection where
the switch box was located.
  The window decorators were forever leaving props
about behind the scenes and I stepped past the unclad
half figure of a mannequin, ducked to miss a
pair of silk stockings which dangled from a hanger
hooked carelessly on a strip of framework. I
reached the alcove which contained the switch box and
came to a dead stop.
  This, I knew, was the moment toward which I had
been moving with dreadful certainty all day long.
All the wires which pulled me had been stretched
so taut that I had only to scream to snap them.
  But I couldn't scream. I could only stand there
staring at the man who lay at my feet beneath the
switch box. He was sprawled face down, and
beside him was the steel-clubbed head of a broken golf
stick.
  There, too, was that ruddy hue I could not
escape. Dulling the shine of steel, staining the
floor, crimsoning the blond hair of that limp
and grotesque figure.
  It was Michael Montgomery and I knew,
instinctively, that he was dead.
  I could only stand there sharply aware of small
things that were of no consequence. The chill of the window,
the shine of Monty's shoes, the way his right hand was
tightened into a fist. How many times later I was
to recall all those small details, recall
them frighteningly in my dreams, and unwillingly when
I was awake.
  All that was Monty, his cruelty, his charm, his
vitality, had been resolved at last. Someone
had taken upon himself the meting out of justice.
Someone--someone. It was the significance of that word
that brought me back to life.
  For all I knew the murderer might be hiding
in that very window. I had to get away quickly. I
had to get back to the bustle and safety of the
store, call for help, raise the alarm.
  But at the very moment when I turned toward the
single passageway of escape, I heard a
sound that was more frightening than any sound I'd ever
heard in my life. It was faint--a clicking and
fumbling.
  A sound made by the latch at the entrance to the
window. Someone was opening the door.



              CHAPTER 4

  I stood there in that narrow passageway, my
blood drumming wildly in my ears and
Monty's body sprawled on the floor behind
me. Stood there, waiting agonizingly through
seconds that seemed like years, while someone
climbed into the window.
  The head and shoulders of a man appeared first, then
his whole body, and I experienced an instant of
almost agonizing relief. But with recognition
came a guarded tightening.
  It was Bill Thorne. But why was Bill
Thorne coming into this window? As far as I was
concerned, who was Bill Thorne? What did I
really know about him? And how could I forget that only
a little while before he had threatened to punch
Monty's head?
  "What are you doing here?" I asked in a
voice that sounded strained and cracked.
  He looked at me queerly, but I must have
been a strange sight with my face bloodless with
terror.
  "What's up?" he asked.
  I could only repeat my question as if I knew
no other words. The second time he answered me.
  "I'm looking for Monty. I got tired of
waiting around upstairs for him to show up. Thought I
might catch him down here. Linell, what's the
matter?"
  He sounded natural enough and if he was looking
at me a little strangely, that too was natural,
considering how I was behaving. I made a feeble
motion toward the alcove and the switch box.
  "Back there," I gasped. "Back there on the
floor! You're too late!"
  He gave me one look and strode past to the
alcove. When he saw, he made no sound, no
outcry. His eyes turned back to meet mine for
just an instant, then he knelt at Monty's
side. I watched while he felt for a pulse and
I knew by his face that there was none. He shook
his head and stood up, looking white and shaken.
  "We've got to get you out of here," he said.
  Then, while I watched, he leaned down and
gingerly picked up the broken golf stick. Working
carefully, to avoid the area where blood had
spattered, he wiped the shaft with a handkerchief,
replaced the stick beside the body.
  "Now then," he said, "come on."
  He had wiped the fingerprints from that
stick. His hand hurt my arm and I tried to pull
away.
  "We--we've got to call so-so-somebody!"
I said between chattering teeth. "Go-go-get a
doctor!"
  He shook me quite sharply. "It's too late
for a doctor. Pull yourself together. You've got to
get back upstairs."
  His fingers were cruel and tight on my arm and I
was too terrified to protest. We walked to the
entrance of the window and then he bent to whisper
grimly in my ear.
  "We're going out into the store now and you're going
to walk past the counters and over to the elevators as
if nothing had happened. It's busy out there, and
if we move quickly, the chances are we won't be
noticed."
  There was no resisting the tight band of his fingers
grasping my arm. I found myself walking along the
wide aisle, conscious in a confused way of the
bright lights of the store, of spring decorations
overhead, of the gleam of crystal at the perfume
counters. Then we were in the elevator and a girl in
a green uniform was saying, "Floors, please,"
as the car moved upward.
  Just as we reached the eighth floor the closing
bell jangled harshly and I jumped as if the
sound had released some lever that controlled my
normal will to think and act. But I didn't try
to talk to Bill until he led me to my office
and thrust me none too gently into the chair behind my
desk.
  Then I sat up and started in.
  "I don't know what you've had to do with this,
Bill Thorne," I said angrily, "but I
don't like the way you wiped that golf stick with your
handkerchief. Or the way you sneaked us out of there.
Or--"
  "Stop it!" he said. "It's no go."
  He'd perched himself on the corner of my desk
again, just the way he had earlier that afternoon, only now
there was no twinkle in his blue eyes. Only
grim purpose.
  I could only gape at him blankly,
numbly, until the straight line of his mouth
softened. He leaned over and put his hand beneath my
chin and I had a swift, incongruous memory of
Tony doing the same thing to that mannequin.
  "You can trust me, Linell," he said.
"I'll see you through. Begin at the beginning
and tell me exactly what happened. Was there a
quarrel? Where did you get the golf stick?"
  I began to understand and the stunning realization that
Bill thought I had killed Monty did what
even the sight of that crumpled body had not
managed to do. It snapped the tension.
  I put my head down on my arms and began
to laugh. Crazy, choked laughter that shook me
clear through and must have sounded more like sobs than
laughter.
  Bill put his hand gently on my shoulder and the
concern in his voice made me laugh all the
harder.
  "Linell," he said, "you mustn't. You poor
kid! Monty got what was coming to him all right, but
why did it have to be you?"
  I couldn't stop. All the strain I'd been
under that day was releasing itself in laughter. And there was
horror too, because I sensed that the moment I
stopped laughing I'd have to face the terrible fact
of murder.
  I raised my head and Bill saw that I was
laughing. He looked so shocked that I knew he
must think I'd gone crazy--and that made me
laugh still more.
  "It's so--from-from-funny!" I gasped.
"You're so rid-do-diculous!"
  He said, "If you don't stop, I'll slap
you."
  He looked as if he meant it too, but I
couldn't stop. He did mean it. His hand whacked
smartly across my cheek and I could feel the
blood tingle under the blow. I stopped right in the
middle of a giggle, so mad I wanted to throw
things.
  "How dare you!" I stormed. "How dare you
strike me! How dare you think I killed
Monty!"
  He caught me by the shoulders and turned me
toward the light. "You mean--you didn't kill
him?"
  We looked at each other for a long moment.
There was something guarded in Bill's eyes that I
didn't like. It meant either that he was still suspecting
me, or that he had something to hide himself. Even in
my numbness, I couldn't quite accept the way he'd
behaved through all this.
  My lips must have trembled, for he bent over
me at once. "If you switch to tears, I'll
slap you again. Regardless of what's
happened, you've got to get out of this store.
I've never seen such a nice mess of
circumstantial evidence as you handed me down in
that window, and I can't turn in an alarm till
you're safe."
  "My prints weren't on that stick," I told
him indignantly. "If you hadn't wiped it off,
the police could tell I'd never touched it. But
maybe you were wiping your own prints off."
  He didn't deny it. "We can go into the
details later," he said. "Right now I've
got to get you out of this."
  "Get her out of what?" asked Sondo's
voice and we both swung guiltily about to see
her standing in the doorway.
  There was no telling how much she might have heard,
with her stealthy way of sneaking up before you were aware
of her. But though her big dark eyes looked
brightly curious, there seemed nothing in them of
suspicion.
  "Hello, Sondo," Bill said. "I've just
been offering a little free advice. Linell
takes on more than her share of work, it seems to
me. Can't your bosses look after their window job
themselves?"
  "It's Linell's job too." Sondo
presented her usual chip-on-the-shoulder
attitude. "Monty can't do everything. And
Tony's no good. Right now he's over in window
display getting gorgeously drunk. You're the
only one he ever listens to, Linell. So how
about coming over and clearing him out?"
  Bill didn't give me a chance to answer.
  "Not tonight," he said. "Linell's in a hurry.
You'll have to get rid of all incidental drunks
yourself."
  He picked up my hat and plunked it on my
head with about as much skill as you'd expect from a
man.
  Sondo said, "Oh, stop playing the dominant
male. I'm talking to Linell, not you. Look--
I don't care if Tony gets fired tomorrow, but
I've got some work to finish and he keeps
cruising through the place getting in the way. And if
he turns mean he may start smashing things."
  Bill had a hand on my arm again and I knew
the way he was squeezing meant that I wasn't to
waste any more time on Sondo. Thanks to his
tender protection I was going to be thoroughly
black-and-blue tomorrow, and the soreness of my
arm didn't make me feel any more amiable
toward him. But there was something else that kept me from
turning down Sondo's request.
  Tony.
  Tony was pretty decent really, and he'd
always been nice to me. But he was reckless and
impulsive and excitable. If the--the body (i
winced from the picture that word brought up) was
discovered and then Tony was found in the store,
drunk and spilling over with indignation against
Monty, it might go hard with him. Tony hadn't
had anything to do with this, of course, and I didn't
want to see him get into a lot of trouble. It would
only take a couple of minutes to collect him
and get him out of the store with us.
  I took off my smock and hung it over the
back of my chair.
  "Come on," I said, "we'll go get
Tony."
  And I started off, with Sondo at my heels,
and Bill reluctantly following. Short of
picking me up by the hair and dragging me off to the
elevators, there wasn't much else he could do.
  Tony was in his office this time and he was still
conversing loudly with his plaster and papier mach`e
dream girl, Dolores.
  "Tony," I said, "we've come to see that you
get started home all right. Be a good guy and
get your hat."
  Tony dazzled me with his smile. "Linell,
honey, this is my home. I like it here. Besides,
I got Dolores now."
  "You see what I have to put up with?" Sondo
said. "Well, I'm going back to work. I leave
him to you."
  She went off and I tried again. "Listen,
Tony, this is serious. It's important that you
go home right away. Please come."
  "Oh, you mean it's important," Tony
said. "That's different, isn't it?"
  Bill started in on me. "Stop wasting time.
I'll give you one more second to persuade him,
and then you're coming if I have to carry you. And I
mean--"
  He stopped and looked around with a listening
expression on his face. "What's that?"
  I knew right away, but I'll admit it had
an eerie sound echoing through those deserted display
rooms. It was the phonograph in Sondo's
workroom. She'd brought it when she first
came to the store and Monty had humored her and
let her play it. She said she could always work
better to music, and though the window decorators
claimed it drove them batty, Sondo's
phonograph could be heard in the department at almost
any hour.
  "It's that damn Bolero!" Tony said.
"Some day I'm going to smash that box to tinders."
  I explained to Bill, and while I was
talking, trying not to listen to the monotonous beat of
the music, something quite dreadful began to happen way
down inside me.
  I began to be terribly aware. Aware of the
fact of murder. Until now shock and hysteria
had held me, but that music was beating right in my
blood. With my mind I knew now that Monty was
dead. Violently, horribly dead. Beaten to
death with a golf club. I couldn't yet cope with the
question of who had done so terrible a thing. I knew
only that I wanted to get away from
Cunningham's as quickly as I could, get home
to the safety of my own apartment, to Helena's
comfortable, soothing presence.
  So the first thing I did was to lose my head. I
put both hands on Tony's shoulders and shook
him as hard as I could.
  "Something awful's happened!" I cried.
"You've got to come right away."
  To my relief he stood up, swaying a little.
  "Okay," he said. "I'll come. But
Dolores is coming too."
  He reached down to gather her up in his arms and
I pictured the three of us trying to walk past the
doorman with one of Cunningham's prize
mannequins in our company.
  "Tony," I said, "Monty's dead." I
felt Bill's warning hand on my arm, but I
didn't care. "Somebody's killed him,
Tony. I tell you he's dead!"
  Tony stared at me and for a second there was no
sound except the maddening drum of the Bolero.
  Then, echoing on the bare floor of the
passageway that led toward the display rooms,
came another. The sharp purposeful sound of
someone walking toward a chosen goal. Not the
clicking heels of a woman, but the heavier tread
of a man.
  I put a hand to my throat. "There's somebody
coming."
  "It's all right," Bill said, but his
eyes were alertly on the door. "We belong here.
We came to talk about that bird and phonograph
attachment for the window. Understand, Tony? That's
all we came to talk about."
  I wobbled and leaned against Bill, with my back
to the door.
  "Sure," Tony said. "That phonograph's
gonna stay too. I left it right there in the
window. I don't care what Montgomery
says--" a shock of realization crossed his
face, a stunned look. He was beginning to get it
too now. "Maybe it won't have to come out.
Maybe--"
  The footsteps had come very close and Bill
broke in breezily. "It's a good idea,
Tony. And the contraption I've rigged up sounds
fine. Ought to pull the crowds just as a novelty."
  Even in my confused state I sensed that Bill
was doing the wrong thing. A few moments ago he
could still have turned in an alarm. But he had
committed us to conspiracy, to silence. It was already
too late to tell.
  The steps had reached the door, but I was too
terrified to look. I tried to read Bill's
face, or even Tony's. But Bill just looked
blank and Tony had his head down and was running a
finger around his collar.
  "'Evening, Miss Wynn," said a drawling
voice. "Hi, Tony."
  I turned around as slowly as I could. The man
in the doorway had been put together on a large
scale. He had massive shoulders and arms, the
profile of a poet, and dark dreamy eyes. His
name, ridiculously, was Sylvester Hering, but he
was not a ridiculous person. Merely a sad
one. He regarded the three of us in mournful
speculation. Ominously mournful speculation.
  "Thought maybe I'd find somebody up here,"
he said as if he did not in the least relish his
discovery. "You ought to go home right away after work,
Miss Wynn. You been looking sort of tired
lately."
  He broke off, listening to the music that came
from Sondo's workroom.
  "That's nice, isn't it?" he said dreamily.
"Swell tune. Dum'-da-de-um. The
Norgaard jane, I suppose?"
  I managed somehow to nod, but my nerves were
screaming. I wanted to bombard him with questions. I
wanted to cry, "Have they found--do they know
--who was it--?" But I just nodded dumbly.
  Hering looked at Tony. "Too bad to
interrupt the concert, but you better go bring her
here."
  Tony walked a little unsteadily to the door and
Hering turned back to me.
  "Sorry to break the news," he said, his brown
eyes concerned, "but Mr. Montgomery's been
murdered. Downstairs in window five. You--you
won't faint, Miss Wynn?"
  I've often wished I could faint. I always
admire heroines in stories who slip into
convenient blackness every time the going gets tough. But
I always stay wide awake and watch the whole
operation. However, I thought it might be just as well
if I clung with touching weakness to the hand he held
out to me. Sylvester Hering was a good friend of mine.
We'd always got on fine together. He often
stopped in my office to chat, and he never seemed
to tire of studying the pictures on my walls.
But of course I'd never had any professional
dealings with him before.
  Sylvester Hering was one of the store
detectives.
              CHAPTER 5

  Somebody turned off the music and Sondo
came back with Tony.
  "Look," she said, "I'd like to get home
sometime tonight. Couldn't you all go have your social
hour somewhere else?" Then she saw Hering and a
certain wariness came into her manner. "Well!
And to what do we owe the pleasure?"
  "It ain't my fault," Hering told her.
"Your boss has got himself bumped off down in
one of the windows."
  Sondo turned a yellowish color and fumbled
for a pack of cigarettes and matches in the
pocket of her smock.
  "You ain't supposed to smoke up here." Hering
was reproachful.
  Sondo lighted her cigarette and blew
smoke insolently in his direction, but her hands were
shaking. "What--what happened?"
  Hering's gloom deepened. "This kind of
matador don't sign his autograph. But
there's a couple of people in this store who never gave
Montgomery no popularity vote."
  "You mean it was--murder?" Her control was
admirable, but I sensed that it was hard
won. And beneath her shock there was already speculation.
I could see it in the swift look she gave
Tony.
  "I might have a candidate to suggest myself," she
said with venomous sweetness.
  "Then you better come downstairs and talk,"
Hering said. "That's what I'm up here for--to round
up anybody in the department. Come on now,
folks, all of you." Then he dropped back beside
me. "Gosh, Miss Wynn, I'm awful
sorry."
  I thought I might as well make good use of
any stand-in I had with the police, so I clung
to the arm he offered me and walked along beside him
toward the elevators. Goodness knows I didn't
have to act. I was upset and frightened and confused.
  The sight of the main floor after closing hours was
no novelty to me, but when I stepped out of the
elevator the whole place seemed strange and
unfamiliar. The lights had been turned down,
of course, dust covers shrouded the stock, and the
store had been put to bed. But it wasn't that which
disturbed me.
  And then it came at me again with a sort of rush
--that awareness I'd experienced upstairs. This
wasn't Cunningham's as I knew it. This was a
place where murder had been committed. Perhaps the
murderer was still in the store. He might be hiding
anywhere. In the shadowy aisle beyond the next
counter. Crouching to--
  "You all right, Miss Wynn?" Hering
inquired anxiously in my ear.
  I tried to nod brightly and he gave me a
look of doubt as we walked toward the one part of the
main floor that had not been put to bed. There the
lights burned brightly and several benches had been
drawn about the doorway to window five. The
Homicide Squad had taken over and the place
was overrun with photographers, fingerprint men,
detectives. A man named McPhail was in
charge and he threw our little group a look
markedly lacking in enthusiasm as we came up.
  I recognized several girls from the jewelry
and perfume counters gathered on one of the benches,
all looking frightened and shocked. It couldn't have
been very quieting to know that a murder had been
committed a few yards away while they went on
with their usual work.
  Helena Farnham was among them and she turned
my way with a question in her eyes. Helena
knew I'd been in that window. I gave her a
stiff smile that was meant to be reassuring and went
over to sit down beside Chris Montgomery.
  Chris was hunched over, sobbing, and a woman I
recognized as Susan Gardner, Owen's wife,
was trying without much success to calm and comfort her.
Susan was one of those vague, colorless people who
make good backgrounds. Nobody ever paid much
attention to her and I'd always wondered why Owen, with
his passion for beauty, had married her.
  She looked up and nodded at me, her pale
blue eyes wide with distress.
  "Perhaps you can do something with her, Miss Wynn,"
she said. "She'll be ill if she doesn't stop
crying."
  I put an arm about the girl's shoulders. "You
mustn't. It doesn't help. They'll be wanting
to question you pretty soon, and you've got to be ready
to answer sensibly."
  Chris jerked her head up and there was very evident
terror mingled with the grief in her face. "But I
don't know anything! I haven't anything to tell.
Oh, Linell, make them let me go home.
Don't they understand that I've just lost my husband?
Don't they--"
  "Hush!" I tightened my grip on her
shoulder, glad to have this task of quieting her. It
helped me get myself in hand and keep a rein on
my own emotions. "This isn't an ordinary death.
That's a terrible thing to face, but we all have to
face it and do what we can to help the police."
  This only brought on a fresh attack of
sobbing, so I gave up and sat patting her
shoulder.
  Another bench had been pulled up and Sondo,
still smoking, had plumped down on it between Bill and
Tony, her scrawny legs crossed and the green
smock hitched carelessly above her knees. It was
impossible for Sondo to fall into a position
remotely resembling feminine grace.
  Tony looked dazed and he was still not entirely
sober. He had slumped down on the end of his
spine, his long legs thrust inconveniently into the
aisle, where everyone who passed had to step over
them.
  Bill was the only one who looked unconcerned
and natural, and I didn't like that a lot. This
wasn't any time to look unconcerned and
natural. He must have felt my eyes upon him for
he held my gaze for just a moment. Not
by so much as a flicker did his expression change,
but somehow there was meaning in his look.
  It said, "Don't worry. You'll get through
all right." But it said something else too, as
plainly as words. It said, "Be careful."
  I gave him a faint nod that meant I
understood and then glanced at Mrs. Gardner over
Chris's bowed head.
  "Who found him?" I whispered.
  She didn't have to ask whom I meant, but her
lips trembled and she tried twice before she
managed to form the words.
  "Owen," she said. "Owen found him."
  That was a bit dismaying. It would have been better
if it had been someone wholly unconcerned. Now
the detectives would trace the enmity between Gardner
and Monty, and the tie-up with Chris. In which case
I couldn't throw Owen to the wolves--I'd have to
tell the truth, explain that he couldn't have had
anything to do with it because Monty had been dead before
Owen Gardner had ever gone to the window. I had
reason to know. It would look pretty bad for me,
considering that I'd rushed off upstairs without giving
the alarm. Bill's well-intended efforts would land
us in hot water yet.
  Just then Gardner stepped down out of the window,
followed by a detective, and McPhail
beckoned to him. The whispering of the sales girls
on the other bench hushed as all attention focused
on McPhail and our fourth floor merchandise
manager.
  I gathered that McPhail felt this was an
inside job. Even though the store had been
filled with customers, it was unlikely that one of
them had stepped into the window and murdered Monty.
Nothing had been stolen from his wallet. While the
customer angle wasn't being overlooked,
probability pointed toward some more revengeful and
personal motive than theft.
  Gardner told briefly about coming down to the
window, looking for Montgomery, and described
finding the body.
  "Why did you want to see him?" McPhail
asked.
  Gardner was holding himself in check, but a
muscle in his cheek twitched. "Why shouldn't I?
There's a decided tie-up between my department and
window display."
  For the first time I noticed that Sylvester Hering
had taken up a stand across the aisle at the
perfume counter. His huge arms leaned alarmingly
on the fragile glass of a showcase, and his
attention seemed concentrated lovingly on the
glittering display of bottles and vials. But his
ears were missing nothing of what went on, for without
shifting his rapt gaze, he spoke to
McPhail.
  "There ain't no tie-up with that golf window and
Mr. Gardner's department. He don't handle
sport stuff."
  "Nevertheless," said Gardner, "I had business
to discuss with Mr. Montgomery. I was not at
all satisfied with the evening gown display he gave
me in the corner window. That was a botched-up
job, if ever I saw one."
  "So you didn't like Montgomery?"
McPhail caught him up.
  "Certainly I didn't like him. But I'd
scarcely murder a man because I disapproved of the
way he displayed my goods. If that's what you
mean to imply."
  "I'm not implying anything," McPhail
snapped. "I'm just trying to get the set-up
here."
  There was a movement beside me and I realized that
Chris was sitting up now, her attention wholly
concentrated on her father. Gardner looked her way
and his face softened.
  "My daughter was married to Michael
Montgomery two weeks ago," he said. "I
was ready on that account to let our difference be
bygones."
  McPhail called to a detective who was
taking everything down. "Got it all?"
  The man nodded and McPhail went to stand before the
line of nervous sales girls. My thoughts were
busy elsewhere and I didn't listen. Owen
hadn't been entirely honest with McPhail.
When I'd talked to him in the afternoon he hadn't
been so strong for this burying of differences. I could
recall much too clearly how angry he'd
looked, I could remember the threatening violence in
his manner and tone.
  When I began to follow McPhail's
progress again I saw that he was questioning the group of
girls from the perfume and costume jewelry
counters. They worked nearest to window five. Had
they observed who went in and out of the window?
  He wasn't getting anywhere. The perfume
girls had been busy on the far side of
the counter and had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
The sale in costume jewelry had taken the
energy and attention of the jewelry girls, so that
they'd had time for nothing else. Besides, as one
girl explained, the comings and goings of the window
decorators were routine and easily went
unnoticed.
  I held my breath when Helena was questioned, but
she said nothing of those lapel pins or the fact that
I'd gone into the window, and she carefully avoided
any glance in my direction. I was only
slightly relieved. Sooner or later I was
going to be dragged into this and the fact that I'd been in
the window would come out. There was that borrow sheet with
my name signed to it, for one thing. It might be
better for Helena if she told the truth.
  Tony Salvador came up for questioning next and
my uneasiness and suspense increased. For once
Tony was moving cautiously. Some realization of
his own peril must have made its way through the fog,
because he carefully avoided all mention of his
quarrel with Monty.
  Sure he'd worked in the window that afternoon. That was
his job. But he'd left before Monty did and had
gone back upstairs. He'd been up in window
display ever since. I glanced at Sondo and
saw that she was intently watching the whole
procedure. She knew about that quarrel and she had
no love for Tony Salvador, but evidently
she meant to bide her time.
  During Tony's recital one of the fingerprint
men came out of the window and spoke to McPhail.
  "We've covered the ground pretty thoroughly.
Not much to go on. There's dozens of assorted
prints all over everything except the one thing that
counts. Somebody wiped off the shaft of that broken
golf club."
  Tony forgot his caution. "What golf
club?" he asked suddenly.
  Immediately suspicious, McPhail said, "I
suppose you don't know how it was done?"
  "You mean--" Tony was sober enough now and
plainly shocked. "You mean they--whoever it was--
used a broken golf stick?"
  "That's right," snapped McPhail. "What do
you know about it? What do you know about that club?"
  Tony's finger tugged at his collar. "Me?
I don't know anything about it. Just that there were golf
clubs in the window. I put 'em there myself.
Linell--Miss Wynn knows about that. I
phoned her right after I left the window and told
her to finish up with the accessories. She's been
doing that a lot lately." He turned and looked
at me. "You did take care of that job,
didn't you? Say--to was
  He stopped short and I could almost read his
thoughts. Not until that moment had he recalled that
I had told him Monty was murdered, or
wondered how I'd known. But he'd made that
dangerous connection now and if he betrayed the
fact to McPhail, I was in for it.
  "That's all I know about it," he said.
"Montgomery was alive when I left the
window."
  Sondo snorted, but when McPhail glanced
her way, she pretended to be blowing her nose.
  The detective wasn't satisfied with
Tony, but after all this was merely a preliminary
investigation.
  He said, "I'll come back to you later. Which
one is Miss Wynn?"
  I took my arm from about Chris's shoulders and
braced myself for what was ahead.
  "I'm Miss Wynn," I said.
  McPhail's eyes were cold and hard. The letter
of the law might read that a man was innocent until
proved guilty, but this man saw guilt wherever
he looked. It was difficult not to feel guilty
with his suspicion probing into my soul. I blinked
in spite of myself and shifted my gaze, and I could
sense McPhail's satisfaction in beating me
down in even this small way.
  There was a moment of silence in which I was sharply
aware of the minute details of my surroundings.
Aware of a jumble of sounds and voices from the
window, aware of the bright lights, the scent of
perfume from across the aisle, of McPhail
waiting, playing cat and mouse.
  Then it began.
  As simply and quickly as I could I told of
coming down to the window. Yes, it was my job to look
over accessories, to make selections and last
minute touches. I told about choosing the lapel
pins--without mentioning Helena--of going through my
routine work in the window. I even remembered that
queer sense of being watched and told him about that.
  He pounced on it right away, but when I
couldn't produce anything substantial concerning the
experience, he dismissed it impatiently.
  I said I'd gone right back upstairs
when I was through and that I hadn't seen Monty at
all. I left Bill out entirely.
  McPhail looked as if he hadn't believed
a single word I'd told him, but that seemed to be
his attitude toward all witnesses anyway.
He did check on whether it was possible to enter and
leave the window without discovering Monty's body,
found that it could have happened, and was about to let me go.
  But right then Hering chose to lift his unhappy
gaze from the array of perfume bottles and turn
it my way.
  "You got to know it sometime," he said
despondently. "Up to a couple of weeks or
so ago, Miss Wynn was engaged to
Montgomery."
  He looked so unhappy that I felt sorry
for him. He hadn't wanted to give me away.
Not that it mattered. I was relieved, really, to have
the whole thing out. Hering went back to regarding the
perfume bottles with an air of tragedy.
  This time I was in for it. McPhail's questions were
like machine-gun fire. Why had the engagement been
broken? Had we quarreled? Had I known
Monty was interested in the Gardner girl? Then
back over the window routine again in an effort to
trip me, followed by a new barrage of questions.
  It was pretty unpleasant and after a while it
got so monotonous it was almost numbing. I was
terribly afraid my mind would just go off to sleep
and I'd begin to give all the wrong answers. I
didn't dare so much as glance at Bill. I had
to stand on my own feet and get through as best I
could.
  McPhail left me, finally, unsatisfied,
but unable to wring any incriminating evidence from me.
  There was a break now in the questioning. The
photographers were through in the window, the Coroner
had made his examination and stated that Montgomery
had been dead no more than an hour.
  Two men carried a stretcher past us and Chris
screamed hysterically and clutched at me. I
tightened my arm about her and hid my face against
her hair. That was a bad moment for me too. No
matter what Monty had done or been, he had
paid for everything now, more than even he deserved.
  I didn't look up again until one of the
detectives came out of the window and held something
out to McPhail.
  "What do you make of this?" he asked.
"Montgomery had it clutched tight in his
right fist."
  McPhail took the small circlet of
gold and examined it curiously. Then he came
over and held it out on his palm before Chris and
me.
  "Ever see this before, either of you? Did it belong
to Montgomery?"
  I looked closely at the ring. It was of
yellow gold, with worn, antique carving on the
wide band. The prongs of the setting were bent, the
stone was missing, and there was no way to tell whether
it had been lost long before, or broken off
recently. It must have been an unusually large
stone. The ring might have been a woman's, or a
man's little finger ring.
  "If it was Monty's I never saw it before,"
I told McPhail, and Chris, between whimpers,
disclaimed all knowledge of it too.
  McPhail passed it about the entire circle,
but no one admitted to recognizing it. All of which
annoyed him extremely. He gave orders that
the window be carefully searched to see if the stone
could be found. And then he turned his attention to
Chris.
  The girl promptly went to pieces again and for a
few minutes nothing could be got out of her at
all. It was Bill Thorne who brought order out
of the emotional chaos. Probably he had learned
by practicing on me.
  He went over, put his hands on her shoulders,
and shook her. There is something decidedly startling
about being suddenly shaken or slapped by a nice young
man you've always considered quite mild-tempered.
Chris reacted just as I had. Her mouth dropped
open in shocked surprise. But Bill's eyes
were kind.
  "We all know how you feel, Chris," he
said. "But you're a big girl now. You've got
to sit up here and answer all Mr.
McPhail's questions. He doesn't want to
hurt you. He only wants to get at the
truth."
  The soothing voice stopped her hiccoughing sobs.
She actually sat up and faced McPhail with
an effort at self-control.
  He repeated the questions he had asked and she
answered them in a voice so low that sometimes it was
difficult to catch her words. But the picture she
was giving wasn't exactly true to the character of
Michael Montgomery as I had known
him.
  I felt a little sick. It was dismaying to
realize that one human being could so trick and fool
another. But Chris held firmly to her
idealizing and it wasn't until McPhail
brought her to an accounting of her actions that day, that
she began to falter. It was a stubborn faltering,
however, as if she were trying to evade something which
terrified her.
  "My reason for going to Miss Wynn's
office hasn't anything to do with what has
happened," she said. "I won't talk about it.
You can't make me."
  He saw the signs of returning hysteria and
left the subject hastily. "All right, go on.
We just want to know what you did next."
  "I went down to the fourth floor to see father,"
Chris continued. "I talked to him for a few
moments and then I went down the escalator to the
waiting room on third to meet mother. We were all
going to have dinner together."
  "And then?" McPhail prompted.
  Chris waved her hands vaguely. "Why--why
that's all. We went downstairs. We--were just
looking around at things, and all of a sudden somebody
came running up to tell us about Monty and--"
she broke off and her head went down on my
shoulder.
  Hering interrupted again, gently, sorrowfully.
  "I was up in the waiting room," he
explained. "I had to get some stamps for a letter and
I had to stick around a while before the girl at the
desk could wait on me. I guess I've got
a kind of photographic memory. I mean,
I see a thing and it sticks."
  "Okay, okay," McPhail broke in
impatiently. "What did you see that stuck?"
  "Mrs. Gardner was up there all right," Hering
said. "But she was alone. She was alone all the time
I was there. She kept looking at her watch, and
then after a while she got up and went off. Miss
Gard--Mrs. Montgomery never came to meet
her at all."
  There was a faint sound from one of the opposite
benches and I looked across to see Sondo leaning
forward, her eyes upon Chris. There was a burning
intensity in them that startled me. Then she became
aware of my regard and relaxed, with her usual
wry smile.
  McPhail appeared anything but pleased
with Hering's contribution. Nobody would let this thing
go through to a smooth, logical finish. Somebody
always had to gum up the works. But there was no help
for it. He had to follow the new tack.
  "Well?" he demanded of Chris. "What have you
got to say to that?"
  But Chris was having hysterics again--on my
shoulder.

              CHAPTER 6

  McPhail was ready to give up. "You'd
better take her home and put her to bed. I'll
talk to her tomorrow when she's feeling better. Then
maybe she can explain why her story doesn't
match our friend Hering's. Or maybe you can
explain it, Mrs. Gardner?"
  There was heavy sarcasm in his voice and Susan
started. But she showed more presence of mind than one
would have expected.
  "I--I think I can," she faltered. "The
reason Mr. Hering didn't see Chris come up
to me in the waiting room, was because we didn't
meet till I reached the escalator and found her
coming down. That would have been out of even Mr.
Hering's photographic range, I'm
afraid."
  I looked at her in surprise. Susan
Gardner had returned the detective's sarcasm
with a gentle variety of her own. McPhail
wasn't noticing, however. The look he gave
Hering was anything but complimentary and the store
detective's gloom deepened by another
degree.
  Bill, next in the questioning, was disposed of quickly
enough. He explained that he'd come to see
Montgomery about some special figures he'd
wanted for a window. The display manager was out of the
department and he'd waited in his office. No, he
couldn't say much about who had come and gone in the
department while he'd been there. He'd talked
to Sondo Norgaard briefly. Once the phone
in the connecting office had rung and he'd heard
Sondo answer it. But for the most part he couldn't
say who'd been on the premises. Later he'd
given up waiting for Monty and had come over to my
office just for something to do.
  He got through smoothly and easily, skirting
all quicksands. For once McPhail actually
seemed to believe what was being said, and there
went our last chance to make a clean breast of
things. Bill hadn't been telling the whole truth
any more than I had. And how many others?
  Sondo was last on the list and I sat up to
listen with interest. Here came trouble, if I
knew a storm signal when I saw one.
Sondo knew all about Tony's quarrel with
Monty, and I'd caught a look in her eyes
once or twice that made me suspect she
might know a few other things too.
  But Sondo was in anything but a manageable
mood. She showed no proper respect for the law
and McPhail disliked her on the spot.
  "Just what was your relationship with Montgomery?"
he barked.
  Sondo recrossed her legs, managing to
convey an insult to majesty by the length of time it
took. "What do you mean, relationship? He was
my boss."
  "Oh, sure," McPhail said. "You know
what I mean. What did you think of him? How
did you like him?"
  "Very much." Sondo's tone was bland. "He was
a very brilliant and capable man."
  I expected her to go on and drop a few
disparagements about Tony, but she let the
opportunity pass. McPhail led her through the
usual maze of questions and she answered
impertinently whenever impertinence was possible, but not
a word did she say about the feud in window
display. She said she'd been in her workroom all
afternoon, and admitted cheerfully that she couldn't
prove it.
  I thought of that moment when I'd gone to Tony's
workroom and had passed Sondo's door without
looking in. The light had been on, but her
phonograph was silent. Had she really been there
or not?
  McPhail questioned her about answering the window
display phone while Bill was waiting for
Monty. She dismissed the call as routine
business, but it seemed to me that an odd flicker
came into her eyes.
  Whatever she knew, she wasn't telling. I
think McPhail would have enjoyed getting something on
her, but her answers were glib and gave nothing
away.
  Hering sauntered back from an excursion into the
window.
  "She said upstairs she might have a
candidate for murderer," he told McPhail.
  "Well," said McPhail. "If you know
anything, Miss Norgaard, this is the time to
spill it."
  But Sondo smiled venomously and disclaimed knowledge
of anything. She'd just been talking. She didn't
know a thing.
  McPhail was disgusted with the whole affair, and
particularly tired of Sondo.
  "Did they find the stone from that ring yet?" he
asked Hering.
  The store detective shook his head
gloomily.
  McPhail glanced around at the rest of us.
"Now look, all of you. What's happened here this
afternoon is bad business and you're not any of you
clear of suspicion. So no skipping out of
town, see, or you'll land in jail. You can all
go home now and report back to your jobs in the
morning. I'll let you know when I want you to
answer more questions. Some of you will be called for the
inquest."
  A sudden commotion started at the other end of the
store. Several large, important-looking
gentlemen were advancing down the middle aisle with the
air of a parade. Sondo caught my eye and
winked.
  "The heavenly hosts themselves? Do you suppose
we'd better get down and salaam?"
  The procession was headed by Mr. Cunningham,
president of the store, flanked on each side
by the first and second vice-presidents
respectively and it was apparent that he had been
thoroughly affronted.
  A murder had been committed in his beautiful
store. Murders were not good for business. Murders
were definitely low, messy, and uncharacteristic of the
high Cunningham level of quality. The man
who had been murdered was a valued employee of the
store; a man who had been imported some months
before at considerable expense. Mr. Cunningham was
in a very critical mood. He looked around at
us lesser mortals as if he'd have preferred to
part with the whole lot, rather than to lose
Montgomery.
  McPhail had evidently met executives
before. He sighed and signaled to Owen Gardner.
"You had better stay a while. The rest of you can
go."
  We went willingly enough.
  Near the door Tony put a hand on my
elbow to draw me quietly aside.
  "Thanks for trying to get me out of the store,"
he whispered. "I won't be asking you any questions,
see? And I won't be answering any either.
Whatever you do is okay by me."
  It was a promise of secrecy and I hated
to be in a position to have to accept it. Sondo's
eyes were upon us suspiciously, so I gave
Tony a nod of thanks and went over to join
Bill.
  As I came up, Bill said, "I've got
my car outside. Suppose I drive you and
Miss Farnham home?"
  In spite of the suspicions about Bill that had
flashed through my mind, I was relieved. We were
certainly in no state to take a bus. And
probably Bill's connection with the whole thing was
innocent. Strain and shock had made me
suspicious in a direction where I'd never have
entertained a doubt in a more normal frame of
mind. At least those were the arguments I used on the
ride home.
  He came up to the apartment with us and suggested that
he be fed a sandwich or two. That was the first time
Helena and I thought about the fact that we hadn't
had supper. But even when we thought about it, we
weren't hungry, and it took Bill's bullying
to get us out to the kitchen.
  It was queer how matter-of-factly we were
behaving by that time. I suppose the human mind cannot
live intensely through a period of horror without
becoming somewhat numbed. In spite of all I'd
endured since the discovery of Monty's body,
I think I accepted the fact of murder only in
brief flashes of realization. The rest of the time
I was too confused to face the enormity of what
had happened.
  Just the same, it was I who voiced the question that was
in all our minds.
  "Bill," I said, buttering rye bread
automatically. "Who do you think--"
  He shook his head at me. "Better let it
go for a while. You've had a nasty shock. Can't
we talk about something else?"
  There was a heavy silence in which we all tried
to think of something else--anything at all. And
couldn't. Then Helena looked up from arranging
slices of cold meat on a plate and asked a
point-blank question.
  "Did you find him when you went into the window,
Linell?"
  I had a bad moment as remembrance swept
back, but my mind was weary of horror. There was
no use trying to keep the truth from Helena.
  "Yes," I said. "I found him and Bill
found me. Then Bill rushed me off upstairs and
we've each been suspecting the other ever since."
  Bill helped himself to the makings of a sandwich and
took a bite. "You can see what a nice
tidbit that would make for McPhail. And it
wouldn't help the case any for him to know."
  Helena's silence seemed a little ominous and I
dropped my butter knife in anxiety.
  "You don't think we--we ought to--" I
began, but she cut in on me.
  "I don't very well see how you can now.
Bill's right that it wouldn't help. But I was just
thinking how much worse it may be for you if it comes
out later on."
  She'd finished with the plate and was standing there
examining the palm of one hand absently.
Helena's hands were lovely. They hadn't aged as
her face had, and as I went shakily past her
to get the coffee from the stove, I saw a long red
scratch which ran down one finger and clear across the
palm.
  "Heavens!" I said. "How did you do that?"
  She started, as if she hadn't been aware that
she was looking at the scratch. Then she shrugged.
  "One of the girls from upstairs came back to
exchange a pin she didn't like. One of us was
clumsy and that's what happened."
  "You'd better put something on it," I told
her, but I doubt if she heard me.
  She went on looking at her hand as if she were
really seeing that scratch for the first time. And an odd
look came into her face, as if she were
remembering something. But whatever it was, she
evidently didn't mean to talk about it. She
picked up the plate and carried it into the living
room where we'd set up a card table for our
impromptu supper.
  "I'd hate to be in McPhail's shoes
tonight," Bill said as we sat down. "This is going
to be smeared all over the front pages tomorrow, and
he has a good portion of the city of Chicago to
choose from in selecting the murderer."
  "I thought he was going to discard the outsider
theory," I put in.
  Bill shook his head. "He can't discard
anything, though the chances are that whoever did this is
someone who hated Monty. Somebody he'd
hurt. Somebody reasonably close to him."
  "That would tie in the store," I said. "His
personal life was pretty much connected with it,
I think."
  We couldn't keep from speculating to save our
souls. In a moment we were deep in discussion. I
began checking over the people who had strongly disliked
Monty.
  "There's Tony," I said. "And of course Owen
Gardner. Monty wasn't exactly popular,
but most of the boys in window display got along with
him all right, I think. Besides, everybody up there
went home early today except Tony and
Sondo."
  "H'm," Bill said. "Well, McPhail
will check their alibis fast enough. What about his
secretary?"
  I shook my head. "Not Monty's type.
Plain and efficient. And anyway, she's gone
home to be with her mother. She left last week.
But there must be more than one woman in Monty's
past who had reason to detest him."
  "That's a green field," Bill said. "Now
we've got half the country to choose from. He's
worked in stores all over the east and middle
west."
  Helena made her contribution. "Linell
didn't list that office boy of hers. He
didn't sound very fond of Monty this afternoon."
  That was funny. I hadn't thought of Keith
since he'd walked out the door of my office.
Yet he had his small place in the pattern
too and McPhail would probably get around to
talking to him in the morning. But to think of Keith as
a possible murderer was absurd and I said an
emphatic no to that.
  "Just the same," Bill said, "we'll put his
name on the list. He's a queer egg, to say the
least. And there's another name. Yours, Linell."
  I choked over my coffee and put my cup
down with a hand that shook.
  Helena said, "Don't tease her like that," and
Bill reached over and gave my hand a friendly
pat.
  "Don't take it too hard," he told me.
"Just to show you I'm open-minded, I'll put my
name down too." And he actually took a
notebook from his pocket and wrote down the names.
"Now then--where does Sondo fit in? She was
sticking up for Monty with McPhail. That mean
anything?"
  I tried to focus my mind on Sondo, but
my thoughts had a tendency to gallop off in four
directions at once.
  "I don't know," I said. "She always seemed
to get along all right with him. It was Tony she
disliked. If Sondo was going to murder
anybody, I'd expect it to be Tony."
  He put down Sondo's name with a question mark after
it.
  "Anyway," he said, "there's something she's not
telling. Did you see how suspiciously she
watched everybody? She was a clam with
McPhail, but I have a feeling that she has a
finger on some point that wasn't brought out."
  I bit into a sandwich that seemed to have no taste,
and swallowed only because I felt I ought to.
  "Where does Chris fit in?" I demanded.
  Helena passed Bill his fifth sandwich. There
was nothing wrong with his appetite.
  "Does Chris belong on your list at all?"
she asked. "She seems a sweet girl and she
was certainly broken up over this. I felt
sorry for her when McPhail was hammering
away."
  "Oh, I didn't mean as the murderer," I
explained hastily. "She was in love with Monty
all right. But it was queer about that waiting room
business. And there's certainly something troubling
her."
  I was watching Bill as I spoke. That
interest of his in Chris--what did it amount to?
  "Non-suspect," he said. "We can't use
her at all. I was sorry for her today too. She
looked so different from the happy kid who won that
dress design contest a year ago. Remember,
Linell?"
  "Of course I remember. National
recognition, with her picture in papers all
over the country."
  But I was feeling hurt, and even a little frightened
that Bill should put my name on the list and so
readily eliminate Chris Montgomery's.
  All our nerves were in a jittery state by that
time, so when the doorbell shrilled suddenly, the
three of us jumped up in alarm.
  I got to the door first and opened it to
Chris. Her yellow frock was rumpled and her
eyes red. She flung herself past me into the room
as if pursuing hordes were on her heels.
  "I had to come!" she cried. "Oh, Linell,
I couldn't go home tonight till I'd said what I
came to your office to say this afternoon."
  It was Helena who took charge in her usual
capable manner. She settled Chris beside Bill
on the couch and took away her purse and
gloves.
  "I'll get you a cup of coffee," she said and
went to the kitchen.
  "Take it easy, kid," Bill told her.
"Where did you leave the others?"
  "Susan stayed to wait for father," Chris said.
"But I couldn't stand it there in the store any
longer, so I slipped out on my own and took a
bus over here."
  Helena came back with the coffee and Chris
sipped it, becoming slightly less wilted.
  "Linell," she went on earnestly, "I
wanted you to know that it was really you Monty loved.
I--I think he hated me. If I hadn't
been so blind and selfish and--"
  I patted her hand. "We've been over this
before. You mustn't go on reproaching yourself. I know
how charming and compelling Monty could be when he
chose, but I'm afraid I haven't much belief
in his ability to have loved anyone but himself."
  Chris shook her head. "Oh, but he did
love you. He even told me he did. That's
what I wanted you to know. I thought it might make
all this a little easier for you to bear."
  I knew it cost her something to tell me and I
was touched. I was shocked, too. What a talent
for sadism Monty had had to marry the child
deliberately and then tell her that he loved me.
And why had he done such a thing?
  "Chris dear," I said, "you must try to understand
that I haven't been in love with Monty for a long
time. We were moving toward a break-up and he
knew it as well as I. So stop worrying about
how you may have hurt me."
  I was aware of quickening interest on Bill's
part, but Chris's expression was blank. It was
evident that the idea of anyone falling out of love
with Monty had never occurred to her.
  "Sometimes in the last couple of weeks I've
hated him as much as I loved him," she said in a
puzzled tone. "But it was love and hate
all mixed up together in some queer way and it
wouldn't let me go," she paused. "I mean after
--I found out."
  "Found out what?" Bill asked.
  She started to answer, then stopped. "I can't
talk about that. I mean I really can't explain.
But I don't want you to think I'm completely
a fool. All those things I was telling
McPhail--I didn't believe them really.
I just had to say them for him."
  "You mean about believing Monty was such a
wonderful person?" I asked.
  "Yes." She looked very young and very sad. "I
couldn't believe in him the way I did before. Not
after the last two weeks. But, Linell, it
didn't matter. I don't care how bad he
was, or how cruel--I loved him anyway.
I always will. I guess I've got a lot of
my mother in me after all."
  She sat up very straight on the edge of the couch.
Her face, with its youthful prettiness, looked
suddenly older, more adult, and there was the shadow of
deep unhappiness in her eyes.
  I was puzzled. Somehow this older aspect of
Chris didn't fit in with what I knew of the rather
vapid Susan Gardner. She saw my
bewilderment.
  "Didn't you know, Linell? Susan isn't
my real mother. She's been wonderful to me and I
love her dearly, but she's not my mother."
  I think we were all a little surprised and there was
a silence before Chris went on, groping
uncertainly for words to explain.
  "My own mother ran off before I was two years
old. With some man. Father hasn't ever talked about
it much, but he's told me a little. He says the
man was no good at all. But mother must have loved him
to do a thing like that. She must have loved him the way I
loved Monty, who wasn't any good either. That's
what I mean about being like her. I guess I even
resemble her a little, though I'm fair like father and
she was dark. I found an old picture of her a
while ago and it looked almost like a picture of
me, the way I look now."
  Chris's inclination toward hysteria had passed,
but it wasn't good for her to go on this way, brooding
over past tragedy, magnifying the present.
Helena and I exchanged glances and then she
spoke to Bill.
  "Why don't you drive Chris
home? She ought to get to bed as soon as
possible."
  "Of course," Bill said. "Come on, kid.
You're staying at your father's aren't you?"
  Chris nodded. "Oh, yes. I couldn't bear
to go back to that awful, empty apartment of
Monty's."
  Helena brought her things, but Chris stopped, as
if there were something more she wanted to say. Even though
her emotions were under control, strain was visible in every
line of her face. Strain that had its roots in
fear.
  "You see," she said to me, "father's had such a
bad time that I--I don't ever want anything to
hurt him again. She made him unhappy. My
mother, I mean. And I've made him unhappy
by marrying Monty. So now all I want is to
try to make it up to him. For everything."
  "I understand," I assured her, though I
didn't quite. There was something I couldn't put my
finger on. Something that left me faintly uneasy.
But I patted her arm soothingly. "Get a good
sleep. And drop in to see me next time you're
downtown."
  Bill said, "Call me out at Universal
tomorrow, Linell, if anything new comes up at the
store."
  There was a moment in which Bill and I looked at
each other and I knew that we were friends. Allies.
He didn't want to suspect me, any more than
I wanted to suspect him. The realization was
comforting.
  I don't know why my mind chose that particular
instant to fly off at a tangent and recover a
memory that had slipped from me entirely. But
without any warning at all, the picture was there,
sharp and clear. The picture of myself in the window,
going through certain motions.
  "The golf stick!" I gasped. "Oh,
Bill, the golf stick!"
  "What about it?" he asked.
  "The other half--the part they didn't find. I
had it in my hands. My fingerprints are on it!"
  And I told them about trying to clean up the
window; about picking up the upper half of that stick
and thrusting it into the golf bag just to get it out of
sight. A hiding place that would be discovered
sooner or later. And if they checked my
fingerprints--to 
  Bill shook his head at me
despairingly. "That makes it all a bit
worse. Maybe instead of trying to put what's
happened out of our minds--which isn't possible
anyway--we'd all better turn our wits to the
business of discovering the real murderer, before someone
innocent is blamed."
  Helena had put an arm about me because I'd
started to shake again and I leaned against her.
  "There's something else too!" I cried.
"Something I'd forgotten all about. You know that ring
McPhail was so puzzled over? I think I must
have found the stone to that. Or a piece of it
anyway. I picked a fragment of something from the
carpet in the window, but I thought it was a broken
bit of costume jewelry. If it was the stone from
that ring, perhaps it's important."
  "What did you do with it?" Bill asked.
  I could remember the very feel of the thing in my
fingers. It had been smooth, but jagged on one
side from the break. I could remember the careless
movement of my hand as I put it away.
  "It's in my smock pocket," I said. "I
left the smock hanging over the chair in my
office."
  "Good," Bill said. "Get it the first thing in the
morning and take it to McPhail. It's likely
it does mean something. And try to get some rest
tonight."
  Then Helena closed the door and we had the
apartment to ourselves. I walked around restlessly,
desperately, for all my weariness.
  "Helena," I said, "who could possibly
have--"
  She cut me off at once. "No more
supposing tonight. Let the police do the worrying.
You've had a terrible day and I'm a bit limp
myself. To bed we go."
  Later, in the bedroom I shared with Helena,
all the awful pictures began to return, and the
pounding of all those unanswered questions. I lay there
for a long while, with my eyes closed against the soft
darkness, listening to the rain against the windows.
  Monty's death must have been the climax of some
secret story the rest of us had yet to read. But
it wasn't an ending in itself. It was the beginning of a
new story in which all of us who had been close
to him in any way must now play our unwilling
parts. A story filled with terror and uncertainty
and despair. These things followed murder as
surely as night followed day. Tomorrow the
new chapter would begin. What would be my place in
it? When would the part I'd already played come to
light?
  I tossed for a long while on my pillow before
I dropped off into a dream-haunted sleep.

              CHAPTER 7

  The next morning I overslept and Helena was
considerate enough not to wake me. She was gone when I
got out of bed, but she'd left a newspaper on
the dresser for me to see. The murder of Michael
Montgomery had hit Chicago's front
pages.
  It had hit Cunningham's, too. Hit it
hard. The minute I walked in the store that
Wednesday morning, I sensed the nervous
excitement. I was aware of it as the chatter hushed
when I stepped into the elevator. The few good
mornings which greeted me were packed with unspoken
questions. I responded when necessary and tried to ignore
the eyes I was sure were boring into my back.
  How many of these people, I wondered, were connecting
me with Monty's murder? How many were saying to
each other, "Well, he threw her over,
didn't he? A woman scorned, you know!" And
if they were wondering about me now, how would it be if
they ever learned what I was hiding?
  But the thing uppermost in my mind at the moment was
that bit of something I'd picked up in the window and
which might be part of the stone missing from the ring Monty
had held clutched in his hand. I meant to get it
from the pocket of my smock at once and I
walked quickly as I left the elevator.
  The door of my office stood open, as always.
There was nothing of value there and I never bothered
to lock it at night. Keith hadn't come in yet
and I walked straight to my chair.
  The smock was gone.
  My first thought was that I must have hung it somewhere
else. The hook behind the door perhaps. Another
instant and I would have turned, but in that instant some
faint sound reached me and I knew I was not alone
in the room. Knew, with horror running like ice
water through my veins, that something waited for me behind
the door.
  And then, before I could recover the power of
movement, there came a rush from behind me. Something
caught me a heavy awkward blow behind the ear and
I pitched forward across my desk,
stunned and groggy.
  I wasn't out cold. The blow, though struck
with desperate intent, had glanced off the thick
padding of my hair. I could hear the thud of
footsteps down the corridor, yet I couldn't
summon the will to move or scream. I seemed to
be swimming through space without being able to make the
effort to return to a more solid world.
  Then heavy hands were pulling me up from the desk,
shaking me. I started frantically to struggle,
thinking that my assailant had come back. But the
hands held me firmly and squeezed me back
to consciousness. As the red mist cleared from before my
eyes, I realized that the hands belonged to
Sylvester Hering and that he was muttering over me in
concern.
  I stood on my feet for an instant and then
collapsed in a chair.
  Hering bent over me anxiously. "You all right
now, Miss Wynn? What happened? You
faint?"
  "No," I told him, "No!" The throbbing
lump behind my ear didn't help to clarify my
thoughts.
  "Somebody hit me," I said. "Somebody
hit me and ran away!"
  Hering took one look at the lump and then
rushed off down the corridor in the direction
I'd indicated. I felt that search would be
useless. Whoever it was would have had time to make the
stairway by now and lose himself in the store. I
looked about my small office, trying to force my
mind to function.
  It was the sight of my flowered smock on the
floor behind the door that whipped me back to full
consciousness. I leaned over dizzily and picked
it up, searched the pockets with trembling fingers.
  The stone from the ring was gone.
  Hering came back, shaking his head. "Couldn't
find nobody. Don't you know who it was?"
  "No," I said. "But I think I know what
he wanted."
  I told him about the stone I'd dropped into the
pocket of my smock, and he picked up the
phone on my desk to try to get in touch with
McPhail. But the detective was off on some
hunt of his own. Hering reported what had
happened and left word for McPhail to call the
store.
  When he hung up, I pointed to the
floor. "Look. That must have been what hit
me."
  There was a shelf halfway up the wall and on
it had stood a pair of small onyx book ends
from Mexico. One of them lay on its side on
the floor. Hering picked it up carefully, using
a handkerchief.
  "Looks like it all right. Let's see that
bump." He examined my bruises. "That'll
hurt for a while. But you got off easy. Skin's
not even broken. Your hair's thick and a book
end ain't the handiest slugger in the world. How you
feel now?"
  "My head hurts," I said. "But I'll be
all right."
  "Then maybe it's a good thing it happened," he
told me solemnly.
  "What do you mean?"
  He shrugged heavy shoulders. "Look, Miss
Wynn, I'm your friend."
  "Of course," I said. "Thank you."
  "That's why I want to tip you off. You watch
your step. There's a lot of people in this store who've
been plenty mad at Montgomery at one time
or another. But you got the motive. A better
one than anybody else. McPhail could make
things pretty hot if he got anything on you.
Maybe this attack kind of lets you out. So
maybe it's a good thing."
  I pressed my fingers against throbbing temples.
  "Look, Miss Wynn," Hering went on,
"if you think you can stay on the job today, it might
be better to keep still about this. Not go blabbing it around
right away. Watch how people act. See if
anybody looks surprised to see you okay, or
gives himself away."
  I nodded. I was willing to keep still about the
affair. The news would bring half the floor around
me in sympathy and I felt I wanted most of
all to be let alone.
  "Well," Hering said, folding his handkerchief
tenderly about the book end, "guess I'll take
this over to the fingerprint boys. Oh--that's what I
was coming to tell you. That you're supposed to go get
fingerprinted."
  "Fingerprinted?" Sickness flashed through me as
I remembered that golf club.
  "Yeah. Over in window display. Mr.
Cunningham's got a few pals among the
higherups and he put up an awful yowl
about pulling a flock of people off their jobs and taking
'em over to headquarters to get fingerprinted. What
with the publicity and all. So to keep him quiet
they're doing it over here."
  "When's the inquest to be?" I asked.
  "They were going to hold it today," Hering
explained, "but McPhail asked for a continuance,
so the Coroner's set it for Monday. This is a
screwy case. Too many witnesses.
McPhail wants to get 'em all rounded up
before the inquest. Well, I gotta run along.
You think you'll be okay now?"
  I gave him a stiff smile. "I think so.
Whoever it was got what he wanted. I don't
think he'll come back."
  "Mm," said Hering. "Unless he thinks you
might have seen him. Then he might want to finish
off the job."
  And with that cheerful thought, he left.
  Nothing seemed real or solid any more. I
wasn't even very frightened as yet. Too many things
that simply couldn't happen had happened, and my
mind hadn't gotten used to accepting them.
  Someone had killed Monty. Someone had hidden
in my office and struck me down. And a fragment
of stone was gone from my smock. There--there lay the
clue. Who had known where I'd put the stone?
  There were just three people. Helena, Bill,
Chris.
  Helena had left before I had this morning. She
would have had plenty of time to slip upstairs to my
office before I arrived to get the stone from my
smock. But Helena was my friend.
  As for Bill and Chris--I'd come down after the
store opened. Anyone at all could have walked in
among the customers and come upstairs unchecked
ahead of me. But it couldn't be Bill. It
couldn't be! I wasn't going to think again those
ridiculous thoughts that had tormented me the night
before.
  Yet it couldn't have been Chris either. She was
big enough and strong enough. But she had seemed to
worry about what she had done, so anxious to make
her peace with me.
  Bill and Chris were my friends, too. Still--even
a friend who was desperate, trapped, might strike
out against discovery. Against any person who meant
discovery.
  Or had one of these three told others? In that,
there was a thread of hope. I'd check
on it later when I could see each one alone.
  The whole thing was so baffling. What had that ring
meant in Monty's hand? And if it had been part
of the stone from the ring I had found, why should such a
fragment be of importance to the murderer?
  The questions were endless, impossible to answer. And
on every hand there were threats to me, dangers I might
be unaware of even now. I wished Keith would
arrive so I needn't be alone. In a few
moments I'd have to go over to be fingerprinted, but first
I wanted to collect myself a bit. Perhaps work
might help.
  I searched my desk and found the copy I'd
been working on the day before, with its bold words:
"Red is the Color of the Year." But that was no
way to settle my mind. "Red for blood,"
Keith had said. But now I could go him one
better. In my mind red would forever stand for
"murder." I thrust the paper out of sight just as
Keith came in.
  The boy looked ghastly. His naturally muddy
complexion had yellowed and his hands were shaking so that
he could hardly hang up his hat.
  "What's the matter with you?" I demanded.
  "I--I didn't know till this morning," he
stammered. "About Mr. Montgomery, I mean.
It's awful."
  "You'd better straighten up," I said.
"We're both supposed to go over to the display
department and get fingerprinted."
  "Fingerprinted!" The word came out shrilly.
"But I didn't have anything to do with this. Oh,
Miss Wynn, I've got to stay out of it!"
  He looked so green that I turned mercifully
away. It wouldn't do to take the boy over to the
police in such a state of jitters.
  "I'm going ahead," I said over my shoulder.
"As soon as you can, follow me."
  I went out without looking at him again. I was still
a little wobbly, I discovered, but I felt lucky
to be alive at all.
  Bill had been doubly right last night when
he'd said we'd better all put our wits to work
and try to clear this thing up. Not only to save some
innocent from arrest. To save our own lives. I
thought of that last remark of Hering's about the murderer
coming back to finish the job, and shivered as I
stepped into the empty corridor.
  The fingerprint expert had grumblingly set up
his materials in Monty's office.
He didn't care for the irregularity of the
procedure and was letting everyone know just how he
felt. I could hear him the moment I stepped into the
department. Another detective plodded
systematically through Monty's papers and files,
pausing now and then to ask questions of Tony
Salvador.
  I tried to notice if anyone watched me
warily, or seemed surprised to find me walking
about in good health. But I saw nothing
suspicious.
  Sondo came out of the office, wearing her
usual green smock and a yellow kerchief tied
about her tangle of black hair. She waved
inky fingers at me and motioned with her thumb.
  "A lot of work we can get done with that crowd of
flatfeet trampling all over the scenery! I
tried to explain that a department store is like the
theater. Come hell, high water, or murder, the
show goes on. But it didn't register."
  Her words were flippant and callous, but there were
smudges beneath her big dark eyes and the hollows
under her cheek bones were more marked than ever.
Sondo hadn't been sleeping well either.
  But as I stepped to the door of Monty's
office, I forgot her.
  This room was Monty's own and very familiar to
me. In the months he had worked here, he had
stamped it with the imprint of his vital personality.
Last night in Tony's office it had not been like
this. Then death had been too horrifyingly new
to be accepted. I could make no real connection in
my mind with that crumpled body down in the window and
the Monty I knew.
  But now it was real. There were reminders of him
everywhere. Things he had touched and left his mark
upon. Rough drawings he had sketched for window
plans. Pictures he had chosen for the walls.
It seemed as though at any moment his vibrant
voice might echo through the department, his footstep
sound upon its floor. A voice that would never echo
again, a step that would never fall.
  That knowledge made him really dead. And the thought that the
same murderous hand which had struck him down had
been raised against me, made reality all the more
keen.
  I became aware that Sondo was still at my
elbow, her dark penetrating gaze upon me.
  "Stop in to see me when you're through here," she
whispered. "I think we could do a little
note comparing." And with that enigmatic remark she
went off toward her workroom.
  Two of the girls from the perfume counters came
past me out of the office, whispering together, and as I
stepped through the door, I saw that Helena
Farnham was just pressing her fingers to a card. Behind
her, Owen Gardner awaited his turn, looking
completely outraged at the thought of this indignity.
  Helena quirked a sympathetic eyebrow at
me as she went out and whispered, "I'll wait for
you."
  Tony nodded as I approached and then switched
his gaze speculatively to Owen.
  "Say!" He spoke abruptly. "How about
getting Carla Drake up here to be printed?"
  Gardner looked up from wiping his fingers. "What
for? She hasn't any possible connection with the
case."
  "Who's Carla Drake?" a detective
demanded.
  "She models dresses down on my
floor," Gardner said. "I doubt if she's
spoken to Montgomery more than twice in the three
months she's been in the store."
  Tony shrugged. "Maybe so. But she's always
sneaking in and out of the display department and she's been
pretty darned thick with Sondo Norgaard."
  The detective nodded. "Call the fourth
floor and get her up here."
  Gardner glared at Tony and strode out of the
office.
  The fingerprinting didn't take long, but I was
barely conscious of what was going on. Tony's
words had recalled to my mind that moment so long
ago--yesterday morning!--when I'd come upon
Monty and Carla in the corridor. If what
Owen said was true and Monty scarcely knew
Carla, then that was a strangely intimate scene
I'd happened to witness.
  Helena was waiting for me when I left the
office and we walked over to Sondo's workroom
together. The phonograph was playing as usual, but
this time it was Cole Porter, instead of Ravel.
Begin the Beguine. The effect, however, was just
as melancholy.
  I shivered as we went in. "Gracious,
Sondo, don't you have any cheerful records?"
  "I'm not in a cheerful mood," Sondo said.
"I'm remembering that Monty's dead, if no
one else is."
  I glanced at her in surprise. It wasn't
like Sondo to display sentiment of any variety.
  The girl was up on a stepladder, a
paintbrush in her hand, and tacked on the wall before
her was a huge sheet of heavy, seamless paper.
Sondo was at work on a background for one of the
red windows Tony had been planning.
  "Red is the color of the year!" Sondo
announced derisively, and smeared a streak of
scarlet casein paint across the paper.
  The workroom was as wildly untidy as Sondo
herself. Rolls of paper and bolts of cloth
spilled over a table. There were tacks scattered
on the floor and a hammer balanced precariously
on the edge of a shelf. A half-finished sketch
smeared by a penful of India ink was tacked to a
drawing board.
  This room was wholly Sondo's. Monty
might have left his more orderly imprint on the rest
of the department, but here Sondo had gone her own
untidy way. The work she produced was first-
rate, her salary small, so it had been wise
to let her alone.
  Not that many people ever dared give orders to Sondo.
She was a domineering little person with a will like a
hurricane. What she chose to do she did, and
left destruction in her wake if she was
opposed. Even Owen Gardner was a little afraid
of her, and I could remember more than once when
Sondo had flown furiously to Monty's
defense and vanquished the merchandise manager
himself.
  "You said you wanted to see me," I reminded
Sondo. "Has anything new come up?"
  "Nothing new," she said. "Our friend Hering was
over here this morning telling me all about his
photographic memory. I'll bet he was right
about Chris never coming up to the waiting room at
all. He was taking one of his mental pictures
of that perfume counter during the questioning last night and
he could rattle off the names of every perfume
bottle on display. In order, too. So I
think there's something fishy about Chris."
  "Why?" I asked.
  "Look," Sondo said, "I'm no fool.
I was around Monty enough to know something about him. He
wasn't in love with Chris. What possible
appeal could she have had for him? A big, husky
kid with that empty kind of prettiness that means no
brains."
  "You're a little hard on her," I protested.
  Sondo sat down on the top of the ladder and
waved her paintbrush at me. "How can you be so
generous when she sneaked in behind your back and took
him away from you? How can you stand the sight of her
when--"
  "If that's all you wanted to talk about, I'll
be getting back to work," I told her quietly.
  Helena was glancing at the sketch on
Sondo's drawing board, and she laid it down and
turned around. But she didn't say anything.
  Sondo went right on. "It's not all I
wanted to talk about. I think it's up to somebody
to find out the truth about that marriage. Those dumb
coppers never will. There was something worrying Monty
before he got married and if we could find out what it
was we might have a key to the whole thing. And once
we get that key in our hands--"
  I looked up at her, startled. There was something
so utterly vindictive about the expression on her
ugly little face that I was dismayed. A surprising
thought began to form in my mind, but before I could get
used to it and accept it, Helena took the play
away from me.
  "So you're another one who was in love with
Montgomery," she said calmly to Sondo. It
was no question, but a quiet statement of fact.
  Sondo didn't take it quietly.
"Don't be idiotic!" she snapped, and went
furiously back to her painting.
  I felt a little upset. It had been no
secret to me that Monty exerted a tremendous
attraction for women, and that he was not above the
dubious enjoyment of exerting it consciously, even
where he had no interest in the woman. And
Sondo, for all her lack of feminine appeal,
was a woman. But if Monty had done this--and he
must have known he was doing it--
  I turned toward the door and saw Carla
Drake standing there. There was no telling how long
she had been there, or whether she had heard anything
of our conversation. She wore a beautifully-cut
suit of powder blue that emphasized the rather lush
curves of her figure and set off her fair
skin and silver hair to advantage. But she
didn't look quite real, quite flesh-and-blood.
  She came into the room like a sleep-walker,
apparently seeing none of us, and went straight to the
phonograph. There was a packing box beside the
machine and she sat down, clasping
graceful hands about her blue-skirted knees.
Her head tilted back so that her silver hair
hung below her shoulders and her eyes were rapt and
dreamy.
  Sondo looked down at her and said sharply,
"Cut it out, Carla!"
  But if the model heard, she gave no sign,
listening with all her being to the baritone's voice.

"To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when the tune clutches my heart.
  ..."

  Sondo dropped her paintbrush and came down
from the ladder. In three catlike steps she
crossed the room, lifted the needle from the
record. Carla started, blinked, came out of her
trance.
  Her eyes looked old, somehow, in her youthful
face. That was something I'd never noticed before.
If ever a woman had a tragic past, it was
Carla. The evidence was there in her eyes.
  But now they flooded with tears and she spoke
sadly to Sondo. "You don't understand. It's that
piece. It has wonderful memories for me.
You said I might come up here and listen to it any
time."
  "The trouble is you get drunk on it,"
Sondo said curtly. "You've got to be able to
take music or leave it, the way I can. But you
get tight on it the way Tony gets tight on
liquor."
  "Who gets tight?" It was Tony himself. He
came in carrying a portable phonograph of the
same make as Sondo's and set it on a table.
"Let me have one of your records, Sondo. Not
that damn Bolero! This is the contraption Bill
Thorne made for the window, but there's something wrong
with it."
  Carla got up from the packing case and Tony
glanced her way.
  "What are you doing here?" he asked. "You're
supposed to be over in Monty's office getting
fingerprinted."
  The model glided smoothly toward the door.
"I know. I just happened to hear the music and--"
she broke off, turned back to Tony. "Do--do
they know anything more? About him, I mean?"
  "I wouldn't know," Tony said. "The police
aren't exactly showering information around.
If they have any to shower."
  "I just wondered," Carla said gently.
"There's nothing anyone can do anyway. It's all
written there ahead and what must come will come."
  Across the room Helena was studying her palm
again and Carla looked at her.
  "How is your hand today, Miss Farnham?" she
asked.
  Helena opened and closed it a couple of times.
"A little sore. But it will be all right."
  "I was so sorry about scratching you," Carla
said. "It was very clumsy of me."
  "The fault was just as much mine," Helena told
her.
  I think I was the only person in the room who
paid much attention to the little byplay. But I was
curious because I'd caught again in Helena's
eyes that odd look I'd seen the night before, as
if she were remembering something. And it seemed to me
that the two women were regarding each other with a certain
wariness of expression.
  Then Carla slipped noiselessly out the door
and Tony glanced after her.
  "I'll take Dolores any day," he said.
"That Jane gives me the creeps. All that
stuff about what-must-come-will-come. She's
nuts. What do you let her come up here for?"
  "I like people who are slightly nuts," Sondo
told him. "And she can come up here any time she
likes. Nobody's promoted you to the position of
display manager yet."
  Tony picked out a record haphazardly and
slipped it into place in the machine he'd brought.
"Maybe not. But they will after those windows I'm
putting in the end of the week. They'll make
State Street sit up and take notice."
  Helena glanced at her watch and murmured that
it was time she got to work. Sondo and Tony were
paying no attention, so I put a hand on her arm
as she went by me.
  "Helena," I said softly, "did you tell
anyone about that piece from the ring that I put in my
smock pocket?"
  She looked a little startled. "No--I don't
believe I did. Why?"
  "Never mind," I whispered. "Tell you
later."
  When she'd gone, I turned back to Tony and
Sondo. Tony's interest was entirely on the
machine and Sondo was watching him with open
curiosity. The record whirled and the music
started, but it came out with an odd, tinny
vibration. Tony listened for a moment and then lifted
the needle.
  "See what I mean? It was all right when I
played it yesterday. So what's got into it now?
I suppose some of Bill's gadgets have come
loose."
  "You'd better let Bill tinker with it then,"
Sondo said. I've seen what's happened before this
when you go taking things apart."
  Tony ignored her. "Linell, that office
boy of yours lives west, doesn't he? How
about letting him off early tonight so he can drop this
at Universal Arts? I'm still going to put that
golf window across."
  "I don't mind," I told him. "Keith's
just sitting around waiting for me to get to work
anyway. Which reminds me that that's what I'd
better do."
  But I didn't hurry back. I ran into one
of the girls from advertising and she wanted to hear the
latest, so I stopped to talk a few moments.
By the time I reached the office it was empty.
Evidently Keith had gathered up courage to
face the fingerprinting.
  Until this moment I hadn't been really
frightened, but a reluctance to step through the door
swept over me. Suddenly, I was afraid.
  I looked around quickly to make sure no
crouching figure hid behind the door. The room was
quite empty, but I was uneasy, disturbed. It was as
if some mark had been left upon it, as if it had
in some way been changed. I'd been too dazed
before to notice details, but now I was sure that
something was wrong.
  I sat down at my desk, with sweat breaking
out on my forehead and on the palms of my hands.
Something was different, out of line.
  I couldn't find it at once and I began to
check carefully in my mind. On the wide window
ledge, conveniently ready to my hands, were stacks of
current and back issues of all those magazines
that are bibles of the fashion trade. My desk was
heaped with clippings of ads from Cunningham's and
rival stores--all the usual litter. But an
ordered litter, because it made sense to me.
  What, then, was different?
  The glue pot on my desk was uncovered.
Leaving sticky things around like that wasn't
a vice of mine, and Keith was essentially neat.
Whoever had used the glue brush had been hurried
and untidy about it, for there were smears on the desk
and down the side of the pot.
  I sat back in my chair and began a
systematic study of the walls. It was there the
trouble lay, I felt sure. There was something
different, something changed. And then I saw it.
  On the wall just behind my desk, fitted neatly
in among the other pictures, was a portrait that
had not been there before. It was a black-and-white, a
coyly posed beauty winner in a lastex bathing
suit. A very Hollywoodish sort of picture
and not one I would ever have chosen to grace my
collection.
  I got up and walked over to the wall, slid
my hand over the paper. The glue wasn't dry.
This page had been pasted on my wall that very
hour.

              CHAPTER 8

  I stood for a moment with my fingers touching the
picture. Then I went over to the magazines
stacked on the window ledge and paged hurriedly
through the top one. It didn't take long to find
what I was looking for--a ragged edge where a page
had been torn out.
  Sure enough, that bathing suit pose had been
ripped from a current issue. Selected at
random, to hide a blank space left where
another picture had been peeled from the wall?
  Whoever had struck me down earlier that morning
had been in my office not only to get that bit of
stone, but also for the much stranger purpose of
removing a picture from my wall.
  Carefully I lifted an edge of the newly
glued page. It had been fastened roughly, the
glue smeared on the back in splotches so that it
wasn't fixed tightly. It tore a little as I
pulled it off. The picture underneath had been
torn too as it was removed, but there the glue was
old and easily pulled loose. Only one
corner of the former picture remained--not enough to give
a hint as to the identity of the picture.
  Of course I knew I'd remember it.
I'd arranged those walls myself, with Keith's
help. And I'd looked at them six days a
week for months on end. I could almost recite
by heart the order of my little art gallery.
In just a moment now the image of that missing
picture would flash before my mind's eye. I could
almost grasp it--almost--
  But each time it eluded me provokingly and I
was sitting there with my palms pressed over my
eyes, struggling vainly to remember, when Keith
came in.
  "What's the matter, Miss Wynn?" he
asked in a startled voice.
  "It's nothing," I said. "But I want you to do
something for me. Do you see that space on the wall
there? I want you to remember what the picture was
that was pasted there."
  Keith looked at the space for a moment and
shook his head in bewilderment.
  "Never mind." I was weary. "I can't
remember either. But keep it in mind. It will come
back to us sooner or later. Someone came into this
office, tore down one picture and pasted up
another. Your guess as to why is as good as mine."
  He looked about the office with quickly shifting
eyes. It made me nervous just to watch him.
  "Forget it," I said. "You'd better get to
work and go through the store to check any torn or
soiled signs that need replacing."
  Anything, I felt, to get him out of sight.
He left with an air of being more than willing to go.
The phone rang and I picked up the receiver.
  "Hello," said a very faint voice, "this is
Chris."
  I tried to sound cheerful. "Oh, good morning,
Chris. How is everything?"
  There was a moment's silence, as if that were not a
matter she cared to go into. Then she went on
hurriedly.
  "Listen, Linell. I'm in the store using a
house phone. But I don't want to go roaming
around and have people ask me questions, so I can't come up
to see you. But I've got to see you. Alone.
I need your help, Linell. I need your
help, Linell. I need it terribly. Will you
meet me for lunch?"
  "Of course," I assured her. "Wherever you
say."
  "At a quarter to twelve then. Do you know that
little Polka Dot place over on Washington?
Father's taken me there to lunch several times and it's
fairly quiet. If we get there before noon
perhaps we can get a booth and be able to talk in
privacy."
  "I'll be there," I agreed. "Take care of
yourself, Chris."
  She rang off and I thought about this new
complication. So Chris was in the store. And
Sondo was behaving very queerly about Chris. Which
meant--what, if anything?
  But I wasn't going to sit there any longer
struggling with problems that were too much for me. I
took out a fresh sheet of paper and this time I
went straight to work and got the thing done.

Red is the Color of the Year
  Red for Daring
  Red for Courage
  Be Dramatic in Red!

  That settled that. Now it could go over to the sign
department to be lettered. But if it was going to take me
two days to write four very ordinary lines, where
would my job be in a week's time?
  Someone said, "May I come in?" Susan
Gardner was standing in the doorway. I laid down
my pencil in surrender. There was no use even
trying to work.
  "Hello," I said. "Of course you may come
in."
  Owen Gardner's wife sat down hesitatingly
in the chair opposite my desk. She was wearing
a frock that was a masterpiece of style and
quality but, as usual, on her it was a little
dowdy. She had the sort of figure which encouraged
a dress to ride up in the wrong places, and
fostered a relief map of wrinkles. She made
habitual little gestures of smoothing out and pulling
down, but the result was negligible. Then she
gathered her forces for a plunge into frankness.
  "This has all been so awful," she began in a
hurried, breathless voice. "Monty murdered and
Chris a widow in two weeks. There were
reporters out to our place this morning, and more
detectives. But I want to talk to you about
Chris."
  "I'm very fond of Chris," I assured her.
"I'd like to help if I can."
  Susan nodded. "I know. You've been so kind
to her all along. Though sometimes I think she's
had too much kindness. I've tried so hard to
make it up to both Owen and Chris by being all the
things Owen's first wife was not. But sometimes I
feel that I've failed completely."
  Her voice fluttered off into silence and she
looked around at the bright pictures on my
walls.
  Owen admires beautiful things. He admires
beautiful women like those models up there in your
pictures. She was like that, you know. Glamorous.
His first wife, I mean. He's never talked about
her much, but I can guess. And sometimes I wonder
--when a man has a taste for women like that, does
he ever really get over it?"
  It was disturbing to realize that back of
Susan's manner, back of her self-
effacement, existed so wistful an envy of all that
she was not.
  "Oh, I don't know," I said, in an effort
to be reassuring. "It seems to me that once a
man has been fooled badly, he'd be more apt
to turn to a woman who was entirely different from the
first one."
  "Do you really believe that?" Susan said, with
touching eagerness. Then she went on
apologetically. "But I didn't come here to
talk about myself. I believe Chris is worried
about something more than Monty's death. She's in a
state of fright that borders on hysteria. And she
won't talk about it to me at all. But I know
she's having lunch with you and I thought she might
tell you what she won't tell those who are
close to her. If we could just find out what's
wrong, perhaps we could help her."
  "Well, I'll try," I said, feeling more
inadequate by the moment.
  Her kind, plump little face took on a
surprisingly grim expression. "Michael
Montgomery was a very wicked man. I'm glad
he's dead. I hope they never catch the person
who did it." Then she added, "So there!" like a
reckless child.
  But her indignation died out almost at once and she
stood up, her own amiable self again. At the
door she paused.
  "There's one thing, Miss Wynn. I know I
can trust you. Mr. Hering was right. Chris never
came to the waiting room to meet me. I made it
up about meeting her on the stairs. I found her
wandering around down on the main floor in a dazed
sort of state, but what she was doing there I
don't know."
  That was rather startling information. But before I could comment,
she went still further.
  "Did you find the stone from that ring in your
smock?" she asked. "And did it mean anything?"
  I couldn't suppress a start. "How did you
know about that?"
  "Why--why Chris mentioned it to Owen and me when
she came home last night. Wasn't she
supposed to tell?"
  "It doesn't matter," I said. "Not now.
The stone was gone when I got to the office."
  I watched her for any reaction, but she so often
looked disturbed that it was difficult to gauge her
state of mind. She fluttered out of the office
shortly after.
  So Chris had talked. Which brought both Owen and
Susan into the thing, and left me no closer to a
solution, or even an opinion. Knowing Owen and
Susan, I couldn't imagine either of them in the
murderous role that had been played in this very
office. But as far as that went, I couldn't
imagine anyone I knew killing Monty.
  Later on I'd get Bill Thorne and
we'd go over the whole thing together. When he heard
what a close call I'd had that morning, perhaps
he'd change his tune. And when he knew that
Chris had never really gone to the waiting room to
meet Susan, he might not be so gallant about
listing her as a non-suspect. As for the
suspects, there were a couple of others we hadn't
included on our list last night.
  Susan Gardner, for one, with her unexpected
bitterness against Monty and her strongly
protective mother love for a girl who wasn't
her own daughter. And Helena, who had something on
her mind about that scratch. And the model, Carla
Drake, though her connection was obscure.
  The next three-quarters of an hour ran
along on a more normal schedule. I had no
further time for making wild deductions for the phone
rang repeatedly, people rushed in and out of the office,
buyers issued orders no one had any intention of
obeying and had to be quieted and placated. It was
a relief to throw myself into the whirlpool of my
ordinary life.
  On top of everything else, the newspaper
reporters suddenly discovered the eighth floor and
were in our hair, until Mr. Cunningham
furiously pulled strings and got them called off.
  Once, when the telephone rang, it was Hering,
to tell me he'd talked to McPhail and that the
detective wanted to come over that afternoon
to question me and to get an idea of the set-up of my
office.
  The hour for my appointment with Chris seemed
to arrive in no time at all. I left the store
with a sense of release from unbearable surroundings and
hurried to the Polka Dot.
  Chris was already there, holding a place for me in
one of the small booths. There were dark circles
under her eyes and her lips had a tendency to
quiver.
  "Oh, Linell!" she cried. "I was so
afraid you wouldn't come!"
  I slipped into the seat opposite her. "Of
course I'd come. Have you ordered yet?"
  She shook her head. "I don't want any
food. I just came here to have a chance to talk.
Everywhere else there are always people around you."
  I couldn't urge food upon her. I felt so
little like eating myself. We ordered soup and I
settled back against the wall of the booth.
  "Now then--what's troubling you?"
  "It's Sondo. Linell, she frightens me.
She's an awful person. I've always known she
had no use for me, but now she hates me. She
hates me because I married Monty and she wants
to hurt me."
  "But there's no way in which she can hurt you," I
said, "other than using her sharp tongue when she
gets a chance. And you have to accept that with Sondo."
  "But why should she want to hurt me?"
  I reached out and patted Chris's hand. She had
large hands, long-fingered and broad across the back,
but somehow useless, helpless. Not tough, sinewy little
paws like Sondo's.
  "It's not hard to see," I told her.
"You're young and very pretty, and you married
Monty. Probably if I'd married him,
she'd have wanted to hurt me too. I've never
realized it before, but I think Monty has been
something of an idol to her and his death has hit her
pretty hard."
  Quick tears came in Chris's eyes and she was
silent, remembering. The waitress brought our
orders and I waited till she'd gone before I
spoke.
  "Was that all you had to tell me?" I asked
at length.
  "No, there's something else," she said, blinking
back the tears. "The thing I've really been
wanting to say. Monty had some reason
for marrying me, Linell. Something that hadn't
anything to do with me personally. He even threw it
up to me while we were away. He said the only
thing I meant to him was protection, that I was a
weapon in his hands. A weapon to keep him
safe."
  "What did he mean by that?"
  "I don't know. I don't know at all.
Perhaps I couldn't keep him safe after all from
whatever it was he feared. So if we could just find out
what it was, then we'd know why he died and who
killed him."
  "Have you any ideas as to how to go about it?" I
asked.
  She nodded. "Yes. That's where you come in. I
want you to help me. I want to go up to his
apartment and go through his things."
  "The police have already done that," I said.
  "I know a place to look they might have
missed. A place he told me about. He said
if anything ever--happened, to look there."
  "Then why don't you tell McPhail and have
him help you?"
  Chris's lips began to quiver and I thought she
might break into tears again. But she made an
effort and quickly recovered.
  "No, Linell! I just want you to go with me.
What I find might be something I wouldn't want
the police to see."
  "Well," I said, "I don't know why you
shouldn't go in and out of the apartment as you please, even
though there's probably a guard stationed outside for
the time being."
  Chris looked dismayed. "A guard? Oh,
dear! I never thought of that. I don't want them
to know. Anyway I've lost the key to the
apartment."
  I glanced at her sharply. "Lost the key?"
  "Well, I can't find it. And Monty gave
me one, you know, when we came back to town--though
I spent just one night there and haven't been back
since."
  Somehow I didn't like the idea of that lost
key. Particularly if there was evidence hidden in
the apartment which might incriminate someone. That made
another puzzler.
  Suddenly, as I watched her, Chris's face
seemed to crumple into confusion, doubt, fear.
  "What is it?" I demanded. "What's the
matter?"
  In frozen silence, she was looking toward the
front of the restaurant.
  I reached out, clasped her shoulder and shook it.
Chris jerked away, shrank far back in the
booth.
  "We've got to get out," she whispered.
"Quickly."
  "But why?" I asked. "Stop acting like a
baby, Chris."
  The jibe had no effect. She was up, pulling
at my arm. We paid our checks and went
hurriedly out of the restaurant. But not so
hurriedly that I missed the two in the front
booth.
  Owen Gardner was leaning forward, his interest
wholly absorbed in the woman who sat
opposite him. In passing the booth, I had a
glimpse of powder blue, of the fall of silvery
hair beneath a smart little hat. The woman was
Carla Drake.

              CHAPTER 9

  Chicago's Loop was aroar with the noon hour
rush, and elevated trains rumbled above our heads
as we turned down Wabash Avenue. The lights
changed at the shrill of a policeman's whistle.
I slipped my arm through Chris's and marched her
along briskly.
  "Do you think they saw us?" she asked, without
turning to look at me.
  "I doubt it," I assured her. "But why
didn't you want to be seen? What's up?"
  Her voice was so low that I had difficulty
catching the words above the din of traffic.
  "I've been afraid he was meeting her,
Linell. But I haven't been sure till now.
Oh, how can he? How can he hurt poor
Susan like that?"
  I tightened my grip on her arms. "Don't
leap to conclusions. The world hasn't come to an end just
because your father is taking one of the store models to
lunch. It's been done before without any dynasties
collapsing. Don't be an infant!"
  Somehow I couldn't pack a great deal of
reassurance into my words. I remembered only
too clearly that moment, yesterday, when I'd gone
to Gardner's office and there'd been something almost
guilty about the way he'd ushered me in and
dismissed Carla. However, Gardner's
peccadillos, unpleasant as they might be for his
wife and daughter, had nothing to do with the more immediate
matter of Monty's death. Chris had enough concern
without this added distress.
  "You mustn't worry," I told her, managing
to put some conviction into my voice. "I'm sure
it can all be explained quite harmlessly and that you'll
feel foolish and ashamed of your suspicions.
After all, Carla's no young girl. She must be
close to forty, if not more."
  But I doubt if Chris listened to a word I was
saying. We said good-bye at the foot of the
elevated steps and I stood looking after her for a
moment, before cutting over to State Street to get
back to Cunningham's.
  I knew what I was going to do before I turned
my attention to anything else.
  Keith looked up as I walked into the office.
"Tony wants to see you right away. He says
never mind the crime wave--his windows have to go in
and you're to hurry over."
  I picked up the phone, called a number.
  "I'll go see him in a minute," I told
Keith and then spoke into the phone. "Hello,
Mr. Thorne? ... Oh, Bill, I'm glad
to talk to you! Bill, when can I see you?"
  His voice was cheerful. "How about tonight? I have
to finish up some work here, but it won't take too
long. Suppose you come out to the shop when you're through
work and we'll have dinner together."
  "Wonderful!" I cried, feeling that several
tons of worry had slipped from my shoulders.
"I'll be out around six."
  "Anything wrong?" Bill asked.
  My fingers felt the lump behind my ear. His
voice had such a sympathetic ring, I had to
make a real effort to keep from blurting out what
had happened to me.
  "No--well, I suppose there is in a
way," I told him. "A lot of ways. But
I can't tell you now. See you later."
  I felt considerably better when I hung
up. Bill was that kind of person. He had a
level head on his shoulders and he'd help me
to see everything clearly. Until then, I'd
simply stop puzzling and worrying.
  That's what I thought.
  Keith was watching me. He spoke as soon as
I hung up the receiver.
  "Tony said I was to take that
phonograph out to Universal Arts this afternoon. But
if you're going out there--"
  He looked unhappy and I knew how badly
he must want to get away from Cunningham's.
  "You can take it out," I told him. "It will be
heavy, I expect, and I don't want to
juggle it on a crowded street car."
  He cheered up right away and I went off to the
display department.
  I could hear Sondo and Tony wrangling long
before I reached Sondo's workroom. The girl was
up on her ladder, working on a background for
Tony's red windows.
  She had painted two or three figures coming
down a corridor of big red and white checks.
The checked floor of the painted corridor would
continue into the window itself and mannequins would be set
upon it.
  The two of them were behaving as if nothing had
happened to disturb their show-window world, and their
manner jarred me. I couldn't immediately look beneath
the casual surface of their flippancy for the
tension that must have existed.
  "How do you like it?" Tony asked, "We'll be
putting the red series in Friday, so you'd better
count on working late that night."
  "Maybe they'll go in," Sondo snapped.
"I've still got the navy blue background to do and
the decorations for the window signs. And now you're
howling for screens."
  Tony ignored her. "You get the set-up,
Linell? The golf window, then the red series in
the middle. And next week we're putting gray
in the corner window. Babcock says they'll be
showing a lot of gray this spring and she wants all
gray dresses in the display. That's why I
want to put in some folding screens for
background. Something to liven up the color
scheme."
  I suppressed a desire to call them back
to the reality of horror. Too much that was dreadful
hung over our heads. If we snatched at a
familiar routine, perhaps we could for a little while
avoid the quicksands. I made an effort to join the
discussion.
  "I saw a hat down in millinery a couple
of days ago that was a honey," I told Tony.
"Flame color. If it hasn't been sold it
would give you your color keynote."
  That was the way the decorators worked.
One striking note of color gave them their key
and they built around it, repeating it in background
and accessories.
  Sondo came down from the ladder. Fresh
smears of red brightened the already stained smock, and
her black hair escaped in careless tendrils from
beneath the yellow kerchief. She pulled a
wallpaper book from a shelf and began to ruffle
through its pages.
  "Here you are, Tony!" she cried, shoving the
book toward him. "There's flame for you in those
flower clusters. If they match the hat, we can
use wallpaper to cover the screens. And I can
copy the flower motif on the window signs in
flame, too."
  "Good girl!" Tony said, and they beamed at
each other amiably.
  Then Sondo climbed back up the ladder and
returned to work, and Tony sent one of his helpers
to millinery to pick up the hat.
  "That's a start," he said. "Now if you'll
get going on the window signs, Linell."
  I closed my eyes and attempted half-
heartedly to play the game the others were playing.
It wasn't as easy for me as for them. There was
nothing hanging over Sondo's head, or
Tony's. No one had made an attack on
their lives. Even though I didn't want what
had happened to me publicized, still I felt a
twinge of resentment that these two could be so casual
and matter-of-fact in their ignorance of how close
I'd come to death.
  "Shimmering gray for spring," I chanted. "The
gray gleam of April rain, accented by all the
hues in your garden."
  Sondo Bronx cheered lustily. "Talk about
tripe! I'm glad I only have to paint
signs, not write 'em."
  "Don't pay any attention to her," Tony
assured me. "She's a frustrated sign
writer herself. Anyway, these new windows are
going to be something. Better than anything Michael
Montgomery ever put in." The name carried a
spell with it that hushed our forced cheerfulness.
  "You're glad Monty's gone, aren't you?"
Sondo said bitterly.
  Tony glared up at her. "What do you
expect me to say? I never wasted any love
on him while he was alive, why should I pretend
to now that he's dead? I'm running this
department and I can't be sorry because Monty's not
around to interfere."
  "What if they put in another display manager
over your head?" Sondo asked. "Will you get
rid of him too?"
  "Oh, stop it!" I broke in. "We're
all in this together and it doesn't do any of us much
good to go flinging ridiculous accusations around."
  "How can you be so sure it's a ridiculous
accusation?" Sondo demanded. "There's just one thing
I'd like to know, Tony. Why did you get that
peculiar look on your face and shut up so fast
when McPhail told you Monty was killed with a
golf club?"
  "You know what you can do," Tony said. "And if
I get the job of running this department
permanently, don't think you're going to stay in
it."
  Sondo tossed her kerchiefed head. "I'll
be here longer than you, Mister Salvador.
Lay you odds on that."
  I stopped listening to their squabble because I was
thinking of that golf club and my own fingerprints upon
it, prints the police now held in duplicate
in their records. I had to tell McPhail about
finding the club. I had to tell him before he
discovered those prints.
  I started out of the room and Tony stopped
quarreling with Sondo to call after me.
  "Hey, Linell! Will you go down and talk to
Babcock? You know how to handle her. She's just
had another brain child. A perfectly stinko idea
about having mannequins lined up in the window
holding block letters in their hands spelling out
GRAY FOR SPRING. Discourage it, will you?"
  "I'll try," I said wearily and went off
toward the elevators.
  I didn't care much about Babcock's ideas,
or the continual war that raged between some of the buyers and
window display. I felt as if I walked a
narrow ledge with an abyss on either side. On
one hand waited the police. It was true that I,
more than anyone else, had the motive for
Monty's murder. And too much
circumstantial evidence, still unknown to
McPhail, had piled up against me. I might
have some nasty times ahead unless I moved
carefully.
  But on the other hand lay a more terrifying
danger. The very real attack on my
life, and the unpleasant possibility Hering had
suggested--that the murderer might watch for an
opportunity to "finish off the job."
  It was no wonder that I went down to see
Miss Babcock in a most indifferent frame of
mind.
  When I reached fourth I found that the buyer for
better dresses was taking life the hard way, as
usual. It wasn't easy to turn an idea which
she considered divinely inspired into something
slightly less antique, but I'd had plenty
of practice and set about it almost automatically.
  I began by planting the flame colored hat and
the screens in her consciousness, and then gradually
circling until she came out dramatically with them
as her own idea. That would annoy Tony
considerably, but would give us our way and at least
keep peace.
  As I was about to leave, Miss Babcock put
a sympathetic hand on my arm.
  "I want you to know, my dear, how sorry we
all are about what happened. So unfortunate. So
bad for the store. Have they, have they found out yet
who--"
  "No," I said curtly. "Nobody knows."
  Miss Babcock looked disappointed and
reluctant to allow me to escape.
  "How would you like to see one of the numbers we're
going to present in the style show?" she asked. "The
model who is to wear it is back there trying it
on. Miss Drake is so stunning, don't you
think? So unusual?"
  I'd been anything but vitally interested until
I heard Carla's name. The woman had crossed
my path so often lately that I was beginning to have a
fatalistic feeling about her.
  Miss Babcock led me to one of the dressing
rooms. A fitter knelt on the floor, while
Carla turned slowly before the triple mirrors.
  Beautiful gowns and beautiful models were
nothing particularly new in my life, but I
caught my breath in tribute.
  The dinner gown Carla wore was as modern as
tomorrow, but it's ancestry went back to the
classicism of old Greece. It was white and
straight in line, flowing, full, yet clinging to the
lovely curves of her body with revealing
simplicity. It was banded at the neck and wrists
in gold and a golden girdle circled her waist.
  If you discounted the silvery hair,
falling in beauty to her shoulders, if you missed the
tragic wisdom of her eyes, she might have been
as young as Juliet.
  "It's beautiful," I said. "You're
beautiful, Carla."
  Her eyes flooded unexpectedly with tears.
"Thank you, Miss Wynn. But it is the
dress." She lifted the white folds in her
slender hands and turned before the mirror.
  I had never seen a motion so graceful, so
lovely. Then something like dismay came into her eyes
and she stilled the swirling of the skirt. I had a
queer feeling that she felt she had made some
disclosure. The fitter picked up the hem again and
I followed Miss Babcock back to the
department.
  "Where did you find her?" I asked.
  The buyer shrugged. "She came from New
York. I understand she lost her husband some time
ago. She's a good model, but the other girls
don't seem to care for her much. There's something
peculiar about her."
  I left the department thoughtfully. So Carla
Drake had "lost" her husband, whatever that
meant. And on the day Michael Montgomery
died, he had stood talking to her in an eighth
floor corridor, so intent that his hands had rested
on her shoulders. At the time I had thought that the
gesture was one of affection. But now I wondered.
  When I reached the middle aisle, I saw that
my signal was on in the light box between the
elevators. I stepped to a house phone and
learned that I was wanted at once in my office.
  Though such a summons was familiar enough, I
couldn't suppress the sense of alarm that swept
through me. I went upstairs at once and found
McPhail waiting for me. Keith, working at his
desk, did not look up, but even his ears looked
frightened. My uneasiness increased as I sat
down opposite the detective.
  His greeting was curt and he went at once to the
point. He wanted to know exactly what had
happened that morning and I gave him the story in
full, conscious all the while of Keith listening.
  McPhail prodded me with sharp questions about the
identity of my assailant and about that bit of stone
from the ring. But I could tell him nothing that would
help. I had done no more than glance at the
fragment before I put it in my pocket, and I'd
had no glimpse at all of whoever it was
I'd surprised in my office.
  I told him about the queer business of the
picture which had been torn from my wall and the
substitute pasted up in its place, but that made
as little sense to him as it did to me, if he
believed the story at all.
  "Now then," he said, with a cold, unwavering
look, "suppose you come clean about what happened
in that window yesterday."
  So it had come. Somehow he knew about my finding
Monty and running away. I longed for Bill's
sane presence more than I'd longed for anything in
my life. But there was no Bill. I had to get
through this on my own.
  Before I could form an answer, McPhail
shifted the papers on my desk and I saw what
lay beneath them, the upper half of a broken golf
stick. There were powdery traces on its varnished
surface and I knew I'd waited too long.
  Even so, my relief was tremendous. The
fingerprints on that stick looked bad for me, but
they weren't as bad as the other. My cheeks
cooled and my tenseness relaxed.
  "Oh, that!" I said. "I'd meant to tell you
about it. I forgot it entirely until last
night. It was there in the window when I went to take
care of last minute details. I wondered at
the time how it came to be broken, but I didn't
think about it especially, any more than I thought about
the stone. I just picked it up and put it in the
golf bag to get it out of the way. I meant to ask
somebody about it later. And then I forgot."
  "Very convenient," McPhail sneered. "A
man gets murdered with a golf club and you forget
that you had the other half of that club in your hands.
Until we find your prints on it and you have to
remember."
  "But I did forget!" I protested.
"Everything was so shocking and horrible. It went right
out of my mind at the time you were questioning us. But I'd
have got around to telling you today if you'd given me
time."
  "You've had time enough," McPhail said. "And
here's something else. The only prints on that
book end that was used to knock you down are yours and
your office boys."
  Keith's head sank a little lower between his
shoulders and I had a sudden unpleasant vision of
him hiding behind the door and leaping out at me. I
dismissed it at once as ridiculous.
  "That's silly!" I told McPhail.
"Keith and I have both handled those book ends many
times. You'll find our prints on the other one
too. All it means is that the person who
attacked me must have worn gloves."
  "Maybe," said McPhail, his mouth grim and
straight, his eyes cold with suspicion.
  "Oh, come now!" I cried. "Do you think I
picked up that book end and knocked myself out with it?
Ask Mr. Hering. He knows how groggy I
was. And there's no getting away from this lump on
my head."
  McPhail would have loved to get away from it.
I'm sure that lump and the fact that Hering had
vouched for the attack on me, were the only things which
kept him from taking me to headquarters as a
suspect then and there.
  As it was, I went through a bad twenty
minutes or so, while he shot the same questions at
me, over and over. But somehow I kept my story
straight and suppressed that moment when I'd gone
back to the switch box.
  McPhail left at last and I phoned
Helena to let her know that I was having dinner with
Bill Thorne and wouldn't be home till later.
I told Keith he might as well go pick up
the phonograph and take it out to Universal
Arts. Certainly, neither of us was good for any work
after McPhail's visit, and the despairing look
Keith gave me was the last straw.
  "What's the matter with you?" I demanded. "You
haven't anything to worry about. McPhail's not
taking your prints on that book end seriously.
There's no possible tie-up you could have with this
affair. So stop going around with that I-am-a-leper
expression on your face!"
  "It's that attack on you, Miss Wynn.
That's awful. It's--"
  "Well, don't go broadcasting it," I said.
"I don't want the whole store in here oh-+ and
ah-+."
  He shook his head mournfully. "The trouble is
you can't tell where all this is going to end. There's
something pretty awful loose in this store and it's
out of control now. It's killed once and it'll
kill again. And how can any of us stop it, or get
out of its way, when we can't even see what it
is?"
  "The trouble with you," I said, "is that you read
too many detective stories. It's not
an "it," but a human being. Somebody who had
something against Monty. Eventually the police will
catch up with the murderer and we'll know the whole
story. But it won't be anything supernatural."
  Keith shook his head. "I don't just read
detective stories, Miss Wynn. I've
read a lot about the psychology and pathology of
crime too, and we're not dealing with anything
normal now. There's nothing more awful than this kind
of insanity. Where the person goes right on wearing
his ordinary face and ordinary actions and you can't
tell the difference. But inside he's gone stark
raving mad and he's not going to do things that are
normal and sensible. He's going to do treacherous,
crazy things to fool you and blind you. So he can
strike again."
  I'd known the boy ever since I'd come to
Cunningham's and I'd always thought him more or
less inarticulate and futile. Yet behind his
quiet exterior was all this teeming
unpleasantness.
  He saw he had startled me and tried to
smile. It was a tight, thin smile that was a little
frightening.
  "Miss Wynn, I'm sorry. I wouldn't
scare you for anything. Gosh, I like you better than
anybody I know. It's just that--that--well, you
better be careful. Don't you trust anybody.
Not anybody at all."
  With those cheering words, he left in search of the
phonograph.
  I went over to the single small window and threw
it open. I was chilled to the bone, but I wanted
fresh air. Eight stories below trucks rolled
in and out of the alley, midget figures of men
moved and gestured and spoke with midget voices.
All about crowded the walls of stores and
buildings, alive with lighted windows like unlidded
eyes that watched until the light was quenched.
  The wind from the lake was raw, smoke-laden,
grime-laden, its first clean freshness gone the
moment it struck these hills of steel and concrete.
  I shut the window and turned back to the office.
The blank space on the wall behind my desk
challenged and tantalized me. What had a page
from a magazine casually pasted up with a hundred
other pages to do with the murder of Michael
Montgomery?
  If I could remember that picture would I
perhaps have the answer?

             CHAPTER 10

  The Universal Arts Company was far enough out on
West Madison Street to make a tiresome
streetcar ride at the rush hour.
  I clung to a strap and lurched with the stopping and
starting of a car streamlined in everything but motion. I
was thankful that I'd sent Keith on earlier with the
phonograph. It wouldn't have been any fun
handling it in a jam like this.
  Universal Arts occupied the fourth floor of
an old brick office building and I went up
in an ancient, creaky elevator. Bill had
talked about moving into new quarters, but as yet the
change hadn't been made.
  I stepped into a tiny hall opposite the
receptionist's vacant desk, and Bill came
out of his office to greet me.
  "I've a job to finish up," he said. "Some
designs I want to have ready for morning. But we
can go out to dinner now. Then, if you don't mind, you
can come back with me afterwards, and when I'm through
I'll drive you home."
  The plan was agreeable and we went downstairs
again in the elevator.
  "The neighborhood's nothing to brag about when it
comes to eating," Bill said, "but there's a place
around the corner where the meat balls and spaghetti
can be recommended."
  We went to the place around the corner and found
ourselves a small table with a slightly spotted,
red-checked cloth, and an old-fashioned vinegar-
and-oil cruet set.
  The minute we'd ordered, I went into my
story, beginning with the attack on me. It was nice
to see Bill look so concerned and sympathetic, but
he lost no time getting busy on the same
angle I'd taken.
  "There were three of us there when you remembered about
that stone," he said. "Chris and Helena and I.
And I haven't told a soul. Do you suppose
the others talked?"
  "Helena thinks she didn't. But Chris
told Owen and Susan. Susan came up to see
me today and she knew all about it."
  Bill sighed. "Then it's probably all
over town by now."
  "I should think you'd be glad," I said. "It
gives you more of an out."
  He grinned at me a little absently. I could
see that my story had shocked him considerably, and
somehow I was glad it was I--instead of Chris--
who had his concerned interest for a while. I gave
him the rest of the story--my tilt with McPhail
over the golf stick, the picture torn from the
wall, and then I told him things I hadn't
mentioned to anyone else. About seeing Monty and
Carla Drake engaged in secret and earnest
conversation the morning of the day Monty had died.
About the oddness of the moment when I'd happened upon
Carla in Owen Gardner's office, and about seeing
them together later in the restaurant when I'd been
with Chris. Nor did I forget that Carla had
"lost" a husband. And last of all, her connection
with that scratch on Helena's hand.
  Bill couldn't recall ever having seen
Carla, but my description, and the way she seemed
to thread herself in and out of the affair intrigued him.
"Your lady of the silver hair sounds like trouble to
me. I'd like to meet her."
  "I'll try to arrange it," I said. Carla
wasn't the type of woman a girl goes throwing
at men she likes.
  Bill's grin was maddening. "I'm good at
arranging things like that myself. Don't mix in.
Tell me about that scratch business again."
  "Oh, it wasn't much of anything," I said,
regretting that I'd ever mentioned Carla. "Just that
I noticed a queer look on Helena's face
last night when I inquired about her scratched
hand. And then today it developed that Carla had
scratched her when she was exchanging a pin. It
all sounds perfectly innocent and yet there was a
moment this morning when Carla and Helena gave
each other a look that I'd swear had some
special meaning. But I don't think it has
anything to do with the murder. After all, Carla
wasn't anywhere near the window at the time."
  Bill's blue eyes had a glint in them.
"How do you know?"
  "Why--why, it's never come out if she was."
  "Maybe nobody's thought of it," Bill said.
"Evidently she knew Monty, and she seems
pretty chummy with Gardner. Another thing that's
funny is her friendship with Sondo. They don't
sound as though they'd appeal to each other, if you
ask me. Linell, do me a favor."
  "Of course, if I can."
  "Find out from Helena just what time of the
day Carla came down to exchange that pin."
  "Oh," I said, "I'm beginning to see."
  It had been there all the time, of course, quite
plainly, but my mind was confused with so many
details. At some time yesterday Carla Drake
had gone to the jewelry counter to exchange a pin.
And Helena had been there all day, except for
her lunch hour and the time she'd run up to see me.
If that exchange had been made within an hour of
closing--to 
  "The trouble with this whole thing," Bill went on,
"is that there are too many unconnected threads
lying about. Who broke the golf stick? Where did
that ring come from Monty was clutching?"
  "And what about the rest of the missing stone?" I
put in. "It was only a fragment I found."
  "Right. Was the other piece lost in the window,
or somewhere else, and what has it to do with the murder?
And then there's that picture torn from the wall.
Somewhere, somehow, these things are tied together. When we
begin to hook them up, perhaps we'll get somewhere.
Not before."
  We were silent for a while, struggling with all the
small mysteries. Then I remembered Keith and
the phonograph and asked Bill if he'd brought
it out.
  Bill nodded. "Yes, he came up an hour
or so ago. I had him take it straight to the
shop, but I haven't had time to look it over
yet. He's a queer duck, that office boy of
yours."
  "So I've discovered," I said.
  Just thinking about Keith was enough to give me the
creeps again and I found myself glancing uneasily
about the little dining room. I didn't like what I
saw.
  "Bill," I said in a low voice, "don't
look now, but there's a man sitting a couple of
tables away. I noticed him shortly after we
came in. He pretends he's interested in the
menu, or the wall over our heads, but it's us
he's watching. I'm sure of it!"
  "My innocent!" Bill's smile was dry.
"Of course he's watching us. More particularly
you, I think. You're being honored by the police
department. As far as I know, I haven't had
anybody tailing me as yet, but after the
suspicious company I'm keeping this evening,
I'll expect a like honor tomorrow."
  "Oh, Bill! But that's awful.
I'd never have come out if I thought--"
  "Don't be a goop," he told me. "I
wanted you to come out. And if I'm going to be
followed, all I ask is to lead 'em as merry
a chase as possible. Besides, this makes things
safer for you. You're not likely to be attacked
again with the police on guard."
  That was a thought. But the sense of privacy, of
being alone with Bill was gone.
  "Let's go back to your place," I said.
"They can't follow us up there."
  Back at Universal I went over to a blind
in Bill's office and peered down between the slats.
Sure enough, our friend of the restaurant was lounging
in a doorway across the street, smoking a
cigarette. It gave me a queer feeling to
realize that I couldn't take a step from now on
without being observed and trailed.
  "I've got to get to work," Bill said.
"Maybe you'd like to look around the workshop till
I'm through."
  He pushed open a door, switched on a
light or two, and I stepped past him into a
huge room.
  I'd never thought much about the shop where our plaster
figures originated and it caught me
unprepared. There was no picture in my mind to
match the reality and I could only stand there in
stunned dismay.
  The place had the vast echoing reaches of a
cathedral. Except for Bill's office, it
occupied the entire floor, vanished into ghostly
distance at the opposite end of the building, and went
endlessly upward toward the high ceiling. Plaster
dust lay over everything. It covered the floor and
spread in drifts on every shelf. The dry smell
of it hovered in the air and choked my lungs.
  "Come on in," Bill said.
  The place frightened and fascinated me. I was
torn between an impulse to turn back to the bright
compactness of Bill's office, and an even
stronger desire to explore this strange world before
me.
  I walked around some piled packing cases and
then drew close to Bill with a gasp of horror.
A foot away from me hung a horrible, brown,
desiccated thing like a crumbling mummy.
  Bill laughed. "That's only an armature.
You know--the foundation for the first clay model. Come
over here and I'll show you the start of a
mannequin."
  I followed him to a big table on which stood a
half figure in plaster. It looked ghastly in
naked white, all the more horrid since lips and
eyes had been touched with color and artificial
eyelashes had been fastened to the lids. The thing was
bald and a cheap wig, to give the sculptor an
idea of how it would look when completed, lay on
the table beside it.
  "Our master mold will be cast from that," Bill
explained, "and then a papier mach`e foundation will be
made, with a light plaster composition over it.
Over there are the booths where the figure can be
sprayed with color."
  It was all very interesting, but somehow I couldn't
focus my attention on Bill's words. The
place held me in its grip and I waited with
tense expectancy for him to go away and leave me
alone with it. It was as if the whole vast room was
waiting too. Waiting to share some secret with me
--if only I would come quickly and alone.
  "You go back," I whispered. "I--I'll just
roam around and get acquainted."
  I stood there in silence, hearing his steps move
away, hearing the click of the office door,
waiting with a queer compulsion until I could do
whatever it was the place demanded of me.
  Two naked electric bulbs hung down from
the ceiling, casting a thin light where I stood. But
it was not dark beyond. Windows ranged the entire
length of the walls on both sides, and through these,
moonlight flowed, making patterns of light and
dark.
  I moved forward softly, as if stealth, too,
were part of the compulsion. Behind me lay the work tables and
the area of packing cases. Ahead a new and
shadow-haunted world beckoned.
  Everywhere stood ghostly plaster figures--
forests of them, with a single narrow path of clear
floor winding between. There were creatures of every form and
description. Prancing plaster horses,
eagles, unicorns, swans. And there,
directly at my feet, was surely an acre
of small plaster owls, still unpainted, waiting to
be made ready for next Halloween.
  I moved on into the dimmer reaches, but still it was
not dark, for the plaster figures glowed luminously
in the moonlight, casting a reflected radiance of
their own. I'd felt the creatures behind, and now
tall Grecian columns towered above
me and I found myself in a maze of gods and
goddesses. A pointing Mercury caught my
sleeve and cold sweat came suddenly to my
forehead.
  Why was I here? Under what spell had I
wandered so far into the depths of this eerie place,
leaving Bill and safety behind?
  Safety? What nonsense! I tried to get
myself in hand. This place was peopled only by things
of cold plaster and there was nothing to fear. I had
only to turn and walk back along the path to reach
Bill again.
  I turned and it seemed that the acre of owls had
moved in behind me. They sat on the floor,
hundreds of them, watching me with empty, staring
eyes, and it was as if they were saying, "Go on, go
on! You cannot go back!"
  The path had disappeared. It was there, of course.
But some trick of light and shadow had hidden it for the
moment. I ignored the squeamish rise of panic
and turned my back on the way by which I'd come.
Because I'd suffered a savage attack that morning
didn't mean that I must be fearful of shadows. This
place was far removed from death and murder. There was
nothing here to fear.
  A path lay ahead and it would undoubtedly
circle the floor and lead back to Bill.
  It was then that I saw a square patch of
moonlight on the floor at my feet moving like
smoke, like the rippling of water. I glanced up
at the big window. A silver edge of cloud was
creeping over the moon. It moved quickly and already
the light was dimming.
  Panic surged up again, but I refused to
give in to these tricks of the imagination.
  With the fading light the figures about me seemed
to come into a shadowy life of their own. Where before they
had seemed stiff and white and inanimate--now they
wavered in the gloom, whispered among themselves.
  But their whispers were unreal, imagined. The sound
I heard close at hand had frightening reality. It
was no more than a creak, as if something moved
stealthily and sought to tiptoe away.
  But even as I tensed to listen, the sound was gone,
the whole vast place hushed into deathly silence.
An unnatural silence. The silence of waiting.
I saw the shadow then, a few yards ahead. A
shadow darker, more dense than the shadows all around;
a shadow more human than those other shadows that
merely mocked the human.
  I couldn't be sure if the thing moved, or
only seemed to move. A second later I was
sure. The outline had changed, wavered into a new
form.
  I wanted to scream, to cry out to Bill, but my
throat muscles were tight and choked and no sound
came. But I could move; I could walk. I
turned and ran blindly back along the path to the
place where the owls had crowded in--and still I
couldn't find the way. I turned helplessly from
side to side, sick with terror, brushing at last
against an Olympian figure which tottered on its
pedestal, and crashed to the floor.
  In that instant I heard clearly the sound of
running feet. Feet no longer stealthy but bent
on escape.
  "Bill!" I screamed. "Oh, Bill!"
  But he had already heard the crash and rushed to find
me.
  "Don't worry," he said. "You haven't
done any great damage. I should have turned on more
lights."
  I clung to him, shaking. I liked the comforting
feel of his arm about my shoulders. I had to tell
him quickly. "Bill, someone was hiding there among
those figures. Someone who ran away."
  I could sense his disbelief, but he went to a
wall switch and in a moment the entire place
blazed with light. It was not an easy place to
search. There were too many objects to afford
temporary shelter, and where we were standing a wide
aisle ran past benches and tables, troughs, and
vats.
  I went to the place where the shadow had crouched.
  "Look, Bill," I said.
  The thick plaster dust had been recently
disturbed, trampled, though no distinct
footprints showed.
  Bill glanced at the telltale marks and then
ran into the aisle. "The fire escape door is
open! That's the only way out, except through my
office."
  We ran across to where a few steps led up to an
open door. There were traces on the steps, marks
of plaster dust. Bill believed me now.
  He said, "I'm going down. You go back,
Linell."
  I had no intention of facing that echoing vastness
alone. I climbed out into the cold of the fire
escape and followed Bill down the
ladder.
  But the chase was futile. The long, dark
alley offered a dozen doorways to shield and
conceal, a dozen passageways between buildings to
furnish escape.
  "You're cold," Bill said at last. "We
might as well go back. But first we'll go around
and pay a surprise visit to your shadow."
  The man in the doorway looked bored and tired
until he saw us hurrying around from the rear of the
building. He took the cigarette from his mouth in
astonishment.
  "A lot of good you are!" Bill said
scornfully. "Did you see anybody come out of the
alley just now? Anybody at all?"
  He hadn't seen a thing. His attention had been
focused on the main door of the building. Our
visitor had made his escape.
  The detective went into the building with us to question
the elevator operator. The man said he'd
taken no one upstairs that evening except Bill
and me. But since Bill hadn't bothered to lock
up when he went out to dinner, it would not have been
difficult for someone to give the elevator man the
slip and reach the upper floors by means of the
building stairs. The fire escape offered an
exit, since anyone coming down could lower the last
flight, but it couldn't have been used as an entrance.
  The whole thing was senseless. Nothing much of
value could be picked up in the shop by a petty
thief; in fact most of the things were too large to be
carried off. What could the prowler have wanted? I
thought of Keith and what he'd said about a mind
ready to do crazy, treacherous things, but there couldn't
be any possible connection between Universal Arts
and the death of Michael Montgomery.
  After Bill and the detective, a young man named
Jones, had given the shop a quick search, we
gave up and went out for coffee and doughnuts. Our
new friend was gloomy and guarded and suspicious--not
very good company. But when Bill drove me home,
we were generous and offered him a ride in the back
seat. I've an idea he believed as little in the
hidden watcher as McPhail had believed my
story of the picture torn from the wall. I
suppose it's the job of detectives to be
suspicious and disbelieving, but it makes them very
difficult to get along with.
  Helena met us at the door of the apartment,
opening it the moment she heard the sound of
my key.
  "Thank heaven!" she said. "I was beginning to
get worried. I phoned Bill's place
once, but I couldn't get any answer."
  "We were probably roaming the alleys about
then," I told her. "But why the anxiety?
Anything wrong?"
  "Company for you." Helena glanced over her
shoulder. "But I wouldn't know how to entertain her.
If you ask me, the girl's a little unbalanced."
  It was Sondo Norgaard. She had arrived
only a few moments before, and came into the
hallway when she heard Bill's voice.
  "Hello, Linell," she called. "That you,
Bill? Swell! I want to talk to you both."
  Sondo, minus her green smock and dressed
in a drab brown suit, looked more like a gnome
than ever. But tonight there was something electric about her
--wild black hair and eyes that flashed with
triumphant light. She strode back into the
living room as if she owned the place and seated
herself on the arm of a sofa, swinging one brogued
foot.
  Bill explained what had happened at the shop
and described our hunt through the alley, while
Helena sat quietly sewing, her strong,
well-cared for hands moving competently with needle and
thread. Sondo perched on the sofa, swinging her
foot and listening with that electric interest to every word.
  "Anything damaged?" she asked when he had
finished.
  Bill glanced at her. "Why did you say
damaged? Why didn't you ask if anything had
been taken?"
  Her teeth flashed in an insolent,
secretive smile.
  "A girl can ask a question, can't she?" she
demanded. "And you might as well answer. Was
anything damaged?"
  "Not that I know of," Bill said. "Have you any
reason to think that what happened out at the shop has
anything to do with the affair at the store?"
  Sondo hugged her thin arms about herself and laughed
unpleasantly. "How should I know?"
  I dropped down on the sofa beside her. This day
had added up too many nerve strains and I wished
Sondo would say her say and go home.
  "Why did you want to see me, Sondo?" I
asked.
  She hopped off the sofa and took a
quick turn about the room as if seething energy would not
let her rest. Then she came to a halt in the
middle of the floor and faced us, hands on hips.
  "I'm going to have a party," she announced.
"Tomorrow night. And I want you all to come."
  Helena's needle paused in midair and
Bill turned away from the bookcase.
  "A party!" I said in a shocked echo. "At
a time like this? Sondo, you're crazy!"
  "It's scarcely appropriate," Bill
said.
  "Why do you want to give a party, Sondo?"
Helena asked.
  Sondo rocked triumphantly back and forth
on her heels. She was obviously enjoying the
sensation she had caused.
  "I've a reason for wanting to give it," she
said. "I may be crazy, but I'm going to do it.
And this party will be very appropriate indeed. You
see, my cherubs, it's going to be a murder
party!"



             CHAPTER 11

  Sondo helped herself to one of Bill's
cigarettes and bent her head to the match. The tiny
flare caught the shine in her eyes and something made
me shiver. Was Helena right? Was the girl a little
unbalanced?
  "Now for the details," Sondo went on.
"I'm going to invite everybody who's had any
connection with this affair. Even your office boy,
Linell. He's going through a siege of calf
love over you and he was death on Monty."
  "Oh, Sondo!" I protested.
  But she only made one of her monkey
grimaces and continued. "We'll have Owen Gardner
and dear dumb Susan, of course. And we'll have
Tony--maybe. Though I might have other plans
for him. We'll have Carla because she's the mystery
woman in the case and--"
  "I thought Carla was your friend," Bill put
in.
  "She is. But she picked me--I didn't
pick her. And I'm afraid our stunning Carla
doesn't love me for myself alone. She likes
my collection of records. Say--Bill, have
you looked at that phonograph yet?"
  "I will tomorrow," Bill promised. "If the
display department over at Cunningham's would
take better care of things--"
  "I didn't think you'd looked at it,"
Sondo said. "I suggest that you do so the very first thing
in the morning."
  Her eyes were dancing wickedly and she shook
her head when Bill prodded for an explanation.
  "Let me see--who else?" She began
checking on her fingers. "There'll be you three, of
course. And--why, I do believe I've
forgotten Chris. Oh, we must have Chris. After
all, she'll be guest of honor."
  I lost my patience completely. "Look
here, Sondo, why do you keep picking on
Chris? You've got the child frightened half to death,
and for no good reason at all."
  "No good reason?" Sondo sniffed. "I
wouldn't be too sure about that."
  "Just what's the idea behind this party?" Bill
asked.
  "Oh, only a friendly little get-together. But with a
purpose, of course. The purpose of finding out
a few things about one another, of comparing a few
notes."
  Helena's needle moved evenly in and out of the
cloth, but a line puckered between her eyes. "How
do you know anybody will come?"
  "They'll come," Sondo was confident. "People
usually do what I want them to. I'm a very
persuasive woman."
  "What about the police?" Bill asked. "Are
you planning to invite Hering and McPhail to your
party? They'll be pretty hurt if you don't.
In fact I think they're quite likely to attend
anyway."
  "You mean we're being watched?"
  "Some of us are," Bill said. "Linell had a
detective trailing her tonight."
  Sondo was examining her fingernails. "I think
there won't be any detective around tomorrow."
  "How'll you manage that?" asked Bill.
  She returned his look coolly. "If there was
an arrest the police would be withdrawn, wouldn't
they?"
  "Maybe," said Bill.
  "Well then," said Sondo, "it's just possible
there might be an arrest."
  Bill scowled. "I don't know what you're
up to, but I can't say I like the sound
of it. Besides, if there's an arrest, what's the
purpose of your party?"
  "I didn't say the right one would be arrested,"
Sondo told him. "I just said there might be an
arrest. But that's not for you to worry about. I'll
invite everybody the first thing tomorrow morning. If I
speak to Gardner he can arrange to bring Susan and
Chris, and--"
  "You'll have your trouble getting Owen Gardner,"
I broke in. "He doesn't like you, and he
won't want Chris submitted to any more
emotional upheavals. Which means Susan won't
come either."
  "They'll all come," Sondo was assured.
"After I've talked to Owen he'll be afraid not
to. You see--" her impudence mocked us, "Owen
Gardner is going to have a very personal interest in the
identity of the murderer."
  "This is a screwy idea," Bill said, "but
I suppose I'd better come and lend a
stabilizing influence. I'll pick my own
girl, however, so never mind any assignments."
  I had a feeling Bill would ask me and I
wasn't too pleased when he went on.
  "I think I'll come down to the store tomorrow and
see if I can scrape up an acquaintance with the
lovely Miss Drake. The more I hear about the
lady, the more I think we'd make quite a pair."
  "She's old enough to be your grandmother," I said.
"Don't make any more of a fool of yourself than you
can help."
  Bill grinned at me. "Older women
fascinate me. They have something you young things lack.
Anyway, I doubt if she can quite rate as a
grandmother."
  He was looking disgustedly satisfied with himself and
I yawned and stared at the ceiling to show how bored
I was.
  He said, "Come along, Sondo. I guess
we can take a hint when people want us to go home."
  Sondo wasn't given to taking hints and she
wasn't in the least anxious to leave, but Bill's
offer to drop her off was too convenient to be passed
up.
  When they had gone, Helena put away her
sewing.
  "That young man's very fond of you, Linell," she
said. "And he's really nice."
  I felt snappish. "You don't know him as
well as I do. If he likes me,
he certainly has peculiar ways of showing it.
Carla Drake!"
  It was funny how much I was beginning to dislike
Carla. I changed the subject.
  "What do you think of this party idea?" I
asked.
  Helena raised her handsome shoulders in a
shrug. "I don't think Sondo Norgaard is
quite sane. And I think she was passionately,
hopelessly in love with Monty. Love like that is
dangerous."
  I was startled. "You don't mean that because she
loved him she might have--might have--"
  "Killed him?" Helena said. "No, I
don't think that, exactly. But I think she's
dangerous now. I think she's out for payment in
blood. And her mind is sufficiently twisted so
that she won't be guided by logic in choosing her
victim."
  "Then you think this party idea isn't very wise?"
  "I think," said Helena quietly, "that it
might easily turn into a Frankenstein monster
that will get out of Sondo's control. We'll be
lucky if it goes through without disaster."
  She was standing at a window, looking down at the
moonlit street, while a finger of one hand
absently traced the scratch that crossed the palm
of the other.
  "There's someone down there watching the building,"
she said.
  I was too tired to care. All I wanted was
to get to bed. But there was one more question I had to ask.
  "Helena, what time of the day was it that Carla
Drake came down to exchange that pin?"
  She was so quiet for a moment I thought she
wasn't going to answer. Then she turned away from
the window and gave me a long, slow look that was
completely inscrutable.
  "I don't remember," she said, and I knew
she was lying.
  Cunningham's was becoming accustomed to murder.
Excitement still ran high on Thursday, but the
element of horror was less keen among those whose
lives had touched the tragedy only from a distance.
  For those of us who were close, it was not like that. I
thought of a violin whose strings were being tightened to reach
a certain pitch.
  Keith was in the office when I arrived and I was
glad to see him. I'd probably never again be
able to step into that room without a twinge of
painful remembrance. The swelling behind my ear was
down, but I could still recall that moment all too
clearly.
  "You've been invited to a party," I told
Keith at once.
  He looked at me without comprehension and I
explained.
  "Sondo Norgaard wants to have a cozy little
group out to her apartment this evening. Just the select
few she suspects might have murdered Monty."
  Keith's eyes fairly popped. "I won't
go to anything like that. I won't!"
  "Good," I said. "If enough people refuse there
won't be any party." I was offering him an out, but
for some reason he seemed uneasy about taking it.
  "I don't understand, Miss Wynn. What's
she want to have a party for? Do you suppose she'll
be mad if I don't come?"
  "It's quite likely," I said.
  His gloom increased. "Anyway, there'll be
another one who won't be there. Tony
Salvador."
  It was my turn to be startled, "What do you
mean?"
  "Tony's been arrested. They've got him
over at headquarters now. It happened this morning
right after he came to work."
  "I don't believe it!" I said. "Not
Tony. Tony does a lot of barking, but he
wouldn't hurt a fly."
  "I don't believe it, either," Keith said.
"Tony didn't do it."
  He sounded so sure that I asked a point-
blank question. "What do you know?"
  I began to consider him with a more serious interest
than I'd shown before. Now that I thought about it, the
state of fright he'd been in ever since the murder
seemed a bit too intense to be accounted for by
jittery nerves.
  "Keith," I said more gently, "if you really
know anything, you ought to tell me. Perhaps I could
help you decide what to do. I know you've been
frightened and worried the last day or so and it would be
much better if you got the thing off your mind,
whatever it is."
  I saw his eyes turn toward that blank
space on the wall.
  "I wouldn't tell you, even if I knew
anything," he said. "There are times when it's safer
not to know. They say that after a person has
killed once its easier to kill again--to kill for
protection. So I don't know anything, see?
I just don't think Tony's the one. I think this
arrest is a trick of some kind."
  That was what I thought myself. And I thought I
knew who was behind the trick.
  "Come along," I told him. "We're going
over to see Sondo. You'll have a chance to explain
in person that you won't come to her party."
  He wasn't anxious to accompany me, but he
didn't dare to refuse. We went over to window
display and found Sondo on her knees, busily
pasting wallpaper over the panels of a folding
screen. The phonograph was wailing Dark
Eyes and the first thing I did was to lift the needle
and turn off the machine.
  "I want some words with you," I said grimly,
"and I can't think with that thing going."
  She looked around at us with her usual
grimace. "Okay, but don't expect me to
stop and serve tea. Even with Tony in jail,
those windows have to go in. I've had executives
in and out of here tearing their hair ever since I
arrived. But they have to trust me--there's nothing
else they can do."
  "What's this about Tony being arrested?" I
asked. "You're behind it, aren't you?"
  She smoothed a strip of bright-patterned paper
with annoying deliberation. "And what if I am?
Can I help it if I've piled up such a
nice stack of evidence against Tony? What could
I do except take it to McPhail?"
  "What evidence?" I demanded.
  "Oh, just odds and ends." Her manner was
airy. "About the perfectly whopping scrap he
had with Monty when he went after him with that golf
club."
  "Tony went after Monty--?"
  "Yes, of course. Didn't you notice how
uneasy Tony was over that club. I finally got
the truth out of him. He threatened to bash
Monty's head in, but Monty just laughed at
him and snatched the club out of his hands. It was one
of those old wooden clubs, you know, and Monty
took it and broke it over his knee. Then he
threw the pieces down and went around to the switch
box. Tony picked up the heavy end and followed
him to finish the job."
  "I don't believe it," I said. "I
don't believe any of it."
  Sondo was unperturbed. She sat back on
her heels and surveyed the screen.
  "Hand me that hat, will you, Linell?" she said.
"And by the way, what do you think of my idea for
Easter?"
  I followed her pointing finger and saw that she'd
arranged a large green paper plant in a red
flower pot. The plant was jauntily wearing a
flame colored hat. I handed the hat to her without
a word.
  "I'm going to have a line of those plants across the
back of a window," she went on, "all wearing
hats. Nice, don't you think?"
  "What I think couldn't be printed," I said.
"Are you trying to send Tony to the chair?"
  Her dark eyes were mocking and wicked. "But
it's almost all true. Tony's admitted it about
the golf stick. He's even admitted that he
threatened to kill Monty. McPhail's got his
man. The case is closed."
  "And there'll be no detectives trailing us
tonight, is that it?"
  Sondo's laugh had an ugly ring. "You're
so clever, Linell dear!"
  "And you're so clever," I said, "that it's a
wonder somebody hasn't murdered you."
  She held the bright hat up against the beige and
flame background of the screen, nodding her
satisfaction.
  "I can take care of myself. And a night in
jail won't hurt Tony. He can stand chastening.
It's better that way than to go on waiting for slow
police force methods. Besides, I'm looking
forward to paying off this score myself."
  There was a look so malevolent on her dark
little face that I turned away. Helena had been
right. The girl was dangerous and I didn't envy
the murderer.
  She changed the subject swiftly. "You're
coming to my party, aren't you?" she demanded of Keith.
  He cast a helpless look at me, and then
nodded his head weakly. So much for Keith and his
firm resolutions.
  I'd have started back to my office, but Bill
Thorne sauntered unexpectedly into the room.
He smiled at me, but his blue eyes were grim
as he looked at Sondo.
  "Good morning, Madame Machiavelli," he
said, "and how are all the little schemes today?"
  She wrinkled her nose at him
impudently. "Very well, thank you. Have you
heard--?"
  "About Tony, you mean? Yes, I've heard.
But that's not what interests me."
  He went over to stand lazily before her, his hands
thrust in his pockets. Sondo was such a little thing,
she had to tilt her head to look up into his
face. Her eyes were wicked and unblinking.
  "How did you know," Bill asked, "that the
phonograph was going to be smashed?"
  Sondo put her hands in her smock
pockets, openly mocking Bill. "Why, Mr.
Thorne! Whatever do you mean?"
  Bill gave her a look full of daggers and
ground glass, and turned to speak to Keith.
  "That phonograph was all in one piece when you
left it at the shop last night, wasn't it?"
  "Sure," Keith said. "Of course."
  "Bill," I broke in, "you don't mean that
was what--"
  He nodded. "I had a look at the
electrical shop the first thing this morning. The
phonograph was there all right--smashed to bits."
  Sondo gave a squeal. "I knew it! I
knew it!"
  Bill ignored her. "How did it happen,
Keith, that you took the wrong phonograph out to
Universal Arts?"
  Keith looked blank and Sondo stopped
squealing. But she still resembled the cat who'd
swallowed the canary.
  Bill went on. "The phonograph you took
out to my place wasn't the one I made the
attachment for."
  "But--but I took the one Miss Norgaard
told me to take," Keith stammered.
  Bill walked across to Sondo's
phonograph. "This is the one that was intended for the
window. How did you happen to send me yours,
Sondo?"
  Sondo's look of bewilderment was badly
overdone. "Why, you're right. This is the one that
belongs to the store. How could I have been so
stupid?"
  "I thought you said something was wrong with this one?"
Bill turned on the machine, set the needle in
place. The music came out clearly, the
vibration entirely gone.
  Sondo made a fluttery, feminine gesture
of confusion that was scarcely in character. "It
sounds all right now, doesn't it? I feel so
foolish!"
  "Yes, you do!" Bill said derisively.
"You made the substitution on purpose. Because you
wanted the wrong phonograph to be taken out to my
place. Why?"
  Sondo dropped her pose of innocence.
"Wouldn't you like to know? But you won't know. Not
till I get ready to tell you."
  And she turned her back on us and went
furiously to work.

             CHAPTER 12

  I sent Keith to the office and walked slowly
to the elevators with Bill.
  "What's it all about?" I asked. "Why would
anybody want to go clear out to Universal Arts
to smash up a phonograph?"
  "I can only guess," Bill said. "Did you
hear the other one while it was on the blink? How
did it sound?"
  I tried to remember. "There was a sort of
tinny vibration."
  "As if something might have dropped down into the
sound box?"
  "Why, yes," I said. "It could easily have
been that. But I still don't see--"
  "Suppose the thing that dropped into it was an
object of importance to the person who murdered
Montgomery. Suppose the murderer had a good
idea that object had fallen into the phonograph
while it was in the window. Wouldn't he be willing
to go to any lengths to recover it? Even to coming out to
my place and smashing up the machine to find it?"
  Chills went up and down my spine. If all
this was true, then there was a connection between the murder
and Universal Arts. The phonograph made a
link. And I knew that in the frightening moment the
night before, when I'd become aware of the shadow
crouching among those white things of plaster, I'd
again been within arm's reach of the murderer.
  Bill read my face. "You're all right now.
Don't start falling apart at this late date."
  I made an effort to ignore my wobbling
knees and attend to the confusion of my thoughts. "But
why should Sondo--?"
  "She probably figured the thing out herself and
wanted a chance to find what was in the phonograph.
So she sent off the wrong one with Keith and kept
the other until she had time to investigate. Not being
in a hurry, she could do it more tidily. Since the
machine's all right now, the chances are she found
what she was looking for. All clear?"
  I shook my head. "If she had any real
evidence, why is she throwing this party? Why
doesn't she take the whole thing to McPhail?"
  "It suits Sondo's peculiar temperament
to go about it in her own way. Besides, the evidence,
whatever it is, may not be conclusive."
  A suddenly brilliant idea
struck me. "Bill! All we have to do is
figure out how many people knew the phonograph was out
of order and that it was going to Universal."
  "Good enough," Bill said. "Start figuring."
  "First of all we can put you down," I told
him. "Though I must admit you'd probably
take the thing apart with something more delicate than a
crowbar, or whatever was used. And you couldn't have
been in two places at once. I mean in your
office and hiding in the workshop too."
  "Thanks for small favors," he said. "I
wish I could vouch as well for you. But you certainly
knew about the affair. You could even have been breaking
up the phonograph while I was working. And you could
easily have staged that whole episode of the
prowler."
  "I think I'll go back to the office," I
said haughtily.
  He caught my arm and his eyes were laughing.
"Wait a minute, Miss Flighty. Let's
do some serious checking."
  It wasn't as easy as it looked at first
glance. When Tony had brought the phonograph in
to play it, there had been Sondo, Carla,
Helena, Tony and myself in the room. Carla and
Helena left before Tony suggested that Keith
take the machine out to Universal. To all
appearances, only Sondo, Tony, Keith,
Bill and I knew about that. But--and here was the thing
that made our checking hopeless--anyone speaking in
an ordinary voice could be heard in the
corridors or several rooms away.
  Anyone at all could have lingered outside
Sondo's workroom and heard what was going on.
In that case, we'd have to include Owen Gardner,
who'd been up there being fingerprinted. Even Chris
and Susan had been in the store that day, and it would
have been possible, though not likely, for them to have
been within hearing distance.
  "A lot of help you are," Bill said.
"We're right where we started. But maybe Sondo
will get somewhere tonight. Which reminds me that I'd
better get downstairs and date up the lovely
Carla."
  "Without an introduction?" I asked. "Who do
you think you are?"
  "You underestimate my charms," he told me,
with that idiotic grin on his face. "I'll let
you know how I come out."
  I sniffed something about not being interested
and went toward the office with my chin in the air.
  "Mrs. Montgomery's been trying to get
you," Keith said when I walked in. "She's
going to call back. She sounds excited again.
Say, what was all that about the phonograph
anyway?"
  I had no intention of getting into a long
wrangle of speculation with Keith, so I shook
my head and gave him some letters to type. The phone
rang and it was Chris.
  "Hello," I said. "I know--you've got to
see me."
  "Why, how did you guess?" she asked, and the
innocent surprise in her voice pricked my
conscience.
  "I'll meet you," I assured her
contritely, "but I can't take another minute
off till lunch."
  "Any time before twelve-forty is all right,"
she said. "That's when the train leaves."
  "What train?"
  "Why, the one Susan wants to take," she
said, as if I should have known. "That's why I want
you to meet me. So we can stop her. She simply
mustn't go, Linell."
  This was getting too complicated for the telephone.
"I'll see you at twelve," I told her.
"Wherever you say."
  She mentioned the waiting room of one of the big
stations and hung up. I sat for a few minutes with
my hand on the phone. Now what went on?
  It rang again promptly and this time it was
Bill. His whistle was vulgar, but expressive.
  "The lady exceeds her reputation," he
announced smugly. "I'm taking her to supper
tonight and then over to Sondo's."
  "Do you think she'll be safe?" I asked
sweetly.
  "Oh, I'm the type women trust," he said.
"It's my youth and innocence that appeals."
  I wished him luck and hung up. Bill's
kidding was something to keep the two of us sane and
postpone as long as possible the inevitably
approaching time when all that was frightful would crowd
closely about us and laughter would die on our
lips.
  For the rest of that morning I managed to free my
mind of questions and suspicions. The pressure of
work on my desk was increasing and I had to get out
from under to some extent.
  I can't say that the copy I wrote during those
days was brilliant, but I am amazed now that I
could respond to necessity and accomplish anything.
I did manage, however, and when I left the
office to go to meet Chris, my conscience was a little
clearer as far as my job was concerned.
  I found Chris on one of the big benches in the
station waiting room, with Susan beside her. Chris
was talking animatedly, waving her hands,
evidently pleading. Susan sat listening to her--
plump, dowdy, silent, and very, very stubborn.
Heaven preserve me from the stubbornness of a woman
who is ordinarily gentle and yielding!
  "Oh, Linell!" Chris wailed the moment I
joined them. "You've got to talk to her. She's
going off to Florida and she simply mustn't."
  "I have my ticket," Susan told me, as
if that settled everything.
  "But just why are you leaving?" I asked.
  "I don't care to discuss the matter,"
Susan said. "When I learned this morning that an
arrest had been made, I decided I might as
well leave. I'd been planning to make this
trip all along, but of course Mr.
McPhail wouldn't let any of us leave town
before."
  "The trouble is," Chris explained to me, "if
she goes, she won't come back. She's leaving
father."
  "It's the only right thing to do," Susan said.
  I felt this was a little out of my province and
wished Chris hadn't called me in. After all,
if Mrs. Gardner had decided to leave her
husband, there wasn't anything I could do to stop
her.
  "You see," Susan went on, discussing it after
all, "I've felt right along that I wasn't the
type of woman for Owen. Oh, I've made him
a good wife, and I think I've made a good mother
to Chris, but a man like Owen needs much more in life
than I could ever give him. Miss Drake is
so lovely and I'm sure she's very charming and
interesting company--"
  So she knew about Carla. That was sad, but still not
my affair. But it was passionately Chris's
affair. She broke into what Susan was saying.
  "I'll bet she's a nitwit! I'll bet
father would be sick of her in two days if he
actually had to live with her. Susan, you can't go
without giving him a chance to speak for himself!"
  Susan shook her head with gentle stubbornness
and the hands of the station clock moved closer to train
time.
  Chris threw me a reproachful look for not
helping and plunged into a new argument.
  "Wait a while anyway, Susan. Don't
leave right now while all this about Monty is still in
the air. I'm so lonely and frightened. I need you,
Susan."
  Susan patted her hand. "You can come down and
visit me in a week or so, if you like. I'd
love that and it would be good for you to get away."
  "No!" Chris cried. "Oh, I couldn't
leave. I--I'm afraid. Susan, that's why
you mustn't go. I don't think they've caught the
person who killed Monty. I don't think
it's over yet."
  Susan and I both looked at her.
  "Tony's not the one! Oh, I'm sure he's
not the one. That's why we all have to move so
carefully. We're not safe yet. If you leave
town at this time, Susan, it might look bad for
you, bad for the rest of us."
  "I'm afraid I don't see--" Susan
began, but Chris stopped her at once.
  "Wait a few days longer, please. I think
it would be better for all of us to go to Sondo's
gathering tonight."
  So Sondo hadn't been letting any grass
grow under her feet.
  "Even father's agreed to go to that party," Chris
said. "He was furious about it, but he's going. And
if you leave town--"
  Some of Susan's hard-won resolution was
crumbling. She looked anxiously at me.
  "What do you think, Miss Wynn? This party
sounds like a stupid, dangerous thing."
  "It does to me, too," I agreed. "But
Sondo's not stupid by any means. She has some
purpose back of all this, I think. And if
McPhail has arrested the wrong person, it
might be better for all of us to see Sondo through.
Something awfully queer is going on at
Cunningham's."
  I told them about the picture, though I left
out the attack on me; about the phonograph being
smashed the night before out at Universal Arts, and
of my own part in that affair.
  Susan listened intently and put one arm about the
shivering Chris.
  "All right," she said, "I'll put off my
trip for a week or so. But then I'm leaving.
I'm not angry or bitter. I think I've
always felt I couldn't hold Owen. And now that
he's found someone else, I don't want to stand
in his way. You see--" she turned directly
to me, "you see, I love him."
  There wasn't anything to say or do in the face
of that simple statement. My respect for
Susan and my dislike for Carla increased.
  Chris leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You
go home now, Susan, and be a good little mother.
Father's going to pick you up tonight. He told me
he would. But I'm going with Linell, if she'll
let me."
  We took Susan to the elevated station and then
stopped in a drugstore for a quick lunch before I
went back to the store.
  We were both quiet. Chris's thoughts were her
own and I was lost in uneasy speculation. For one
thing, it was strange that Chris should be so positive
that Tony hadn't murdered Monty. And for
another, I was wondering if there had been anything
beneath Susan's sudden determination to leave town.
I liked Chris and I was beginning to be quite fond
of Susan, but just the same. ...
  When we headed for Cunningham's, Chris said
she'd go along with me.
  "I've something to do at the store." There was such
determination in her voice that I glanced at her in
surprise.
  "Just what are you up to?" I asked.
  Chris strode along beside me with her blond
hair blowing in the wind, and her square young
shoulders thrust back.
  "I'm going to see Carla Drake," she
announced in a voice that made people turn to look.
  I had to skip to keep up with her, though there's
nothing short about my legs. For the first time, I
felt ineffectual around Chris. Her sudden
resolve was surprising and disconcerting.
  "Listen," I said, tugging at her elbows, "you
can't go barging into Cunningham's to throw accusations
at Carla. It isn't done. It won't get you
anywhere."
  "It's going to be done!"
  I felt as if a mild summer breeze had
turned into a cyclone right under my nose and I
wished Bill was around to handle the situation. He
had a way with women. I had to admit
that.
  "What about your father?" I asked as we flew
through Cunningham's revolving doors. "He'll
be wild if he finds out about this. He'll--"
  Chris paid no attention. She went ahead of
me down the main aisle with a stride that parted the
crowd and made people get out of our way.
  I decided I'd better go along to pick up
pieces and nurse the wounded, so I got out of the
elevator with her on fourth. Fortunately, Owen
Gardner wasn't anywhere in sight. Chris might
have much of her wayward mother in her, she might be young
and spoiled and helpless in a lot of ways, but
evidently there was a strong streak of Gardner in
her, too, and I didn't like to think what might
come of a clash with her father when she was in a mood like
this.
  "Where's the Drake woman?" she demanded of the
startled Miss Babcock.
  The buyer began her usual line of opposition
to anything she didn't understand, but Chris brushed
her off like a speck of dust and I followed in her
wake.
  Carla was back in one of the dressing rooms,
changing her clothes. In fact, when Chris and I
burst in on her she was dressed in black chiffon
panties and a bra. And I must say she looked
just as stunning without her clothes as she did with them,
which is more than can be said for most women.
  Our appearance must have been surprising, but
Carla gave us one of her usual dreamy-eyed
glances and took a gray frock from a hanger,
preparatory to dropping it over her head.
  Chris, having gone berserk, did a good job
of it. She snatched the frock out of Carla's
hands and threw it at me.
  "I want to talk to you!" she cried. "I
want to--"
  Carla regarded her sadly, but without self-
conciousness. "Don't wrinkle the frock," she
said to me. "It just came in from the press shop."
  "Never mind the frock!" Chris went on.
"I want you to keep away from my father! I
won't have you breaking up my home and making my
mother unhappy. Women like you aren't any good. You
can't get a husband of your own, so you go around
picking on other women's husbands. But you're not
going to take my father away. If you ever so much as
look at him again, I'll take you apart."
  Having shot her bolt, Chris
collapsed on a stool in the corner and burst
wildly into tears. It was all pretty juvenile
and hysterical and uncomfortable. I must say
Carla took it well.
  When she reached for the gray frock and slipped it
over her head, it seemed immediately to mold itself to her
body. She smoothed a few silver strands of
hair that had been ruffled and pulled a zipper up
the side of the frock, all without a word to Chris.
  Then she went over to where Chris sat huddled
on the stool and put the lightest of hands on her
bent head.
  "I'm sorry," she said. "Truly, I'm so
very sorry. I know how much pain you've had. I
understand pain. But in the end perhaps it will all come
right."
  Chris jerked up her head, her eyes stormy
and rebellious. "Don't you touch me! You--
you--"
  "There are many words," Carla said. "But they would
be ugly on lips like yours. And not so very true."
  Chris had spent her fine anger. She was a
little girl again, desperately hurt, and at a
loss before this poised and lovely woman. Still she
must try, slapping out like a child at the thing that hurt
her.
  "You'll be at Sondo's party tonight! And--and
father will be there too, and Susan. If you so much
as--"
  "Hush," Carla said. "You needn't worry
about tonight. Tonight I am going to Sondo's with a very
charming young man named Bill Thorne, and if it will
make you happier I won't speak to your father at
all. Now if you'll excuse me--a customer
is waiting to see this frock."
  She was out of the dressing room before either of us could
speak. I'd meant to ask her exactly what time
of the day it had been when she had gone down to the
jewelry counter to exchange that pin she'd bought.
But somehow she'd eluded me, as well as Chris,
and we looked at each other with expressions that
admitted we were vanquished.
  "I don't understand her," Chris quavered.
"She just doesn't act the way a woman like that
ought to act. She wasn't a bit ashamed. She
wasn't even angry."
  "Perhaps she hasn't any reason to be
ashamed," I said. "Well, now that the storm is
over I'll get back to work."
  We left the dressing room together and
as we crossed the floor, I had a glimpse of
a graceful wraith in gray, moving before a
middle-aged woman who would later be disappointed
because that frock declined to make her look like
Carla.
  The model was a downright menace, I thought
unhappily. What chance would a girl with only
moderately good looks have against something like that in the
eyes of Bill Thorne? I hadn't thought
seriously about meaning anything to Bill until that
moment. Not consciously, anyway. I didn't like
men much any more. After Monty, I was a badly
disillusioned woman. I certainly didn't want
to get my emotions tangled up over somebody
new.
  Chris was talking persistently and finally broke
through my daze.
  "So you will help me, won't you? I'm sure
the janitor will let us in. And now that the police
won't be watching the place--"
  "What place?" I asked. "What on earth
are you talking about?"
  "My goodness!" Chris said. "Weren't you even
listening? Monty's apartment, of course. I
want to go out there tonight. Before we go to Sondo's.
Linell, I just have to set my mind at rest.
Maybe there's nothing. But if there is, I want
to find it before the police let Tony go and start
all over again."
  "Oh, all right," I agreed. "I suppose
it's perfectly legal for a wife to go into her
husband's apartment. I certainly can't see any
harm in it."
  Chris gave my arm a little squeeze of
gratitude. "I don't know what I'd do without
you. I'd never dare get into all these things alone.
I'll meet you downstairs at closing time."
  I left her, feeling exasperated. It
seemed to me that I'd spent half my time
lately flying around after Chris like the tail of a
kite.

             CHAPTER 13

  Chris had the little roadster Owen had given her
the year before and it didn't take us long to reach the
apartment building where Monty had lived. There was
no police guard on duty and as the janitor
recognized Chris, we had no difficulty
getting into the apartment.
  I had no heart for the expedition. The afternoon at
the store had been uneventful, but I had a heavy
uneasiness hanging over me because of Sondo's
party. Shortly before closing time I ran down to
let Helena know I was going with Chris, and I'd
found her weighted down with gloom, too. And then
there was the matter of Bill and Carla having
supper together, and goodness knows what would come of that.
  So when the janitor opened the door for us and
Chris switched on lights and led the way in,
I was in no cheerful, or adventuresome mood.
  There is something terribly depressing about going
into rooms that have been left by someone who was alive
and who expected to return to them, but will now never
return.
  The apartment was attractively furnished in
deep tones of brown and green. Monty had had
sophistication and good taste and these were the rooms of a
man who had read much and had a diversity of
interests.
  There was much with which I was familiar. On his
desk lay a book I'd given him on
Egyptian art at a time when he'd been
interested in using that motif in his windows. Above the
mantel hung a rather violent painting in tempera
that Sondo had done. A brilliant Mexican
scene of cactus and blazing sky, with a little pile
of bleached bones lying on desert sand in the
foreground. I remembered it quite well because it had
hung in one of our windows and I'd disliked it
then. I hadn't known Monty had taken it for the
place of honor in his own apartment.
  Chris stood beside me looking up at the
painting. "It's horrid, isn't it? All those
greens and yellows. I hated it the minute I
saw it, but Monty liked it."
  She turned away and looked about the room,
shivering, though it wasn't cold. I knew the
strain it must be for her to come back to this place she
had shared so briefly and unhappily with Michael
Montgomery. There were even a few of her own
things scattered about, but unrooted, not belonging.
  A pipe lay on the smoking stand and Chris
picked it up gently, caressed the bowl with the palm
of one hand. My heart ached. She was so young and she
had been so badly cheated. By Monty himself, who
had not loved her. By life, which had taken Monty
away from her. Sondo, too, had been painfully
cheated, but how different her reaction.
  In Chris there seemed to be nothing of
bitterness, nothing of real hatred against the
murderer. She had suffered the wild,
uncontrolled grief of a child, but she had shown more
bitterness against Carla that afternoon than she'd ever
displayed toward the unknown murderer. With Sondo
it was different. There was no softness there, no time
wasted on tears. She was bitter and violent--like
her painting. And I was beginning to be more and more
apprehensive of the evening ahead of us.
  "Perhaps you'd better do what you came to do," I
said.
  She seemed reluctant to move, as if she
dreaded to find whatever it was she had come for. The
memories she had of these rooms--not pleasant
ones, certainly--were more acceptable to her than the
terrible fact of Monty's death.
  "Have you changed your mind?" I asked. "If
you'd rather not go ahead--"
  But she seemed to pull herself together. "I must,"
she said. "I must know."
  She went directly to Monty's desk, and
pulled out a middle drawer filled with letters and
clippings, and dumped the whole batch out on top
of the desk. Then with a heavy brass paper knife
she went to work prying something loose at the bottom
of the drawer.
  "The police didn't find it," she said
thankfully. "This is where Monty told me to
look."
  A thin layer of plywood fitted tightly
over the real bottom of the drawer. Chris got it
out with the paper knife and I leaned over to see.
  There wasn't much there. Two letters and a
newspaper clipping. Chris took them out with
trembling hands. We sat down on the couch before the
empty fireplace and looked over our find.
  First the clipping. It was from a New York
paper, nearly a year old, and mentioned the theft of
some valuable fur coats during a style show
presented by a big Fifth Avenue store.
  "Does it mean anything to you?" Chris asked.
  "Only that it's the store Monty came from before
he worked for Cunningham's," I said.
  "But why would he keep anything like that in such a
secret place?"
  My guess was as good as hers and Chris spread
one of the letters on her knee so that we could read it
together. It was typewritten and began curtly,
without salutation. The signature was merely a
typed initial.

Michael:
  It is almost weird to find the old set-up
again. Though the actors have changed their positions,
and even their identities, all the
potentialities for danger still exist.
  I have promised to do nothing, to betray nothing--
though not for your sake. But walk carefully. There
is still the ring.
    E.

  Again Chris and I exchanged looks. Unless
she was acting a part, the note had no more meaning for
her than it had for me. There was just that one ominous
phrase: "There is still the ring."
  I sat up suddenly. "Chris, this must be it!
It ties up directly with the murder."
  "But what does it mean?" Chris demanded.
  "Somebody's not telling what he knows," I
pointed out. "This proves how important the ring
is." Then I knew.
  "Of course!" I cried in excitement.
"It's the stone of the ring that counts--to someone who was
in the window when Monty was murdered. I found one
fragment, but the larger part was missing, so it must have
been that which dropped into the phonograph and gave it
a queer sound. It would have been the stone the murderer
was after when he went out to Universal last night and
smashed the wrong phonograph. And if that's
true, then--then Sondo has the answer!"
  Chris was listening to me, but without open interest.
Later, when the secret of the ring was to be placed so
strangely in my hands, I was to try again and again
to recall the expression of her face, the way she
had reacted. At the time, though her lack of
interest puzzled me, I thought she had something
else on her mind and this was not the clue she sought.
  She made no comment, and spread out the second
letter for us to read--and I had to suppress my
excitement till the time when I could confide my
theories to Bill. This letter was written in black
ink in a strong hand. Merely a paragraph, with a
name signed to it.

  You have brought about the death of the person I loved
most. I know you are callous and have no regrets.
I know you would do anything to save yourself. But soon
you are going to have much to regret because the person you
most love will have to pay this debt in full. That
person being yourself.
    Lotta Montez.

  "Who on earth," I said, "is Lotta
Montez?"
  Chris shook her head. "I've never heard of
her. And I don't know any E either."
  She got up and went back to the desk. There was
nothing else in the drawer. I spread out the two
letters and the clipping and read them again.
  "The answer must lie here," I said.
"Otherwise he wouldn't have told you to look in the
drawer if anything happened to him. It certainly
appears that he was up to something not too healthy and
above board."
  Chris put her hands over her face. "It's
awful to love a person who isn't good. I wish
I could stop loving him. I wish the pain would go
away so I could forget."
  I made no attempt to comfort her. It's no
use talking about the healing of time and things like that.
Each of us has to find out for himself. And there's
only one way to find out--the hard way.
  Chris turned back to the desk and made
another search before returning to her place beside me
on the couch.
  "There doesn't seem to be anything else,"
she said. "Linell, can you connect any of these things
with people we know?"
  I couldn't and when I told her so she seemed
oddly relieved.
  "But I don't think this is for us to decide,"
I said. "I'd like to show these letters to Bill
Thorne and then turn them over to the police."
  Chris gave me a startled look. "Oh, must
we?"
  "Why not?" I asked.
  "But--but it may just mean stirring up
unpleasantness in Monty's past. And what's the
good of that now?"
  It might do a lot of good if it led the
police to the murderer," I said.
  There was a certain relief in Chris's
manner, yet there was uneasiness too. As if she
was glad not to have found something she'd half expected
to find; and as if she couldn't be sure it still
didn't lie in those enigmatic letters we'd
uncovered.
  I began to think of what she had told me
since the murder. That Monty had married her in
order to protect himself in some way. From
whom? The letters from E and from "Lotta Montez"
carried obscure threats. Who were these people and how
could Monty's marriage to Chris protect him?
There must be some secondary thread here we were
missing.
  Chris was roaming about the room and I looked
after her thoughtfully. Against whom could Monty have
best used Chris as a shield? Owen Gardner?
Monty might have married Chris to protect himself
against Owen. But what had Owen to do with the whole thing?
He hadn't come to that window until long after
Monty was dead. I knew that. Then what--
  A sound broke into my thoughts. Chris heard it
too and whirled about. Someone was at the door of the
apartment fitting a key into the lock.
  I suppose I realized instinctively that
whoever was about to enter would be frightened away if he
saw lights inside. Anyway I motioned
wildly to Chris to reach the wall switch, while
I turned off the reading lamp on the small table
beside me.
  Chris obeyed and I could hear the sharp intake
of her breath from across the room. I regretted my
action the moment the lights were out and the room plunged
into darkness. I'd encountered the murderer twice and
I'd had enough of waiting in semi-darkness for shadows
to move and footsteps to fall--yet here I was
going through the whole eerie experience again. This time,
at least, there were two of us, Chris and I, and for
safety we were separated by the width of the room.
  A faint glow of light came from the tiny
entrance hall just off the living room, as the door
to the outer hall was opened and closed. Closed
softly, stealthily. Then silence, while my
heart beat in my throat. I knew someone had
stepped into the apartment and was standing in the darkness,
listening and waiting. Someone who was behaving in too
secretive a manner to have any right to be there.
Someone desperate.
  Chris and I waited, too, frozen into
immobility. Then there came a faint tap of
steps across the bare floor before the carpet was reached
and after that only whispering, muffled sound.
  I turned my head stiffly and looked toward the
windows, where soft moonlight glowed faintly around
the edge of the venetian blinds. A hand seemed to
close over my thudding heart and stop its beating.
  Someone stood between me and one of the windows.
  The figure was tall and black and indistinct.
I couldn't be sure whether it was a man
or a woman. It hesitated an instant and then
made its way fumblingly through the darkness to
Monty's desk. Hands patted over the
surface, halting as if in surprise at the
pile of papers Chris had dumped from the drawer,
then moving on with a tiny rattle which told me they
fumbled for the chain of the desk lamp.
  That second or two was filled with almost
unbearable suspense. An intruder had come into this
room, hunting for something. Just as an intruder had
hidden in my office and broken into Bill's
place. were these the same? In another moment the
light would flash on and we would see--the murderer?
  Fingers found the swinging chain and tugged. A soft
pool of light flooded the desk, reflected
upward into the face of the woman who bent above the
lamp. It was Helena Farnham.
  The relief that surged through me was so intense that
I almost burst into hysterical laughter. It lasted
no more than an instant, and was followed at once
by distrust, by shock and by horror.
  I lived with Helena Farnham. She was my
friend. As far as I knew, she'd had no connection
with Michael Montgomery. Yet she was in
possession of a key to his apartment and she had come
here, knowing the police guard was lifted, to look for
--what?
  Even though she was dazzled by the light she sensed
our presence immediately and whirled to face us. She
wore a long black coat and black turban and
her face was dead white, her eyes set in deep
hollows. I know she must have been as shocked as we
were. I know the experience must have been a frightening
one--to turn and see us. But her self-control was
admirable.
  "Hello, Linell," she said. "Hello,
Chris. Evidently we're here for the same
purpose." She motioned toward the papers on the
desk. "Have you found it yet?"
  Chris came across the room and stood beside me,
her hand on my arm. I think she was a little
afraid of Helena in that moment. I turned on
another lamp.
  "Have we found--what?" I asked, between stiff
lips.
  She didn't answer at once, but looked
coolly about the room. Her eyes noted the
painting above the mantel, with the signature,
"Sondo," drawn in yellow across one corner,
and examined the furnishings, the rugs and
hangings.
  "Isn't it odd," she mused, "the way the
most despicable men often have the most excellent
taste?"
  "Helena," I said, "you'd better explain
why you're here."
  She smiled at me remotely and her eyes
came to rest on the sofa beside me where lay those two
letters and the newspaper clipping.
  "So you did find something?" she said, bending above
the papers.
  I suppose I should have prevented her from touching
them, but Helena was someone I knew, or thought I
did. She was someone I'd trusted. And Chris was
guided by me, so we sat there in silence.
  She read every word, clipping and all, and her
white face and dark eyes told us nothing. Then
she straightened, walked away from us to the
fireplace, and stood looking down at the dead
hearth.
  "So they've arrested Tony Salvador," she
said. "Tony didn't kill Monty. I'm
sure he didn't. They'll find out and let him
go."
  Chris spoke for the first time, her fingers still
clutching my arm. "What do you know about all this,
Helena Farnham?"
  Helena was studying the scratch on her palm
again. She spoke without raising her eyes, and there
was no irritation in her voice. Only pity for
Chris.
  "I know this has been a terrible thing for you," she
said. "But I think Michael Montgomery
deserved to die. I think justice has been done
and the matter should end."
  I watched her in shocked silence. That was the
way a murderer might talk! And then Chris
surprised me still further.
  "I think so, too," she agreed fervently.
"I loved Monty and I still love him. But I
hope they never catch the person who did it."
  Helena came back to the couch, as if she had
suddenly made up her mind. She selected one
of the letters, picked up a box of matches and ran
back to the hearth. Before I could make a move to
stop her, she'd held a match to the notepaper and
the flame flared upward in the draft from the
chimney. By the time I reached her side, it had
crumbled to black ash and Helena was breaking it up
with the poker.
  "Burn the others too!" Chris cried.
"Burn them all!"
  And if I hadn't thrust the remaining note and the
clipping into my purse, Chris would have snatched
them. As it was, she was all for dumping every paper
on Monty's desk on the hearth and lighting a
bonfire. Hysteria again. A frenzy of
hysteria.
  I remembered Bill's treatment and put my
hands on her shoulders, shaking her as hard as I
could. She was bigger than I, and I felt like a
Pekinese shaking a chow. It turned the trick,
however. She let the papers slide back on the
desk and went over and curled up on the couch.
  "I want to go home!" she wailed. "I
don't want to go to Sondo's. I'm afraid
to. Something awful will happen. I know it will!"
  Helena and I exchanged glances.
  "If we stay away," Helena said, "goodness
knows what Sondo will cook up behind our backs.
I think the idea is horrible, but we'd better
go and defend ourselves. By the way, Chris, this is as
good a time as any to return your key."
  She leaned over and dropped the apartment key
into Chris's hand as the girl looked up in
surprise.
  "It wasn't very decent of me." Helena was
calm. "I mean, to go rifling your purse for the
key that night you came to our place. But I had
to have it, you see. So that I could do what I've
done tonight."
  Certainly her poise was amazing. Later on
I meant to get her alone and find out a few
things. Maybe what she was doing was all right,
maybe not. I wasn't afraid of her and I
meant to have the whole thing out.
  It was time now to get on to Sondo's. I
swept the batch of papers back into the drawer, so
that the place wouldn't appear to have been ruthlessly
searched, and trailed after Helena and Chris. I
let them go into the hall, while I stopped to
switch off the lights. And to do one other thing, which
had struck me suddenly.
  While they started down the stairs, I paused
in the vestibule and glanced at the note in my
purse. It was the one signed E.
  Helena had burned the letter signed by
"Lotta Montez."

             CHAPTER 14

  Sondo lived on Superior Street in
Chicago's more Bohemian quarter, and it went
without saying that she had a basement apartment.
  Chris parked her car conveniently near and we
got out and went down a dusty, crooked flight of
stairs.
  Sondo opened the door and at my first
glimpse of her and of the room beyond, I knew I
wasn't going to like the evening.
  Perhaps, under other circumstances, the set-up
might have been downright funny. That night there was
nothing funny about it. It made no difference that
Sondo had gone dramatic in a big way, or
that the whole place reeked of bad theater. The
room, with all its tawdry trappings, had something
odious about it, something evil.
  Stubby logs burned in the fireplace. The
leaping flames kept shadows dancing and scorched
anyone who came too close. There were lighted
candles in heavy wrought-iron candelabra on a
high carved chest at the far end of the room, and in
brass candlesticks on the mantel.
  Sondo had gone exotic in black satin
lounging pajamas and a Russian blouse
embroidered in scarlet and gold. But she still
looked more guttersnipe than glamor girl.
  The room was thick with heat and cigarette
smoke, and even a little wood smoke to sting the
eyes. There was music, too--coming from
Sondo's small piano, and for once it wasn't
anything melancholy and sentimental. To my
surprise, Bill was at the piano playing the
Carioca in a sprightly way that cut the
melodramatic atmosphere like an astringent
knife, to Sondo's evident displeasure.
  Carla Drake sat beside him on the piano
bench, looking like a beautiful lost lady, with
candlelight glinting on her hair and tears running
down her cheeks. I couldn't see what there was about
the Carioca to bring tears, but Carla was crying as
if her heart would break, and Bill wasn't
paying any attention.
  He caught my eyes over the top of the piano
and gave me a slow wink. I sniffed and followed
Sondo to the alcove she used for a bedroom. We
left our things on the bed, powdered our noses and
went back to the heat and wavering light of the living
room.
  I wondered just what fruit Bill's
date with Carla had borne, if any, and hoped
it was the kind that pertained to the case in hand, instead
of a bit of side research on his part. Maybe
he'd get it after a while that I was the kind of
girl to whom things happened and that he'd better
stick around if he wanted to keep up with the
parade. I certainly had a few things to relate
that would open his eyes.
  Susan and Owen Gardner arrived and I could
tell by the way Owen glared about the room that the
theatrical set-up offended his taste. Susan
looked a little frightened, as if she longed to cling to
him, but didn't quite dare. Chris went over and
sat down beside her, with a defiant glance toward
Carla, who was lost in her musical jag and
didn't notice.
  The chair nearest the fire had been chosen by
Helena, who could manage to be cold even on
warm summer nights, and who seemed not to mind heat
that would have toasted me pink in five minutes. I
picked a studio couch, well back from that
scorching blaze, where I had a good view of the
room and could keep an eye on Bill at the
piano.
  Sondo stood up and clapped her hands.
"Stop it, will you, Bill? We've got to give
Carla a chance to sober up."
  Bill grinned at her and obligingly raised his
hands from the keys. Carla gave a sigh and
borrowed Bill's handkerchief to wipe her eyes.
I disapprove of women who never manage to have
handkerchiefs of their own. I don't think they're
as helpless as they like to appear.
  In a corner near the fireplace was a red
lacquered Oriental screen and Sondo went
over to stand before it. It made a striking background
for her small, black-clad person, and I'm
sure she was aware of the fact. She looked like a
figure on a rather lurid magazine cover,
except that she was never still.
  Tense, nervous excitement ran through her like
quicksilver and set her hands dancing as she talked.
There was an electric gleam in her dark eyes and
we could all sense the strong purpose that drove
her like a whip.
  "There is only one of us here tonight who has
anything to hide," she said. "All the rest can
talk frankly. There is no McPhail to ask
questions, no record being made of our words. I've
invited these few of us who are closely
concerned. These few and--the murderer."
  She paused and sent her brilliant glance
around the circle. The silence was like a single breath
held in anticipation of disaster. When the
doorbell shrilled suddenly there wasn't a one
of us who didn't jump.
  Sondo ran to answer it and came back with
Keith Irwin. We'd all forgotten him as
usual. He came in like a dog who expects
to be beaten, and his frightened look sought me at
once.
  Sondo motioned him toward an empty chair
next to Owen Gardner. He took two steps in
that direction and then seemed to experience a curious
reversal of purpose. There was room on the couch
beside me and he turned awkwardly to choose that
place. I found myself wondering in faint
amusement if he were afraid of Owen.
  Sondo went back to her place before the
screen.
  "I'm going to start," she said, "by
reconstructing what happened in window five at
Cunningham's day before yesterday. First of all,
we know that Tony Salvador was in the window
arranging the golf exhibit and setting up his
idiotic bird attachment. Upstairs Monty
sent me over to see if Linell would give him a
few moments. Chris was in her office and left
immediately."
  The dark look Sondo turned upon Chris was
like the flick of a lash and I saw the girl wince.
Sondo continued:
  "Monty stayed only a short time with
Linell. From her office he must have gone
directly downstairs to the window. Tony showed
him the bird and phonograph arrangement and
Monty laughed it down. Tony had been
smouldering all the time Monty was away on his
trip. I have reason to know. And when Monty
told him to take the phonograph out of the window,
he lost that excitable temper of his."
  Sondo walked over to a small table and
picked up exactly the type of cigarette
holder you'd expect her to have. It was green jade
and very long and exotic looking.
  "So Tony snatched up one of those old
wooden golf clubs," she said, fitting a
cigarette into the holder, "and waved it threateningly
at Monty. Monty wasn't afraid of him.
He simply took the club out of
Tony's hands and broke it across his knee. Then
he threw the two pieces down on the floor of the
window and told Tony to get out. I'm inclined
to think Tony obeyed and that he left Monty
alive in the window."
  There wasn't a sound in the room while
Sondo lighted her cigarette.
  "Tony returned to window display and phoned
Linell to tell her about his quarrel with Monty.
I could hear every word he said. I had my
phonograph turned off so I could listen. But
except for a few details I'll get to later,
that's where my information ends. I know Linell came
over to the department to talk to Tony, and that she went
down to the window after that. But what I'm interested in
is what happened during the interval immediately after
Tony left Monty alone in the window."
  She smoked in silence for a moment and her dark
eyes studied each of our faces in turn. When
she spoke again there was a quality in her voice that
made my skin creep, made murder a living,
breathing thing, poised, and waiting there among us.
Waiting in dread of discovery, but on guard and
ready to strike again.
  "Someone here in this room knows what happened in
that interval," Sondo said. "Someone here among us
now. I mean to know which one."
  The look in her eyes wasn't quite sane. It
was fanatic and revengeful.
  "Will you tell me?" she went on with a sweetness
in her voice that was terrible because of its mockery.
"Or must I hunt you out?"
  Owen Gardner's voice was harsh. "Stop your
playacting, Sondo, and get to the point."
  His words released us from the unnatural tension.
Bill offered Carla a cigarette and lit it for
her, and the rest of us shifted our positions and tried
to relax. I noticed that Carla and Owen seemed
to be ignoring each other.
  "Do you mind if I ask a question, Sondo?"
Bill said, and went on without waiting for
permission. "What did you do with the stone to that ring?"
  I caught my breath and leaned forward. So that
idea had struck Bill too? Sondo drew
lazily at her cigarette and gave him her
curious, twisted smile.
  "What stone to what ring?"
  "You know well enough," Bill said, curtly.
"But for the benefit of the others I'll do a little
reconstructing myself. Either Monty, or
the person who went to see him in the window had a
ring in his possession. There must have been a
disagreement about it, even a struggle. The stone must
have been loose. It broke and the pieces flew out
of the setting. But isn't it a little odd that the larger
piece of the stone has never been found?"
  Sondo shrugged and Bill went on.
  "You don't suppose that stone could have dropped
into the phonograph, do you? It wouldn't be possible
that you suspected as much, and when Tony wanted to
send the machine out to Universal, you allowed
Keith to take the wrong one so that you could tinker with the
other at your leisure? It wouldn't be possible that
you have the stone to that ring?"
  Sondo's expression was inscrutable. Her
thick dark lashes shielded eyes that glanced
lazily about the room. She was like some wild little
jungle cat, moving gracefully, but filled with
deadly power that could lash out and demolish when she
chose to release it.
  "Any other questions?" she asked.
  No one spoke for a moment and then I burst out
impulsively.
  "Yes, I'd like to ask one." I opened the
purse in my lap, took out the paper signed
E, and read them the note with its last sentence,
"There is still the ring." "Does anyone know who
wrote this?"
  No one said anything, so I plunged again.
  "All right then, does anyone know a woman
named Lotta Montez?"
  Again there was silence, but this time I could feel a
certain tenseness. Not a movement, not a sound,
nothing which had direction. I was sure that name had
met with recognition, and possibly from several
quarters. Certainly not from Helena alone.
  But I could read nothing in the faces about me.
Sondo's eyes were bright and watchful. Susan and
Keith looked frightened. There was still more resentment
than anything else in Owen Gardner's face,
while Chris looked as if she were about to burst
into tears. Helena was white and tired and Bill
had an air that said, "What have you been into now?" and
was addressed to me alone. As for Carla, except
for her habitual melancholy, she was
beautifully blank.
  "What's this all about?" Bill asked.
  I could be as mysterious as Sondo when I
chose. I shook my head and put the letter back in
my purse. Sondo's dramatic
methods weren't getting us anywhere. Those who
knew anything weren't telling and I resolved that
the letter should go into McPhail's hands the next day.
  Sondo, too, had evidently concluded that
matters weren't moving ahead, and took charge
again.
  "We've wasted enough time," she said. "There was one
other person in that window. I've suspected it
all along. But now I know."
  She walked over and stood threateningly above
Chris Montgomery, and though she was small, and
Chris much bigger, it was Sondo who dominated.
  "You loved your husband very much, didn't you?"
she demanded with venom in her tone. "But it might be
that your love turned to hate when you married him and
found he cared nothing for you at all. Isn't that
true? Isn't it true that you hated him enough to
kill him?"
  Chris looked up at her wildly. "It's not
true! I still love him! I always have!"
  Her hands would have gone to her face, but Sondo
reached out and caught her wrists with sinewy fingers,
held them down with a strength Chris was helpless to
struggle against.
  "Then what were you doing in that window when Monty
was murdered?" Sondo asked in a low, cutting
voice. "And don't try to lie. Bill heard
the phone ring that time in the display department. He
heard me answer it. It was you on that telephone,
Chris. Remember?"
  Chris tried feebly to pull her hands from
Sondo's grasp, but the effort was useless.
  "Shall I tell them what you wanted, Chris.
Shall I tell them you asked where you could find
Monty? And that when I told you, you said you'd go
right down and look for him? Are you going to deny that you
went to that window? Do you dare deny it?"
  Chris went limp as Sondo released her.
She turned her head helplessly from side to
side, but the gesture was one of an animal
trapped, not a motion of denial.
  The thing had happened so quickly that not one of us had
made a move. Now Susan Gardner flung a
comforting arm about the girl's shoulders and faced
Sondo defiantly.
  "It's not true, any of it! You're a wicked
person, Sondo Norgaard!"
  Strangely, the life and animation seemed to
die out of Sondo. There was a burning ember of
purpose left at the core of her, but
all the rest was cold ash.
  "No," she said dully. "I'm not wicked.
I want to see justice done. I want to find
the person who killed Monty and make him pay,
whoever it is. That's all I want and it's the thing
I mean to do. None of you can stop me. Do you
want to talk, Chris?"
  I happened to glance at Owen Gardner and was
shocked at what I saw. I've never seen such
rage and hate in a human face. I almost
cried out to Sondo to be careful, for his fingers
moved convulsively as if he longed to close them
about her thin neck. He was evidently too
infuriated to speak, for no words came from his white
lips.
  "It's easy to reconstruct what happened,"
Sondo said, almost listlessly. "Chris went down
to the window and found Monty there alone. She
picked up that broken golf club Tony had
left, and because Monty had hurt her so badly,
she killed him with it."
  This time Gardner came out of his chair, his face
apoplectic.
  "You're crazy!" he shouted at Sondo.
"I've always known you were crazy! If you try to
harm my girl I'll--"
  Chris ran across and flung her arms about his
neck.
  "No, father! She's not crazy. She's telling
the truth. I was in that window. I was there when
Monty was killed!"
  There was a long, hushed moment while we stared
unbelievingly at Chris. And once more I was
aware of little things--of the curling smoke from
Sondo's cigarette, of the shine of Carla's
hair, of Bill's right hand forming a soundless chord
on the piano keys.
  Then Owen Gardner put his hands on Chris's
shoulders, patting them with awkward gentleness. "Of
course you weren't in the window, Chris honey. You
couldn't have been."
  She pulled away from him and faced us. "Yes,
I was. Sondo knows, so I might as well
tell you what happened."
  She went quietly back to her place beside
Susan and it was as if she had gone through so much
terror in the last two days that now it was a
relief to tell the thing. Her voice was a
monotone, expressionless, as if all emotion had
been drained from her.
  "After I talked to Sondo on the phone I
went down to see if I could find Monty in the
window. I heard his voice, so I just opened the
door and went in. But the moment the door closed
behind me I realized he was quarreling with someone and
I was afraid to interrupt. I was afraid to be
caught eavesdropping too, because he was so
wildly angry. So I didn't go into the window
proper at all, but just crept around behind a wing."
  She stopped blankly and Sondo prodded her
on.
  "It all happened so much more quickly than I can
tell it. I didn't see who was in the window with
Monty. The other person didn't speak at
all so I didn't even hear a second
voice. Monty stamped around to the switch box and
I squeezed back as far as I could into the corner
so I wouldn't be found. I'd never heard him as
angry as that and I was frightened. And then the other
person went around after him and I heard the most
awful sounds."
  She broke off and put her hands over her
ears, as if to shut out the memory of those blows.
  "Then the--the person left the window and I--"
her voice trailed off and suddenly she crumpled
into a limp heap on the floor.
  Bill picked her up and laid her on the
couch. Sondo hung over her with a vulture
look, until Helena and I pulled her away.
  "You've done enough damage for one evening." I
told her angrily. "Chris is hardly more than
a child and she's been through all the horrors there are.
Can't you let her alone?"
  I doubt if Sondo heard me. She jerked
herself free and dropped down on her knees beside
Chris.
  "What happened after that? Who was in the window with
him, Chris? Who?"
  The girl's eyelids fluttered and her lips
moved in a whisper. "I don't know."
  "You're lying! Monty must have said something that
told you who the person was. You do know!"
  Owen pulled Sondo away from the couch and pushed
her roughly into a chair. I'm not sure but what
we might have had another murder on our hands right
then, if it hadn't been for Carla.
  She had been sitting dreamily on the piano
bench, apparently undisturbed, looking at
nothing. Suddenly she got up and crossed the
room with incredible swiftness. Her
slender hands rested lightly on Owen's arm,
scarcely more than a touch. It was the first time she'd
appeared to see him.
  "This isn't the way," she said in her throaty
whisper. "It doesn't matter now. He's
dead. We all know Chris is innocent."
  Her voice seemed to quiet him. His anger
died out and to my surprise he went over to
Susan and touched her arm.
  "We must take her home," he said. "We
must take her home right away."
  Sondo made no effort to interfere. But she
had one more little speech to make. It was apparently
directed at no one of us, but it reached us all.
  "There's just one thing," she said. "One thing that will
make Chris's story all a lie. That's the
stone of the ring. Bill was right. I have it. If it
stands for what I think--but I shan't try to
guess any longer. When McPhail comes to the
store tomorrow I'll give him the stone and see what
he can make of it."
  If that meant anything to one of us, no sign was
given. Chris, looking weak and shaken, was led out
by Owen and Susan. She paused in the doorway and
looked over her shoulder at me.
  "I was in the window when you were there, Linell. I
--I was afraid to leave right away. I didn't
know what to do about Monty. And then in a little while
you came and I had to wait till you left."
  So there had been someone in the window watching me.
Chris!

             CHAPTER 15

  When the door had closed, Sondo turned
back to the rest of us.
  "You mustn't go till you've had coffee," she
said as pleasantly as though she'd been playing
hostess at an ordinary party.
  So we stayed and drank her bitter coffee.
At least Bill did, and one or two of the
others. I felt too sick over what had
happened to swallow anything. To my surprise,
Keith perked up a little and stopped looking as if
he were afraid of his shadow. Not that he became the
life of the party but, with the departure of the Gardners,
one layer of fear left him.
  When we were all served, Sondo settled into a
winged-back chair and regarded us in cynical
amusement.
  "So you believed her? All that nonsense about
hiding while someone else murdered Monty!"
  "I think it's true," I said flatly.
  Sondo didn't even glance at me. "Am
I the only one who sees the discrepancies?
Chris was supposed to be in love with Monty.
If that was true, don't you think that no matter
how frightened she was, she'd have rushed out of that
window to give the alarm, to try to help him?
Loving him, how could she possible stay there waiting
her chance to escape unseen? How could she go off and
leave him lying there?"
  Her small hands were like talons gripping the
edge of the chair as she waited for our denial. We
made none.
  "If I'd been in that window, do you think I'd
have crouched there like a coward? Do you think I'd have
left him?"
  "Not you," Bill said, "You'd have been in the
thick of things yourself. But your temperament is
scarcely Chris's."
  "One woman in love is very much like another."
Sondo was defiant.
  Keith, somewhat to my surprise, entered the
discussion for the first time. "But what if she loved
someone else besides Monty? What if raising the
alarm meant she'd injure another person? If
Monty was already beyond her help, maybe she'd
behave just as she did behave."
  Sondo threw him a speculative look and
he flushed to the ears, already regretting his words.
  Bill set his cup down and said, "There's one
thing I want to know. Sondo, just how do you happen
to know so much about what went on in the window?"
  Her grin was impudent. "I wasn't there, if
that's what you mean. But the fact that Chris was going
to the window, coupled with the evidence of the ring, made
me pretty sure. I'm more sure than ever
now."
  "Well," Bill said, "It's your party. But
if I were you I'd get the stone from that ring off my
hands as quickly as possible. Why don't you come
along with me tonight to see McPhail?"
  "Why don't you mind your own business?"
Sondo told him. "I'll do things my way,
or I won't do them at all."
  Carla broke in unexpectedly. "Would you
mind if I stayed with you tonight, Sondo? I live
so far away."
  Sondo looked surprised, and then
interested. "You can stay if you want to, Carla.
If you're not--afraid?"
  Carla shook her head gently. "Only those
who have something to lose are afraid. I have nothing
at all."
  "Well, I like that!" Bill said. "And here I
thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
  Carla gave him a slow sad smile that might
have meant anything. I couldn't figure her out at
all. But I must admit that I was glad Bill
wouldn't be driving her home. I was beginning to think
he had a dizzy head on his shoulders.
  In the end that was how it was arranged. Carla
stayed with Sondo and Bill offered to drive
Helena and me back to our apartment, and to drop
Keith off at his bus stop on the way. Sondo
stood in the doorway at the foot of the stairs,
dramatic in her black, gold-embroidered
pajamas, with Carla at her shoulder, tall and
cool and lovely. Behind them lay dying
firelight, flickering on the walls and shining on
the red lacquer screen.
  Somehow, little as I cared for Sondo, I was
reluctant to leave her there alone with Carla. Not
because there was any suspicion in my mind concerning
Carla. It would have been the same no matter who
had stayed with her. Two women alone, and one of
them possessed of dangerous knowledge. Even though
Sondo was often such a strange, disagreeable
person, still there was something fearless about her I could not
help admiring. And I knew only too well
that the person who had killed Monty was ruthless and
ready to stop at nothing.
  I wanted to talk to Bill alone, but what with
having Keith with us part way, and Helena all the
way, I had no chance. I wanted to ask a few
pointed questions about Carla, but I didn't want
to ask them before Helena. However, when we'd
dropped Keith, I told Bill a little of our
adventure--that Chris and I had gone to
Monty's apartment. I left Helena out of it,
not only because she was right at my elbow, but because it
didn't seem fair to bring her in until I'd
a chance to talk to her.
  I told him about the Lotta Montez letter
without betraying what had happened to it, and he asked
to have a look at the E note.
  I opened my purse and fumbled about inside.
Bill made a crack or two about filing
systems for women's pocketbooks, and
then I got a little frantic and dumped everything out
in my lap right there in the car.
  The note was gone.
  "But, Bill!" I wailed. "It was right here.
I had it at Sondo's. You saw me take it
out and read it."
  "Where did you leave your purse?" Helena
asked.
  "I didn't leave it," I told her. "It
was right in my lap all the time. I know it was."
  "Even when you jumped up to make room for
Chris?" Bill asked.
  I thought back in chagrin. No, I hadn't
had my purse in my lap all the time. When all
that excitement had started about Chris, I'd
jumped up without regard for my belongings. I
couldn't remember anything about my purse during that
interval. I could recall vaguely that later
I'd seen it lying on the couch or a chair--I
wasn't even sure which--and had picked it up. But
who had been near it during that time, I hadn't the
faintest idea. Everyone in the room had seen me
put the note away. Except possibly
Chris. Though I couldn't even be sure about her.
  "Nice going," Bill said dryly. "Between you
and Sondo, McPhail is losing a lot of
evidence. I think maybe you'd better have a little
talk with him tomorrow and tell him all about what has
happened.
  I agreed meekly and Bill said that anyway
it was a good thing I'd lost the letter. At least
nobody would be murdering me to get it.
  It was late when we got home and I felt so
tired and upset that I didn't invite Bill
up. He hadn't said anything about Carla Drake
and it seemed to me that omission was very peculiar
indeed.
  He had a funny quirk to his smile when
he said good night, and told me pointedly that
I'd be hearing from him soon. I hoped my
manner indicated to him how little I cared.
  The moment Helena and I stepped into our living
room, I could sense the uneasiness between us. She
said nothing, and I said nothing and the silence grew
into a chasm. We went about our usual preparations
for bed as if nothing extraordinary had happened,
but each was intensely aware of the other. I was
waiting for her to speak, to explain, and she knew
I was waiting. But she said nothing at all. She
went off to the bathroom, came back with
her face carefully creamed for the night and got
calmly and silently into bed.
  That was too much for me. I went over and sat
on the edge of her bed, pulling my pajama-clad
knees up to my chin. Helena had switched off the
light and the room was dim except for moonlight
at the window over by my bed. I didn't mind.
Sometimes it's easier to talk in the dark.
  "You'd better tell me," I said. "I have
to know."
  She lay with one arm thrown across her eyes and in
the gloom I couldn't see her face at all.
  "What if I don't tell you?" she asked.
  "Then--then I'll have to go to McPhail," I
said reluctantly. "How can the police work when
all these under-the-surface things are kept out of their
hands?"
  "Such, for instance," Helena said quietly, "as
the fact that you were the one who found Monty's
body?"
  Her words startled me. That was an attitude
I'd never expected her to take. And she
certainly had me. I knew that the part I'd
played was perfectly innocent, and of no value
to the police, but who else knew it? As Hering
had pointed out, I had a strong motive and
McPhail was already treating me with suspicion.
I'd be in for a siege if he found out.
  "Helena," I said, "sooner or later I
think everything is going to come out and that we'll both have
to tell McPhail the truth. But in the
meantime--"
  Her voice was hard, unfriendly. "In the
meantime let well enough alone."
  But I couldn't do that. I couldn't go over to the
other bed and go to sleep, wondering and guessing and
suspecting. When it came right down to it, I
didn't know an awful lot about Helena. I'd
become acquainted with her when she'd first come to the
store about a year before. I'd had to do a series of
jewelry signs for the windows and Helena had
helped me. She'd seemed very interested in what
went on upstairs in the window display and
advertising departments, and we'd struck up a
friendship. When she'd suggested that we take a
larger apartment together and split expenses, it had
been a nice break for me. But in the months
we'd lived there, I'd learned very little about her.
Though, until now, that fact hadn't seemed
important.
  "Helena," I said, "did you know Michael
Montgomery? I mean did you know him at all
well?"
  "I knew him well enough to dislike him," she
said. "But I'm scarcely his type."
  I followed up my thread of an idea.
"Did you ever know him--in the past?"
  "Of course I didn't know him." She said it
a little too sharply and I had the same feeling that
she was holding something back that I'd had when I'd
asked her about Carla.
  "All right then," I went on, "there's just one
other thing, and I think you'd better tell me this.
Who is Lotta Montez?"
  She sat straight up in bed. "Linell,
I'm very fond of you, and I know you mean well about
all this. But you simply must let the questions go
unanswered. If you don't, you may get some
innocent people badly involved. One of them, at
least, has suffered enough at Monty's hands. To
turn that person over to McPhail now would do no
good, and it might do irreparable harm."
  She dropped back on her pillow and closed
her eyes. Moonlight touched her face and her
mouth looked bitter and twisted.
  "Then you know who murdered Michael
Montgomery?" I said in a low voice. "You do
know, don't you?"
  She turned her face toward the shadows. "I
don't know anything. I don't know anything at
all. Go to bed. Go to sleep."
  I got helplessly off her bed, slid my
feet into mules. It was no use. I had an
idea that even if McPhail put her through the
third degree, she still wouldn't tell what she
knew.
  The phone rang and I flew to answer it, with
thoughts of disaster flooding my mind. Who on earth
could be calling at this hour? Had something happened
at Sondo's?
  My hand was shaking when I lifted the receiver. It
was Bill's voice and there was only impudence in
it.
  "Hello, baby," he said. "I knew you
wouldn't be able to sleep until you hear how I
fared with My Lady of the Silver Hair."
  I wanted to slam the receiver down, but
curiosity got the better of me.
  "I suppose she confessed that she murdered
Monty and threw herself on your mercy?"
I inquired.
  "Nothing of the kind," he said, and I didn't like
his laugh. "We didn't talk about sordid things
like murder. Too busy discovering common interests.
Carla likes to rhumba and so do I. I think
we're going to make quite a team."
  "Look," I said, "I'm a working girl and
it's way past midnight. Didn't you even find
out what time she went down to exchange that pin?"
  "Well, no," he admitted. "It seems
she doesn't remember either."
  "But how did she look when you asked her?"
  "Beautiful. That's the only way she ever
looks."
  "Oh, well," I said, "if you want to run
around with old women it's no concern of mine."
  "Jealous, baby?"
  "I am not jealous," I said. And then I did
hang up. Right in his ear.
  When I went back to the bedroom Helena
looked as if she'd gone to sleep, so I
didn't bother her. I crawled into bed thinking
murderous thoughts about the entire male sex and one
member of the female in particular. But I
suspect that I was rather enjoying myself. So long as it
was Bill who pulled my pigtails, I'd just as
soon have them pulled.

             CHAPTER 16

  Fortunately I didn't have to get to work early
Friday. Tony's red windows were going in that
night, and even with Tony in jail, the work had to go
ahead. Lately Monty had had me stay to
help him with the big State Street windows. On
these occasions I came down late in the morning and
worked late at night along with the rest of the
department. That was my plan for the day, so it didn't
matter if I overslept.
  I awoke with a jolt and sat up in bed,
feeling that it was going to be the worst possible sort
of day. It wasn't raining, but clouds hung low,
and the air was heavily oppressive. Not a breath
of wind stirred at my window, but dampness cut
through to the bone.
  More than the weather disturbed me, however. My
first waking thought was that something was about to happen.
Something terrible that had to be stopped. It took me
a minute or two to pull myself out of my deep
sleep and figure out who I was and what
I was concerned about.
  Then I thought of Sondo. Had she and Carla
come through the night all right? I had to know at
once. I got up quickly.
  Helena's bed was empty and her breakfast
dishes stacked in the sink. She'd left without
waking me, since she had to get to work on time as
usual.
  I looked up Sondo's number and called
it. I waited for a dozen rings, but there wasn't
any answer. That might, or might not be ominous.
Sondo's hours depended on the work she had to do,
and if she had to go down early and stay late, she
often took some time off in the afternoon. On the other
hand--but I didn't want to think about that.
  I ate a sketchy breakfast and hurried for the
bus, knowing there'd be no peace-of-mind for me,
until I reached the store.
  I'd told Keith he might help me in the
windows, so he was working on the late shift, too,
and hadn't come in when I reached the office.
  I called window display, but the operator could
get no answer. Which still didn't mean anything
serious. I tried the fourth floor and got
Carla easily.
  "Where's Sondo?" I asked.
  "Sondo?" She sounded surprised at the
urgency in my voice. "Why, we left her
place together this morning. Isn't she upstairs?"
  Relief swept through me. "It's all right
then," I assured Carla. "She's probably
running around the store. Nothing--happened last
night?"
  "Of course not," Carla said in surprise.
"Whatever would?"
  Now that I could breathe again, I couldn't resist
a dig. "Bill says you're a wonderful
rhumba dancer, Carla."
  She gave a queer little gasp. "Why, how
silly! I've never danced the rhumba in my
life." There was a blank pause and then she said,
"Oh, there's someone calling me. Sorry," and
rang off.
  I put down the telephone. What on earth was
the matter with her? Had Bill just been teasing me?
But even then, there was nothing in the word "rhumba"
to startle anyone. She'd acted as if I'd
accused her of something awful.
  I got up and moved about the office restlessly.
So many things puzzled me. Chris hiding
in the window at the very time when Monty was murdered.
That was a terrible thought in itself. Helena stealing into
Monty's apartment, burning that note. Later
refusing to explain. And always Carla somewhere in the
picture.
  I felt as if I ought to do something. But I
didn't know what. The vacant spot on my
wall, where that picture had been, caught my
eye tantalizingly and I made a face at it.
  "Oh, you!" I said. "If I could just
remember what you were!"
  Keith chose that moment to walk in and was
evidently not too reassured to find me talking
to myself. He gave me a sidelong glance and
slunk toward his desk.
  "Well!" I said. "Good morning. How are
you? I like people to speak to me when they come to work!"
  He said, "You're feeling it again, too aren't
you?"
  I looked at him blankly.
  "I mean it was like this the other day. Our nerves
all tied up and waiting for something. And then Mr.
Montgomery--"
  "Oh, stop it," I told him. "Of course
our nerves are wound up. That affair at
Sondo's last night was enough to upset us all."
  "It isn't just that," he said darkly. "Miss
Wynn--maybe I talked too much last
night."
  "I can't remember your talking at all."
  "But I did," he said. "And I shouldn't have.
If you happen to remember, please don't mention
it to anyone. Will you, Miss Wynn?"
  "Of course not," I told him. I wasn't
trying to remember what he'd said. My thoughts were
concerned with Sondo and I was uneasy because no one
answered the phone in the display department. Sondo
had come to work early. So where was she? I ought to
talk to McPhail and tell him everything I
knew, but somehow I hesitated. There was that queer
threat Helena had made and which I had an idea
she might carry out. But most of all I didn't
want to tie Chris up in a chain of
circumstantial evidence.
  Keith looked up suddenly. "It couldn't be,
of course, but--that sounds like Tony Salvador."
  It was Tony, all right, and he was furiously
angry. As he approached my office I could
hear Sylvester Hering attempting to calm him.
  "Now take it easy, Tony?"
Hering was saying. "She only told the police
what was her duty to tell them. You can't
blame--"
  "I know what she did!" Tony broke in.
"She built up a whole pack of lies just to
get me arrested. Wait till I get my hands
on her!"
  They were coming down my corridor and I ran to the
door.
  "Hello, Tony. We all knew they'd have
to let you go, but we've been worried just the same.
Thank goodness you're back to work on the windows
tonight."
  He gave me a black look and went right on
raging. "Nobody can stop me from what I'm going
to do to Sondo Norgaard. Not if they have to take
me right back to jail for it."
  Hering said, "Take it easy, take it
easy," and trailed after Tony.
  "I'll be right back," I told Keith and
followed Tony and Hering toward the display
department.
  I wanted to see Sondo and assure myself that
she was all right.
  The department was deserted. None of the window
decorators had come down yet and there was no
Sondo anywhere. We gathered for a council of war
in her workroom. The green plant still wore its
Easter bonnet and on a table was one of
Sondo's latest creations. A lamb made of
rolled tubes of white paper. A fetching little
creature with downcast, fringed paper eyelids.
A screen to be used in the gray window was pulled
out beside Sondo's work table, and I looked around it
out of idle curiosity. What I saw made me
gasp and reach weakly for Hering.
  A woman's body, clad only in a pink
satin underslip, lay twisted awkwardly face
down behind the screen.
  "She's here!" I cried. "Here on the
floor!"
  Hering pushed me aside and Tony crowded after
him. They stood for an instant looking down in
shocked silence. Then Hering turned back to me with
a melancholy smile.
  "It's okay, Miss Wynn. It ain't what
you thought."
  It wasn't Sondo. When I looked again I
saw that the too-awkward position of the legs and
arms wasn't due to death, but to the
inanimate. Tony's Dolores lay there on the
floor.
  I started to laugh a little hysterically, but Tony
knelt beside the mannequin's figure and gave me
a look that stopped me at once.
  "If Sondo did this," he said, "there's just
one more score to square with her."
  I believe that in some strange way Dolores
was a real person to Tony. He turned her over
quite gently and I gave a cry of dismay. The
whole side of the mannequin's head had been
broken in. Not by a fall, but deliberately.
  We knew it had been deliberately because as
Tony turned her we saw the hammer under her
body. Tony reached for it, but Hering put a quick
foot on his wrist.
  "Don't touch it," he said, "Fingerprints."
  That was when I began to get the sinister aspect
of the thing. The viciousness. It must have taken wild
rage, or else a cold impulse toward
destruction to have smashed the mannequin. And who would
vent rage upon a thing of plaster and papier
mach`e?
  Yet there was no other sign of vandalism in the
room. Nothing else had been touched. Hering found
the mannequin's dress on a chair. A bright
red dress she would have worn when they put her in the
window that night.
  The hammer was a small one Sondo kept on
hand for tacks and the light carpentry work she sometimes
attempted. I'd seen it often on her shelves.
But there was no Sondo in the department, though Hering
and I went through every room of it.
  Tony stayed beside Dolores and I believe
he was actually grieving. When we came back,
he looked up at us.
  "There's no use searching for her," he said.
"This is just something else she's done to get even with
me. But she'd have sense enough to get out of my sight
after she did it. You needn't expect her here
today."
  Hering looked around the room. "It don't
seem like the Norgaard girl would do a thing like this."
  "A lot you know!" Tony told him. "It's
exactly the sort of thing she would do if the
impulse struck her. Sondo's a devil."
  "Just the same," Hering mused, "it don't
seem like anybody who wanted to work for the store would
go smashing one of those mannequins. They cost a
lot of money, don't they?"
  "Dolores came to a hundred and fifty
dollars," Tony said.
  "And there's another thing." Hering went over and
picked up the red dress. "Of course I
don't know much about the way you run things up here,
but I've got a sort of picture in my head.
I mean about these dresses you use in the windows.
You don't just go throwing them around on chairs, do
you?"
  "Of course not," Tony said. "We get them
fresh from the press room and then--"
  "And then they go right on the dummy, don't
they?"
  "Mannequin." Tony corrected
automatically.
  "But you carry 'em around on hangers, don't
you? And if you had to let a dress out of your hands,
you'd hook the hanger over something. You wouldn't just
go throwing the dress over the back of the chair."
  Tony and I both looked at him. He had
something there. Not a hanger in sight in the room.
  "Of course I wouldn't know," Hering said, "but
it looks like maybe that dum--mannequin was already
dressed and somebody took the dress off her.
Took it off in such a hurry that they didn't
bother to look for a hanger to hang it up
properly, just tossed it over a chair."
  We found out very shortly that he was right about the
mannequin having been dressed. The rest of the
department started to straggle in and one of the boys
admitted that he'd dressed Dolores before he
went home the previous day. The mannequins had
to be carried downstairs in sections, and were usually
dressed in the windows, but in this case Sondo had
wanted to try out some effects and had asked that
Dolores be dressed and left in her workroom.
  This careful deduction got us nowhere. Tony
finally dragged himself away from the "body" and Hering
went to phone McPhail about the latest
developments. It wasn't until much later in
the day that Miss Babcock got into the affair and
began to throw tantrums because the red belt that
belonged with the dress was missing.
  Meanwhile, I went back to my office to find
Chris waiting for me. By the sudden silence that
fell when I walked in and the guilty expressions
on the faces of both Chris and Keith, I could
surmise that I'd interrupted a little heart-to-
heart talk.
  "Oh, Linell!" Chris burst out
when she had recovered from her momentary
embarrassment. "I came to ask you not to say
anything to the police about what came out at
Sondo's party. You don't have to, do you? After
all, it hasn't anything to do with Monty's death.
I mean, since I don't really know anything--"
A flush crept up her throat and into her cheeks
and she stopped helplessly.
  "Now listen to me," I said. "I'm beginning
to feel practically like an encyclopedia of what
the police department doesn't know. About every
fifteen minutes someone new comes up and asks
me please not to say anything to the police about such-
and-such because, of course, it hasn't anything to do with the
murder."
  Tears began to well up in Chris's eyes.
"Oh, Linell, how can you be so unkind? Of
course father and Susan won't say anything. And
I've already stopped by to speak to Helena and Carla
and they won't tell either. Keith just promised me
he wouldn't so there's only Sondo, Bill
Thorne and you left. If you'd promise, then
I could just go over to see Sondo and--"
  "If you can find her," I said. "Just at the
moment she's disappeared."
  The flush drained out of Chris's cheeks.
  "Oh, no!" she whispered. "Oh, no--it
couldn't be!"
  "Couldn't be what?" I snapped.
  She looked around toward Keith, but he was
watching me in wide-eyed horror and didn't
see her.
  "I didn't say she'd been murdered," I
told them. "I only said she'd disappeared.
Probably not even that. She came to the store this
morning, so she may be around somewhere."
  Chris was not reassured. She jumped up.
"I'm going over to window display. I've got
to find out! I've got to know!"
  "Maybe you'd better stay away," Keith
warned her. "After what Sondo did to you last
night, they might go tying you in. Or they might
tie--"
  Chris whirled on him. "Don't you say it!
Don't you dare say it!"
  The glimmer of a most unpleasant suspicion
began to stir in my mind. What was it Keith had
been so uneasy about having said last night? It
had been after Chris had gone. He'd accounted for
her strange behavior in the window by
suggesting that there might be someone else she'd loved
as well as Monty.
  For the first time that idea began to take hold in
my mind. I'd thought from the beginning that she had never
shown a natural hatred toward the murderer, even
though he'd taken the life of the man she'd loved.
And she'd been so frightened and hysterical from the
beginning. There were two people Chris had loved besides
Monty; two who loved her devotedly. Owen and
Susan Gardner.
  I leaned my elbows on the desk and put my
face in my hands. My confusion of mind was so great
that I couldn't seem to think in a straight line for
two minutes consecutively. Sooner or later
I'd have to go to McPhail with everything I knew.
Everything. Which meant my own part in finding
Monty's body, the part Bill had played,
Helena's visit to Monty's apartment, the letters
we'd found there, Sondo's suspicions of a
possible explanation concerning the ring--anything and
everything. But before I did that I wanted to have one
last thorough talk with Bill.
  "Chris," I said more gently than I'd
spoken before, "I think you'd better go home and
stay there. Don't talk to anyone else in the
store. Probably Sondo is all right and will
show up at any minute. But--but if she isn't
all right--we'll all have to tell the truth.
There's nothing else for it. Go home, Chris and
rest. And I'll call you the moment I know
anything."
  She said, "All right, Linell," in a voice
that was hardly more than a whisper and went out of the
office as if she were walking in her sleep.
  The moment she was gone, I sent Keith off on
an errand and then phoned window display. One of
Tony's helpers answered. No. Sondo
hadn't shown up as yet. Hering was still there.
Sure, he'd tell him I wanted to see him.
  I sat back and waited. There were a number of
things I couldn't tell Hering yet, but there was one
thing I could. Until I made up my mind to
confess the part I'd played, I simply couldn't
go giving any of my friends away, but there was one
person concerned who was no friend of mine.
  "I want you to find out something for me," I said
when Hering came in. "It's just possible there was
another person near the window at the time Mr.
Montgomery was murdered. I mean someone who
hasn't figured very strongly yet."
  He looked all ears and interest and I went
on.
  "Last week Carla Drake bought a pin down
at the costume jewelry section. It didn't
suit her and she went down Tuesday to exchange
it. Helena Farnham waited on her on both
occasions, but for some reason neither Miss Farnham
nor Miss Drake can recall exactly what
time of the day that exchange was made. Do you have
access to the salesbooks?"
  "I'll find out, Miss Wynn," Hering said.
  "Of course there may not be anything to it," I
told him. "I'm just curious, that's all. But
there's one other thing. Yesterday a clipping came
into my hands and it may have some significance. I
wonder if you could look up the case referred
to?"
  "Well," he said, "I guess so. That
Miss Drake sure is some baby, ain't
she?"
  "Et tu, Brute?" I said and smiled at his
blank look. "I mean it would certainly be a
shame if she turned out to be a murderess,
wouldn't it?"
  "Yeah," Hering said. "Tough to get a
conviction. What's that clipping you were talking about?"
  "I have it in my handbag," I said, and then
wondered if I did. I'd read it over again on
the way to work that morning, but what with the queer things that
went on these days I couldn't be sure how long
I'd keep anything.
  I opened a drawer in my desk. I must have
done it absently, because it wasn't the drawer in which
I kept my bag and gloves. And then I sat
quite motionless.
  Hering must have noted the peculiar expression on
my face because he came around the desk and looked
at the contents of the drawer.
  "Pull it out," he said. "Go ahead, pull it
out."
  I didn't want to. I didn't want to
because suddenly and unreasonably I was afraid.
I knew what was in that drawer and so did Hering.
When I still hesitated, he reached in and pulled out
the wrinkled green folds and shook them into shape.
  The thing was Sondo's paint-smeared smock and
out of it dropped the knotted yellow kerchief she
so often wore about her head.
  Hering regarded me darkly. "Where'd you get
this?"
  "I don't know," I said in bewilderment. "I
mean I didn't get it anywhere. Sondo must have
put them there herself. But I can't imagine what
for."
  Hering looked increasingly mournful. "Maybe
she did and maybe she didn't. You sure you
don't know anything about this, Miss Wynn?"
  I began to feel a little indignant. "I've
told you I don't. What do you think--that I've
murdered Sondo and--and--"
  He shook his head at me reproachfully.
"Don't get excited now. I didn't say
nothing of the kind."
  "But you thought it!" I cried. "I saw it there
in your face. But why you should mind, I'm sure
I don't know. I'd be a lot easier to get a
conviction on than Carla Drake."
  Hering said, "Aw, Miss Wynn!" and I
began to feel a bit foolish. I hadn't meant
to pull a Chris on him, but it just seemed as if
so many things were piling up and that smock stuffed in the
drawer of my desk was the last straw.
  "It's all right," I said. "I'm sorry.
I'm sure there's some simple explanation and as
soon as Sondo shows up we'll hear about it."
  "I'll have to take this over to show McPhail,"
he told me. "And now that clipping."
  I found it and gave it to him. "It's about a
fur coat theft at a style show run by the store
where Monty used to work before he came here.
Maybe there's a connection."
  "I'll check on it," he assured me. "And
don't you worry about this smock business."
  Keith came back shortly after Hering had
left and I told him what had happened. He
looked sicker than ever and dropped limply into
his chair.
  "That means she's dead," he said in a hollow
voice. "That's what it means!"
  "It doesn't mean anything of the kind," I
told him, but he shook his head at me.
  "If she's dead I'm going to tell," he
whispered. "I have to tell. I can't let it go
on."
  I was tempted to get up and shake Keith, the
way Bill and I took turns at shaking
Chris.
  "Just what have you got on your mind?" I asked.
  He only shook his head and I knew from
experience that when Keith developed a
mood there wasn't much chance of doing anything with
him. He denied all knowledge of the smock and I
believed him.
  It wasn't until after lunch that we found out
Bill had disappeared too, and that in all
probability he'd been the last to talk to
Sondo.

             CHAPTER 17

  But before that a few other things happened.
McPhail arrived in a highly indignant
state. He wanted to see Sondo about the wrong
steer she'd given him in the Tony business, and
he wasn't any too pleased over Dolores'
broken head, or the smock stuffed in my drawer.
  After a futile questioning session in which nothing new
came out, he ordered a description of Sondo
broadcast and set the whole police force watching
for her. By that time he'd come to a satisfactory
conclusion in his own mind. He'd been fooled by
Sondo once and he didn't mean to be fooled
again. Obviously she was our murderer and had done
a neat getaway under the cover of Tony's
arrest. Everything else--the smashed mannequin, the
smock in my drawer--were merely blinds by which he
had no intention of being confused.
  Tony was delighted with this idea and lost no time
in revenging himself upon Sondo by telling
McPhail everything he could think of against her.
  Miss Babcock was called in and questioned about the
red dress. She explained that it was a frock
Mr. Gardner had particularly wanted shown in the
window and that one of the display boys had taken it
upstairs the day before. But where, demanded Miss
Babcock indignantly, was the belt? In her
eyes. I'm sure, the belt's disappearance was
far more serious than Sondo's. In spite of the
rumpus she raised, the belt wasn't found. Not
then.
  It was immediately after lunch that I had my odd
encounter on the stairs.
  All the stairways in the newer part of the store
are enclosed and shut off from each floor. Since
there are plenty of elevators and a wide
escalator, they are seldom used. I'd been
taking care of some matters pertaining to signs on
the third floor and then I had to go down to the
second to see the buyer of yard goods. As the
stairs were handiest, I went through the door
and out onto the third floor landing.
  As I started down, I heard voices just below
and one of them I recognized as Helena
Farnham's. I paused and looked down over the
rail. Carla Drake was with her and they were talking
earnestly.
  "I appreciate what you've done for me,"
Carla was saying. "I won't forget it. This way
neither of us needs to be involved."
  Carla's back was toward me so that I couldn't
watch her expression. Of Helena I could see
just the profile as she looked intently at
Carla.
  "He caused enough suffering while he was alive,"
Helena said. "There's no need for him to cause
more, now that he's dead."
  Carla held out her hand and Helena took it.
It was like the signing of a pact. Then Helena
started downstairs toward the main floor and Carla
came up in my direction. I didn't linger to
be discovered, but whirled and ran back onto the
third floor, making my way to the escalator.
  So there was something between Helena and Carla.
Helena knew something about the model, something she was
being quiet about. And I thought I knew what it
was, in part.
  My signal light went up before I'd finished
what I had to do and I learned I was wanted in
window display where McPhail was holding
temporary court. Hering was with him and on
Monty's desk lay the carbon of a sales
slip.
  "We've sent for Miss Drake and Miss
Farnham about this pin business," McPhail said.
"But first you can tell me what you know."
  I explained that I'd had an uneasy feeling
that the two women were being evasive about the time
Carla had gone down to exchange the pin.
  McPhail shoved the slip out of sight and
nodded. "We've got the record here in
carbons. The number stamped by the cash register
shows that the pin exchange was made within an hour of
closing time last Tuesday."
  But he didn't get anywhere with them. Carla
recalled vaguely that she must have made the
exchange some time in the afternoon. Helena said she'd
been too busy and there were too many exchanges for
her to remember any particular one. When
McPhail confronted them with the record, neither
turned a hair. They'd expected
something of the kind, of course, and both were schooled in
self-control.
  I didn't want to go too far until I was
ready to go all the way, so I refrained from
mentioning the meeting on the stairs. First I wanted
to talk to Bill.
  McPhail let Helena go, but he kept
Carla for a while. Somebody had told him she'd
spent the night at Sondo's and he was interested
in getting an account of that. I was interested too and
glad he didn't send me away.
  Carla did a nice job of skimming the
truth. Sondo had had a few friends over last
night, she explained serenely, and when they'd gone
home Sondo had invited her to stay. It was
late and she'd been glad of the opportunity.
  No, Sondo hadn't seemed any different
than usual. They hadn't talked much. Sondo
wanted to write a letter, so Carla had gone to bed
on the studio couch in the living room. In the
morning Bill Thorne had turned up bright and
early on their doorstep and invited them to
breakfast.
  My interest quickened. Breakfast? Mm.
  "But Sondo was in a hurry to get to the
store," Carla explained. "She seemed to want
to get down especially early. So Bill just
took me to breakfast."
  That made it still more interesting. I wanted to know
all about that breakfast--where they'd gone and who'd
said what. But McPhail didn't follow it
up.
  He said, "After Sondo left you to go to work, you
didn't see her again?"
  Carla shook her head. "I didn't. But
maybe Bill did. He seemed curious about
what she was up to and he said he thought he might as
well run down to Cunningham's and have a talk with
her before he went out to Universal. So he drove
me to work."
  Hering picked up the phone on Monty's
desk. "Want me to call Universal?"
  McPhail nodded and he put through the call.
Bill hadn't been at Universal all day.
But he'd phoned. He'd phoned from
Cunningham's and said he had some things to do and
might take some time off. So nobody had been
concerned.
  Hering checked with a Cunningham operator who
remembered a man's voice on the
window display connection, asking for an outside
wire early that morning. It looked very much as if
Bill had had his interview with Sondo and then
both of them had disappeared into thin air. Whether
together or separately was anybody's guess.
  I was beginning to get really scared. I didn't
like the sound of any of it, and I didn't wait
any longer to put in a few ideas of my own.
  "I think something's happened to him," I told
McPhail, while my stomach did back
flip-flops at the very hint of anything happening
to Bill. If he'd just show up quickly and all in
one piece, I'd even forgive him for taking
Carla to breakfast.
  McPhail was unimpressed by my contribution.
"I suppose you think maybe the Norgaard
woman murdered him too? And I suppose a
little half-pint squirt like her could just tuck the
body under her arm and cart it out of the store?"
  It was awful to hear Bill referred to as "the
body."
  "Maybe not," I said. "But she could have
persuaded him to go out of the store with her and then--and
then--" I couldn't go on.
  Somebody had carried that pine spray of
Tony's into Monty's office, and Hering had
picked it up to test experimentally. He put it
down now and turned to me.
  "Look, Miss Wynn. What makes you
think he didn't just go off alone on some hook of
his own?"
  I laid down my ace. "Because he wouldn't have
come to Cunningham's and gone away again without
stopping in to see me. Even if it was just to say
"hello," he'd have stopped in my office."
  McPhail looked me over in a way I
didn't much like.
  "He had breakfast with the Drake woman,
didn't he?" he said, and the inference wasn't to be
missed.
  In McPhail's eyes I evidently
wouldn't stand a chance against Carla, and probably
Bill wouldn't have been interested in looking into my
office.
  I said, "If you're through with me, I'll get
back to work," and went haughtily to the door.
  Keith was waiting outside for me.
  "I didn't know if I should interrupt or
not," he said. "There's about twelve people waiting for
you to call them up, and there's some trouble
about the signs for the style show and--"
  My heart wasn't in my work at the moment.
All I wanted to know was whether Bill Thorne
had called. Keith said he hadn't and, when my
chin went down another notch, asked what was the
matter.
  "Bill's gone too," I said. "Sondo and
Bill. They can't find either of them."
  Keith looked so awful that I had to make an
effort to take him in hand, instead of indulging in my
own fears.
  "Nothing's happened to Bill. He phoned
Universal and told them he had some things to
attend to. And McPhail thinks Sondo is
the one who killed Monty and that she's tried to
get away. He's sent out a description of her
and they'll be sure to pick her up before long."
  My words had a hollow sound because I didn't
believe them myself, and Keith shook his head
darkly all the way back to the office.
  "I don't think so," he kept saying. "I
don't think so."
  Once during the afternoon I called Chris to see
how she was and to ask if she'd heard from Bill.
Susan answered the phone and said Chris was
asleep, so I told her not to bother. But she was
sure Bill hadn't been heard from there.
  And then around four o'clock Owen Gardner sent for
me.
  There had been no news of either Sondo or
Bill and I was on edge with anxiety, and in no
mood to look after the interests of Cunningham's.
Though one good thing about a job is that it has to be
done, and you can't give up even if you want to.
  A look at Owen told me that his heart
wasn't in his department either, though he made a
pretense of having called me down about the window
signs to advertise the style show.
  "We're holding the dress rehearsal tonight, you
know," he told me, "and the first show will go on tomorrow
afternoon."
  He might have been talking about the weather in
South Africa for all the personal interest he
appeared to be taking in the matter. He looked
awful. There was no pinkness to his skin now. It was
a gray, muddy color and his plump face
seemed to have fallen into hollows and deep lines.
  After a few more perfunctory remarks about the
show, he stopped pretending.
  "Anything new upstairs, Linell?"
he asked. "Any word of Sondo?"
  I shook my head. "Nothing. And did you know
Bill Thorne is missing too?"
  He didn't seem impressed. It was
Sondo's disappearance that held his interest.
  He said, "If she doesn't come back--I
mean if--"
  "You mean if something happened to her?" I asked
directly.
  There was horror in his blue eyes that were so much
like Chris's. Then, with a quick rush of words, "If
something's happened to Sondo, she can't go to
McPhail with all that stuff about last night."
  "You mean about Chris?" I asked.
  "Yes. Linell, do you see what it means if
they find out she was in the window? Do you see what
they'll do to my poor little girl?"
  "Perhaps they'll find the murderer before it needs
to come out," I said without much hope.
  If anything he turned a little grayer. "It's
horrible--Chris being in the window when it happened.
And keeping it all from us. I don't know what to
do. I don't know how to save her."
  He looked so broken and helpless that I leaned
across his desk and patted his hand. "The police are
sure to end it soon. There'll be a slip somewhere
and they'll catch the person behind all this."
  "And then what?" Owen said queerly and put his
hands over his face.
  He looked strange and rather terrible, sitting there
with his plump hands over his face. As if he were
dying a slow, torturing death inside, because of
Chris, for whom he'd wanted so much, and with whom
life had dealt so cruelly.
  When I left his office I noticed the
bustle of excitement in the department. Murderers
might come and go in Cunningham's; people like Sondo
Norgaard might disappear, but the models were
concerned with their own lovely persons and ambitions.
Tomorrow Cunningham's big semi-annual style
show opened, and tonight was dress rehearsal!
  When I got back to my office Keith was
grinning broadly into the telephone and shouting,
"Here she comes now! Wait a minute, Bill,
wait a minute!"
  I took the receiver from him and collapsed into my
chair.
  "Hello, baby," Bill's voice said.
"Miss me any?"
  Human nature's a funny thing.
I'd missed him achingly until that very moment and
then I'd have willingly killed him.
  "Miss you?" I said coldly. "Why on earth
should I?"
  "Never mind, honey," he consoled me.
"I'll take you to breakfast, too, one of these
days. It's surprising the things that come out over
early morning coffee. Maybe you'd even discover
how fond of me you are."
  "Have you got Sondo with you?" I asked,
ignoring that last.
  "Sondo?" He sounded surprised. "Why would
she be with me? What's happened to Sondo?"
  "That's what we'd all like to know," I told
him. "McPhail thinks she's the murderer and that
she's skipped town."
  I could hear Bill draw in his breath. "I
saw her at the store this morning. Didn't you
get the note I left on your desk?"
  "Note? I didn't find any note!" I
didn't want to pretend any more. The anxiety
I'd felt broke through in words. "Oh, Bill,
I've been so scared. I couldn't find where you'd
gone, and what with Sondo's disappearing too, I
thought maybe--maybe--"
  Bill swore softly but distinctly. "I
might have known better than to leave something like that on
your desk. But you hadn't come to work yet and I
thought I could be cryptic."
  "What did it say, Bill?"
  "Just to keep an eye on Sondo because something
fishy was going on and that I was off to Mexico."
  "Off to Mexico!" I gasped.
  The operator came on just then and I heard the
drop of coins. That was the first I realized that
Bill wasn't talking to me from Chicago.
  "Where are you?" I demanded.
  "Listen, honey," he said, "the less you know the
better. That crack about Mexico was
figurative. I'm not very far away. I'll
tell you just this much and you're not to repeat it to a
soul. Understand?"
  "I won't!" I promised fervently.
  "Carla let something slip at breakfast. I
don't think she meant to. She knows more about
Monty than she's telling. It seems his
unsavory qualities date pretty far
back. There was a girl he was tangled up with
down in Mexico a long while ago, and there's a
possibility that she's cropped up in his
life again. If she has, we may have something. But
the thread's a slim one, and right now I'm playing
detective for all I'm worth. I'll be
back in town in a day or so."
  "What do you think's happened to Sondo?" I
asked. "What did you mean about something fishy going
on?"
  "Well, she all but threw me out of the apartment
this morning. She was rushing around in a feverish
state and she told me to get out quick and stay out."
  "You know that mannequin Tony calls
"Dolores"?" I asked. "Was that in the
room?"
  "Sure," Bill told me. "Dolores was
there. She had on a red dress and Sondo was
pulling it off in a great hurry."
  "Did Sondo have on her green smock?"
  Bill thought a minute. "I think she did.
In fact I'm sure she did. Why?"
  "Only that Hering and I found her smock stuffed
in a drawer of my desk." I said. "And
Dolores had her head smashed in. With a
hammer."
  Bill said, "Oh, God. And Sondo
hasn't shown up?"
  "No," I said. "Not a trace."
  There was an urgency in Bill's voice that
hadn't been there before. "Look, Linell, I'm
coming back to town. But there isn't a train out of this
dump till midnight. I'd like to phone you again
before then. How late will you be home tonight?"
  "I have to stay for the windows," I told him.
"But I won't be any later than ten o'clock."
  "Good. I'll call you at home. And,
Linell--"
  "Yes?"
  "Honey, be careful. Don't take any
chances. Promise!"
  "I promise," I told him, with my heart
doing a sort of highland fling in my breast because it
mattered to Bill Thorne if I took chances.
  After he'd hung up I sat there smiling
idiotically at the telephone. Bill was safe.
He'd had breakfast with Carla because he wanted
information. He'd called me "honey," and I
felt about sixteen and loved it.
  I couldn't think of anything else. I couldn't
think of the fact that I'd told him I'd be home
by ten o'clock, which was one promise I'd not be able to
keep. I wasn't even thinking about his
warning me to be careful. Because how can you know when to
be careful when you don't know around what corner
danger lies?

             CHAPTER 18

  The red windows were going in.
  Tony and his helpers were all at work.
Sondo's backgrounds had been hung and the
checkered floors were down. Tony was busy
dressing the mannequin that was to take Dolores'
place, though not in the dress originally intended for
the window, because the belt was still missing.
  It was my job to add finishing touches, to
contribute any brilliant ideas I might have,
and to keep in close touch with the window work in order
to write better sign copy. Keith was anxious
to learn something about the window decorating end and he
was there too, mostly getting in the way.
  Right at the moment I was wandering dreamily around
the cosmetic counters selecting a few odds and
ends I wanted for a window.
  I don't think I was quite all there. Monty's
death and Chris's grief and all the queer
undercurrent things that I couldn't understand, had gone
away from me for a little while. There was one spot in
me that woke up every now and then and clamored,
"What about Sondo?" But mostly I was moving
around in a haze of happiness that was personally mine
and that horror couldn't touch. I'd never felt like
this about Monty. There'd always been a sure knowledge that
I'd be hurt if I loved him too well. But
I didn't think Bill was going to hurt me. Not
for all his teasing. It was wonderful to have somebody
who'd worry about me the way I'd worry about
him. It was wonderful to have Bill.
  So I moved around in my foolish, happy
daze and I suppose it's just as well I had
my little moment, because it wasn't going to come again for a
while.
  I picked out a small red tower of a box that
held cologne, then a red and gold compact and a
lipstick with a bright red container. After that I went
over to costume jewelry and found a long strand of
big red beads. I showed my selection to the
watchman--the usual routine--and went back to
Tony's window.
  I hadn't been in a window since the day I'd
found Monty, but I didn't think about that. I was
feeling too happy about Bill for any
queasiness. It didn't even matter that Tony
looked like a thundercloud and snapped at everybody
who spoke to him. I paid no attention, but carried
my things to the right front corner of the window and
knelt down to arrange them as a little eye-catching
accent in red.
  The heavy depression of the day had finally
lifted. Rain pounded against the big plate glass
window behind me. If I'd stopped to think,
conditions were very much the same as they'd been on
Tuesday. But my own golden haze kept me from
thinking.
  Under the circumstances, I don't know how it
happened that what Tony was doing registered with me
at all. I opened the box of cologne, tried
various arrangements of compact, lipstick and
coiled red beads. When I achieved a combination that
satisfied me, I sat back on my heels
to get the effect.
  "How does it look, Tony?" I asked.
  Tony's soul was still rankling under the
indignities to which he'd been submitted, and he
only glowered at me and went on trying to crush a
hat that simply didn't belong there onto the head
of a mannequin.
  I said, "Heavens, Tony, stop it!"
  The elaborate net and horsehair wigs they
put on mannequins these days are stunning to look
at, but they often drive the window decorators
crazy because they lack the softness and pliability of
more natural wigs.
  "This hat's got to be used," Tony said
grimly and made another attempt to arrange it
on the stiff wig of the mannequin.
  I came out of my haze enough to feel sorry for
him. This series of red windows was Tony's own
brain child. The whole idea was really a knockout
and if it was done as Tony had planned, we all
knew it would make a stir on the street. But
Tony had had too much handed him and now that the
opportunity to put the series across was actually in
his hands, he was going to pieces with resentment over
past wrongs, instead of trying to meet and fulfill
his present chance.
  I went over and took the hat out of his hands to have
a try at it myself. But the hat and the mannequin were
simply not to be mated.
  "Look, Tony," I said, "this won't do at
all. But what about that blond figure upstairs?
You know--the one with her hair parted in the
middle. I think you could use the hat on that one."
  Tony said something intelligent and encouraging like
"umph," and I knew he wouldn't do anything about
it on his own. There was still a lot of work to be done
in the windows and all his boys were occupied. Keith
wouldn't know where to look if he went. I was the
third hand that could be spared.
  "I'll go get her," I offered. "Her
coloring's good and she'll be much better all
around."
  "Dolores was the one," Tony said, but he
didn't object to my going.
  And I never thought about not going. I'd only have
to carry a half figure downstairs and the
figures we use now are very light. I never
gave a thought to Bill's warning that I must be
careful. It seems amazing that I could go blithely
off on that errand, without a care in the world and all
disaster forgotten. Just because the word "honey" had gone
to my giddy head and I thought I carried a
talisman against the powers of darkness.
  The elevator man took me up and said he'd
wait for me unless he got a signal. As we
went past the fourth floor I caught a
glimpse of bright lights from the dress section where
the style show was being rehearsed.
  I got out on eight and started toward window
display. The passenger elevators were at the very
opposite end of the floor and it was quite a hike.
I didn't mind. It's a wonder I didn't
skip as I went and maybe whistle a little tune.
Never have I been so disgustingly carefree in my
life--or with so little reason.
  I went past my office, with my heels
clattering gayly on the wooden floor. I
hurried across the little drawbridge effect leading
into the department, without a thought for the gloomy depths
of the freight elevator on one hand, or the old,
open stairway on the other.
  I didn't pause. I went straight on
into the department. Only one or two lights were
burning and I didn't bother to turn on any more.
I knew my way around the mannequin room, and
I knew exactly where the half figures for the
State Street windows were kept. There is something
of a caste system among the mannequins. The
older, cheaper figures are relegated to side
windows, while State Street gets our prima
donnas.
  I went directly to the right cabinet
and pulled open the door. Cabinets ranged as
high as the partition in the mannequin room, but this was
a low one, at floor level. Only a dim
light came over the partition, but I knew what
I was doing, and there was enough light to make out the
figures in the cabinet.
  I lifted out the first one, a luscious redhead,
and set her to one side. Then I reached in for my
blond. And knew immediately that something was wrong.
  The next figure was wearing clothes, and the
mannequins were never put away dressed. I
put my hand on her hair and then froze where I
stood. My throat was choked with horror. For one
long, dreadful moment I couldn't even take my
hand away.
  Instead of the stiff net of a mannequin's wig,
I'd touched hair that was soft and silky.
Flyaway human hair that coiled about my fingers
like something alive.
  But not alive.
  I stumbled backwards and closed the door
quickly upon the thing that sat propped against the wall of
the cabinet. I didn't want to look. I
didn't need to look. I knew.
  My surroundings began to crowd in upon me,
awareness quickened within me and all my senses tensed
to listening. The old trembling weakness ran through me
and my knees refused to obey. But I could listen
and watch.
  I was aware of the lonely sound of rain whispering
against the windows, and of all the dim, vast, echoing
emptiness of the floor; the area of a huge city
block. Far away the clang of an elevator
gate told me the operator had not waited. I
was the only living being on all that floor and within
arm's length, separated from me by only the thin
wood of the cabinet door, lay something terrible and
gruesome and dead.
  Now, in my awareness, other shadowy figures
about the room took on threatening guise and the whole
place was horror-filled. But the culmination of
all terror was still to come. Into that listening and waiting,
came a sound that closed my throat and turned my
flesh to ice. The eerie, ghostly sound of music,
of a phonograph playing.
  The needle had been set down in the middle of the
record and the voice of the singer took up the words.


"Let the love that was once afire
  remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only
  remember,
When they begin the Beguine."

  Sondo's favorite tune!
  And then I heard the other sound. A queer
slipping noise across the floor of Sondo's
workroom and I knew there was something more terrifying
than being alone on that floor.
  I was trapped in the mannequin room. There was
only one path of escape and that lay past
Sondo's workroom, where that dreadful music
played and something slipped and slid across the
floor.
  I took a step toward the door and some small
object on the floor slid away from the touch of
my foot with a tiny clatter. I stepped again and
felt it small and hard beneath my shoe. Scarcely
knowing what I did, I bent and picked the thing
up, lest it clatter again, and slipped it into the
pocket of my suit. And as I did so, I had
the queer feeling that I was repeating a motion I
had made long ago in the remote past, before I
had ever reached a hand into a cabinet and touched
silky hair that was no longer alive.
  The weird singing went on and on and I knew
I had to escape before it stopped. I stole in
stark terror into the corridor. The door to
Sondo's room stood open, but from where I
crouched I could see nothing in the dim light. I
could only hear--the music, and that light, strange
sound.
  Was Sondo dead? Had it been Sondo in the
cabinet? Or was it Sondo here in this room
playing the music she loved? Was it perhaps--both?
  I screamed then. I couldn't stop myself. There
was no reason in me, but only a crazy tearing of
sound from my throat.
  "Sondo!" I cried. "Sondo! Sondo!"
--as if by crying her name aloud I could make her
be alive, and not a dead thing propped in a
cabinet, not a ghostly dancer to that awful music.
  But the music went on playing, though the other
sound stopped abruptly. And nothing came out of that
room. Nothing flew at my throat. No hands,
living or dead, reached out for me, and I fled past
the open door and ran wildly across the dark
reaches of the floor toward the elevator.
  There I stood shaking the gate
crazily, screaming for help, until the
elevator came rapidly upward, the operator
round-eyed with amazement and a passenger in the car.
  It was Sylvester Hering and never have I been so
glad to see anyone in my life. I flung
myself upon him, chattering hysterically and he simply
put one big hand over my mouth and smothered me into
silence.
  He said, "Don't act like that! Pull yourself
together. What's happened?"
  I waved one hand wildly toward the display
department. I could only gasp incoherently.
Hering took me by the wrist and he and the elevator
man started off on a run, with me trailing
helplessly along. I didn't want to go back,
but I was being dragged back. I couldn't even be
allowed the privilege of hysteria.
  The phonograph was still on in Sondo's
workroom, the needle clicking round and round at the
end of the record. But there was no one there, no one
at all. Hering turned off the machine and turned
sternly to me.
  "Not here!" I told him frantically. "In
the mannequin room!"
  I had to go with them and show them which cabinet, but they
didn't make me look. I shrank back against
the door and covered my face with my hands. I
couldn't shut out the things they were saying.
  "It's the Norgaard woman, all right,"--that
was Hering.
  "Lookut what's around her neck!"--the
elevator man.
  I wouldn't look and I didn't know till
later about the thin, braided suede belt that had
cut off Sondo's life. A belt of bright
scarlet--the color we were featuring for the year. The
missing belt.
  The next hour or so will always remain a little
hazy in my mind. I've a memory of Hering
trying to be in a dozen places at once.
Trying to search all the enormous eighth floor,
calling McPhail, giving orders that no one be
allowed to leave the store.
  We were all gathered in the department eventually--
a more terrible repetition of the ordeal we'd gone
through only a few days before. Tony and the boys from
the windows, the models from the style show, Miss
Babcock, Owen Gardner, and Carla Drake in
her gold and white gown, looking like Juliet.
Carla, protesting that she must be allowed
to change her dress. Objecting and complaining
till she was allowed to go and make the change. There
were a few others too. Scrubwomen, anyone who
had been in the store.
  But out of us all there was simply nothing to be
gleaned. Apparently everyone had been doing what
he was supposed to do. I was the only one who
admitted I'd been on the eighth floor.
  After the police routine had been run through and the
body examined, we found that Sondo had been
dead since early morning. There was a bruise at
her temple where she had been struck a blow,
only enough to stun her, to make her helpless so that those
cruel hands could draw the suede cord tightly
about her throat. It was thought that the same hammer with
which Dolores had been smashed had struck the
blow.
  This was more dreadful than Monty's death. That
had been impersonal in the sense that it had little to do
with us. Someone had hated him and killed him. But
Sondo was dead, not because she was so bitterly
hated, but because she had possessed knowledge that was
dangerous. And that left each one of us wondering
if he too knew more than it was safe to know. In
a queer sort of way I suppose I'd liked
Sondo. She was erratic and tempestuous and
fiery, but she'd had a touch of genius and
dauntless courage.
  I told McPhail what I knew or
surmised about the affair of the phonograph and the
ring, and his men turned the place upside down
searching for any trace of the stone, but if it was in the
department, they didn't find it. Nor did they
find anything enlightening when they later searched
Sondo's apartment.
  Bill had told me to keep still about everything
until he saw me, so aside from what I knew
about the phonograph, I said nothing. My mind was
sick with speculation. If Sondo's
suspicions had been correct, if she'd been
following the right thread, then it was Chris she had
prepared to trap. Every bit of evidence she'd
uncovered had pointed to Chris. And she'd spoken
as if she held back one final ace--the ring.
Had that ring belonged to Chris? She'd been in the
store that morning. Had she gone first to window
display to try to recover her property? Had
she--his
  I could see the two of them with terrible clearness
in my mind's eye. Chris, so big and
strapping, and little wiry Sondo. A Chris
capable of action when she was aroused--and not a limp
crybaby.
  I couldn't believe it.
  Later I found myself in Hering's company at the
lunch counter on the seventh floor, without quite knowing
how I'd got there. Every night free coffee was
served to the scrubwomen and anyone else who worked
late. The free coffee business was flourishing that
night.
  I sat on a high stool beside Hering, while
he handed me cream and sugar, and all but stirred
my coffee for me. I'd gone so far along a
road of horror since that moment in the mannequin
room, that I couldn't feel much more about anything for the
time being.
  I do remember rousing myself once to inquire the
time. It was after ten--which meant that I'd already
missed my call from Bill. I hoped he
wouldn't be too worried and that he'd come back to
town tomorrow, but I couldn't even get very excited about
that.
  "What's the matter with your fingers?" Hering
asked me, and I looked at my hand, not knowing
what he meant.
  Then I realized that I'd been rubbing my
fingertips against my skirt, rubbing them again and again
--and I knew why. It was as if I was trying to
rub from them the silky feel of Sondo's dark
hair.
  "Why can't we do something?" I cried. "Why
doesn't somebody do something?"
  Others at the lunch counter glanced at me, then
hastily away. For the first time I looked about to
see who was there.
  Carla Drake had changed to her blue suit
and was wearing her usual beautiful, sad
expression. I noticed with distaste that Owen
Gardner had taken the stool beside her, but he was
wasting no interest on her just then. He looked
grayer than ever and the strong black coffee he
drank seemed to be doing him little good. Once
Carla turned and said something to him in an undertone,
but he only shook his head indifferently.
  When I'd downed two cups of coffee, Hering
pulled me off the stool and led me away from the
counter. There was an exhibit of porch
furniture not far from the lunch counters and he
pushed me into a glider and sat down beside me. I
was so numb and dazed that I had to be
pushed and led.
  "I found out about that fur coat business," he
told me. "I had some time off this afternoon and I
went over to the library and looked up some eastern
papers around that date."
  "Did you find anything that ties in?" I
asked. I formed the words automatically because I
couldn't really care. I didn't want to wake
up and try to think. Every time I began to use my
mind, I started through that experience in the mannequin
room again. All I wanted now was to be numb.
  "If it ties in," Hering said, "I don't
know how. I took it to McPhail, but he was so
bent on catching Sondo that he wasn't
interested. I guess I don't look so smart
from where he sits. Anyway, it seems
Montgomery had a quite a finger in the style shows
at that store in the east. They put 'em on like
regular stage shows and he designed settings and
arranged everything. Well, he had a dance team
he was helping, and they went around appearing at all
these shows between the dress displays. I guess he
gave 'em a lot of good publicity."
  I was barely listening. I'd begun to think of
Bill again. Where had he gone? How long would it
take him to get back to town?
  "Well," Hering went on, "they had a fur
coat show and some of the coats disappeared. I
guess it even looked a little bad for Monty for a
while. But they finally pinned it on these dancers
he'd helped. They arrested the man, but the woman
got away. "Luis and Lotta" they called
themselves."
  I came out of my apathy with a name ringing in my
ears. "What did you say?"
  Hering regarded me in despair, "Ain't you
even been listening? I said they billed themselves as
"Luis and Lotta.""
  "Did the papers give their last name?" I
asked.
  "Yeah. Some sort of Spanish name. I got
a picture of it in my head. Wait a
minute."
  "It wouldn't be Montez, would it?"
  He fitted the name painstakingly to his mental
photograph. "Yeah, sure. That's it. How'd
you know?"
  "I've probably heard it some place," I
said.
  Hering changed the subject. "Look,
Miss Wynn, who do you think was up here playing
that phonograph tonight?"
  Everything came back with brutal clarity. I
forgot about Lotta Montez.
  "I don't think anybody ever played it,
except Sondo and Carla Drake. And this time
it wasn't Sondo. Carla was in the store all
right, but why on earth she'd go sneaking upstairs
to play that record, I don't know. And if it was
Carla, why didn't she come out when I started
screaming?"
  "It could have been somebody who wanted you to think
it was the Drake woman," Hering said.
  "But why? It doesn't make any sense. And
who would know I was there and take all the trouble to go
up and scare me? Whoever it was had to walk up.
The elevator man said he didn't take
anyone but me to the eighth floor around that time."
  Hering's melancholy deepened. "There's a
lot that doesn't make sense till you get
hold of a key. What did Sondo take the
dress off that dummy for? And who smashed its head
in?"
  We were on the old treadmill of speculation
again. Tomorrow Bill would be back in town. Tomorrow
I'd get to tell him everything I knew. And with
whatever it was he had found out, perhaps something would
make sense and we could go to McPhail with some
concrete evidence that wouldn't hurt the wrong
person.
  One of McPhail's men came toward me
"Hey! I been looking all over for you. You're
wanted upstairs, Miss Wynn."
  Hering took me up and I went into Monty's
office, where McPhail was waiting for me. The
department was bright now, with lights burning everywhere,
and noisy enough to shut out the rain beating against the window
panes. I knew the minute I sat down in the
chair opposite McPhail, that something new had
come up.
  I found out almost at once. Although the
fingerprints on the hammer had been badly
smudged, they'd made out one clear thumb mark.
It belonged to Bill Thorne.

             CHAPTER 19

  I forgot all other horror in this shock. I
knew it was all right. It had to be. But it looked
bad for Bill.
  I told McPhail about the phone call
I'd had from him late that afternoon and the detective
pounced on the information eagerly.
  "Where'd he call from? Where is he now?"
  "I don't know," I said helplessly. "He
didn't tell me."
  McPhail didn't believe a word and I
became a little frantic trying to convince him.
  Across the room Hering was playing with the pine
spray again, while he listened. He gave the
plunger a little push and the office began to smell of
Christmas trees. McPhail sneezed and
barked at him.
  "Get the damn' thing outta here!"
  Hering took it away sheepishly and came
back.
  I explained to McPhail that Bill was on the
track of something and that he'd thought it safer if I
didn't know too much about it. I said he'd told
me about seeing Sondo and that he'd sounded concerned
when I'd told him Dolores had been smashed
with a hammer.
  "Sure," McPhail said, "he probably
remembered his prints were on that hammer."
  "He didn't say anything about the hammer,"
I told him. "He just sounded shocked and said
he'd come back to town right away. There wasn't
a train until midnight and he was going to call
me again at ten o'clock. Only of course I
wasn't home."
  At the back of my mind I was thinking that all
he'd need to know to settle us nicely was the part
Bill and I had played in the discovery of
Monty's body. Why on earth had Bill had
to touch that hammer when he'd been in Sondo's
workroom that morning?
  The palms of my hands had broken into a cold
sweat and I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket
to dry them. Of all the times in the world to pull out a
handkerchief, I had to pick the worst moment.
  Something which had been caught in the folds flew
across the room with a little clatter. Hering leaned down
and picked it up. But he didn't hand it back
to me. He studied it for a moment thoughtfully and then
put it down on the desk in front of
McPhail without a word.
  His action was so odd that I leaned over to see
what it was. McPhail picked the object up
in his fingers and turned it about. It was a large
carnelian stone, deep red and highly
polished, set in an oval of antique gold,
evidently broken loose from the prongs of a ring.
About a third of the stone had cracked off and the mounting
was visible underneath.
  McPhail spoke curtly over his shoulder and
someone brought an envelope and laid it before him.
He took out the ring that had been found clutched in
Monty's hand and fitted the stone to it. The match
was perfect. He looked at me, his eyes cold
and deadly.
  "Well?" he said.
  I felt as if a net were being pulled in around
me and I was suddenly too weary to fight the
entangling mesh.
  I don't know where it came from," I said.
"I've never seen it before."
  Someone was trying to incriminate me. That smock
stuffed in my desk. And now the stone to the ring in my
pocket. Who could hate me like that?
  Hering's eyes were on me. "You try hard to
think, Miss Wynn. You must have got that somewhere.
Can't you remember anything about it?"
  I put my fingers over my eyes and thought of
everything I could remember handling that night in my
work in the window. I went again through all the steps
I'd taken on my way upstairs to the
mannequin room, thought through the whole experience.
And suddenly I had it.
  No one had put that stone in my pocket.
I'd put it there myself. I looked up at
McPhail triumphantly.
  "I remember now! When I was in the
mannequin room. Right after--right after I found
her. My foot kicked something on the floor and
then I stepped on it. I picked it up and put
it in my pocket so I couldn't kick it again. I
didn't look at it or think about it, but it must have
been the stone."
  McPhail regarded me with open disbelief in
those cold eyes. "Pretty smooth with your
stories, aren't you? First you find a piece in the
window and then you lose it. Now you got the other
piece. Come clean now--where did you get it?
Why was it in your pocket? What were you going to do with
it?"
  He took me over the whole thing again and again,
until I felt so weary that I wanted to give
up. It was almost like the horrid fascination of
looking down a well. I knew it was the end of
me if I jumped, but I was tempted
to go plunging down--to cry that of course I'd
murdered Sondo, that the ring was mine, anything to
get away from those coldly cruel eyes watching
me. Somehow I clung to a shred of sanity because
I knew I had to help Bill.
  Hering finally broke the tension. He picked up
the stone again.
  "You know," he said, "I've seen this somewhere
before."
  McPhail turned. "Where?"
  "I don't know exactly." Hering looked
uncomfortable. "It's just that I got a picture
of it in my head. And when I get a picture like
that I know--"
  "You and your pictures!" McPhail
snapped. "If you've seen it before you'd better
remember where."
  Hering closed his eyes and went into one of his
trances.
  "It was on a hand," he produced at last.
  "Well now," McPhail said heavily,
"ain't that just too sweet! On a hand he says.
You wouldn't by any chance know whose hand, I
suppose?"
  "Nope," Hering shook his head. "That ain't in
the picture. But it was a woman's hand. With red
nails."
  McPhail turned his back in disgust and started
over again on me. The little interlude had restored
my balance to some extent, and I could go over the
ground again without giving way.
  Hering was still playing with the parts of the ring and suddenly
he exclaimed and stepped forward to show something to
McPhail. There was a tiny hinge in the gold
oval that held the stone and when he pressed above the
hinge with his nail the stone tilted up to show a
hollow beneath. It was a space in which a lock of
hair, or a picture, or some such sentimental
treasure might have been kept. There was nothing in
it now.
  McPhail glared at me. "I suppose you
don't know what was kept in that ring?"
  "Of course I don't," I said. "I've
told you I've never seen the thing before."
  He finally let me go, but only, I think,
because he thought I might lead them to Bill. From that
moment on I was followed every time I left the
store.
  There wasn't anyone to take me home this time
and I have no clear memory of going out and
catching a bus. I suppose I must have, because I
turned up eventually at my own door.
  Helena was sitting up in bed, reading a
magazine, and she looked up anxiously as I
came in.
  "Linell! I've been so worried. You've
never come home this late from the store."
  I went over and sat limply down on her
bed. "Sondo's dead. Murdered, just like
Monty. I found her. I--I went up to the
mannequin room for a figure. And when I put
my hand into a cabinet I touched her hair and--"
  Helena's magazine slid off on the floor
with a ruffling of pages. She recovered herself as I
talked, but there was a gray look about her mouth.
"I knew it," she cried. "That party. I knew
something awful would come of it. A thing like that gets out
of hand."
  I told her about that earlier attack upon me in
the office and it was pleasant to have her soothe and
cluck over me. But still I watched her a little
uneasily. I hadn't seen her alone since the
night before when she'd refused to tell me about
Lotta Montez, and it seemed to me that Helena
was looming up more and more as a mystery woman.
  "I know about Lotta Montez," I said, when
we'd exhausted the subject of Sondo's
murder.
  "About her?" The words were scarcely more than a
whisper.
  "Yes. That she was mixed up in that fur coat
theft in the east. She and her dancing partner."
  I watched her warily. Her expression was
guarded and I couldn't tell how my news had
hit her.
  Lotta Montez. A stage name certainly.
But who was the real woman behind the name? Why had
Helena burned that note?
  She leaned forward and put her hands on my
shoulders, turned me so that I faced her.
  "You're young. Linell," she said. "Only a
few years older than Chris. Too young, perhaps,
to have learned tolerance."
  "Tolerance!" I cried. "How can you talk about
tolerance when two people have been murdered?"
  "Listen to me," she pleaded. "I'm not talking
about murder. I'm talking about someone who is
innocent and mustn't be brought into this."
  I had to believe in her sincerity. I might not
understand her motives, but I couldn't
doubt that she was honest in what she was saying.
  "There's nothing I can do anyway," I told
her. "Hering looked up the fur theft and he put
the whole thing in McPhail's hands. But right now
McPhail is busy suspecting Bill
Thorne."
  "Bill!" Helena's tone was incredulous.
Then she remembered. "He phoned you tonight. I
told him you were working late and that everything was all
right. He said he'd be seeing you and hung up."
  That was a help. Not that I blamed Helena,
since she hadn't known what was happening at the
store. But if Bill took her at her word, he
might not even come home tomorrow. And he had to come
home. Quickly. In order to defend himself.
  I gave Helena a further account of the evening
while I was getting ready for bed, and the strangeness
between us began to wear off. After all, Helena had
as much right to shield someone if she chose, as
Bill had to shield me, or I him.
Probably none of us was obscuring the real
issue. I couldn't help wondering who it was
Helena was shielding. And why?
  It took me a long time to get to sleep and then
I had a queer dream. I was back in my
office at Cunningham's and that missing picture
was again in place on the wall. I knew it was
there. But it was in place only so long as I had
my back to it. The moment I started turning around,
the spot on the wall was empty again. I kept
trying and trying to sneak up on that picture and
catch it in place--but always it just managed to
elude me.
  I woke up limp with fatigue, but came
alive the moment I got out of bed. This was to be a
day of action. If Bill wasn't to be arrested
the moment he set foot back in town, somebody
had to do something. And I knew one thing I was going
to do--about that missing picture from the wall of my
office.
  I think I was a little shocked when I walked
over from Michigan and found Cunningham's State
Street windows alive with color and light. The
curtains had been opened and the red windows were on
display.
  There were my signs, lettered in red on creamy
paper. "Red is the Color of the Year!" with a
crimson exclamation point. And Sondo's
backgrounds bright and spectacular--when Sondo
herself lay so tragically dead.
  I had forgotten all about the windows from the time
I'd found Sondo. But others had been more
responsible than I. Sometime, between all the
police procedure, Tony had managed to get
his windows done. They were every bit as striking and
effective as we'd hoped and I felt sick at
heart to think Sondo couldn't see them. For all
her scrapping with Tony, she'd loved her work and
had taken a real pride in the things she did for the
windows.
  The store was in a state of confusion. The news
of the second murder was out and I think every
employee in Cunningham's had the jitters. The
women, particularly, went to the locker rooms and
upper floors in groups of two or three and
during the day there were several resignations.
Policemen were posted at every entrance and reporters
lurked in every corner. Not even Mr. Cunningham
could stem the tide now.
  The day had a remorseless tempo. One thing
led to another so swiftly that I seemed to be out of
breath most of the time.
  Keith started things off. He was already in the
office when I arrived, and I knew by his face
that he'd heard.
  "I told you it would be like that," he said.
"Something's loose now and it can't be stopped unless
it's caught and bound. I told you it wasn't
safe to know too much. Remember? So I'm going
to be rid of what I know."
  "What do you know, Keith?" I asked evenly.
  His eyes were dark and haunted in his yellowish
face. "It's all right to tell you now," he said,
"because then I'm going over to tell McPhail.
Remember Tuesday afternoon--before Mr.
Montgomery was murdered--when you gave me those
signs to take down to lingerie?"
  I nodded.
  "Well, I didn't leave the store right
away afterward. I was going down to the basement to look
at some shirts they had on sale. I took the
basement stairs down from the main floor. The
stairs at the front of the store. You know where they
come in?"
  I knew perfectly well. That stairway, with
its head close to window five, cut down just below
the front windows.
  He saw my quickening of interest. "Just as I was
starting down the stairs I heard somebody talking
in the window. Somebody talking loud and
angry. I'm pretty sure it was Mr.
Montgomery, and I heard part of what he said."
  I leaned forward. This was the thing Chris wouldn't
tell.
  "What did you hear?"
  "He was swearing some. And then he said, "You
get out of here and get out fast. I'm sick of the
whole tribe of Gardners and you're the worst of the
lot.""
  My eyes were on Keith, but I didn't
really see him. Certain little pieces of a
puzzle were beginning to fall into place. But my
mind shrank from accepting the pattern they
presented. Monty might have addressed those words
to Chris, though that seemed unlikely, if her
story of hiding in the window during Monty's
tirade was true. The other person to whom he
might have been speaking was Owen Gardner.
  Had Owen gone down earlier to see Monty?
And then gone down again to discover the body? It was not
only possible, but suddenly very likely. If it
had been Owen in the window, then many things were
explained. Chris's hysteria, her lack of
hatred for the murderer.
  That would be why she'd kept her presence in the
window secret; why she refused to tell what she
had heard. It explained Owen's behavior too.
Torn between the necessity to save himself, the love
for his daughter, and the need to keep her from being
involved. Might it not even explain Sondo's
death?
  Owen, watching Sondo as she tortured Chris
and threatened to involve her. It all dovetailed
perfectly. The only trouble was that I had
pieces left over. I had Lotta Montez,
and Helena shielding someone, and a carnelian ring,
and a mannequin with a smashed head.
  Perhaps those things were really extra. Perhaps they
fitted no more than that stone in my pocket, or
Bill's thumb print on the hammer.
  Keith was watching the expressions that crossed
my face.
  "I've been afraid," he said. "But I'm
not afraid any more. If I wait, maybe
I'll be the next one after Sondo. So I'd
better go talk to McPhail."
  "Yes," I said, "you'd better go talk to
McPhail."
  He went off and I phoned Universal Arts
to see if there'd been any word of
Bill. But nobody had heard from him since the
day before.
  I took care of a few urgent matters on
my desk and then put on my hat and coat. One
last look at the vacant spot on my wall
told me nothing, but I knew now what I might
be able to do about it.
  The public library was only a short walk
and I went straight up to the periodical room and
explained to the attendant what I wanted. I
sat down at a table with an armful of magazines
and started going through them methodically.
  These were the magazines from which Keith and I had
cut pictures to paste on the walls of my
office. We'd chosen old ones to cut up, of
course, so if I went back a few months before
the time we'd papered the office, I ought to find a
copy of the picture that had been torn from my
wall.
  I knew I was on familiar ground. Many of the
pictures I had pasted on the office walls
looked up at me from those pages. But though I
went through the magazines carefully, with my hopes
high at first, and then gradually dying, I found no
picture which struck a responsive chord in my
memory.
  Just as I was about to give up, I was rewarded--
not by finding the picture, but by discovering one I'd
never seen before.
  It was a beautiful photograph done in full
color--rich golds and reds and black. A man
with a young, narrow, Spanish face smiling down at
the woman in his arms. A woman in a dance
frock of gold and red, and high-heeled gold
sandals. Her head was tipped back to look up
into his eyes and her glossy black hair
swung to her shoulders.
  My eyes dropped to the caption below the
picture--"The dance team of Luis and Lotta,
which has been making such a stir at style shows
lately"--and then back to the profile of the
woman.
  I knew her in spite of the dark hair.
Lotta. Shortened from Car-lotta? Eventually
Carla? There was no doubt about it. Lotta
Montez was Carla Drake.
  I sat back, wondering where the path led to now.
Carla Drake, was Lotta Montez, and whose
dancing partner had been sent to jail in connection with
a fur theft at a store where Michael
Montgomery had worked. Had she loved that much
younger man in the photograph? Was he the "lost"
husband Mrs. Babcock had mentioned? And what
had become of him in the end? Hering had said that
he'd been arrested. He'd said nothing of trial
or conviction. But he'd said something else too--that
the woman had got away.
  I carried the magazines to the desk and headed for
Cunningham's as fast as I could go. I left the
elevator at the fourth floor.
  Miss Babcock greeted me with a frantic
wave of her hands. "The police are questioning Mr.
Gardner again. And the style show's scheduled to go on
at two this afternoon. What am I to do?"
  So Keith had had his interview with
McPhail.
  "I want to see Miss Drake," I said.
"Right away."
  Miss Babcock went on for five minutes
about Owen, the style show and the inconvenience of
murders in general.
  Then she said, "Oh, Miss Drake won't
be down till later. She's not modeling this
morning."
  I was just as glad. There was something I wanted
to see before I faced Carla.
  "Do you mind if I have a look at that white
dress she's wearing in the show?" I asked Miss
Babcock.
  The buyer motioned absently toward the racks
where the style show dresses hung. I found
Carla's lovely Juliet frock without any
difficulty and lifted the soft material in my
hands.
  I could remember the tears in Carla's eyes
when I'd told her how beautiful she looked.
I could remember the graceful way she'd lifted
the skirt. And the way she'd shied away from the
slightest mention of dancing.
  I ran the edge of the hem through my hands. There was
a gray tracing of grime along the edge of the
skirt. Grime never picked up from the soft,
well-cleaned carpets of the dress section. I
went back to speak to Babcock.
  "Do you happen to remember where Miss Drake
was during the rehearsal last evening?" I asked.
  "Why--she was here, of course. Where else would
she be?"
  "But there were so many models. Are you sure?
Would there have been any time when she could have
slipped away for fifteen or twenty minutes?"
  Miss Babcock considered. "Well, if it
comes to that, I don't suppose there was one of us
who was in plain sight all the time. Not even Mr.
Gardner. Wait!" Something like a glitter came
into her eyes and she put an excited hand on my
arm. "There was a time. We had to wait for her
once. In fact we ran some of the other girls
through ahead. But she showed up right afterwards. She said
she'd got bored and was looking around the department.
It was strictly against rules for her to be out of the
dressing rooms and I was very annoyed. You--you
don't think Miss Drake has anything to do with
--with all this?"
  She looked disgustingly eager and I had no
intention of satisfying her curiosity.
  I said, "Oh, no. Certainly not," and left
before she could stop me.
  Now I was pretty sure about the mysterious hand
that had played the phonograph last night. And
where did it get me? If Sondo had been
murdered around that time--but she hadn't. She'd been
dead since early morning.
  I went upstairs to my office and found Bill
tilted back in my chair.

             CHAPTER 20

  "Bill!" I cried. "Oh, Bill, I'm
so glad to see you!"
  He nodded approvingly. "Now that's the sort
of heartfelt greeting I like from my women.
Maybe you'll appreciate me more when I'm
around after this."
  I didn't bother to take him down. I could do
that later on.
  "Bill, so many awful things have happened. Have you
heard about Sondo?"
  He dropped his joking manner and I saw how
tired he looked, saw the anxiety in his eyes.
He got up and pushed me gently down in my
chair.
  "Yes," he said, "I know. I've had a
talk with Hering. I wish I'd been here. I
wish you hadn't had to go through all that alone."
  I remembered suddenly. "But, Bill, how
did you get here without being arrested? I thought
McPhail--"
  "McPhail isn't interested in me just now.
He's got his hands full. Keith
told him what he'd heard in the window and he's
having it out with Gardner and Chris."
  I dropped wearily down in my chair. "I
wonder if it's really over? Oh, I'd hate
it to be Owen!"
  "There's no telling," Bill said.
  "What happened yesterday?" I asked him.
"I mean when you went up to see Sondo. How
did your fingerprints get on that hammer?"
  He was airy about his explanation, but anxiety
was still there.
  "It's simple enough. The hammer was on a
high shelf and she asked me to hand it to her. I
don't know what she wanted it for--she wasn't
hammering anything. I got the impression that she was
setting the stage for something and that she wanted me out
of the way in a hurry."
  "She must have set it all right," I said. "When
McPhail gets through with Owen, you're going to have a
lovely time explaining those fingerprints."
  Bill shrugged.
  "What about your trip?" I asked. "Did you
find out anything?"
  He shook his head. "I was on the trail of
something, but it fizzled out. Carla knows more about
Monty than she's telling. She almost gave
something away and then caught herself up. She said it
all went back to the time when Monty worked at a
department store in a city in Missouri. There was
some sort of scandal and he ran off to Mexico with
the woman. So I followed the thread back to that
store. But it must have been eighteen years ago,
or more, and I wasn't able to pick up the last
strands. Maybe if I'd taken more time--but I
couldn't tell what you'd be getting into while I was
gone, so--"
  I broke in. "Maybe Carla's smarter
than you think. I rather suspect she's had a little
experience twisting men around her fingers. And you
probably twist as well as the next one."
  Bill's eyebrows went up in an amused
quirk. "Meaning?"
  "Meaning that she tossed you a few red herrings and
you were gullible enough to bite. What better way to
get you off the real track than by sending you down a
side trail?"
  "How can you love me and have such a poor
opinion of my intelligence?"
  I ignored that. "I've been following a few
threads myself. I know a lot more about
Carla than you do, and I didn't have to take her
to breakfast to find out."
  He grinned at me, but I went ahead and
told him about my discovery at the library. About
Carla being Lotta Montez. About her knowing
Monty in the East and being mixed up in that theft of
fur coats. That she was probably still wanted by the
police. And about that tracing of grime on the hem
of her white dress.
  He let out a low whistle. "Next time,
baby, I'll stay home and let you do the
sleuthing."
  There was more evidence against either Chris or Owen
than there was against Carla. Or against Bill and me
for that matter. There was, however, a possible
motive in the light of what I'd found out. If
Carla was wanted by the police and Monty knew
it--his But then why would she come to the very store where he
worked? If that had been accidental, why had she
stayed? And what connection had she with the ring?
  I began to feel more and more that the key to the
puzzle of Carla lay in Helena Farnham's
hands. If Helena could be made to talk! If
she'd only tell us what really happened the day
Carla exchanged the pin! Helena had seen
something, knew something.
  I picked up the phone and called the costume
jewelry section. Helena was busy with a customer
and I had to wait a moment. When she answered I
wasted no time.
  "You're having lunch with me," I told her.
"What time do you go?"
  "More questions?" she said. "It isn't any use,
Linell."
  "Oh, yes it is!" I told her. "It's
got to be. Do you know what's happening up here?
Do you know that McPhail is about ready to arrest
Owen Gardner and that Chris is badly mixed
in?"
  There was silence at the other end of the wire and I
knew I'd surprised her. I pushed my
advantage hastily.
  "None of us thinks Chris or Owen is
guilty, but Bill and I come next on the list.
So don't you think you'd better tell me what you
know?"
  Again silence. Then she said, "Linell, I
honestly don't think it will help, but if you want
the story, I'll give it to you."
  I arranged to meet her and hung up,
to face Bill triumphantly. "Now we're
getting somewhere!"
  "Maybe," he said.
  I told him everything else I could think of, the
things I'd had no opportunity to tell him before.
About the queer way I'd found the stone to the ring, for
one thing.
  "Sondo must have had it in her possession,"
Bill said. "She could have dropped it on the
floor of the mannequin room herself. Or it might
have fallen out of her clothes when the murderer dragged
her body in there and hid it in the cabinet."
  I shivered. Every time the thought of those moments in the
mannequin room came back to me I broke out
in goose flesh.
  Bill saw the look on my face and went on
quickly in a matter-of-fact voice. "Or the
murderer might have recovered the stone and dropped it
himself."
  "Or herself," I said.
  Bill stood up just as Keith and Hering came
into the room. Keith was yellower than ever, yet
he looked relieved. As if he felt safer and
more at ease with his conscience.
  Hering said, "McPhail wants you,
Thorne," and motioned with his thumb toward the display
department.
  Bill leaned over and gave my cheek a sharp
pat. "If I don't come back, remember I
love you."
  "I'll write you letters in jail and come to the
trial," I promised, but I didn't feel very
funny.
  Hering looked after him with his usual
melancholy. "Nice kid. But he ought to lay
off hammers."
  "Don't be silly!" I snapped. "Sondo
asked him to hand it to her. And he did. That's all
there was to it."
  Hering didn't say anything and I had a
clairvoyant glimpse of what he might be
thinking. A ridiculous picture of Bill
getting the hammer down for Sondo, thumping her
over the head with it and then calmly strangling her with
the suede belt.
  "Detectives are so stupid!" I told
him. "It would take a crazy person to go smashing
up that mannequin. To say nothing of taking off
Sondo's smock and stuffing it in my desk. If
you think Bill did any of that, you're
crazy."
  "Did I say anything, Miss Wynn?"
Hering asked. "And you know, maybe we
detectives wouldn't look stupid if we could
get any co-operation out of people like you and Bill
Thorne. Do you think it was nice not telling about that
party at the Norgaard girl's apartment?"
  "Oh, so you know about that?" I said.
  "I told them," Keith broke in, looking
at me defiantly. "I told them the whole
thing."
  "Now if I could just remember where I saw that
ring," Hering complained.
  He went off without remembering and left Keith
and me to work--or pretend to--in a long
uncomfortable silence. I think we were alone for
all of twenty minutes and then Carla Drake
came gliding gently into my office to sit down in
the chair opposite me.
  "Miss Babcock said you were down looking for
me," she announced, "so I thought I'd better
come up and see what you wanted."
  I promptly sent Keith on an errand, though
I knew he didn't want to go. Then I faced
Carla squarely, hoping that my manner was as
cool as hers.
  "Why did you go upstairs to play that
phonograph last night?" I asked.
  She smiled very sadly and sweetly. "It was
wrong of me, wasn't it? But I was feeling so
unhappy and I thought perhaps music--"
  "You must have walked up four flights of
stairs. Does music mean that much to you?"
  She made an expressive gesture with her
graceful, dancer's hands. "Music means
everything to me. It is all I have left."
  "But still the elevator is easier," I pointed
out. "And more logical."
  She was undisturbed and wearing her usual
what-will-come-will-come manner. "Not when one is
breaking the rules. I had no right to go about the
store in that expensive frock."
  "You were dancing, weren't you? You were up in that
lonely place dancing. Why?"
  For the first time she looked shaken. "It was the
white frock. It was made for dancing. And that
music was upstairs waiting--"
  I had a sudden inspiration. "Begin the
Beguine--Luis and Lotta used to dance to that,
didn't they?"
  She crossed her arms over her breast and drew
her hands upward along them, with the gesture of one
who is desperately cold. But she showed no
surprise.
  "Yes," she said. "We used to dance to that."
  And the Carioca too, I thought. That explained
her tears that night at Sondo's when Bill was
playing.
  "But you frightened me so," I protested.
"I've never gone to pieces before the way I did
when I heard that music. Carla, it was almost as
if Sondo were in there playing it. Why didn't you
come out when I screamed?"
  She looked at me with lovely, haunted
eyes. "I was afraid, too. I didn't know
who it was, or what could have happened. And I--
didn't want to be found there--dancing."
  What was she hiding? Had she been frightened because
she didn't know--or because she knew very well the
thing that had caused my fright?
  "Why didn't you want to be found dancing?"
I persisted. "Was it because Lotta Montez
is still wanted by the police?"
  Her hands closed upon her own shoulders, her
arms shielding her body as if from a blow. She
made no effort to deny my words.
  "Are you going to tell them?" she asked. "Are
you going to turn me over to McPhail?"
  She had that Lost Lady look in her eyes
again, but this time I believed in it and I couldn't
help being touched.
  "I don't know," I said. "Perhaps I won't
have to. I suppose it's enough that your husband is in
jail, so--"
  "My husband is not in jail," she said with
quiet dignity. "My husband is dead."
  Somehow I was completely taken aback and I
don't know how I'd have answered her. As it
happened I was saved by an interruption, because through the
door of my office walked one the strangest
figures I'd ever seen in my life.
  We pass them sometimes on the street, characters so
weirdly dressed, so queer in manner that we
feel they belong only on a stage. And yet when
we see them in a play we call them exaggerated
and unreal.
  This woman was real enough, for all her get-up.
She was short and broad, with an ancient, seamed
face and black, wicked little eyes like coals
set in yellow leather. She was dressed
in a conglomeration that might have been the choice of a
rag-picker's dream. Feathers and beads, bits
of satin and silk, long faded in hue and set
together in a crazy patchwork design.
  "You're Miss Wynn, ain't you?" she said in
a cracked voice. "I got a letter for you."
  She came in, smelling to high heaven of an
assortment of odors I made no attempt to
analyze, and handed me a long envelope. My
name was written across it plainly in black ink, the
store's name, and the floor of my office.
  I ripped the envelope open. There were two
folded sheets of paper inside and as I pulled
them out, something flew across the desk and dropped in
front of Carla. It was a picture. A
small snapshot cut in a tiny oval.
  Carla picked it up to hand it to me, but something
about it must have caught her eye for she looked at it
a moment, then handed it across without a word. The
expression on her face, though fleeting, was an
odd one, and I took the picture quickly and
looked at it.
  Carla said, "I must hurry before it's time for the
style show," and went out, circling my peculiar
visitor by a wide margin. I scarcely noted
her going, so puzzled was I by the snapshot in my
hand.
  It was only a tiny section of the original
picture, showing the head and shoulders of a girl and a
man wearing fancy dress--the man with a
bullfighter's hat and an embroidered cape about
his shoulders, the girl in a lace mantilla and
Spanish shawl. They were both young, as nearly as
I could tell, though the man's face was blurred
a little. At that, it looked faintly familiar.
I recognized the girl at once. It was
Chris Montgomery.
  I looked up at my visitor. "Who sent
you?"
  "My best friend," she said, preening a little.
"My very best friend. Your friend too."
  She paused and looked suspiciously about the
office as if someone might be hiding there.
  "Ain't no policemen in here, is there?"
  "No," I said, "no policemen. Who sent
you?"
  She bent toward me and I held my breath
against the aroma of gin, garlic and no baths.
  "Sondo," she whispered. "Sondo
Norgaard."
  I'll confess that a cold finger went down my
spine. My visitor managed to smile evilly
and squeeze out a few tears at the same time.
  "I'm Mrs. Dunlop," she confessed. "I
got a room down in the basement near Sondo's
rooms. And me and her was best friends. She never
trusted nobody but me. And now she's gone."
  I could get something of the picture. Sondo with
her warped sense of humor, her derision for most
of humanity. How like her to bestow a friendship of
sorts on this bit of human wreckage.
  "Well," she said, before I could recover from my
surprise, "I got to be running along.
Cynthia'll be waiting for me. Cynthia's my
cat, you know. Sondo gave her to me. Poor
Sondo. She was afraid all along something would
happen to her. That's why she give me that letter to
bring you, just in case."
  She shook her assorted feathers and patches
into place and departed with a coy wave of her hand for
me. I went over and opened the window wide and then
sat down to read the letter.
  It was from Sondo, all right, and it gave me
an eerie feeling to be sitting there reading words that
she had written.

Dear Linell:
  I'm writing this at my table before the fire just
after you've all left. Carla is curled up on
the studio couch watching me. I think she dislikes
me as much as the rest of you do. But there's no really
telling with Carla.
  You were all against me tonight for what I did to
Chris. But in the long run you'll know I was right.
And if by that time I'm not there to speak for myself, perhaps
you'll forgive me. Not that I care whether you do or
not. I only hope I'll be there to laugh.
  Poor Chris! Poor sweet, helpless
Chris! I could see it in your faces tonight--what
you were thinking. But it's your sweet Chris who
murdered Michael Montgomery.
  Of course I loved him. Why wouldn't I?
If I'd been a man I'd have wanted to be like
him. Cold and ruthless and without mercy. That way you
never get hurt yourself. But warm, too, with a fire
that would draw women always. It drew even me,
though I must scarcely seem a woman in your
eyes. And I think in his way Monty was fonder
of me than of all the rest. Because I understood
him. I understood him and I loved him.
The others only loved.
  You know that queer Mexican desert thing I
painted? I made a joke about that. I told him
it was a picture of his soul. He got a kick
out of what I said. But he didn't mind. He was
flattered. I gave it to him and after he'd used it
in a window at the store, he hung it in the
place of honor in his apartment. He said he had
a sentimental attachment for Mexico and this
picture pleased him a lot.
  But that isn't what I want to write about.
Now that Monty's gone, I don't care what
happens to me. I only want to avenge his death.
I want to see Chris crawling on her knees
to me for mercy--so that I can show her no more mercy
than she showed him. Because it is Chris. I have the
truth.
  You and Bill were pretty smart about that
phonograph, but not smart enough. I found the stone
from the ring, and there was a picture hidden beneath the
stone. Chris's picture. That's why she was
afraid to have it found. That's why she went out to
Universal to try to recover it. Because it
identified her so surely. I hoped she'd
break down tonight and confess. But since she wouldn't
I'm saving the stone for the ace I mean to play
tomorrow.
  Not the picture though. The picture goes in
the envelope with this letter to you. I'm too wise for
her. Even if she should succeed in what I think
she'll try--still this picture will go to you and she will be
caught.
  But tomorrow I'll set a trap for her. A very
dramatic little trap. And this is how it will go. I
had one of the boys bring Tony's Dolores into
my workroom this afternoon, because I thought I might need
her tomorrow. Everyone will come down late in the morning,
so I'll have the department to myself. And I'll
dress Dolores in my smock, with my yellow
handkerchief about her head. Then I'll sit her
on the stool at my drawing table with her back to the
door. I'll fix the lighting so it won't be
too bright and she'll fool anyone intent on quick
action into thinking it is Sondo Norgaard. Then
I'll put the stone from the ring in plain sight on
the drawing table, and I'll lay a hammer down
handily near the door.
  When my trap is baited, I'll hide behind
a screen to wait for her to come. I'm not afraid.
She's a coward at heart, really. And
when she's struck at the mannequin, thinking it is
me, she'll have so betrayed herself that she won't be
able to do anything but collapse. I'll make her
crawl then, before I turn her over to the police.
  However, I know that human plans are
fallible, so I'm taking precautions. This
picture and letter go into the hands of the delectable
Mrs. Dunlop, and if anything goes wrong,
they go into your hands.
  Thanks, Linell.
    Yours,
    Sondo.

  I sat there for a while with the letter before me and the
cold lake breeze pouring in the window. I was
too far away to feel it. I was seeing now
exactly what must have happened. The trap being
sprung--but not by Chris. By someone who was more of a
match for Sondo than Chris would have been. A
match in wits and will, not necessarily brawn.
  Then the mannequin smashed and the ruse discovered.
And Sondo stepping recklessly out from behind her
screen, certain she could deal with the situation herself.
Then what? The murderer standing there, hammer in hand,
really caught--and this time attacking the flesh and
blood Sondo. And when she'd dropped,
unconscious from the blow, snatching up the first thing
near at hand--that belt of braided suede?
  But there was still the picture to leave me
uncertain. Was this really such evidence as Sondo
had supposed? I looked at it again,
recognizing Chris's face, wondering about the
identity of the man. If only his face were
clearer! It looked familiar, yet not
familiar.
  I tried to recall the wording of that other note--
the one signed E, in which the ring had been mentioned.
I tried to remember how Chris had looked when
she read it. Had there been uneasiness, fear in
her eyes? Could she have been the one, after all, to
slip that note from my purse? I couldn't
believe that Chris was guilty and I knew I
couldn't take that picture and letter and lay her
safety so surely in McPhail's hands. I
got up to close the window and then hid the
envelope containing both letter and picture between the
pages of a magazine at the bottom of the pile
on my window ledge.
  Keith came back a few moments later and
when I glanced at my watch I found it
was almost time for my meeting with Helena. I'd have
liked to see Bill again before I went, but he was
evidently still busy with McPhail. My news
would have to wait till later.
  I found Helena in a more submissive mood
than she'd been in for some time. The moment we'd
ordered our lunch I opened my attack.
  "I know just enough," I said, "so that you might as
well tell me the rest. I know Lotta
Montez is Carla Drake. I know about the
fur theft and that she's wanted by the police. Now
you can tell me what really happened down at the
costume jewelry counter last Tuesday. Did
you see her come out of the window?"
  Helena didn't look at me. "No," she
said in a low voice. "No, I didn't."
  "But there's something," I said. "That evening right
after Monty was killed, when we were all back at
the apartment. I saw you looking at that scratch on
your hand in an odd way. As if you'd just thought of
something."
  "I had," she admitted. "I hadn't
remembered about Carla exchanging the pin until that
moment. It struck me suddenly. But everything
happened exactly as I've told you. I was
around on the other side of the counter when she came
down. One of the girls told me she was waiting for
me and I went over to the end of the counter near the
window, where she was. And while we were handling the
pins my hand was scratched."
  "But I still don't understand why you should have had that
odd look on your face."
  Helena shrugged. "It was because I knew she had
a motive, I suppose. And at the time I
couldn't help wondering."
  "About that motive," I said. "Was it because
Monty knew she was wanted by the police?"
  "More than that. She was crazy about her husband.
He was years younger than she, but they were very happy
together. Monty sent him to jail. He was guilty
all right. When Monty tried to connect Carla,
Luis confessed and exonerated her."
  "How did he die?"
  "He hanged himself," Helena said. "While
he was in jail. The police still thought Carla was in
on the affair and they were looking for her. But she
got away. You can understand her bitterness toward
Monty. Luis was the emotional type who felt
the disgrace was too much to bear. Particularly in
Carla's eyes, because she hadn't known
anything about what he was doing. But there was one thing,
according to Carla, that never came out in the affair."
  "What was that?"
  Helena looked a little grim. "Carla
claims it was Monty who should have been in jail.
She says it was he who engineered the whole thing and
that she had proof. Luis was weak and a tool in
Monty's hands."
  I didn't say anything for a few moments. I
could understand many things now. Carla, mourning the death
of her young husband, holding to her grief and pain.
Some women get a perverse pleasure in the
indulgence of pain. That accounted for the way music
acted on her. It even made reasonable the
temptation that had made her go upstairs the night
before, to dance alone to the melancholy music of the
Beguine.
  And the motive it gave her!
  "Then she must have come to Cunningham's
deliberately," I said. "She must have followed
Monty here."
  Helena nodded. "She did. She wanted
evidence that would trap him and put him behind bars where
he belonged. When she found out how Owen Gardner
disliked him, she told him the whole thing and the two
of them set about the business of trapping Monty.
That, you see, was why Monty married Chris."
  I echoed her words stupidly. "Why Monty
married Chris?"
  "Yes. In an effort to save himself. I
don't know all the details, but I believe
Gardner threatened him with exposure. He was
worried about Chris's infatuation."
  I was beginning to see the whole thing. "So
Monty, with his usual audacity, simply
crossed Owen up by marrying his daughter and tying his
hands?"
  "Something of the sort," Helena said. "He
knew her father would never expose him after the
marriage."
  "But how did he think he could keep Carla
still?"
  "By threatening that if he went to jail, he'd
take her back with him. She's been
desperately afraid of that."
  "I wish you'd told me all this before," I
said. "I didn't even know you were well
acquainted with Carla."
  "You can see what would happen if all this went
to the police," Helena pointed out.
"Carla's suffered enough at Monty's hands as it
is."
  I could see that. I could almost sympathize with
her if she'd been driven to killing Monty.
He'd been completely rotten. It nauseated
me to think I'd ever imagined myself in love with
him. And there might be others. Though if Carla
had murdered Sondo, why hadn't she done it the
night before when she'd slept in her apartment?
She'd had the perfect opportunity then. Or
would the evidence have pointed too surely to her in that
case? The more I tried to analyze, the more confused
I became.
  We left the restaurant and returned to the
store. Helena went on toward her department, and
as I crossed the middle aisle on the main
floor, I noticed two women walking ahead of
me. One of them was Carla, the other Susan
Gardner.
  Now there was something to ponder!

             CHAPTER 21

  When I got back to the office Hering was
waiting for me. I threw a hurried look at the
stack of magazines on my window ledge as I
went in, but they were evenly piled and hadn't been
disturbed. Even though I wasn't going to do
anything about the picture and Sondo's letter right
away, I didn't want to lose them.
  Keith went out to lunch and Hering sat down on
the corner of the desk.
  "What goes on?" I asked.
  "Looks bad for Gardner," Hering told me.
"But McPhail hasn't arrested anybody
yet. He's moved down to Gardner's office on
fourth so the style show can go ahead. Gardner needs
to be on the spot and Cunningham's pulled strings
to get him a break. But I think there'll be an
arrest before night."
  I believe Hering was feeling a bit lonely.
My office was about the only spot in the store where
he was listened to with respect. I gathered that the
city detectives considered him on a lowly
plane and felt his job was catching shoplifters,
not dabbling in murders. In the end it was Hering who
knew more about the case than any of the others.
  Considering the gloomy mood which had held me so
strongly in its grip the day Monty was murdered,
I'm sure I don't know why I
didn't feel something of the same thing that afternoon. My
nerves were in a much more jittery state. I felt
tense and jumpy and suspicious of everyone, and I
did sense a mounting tempo. But I had no
premonition that the climax was to come with such startling
suddenness. In fact, I felt hopeless of a
solution ever being reached.
  "Where's Bill?" I asked Hering.
  He was regarding my walls with his usual
interest. "Oh, around. Universal's getting
along without him these days. He said to tell you
he'd be up to see you before he went home."
  "Kind of him," I murmured and tried to turn
my attention to the avalanche of work on my desk.
  But Hering didn't take the hint. "Say,
what'd you pull a picture off your wall for?"
he inquired.
  I looked up in surprise. "Don't tell
me you didn't hear about that? I was a good little
girl and told McPhail all about it. Whoever
knocked me out with that book end must have pulled a
picture off. Something else was pasted up in its
place, but I took it down."
  And then inspiration struck me so suddenly I
almost choked.
  "Mr. Hering," I said shakily, "you've
looked at those pictures dozens of times. I
suppose it would be too much to hope that you--might
have taken one of your mental photographs of that
wall?"
  "Well now, I don't know," he said.
"Maybe I did."
  "Then tell me what the picture was that's
missing" I demanded.
  He closed his eyes obligingly and remained that
way for a few minutes, while I held my
breath. Then he opened them and regarded me in
triumph.
  "Sure," he said. "I got a picture of
it. Just as clear as anything."
  I bounced up and down in excitement. "Tell
me! Tell me what it was!"
  He was really enjoying himself. No one had ever
taken his mental photography seriously before and
he had to lengthen his big moment. He nearly
drove me crazy with suspense.
  He turned around with his back to the wall. "You
check now and see if I'm right."
  I could have shaken him. He proceeded to
describe every picture in that row on the
wall, from the door to the vacant space. When he
came to that he paused maddeningly.
  "Did I have 'em in order?"
  "Every one," I told him. "But if you don't
go on there'll be a murder right in this office."
  He grinned at me and closed his eyes again.
Closed his eyes and said one word.
  "Seashells."
  And I had the picture at once. But he
went on in detail. "A woman's hands playing
with seashells against something dark. Hands with bright red
nails."
  "You're wonderful!" I cried. "It was an
ad for nail polish."
  I remembered perfectly now. I hadn't
found it when I'd looked at the library because I
wasn't looking at ads. I'd forgotten we'd
used any.
  Hering positively beamed with pride. Now that
I knew what the picture had been, I was
hopelessly disappointed.
  "It still doesn't mean anything," I pointed
out. "It's just senseless. Why would anybody come in
and pull a nail polish ad off my wall?"
  He was holding back his trump and he leaned
toward me with dramatic intensity.
  "Because the woman whose hands posed for that picture
was wearing a ring. A ring with a big, dark red stone
in it." "You mean--?"
  "Right," he said. "I knew I'd seen that ring
before!"
  I could remember it myself now.
  "Then--then all we have to do--" I began, but
he broke in on me.
  "Miss Wynn, do you remember the name of the
company that put out the ad?"
  "It was the Nail Luster people, I think," I
said. "Are you going to tell McPhail?"
  He was halfway out the door, but he turned
back and grinned at me. "And get laughed out of
town? No thanks, Miss Wynn. I'm going
to get busy and find out who posed for that ad.
I'll be back when I know."
  I settled down in my chair, limp with the
aftermath of excitement. Hands. Graceful hands
wearing a carnelian ring. I tried to remember the
hands of all the women I knew, but I hadn't
Hering's kind of memory.
  The afternoon was endless. Keith came back and we
both buckled down to a pretense of work.
I could send him on errands around the store and run
down to talk to various buyers myself. But I
couldn't write copy to save my life.
  Storm clouds were rolling in from the lake and it
began to get dark in mid-afternoon. I felt restless
with waiting. Would this evidence of the hands mean anything
when we had it? I wanted to talk to Bill, but
he didn't come around.
  At three o'clock I went down to have a look at
the style show. Owen had attracted a good crowd of
our more exclusive customers for the first day and I
got there in time to see Carla Drake (i
couldn't think of her as Lotta Montez) go
drifting effortlessly across the long platform. She
was tremendously effective, but if the burst of
applause she received meant anything to her, she
gave no sign.
  The door to Owen's office was closed and I had
no wish to investigate. When I glimpsed
Miss Babcock weaving toward me through the crowd,
I left hastily, pretending not to see her.
  The rest of that afternoon was all deadly routine
until, around a quarter to five, Tony
Salvador put his head in my office.
  "Well, I've done it!" he announced.
  I hadn't the faintest idea what he was
talking about.
  "Say, don't you work here any more?" he
demanded. The windows! Everybody's nuts about
'em. Mr. Cunningham's secretary came
down to congratulate me in person. Looks like
I get the job."
  "I'm glad, Tony," I told him. "You
deserve it. But, Tony--no more phonographs.
Please."
  He looked a little sheepish. "Maybe you're
right at that." Then the broad smile left his
face. "You know something, Linell?"
  "What?" I asked.
  "I miss her like the dickens," he said.
"Sondo, I mean. Place doesn't seem
right without having her around to scrap with. And those are
her windows as much as they are mine. I don't
think I'll do so well without her."
  "Of course you will," I assured him. "But
I'm glad you said that. She'd have liked to get
credit."
  Tony grinned half-heartedly. "She liked
credit all right, and she deserved it. Say--
Carla's over in display now, packing
up some of Sondo's records. We thought they
might as well go to her. And she said she wished
you'd come over for a minute. She wants to talk
to you about something and you won't be interrupted over
there. She wants you to bring a picture along.
Says you'll know what she means. Well, the
department's knocking off early tonight and I've got
some shopping to do. So long."
  What on earth did Carla want with that
picture, I wondered. Keith shook his head
at me.
  "Don't you go, Miss Wynn. You stay
away from display. Everything happens there."
  Keith was forever playing Cassandra and it
irritated me. "Don't be silly! It's
daytime and I scarcely think Carla will murder
me."
  "You don't know," Keith warned. "You don't
know for sure about anybody. And maybe it's
daytime, but it's already dark."
  It had been murky outside all day.
Another storm was blowing up and the last traces of
feeble daylight were dying out. But I wasn't
afraid of Carla and I was curious as to what she
might know of that snapshot of Chris.
  I slipped the picture from its hiding place
among the magazines and put it in my purse.
Then I said, "Cheer up," and went off to window
display, leaving Keith's mutterings behind me.
  Tony had evidently closed the department for the
night, because the lights were off, except for a single
bulb in Sondo's workroom. What with the gloom
outside, the place was dim and full of shadows.
In spite of my brave words to Keith, I
shrugged aside a twinge of uneasiness as I
walked into the workroom.
  Carla knelt on the floor, sorting a pile
of records. She looked up at me soberly as
I came in.
  "Did you bring the picture?" she asked.
  I tapped my purse. "Yes. What about
it?"
  "I want it," Carla said. "Give it to me
please ... it will be better for everyone if you
give it to me."
  There was something so strained in her manner that I was
startled. It would be just as well, I thought, to keep
Sondo's work table between Carla and me. If she
made a single move, I could be out the door and
away before she could reach me.
  "Why do you want the picture?" I asked.
"Why should a picture of Chris mean anything to
you?"
  For some strange reason the faintest flicker of
relief came into her eyes. Then she turned
back to the records, reading the titles, placing
one on one pile, one on another.
  "The picture doesn't mean anything to me,"
she said. "It's just that--that it might get Chris
into a lot of trouble. And why should you want to do that?"
  "I don't want to get anyone into trouble she
doesn't deserve," I told her. "But I'm
not giving up that picture till I know what it's
all about."
  Carla laid the records aside and stood
up. She pushed back a plume of hair from her
eyes with a careless gesture--that silvery hair she
had dyed black when she'd been part of the dance team
of Luis and Lotta.
  "It's for your own good," she said. "Sondo
died because of that picture. If you keep it, something
may happen to you."
  I didn't like her tone, or the way she was
looking at me and I inched backward toward the
door.
  "I'm not going to keep it," I told her.
"I'm going to give it to McPhail."
  "Don't be a fool," she said. "You mustn't
do that."
  I was almost at the door now. Another step and
I'd make a bolt for it. My bravado was
completely gone. This was a Carla I'd never
seen before and I had no intention of letting her get
near me.
  And then to my relief, I heard footsteps
coming down the corridor and into the department. But it was
a relief shortlived.
  Carla looked around, listening. "There she comes
now. I had an idea you wouldn't want to give
up the picture, so I asked her to come up and
try to persuade you. You'd really better listen
to us, Linell."
  I felt trapped. Carla was there before me, and
someone else was cutting off my retreat from the
rear. I swung about quickly and my panic died.
It was only Susan Gardner.
  "You talk to her, Mrs. Gardner," Carla
said and dropped to her knees to tie up a stack of
records.
  Susan came over to me, her hands
aflutter with distress. "Miss Drake says you
have a picture of Chris that may get her into
difficulty. Won't you please let me have it?"
  Carla gathered up her records and went past
me to the door. "I've done what I could,
Mrs. Gardner," she said. "It's up to you now.
It's no use fighting destiny anyway."
  "Listen," I said to Susan, when Carla had
gone out, "I don't know what this is all about,
or why a snapshot of Chris should mean much one
way or another, but I'm not giving that picture
to anyone but McPhail. I've held off because
I didn't want to get anyone into unnecessary
complications. But if this snapshot is as
important as you and Carla seem to think, then I
want to get it out of my possession right away and
put it where it will help to clear everything up."
  Susan stood there for a moment longer and she must
have realized that my mind was made up. She looked
distressed and unhappy, even a little puzzled, but
she offered no further argument. Without another word,
she turned and followed Carla.
  So that was that, and there had been nothing to fear after
all. I opened my bag to have another look at the
picture that was causing all this controversy, but I
could make no more of it than before. Who was the man?
What part did he play in this? Was it, perhaps, his
identity that held the answer to the riddle?
  Another moment and I'd have returned the
picture to my purse and left the department. I
had no premonition whatsoever of what was about to
happen. I heard no footfall, no sound of a
hand creeping toward the light switch at the door
behind me.
  The light simply went out with a click and I
stood there in darkness, filled with the knowledge that someone was in
the doorway, cutting off escape. I fumbled
at the catch of my purse and put the picture
away.
  "Susan?" I said. "Carla? Who is it?"
  But there was no answer. The darkness was horrible
and blank. I backed away, fumbling for a path
of escape. If I could reach the wall, perhaps I
could work my way around to the door. Escape I
must. For I knew that Death stood in the
doorway. The same death Monty had met, and
Sondo. This time I might not be so lucky as I
had been that day in my office.
  Against the grayer darkness of the doorway I could
just make out the blurred shadow that stood
there. No outline, nothing to give height or form.
Just a darker patch against more darkness.
  Then a hoarse whisper came to me and I knew
there was desperation here.
  "The picture! Give me the picture!"
  The voice was coarsened, unidentifiable. It
might have been the voice of a man or a woman.
Whatever it was, it sent terror streaming through the
marrow of my bones. I wanted to scream, but I
knew no scream could help me. One sound and
I'd be done for, before anyone could hear and come to my
help.
  I moved again. Holding my breath, trying to
control the trembling of my body. Back a
step. Another step, and then a creak sounded that was
like the crash of doom about my ears. I knew I
was trapped.
  I'd backed straight into Sondo's long work
table and the sound had given my position away.
  Hands reached for me in the darkness, brushed my
face. I ducked beneath them, but I was cornered,
caught. The hands were hunting for me. Cold hands
with a deadly strength in the fingers.
  I groped across the table behind me, searching for
anything--anything at all that might serve as a
weapon. My hand closed over a smooth tube of
metal. I picked it up, not knowing what it was.
  There was a hot breath on my face and hands
touched my shoulders, moved upwards. I raised
the thing in my hands, meaning to strike out with it. And
then I recognized what it was. The pine
spray Tony had used last Christmas to fill
the store with the odor of Christmas trees.
  I pulled back the plunger, thrust it forward,
shooting the spray at short range straight into the
face, the eyes of the shadowy figure before me.
  There was a gasp of pain. I didn't wait for
any more. I stumbled for the door, ran blindly out of the
department, down the corridor. No purpose or
direction. Wanting only to put distance between me and
the horror that had reached for me in the dark.
  The elevators were too far away and there'd be
no safety in my office. I plunged down the
stairway three steps at a time, falling
twice, clinging to the rail, picking myself up to
plunge downward again.
  It was my abrupt collision with an indignant
customer coming up the stairs that brought me to my
senses. No pursuit sounded from above, and by
running away I was giving the murderer every
chance to cover her own escape.
  The doors downstairs, I thought frantically.
The exits must be stopped, the store searched. I
left the protesting woman I'd nearly knocked
over and rushed for an elevator, made the startled
operator take me straight down to main. Then
I tore down the middle aisle and ran straight
into Keith, Bill and McPhail.
  Keith gave a little scream as he saw me.
"There she is! I told her not to go over to
display!"
  Bill put out his hands to stop my flight,
caught my shoulders and swung me around. I
clung to him for a moment, half hysterical with
relief. Then I pushed him away and faced
McPhail.
  I couldn't have made very much sense, but he got
enough of the idea to call one of his men from his post near
a door and give sharp orders that every exit be
watched.
  "The pine spray!" I gasped. "I used it
to get away. Shot it all over the person who
came at me ... over her shoulders and face and
hair. She'll smell of it. If she tries
to leave the store you can stop her."
  "You keep saying "she"," Bill said. "Have
you any idea who it was?"
  I hadn't. I was only using the "she" because
of Carla and Susan. I couldn't be
absolutely positive it was one of them. It
might just as easily have been a man.
  "You take Miss Wynn upstairs to her
office and keep her there," McPhail told
Bill. "I'm going to round up everybody who's
had any connection with this affair and we're going to have
a showdown right now."
  I didn't want to go back to the eighth floor
again, but with Bill on one side, and Keith on the
other, muttering I-told-you-so's, I was marched
to an elevator and taken upstairs. Thank
goodness, at least, that my two rescuers had no
odor of pine needles about them.
  Keith told me that shortly after I'd left
the office, he had gone to get someone to stop me.
He would never have been in time, but I was grateful
just the same.
  Sylvester Hering sat on my desk waiting for
me. It was just closing time--I heard the jangle
of the bell as we walked in.
  "I'm on the trail!" Hering
announced. "I got the Nail Luster people looking
up the name of the gal who posed for that hand picture.
They're gonna call me the minute they find out
who she was. I told the operator I'd wait
here." Then he paused and took in my distraught
condition. "Say--what goes on?"
  I could make a little more sense by that time and I
blurted out the whole story. About the picture and
Carla and Susan--everything. Hering had a look
at the snapshot and shook his head in bewilderment.
Then he passed it over to Bill, who sat down
to study it.
  "How is Owen getting along?" I asked, just
to keep talking and stop my teeth from their nervous
chattering.
  Hering shrugged. "He still claims he wasn't
the Gardner Montgomery was talking to in the
window. They haven't been able to shake him from that.
I guess McPhail is going to take him and
Chris over to headquarters for a real going over."
  Bill was still studying the picture, but didn't
seem to come to any conclusions.
  He said, without taking his eyes from it, "You know,
I turned up something funny about Gardner on that
trip I took."
  "What?" I demanded.
  Bill tilted the picture sideways and
examined it from a fresh angle. "I told you about
Monty working in a store down in a small
Missouri city. And running off to Mexico with a
woman who worked there. Well, Owen Gardner worked
in that same store at the same time."
  "Then--then Owen and Monty knew each other
long ago, before they ever worked together here?" I
asked.
  "That's right," Bill said, as calmly as if
he weren't throwing a bombshell into our midst.
"You know something? I don't think the girl in this
picture is Chris."
  "Oh, don't be sil--" I began, but he
looked so positive that I stopped and went to
look over his shoulder. Then I said, "I think
you're crazy. Of course it's Chris!"
  He shook his head. "It can't be. Because of the
man."
  Even Hering craned his neck. "You mean you know
who the man is?"
  "I think so," Bill said. "And if I'm
right, then this picture was taken years ago. So it
couldn't be Chris."
  The phone rang with startling shrillness and I could
have tossed it impatiently out the window. But Hering
picked up the receiver and it was his call. We all
tensed to anxious listening.
  "Yeah?" Hering said slowly. "You got her
name? That's swell. ... Sure, I'll write
it down. Give."
  Oddly enough, he didn't write. He stood
there with his mouth open. Then he said, "Hey, come
again! What was that name?" The name must have been
repeated, for he listened blankly. "That's what
I thought you said," he muttered and put the phone
back on my desk.
  When he looked around at us, it was with the stunned
air of a man on whom a great light was beginning
to break.
  "I think Gardner's telling the truth," he
said. "He wasn't in the window. It was a woman
who killed Montgomery. The woman that ring
belonged to. The same one who wrote that note
signed E and posed for the polish ad. And who
killed Sondo because she wanted to get that
picture back."
  "But who is it?" I cried. "Tell us!"
  Hering leaned over and tapped the picture
Bill held. "The jane we're looking for is
the one in that picture."
  "You mean--you mean Chris?" I demanded.
  "No," he said. "I don't mean Chris.
Bill's right. That ain't no picture of
Chris. It's a picture of the murderer. Her
name's Eileen Gardner."

             CHAPTER 22

  I repeated the name stupidly after him. Bill
whistled. "So! then I'm right about the man. It's
the only way it fits."
  I shook him. "What do you mean? Who is the
man? What fits?"
  "Calm down, toots. The man's Michael
Montgomery, of course. That picture was taken
when he was young, and it's pretty blurred. But
that's who it is. The girl's the one he ran
away with to Mexico. Eileen Gardner. Owen's
wife. Chris's mother. Chris is fair-haired
and she told us her mother was dark. But the mantilla
hides the girl's hair in the picture."
  I could remember something else. That night at
our place when Chris had mentioned an
old picture she'd found of her mother, mentioned how
much it looked like Chris the way she looked today.
I was still confused. I knew no one who looked like
Chris Montgomery. I was trying to understand,
trying to get the fog out of my brain, when
McPhail put his head in the door.
  "Come along," he said. "All of you. I've
got the witnesses lined up over in the display
department. Nobody's been acting funny.
Nobody's tried to leave the store except
Mrs. Gardner and Tony Salvador and we
stopped them. But if there's a whiff of pine on
one of the lot, you better locate it, Miss
Wynn. We can't."
  I had only to use my nose. McPhail
stationed me at the door to the display department and I
stood there with my eyes closed while, one after
another, the people he'd gathered there went past me.
I sniffed each time and then opened my eyes, but it
was no use.
  There was nobody missing. Tony, Owen,
Chris, Helena, Susan, Carla. They even
sent Bill and Keith past me. But on not one of
them was there the faintest odor of pine. And there were
no signs of clothes having been changed either. The
women were all wearing the same dresses they'd
worn earlier, and as far as I could tell, the men
had on the same suits.
  McPhail collected us in Monty's
office and then turned to me in disgust.
  "Why does everything have to happen to you? And why
does it always happen without you seeing anything?
Couldn't you just once get a useful idea that would
give us a hint about who could have attacked you?"
  I looked about the room helplessly, as much at
sea as ever. I had a feeling that it ought to be either
Susan or Carla, but I hadn't a clue in the
world to go on.
  McPhail was just about to dismiss the lot of us when
the idea hit me like a thunderclap in a clear
sky.
  "Wait! I think I know what might have
happened. Look--" I was so excited my words
were tumbling out, "--what if the person who tried
to kill me was wearing a smock, or a wrap, or
something? What if her hair was covered? The
spray would have gone on the outer garments, so that if
she took them off and washed her face with soap,
maybe the smell wouldn't cling."
  "Maybe you got something there,"
McPhail admitted.
  "And here's another idea!" I cried. "If
that's what happened, then she'd have to get rid of that
smock, or whatever it was, quickly. She wouldn't
dare go out in the store that way. And if it was the
person who killed Sondo, wouldn't the first
place she'd think of to hide anything be the
mannequin room? Wouldn't she--"
  Hering was already off on a run to the mannequin
room. We could hear cabinet doors banging for a
moment while we waited in silence. A deathly
silence in which not one of us dared look at his
neighbor.
  Hering came back with a rolled bundle in his
hands. He shook out a long black coat and
held up a black turban.
  The reek of pine needles filled the room.
  Something seemed to twist inside me and I
turned and leaned my forehead against Bill's
sleeve. I was too sick with shock to look at
the woman to whom that coat belonged.

  I'd recognized it at once. It was
Helena Farnham's.
  It is hard to write of those moments immediately
following. Even though she tried twice to kill
me, I cannot hate Helena. Strangely enough,
I think she was always rather fond of me. She was a
woman with an obsession, a single purpose, and
when I stood in her way, threatened the object of
her love, I ceased to exist as Linell Wynn,
her friend.
  She made a statement to McPhail then and
there, in the presence of all of us, and she made it
in a manner so cool and withdrawn that it was
difficult to believe she was a woman with blood
on her hands. I sat listening in disbelief and
horror, trying to understand that this woman was Chris's
mother. She resembled the girl now only in her
big-boned frame. All facial likeness had
been lost with the years and the fading of Helena's
beauty.
  She told McPhail simply that she had
known Michael Montgomery long ago and that she
had gone away with him to Mexico. He had
treated her cruelly, deserted her. Then,
recently, she had met him again here at
Cunningham's, and all her grievances against him
had eaten at her, until, when the opportunity
had offered last Tuesday, she had
killed him. And she had killed Sondo too,
because Sondo had found her out.
  That was all. Nothing of Owen or Chris, or
all that miserable tangle. Bill and Hering and I
exchanged puzzled glances, but McPhail was
happy. He had his confession and there would be no more
murders at Cunningham's. He asked her
only one question--about the ring.
  "I'll show you," Helena said and went
quietly over to a shelf of books behind
Monty's desk.
  What followed is something that will never be erased
from my memory as long as I live. The book
shelf was next to the closed window. Helena
picked up a heavy volume, crashed it through the
glass and hurled herself after it. She was through the
window and gone--gone before even McPhail was
aware of how she had caught him off guard.
  Carla screamed and I put my hands over my
ears. There were shouts from below and McPhail leaned
out the window. He looked a bit white when he
stalked past us out of the office.
  The police stenographer and detectives
hurried after him. Keith rushed off to be sick,
and the rest of us sat there in the office, too stunned
and horrified to move.
  Carla put her head down on Monty's
desk and began to cry softly. Owen Gardner put
an arm about his daughter's shoulders, patting her
awkwardly, with a hand that trembled.
  "Come along, my dear," he said. "Come
along."
  Susan followed them, whimpering and fluttering.
But it is Chris's words I will never forget.
  "The poor thing," she said. "Another woman
Monty hurt. I'm glad she won't have to
face a trial."
  They went off and there were just four of us left in the
office. Hering and Bill and Carla and I.
  "Chris doesn't know," I said. "She
doesn't know that it was her own mother who killed
Monty."
  Carla raised her head, wiped tear-stained
cheeks. "That's the way Helena wanted it to be.
So Chris would never know."
  It was Carla then who drew together the missing
threads and gave us the story. Because Carla, through
no desire of her own, had been nearest to the
whole thing from the beginning. Not even Owen had known for
sure who Monty's murderer had been.
  "He thought it was either Helena or I," Carla
said. "He tried to get it out of me one day at
lunch. But I knew how awful it would be for him
to know that Chris's mother was a murderer. The blow to
Chris in her hysterical state, the effect it
might have on her mind would have been too much for him
to face. So I held off telling him and he was
afraid to have the wrong one arrested."
  "Why did you try to protect her?" Bill
asked.
  Carla flung her head back. "Because
Michael Montgomery caused the death of the one
person I loved. I was glad when he died. I
--I didn't care if his murderer was caught or
not."
  There was a stormy pause and then Carla's
unusual spurt of defiance died.
  "I saw Helena when she came out of the window
after she'd killed Monty. I was waiting to
exchange that pin and no one else saw her come
back to the counter. She was so nervous that she
scratched herself. But I didn't think about it
till later. Then I knew. Helena and I had
been thrown together to some extent because of our mutual
hatred of Monty and I'd heard most of her
story. So I let her know I wouldn't talk."
  The pieces began to fit into place. Eileen
Gardner had lost track of her daughter for
years. Then she had read about her in the
newspapers when Chris had won a dress-
designing contest. She had dropped her work as a
model for hand ads, taken the name of Helena
Farnham, and come to Cunningham's to be near
Chris.
  Owen no longer felt bitter against the wife he
had divorced so long ago. When he saw how she
had changed and aged, so that all her youthful
resemblance to Chris had faded, he told her that
he would not object to her remaining in the store where
she could see Chris occasionally. But he warned her
that she would have to keep her identity a secret.
  Helena promised. What emotion there was left
in her was bound wholly in Chris. She struck up
an acquaintance with me merely because Chris was
something of a proteg`e of mine and she could see her
more often by cultivating me.
  And then life played one of its scurvy
tricks. Monty, anxious to leave the East, which
was getting a little hot for him because of the fur coat
affair, came to Cunningham's as window
display manager. The stage was set for tragedy.
  Helena and Owen were both frantic when they saw
that Chris was becoming infatuated with Monty. Owen
was just about to help Carla bring her evidence against
Monty, when Monty played a bold counter hand
and married Chris. That morning I'd seen
Monty and Carla together, she had been threatening
to give evidence against him anyway, but he'd
caught her by the shoulders and shaken her roughly,
warned her that he'd take her to jail with him if
he went.
  Monty's marriage to Chris had set
Helena off. All she cared about in the world was
Chris's happiness and Monty was wrecking it.
So she went into the window that day to threaten him with
exposure. She had an old locket-ring he
had given her with a picture of the two of them in it
and she meant to show it to Chris in an attempt to
get the girl to leave Monty. So that Owen could
act against Chris's husband. Helena herself had
been that member of the "tribe of Gardners"
Monty had shouted at in the window.
  There had been a struggle over the ring. The stone
had been broken once before and it chipped into two
pieces and flew out, the part containing the picture
falling into the phonograph attachment. All
Helena's hatred of Monty must have spilled
over. When she saw her chance, she picked up the
heavy end of the golf club and killed him.
  Helena had been desperate about the loss of the
stone from the ring. She'd gone to my office to get the
smaller piece, fearing the picture might have
adhered to it. And then she'd seen on my wall that
old ad for which she'd posed. A picture that showed
the very ring Monty had given her. She'd worked
quickly to get it down and replace it with another
picture. But she hadn't been quick enough and I had
nearly trapped her.
  If only Sondo hadn't begun to suspect
Chris! Sondo was already curious about Chris's
possible visit to the window, and when she got the
stone with its picture out of the phonograph, she
thought she had certain evidence against Chris.
Helena, of course, had fallen into Sondo's
trap and gone to Universal to break into the wrong
phonograph. Then she'd given us the slip and
hurried home, to try to get Bill on the phone
in an effort to stop any suspicion on our part.
  Helena had not known about the Lotta Montez
note, though she knew Carla's story.
She had gone to Monty's apartment to try to
recover the note signed E, which had mentioned the
old set-up existing again--meaning Owen, Helena
and Monty in the same store--and had mentioned the
ring. When she saw the Montez note, she had
chosen to destroy it in an effort to throw me off the
real clue. Later, at Sondo's in the confusion
over Chris, she had taken the other note from my
purse.
  And then Helena had walked again into a trap of
Sondo's. She had been frantic because Sondo
was torturing Chris, trying to pin the murder on
her. And she was afraid that if the old picture
got into the hands of the police the truth would come out.
Her fear now was not so much of discovery--she was past
caring much about herself--as of desperation lest Chris
learn that her mother was a murderer.
  So when she had walked into the little scene Sondo
had arranged, she had done just what Sondo had
anticipated. She had picked up the hammer and
attacked the mannequin. But Sondo had been
caught in her own trap. Instead of meeting
Chris, whom she thought she could handle, she had
met a woman obsessed by a single idea, and she
had been no match for her. Helena had
evidently worn gloves in handling the hammer and
had left no prints, merely smudging over most
of Bill's.
  Helena's disappointment at finding the picture
gone from the part of the ring Sondo had so carefully
laid out with her trap, must have been bitter. How
she had dropped the stone later for me to find,
we'd never know.
  Her next move had been to hide Sondo's
body in the mannequin room. Then she had
returned to the workroom to pull the smock and
handkerchief from the broken figure of Dolores.
To have left them there would have been to make Sondo's
ruse too evident to the police. Perhaps she thought
that if the smock were missing altogether, it would be taken
for granted that Sondo had gone out of the department
wearing it. And the hue and cry would not be immediately
raised.
  The logical thing would have been to hide the smock
with the body, but perhaps by that time Helena was too
anxious to get out of the department. So she took it
with her, saw my office empty and thrust it into a
drawer. That was after the conversation I'd had with her
when she'd vaguely threatened me. It was just
possible that the gesture of hiding the
smock in my office was one more scrap of evidence
against me, and as such, might serve to keep me
quiet. Bill's note lay face up on my
desk and she had taken that, since it suggested that
Sondo was up to something.
  When Carla had happened in my office at the
time I got Sondo's letter, she had seen the
picture and had recognized it at once as the
one Helena had told her about.
  Until Sondo's death, Carla's actions
had been apathetic. She had a strong tendency
toward fatalism in her nature and she felt that
Luis' death had now been avenged. As far as the
future went, what would be would be.
  And so she'd gone her dreamy way, listening to
Sondo's sentimental records, living in the
past, not caring very much about what happened in the
present. Though she did bestir herself
sufficiently to stay with Sondo that one night, in
an effort to keep Helena away from her.
  But she had not really roused from her apathy
until Sondo was murdered.
  As Carla sat there in Monty's office,
trying to explain her actions, I began to get a
picture of her confusion and fear, her futility.
The dreamer thrown abruptly against ugly reality
and unable to cope with it decisively. Unable even
to decide upon a course of action.
  She was appalled by Sondo's murder, but could
not even then bring herself to go to the police. She was
half afraid she would not be believed and that her own
motives might come to light. Owen was already
suspecting her of Sondo's murder because of her
foolish dancing that night in the display department.
On the other hand, she was beginning to fear Helena,
to wonder when the other woman might strike out to
silence her. So, torn many ways, she must have
moved endlessly on her treadmill of indecision,
unable to settle on any course of action.
  Then, when she saw the picture Sondo had
left for me, she was seized with the conviction that if
she could get that picture for Helena, the
tragedies would stop. She counted on me to make
the same mistake Sondo had made and take the
picture for one of Chris. So she did her best
to get it from me, even to the extent of enlisting the
aid of poor, bewildered Susan, who knew
nothing of the truth at all. But when I refused
to give up the picture, Carla dropped
helplessly back into her fatalistic
attitude.
  Helena, however, had not been content to leave
matters in Carla's hands. She had got off work
early and had come upstairs wearing her turban and
coat. Not even Carla had known she was hiding there
in the department, listening to everything. When Carla and
Susan had failed with me, Helena had made
her final, desperate attempt to get the
picture.
  That was all.
  "You see the pattern?" Carla said. "The way
Helena tried to the very last to stick to her purpose
of protecting Chris? That's why she made that
statement to the police just now that left out so much of the
truth. She knew she had to give them something that
would serve as a confession, and then die quickly before the
answers came out. To protect Chris, she even
took her own life. There's been a--a sort of
fate acting through this whole thing. So now, must the
pattern be changed? Must Chris know the truth?
  She stopped and there was a long silence. We were
all looking at Hering, and he was looking at none
of us. Hering was the police. It was up to him to go
to McPhail with the true story.
  The wailing of an ambulance siren came up
to us. I shivered, knowing what the sound meant. Hering
listened for a moment and then came over and picked up
the tiny oval snapshot I'd laid on the
desk. The picture of a girl who looked like
Chris.
  And while we all watched him, scarcely daring
to breathe, he took a packet of matches from his
pocket, lit one and held it to the picture. It
flared briefly and then floated in black ash from
his fingers. He dusted his hands and walked out of the
room without a backward look for any of us.
  We had our answer.
  Carla wandered off by herself, looking more lost than
ever, and Bill and I went downstairs. I'm
afraid I was clinging to him as if he were a
lifeline which I never meant to let go.
  "Bill," I said, my voice going up into
unexpected quavers, "I don't want to go
back to the apartment. I couldn't face it. All
Helena's things. Her empty bed. Knowing that
I've been so close to her all the while and--"
  "Of course you're not going back," Bill
said. "You're coming home to meet my mother. I've
been telling her all about what a lucky girl you
are and I think it's high time she had a
look at you."
  But I couldn't even rise to that bait.
  "I don't want to be teased any more!" I
wailed. "I don't want--"
  Bill put an arm around me. "Look,
baby, one of these days when you've had time to get
over all this, you're going to have a proper
proposal. With all the trimmings. But this isn't
the time, the place, or the atmosphere."
  Together we went past the watchman and out the
revolving door.

               THE END