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Show Hidden Wavs p' - By FREDERIC F. VAN DE WATER SOT gtfi l . . -J STNOPSIS EV.ld i"alIory. in search of newspaper work In New York, Is Jorced to accept inr.t,,W 'lh-board Pator In a swank TwJ.? ent bu,se. managed by officious wj H'gglns. There David meets P(Tt, a crippled old lady. Viz . ,cnarmln niece, AUegra. One day talking with Hlgglns In the lobby, rtl d ;larnled fay Piercing scream, "avid Bnds the scream came from the Ferriter apartment, not far from the Pagets The Ferriters Include Lyon and tverett, and their sister. lone. Everett, a genaloglst. is helping Agatha Paget write a book about her blue-blooded an-Cel0TS,- Inside " apartment they find Dlack-bearded man dead. No weapon can be found. The police arrive A half-hour went by. A couple of the homicide men went away with their black satchels. A few indignant indig-nant tennants worked through the blockade beyond the front door and hurried along the foyer talking to themselves. Eddie turned the car over to Boone of the night shift and went home, and Fineman, my relief, had just come in when Higgins came downstairs again. He looked sick till he saw me and then he looked hearty once more. "Hey," he called. "You. Come here." I had been through a lot that afternoon aft-ernoon and I suppose my mind had slowed up. I really thought he wanted want-ed to thank me for saying he had been on the roof, so when he spoke I stood and stared. His voice sounded sound-ed as if he was afraid someone would overhear, but he could have been no angrier if he had screamed. "You had your chance," he told me. "You didn't want it, eh? All right. I don't want you. Get your things and scram." "Wait a minute," I stalled. "If you're canning me, what's it for?" "After what I've been through upstairs," up-stairs," he wheezed and his big fists were clenched, "you've got the guts to ask that. Slandered me and a poor innocent girl, so ye did. You ought to thank me I'm just kicking you out into the gutter where you belong, instead of calling a cop." His voice had got away from him. A blond young man one of our tenants ten-ants but I didn't know which paused an instant and stared at us before he went into the elevator. He looked so sleek and handsome and without It When you're my age, David, you'll take to the small vices remaining, as compensation for others oth-ers you've missed. Have a drink?" She looked toward a cellarette In the corner. I shook my head. Her sharply angled, eager face made me wonder whether the vitality de nied her crippled legs had not flowed upward, to invigorate the rest ol her. She took a long pull at hel glass and wiped her lips on a lacj handkerchief. "Grove," she began, "tells m you've been discharged." I didn't know Grove but I said: "I have. I'm supposed to have bared the amours of the basement Casanova." She gave her husky chuckle. "It was I who bared them. Only a remarkable man could be wrong as often as Timothy." She tinkled the ice in her glass, sipped it again and then looked straight at me. "What are you going to do?" "When you sent for me," I said, "I was just going to take a poke at Higgins." The wrinkles about her eyes deepened. deep-ened. "You quote Kenneth Grahame; you want to punch Timothy. What other recommendations have you?" I did not understand. She prompted. prompt-ed. "You've been a reporter. What else can you do?" I could not see where all this led, but I answered: "I'm a fair blocking halfback and a good fencer. I also ride, swim and know a couple of card tricks." "College, eh?" I wondered if this was her idea of amusing herself. "B. A." I told her. "The diploma is in Omaha. I also had a Phi Beta key but I haven't now there are rules against hoarding gold, you see1. I can ransom my dress clothes though, if you feel you need a butler. but-ler. They're in the trunk my former landlady is keeping for me. She insisted in-sisted on it." I had begun to feel like a laboratory labora-tory specimen under her regard. It bothered me. When Miss Paget asked: "Would you care to work for me?" I shook my head. "Kind of you," I told her, "but 1 think not. I've got relatives in Nebraska Ne-braska if I want charity." I think that surprised her. She lit another cigarette. "My boy," she said through a smoke cloud, "I'm beginning to understand un-derstand why Higgins doesn't like you It isn't charity. People I help have to work for what they get. Is that clear?" It wasn't, but I nodded. She went on: "I'm working, with Mr. Ferriter,. on a genealogy of the Paget family. You've heard of the Pagets." "Sorry," I said and hoped my denial de-nial would irk her. Instead she grinned and for an instant it seemed time had worn her old face so thin that a valiant spirit shone through the mask. "Weren't you lucky," said Miss Agatha, "to have been raised in Nebraska? Ne-braska? If you'll stop being suspicious, suspi-cious, I've something to tell to you." She finished her drink. Her eyes were bright and mocking. "Paget, David, isn't just a family name. It's a religion a very exclusive, exclu-sive, comfortable religion. The only reason there wasn't a Paget on the Mayflower is that the ship had no royal suite. There aren't any D. A. R.'s or Sons of the Revolution among the Pagets. You see, the patriots pa-triots were rather a mixed lot. I was raised in the fear of Pagetry and I'm doing a book about my forebears fore-bears by way of reprisal. I need a man, preferably one who never heard of the Pagets, who can take what the heliotrope Mr. Ferriter digs up and write it. He can't or he's afraid to." "A genealogy is just a catalogue," I told her. "You won't need a writer." writ-er." "Wrong all the way," she told me briskly. "That's just what I do need. There's never been a genealogy genealo-gy like this one. I'm prying the highly polished veneer off Pagetry. I'm going to tell the story of a family fam-ily that is full of cowards and scoundrels scoun-drels and hypocrites and cheats and sluggards like your family, like all families. I'm going to give as much space to my ancestors' frailties as to their virtues. It'll be a big book." Again she gave that robust chuckle. chuck-le. I asked, defensively, for I felt her sweeping me along: "Who'll dare to publish it?" "I will," she said, and her teeth bit through an invisible thread. "One copy for each of the Pagets. Most of them are too far gone for the truth to reach them, but I want my children to know all about Pagetry before they're much older. They aren't really my children, though raised them. My brother and sister-in-law died when Grosvenor was thirteen and AUegra ten. "Grove is working in a bond house for all he's worth which is about half of what he gets. AUegra is too pretty to have brains, yet she has them. I want my book to keep them from going Paget Every family should have a factual account of its ancestors, their weaknesses and foibles foi-bles and misdemeanors and felonies. The Pagets will be the first to get it. I don't want my youngsters to get the family delusion that just being a Paget is all that should be expected of anyone." (TO BE COTlVED) CHAPTER IH Continued "It wasn't completed," Shannon replied. "If it had been we'd have been here an hour sooner. He was calling Police Headquarters when he was killed." He plumped into his chair as though the weight of jumbled facts had pushed him over. "From three-thirty on, there was someone in the hall all the while?" "I think so. I left Higgins there when I brought Miss Paget upstairs. Hoyt was there when I went' down again." "And neither of them saw anyone go out," he snarled like the victim of a practical joke. "And you didn't?" "No." He jumped up and began to walk the room, his jaw hard. Miss Agatha, Aga-tha, leaning forward in her chair, watched him with the interest of a spectator at play. "Could anyone leave without passing pass-ing through the foyer?" Shannon threw at me. "There's the fire escape," I suggested, sug-gested, "or the dumb-waiter." "Thanks," he said savagely. "The fire escape hasn't been used In months. I happened to think of that. And the dumb-waiter rope broke this morning and that tub of lard Higgins Hig-gins hasn't fixed it yet. Yet somebody some-body stabbed that guy next door and got away. How?" "Stabbed him with what?" I asked and only made him angrier. "If I knew," he squalled, "I'd not be suffering here. A knife, you goof. A knife that was in this." He darted to the desk and held a leather sheath, blackened by long wear, up before me. "Ever see that before?" he demanded de-manded and, scarcely waiting for my denial, plunged on. "We found this under Blackbeard's armpit empty. Where's the knife? Gone with the murderer." The hands he ran so frantically through his reddish gray hair seemed at last to control his mind. He asked me suddenly: "Higgins had a key to that flat?" "Yes." "Anyone else beside these Ferriters?" Ferri-ters?" "I don't think so." "Higgins says not," he growled. "Higgins goes in and messes up that phone receiver with his big paws until there's not a clear fingerprint on it. Wait a minute." His eyes sparkled. "Where was Higgins when you took that call?" I saw Miss Agatha shift a little in her chair, start to speak and check herself. I said: "Upstairs on the elevator." "Doing what?" I kept all feeling out of my voice. "He said he was fixing the water tank on the roof." "You can go," Shannon decided. "Jake, bring that big beef back here." Miss Agatha said mildly as I rose: "Timothy was on the fourth floor I'm certain, Captain." "Sure he was," he' agreed. "I just want to see if anyone saw him there." He was pacing the floor again and the old lady was smiling oddly as Jake led me out. I felt Miss Agatha would confide in Shannon when I was gone. Hoyt was on the elevator. He looked at me hard but said nothing while Jake took me downstairs. Higgins Hig-gins was arguing with a half-dozen men in the foyer and getting nowhere. no-where. I could tell they were reporters re-porters and the sight of them made me homesick. Higgins looked worse than I felt when Jake led him back to the car. His face was gray and his eyes made me think of a steer in a slaughterhouse chute. I waited by the elevator shaft till Hoyt came down again. With him was a policeman po-liceman who shooed the reporters off the settees and but of the door. I followed Eddie over to the switchboard. switch-board. "You don't think," I asked and the words sounded foolish, "that Higgins Hig-gins is tied up in this thing?" "Be your age," Hoyt advised me and then grinned. "The big boy looks sick, don't he?" "That's what made me wonder. "Look," Eddie muttered. "You know that smart little trick on the fourth floor Mrs. Arnold's maid? Well Mrs. Arnold's out this afternoon' after-noon' and Mrs. Higgins is away till tomorrow. And two and two makes" "Ah-hah!" I said. "Right," Hoyt agreed. "Higgins has got an alibi, all right, but I think they'll have to tear it out of him. That's why he looks so sick." "Well," I told him, "an alibi is n a;ibi " "I want my book to keep them from going Paget." contented and so much else I was not, that the anger Higgins had kindled kin-dled blazed up in me. I didn't even try to keep my voice down. "You two-timing tomcat," I told him. "Go ahead and kick me out and we'll see who lands in the gutter gut-ter first. Now get this, I never knew where you'd been this afternoon after-noon till I came down here. Now that I'm wise that leaves just one in the house who isn't Mrs. Higgins!" Hig-gins!" "Will you be still?" he asked in a hushed voice, and I knew from his eyes he was going to hit me. "Go ahead," I invited. "There's plenty of reporters outside. It'll make a good story. The tabloids will have pictures, too. One of you in Wilson's uniform, maybe." I waited. He stood still and at last opened his mouth. I never found out what he was going to say for Fineman, at the switchboard, called: "Hey, Mallory. You're wanted up in Three A right away." "Don't bother to pack for me," I told Higgins. "I'll do it myself when I come down." Boone, on the elevator, kept glancing glanc-ing at me as he took me up. Maybe I looked as sick as I felt. Anger is worse than liquor on an empty stomach. They had closed the door of the Ferriter flat but there still was movement inside. I rang the Paget bell. The girl in uniform I'd seen in the hall while Miss Ferriter was screaming let me in. She led me down the hall and stood aside at an open door. I started to enter but astonishment stopped me. I could only stand on the threshold and stare without belief. CHAPTER IV Miss Agatha Paget laid a red ten on a black jack. A tall glass stood beside the cards on her table. A cigarette dangled from her lips. Through its smoke her eyes shone bright as the diamond pin at the throat of her black silk gown. She should have been knitting instead in-stead of playing Canfield. The drink, the cards and the tobacco seemed as out of place as a cuspidor in church. She blew a cloud from her nose, ground out the cigarette on a tray, and nodded toward a chair. "Come in, David," she said. "Sit down." I obeyed. She held a card above the layout, placed it and then looked square at me. "If til at is an air of affronted piety," pi-ety," she told me, "I can get along |