2

MONDAY, 1:05 P.M. TO 4:55 P.M.

Grace Spencer’s report reached the police telegraph bureau at 3:03 P.M. It went out immediately to the East Fifty-first Street station, headquarters of the Seventeenth Precinct. It went also to the office of Lieutenant (Acting Captain) William Weigand, commanding officer of the main office Homicide Squad. But Weigand was not in his office; he was explaining things to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, in command of the Detective Bureau.

“So there we stand,” Bill Weigand said, not for the first time. “We know he did it. The D.A. says sure he did it. And the D.A. says if we want a false arrest suit, go right ahead and pick him up. The D.A. says juries want evidence.”

“That,” O’Malley said, “is what you always get from these damn lawyers.” He regarded the younger policeman reproachfully. “Especially nowadays,” he said. “Like I’ve told you.”

“Well,” said Bill Weigand, “sufficient unto the day.”

“What?” said Inspector O’Malley.

“Nothing,” Bill told him. “A quotation. Misapplied. However, Inspector, that’s the way things are. You’ll find it all in D.D. 14.”

Inspector O’Malley was morose. He said he had. He said it was a hell of a note.

“It looks to me, Bill, like you slipped,” he said. “I don’t say you slipped. I say it looks to me like you slipped.”

“Possibly,” Bill said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“What’s sorry?” Inspector O’Malley wanted to know. Bill merely nodded, agreeing by implication it wasn’t much.

“If you have any suggestions, Inspector,” he said, politely.

O’Malley shook his head firmly. He said Bill knew he didn’t interfere with responsible officers, which was untrue; he said that he couldn’t do everything, could he? He said, “You young cops!” with a falling inflection and an air of great weariness. Bill Weigand, who was used to this, merely waited, with politeness.

“All right,” O’Malley said. “O.K., Lieutenant. Put it on the back of the stove. Maybe it will boil.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I can’t think of anything else. It isn’t as if—”

A buzzer sounded on Inspector O’Malley’s desk. O’Malley looked resentfully at a box with a grid on the front of it. He reached out, hesitated, pushed firmly down on a lever on the box. The box gave a harsh wail and O’Malley jumped.

“Damn’ gadget,” O’Malley said, with compressed fury. He pushed the lever up again. He yelled at the box.

“Well!” he yelled.

The box cleared its throat, a little nervously. Bill Weigand recognized the throat.

“Sergeant Mullins, sir,” the box said. “Report of homicide in the Medical Chambers, East Fifty-third Street. Looks important, sir.”

“Why?” said O’Malley, without compromise in his voice.

“It’s a doctor, sir,” Mullins said, and cleared his throat again.

“What’s important about a doctor?” O’Malley said.

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said. “I see what you mean, sir.”

“The hell you do,” O’Malley said.

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said. “I thought the papers, Inspector. Medical Chambers and everything.” Mullins, in the box, cleared his throat again. “I thought the Loot—I mean, I thought you’d want to know, Inspector.”

Bill Weigand watched O’Malley subside. O’Malley began to subside, he noticed, when Mullins said “papers.” It was a word to conjure with, and Mullins had conjured. It was a word like “commissioner,” like the two words “district leader.” Bill Weigand did not smile, but there was a smile in his mind.

“Yeah,” O’Malley said. “The papers. Why didn’t you say it was in the Medical Chambers?”

Mullins, without stopping to clear his throat, said he was sorry.

“Is it a name?” O’Malley wanted to know. This time Mullins hesitated.

“Seems like I’ve heard it,” he said. “Dr. Andrew Gordon. He’s an optician.”

O’Malley looked at Weigand, and Weigand nodded.

“Oculist,” Weigand said. “Eye doctor. Well known, I think.”

“He’s an oculist, Mullins,” O’Malley said. “Sure he’s well known. Don’t you read the papers?”

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said.

“Well,” O’Malley said. “Stand by, Sergeant. Weigand will pick you up if he wants you.”

He flicked the lever on the box down. The box wailed. He flicked it back up again.

“Damn’ gadget,” O’Malley said.

Bill Weigand was standing up. O’Malley nodded.

“Ought to take it myself,” O’Malley said. “You young cops. But naturally, I’ve got a hundred things.”

“Naturally,” Weigand agreed.

“Well,” O’Malley said, “what you waiting for, Bill?”

Bill wasn’t waiting. He was moving toward the door. Deputy Chief Inspector O’Malley watched him go. Deputy Chief Inspector O’Malley leaned back in his chair, bit the end off a cigar and then laid the cigar in a brass ashtray. He leaned his head back against the high, upholstered rest on his chair. He closed his eyes, so that he could think better.

Pamela North, bent over so that her body above the hips was parallel with the floor, backed out of her apartment door. She held her hands down, palms out, and made small pushing motions with them, meanwhile saying, “No, no.” A small cat, made of India rubber, with a cafe au lait body and upstanding, deep brown ears, looked at her out of blue eyes and made a low, surprised sound. Pam North continued to push the air with her right hand and reached for the door with her left, planning to pull the door closed. The small cat crouched and waved a suddenly bushy tail. Pam got the door with her fingertips and began to pull it toward her. The cat waved the bushy tail. The door was only six inches ajar when the cat moved. It was a movement so fluid, so lithe and, above all, so rapid, that the eyes could hardly follow it. Now you saw her; now you didn’t. It was like a flame of a candle going out.

It was Martini North going out. She went over Pam’s grasping right hand. She landed running; she frolicked down the apartment-house corridor.

“Teeney,” Pam North said, in deep reproach. “You’re a bad girl.”

Martini stopped when she heard what was, for her, the operative portion of her name. She stopped; it seemed, midway in a leap. She sat down, all in one motion, and looked around at Pam. The little cat’s eyes were round and surprised and innocent. It was clear that she was seeing Pam for the first time.

Pam left the door part-way open and advanced.

“Bad cat,” Pam said, in low, sad tones. “Bad cat.”

Martini watched Pam’s approach with pleased interest. When Pam was two steps away she crouched and smiled. Pam said, “Nice Teeney,” in tones of caress. She reached out a hand. Teeney threw herself over her own shoulders, landed trotting and went down the corridor. Her trot was ridiculously purposeful. It was also, apparently, downhill. Although she was not pleased, Pam laughed.

“Teeney,” she said, “you have the silliest hind legs. Here, Teeney.”

Martini stopped and sat down facing Pam. She raised her right rear foot, looked at it with wonder, and used it to scratch her right ear. Pam sat on her heels.

“Teeney,” she said, in a voice of great interest. “Look, Teeney!”

Pam herself looked. She looked at her own fingers, briskly patting the carpeted floor. She used her nails to scratch the carpet, producing a small scraping sound.

Martini unwound herself, wrapped her tail around her bottom neatly, looked at Pam North’s face and then bent her head slightly forward and looked at Pam’s finger. Pam continued to scratch the carpet. Martini’s interest grew; she subsided to the floor, with her legs under her. Then she began to swish her tail again. It had become a normal tail; now, for the second time, it bushed. Flattened on the floor, moving with infinite secrecy, Martini began an advance. Each leg moved with its own poised caution. Each foot came down like a petal falling, touched the surface in exploration, by infinitesimal degrees took the weight of cat. Martini was creeping over a jungle floor, wary of the faintest sound of crumbled leaf. Muscles rippled along her little, compact body. She advanced by inches. She stopped, waited, advanced again. Her eyes were fixed on Pam’s finger. She was four feet away, three—she was almost within reach of Pam’s hands.

Then she leaped for the kill. She leaped sideways, so that she passed the hand. As she passed it, half in the air, half on her feet, she flicked it with her right forepaw. And she touched Pam’s hand with all claws sheathed, with infinite lightness. Landing, she continued. She continued at a lope, rocking like a hobbyhorse. She reached the partly open door, made a sharp right turn, and went through the aperture. Pam moved, with only human celerity and grace, after her. Martini was sitting inside the door. She was washing her back. She paid no attention whatever to Pamela North, so Pamela North closed the door gently—so as not to pinch Martini if she changed her mind—and went on about her business.

Cats, Pam thought to herself, are certainly something. It must be very funny to be a cat, she told herself, as she waited for the elevator. Because you don’t know what you’re going to do next and I don’t think you recognize your hind feet when you see them. The elevator stopped and Pam got in. “And certainly not your tail,” Pam continued. It was only when the elevator man turned and looked at her that Pam realized she had, as she unpredictably did, spoken aloud. He was an elevator man she knew quite well. Still.

“I said, have you seen the mail?” Pam told him.

“Oh,” the elevator man said, and looked relieved. “It doesn’t come until about one thirty usually, Mrs. North. The second delivery, that is.”

Pam looked at her watch. It was one fifteen. It is always later than you think, Pam thought. She reflected. And hungrier, usually, she added. If she walked briskly, she could get to Charles, which was only around the corner, in two or three minutes. The trouble with not having anybody to lunch with was that you forgot to go when you planned to, and then you got hungrier and ate more and if you weren’t careful you spoiled your dinner. Things would be simplified if Jerry didn’t have to go to his office or, since he obviously did, if he didn’t have to have so many lunches with agents and people.

She walked across the lobby and through the door. And she was confronted by a miracle. In front of the door—not across the street or down at the end of the block, although either would have been itself miraculous, but actually in front of the door—there was a taxicab with its flag up! It was almost impossible to believe. Even as—with that wild surge of exultation which, that spring, so few New Yorkers ever had the opportunity to enjoy—Pam North leaped across the sidewalk, skepticism fought for the upper hand.

It would be waiting for someone. It would be a taxicab which would go only in one direction, and would shake its head glumly—long-sufferingly—if urged to go in another. It would be time for it to go over to the upper West Side, where all taxicabs seemed to live, and pull in. It would have a broken clutch. It would be out of gas. Or it would be merely whimsical.

As she leaped, Pam’s face took on that look of entreaty which, that spring, was the fixed expression of all New Yorkers who sought to become passengers in taxicabs. She looked anxiously at the driver, who regarded her with detached speculation. He was middle aged and jaundiced. He knew his power. Above good and evil, above—oh, infinitely above—the tiny needs of small scurrying folk, he waited her coming. It was not for him, deus ex machina—and what a machina, to be sure!—to indicate in advance his final, august decision. He pretended he did not know what Pam North was about. Not until she was opening the door, perhaps not until she was in and seated, would he look at her with slow surprise—surprise and effrontery—and say, “No, lady,” and give whatever whimsical reason he used between one fifteen and one twenty on Mondays.

There were several ways of meeting this, if you were unwillingly a pedestrian that spring and sought to improve your lot. The simplest was the take-it-for-granted technic. Utilizing that, you merely assumed taxicabs were what they had once been, available, and entered and spoke firmly. Then the driver spoke more firmly and, usually, you got out. The next—Pam’s own favorite—was the please-it’s-just-a-short-run method. That involved a bright, but suitably submissive, smile, to be turned on just as you reached for the handle of the door. A slight wistfulness helped, sometimes. Frequently this method got you refused before you were entirely in the cab—a concession, this.

There were other methods. There was the stern, I’ll-tell-a-cop-on-you method. There was the desperate situation, or I’ve got-to-get-to-the-hospital method—seldom efficacious, particularly when used by women. There was the promising or Boy-what-a-tip-I’m-going-to-give-you method. And there were variants of all these. They were alike only, at last, in their common inadequacy. And all involved, first, the miracle of the cab-with-its-flag-up. That was where you began.

Pam was beginning there. Her first startled leap—which was a little, somehow, like one of Martini’s leaps—carried her halfway across the sidewalk. It was involuntary, almost a reflex. The rest of the way, Pam moved more slowly. She only trotted. The taxicab did not move. Sometimes they merely went away while you were reaching for them, remote in their contempt. This, at worst, was one of the coquettish ones. It might be wooed. Pam reached it, and still it did not move. She reached out a hand and touched its door handle. The touch was almost a caress. She looked quickly, with her prettiest smile, at the driver. He looked at her with no comment in his face. But his face did not reject her; did not utterly reject her. It reserved decision. Gently, so as not to frighten the taxicab, Pamela North turned the door handle. (There had been a time, dim now in memory, when taxicab drivers reached back and opened the door for passengers. It was strange to remember that time, even mistily—even fleetingly.) Pam turned the door handle. It was probable, of course, that the door would not open. Many taxicabs, in those months, opened only on one side. Some did not, it appeared, open at all. They were merely decoys. This one opened.

The door did not fall off, which was always, also, slightly to be expected. It was secured inside by a heavy rope, but the rope allowed a medium-sized opening. It was quite sufficient for Pam North, who was barely medium sized herself. She slipped in, still cautiously—there was a chance, naturally, that the cab might be half filled with original settlers—and, when she found herself alone, sat down gingerly on the edge of the seat.

Now, slowly, with majesty, the driver turned toward her. Now was the moment. He was about to speak. Tensely, perched more tentatively than any bird, Pam North waited. He spoke.

“Where to, lady?” he said.

His voice was almost like anyone’s voice. It was not harsh or condemning; it was not even notably contemptuous. Its tone accepted Pam as, at the least, a candidate for the human race—an entry, not yet scratched.

A delicious feeling of warmth spread through Pam North. She had a taxicab! She had a taxicab!

It was only then, suddenly, that she realized she did not in the least want a taxicab. She was not going anywhere, except down the street and around the corner to Charles. It was a bright, warm day. She had never felt better in her life. She had been overtaken, and overcome, by conditioned reflexes—the reflexes built up among New Yorkers through many, many months of almost hopeless longing, interrupted by short, mad dashes. Few, in those days, could watch an empty taxi-cab go by, or pause momentarily, without some reflex response—a slight watering of the mouth, a momentary twitch of the taxicab-waving arm, a tensing of the leg muscles in anticipation of a spring. Pam North merely carried these responses farther than more phlegmatic people did. But she had carried them quite a distance, this time.

For a moment, but only for a moment, she felt a strange hollowness, an inadequacy. But it lasted only for a moment; when she spoke there was no hesitancy.

“Saks Fifth Avenue,” she said. There was nothing to indicate that it was merely what had come first into her mind.

This was another turning point, of course. It might be that this was a taxicab which would only go downtown. But Pam doubted it; acceptance, although long delayed, seemed to have been complete—complete, at any rate, within reason. Not Brooklyn, of course. Not the Bronx. Certainly not Long Island City. But almost certainly Saks. Perhaps even the upper East Side, if she wanted to go to the upper East Side.

The taxicab driver did not respond, but he made a sound. It was hardly contemptuous at all, that sound. He reached across and pushed down the flag. He started up. (There was something, rather dreadful, wrong with the transmission, Pam’s ears told her. But the taxicab moved.) Pam sat back in her seat.

Now, she thought to herself, whatever am I going to buy at Saks? When all I want is lunch? She considered a moment. Oh well, she thought, probably that will take care of itself.

It took care of itself reasonably well, as it turned out. Pam found several things she needed without going off the main floor. She had no particular feeling of guilt, having long needed a new purse, anyway. What feeling of guilt she did have, vanished when she bought Jerry a dozen handkerchiefs which she was sure he needed and then, after some speculation, a new tie. He needed a new tie, and she always bought his ties. Neither of the Norths thought this at all comic, nor did Pam at any time buy Jerry a new tie of which he did not highly approve.

Since she was there, she decided, there could be no harm in looking at new dresses, because there might be something entirely too good to pass up. She took the elevator and looked at dresses for some time, and found one that might be too good to pass up and tried it on, and looked at herself in all the mirrors. Then she decided that Jerry had better see it before she bought it, on account of the line, and arranged to have it put aside for twenty-four hours, on the chance. She reclothed herself in the lightweight wool dress which was not far from the color of Martini—a very useful, and not coincidental, similarity; Martini was shedding—but which had red pockets, which Martini did not have. She tossed her light spring coat over her arm and tapped briskly toward the elevator, stopping only long enough to make an appointment at Antoine’s desk for the next afternoon. (She did not keep the appointment; she did not return with Jerry to consider the reserved dress. The next day was not to be, in any detail, as she planned it.) In the elevator, she looked at her watch and was startled to see that it was now two thirty. Two thirty-five, really, making the necessary corrections for deviation.

She was really hungry now, she thought, going out the Fiftieth Street door and turning toward Madison. She wanted something reasonably substantial, like hamburgers. She turned up Madison, walking briskly, thinking of hamburgers. She found them in Hamburger Heaven, sitting at the counter. She had two and a cup of coffee and then, after a momentary pause of doubt, a large piece of cake. She had another cup of coffee and a cigarette with it and was pleased because if she had gone to Charles she would almost surely have had a cocktail and this way she hadn’t. The taxicab had really been a godsend, Pam North decided.

She pressed her cigarette out in the ashtray—and was faintly repelled when the man next to her, finishing, simultaneously, dropped his, still afire, into his almost empty coffee cup—slipped from the stool, paid her check at the counter and went out into Madison. Now what? she thought, turning downtown. Now a bus—miracles never struck twice in one day—home and then it would be almost time for Jerry. It was three ten now. She walked down Madison and looked in several windows, and then, because she was enjoying her walk, went through Fifty-fourth to Park. It was three twenty when she reached Fifty-third. As she waited on the curb to cross Fifty-third there was a siren wail and a police car came very fast up Park, swung into Fifty-third and went west, lurching around the front of a car which had not stopped quickly enough. Halfway down the next block, it turned in toward the right-hand curb and slowed to a sudden stop. There were two cruise cars already parked there. And a crowd was gathering. As she watched, several people standing near her turned into Fifty-third and began to run toward the police cars.

The police car which had come up Park was not a cruise car. It was a car she knew; it was the Homicide Squad car from Centre Street. She knew it very well. She had ridden in it—perhaps, she sometimes thought, illegally—with Bill Weigand. Where it went, there was trouble—a certain kind of trouble.

It was another reflex, longer conditioned—and harder to explain—which led Pam North now to turn into Fifty-third Street, walking toward the police cars and the crowd gathering there. She did not run. She did not go eagerly. But she went.

When Bill Weigand, Mullins, Detective-Sergeant Stein and Detective Barney Jones went into the offices of Dr. Andrew Gordon on the eighth floor of the Medical Chambers, there were already a good many people in the offices. There had been, for some reason not immediately apparent, a uniformed patrolman standing near a door which opened beside the elevators. Weigand and the others went around the elevators, following directions given them by the elevator operator, turned left into a broad corridor and went to another door outside which a second uniformed patrolman stood. He opened the door for them. Inside there was a waiting room and the first of a good many people. They looked up as Weigand and the others came in; they looked up with a kind of worried, half-frightened, expectation. They looked up with strained, puzzled faces. Bill Weigand had seen many faces like those. He did not seem to look at the people in the waiting room. But he saw them.

One of them did not look up. She was blonde and slim, and she was lying on her back on a sofa against the wall. She was not looking at anything and her face was white; it was evident that she had fainted. Standing near her was a nurse. Tall, slender, broad-shouldered, the nurse was. Bill felt that, before she turned slightly to look at him, she had been looking at nothing. There was remoteness in the lines of her face; it was as if she had only partly returned from nowhere. At a desk, down the room from the entrance door, near another doorway guarded by another uniformed patrolman, a very young girl with long brown hair was sitting. She had been crying. A tall man, not much older than she, stood by the desk. He might have been looking down at her. Now, he was looking at Weigand, and with the other emotions—the emotions he shared with the nurse, and the girl at the desk—there was something else in his face. Antagonism? They’d see. There was still another man—a man in his middle fifties, at a guess—and he was standing in front of one of the upholstered chairs along the wall. He was standing as if he had just got out of the chair. He was a solid man of medium height, and he had short gray hair. There was strain and puzzlement on his face. No antagonism.

Bill Weigand did not appear to look at any of these people and Mullins, Stein and Jones, following him; did not seem to look at them either. The four, in file, went toward the policeman standing in the doorway near the desk, and he saluted as Bill came up. There was sharp light momentarily on the wall behind him; in a moment there was another flash of light. The photographers from the precinct were at it. It was quick work.

The lieutenant of the precinct squad was watching the photographer who, standing on a chair, was shooting down at something which was shielded from Weigand by the photographer’s body. The flash went off, the photographer got down. He went around to the other side. The body was that of a man, rather heavy, of middle height. It was slumped forward, head and shoulders resting on the desk. The precinct lieutenant walked a few steps toward Weigand.

“Well,” he said, “there it is, Bill.”

Bill said he saw it.

“Gordon,” the precinct lieutenant said. “Andrew. An eye doctor. Somebody bashed the back of his head in.”

“Well,” Weigand said. “Well, well.”

“Yeah,” the precinct lieutenant said.

“The M.E.?” Bill said.

“Coming.”

“Right,” Bill said. He jerked his head toward the waiting room. He said they seemed to have picked up quite a few people. The precinct lieutenant shook his head at that. He said they hadn’t picked them up.

“Found them,” he said. “Here when we came. The babe passed out on the sofa is the guy’s wife. The young fellow is his son. I don’t know exactly who the gray-haired guy is. The other two work here.”

“Right,” Bill said. There was movement at the door and he looked around. A small, round man with a black bag came in. He had a pink face and a pink bald head. He waved his free hand at everybody and said, “What’ve we got, boys? What’ve we got?” He did not wait to be answered; it was greeting, not enquiry. He crossed briskly to the desk and looked at the body. He regarded it; bent over it. He straightened up.

“Somebody bashed in his head,” he told them. “Blunt instrument, boys.”

Bill Weigand smiled at him.

“Thanks a lot, Doctor,” he said. “We needed you to tell us.”

“Sure you did,” the doctor agreed cheerfully. “Obscure to the lay mind, naturally. You hit somebody with something heavy—hit him on the head—and the skull caves. Always assuming he’s not a policeman. Messes the brain up.”

“Always assuming he’s not a policeman,” Bill Weigand said.

“Smart boy,” the doctor told him. “Then he dies. Like this one.” He turned and faced Bill Weigand. His face was not as cheerful as his words. There was a hurt expression on his face, like the hurt expression on a child’s face.

Bill smiled, faintly.

“Funny, aren’t we?” the doctor said. “All right. Who was he?”

“Didn’t you notice when you came in?” Weigand asked. “His name’s on his door. Gordon. Dr. Andrew Gordon.”

“All right,” the doctor said. “I hoped he wasn’t. Never met Gordon. He was a good man, you know. Very good man.”

Bill nodded.

“One of the two or three best,” the assistant medical examiner said. “A damned good eye man. The boss called him in once or twice. Very interesting malignancy, one case was. Question: Contributing cause? Gordon said no.” He turned and looked at Gordon’s body. “Now he’s dead,” he said. “Pity.”

“Right,” Bill said. “How—”

“Long,” the assistant medical examiner finished. “When was he found?”

“About three. Thereabouts.”

The doctor looked at his watch. He turned back to the body; he touched the forehead; he lifted the head and looked at the eyes. He went behind the body, picked up the dangling hand and held it by the wrist. Then he lifted the body back in the chair, moving quickly, expertly. He opened the unbuttoned suit coat, placed a clinical thermometer under the arm and pressed the arm down against it. Leaving the thermometer there, he went across the room and looked at a thermostat on the wall; he returned, removed the thermometer and looked at it.

“Warm in here,” he said. “Makes a difference, of course. You want a guess?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“Not later than two,” the doctor said. “Not earlier than—oh, say twelve thirty to be safe. Few minutes one way or the other.”

Bill Weigand only nodded.

The doctor lowered the body again so that it lay in its original position on the desk. He bent over it and examined the wound. He pressed it lightly with his fingers. He sniffed his fingers. “Used something to keep his hair down,” he said, casually. He stood looking at the head.

“No skin broken,” he said. “Something round and smooth. About as big as your fist. Something like—oh, a big knob on a cane. Hell of a big knob for a cane, of course. Almost as big as a baseball, only smoother. Fit anything you can think of?”

“Oh yes,” Bill said. “A big knob on an ornamental poker. A knob off an old brass bed. A heavy paperweight, rounded on one side. A round stone, thrown by somebody. I can think of plenty of things.”

“Good,” the doctor said. He looked down at the body again. “Damn shame,” he said quickly. He picked up his bag. “Well,” he said, “you know what to do with it, Bill. You’ll get your report copy.”

He went, quick and pink—and with the puzzled expression of a hurt child. Weigand looked after him, smiling faintly.

“Hates murder,” Bill said, more or less to the precinct lieutenant. “Can’t understand anybody so—unkind. Won’t be able to eat dinner tonight, poor guy. We get ourselves into funny jobs.”

“Yeah,” the precinct lieutenant said. “You boys taking over?”

Bill nodded, abstractedly. Except for the men on the doors, he said, they would take over.

“The nurse found him,” the precinct lieutenant said. “That’s about as far as we’d got. O.K.?”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. He crossed the room and stood looking at the body. He looked around the room. He crossed it and opened the door leading into the first of the examining rooms and looked at the room without going in. He went to the other door beside it and out into the corridor and looked down it.

“Funny setup,” he said. “We may need a sketch of it, Barney. O.K.?”

“Sure, Loot,” Detective Barney Jones said.

“A rough, for now,” Weigand told him.

“O.K.,” Barney said.

The precinct lieutenant, two other detectives from the precinct squad and the two photographers went out, in a long file. Weigand waited until they had gone through the waiting room. Then he went to the door. He stood looking into the room, and the people in it looked back at him, worried again, waiting uneasily. He stood for a moment and was about to speak when the door at the end of the room, which had just closed on a police photographer, opened again. Bill Weigand looked down the room at Pam North.

“Is this—” she began, and then she saw Bill.

“This is the place,” Bill Weigand told her, his voice grave and businesslike. “We’ve been waiting for you, Mrs. North.”

Pam looked, momentarily, very much surprised. She looked hurriedly at Bill’s face.

“I—” she began.

“Yes, Mrs. North,” Bill Weigand said, his voice very official. “You’re late. However, now that you are here.” His official voice had resignation in it. “Now that you are here, we’ll go ahead. In here, Mrs. North.”

Pam, still looking puzzled, came down the room. All the people in the room looked at her. Bill took her arm as she passed him, in a gesture which seemed one of direction.

“Ouch!” Pam said, in a low voice. “Bill!”

Bill herded Pam North in front of him into the private office of the late Dr. Gordon. He closed the door behind them.

“Now!” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Mullins,” Pam said. “Mr. Stein.” She looked at Barney Jones, who looked at her with round, appreciative eyes.

“Jones, miss,” Barney told her. He looked at Bill Weigand.

“The sketch, Barney,” Bill said. “The sketch.”

“Yeah,” Barney Jones said. He went to the door leading to the first examining room, opened it and went through.

“Now, Pam,” Bill said. “How did you do it this time?” His voice was no longer official. It was merely very interested.

Pam told him. She left out the part about the captured taxicab.

“And how did you get in?” Bill said.

“Well,” Pam said, “I’m afraid I used your name. And they seemed to think you’d sent for me, Bill—one of them seemed to think I was a relative or something—of the victim, I mean, not of you—and—”

“Right,” Bill said. “Jerry won’t like it.”

“O’Malley won’t like it,” Mullins said. He said it gloomily. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “At all,” Mullins said.

Pam had seen the body. Her face was grave, suddenly. She turned to Bill and her face was still grave.

“It was a—an impulse, Bill,” she said. “A sudden thing I do like—like the taxicab. I didn’t tell you about that. But coming here was like that. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Bill smiled at her.

“Officially,” he said, “I regard your actions, my dear, with—” He decided not to keep it up. “Actually,” he said, “I’m glad to see you, Pam.”

Mullins shuddered; he made his shudder audible. Somehow he had got directly behind Pam, who jumped.

“Mr. Mullins!” she said. “Don’t do that!”

Mullins was embarrassed.

“Look, Mrs. North,” he said, “it wasn’t to make you jump. It was just—I was thinking of the inspector.” He paused, considering. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said. “Only he’s sort of a hard guy not to think of, Mrs. North. You know that.”

“She’s here, Mullins,” Weigand told him. “I let them think out there that she was—official. A policewoman or something. So she’s here. I’ll think about the inspector.”

“You won’t like it,” Mullins told him. “But it’s O.K. with me, Loot.”

Pam looked at Bill and her eyes asked a question.

“They are uneasy,” Bill told her. “Off balance. At least, I hope they are. Because they’re the people we have to work on to begin with. The police have taken over—something impersonal has taken over. Not me—not Mullins or Stein—the police. You, Pam—you, unexplained—might have broken it. So I let them think you were police, too.”

“Oh,” Pam said. “Then what do I do?”

“Sit tight,” Bill told her. “Try not to say anything and if you do—” He considered that, rejected it as hopeless. “Try not to say anything,” he repeated. “Listen. And—use that mind of yours all you want to, Pam.” He smiled at her, and this time it was Bill Weigand to Pam North. “Very nice little mind,” he assured her.

His smile went away. He opened the door of the private office, went to the doorway of the waiting room and looked at the men and women in it. The blonde who was, apparently, Mrs. Gordon was sitting up. There was a dazed look on her face. Weigand’s eyes went over her. They stopped on Grace Spencer. He made a motion with his head when he saw she was looking at him.

“Will you come this way, please?” he said.

He watched her as she crossed the room toward him. She was tall for a woman and thin, but it was an attractive, straight thinness. She moved well on long, slim legs; her shoulders were broad and square and they were held well back. Her face was faintly brown, as if tan from an earlier, hotter sun still lingered on it. When she reached him, he stood aside to let her pass. In the inner office, she did not look at the body, still sprawled across the desk. She looked beyond the body, out of the window behind the desk. But it was not as if she saw anything through the window.

It was shock, Bill Weigand thought. Rather severe shock. Natural enough, but after all she was a nurse. He looked quickly at Pam. Her eyes were thoughtful as she looked at Grace Spencer.

“I’m sorry about—” Bill said, and his head barely indicated the body. “It sometimes takes a little time for the ambulance—”

Grace Spencer spoke then. Her voice was light, clear, and without expression.

“I understand,” she said. “I quite understand.”

Then, when Bill Weigand indicated a chair, she moved toward it, still moving well but moving with a kind of abstraction. It was almost as if she did not realize she was moving. She sat in the chair with her body straight and her knees together and her hands in her lap. Bill’s eyes, not seeming to, watched her hands. Sometimes it is hard to keep hands from moving. Her hands were not moving. But you could guess that only determination kept them quiet. She did not look at Mullins or at Stein; she did not look at Pamela North. She looked at Weigand, and waited. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, without emphasis.

“I’m told you found Dr. Gordon,” he said.

“His body,” she said. “Yes. I found it.”

He waited.

“It was about three o’clock,” she said. “A few minutes before three. The patients had begun to arrive. I—”

She told him of finding the body, of dismissing the patients, of summoning the police. Then she paused and looked at the man from Headquarters and waited. There was an expectant stillness about her. But her concentration had faltered a little as she talked. Her hands were twisting together.

“You acted very properly,” Bill told her. “Now we want to find out everything we can about what happened here today. You understand that, Miss Spencer? You realize why?”

“Dr. Gordon was murdered,” she said. “I do understand.” She let her voice hang an instant at the end of the sentence. Bill Weigand interrupted.

“I’m Lieutenant Weigand,” he said. “From Headquarters. These other men are Detective Sergeant Mullins and Detective Sergeant Stein. This is Mrs. North. She works with us.” He paused. His voice did not alter; it was detached, official. “Frequently,” he said. Pam looked at him and looked away again.

“Thank you,” Grace Spencer said. “You have my name. I am—I was—Dr. Gordon’s nurse. I have been with him for three years. I am thirty-two years old and unmarried. I live—” She gave him an address in the Murray Hill district.

Weigand nodded at Mullins, but Mullins had his notebook out. He nodded back.

Grace Spencer began to tell what she knew of the events of Dr. Gordon’s day. But almost as soon as she began, they were interrupted. Two men in white came to the door of the office, looked in and then waited. Weigand said, “Just a moment, Miss Spencer,” and conferred with them. He turned back, hesitating a moment. Then he turned to Grace Spencer.

“They’re going to remove the body,” he said. “It—it wouldn’t be pleasant to watch. I think we might move somewhere else, Miss Spencer. Would you suggest—?”

She suggested one of the examining rooms, but Bill shook his head. They were very small rooms. The waiting room would be better, except for the others there. He preferred—Then he thought of the solution, and smiled faintly. It would be appropriate. He spoke to Sergeant Stein and Stein went into the waiting room. There was the sound of movement there, and in the examining-room corridor. Stein came back, and nodded. The others were now in the examining rooms.

“The younger man and the girl wanted to be together,” he said. “I let them. All right?”

Weigand nodded. After all, if they wanted to plan their evidence, they had already had opportunity. And it was sometimes helpful if witnesses tried to plan their evidence. It so often involved them in contradictions. The human mind was seldom as logical as it tried to make itself.

The questioning of Grace Spencer moved to the waiting room. She sat at Deborah Brooks’s desk and Pam sat on one of the sofas near by. Mullins put his notebook on a corner of the desk. Grace Spencer went on with her story. She told of checking on the compensation cases, of relieving Miss Brooks—Deborah Brooks, the receptionist—while the doctor proceeded with his examinations.

“There was nothing unusual about the doctor when he returned from the hospital?” Weigand asked her. “He was much as always when you told him the patients were ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

He told her to go on. She told of Deborah Brooks’s return, of her own resumption of her desk in the corridor.

“I sat at my desk so that I would be available if the doctor needed me,” she said, and Mullins took it down.