Then Uncle Benedict would give a convulsive nod, a rather loud snore, waken with such evident embarrassment and look around him with such a panic-stricken apology for his snoring that the whole carful of people would spontaneously break into laughter.

  After that Uncle Benedict was right at home.

  Some ten years before, twinges of pain had announced the coming of arthritis. Gradually the long, slender fingers that had been able to deal cards so convincingly from the bottom of the deck, or pick pockets with such consummate skill that a wallet could be lifted, carefully examined, and returned to its proper place, all without the sucker’s having the faintest idea that he had been “cased,” began to thicken at the joints.

  Now Uncle Benedict, confined to a wheelchair, dozed through the twilight of life, his mind as keenly active as ever, and even Martha, his wife, was unable to tell when his dozing was genuine slumber or when he was merely keeping his old act in practice.

  Those who had known Uncle Benedict never forgot him. His friends worshiped the ground he walked on. It was a matter of police record that on three occasions suckers whom he had fleeced had refused to prosecute, stating publicly that they valued their brief companionship with Uncle Benedict far more than the money that he had taken from them.

  One of his victims had even gone so far as to place an ad in the personal column reading: Dear Benedict, Come home. All is forgiven. We like you even if it did cost us money….

  Not even Martha knew the ramifications of Uncle Benedict’s connections. With a photographic memory for names, faces, and telephone numbers, Uncle Benedict kept no written memoranda. From time to time he would arouse himself from what seemed to be a sound sleep, send his wheelchair scurrying across to the telephone, dial a number, and give cryptic instructions. Occasionally men came to the house, men who regarded Uncle Benedict’s slightest word as law, men who shook hands very gently so as not to bring pain to the thickened joints, men who left envelopes containing crisp green currency.

  The envelopes went in the wastebasket, the currency went into Uncle Benedict’s pocket.

  “Income tax!” he’d snort, when Aunt Martha asked him about his business affairs. “You don’t pay income tax on gifts. That’s a free-will offering.” And that was all anybody ever got out of him.

  Only once had he elaborated. He explained to Martha, “I showed a man how to make some money. I thought out a scheme. I picked the one man who could put that scheme into operation. When the scheme paid off he sent me a gift. You couldn’t report a gift like that to the income tax. I didn’t even count the money. That would have been looking a gift horse in the mouth….”

  Aunt Martha answered Peggy’s ring. “Why, hello, Peggy. What on earth are you doing?”

  “I’m up to my neck,” Peggy said.

  “I read in the papers that you discovered the body of a girl who’d died from poison.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, let’s not stand here gassing. Come on in.”

  Aunt Martha had for years been Uncle Benedict’s “assistant,” the assistance consisting of wearing a pair of skin-fitting black tights, a skirt that fell barely below the hips, a plunging neckline, and a fixed smile.

  When Uncle Benedict had come to the point in one of his exhibitions where it was necessary to make a swift substitution or a few passes with the hand that he wanted to be invisible to the audience, Martha would “spontaneously” wiggle her hips, the fixed smile would become broader and more animate, and then the hip motion would swing into a rhythm of pure vivaciousness. As Uncle Benedict used to describe it, “It gave me the opportunity to do the trick, but by the time I’d got it done, half of the audience just didn’t give a damn. They kept on watching Martha’s hips.”

  “How’s the old warrior?” Peggy asked.

  Aunt Martha looked into the living room and said, “He’s sound asleep, or thinking out a new scheme. I never know which.”

  The Sleeper was sitting in his chair, head drooping forward and slightly to one side. He was gently snoring. Abruptly he jerked into conscious wakefulness, choking off an extra loud snore in the middle. He looked at Peggy with every sign of embarrassment. “Good Lord, Peggy, how long have you been here?”

  Peggy knew from the sheer perfection of his act that the old Sleeper had merely been keeping in practice.

  “Uncle Benedict, I’m in a pint of trouble.”

  “That ain’t so much trouble,” Benedict said.

  “I’ve been holding out on the police.”

  “Well, why not? You can’t go around blabbing all you know.”

  She told him the whole story, and he listened carefully. “What do you want?” he asked when she had finished.

  She said, “In the can receptacle for apartment five nineteen are the broken remnants of a whiskey bottle. I want that salvaged before the can collector gets it. I want to have it processed for fingerprints, and then I want the latent prints photographed and preserved so they can be used as evidence at any time.”

  “What else do you want?”

  “Your immoral support.”

  Uncle Benedict sent his wheelchair gliding over to the telephone. He dialed a number, waited, then said, “George?”

  He waited a moment, then gave the address of the apartment house where Stella Lynn had lived. “There’s a broken whiskey bottle in a galvanized receptacle in the backyard with the number five nineteen on the can. I want that broken bottle carefully preserved. Dust it for fingerprints. Fix any prints you find so they’ll stay there a long time. I also want ’em photographed.

  “Now, you’d better have somebody with you to be a witness in case you’re called on to make an identification of that bottle. Your record ain’t so good…. Who’s that? … Yes, he’ll be fine…. If anybody says anything, flash a badge showing you’re a sanitary inspector, and make a kick about some of the regulations being broken… That’s right, get them on the defensive…. Let me know when you have it. Good-by.”

  Uncle Benedict hung up and turned to Peggy. “That’s taken care of. If you should need anything else, let me know.”

  His eyelids drooped and his head nodded.

  * * *

  Peggy took elaborate precautions to see that no one was following her and then called for the pictures she had left for a rush job.

  In the privacy of her apartment she studied the nine pictures and was utterly disappointed. One picture at the beach showed a handsome young man in tight bathing trunks. He had blond wavy hair, an attractive smile, and a magnificent physique, but he meant nothing to Peggy.

  There was a shot of an automobile parked by the beach, and two pictures of Stella Lynn in a bathing suit that would never have passed any censor anywhere at any time. The bathing suit had evidently been concocted by knotting three bandanas carefully arranged so they showed all the curves of her figure. It was a suit that was not intended to have any contact with the water.

  There was a picture showing the back of an automobile, with a young man lifting two suitcases from the trunk. A series of small cabins with garages showed in the background of this picture.

  Peggy looked for the license number on the automobile. Unfortunately the man was standing so that he concealed all but the last three figures—861.

  Peggy studied a picture of a parked car with a stretch of beach in the background. Here again there was no opportunity to get any part of the license number. The car was shown sideways.

  There was a picture of a picnic lunch spread out on the beach. The young man with the slender waist and square shoulders was seated cross-legged.

  The telephone rang, and Peggy answered it.

  Don Kimberly’s voice said, “Thank heaven I’ve caught you, Peggy.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I got up to the office this morning and learned that a police detective was looking for me. I thought we should find out a little more about that letter before I talked with anyone, so I’ve been hiding out, but I didn’t want to hide out from you, and I didn’t want you to think that I’d left you to stand the gaff. I’ve been trying to get you all day.”

  She felt a big surge of relief. “Oh, that’s fine, Don,” she said. “I’m glad you thought of me. Where are you now?”

  “Right at the moment,” he said, “I’m at a pay telephone.”

  She said, “I understand you’re quite a photographer.”

  “I do quite a bit of photographic work, yes.”

  “I have some films that I think should be—well, I think we should enlarge one or two of them.”

  “Where did you get the films?”

  She was silent.

  Kimberly said, “Oh-oh, I get it.”

  “How long will it take to do it?”

  “How many are there?”

  “Nine. But I think only two or three are important.”

  “Nothing to it,” he said. “We could make enlargements just as big as you want, or pick out the part of the film you wanted enlarged, and then we could go out to dinner. By the time we got back, the enlargements would be dry and we could study them carefully.”

  “Could you do all that yourself?”

  “Sure. I’m all fixed up for it. I’ll come around and get you.”

  “All right, but give me half an hour to shower and dress.”

  “Thirty minutes on the dot, and I’ll be there,” he said.

  Peggy hung up and dashed for the shower, experiencing a peculiar feeling of exultation that Don hadn’t left her to face the problems alone.

  Don Kimberly showed Peggy around his apartment with a sense of pride, pointing out the framed photographs on the walls.

  “You took all these?” she asked.

  “All of them,” he said. “I like dramatic cloud effects. You can see from these pictures that I’ve gone in for thunderheads and storms over the ocean. Of course, you deliberately dramatize that stuff by overcorrecting with a red filter, but it gives you a sense of power, of the surge of the elements, of the forces of nature.”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “They’re—they’re believable. They’re true. They somehow symbolize life.”

  “I’m glad you like them. Want to see the darkroom now?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Let’s take a look at those films, Peggy.”

  She handed him the envelope. He brushed the prints aside and studied the negatives.

  “Well,” he said, “the girl used an expensive camera.”

  “How do you know without seeing it?”

  “You can tell by the films,” he said. “The films are wire sharp. That means she had a coupled range finder and a high-grade lens. That’s why I like to look at negatives instead of prints. The negatives tell the story. Lots of times a cheaper lens will give you a warm black that makes the print seem all right, but the minute you start to blow it up it fuzzes out on you. We’ll make some enlargements right away.”

  “Where’s the darkroom?” she asked.

  He laughed. “This is a bachelor apartment. There was a big pantry off the kitchen, a lot bigger than I needed, so I made it lightproof, installed running water, and fixed up a darkroom. Come on in and I’ll show you my workshop.”

  He led the way into the darkroom and showed Peggy the two enlarging cameras. One of them used what he called “cold light,” and the other used condensers for sharpness of detail.

  Kimberly poured chemicals into stainless-steel trays. “We’ll have these pictures enlarged in a jiffy. Why so thoughtful, Peggy?”

  “Because I want to ask you something that’s probably none of my business.”

  “What?”

  “You know of Stella’s condition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you,” she asked, “that is—were you—”

  “You mean am I the man in the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” He was silent for a few moments. Then he added, “I’ve known Stella for years. She was working in a cafeteria when I first knew her. She was a good-natured, lovable kid. I saw her a few times. Then someone put me on a committee to pick the queen of some local festivities. There was a lineup of a lot of girls in bathing suits, and to my surprise I saw Stella Lynn in the lineup.

  “I don’t think the fact that I knew her influenced my judgment. Anyway, I voted for her, and so did the other two judges. She was elected queen of the outfit. That was three years ago. She’s put on weight since then, but at that time—well, she had a good figure.”

  “Go ahead,” Peggy said, then added, “that is, if you want to.”

  “I want to. I want you to know what the situation was. Stella rang me up to thank me for voting for her, and I congratulated her on winning the contest on sheer merit. Then I lost track of her for a while. Then she rang up again and said she wanted to get away from the small town, wanted to go to the city. I gathered there had been a heartbreak.”

  “That’s the part I wanted to know about,” Peggy said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m trying to reconstruct Stella’s life.”

  “Actually,” Don Kimberly said, “I don’t know too much about her background, Peggy. Do you believe that?”

  “Of course.”

  “There are some who won’t,” he said thoughtfully. “However, to get back to your question. She was in love with someone. I don’t know who he was, but I have an idea he was a no-good. Stella wanted to get out of town. She was pretty well broken up, and she was broke financially. I had to lend her money to clean up a few bills she had around Cofferville and help her get started on a new job. I had no idea her new job was in our company until I met her there.”

  “E. B. Halsey fixed that up for her,” she said.

  “I know. E.B. knew her dad in Cofferville. He’s been dead some five years, but E.B. knew him and liked him.”

  “And knew her?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How well?”

  “I don’t know. Stella never talked about her friends. I’ve been trying to contact E.B. He isn’t available.”

  “I know. This money you lent her, Don—did she pay it back?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “She needed a lump sum. You gave her a check?”

  “Yes.”

  “But when she paid you back it must have been just a little here and a little there in cash.”

  “It was.”

  “Then she didn’t have anything to show that she paid you?”

  “Are you suggesting I’d try to make her pay twice?”

  “I’m thinking of the way the police will look at it,” she said. “The banks keep records on microfilm of all checks that pass through their hands.”

  “I know,” he said curtly, and she could tell that he was worried.

  The doorbell rang sharply, insistently.

  Kimberly looked at her in dismay. “I was hoping we could have a chance to get together on a story before—I’ll have to answer it, Peggy, particularly since you’re here.”

  He led the way out of the darkroom and opened the front door.

  Detective Fred Nelson and a young woman stood at the door. “Hello, Kimberly,” Nelson said easily. “This is Frances Bushnell—in case that means anything to you.”

  Don Kimberly, without inviting them in, said, “How do you do, Miss Bushnell.”

  “It’s Mrs. Bushnell,” Nelson said. “We’re coming in, Kimberly.” He pushed past Kimberly, saw Peggy, and said, “Well, well, it seems the gang’s all here. Sit down, folks.”

  “Since you’re playing the part of host,” Kimberly said coldly, “perhaps you’d like to mix some drinks?”

  “Now, keep your shirt on,” Nelson told him. “This is business. I’m going to be brief. Mrs. Bushnell was a close friend of Stella Lynn’s. She and her husband and Stella’s boyfriend used to go out on foursomes. Tell them about those foursomes, Frances.”

  Frances Bushnell seemed ill at ease.

  “Go on,” Nelson said, “get it off your chest. Don’t pull any punches. We may as well find out where we stand now as later.”

  “Well …” Mrs. Bushnell said, and paused to clear her throat as though not quite certain of herself, “Pete, that was my husband—he still is—and Stella, and Bill Everett—”

  “Now, who is Bill Everett?” Nelson interrupted.

  “That was Stella’s boyfriend.”

  “And when was this?”

  “When she was in Cofferville, working in the cafeteria as cashier.”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  “Well, Pete and I and Stella and Bill used to go out on weekends together. We were all friends. Pete and I got married. I got to know Stella quite well.”

  “What about this Bill guy?” Nelson asked.

  “He turned out to be no good. I think he got into some trouble somewhere. I know it broke Stella’s heart. I think she was really fond of him.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About two years ago.”

  “Then what?”

  “Pete and I got married and came here to live. When Stella came she looked us up. I still kept in touch with her.”

  “Now, when was the last time you saw her?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “In a cocktail bar on Fifth Street.”

  “You just happened to run into her, or did you have an appointment, or what?”

  “It’s a sort of gathering place. Some of us girls who work in offices drop in for a little chat and a cocktail. Stella was there.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, we talked for a while about this and that and I asked her if she wanted to have dinner with me and she said no, that she had a dinner date with a Prince Charming who was taking her to a night spot—that she had something to tell him that was going to jolt him.”

  “Did she tell you the man’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Don Kimberly.”

  “Did she tell you she was going to let him know he was about to become a father?”