We all went down to the bank.

  "Now just a moment," I said, "before the money is passed over. You'll remember that I was to get a complete list of the witnesses."

  Mysgart smiled at Esther Witson and said, "That was the understanding, Miss Witson. I think you have a notebook there ..."

  Esther Witson pulled a notebook out of her pocket, said, "You can copy these or ..."

  I said, "Just take the original pages out of the notebook. It's a loose-leaf notebook and ..."

  Esther Witson jerked the pages out of the notebook and handed them to me.

  "These are all?" I asked.

  "All," she said.

  "Now then," Glimson said, "there's a consideration to be paid by Miss Witson herself, and ..."

  "We can do that between us," Mysgart interposed hurriedly. "Miss Witson's bank is down the street four or five blocks, and if we hurry, we'll be able to get in the side door. They know Miss Witson very well down there, and ..."

  Glimson said to Lidfield, "Give me a list of your witnesses."

  Lidfield was rather apologetic. He said, "I just wrote the licence number of every car that was around there that I could see."

  I said to Glimson, "Of course after your client gave you the licence numbers of these automobiles, you had them investigated and have the names of the owners?"

  Glimson sighed reluctantly, opened his brief-case and took out a typewritten sheet of paper which he handed to me without a word.

  The teller looked at me inquiringly.

  I nodded.

  They grabbed the money and started for the door of the bank, anxious to get down to Esther Witson's bank while they could still get in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I CROSSED over to a phone booth and telephoned the office. Elsie Brand answered the telephone.

  "Hello, Elsie." I asked, "How's the blood pressure?”

  “Pretty high."

  "Okay. I've got a little thinking to do. If there'll be a rise in blood pressure in the office I'll go over and sit in the car I think things out."

  "Personally," Elsie said, "I'd recommend the car. The open air will be restful. There still seems to be the question of where you were last night."

  "Okay. Thanks. Be a good girl."

  "It seems almost compulsory," she said, and hung up before I could ask her what she meant by that crack.

  I went across to the parking lot, sat in the agency car and took out the loose-leaf notebook pages I'd received from Esther Witson in connection with the settlement.

  The name of Mrs. Grail wasn't on there. The name of Rufus Stanberry wasn't on there. The name of Boskovitche wasn't on there. That whole page of the notebook was missing. There were half a dozen other names and licence numbers. I put them to one side for a minute and looked at the list I'd got from Lidfield.

  These were just licence numbers, but on the typewritten sheet which Glimson had passed over, these licence numbers were listed against the names of registered owners.

  There was the licence number of Bertha Cool's car; Bertha Cool's name and address; the licence number of a car listed as belonging to Mrs. Ellery Crail, 1013 Scarabia Boulevard; a licence number of a car listed as a Packard sedan registered to Rufus Stanberry, 3271 Fulrose Avenue; three or four licence numbers that checked with those on the Esther Witson list; a couple of licence numbers that Esther Witson didn't have; then a licence number, "Miss Georgia Rushe, 207 West Orleans Avenue."

  I folded the list, put it in my wallet, crossed over to a telephone and rang the Crail Venetian Blind Company. "May I speak with Miss Georgia Rushe?" I asked the switchboard operator.

  "Who wants to speak with her? You'll have to give your name."

  "Tell her Donald wants to talk with her."

  "Just a moment."

  I heard the plugging of connections, the distant echoes of a ghostly voice, then the professionally cordial voice characteristic of a high-class switchboard operator said, "She went home early tonight."

  I looked at my watch. It was four-thirty-five.

  "Thank you," I said and hung up.

  I tried Georgia Rushe at the phone number she'd left with us when she'd employed us. There was no answer.

  I went back to the agency car and warmed up the motor while I was making a mental check of times and places, getting the sequence of events straightened out in my own mind.

  Then I drove to the Crail Venetian Blind Company.

  The building was a big three-storey brick structure down on the fringe of the commercial district. The sign over the door

  was old, and grimy. Gilt letters that had been on there for a

  long time said : CRAIL VENETIAN BLIND COMPANY.

  I parked the car near the entrance. It was past quitting time and a straggling stream of workers was filing out—older men carrying lunch-pails, slim attractive girls gushing with the healthy vitality of youth, chatting gaily as they moved down the stairs.

  I walked in and tried the inner door. It was locked with a spring lock. I stood by it waiting until a girl, hurrying to catch up with a group down the street, flung it open. She hardly noticed me as I caught the door and prevented the latch from clicking.

  A sign said: OFFICES uP STAIRS, and I climbed the stairs into a little reception room where there was a counter, a few chairs and a little arched opening in a partition bearing the word : INFORMATION. Below this was a glass door which could be swung open and shut so that a person standing on the other side of the counter couldn't hear confidential communications which took place over the inside phone.

  There seemed to be no one behind the arched opening, so I walked round to a gate in the partition, found one of those trick catches which are released by an electro-magnet from the inside or a pressure of the fingers in the right place, pushed up the catch, opened the gate, and went in.

  There was a long hallway with half-glassed partitions bear-

  ing signs in gilt letters: SALES MANAGER, CREDIT MANAGER, ACCOUNTING OFFICE, and down at the far end a door marked : PRESIDENT. Up here in this corridor there was no sound save

  the noises of occasional activity from the floor below—steps, the banging of a door, the sound of a voice. The second floor itself was silent as a deserted court-room after the defendant has been sentenced to death and the judge has gathered his papers and gone out to play golf.

  I pushed open the door marked PRESIDENT.

  Ellery Crail sat at his desk, his chin over on his chest, his big competent hairy hands clinched so tightly that the afternoon light which filtered in from the big window touched the taut skin over the knuckles into high lights.

  He didn't hear the door open, and he didn't look up. He was staring with steady-eyed concentration, his face dark with tortured thought. He might have been hypnotised, sitting there in the rigid immobility of a trance.

  I walked across the thick carpet. And it wasn't until I wasseating myself in the chair opposite the desk that he saw me, looked up with a frown of annoyance and then as recognition flooded his features said with sudden irritation, "You!"

  I nodded.

  "How did you get in?"

  "Walked in."

  "That door's supposed to be locked."

  I said, "Let's get in touch with Georgia Rushe."

  "She isn't here. She left early. She's gone home."

  I said, "She's taking a powder."

  It took a moment or two for the full effect of my words to dawn on him. Then he said, "Powder! Good Heavens, Lam, not that!"

  I said, "I was using a slang expression of the underworld. It means skipping out—taking what is known as a run-out powder."

  "Good God, I thought you meant ..."

  "What?"

  "I didn't know what you meant."

  "Poison?"

  "Perhaps."

  I said, "Let's go have a talk with her. In case you don't know the address, it's two-o-seven West Orleans Avenue. I have my car downstairs."

  He looked at me for a second or two, his eyes hitting me with a hard flinty impact. "How much," he asked, "do you know?"

  "So much you don't have to say anything you don'twant to." Without a word, he pushed back his chair. "All right," he said, "let's go."

  We went down the wide stairs and out through the locked door. A watchman was now on duty, and he said mechanically, "Good night, Mr. Crail."

  "Good night, Tom," Crail said.

  The door closed behind us and the lock clicked into place. I indicated the agency car with a jerk of my thumb and said, "That's it."

  I went round to the driver's seat and Crail climbed in the front seat beside me. We encountered quite a bit of traffic at that hour, but I was taking chances on a ticket and was less than ten minutes getting to 207 West Orleans Avenue.

  It was an old-fashioned apartment house with no attempt at the white stucco exterior which is so frequently used to hide

  the grime of drab age. A few straggling green vines grew up the front of the building. The narrow windows told their own stories of insufficient light and ventilation. One look at the place and you could smell the psychic stench of dejected spirits, the physical odours of ancient cooking, the irritating fumes of defective gas heaters.

  I held back slightly and Grail led the way.

  His finger found the button opposite a piece that had been cut from a calling card printed in Old English lettering, Georgia Rushe.

  Nothing happened.

  The lock on the outer door was a little better than most of them. I had a pass-key I thought would fit it, but I didn't want to show my hand just then. I pressed two or three buttons at random and, after a moment, there was the distinctive buzz from the inside which indicated that someone was pressing a button which controlled the electric catch on the door.

  I pushed the entrance door open.

  The number on Georgia Rushe's mail-box showed that her apartment was 243. There may have been an elevator in the back part of the hall, but I didn't wait for it. I started climbing the stairs and Grail, climbing with the effort of a heavily muscled man, came lunging along behind me. I took the stairs two at a time.

  No one answered when I knocked on apartment 243.

  I looked at Crail. His face was drawn and haggard. Even in the dim light of the stuffy, smelly hallway, I could see the dead white pallor of his skin and the deep lines that etched themselves down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.

  I saw no reason for being namby-pamby about it. I took a leather key container from my pocket, slid back the zipper and shook out my skeleton keys.

  The first one did the trick. The lock clicked back and we went in.

  It was near the back of the building on the north side. A little single apartment that had two narrow windows that furnished a small amount of ventilation. The only cross ventilation was through an adjustable transom over the top of the door.

  A light was on in the apartment, and the globe was powerful enough to make the room seem rather bright. It was a conventional single apartment with a disappearing wall bed behind a glass-knobbed grey-painted door. The overstuffed chairhad seen better days and the upholstery had been pounded down with use until it was hard and lumpy. The davenport had probably been re-finished a couple of times and was in need of a third treatment. The faded carpet was worn almost through to the floor by the table, and two deep circles marked where the foot of the bed would rest when it was lowered. A drawer was open in a little all-purpose table which would, at night, be by the side of the bed. A pine table stained a dark mahogany was in the centre of the room. On it were a few magazines.

  A woman's hat and coat lay on a chair. The door of what had once been a closet was wide open to disclose a little sink and a two-burner gas-stove over which was a small-sized electric refrigerator and a shelf containing a few dishes and glasses. A door which had a built-in full-length mirror was evidently the door to the bathroom.

  On a straight-backed chair was a suitcase about half packed, the lid being raised to disclose the feminine garments on the interior.

  Grail heaved a deep sigh of relief. "She hasn't left yet," he said.

  I looked the place over and said, "Whenever the management goes to the extent of putting in brilliant light globes, you know the place is dark as hell in the daytime," and switched out the lights.

  Instantly the place became dark, gloomy, and depressing. What afternoon light filtered in through the window was so badly dispersed that it gave the place an atmosphere of gloomy unreality.

  I noticed a knife-like ribbon of light coming from under the door of the bathroom.

  Crail said, "For God's sake, switch that light back on." I clicked the switch.

  "Well," Grail said, "she's probably gone out to get something. She's packing. I guess we ..."

  "What do we do?"

  "Wait."

  I said, "Okay, sit down."

  Grail took the lumpy overstuffed chair and tried to fidget himself into a position that was comfortable.

  I walked over to the occasional table which would be by the head of the bed when the bed was let down, and looked in the open drawer.

  There was a small bottle in there with the cap unscrewed. The bottle was empty. The label said, "Luminal."

  I thought for a moment, looked at my watch, then said to Grail, "What time did she leave the office?"

  "About four-ten," Grail said. "She said she wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home. I told her to go ahead." I said, "Did you notice anything peculiar?"

  "About what?"

  "About the way she said good-bye."

  He looked at me with tortured eyes, then nodded his head slowly.

  I didn't ask him what it was, but he volunteered the information. "There was a certain feeling in the way she said it. Something of finality. I guess she read my mind."

  I looked at my watch. It was five-fifteen.

  I sat down in a chair opposite Grail and took out a packet of cigarettes. "Want one?" I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I lit a cigarette, and Grail sat watching me. The hundred-watt light in the ceiling showed small, almost microscopic beads of perspiration on his forehead.

  "How," Grail asked, "did you happen to know—that she was going, I mean?"

  I looked at him and said, "How did you happen to know that your wife had been driving behind Rufus Stanberry?"

  His eyes shifted for a moment, then came back to mine. "She told me."

  I grinned at him.

  His face flushed. "You don't believe it?"

  "No."

  His mouth tightened. "I'm not accustomed to having my word questioned."

  "I know," I said sympathetically. "Lying comes hard to you. Was Georgia driving her car, or did you borrow it?" He couldn't keep the consternation out of his eyes.

  I settled back in my chair and puffed on the cigarette. "How did you know Georgia's car was there?" he asked. "One of the parties to the automobile accident took down

  the licence numbers of a whole flock of automobiles."

  He said, "They must have got the wrong licence number." I smiled and said nothing.

  "All right," Grail blurted, "I borrowed her car. She didn't know anything about it. I—I mean what I wanted it for. Idarn it, Lam, I was such a despicable cad that I followed my wife. I wanted to know—well, I thought she had an engagement to meet someone, and I wondered—well, you know, that Stanberry Building."

  "I know," I said.

  He didn't say anything for a while.

  I said, "When you realised your wife was in trouble, you decided that it didn't make any difference what it was, you were going to stand by her. But you knew that Esther Witson had got her name and address as well as the licence number of the car in connection with that automobile accident, so you wanted it settled."

  He didn't say anything.

  I said, "Life is a peculiar phenomenon, or rather a whole series of phenomena. Lots of times it's hard to do something without hurting someone."

  I saw him look at me searchingly, but I kept my profile to him and kept on talking abstractedly. "Lots of times in affairs of the heart, you have to hurt either one person or another no matter which you do. Sometimes you hurt several people. But when you have to choose the person you don't want to hurt, you sometimes get hypnotised into choosing the person who doesn't want to be hurt. Do you get what I mean?"

  "I don't see what this had to do with it," he said.

  I said, "Sometimes a woman who really loves you will remain in the background so that you don't realise the full extent to which you are hurting her. On the other hand, there are lots of women who are adept at putting it up to you in terms of `I don't want to be hurt.' "