6.

“… a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising from the confusion of the different characters one with another….”

HAZLITT

THE LONG TALL BLOND IN the cherry-red robe came striding like a Valkyrie along the hall of the boardinghouse, armed with soap and towel. Her eyes were full of sleep, but she looked determined and resolute and about sixteen years old. She paused to put her ear to a mighty oaken door and then entered without knocking, closing it carefully behind her.

She crossed quickly to the tumble of blankets on the bed, sought for and found a masculine face, and kissed it enthusiastically. “Awake!” cried Janet Poole cheerfully. “‘Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight….’ That’s FitzGerald.”

“Wau-ugh?” Guy Fowler muttered, and turned over.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, rumpling his hair—not that it needed it. “‘And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light.’ See how I remember?”

Guy granted again.

“I like FitzGerald,” she confided. “Not as much as Shakespeare, but I still like him—even if Fitz means ‘descended from an illegitimate son.’ Why aren’t there any MacGeralds, huh?” She kissed him again. “There! That’s supposed to wake any sleeping beauty. Though you’d look more like one if you’d shave and comb your hair, darling. Come, it’s almost eight.”

“Thanks for the time signal. Now please go ’way; I want to sleep some more. I was up late last night.” He caught her swift, worried look at the wastebasket. “No, no empties there. I promised you, didn’t I? And haven’t I kept my promise for months?” He looked hurt. “I was working.” Guy gestured toward the battered old piano in the bay window, now covered with music manuscripts. “Got a new one—I’m calling it Variations on a Melting Snowflake. Very Debussy, with boogie undertones.”

He tried to retreat beneath the covers again, but Jan’s firm hand shook his shoulder. “Get up anyway, darling, and come to the studio with me. What if Karas didn’t give you a work call? You can play him the new number and maybe he’ll get them to buy the song for the next Bird Symphony; they need one.”

Guy rubbed his eyes and frowned. “But dear, I don’t want—”

“Sure, sure. You don’t want to be in cartoons, you want New York publication and someday a recital and you’ll have it. But we need money now, remember? And—and—” Jan’s blue-violet eyes clouded a little. “I thought you’d want to be around, for a day or so anyway.”

“Oh God, that!” He sat up stick-straight, looking shamefaced. “I’d completely forgotten those nasty valentines and all the rest of it. Of course I’ll come, and watch you like a hawk, too.”

“I was never watched by a hawk,” she said. “By a wolf now and then, maybe, but never by a hawk.”

“Oh Lord,” he muttered. “To be clever so early in the morning.” He sighed. “Okay. Hurry up with the bath, will you please?”

“You first,” said Janet magnanimously. “I can dress in half the time it takes you, remember?”

“I remember.” He suddenly pulled her toward him, but Janet twisted away, laughing.

“Too early in the morning, dear,” she said, and went hastily out of the room. Guy Fowler stared after her, sighing and muttering. There were times—and this was one of them….

“Women!” he said and gingerly slid out of bed.

“Women!” said Mr. Ralph Cushak somewhat later that morning, when he was advised by a pink-eyed Joyce that Miss Hildegarde Withers was outside and demanded to see him at once, with an A priority. “Let her cool her flat heels for a minute,” he said. Then he looked at his secretary. “Powder your nose or have a coffee or something. Didn’t I tell you you could take the week off, by the way?”

“I’d rather be working,” the lush girl confessed, “than sitting around home thinking about what happened to Larry. He was a heel, but a sorta sweet heel. And I always thought that sometime—sometime maybe—” She choked.

“Yes,” said Cushak, embarrassed.

“Mr. Cushak?” Joyce came closer. “It was an accident, wasn’t it? That’s what the police and the newspapers say. Is this Miss Withers trying to make something more of it?”

“She can’t make anything more of it than it really was,” he pronounced. “Your ex-husband died from the effects of poison ivy, and nothing else. There’s no question of—of—”

Joyce looked extremely relieved. “Shall I show her in, then?”

He nodded.

Miss Hildegarde Withers marched into the office with blood in her eye. Without any preliminaries she plunked down the statuette of Peter Penguin on his desk. “And just what, Mr. Cushak, do you know about this?”

He winced, and flushed a guilty flush. “Plenty, as it happens.” Then he went on to explain. He had, some years ago when the big boss was on another business trip, ordered ten thousand of the bird replicas from a persuasive ceramics salesman, as a sort of promotional giveaway venture. After all, the idea had worked out with Donald Duck and Woody Woodpecker and why not here? Only it hadn’t. The thing hadn’t gone over and most of the figurines were still in boxes down in the basement. A few gross had been distributed throughout the studio or given to salesmen; by this time most of them had been taken home by studio employees for their children or else broken. There was no use trying to trace this particular one; anybody in the studio could have picked one up easily from somebody’s desk or from the boxes in the basement. Cushak still didn’t see why she was interested.

“I’m interested,” said the schoolteacher tartly, “because it happens that this particular bird came flying in my window early this morning, with a personal valentine attached.” She showed it to him.

Cushak’s hands trembled just a little as he held the thing up to his bifocals and read aloud the doggerel verse. “Good Lord!” he said, not irreverently. “This grows more serious by the minute. Do you know, Miss Withers—I’m getting more and more convinced that this is no job for a lady, and I thought yesterday when you didn’t show up that you must have somehow come to the same conclusion. Now I’m absolutely sure that if you continue at all you’ll have to have competent assistance. Such as—”

“Such as some Mickey Spillane character from Pinkerton’s? Perish forbid, young man. Besides, I have that assistance, in spades, doubled and redoubled.” Miss Withers had been hoping to bring the Inspector down to the studio this morning to get the lay of the land and meet the ostensible suspects, but Oscar Piper had chosen to high-tail it off into Los Angeles immediately after breakfast. He was, she thought, probably punctiliously reporting in at Spring Street as visiting policemen are traditionally supposed to do.

Anyway, there would be time for introductions later. Now she told Mr. Cushak how she had spent yesterday. “You see, young man,” she concluded, “there was a Lucy, and she was run over by a car en route to one of your studio previews. You still insist that you never heard of her?”

Blankly he said, “Of course I heard about the accident, but I never heard the poor woman’s name and if I did I’ve forgotten it. The studio was not in any way involved, legally or morally—any more than you’d be if your maid was a passenger in a traffic accident.”

“Maid?” Miss Withers smiled. “A little woman named Hildegarde Withers comes in daily to do my housework. But I do see your point. I wish I saw the point of the murder—or perhaps it’s murders now? Did everyone show up for work this morning, I hope?”

Cushak shrugged, and then went on to explain that most studio employees had a way of trickling in anywhere between nine and eleven. “I’ve always thought,” he said, “that we should have a time clock for all artists to punch. But I suppose I could have Joyce check—”

“Never mind,” she interrupted hastily. “It’ll give me an excuse to snoop around a bit. Come, Talley.” Starting out, she whirled and came back to pick up the statuette of the bird. “I’ll just keep this for evidence,” she said.

“But—but you can’t find fingerprints on plaster,” Cushak told her.

She looked at him. “Oh, so you’re interested in criminology, too? Then you must know that there are all sorts of evidence. Sometimes when in desperate straits I’ve had to manufacture it out of whole cloth.” She smiled, and went briskly out.

As schoolteacher and poodle came into the office which she now called her own, there was Tip Brown patiently waiting and whiling away the time by studying the penciled sketches, the doodles she had left on her desk day before yesterday. He looked up with a start. “Oh, hello,” he said. “You know, Miss Withers, some of these aren’t bad at all. That frog swallowing a snake, and the tree with bottles of poison for fruit, and the skull with vines growing out of the eye sockets—”

“Really?” she said, not displeased.

“Yeah. Maybe you missed your calling. The stuff is a bit macabre for cartoons, though.”

“Miss Macabre, they call me. Or perhaps you never read Dickens?” She sat down. “I’m surprised to see you today, Mr. Brown. Surely you got drawings enough of my dog the other day to inspire a dozen movies?”

Tip Brown hesitated. “It never does any harm to get plenty of action sketches.” Then he saw the cold look in her eye. “Okay, ma’am. It wasn’t entirely that. I just—I just wondered if you had anything new on the murder.”

“The Reed death?” she countered cagily. “But whatever would I know—”

“Don’t kid me, lady. You’re not here to work on The Circus Poodle—you don’t give a damn about the story you’re supposed to be assigned to. You’re been asking sixteen thousand questions….” Tip looked faintly belligerent. “Tell me, are you a private detective or something?”

“A private detective or nothing,” she said. “But I didn’t think it was so obvious; I must remember in future to wear dark glasses and a false beard.” She nailed him with her eye. “By the way, since we’re on the subject, I’d like to ask you a few more questions. Mr. Brown, when the late Larry Reed played his perfectly hilarious practical joke on you and sent your mail out of town where it was lost for a month or so, just what important letters did you miss until too late?”

“Oh, so you heard about that caper? I must have more un-friends around here than I thought. Well, it was—it was just that at the time I was somewhat married and my wife was in Reno getting the cure. She lost her money at the crap tables at Harold’s Club or got tight and sentimental in a bar or something—anyway, she wrote me that she wanted to come back and start over. It was a letter I’d sorta been hoping for, because I was carrying a torch at the time. By the time I finally got the letter she’d changed her mind and figured I wasn’t interested, and had up and married a singing cowboy who’s master of ceremonies at a dude ranch. It was all settled, which was just as well because, believe me, she was no bargain to live with and if she had come back it would just have been all to do over again. Larry didn’t know it, but he accidently did me a big favor with that corny gag.”

“Um—and did you realize your good fortune at the time?”

“Naturally not. I blew my top and said a lot of things—the same things somebody’s repeated to you. But I cooled off….”

“Larry Reed got cooled off, too, to use the vulgar phrase. Forgive the personal questions, but somebody has to do something about it and I seem to be the one appointed. So—”

“So somebody has to do something about Jan!” he cut in. “Isn’t she actually in danger, real danger?”

Miss Withers shrugged. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. It may be that the murderer is finished with his nefarious plans—or has been frightened off. It would appear that somebody wanted to kill Larry Reed, and built up this valentine thing and all the rest of it to cover the real motives.”

“Smoke screen, huh? Or else a nut.” Tip nodded, and then frowned. “But you must admit that Jan may be on the spot?”

“Certainly she may. And just why are you so much more worried about Miss Poole than the rest of your friends and associates who have been equally threatened?”

“There’s only one Jan,” he said soberly.

She nodded, “And, of course, there are two of Mr. Karas and two of Mr. Bayles?” As Tip Brown flushed pinker still, she added, “And by the way, Mr. Brown, can you tell me if all three of our potential victims are safe and sound in their offices this morning?”

Hesitantly Tip Brown admitted that while he knew nothing about the two men he had just happened to look in on Janet a little while ago and had found her working on the animation for Peter Penguin’s Sea Serpent, with a certain so-and-so piano player practically breathing down her fair white neck. “That fellow!” he said. “He’s one that could standing watching; I’ve never liked musicians and never trusted ’em.”

“I have noticed that musicians are apt to be like other people. Does your antipathy to musicians extend to Mr. Karas?”

Tip Brown snorted. “That swell-headed maestro? Why, he actually thinks that the cartoons we make here are only backgrounds for his music instead of the other way around. Besides, the old goat is always making eyes at our sweater girls—at his age!”

“Including Janet Poole?” The schoolteacher smiled. “Relax, young man. I quite understand why you are interested in her, and I don’t blame you. Love is a wonderful thing, they tell me—even unrequited love. But it is also often blind.”

He blinked. “Well, I’m not blind enough to kid myself about my chances there; that piano player with the phony Boston accent has her hypnotized.”

“Perhaps not as completely as you think,” Miss Withers said wickedly. “You know, of course, about Jan’s posing—?”

“What?” The round pink faced paled. “Who told you? Who’d dig that up now?”

“I mean about her posing for Larry Reed, at his home,” she probed quietly on.

“Oh,” he said in a different tone. “I don’t care who says it, it’s not true. Sure, Jan went out with him a little when she first came to work here, but she’d never go up to that wolf-den of his alone—not even then.”

“But she did, and it must have been quite recently, too,” continued the schoolteacher with elaborate casualness. “Because there was a half-finished water color of her on his easel when he died.”

Tip Brown, who had been idly stroking Talleyrand’s fuzzy topknot, twisted the wool so hard that the poodle gave a reproachful yipe and scooted over to his corner. Tip carefully lighted a cigarette. “So? Well, you never know, do you?” He waved his hand in a casual farewell gesture, and went hastily out.

“Well!” said Miss Withers to the dog. “He either didn’t know—or else he didn’t know that anyone else knew. I’m talking about Jan’s posing for the art class, of course. Her deep dark secret, like most secrets, was no secret at all. But he jumped at the idea of her posing for Larry Reed, even just for a portrait. That young man will bear watching—as who in this case won’t? Among them a person named Rollo Bayles.”

Talley wagged his almost nonexistent tail.

“No,” said Miss Withers firmly and shut him in the office, setting off briskly like a prospector looking for diamonds or gold, but willing to settle for any sign of ore anywhere.

She found out that Bayles had a workroom in a long building at the end of the studio street, and finally discovered a door with his name blazoned on it. She pushed inside without knocking, and found herself alone in a high narrow room smelling strongly of oil paints and lighted only from above; most of the wall space was given over to large-sized paintings in various stages of completion. They were all delicately, breathtakingly beautiful, if a bit on the vague side. The vagueness came, she realized, from the fact that in the compositions there were no central figures at all, no foci of interest; the paintings were all backgrounds against which someday the animated cartoon figures would perform their antics.

At the far end of the room a door bore a sign, Color Lab. A man’s hat and raincoat hung on a hook near the door, though that was no proof that Rollo Bayles was on deck today—it might be only office camouflage, a permanent exhibit. Certainly the man was nowhere around; the place was silent as the proverbial tomb. She went immediately to the big paint-stained desk and without a qualm began to search it. Miss Withers long ago had come to the conclusion that a man’s office desk—like a woman’s handbag—is the key to his character.

Rollo Bayles, she thought, must be rather a messy type; he kept no order whatever and seemed to have spilled ink and paints rather freely about, even for an artist. There were no knickknacks, no personal letters, but in one bottom drawer was a pile of ancient Saturday Reviews. For a moment the schoolteacher beamed, thinking that she and Mr. Bayles had similar tastes. Then she discovered that most of the magazines were open to the personal columns, with a neat check mark against such choice items as “Is there a Costals for this lonely Solange, fond of outdoor sports and Existentialism? Write Box 233B.”

“Dear me!” murmured Miss Withers, shaking her head. “He’s one of those.” But there were no evidences that Rollo Bayles had ever actually answered any of the lonely-heart ads. Probably, she thought, he had simply gloated over them, toyed with the idea of actually writing to one of those itching, waiting females; he had dreamed of wonderful new friendships and romances and at the same time had realized somewhere in the back of his mind that fairy princesses do not have to advertise for suitors.

As a last resort the schoolteacher looked under the blotter—men, she knew, always tucked things away under desk blotters—but there she found only a clipping from Time about a supposed new way to restore fading hair by means of a vitamin-complex pill, her own name and address and phone number on a scribbled bit of paper, and a print of the justly famous calendar pin-up picture posed for by a certain young movie star in the altogether.

But in spite of these sad, lonely indications of “the dreams of fair women” there was nothing at all to indicate any connection between Bayles and the late lamented Larry Reed—or any connection with the other recipients of the cross-eyed valentines. The thing just didn’t fit together; Miss Withers felt somewhat like the audience at a magician’s show, sitting back and watching things that weren’t where you thought they were.

“Misdirection,” she decided. And then her musings were interrupted by the sound of scuffling in the room behind the closed door, and she hastily withdrew from the vicinity of the desk and tried to look as if she weren’t there. It was none too soon, for the door of the color lab burst open and a pretty auburn-haired lass of perhaps eighteen came loping through. She wore the blue uniform of a studio messenger, and she giggled as she ran. Close behind her but losing ground steadily was Rollo Bayles, already a bit winded.

The girl made the front door with a lead of five lengths, scooped up a pouch of still-undelivered mail, and slipped out into the sunshine with a last peal of merry laughter. Bayles stopped short, staring after her with an extremely odd expression on his face. He looked, Miss Withers thought, like a thwarted child—a tormented, unhappy problem child who might stamp his feet or smash something any minute. Then he turned and saw that he had an audience.

“Mister Bayles!” said Miss Withers dryly. “At this hour of the morning!”

The man regained control of himself quickly. “I suppose you think—” he began. “Well, it isn’t like that at all. You see, I was only blending some colors to show her the exact shade of lipstick she should wear with that hair, and one thing led to another and—”

“And that isn’t the point, young man. I’m not interested in your extra-curricular activities, if any. I just came here to return something of yours.”

“Mine?” Bayles stared blankly at the statuette of the sacred bird. “You’re mistaken, ma’am.”

“The mistake was made by the person who hurled it through my window last night.”

Bayles stiffened warily. Searching his face, Miss Withers thought that she saw guilt there. But then people could feel guilt about so many different things. He blinked his rather protruding eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “But why on earth—? Are you intimating that I’d do a thing like that? I’m supposed to be one of the targets of this crazy plot, remember?”

“This was the mistake that was made, Mr. Bayles,” she went on coolly. “While in the case of Larry Reed’s murder there was no question of alibis—since we cannot know where and when and how he got the poison—now we do know that the murderer was in a car outside my bungalow at a certain time last night, leaving me a warning to lay off.”

“Oh?” he said cautiously.

“Yes.” She smiled brightly. “You see what it means? This automatically eliminates everyone who has a good alibi for that hour. Immediately after the car roared away and before the driver had a chance to get home, I telephoned everyone involved in the case, just to check. You didn’t answer your phone, by the way.”

“What? Oh, I can explain that. I’d taken a couple of seconal tablets to knock myself out. The phone could have rung all night and I wouldn’t have heard.”

“Then,” she persisted wickedly, “you say you were home and in bed at three o’clock this morning?”

“Certainly. I came home shortly after two, and I can prove it. I always turn on my bedside radio for a little owl music before I go to sleep, and the people in the next apartment heard it and pounded on the wall, so that proves—”

“That proves something, at any rate.” The schoolteacher felt a surge of secret triumph, though she also wished with all her heart that she had actually thought of making those phone calls. She turned to go, and then as Bayles relaxed in obvious relief she whirled back on him again. “Just one thing more,” she said. “The sender of those poison-pen valentines knew too much about the past of his potential victims. Perhaps we can pursue that line a little. Mr. Bayles, how did your secret leak out?”

The man shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know, honestly. It’s nothing I’d be likely to talk about.”

“Not even to an old friend, or an affable bartender—or—?” Bayles shook his head. “For years I’ve put it out of my mind, completely. I wouldn’t let myself think of it. You see, I promised my mother on her deathbed that I’d become a priest, and—and—” His eyes were wet and shining.

“I understand.” The schoolteacher took her departure, fearing that the man would break into Mother Machree—or into tears of self-pity. He was, she thought, a small loss to the Church of Rome. Miss Withers was beginning to form a picture of the real Rollo Bayles in her mind’s eye, and it was not as pretty as his paintings by any means.

Yet a man could be an apostate, he could break a deathbed promise to his adored mother, and still—could he be a murderer, could he kill, and kill with the subtle, sneaky method of poison?

The schoolteacher walked thoughtfully back along the sunlit studio street, past hurrying cutters with their precious cans of film, past cute little uniformed studio messengers with their languorous starlets’ walk and their wondering starlit eyes—each remembering that Lana Turner had been a soda jerk when she was discovered—past secretaries and electricians and executives and all the myriad denizens of this gold-plated anthill. From the open window of a sound room came the last line of the alma mater anthem—“G-g-g-gawk-wak—that’s Peter Penguin’s song….” repeated over and over again as the sound men ironed out indistinguishable errors in the track.

Miss Withers even ran into the gnomish janitor she had met on her first day here, who gave her a roguish wink. On an impulse she caught his sleeve. “Mr. Cassiday, you know more about this place than almost anyone. You knew Larry Reed and all the others involved. Did he have any enemies? Who, do you think, would have a motive to poison him?”

“Poison?” The old man stiffened suspiciously. “But the paper said—”

“The newspapers can be wrong, and so can the police.”

Mr. Cassiday scratched his head. “Well, if you ask me I’d say that Larry Reed was his own worst enemy. Coming into the studio with hangovers so bad that I had to go out and get him a pint so his hand would be steady enough to hold a pencil. Carrying a torch for some dame, he was.”

“His former wife?”

“Joyce—Mr. Cushak’s secretary? I don’t think—”

“Janet Poole?”

“Maybe. I dunno. But, ma’am, if Larry really was poisoned, I say they should look for a woman—because any fool knows that poison is a woman’s way.”

Miss Withers thanked him and went on, more thoughtful still. Everyone nowadays seemed to be an amateur criminologist; everyone knew that poison is usually a feminine weapon, that writers of poison-pen letters always send one to themselves, and that the murderer never returns to the scene of his crime. All truisms. She remembered Porgy and Bess—“It ain’t necessarily so.”

She came at last to the music stage and went up the steps, then through wide doors and into a good-sized hall, its walls draped with heavy cloth. Two bare overhead bulbs gave a dim glow—enough light so that she could see at one end a raised platform with a baby-grand piano, folding chairs and music stands. The place was very empty and still, almost too still for her present mood. As the doors swung automatically shut behind her, they cut off all the cheerful noisy bustle of the studio, and the room was suddenly heavy with brooding silences; the dangling microphones and the hulking electrical equipment seemed to glare at her, reminding her that she was an intruder here.

Miss Withers almost expected the various complicated mechanisms to break into raucous music; she found herself holding her breath and tiptoeing as she went forward into the cool gloom. But all remained silent, too silent. She could see a smaller door at the far end of the place, and as she came closer she could make out that it bore the legend, Jules Karas, Music Director, Private. She knocked once, and entered.

It was an office even larger than Mr. Cushak’s, though somewhat less ornate. There was a movieola, a big record player, a bookcase stuffed with music sheets and orchestrations, and another case with stacks of phonograph records and albums. Under the one window was a desk; it was a very clean desk that bore only an onyx fountain-pen set, a plaster statuette of the bird similar to the one she had in her hand, and an ash tray in which rested a half-smoked cigar in a long amber holder. Miss Withers felt somewhat relieved; at least all three of the people in whom she was most interested had shown up at the studio safe and sound this morning. The ash of the cigar in the tray was still warm to her exploring fingers, so she figured that she must have missed Mr. Karas by seconds.

He might, of course, return at any moment. It was not the propitious time to go prowling his desk as she had Mr. Bayles’; on the other hand, there might never be another chance. She went to work swiftly and silently, and when she had finished with the last neat drawer she knew nothing about Mr. Karas that she had not known before—except that he kept a large, oddly shaped bottle of something labeled slivowitz in his desk, tucked in behind rolls of music manuscript. The stuff smelled somewhat of old prunes and heavily of alcohol, and it made her sneeze.

From the doorway behind her, a pleasant masculine voice said, “If you’re needing a snort, go ahead. Don’t mind me.”

The schoolteacher whirled around, almost dropping the brandy bottle, to see Guy Fowler standing there, a sheet of music manuscript in his hand and an expression of amused surprise on his face. She hastily replaced the bottle and slammed the drawer. “I was looking for Mr. Karas,” she said.

“Well,” pointed out the young man reasonably, “you’re not likely to find him in his desk drawer.” He came on into the room. “Matter of fact, I’m looking for him, too; I’ve a new number Jan wants me to try on him. But I guess he must have popped out for a cup of coffee or something.”

“He’s obviously not here, at any rate,” Miss Withers snapped. “What’s wrong?”

Guy Fowler was staring at the ash tray on Karas’ desk with a very odd expression. “I don’t know. But I never knew Karas to go anywhere without that holder; when he wasn’t smoking he kept it in his breast pocket. He surely must have left here in a tearing hurry. And he never hurries.”

“‘The Ides of March are here, la grippe is at the door—and many folks are dying now, who never died before.’” The schoolteacher sniffed. “So you think Mr. Karas left here in a hurry. Frightened, perhaps? Do you suppose he got another of those valentines?”

“Could be,” the young man said. “They seem to be falling like autumn leaves don’t they?” His look was wise and knowing and most sympathetic.

“So you know that I, too, received one in the middle of the night?”

His smile was faintly amused. “Of course. You don’t know this studio very well, Miss Withers. It’s one big happy family, with no secrets—especially at a time like this, with the whole lot buzzing. Secretaries overhear things and then drop a word to some pal around the water cooler or in the coffee shop—that’s the way it goes.”

“The most important secret of all seems still to be pretty well kept,” she told him. “Don’t forget that the murderer of Larry Reed is among us, laughing up his sleeve.”

“His?” Guy Fowler echoed softly.

“Of course. The only girl who seems to be involved in this is Janet, and certainly you’re not suggesting—”

He almost laughed out loud. “Certainly I wasn’t. Janet wouldn’t kill anybody, and if she did—by some fantastic trick of fate—she couldn’t keep the secret for ten minutes. She’s as clear as a mountain brook.”

“Hmm,” murmured Miss Withers. There were things young Mr. Fowler would be learning when he married his clear mountain brook, or she missed her guess.

“I was only thinking,” he continued thoughtfully, “that in all the books and stuff I’ve read on the subject poison is supposed to be a woman’s weapon, no?”

Here we went again. Miss Withers sighed and nodded. She could have mentioned such notable exceptions as Molineux and Carlyle Harris and Dr. Palmer and the unfortunate Crippen, but Guy Fowler still was talking. “What about Joyce Reed—Mr. Cushak’s bumptious secretary who used to be married to Larry?”

The schoolteacher looked at him. “Any special reason for bringing her name into the case?”

“No, ma’am. But when people are married, or have been—”

“They’re automatically suspect, if anything happens to one of them. I know—and it’s a sad commentary on the marital state. But frankly, Joyce doesn’t look like a poisoner to me.”

“If it really was poison.”

“It really was, and not the first time this particular poison was used, either.”

Guy’s ears perked up. “What?”

But Miss Withers had already, as usual, said more than she intended. “Excuse me, young man—”

She started out, but he blocked her way, looking suddenly very boyish and engaging. “Why don’t you like me, Miss Withers?”

“I beg pardon?” She drew back, staring at him. “I think I’ll answer that question with another. Why are you such a fool as to refuse to marry your Janet until you’ve paid back every last cent you’ve borrowed from her? That may take a long time and she doesn’t want money; she wants you. Now!”

His face set. “A man has his pride.”

“Which always goeth before a fall, or so I’ve heard.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve been dodging responsibilities most of my life, and I guess running away from things. I’m going to be standing on my own two feet from now on.”

“Men!” said Miss Hildegard Withers in her most spinsterly voice, and pushed past him and out of the place. But when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw young Fowler still standing there, scratching his head and looking puzzled. But it was nothing to the puzzlement that possessed her as she hurried back to her office. There she cut Talleyrand’s welcome-home scene as short as possible, shaking hands only once instead of the usual baker’s dozen, and sat herself down with pencil and notebook. “Rollo Bayles …” she wrote, and had filled hardly half a page when the telephone shrilled at her elbow like an offended bumblebee. “Yes, Mr. Cushak?” she answered wearily.

But it wasn’t Mr. Cushak at all; it was the Inspector, and his voice was jubilant. “Hildegarde? Remember I told you that I’d solve this case for you today?”