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Show '-"W By FREDERIC F. VAN DE WATER IVr"l people than probable perpetrators of a murder." Her mind was straight and merciless merci-less as a bayonet thrust. I stammered: stam-mered: "You think then that that " "Never mind boggling," Miss Agatha Aga-tha ordered. "I think that, anywhere any-where but in detective fiction, the persons nearest to a crime are those most likely to have been involved. That need not prevent my asking them to lunch. You forget that a spectator of life must have her vicarious vi-carious thrills." "I,never said a word," I told her. ' "With a face like yours," she replied, re-plied, "you didn't have to. Of course I suspect the Ferriters. So do you." She rolled her chair to the desk side and jumped upon her project. For a half-hour we talked. Or rather, rath-er, I listened while she elaborated her purpose to me and outlined the scope and set the tone for the first chapter. At last, she paused and grinned. "Any questions?" I shook my had. "I don't care for your friend's manners, or his mind or his smell Unless he cares to argue it, I'll be on my way." My voice must have been loud for men at other tables looked at me, and Gene, the waiter, came hurry-' ing across the room. Breath went from Duke with a hiss. He lurched and tried to rise but Cochrane threw himself sidewise and held him down. "Easy, Larry," he soothed, "you're drunk," and to me, "Make it fast." I obeyed. He overtook me at the Broadway corner. "Young Lochinvar!" he said, panting. "I don't like that guy," I told him sulkily. He grinned. "So I gathered. It was a fool play to bring you there. We better meet in your room hereafter, accomplice." ac-complice." He left me at the subway station. I walked on uptown and wished that I had thrown his job after him. And then I was sorry that I had not told Cochrane all I had learned of Grosvenor Gros-venor I knew that I could not do SYNOPSIS David Mallory, In search of newspaper work in New York, Is forced to accept a ob as switch-board operator in a swank apartment house, managed by officious timothy Higgins. There David meets Mis Agalha Paget, a crippled old lady, and her charming niece. Allegra. One ay- talking with Higgins in the lobby, "avid is alarmed by a piercing scream, uavld finds the scream came from the Jerriter apartment, not far from the Pagets'. The Ferriters include Lyon and iverett, and their sister. lone. Everett a genealogist, is helping Agatha Paget write a book about her blue-blooded ancestors. an-cestors. Inside the apartment they and a black-bearded man dead. No weapon can be found. The police arrive. Higgins, Hig-gins, who actively dislikes David, informs in-forms him that he is fired. David is called to the Paget apartment. Agatha I Paget offers him a Job helping write her I family history which will unearth a few family skeletons. He accepts the offer. Meanwhile, police suspect Lyon Ferriter of the murder. Jerry Cochrane of the Press offers David a Job helping solve i the murder. David accepts. He is to I keep on working for Miss Paget. Later David meets Grosvenor Paget, AUegra's brother. Then, that night. David sees Grosvenor prowl through the Ferriter apartment. David confronts Grosvenor with the story. He Is told to mind his own business. Then David goes to Higgins' Hig-gins' basement flat to retrieve his luggage. lug-gage. In the darkness he brushes against an unknown person, and in attempting to capture him, falls over his own suitcase. that either. Loyalties pulled me two ways. I stood aside on the stair to let my landlady descend. She stopped and peered down severely. "If anyone calls when I'm away, Mrs. Shaw," I told her, "you can let him in my room." " 'Him'?" said Mrs. Shaw and sniffed. "I've no objection to 'hims,' L,et me do lew pages and see whether I've carght your idea." "Excellent," Miss Agatha said with a jerk of her head. "Everett would have speut the next half-hour in qualms and objections." "You taay, 'tyhen you see my copy," I told Usr. She chuckled again as she rolled toward the dow. "What hoi" be said in response to my greeting and waved a plump hand. I thought of AUegra, standing provocatively pro-vocatively besWe him. I thought of Duke's slander and bent again to my work. Everett had a softness that shook insttsad of hardened under un-der stress but, eren in his agitation, he had not forgoien his cologne. I don't like cologne. With the reek of it in my nose, I found him standing beside me. He smiled and picked up the two pages I had completed. "Do you mind?" he asked and read them without waiting. The points of the waxed mustache twitched and color came to his pudgy cheeks. It isn't pleasant to have another recast your own work. I understood' his irritation. He dropped the sheets on the desk and dusted his hands together before he lit a cigarette. "Of course," he said with a gesture ges-ture of resignation, "if that's the sort of thing she wants " "So what?" I asked, but his faintly faint-ly popped eyes slid away from mine. He laid his cigarette on an ash tray and shrugged. "No offense, my dear chap. I mean well, isn't it a bit ghoulish and horrible, this er, exhumation of all the family skeletons? I mean it's really not my sort of work." He stood quite still a minute before be-fore he said, in a voice that tried hard to be careless: "Anything new?" "Don't you read the papers," I asked, "or is journalism too ghoul- -ish and horrible?" He didn't resent that but answered, an-swered, quite humbly: '. "Of course. I just meant, have you has anyone, I mean found out anything else?" I shouldn't have deviled him further, fur-ther, but he asked for it. I shrugged and put a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter. "I'm a rewrite man," 1 told him. "Not a detective." I heard breath go through his nose. He mopped his face with a plaid-bordered silk handkerchief. The smell of cologne drove away my pity. "But," he faltered, "you do know something, eh?" "Plenty," I answered. "What?" he asked as though the word hurt him." I shook my head. "You're nervous enough already." He made a desperate gesture with both hands as though trying to push something away. "Nervous! Why shouldn't I be nervous? I've been humiliated by a lot of foul police. Asses that have no respect for the commonest decency. de-cency. We've all been hounded by them, because they're too ignorant ever to find out who did that dreadful dread-ful thing." CHAPTER Vn Continued 9 The cab's brakes squealed. Cochrane Coch-rane thrust open its door. "The Artists and Writers," he said, "and just in time to save one very precious life." He led me down a crooked hall to an Iron door with a wicket and rang the bell. "A newspaper hangout," he explained. ex-plained. "It masqueraded as a restaurant res-taurant during prohibition. Now it poses as a speakeasy. Newspaper men are romantic." "That's because," I told him, "they meet so many interesting people." peo-ple." "Gene," Cochrane bade the face that appeared at the wicket, "two hot Scotches, quick, and I'll close the door myself." Cochrane was sipping his second drink and talking in a low voice. Blackbeard's body lay in the morgue, still unidentified. The Ferriters Fer-riters had been easier to trail. Lyon and his sister had been in Alaska where he had run a combined saloon and store on the Tanana River. "A year ago," Cochrane went on, "it seems lone and Lyon and a newcomer, new-comer, a guy named Horstman, went prospecting, and were out all winter. They found gold, but Horstman Horst-man got lost in a blizzard and his body never was recovered. Lyon sold his claim and came to New York. He's comfortably fixed. His sister doesn't do anything, either. And right now, she doesn't look as if it agreed with her." He made a design of wet rings on the table with the bottom of his glass and asked, still watching them, "Do you know anything of a tie-up tie-up between the Paget boy and lone?" "Why?" I stalled and my voice must have been sharp, for he grinned. "You and I," said Cochrane, "have the same sort of dirty mind. The idea may lead nowhere, but the lad comes into an inheritance in a few days now three million or thereabouts, which is no small sum to shoot at, even in inflated currency. curren-cy. Ione " He broke oft". A man came, walking walk-ing stiffly, from the barroom. He said, "Hi, Jerry," to Cochrane, started to pass on and then stopped, staring at me. It was Duke of the Sphere. I found myself disliking him again. "Hello, Larry," Cochrane said and his face was guileless. "Have a drink?" "Thanks," Duke answered. "I've had mine." He had. He swayed as he spoke and kept on looking at me. We watched each other like hostile dogs. Cochrane said quietly: "This is David Mallory. He" "We've met before," I broke in. Duke sat down with a long sigh. Drink had turned him pale and sweating. I knew he was trouble-hunting trouble-hunting and felt my own temper rise to meet his. He asked carefully, for his tongue was thick: "Private conspiracy, or can I horn in?" . "You may, when you see my copy," I told her. Mr. Mallory, but you simply cannot receive well ladies here." She glared at me with the sour air of morality that fat women so often wear. "Good God," I answered, "what put that into your mind?" "I'm not," she told me, "more suspicious than most, Mr. Mallory, but a lady called to see you an hour ago." "A lady?" I asked with what breath I had. "Did she have blue eyes and blond hair?" Mrs. Shaw might have looked so at Brigham Young. "This," said she, "was a dark lady. Anxious to see you she was, I'm sure. But she would leave no message or name." I watched her go on down the stairs. At the landing, she flung back: "Very good-looking if you like that type." CHAPTER VIII It was long before I got to sleep. There were too many things in the room with me. The visit of the woman who had roused Mrs. Shaw's morality joined the procession of puzzles that marched endlessly round my bed. It made no sense. Neither did my conclusion that the caller must have been seeking some other David Mallory. Neither did anything else. When slumber caught me at last, I overslept and again reached the Paget apartment breathless and just Something clicked inside me and I looked at him hard. It might be only the indignation of the innocent that rode him. It might be something some-thing more. I couldn't picture Everett Ev-erett Ferriter as a murderer, but I bad been fooled too often in the last two dnys to trust my own senses. So I said: "Don't underestimate the cops. They are unrefined, but the Homicide Homi-cide Bureau in this town ranks pretty pret-ty high. I've been a newspaper man long enough to know that when a detective de-tective seems dumbest he's probably proba-bly being smartest I'll bet you. even money, that they clear up this case in a week." I knew I had hit him. He gagged a little and gave a sick smile. "I hope you're right," he told me. "It can't be a minute too soon for me for all of us." He left so quickly and silently that I heard the front door shut before I knew he was gone. I sat and scowled at the wall while I tried to pull that jittery figure fig-ure into a pose of guilt. Then I remembered his alibi. It had been the nature of this alibi, and AUegra's AUeg-ra's part in it, that had made me vindictive. I thrust my mind away from current crime and into the annals an-nals of Miss Agatha's forebears (TO BE COXTIM ED1 on time'. Annie led me to the workroom. work-room. The sanity of winter sunlight, sun-light, streaming in through the window, win-dow, the stacked papers on the desk, the typewriter, the very couch on which Grosvenor had sat glowering the evening before, all were solid, normal things that tangled further my suspicions. I looked through the window. Beyond the casement across the air shaft, I had seen the boy at his furtive mission. As I watched, a dim figure drew up the shade. The Ferriters had come home. I turned and faced Miss Agatha. "Good morning. David," she said briskly. "You and I are among the few punctual people in this world. Mr. Ferriter hasn't arrived?" "I haven't seen him," I replied. "Perhaps he is next door. The apartment apart-ment " She bit through an invisible thread and nodded. "Yes. They have come back. I've invited them all to lunch. Perhaps my precious genealogist thinks he is not to report till then." She peered at me and pursued: "You needn't look shocked, David. Da-vid. I've broken bread during a long life witl- many more disreputable Cochrane grinned. "I knew Dave in Omaha," he said so smoothly that the lie sounded like truth. "I've been trying to pump him. Help yourself." "Thanks," Duke replied and looked at me briefly. "Turned in your copy, Jerry?" "Still trying to find something to write about." Duke mopped his glistening face. "You had no trouble yesterday. Why don't you let your stool loose on young Paget's affair with lone?' Cochrane glanced at me and I held fast to myself. He said easily, Just one of Shannon's 'theories.' There's nothing in it." "Isn't there?" Duke asked. "The reason this thing is locked up so tight is because the Pagets are in it up to their necks. The Pagets are people in this town. They've got the immunity of cash and position. posi-tion. If we could tear the lid off this thing, we'd find a Grove-lone tie-up and probably Allegra mixed up in it." I got up. "I hope," Duke said, fumbling with his words, "that I'm not offending offend-ing you." I said to Cochrane: |