Chapter VI

Ruth Porges could not have explained, even to herself, why the scream

had unnerved her so. Like the others, she'd been unable to identify the

voice. But she did have a faint, will-of-the-wisp kind of suspicion

that it was Lynn Prentiss who had cried out in shock and horror. It

hadn't sounded like Susan's voice at the desk or the voice of Joyce

Sanderson from the linotype room.

And somehow, all morning, she's been expecting something alarming

to happen. She couldn't have explained that either. It was just

that--well, things were coming to a head as far as Lathrup was

concerned. She was reaching the saturation point in arousing bitter

anger and adding fuel to long-standing grievances.

Ruth Porges had only to close her eyes to bring it all back. She'd

thought that what had happened had been filed securely away in her

mind; was just a collapsed file covered with dust, the pages so yellow

and brittle they'd crumble if she thumbed through them again.

But now she knew better. It wasn't that old a file. It had all happened

less than ten months ago, and it had left a raw red wound in her mind.

It could be put in very simple terms--no file was really needed. It

would have sounded like a musical comedy refrain if it hadn't been so

cruelly tragic. Over and over, echoing still.

_She stole my man._ Went right after him, with no scruples and no holds

barred. And when she discovered that he wasn't too accomplished a

lover--not too good in bed, why not say it?--she cast him aside like an

old shoe.

Ruth Porges leaned back and shut her eyes and let the memories come

flooding back.

* * * * *

He was wearing a gray trench coat and his hair was short-cropped, and

he looked handsome and distinguished enough to make her think of Paris

in the spring and she was sitting alone at a table in a Left Bank cafe,

and there he was coming toward her, smiling his handsome, slightly

crooked smile and it was just three years after the end of World War II.

But of course it hadn't been like that at all. She'd met him at a

party in the Village and he'd been a writer of a sort and a painter of

a sort and knew quite a few important people in the musical world. As

far as she knew he hadn't sold a single story or article to a magazine

and he certainly wasn't wealthy, but he always seemed to have enough

money to take a girl out for the evening and spend perhaps fifteen or

twenty dollars and he never tried to economize by suggesting they go to

little Italian restaurants where you could get red wine by the bottle

and the bill never exceeded three or four dollars.

No lavish spender, no Rainbow Room sort of escort, but her own salary

was large enough to enable her to go to the Stork Club occasionally

in the company of girl friends with escorts to spare, so she didn't

begrudge him a fairly modest evening's entertainment when he seemed to

like her so much.

And he did like her--no question about that. Roger Bendiner, the only

man who'd ever really thought of her, entirely and all the time, as a

woman who had so much ... so very much ... to give to a man.

"So you want me to meet your boss?" he said. "That's quite amusing,

you know. A reversal of the usual sort of thing. A harassed husband

comes home to a wife who's a little on the uncooperative side and says:

'Darling, I'm bringing the boss home for dinner. Try to build me up

instead of tearing me down, just for this one evening, and make the

meal a little outstanding, eh?'

"But this way it's much simpler. Your boss is a woman and I just have

to charm her a little. All you have to worry about is whether or not I

have enough charm. But since we're not married yet I'll have an ace to

start with. Every executive-type woman is interested in an unmarried

man, no matter how much he may be lacking in the social graces and even

if he has a bashed in nose."

"You haven't a bashed in nose and you're not lacking in the social

graces," she reminded him, smiling a little.

"Well, that's a matter of opinion," he said. "Of course you're right

about my nose. But my ears are much too large and only Clark Gable

could get away with ears this size and still--well, you know what I

mean."

"I think you're just as handsome," she said.

The evening went so well at first that any kind of resentment directed

toward Lathrup would have seemed to her ungracious and lacking in

common sense. She wasn't quite sure why she'd invited Lathrup to meet

Roger; was unable to explain it later to her own satisfaction and would

have been at a complete loss to explain it to anyone else.

The impulse hadn't been prompted by a desire to impress Lathrup with

her capacity to attract and hold a handsome man or to ingratiate

herself with the woman in any way. She'd begun to dislike Lathrup a

little even then, along with every other member of the editorial staff.

Probably she'd done it to impress Roger. Not that he'd needed to be

impressed in that way, but to a woman deeply in love and not quite

able to accept the miracle at face value a desire to shine, to seem

exceptional in all respects can become almost a compulsion. And Lathrup

_was_ decorative, an exceptional woman in so many different ways that

it was a feather in Ruth Porges' cap to claim her as a close friend

as well as her employer. Simply to parade her before Roger in that

capacity was so irresistible a temptation that she had succumbed to it

with no particular misgivings, since it had never even occurred to her

that Roger could transfer his adoration from her to another woman.

The transference had taken place so gradually that at first she had

remained completely unaware of it. Even when she saw them together on

the dance floor, and Roger was holding Lathrup a little more tightly

and intimately than most of the other men were holding their partners

and their cheeks seemed to remain in contact for a surprisingly long

time--seemed, in fact, almost never to separate--she did not become in

any way alarmed.

Annoyed, yes. She _was_ a little annoyed, because even during a lull in

the music they remained so completely absorbed in each other that they

did not once glance in her direction.

But she thought nothing of it, really, and when they returned to the

table and sat down and kept looking at each other, completely ignoring

her, it was a full ten or fifteen minutes before her color began to

rise a little and a look of concern crept into her eyes.

She wasn't angry at Roger even then ... or with Lathrup. She put their

behavior down to a momentary infatuation brought on by Roger's five

Manhattans, and Lathrup's three Old Fashioneds, an infatuation which

would evaporate like dew in bright sunlight the instant the next dance

number began and she and Roger would get out on the floor together, and

she'd mold her body to his and he'd hold her more tightly than he'd

have dared to hold Lathrup, and their lips would come together at least

once in the course of the dance in a long and passionate kiss.

The lights were dim; no one would see. It would not cause a scandal.

It would be in bad taste and unacceptable on such a dance floor in the

presence of patrons who would never think of going so far, however much

they might want to do so, and if in a brighter light it might even have

brought a tap on the shoulder from an irate head waiter.

But she'd do it anyway ... she'd prove to Lathrup that she was a woman

who was not afraid to dance with her man like a hellion on a Village

cellar dance floor, like a real gone Beat nineteen years of age with

a rose pinned in her hair and an upthrust of breasts that could make

the most distinguished of midtown, gray-templed, capital-gains league

patrons feel as primitive as a Dawn Man.

There were swanky night clubs where it was winked at and took place all

the time, of course--the danse primeval. But this just didn't happen to

be that kind of night club. She'd make it that kind, however--for Roger

and herself alone. And if anyone saw or objected or tried to interfere

she'd really show them what a hellion she could be. If the protests

really angered her--she'd take off her clothes.

She suddenly realized that she'd allowed herself to become more drunk

that she'd ever imagine she could be. She'd had five Manhattans too,

and the last one she hadn't sipped. She downed it in a gulp, her eyes

on Roger's face.

Roger had apparently forgotten that there was more than one woman

seated at the table with him. And that woman wasn't herself. He was

looking at Lathrup now in a way that made her turn away with a half-sob

of shock. The pure animal flamed in his eyes. He was undressing her

with his eyes and she was smiling back at him, apparently not caring

in the least, giving him the kind of encouragement that could only be

characterized as lascivious, the look of a wanton lost to all shame.

Ladylike as well ... that was the most shocking, revolting,

unbelievable part of it.

Ruth Porges had an impulse to get up, lean across the table and slap

Lathrup's face.

In her present state of intoxication it would not have been a ladylike

slap. She was quite sure of that. She'd lose her job, of course, along

with the man she'd already lost--her satyr-lover whom she'd allowed

herself to idealize. And to think that he'd held her in his arms, and

she'd yielded her virginal body to him, surrendering utterly to his

fiercely insistent, madly passionate caresses. A man incapable of

loyalty, a man consumed by the kind of gross sensuality that degraded a

woman by its complete lack of respect for her as an individual.

If he could look at Lathrup that way, at her thighs and bourgeoning

breasts--the more bourgeoning because of the wanton way she'd

constricted their swelling roundness--and her hair and lips and

eyes ... he could look at any woman that way, feel the same way about

any woman attractive enough to catch his eye and even some who were

the opposite of attractive, but who had something about them that

stirred men of primitive instincts to a frenzy of desire. The more

coarse and slatternly the woman the more some men seemed to be stirred.

Not that Lathrup was coarse and slatternly--just the opposite. And

Roger was the kind of man who would be repelled by a real slut. She

gave him that much credit. He was nothing if not fastidious, he would

seek to pluck only the unique and delicate blooms that grew very high

up, on trees of rare growth arching above white marble terraces, their

branches stirred by breezes from the blue Mediterranean, or the New

York equivalent of such blooms.

What kind of woman was Lathrup anyway? A hard, executive-type woman

two-thirds of the time, a woman some people might wonder about and even

just possibly think a lesbian--although there was little about her to

suggest that--and then, _all woman_, so completely feminine that she

could bring a man to his knees before her with a single provocative

glance.

How could she hope to compete with a woman like that? And she no longer

wanted to, because Roger was clearly unworthy of her, not the kind of

man she'd thought him, not the eternally devoted lover who had found

in her alone something special that he had been searching for all his

life, just as she had been searching....

She stiffened suddenly, an intolerable anguish arising in her and

making it difficult for her to breathe. Roger had arisen from the table

again and was moving out onto the dance floor with Lathrup held firmly

in his embrace. The orchestra was playing a waltz now and the tempo of

the music was slow and sensuous and Lathrup had abandoned all pretense

of reserve.

The way their bodies blended, seemed almost to melt together, was more

outrageous than the Village cellar wildness she had pictured to herself

a moment before and which she would not have hesitated to engage in

if she'd felt that Roger had wanted to feel that close to her in a

defiantly intimate way.

This was a more outrageous intimacy, because it was unmistakably the

clinging embrace of two lovers in a darkened room, behind the privacy

of a securely locked door.

Neither of them seemed to care that the dance floor wasn't quite that

dimly lit and that their completely shameless amorousness would be

observed by everyone on the floor. And then she saw that they were

kissing each other just as shamelessly, that their lips were meeting

and clinging, and that one of the kisses seemed to go on and on.

She had opened her lips and....

Oh, dear God, how could she endure watching them, knowing what such

a kiss could mean, how it could burn and scorch and drive a man and

woman deeply, truly in love, to the kind of madness that wasn't in the

least profane when it was sanctified by that kind of love. But when it

wasn't--

How she ever lived through the rest of the evening without becoming

hysterical and screaming accusations at both of them she had never been

able to explain or analyze in a rational way to her own satisfaction

and seal away in the mental file that would become, from time to time,

a raw, profusely bleeding wound again.

Perhaps the salve which Roger had applied to the wound toward the end

of the evening had helped a little. He'd begun to pour it on at the

end of the second dance, chiefly by noticing her again and pressing

her hand warmly, and when they arose to leave he was all courtesy, all

consideration again.

He'd put Lathrup into a taxi at her own request and they'd gone home

together. Not to her home, but to Roger's apartment. But for those

three weeks Roger's apartment had become more of a home to her than the

two-room, rent-controlled apartment she'd occupied for ten years on the

northern fringe of the Village.

As the taxi shot westward and then turned south toward the Chelsea

section--the night club was on Fifty-Second Street just east of

Broadway--his arm went around her and he pressed her very tightly to

him.

"Your boss is quite a woman, Honeybunch," he said. "But she can't hold

a candle to you. All right, she's a top-drawer beauty, distinctly

on the special side. There are a lot of men who would find her

irresistible, but not me. No matter how much I found myself attracted

to her it wouldn't ... well, flower into an immediate interest, the

kind of interest that doesn't quite make you know whether you're coming

or going."

She wasn't deceived or mollified, but some instinct of caution deep in

her mind prevented her from giving too free a rein to her anger.

"Your interest in her seemed immediate enough to me," she said. "I

happened to notice the way you were dancing."

He gave her waist an even tighter squeeze. "Good grief--you can hardly

blame me for going overboard just a little. How often does a guy like

me get to dance with a lady in sables?"

"She never wears sables--or mink either. It just happens to be an

eccentricity of hers. I wish to hell you'd shut up and not try to be

amusing."

"Okay, let's not have an argument about it. We had fun, didn't we? It

was a good evening."

"Not to me, it wasn't."

"But why, for Pete's sake? Tell me why? What did I do, that was so

unusual? Do you mind if I tell you something? Please don't get on a

high horse, don't lose your temper--"

"I've already lost it. It's so far lost I'll probably never get it back

again."

"All right, but just listen ... please. You're a wonderful person. But

you have so low a boiling point at times that you're your own worst

enemy. You cut off your nose to spite your face. I do it, too ... often

enough. Maybe that's why we get along so well together."

"Do we? Right now I'd say we were more like a tiger and a lion in a

cage together."

"All right. A tiger and a lion can get along very well together, if

their temperaments coincide. They can even mate and give birth to a

_tigron_. There's one at the Bronx Zoo. In fact--"

"Now you're trying to be amusing again. You'd better be damned serious,

because I was never more serious in my life ... about what happened on

that dance floor. I'm going to say something that will shock you. You

think I'm a prude. You've said so often enough, despite the fact that

I've never behaved like one with you in bed, have I? _Have I?_"

His eyes became suddenly serious. "No, darling--of course not. And if I

ever called you a prude I'm sorry. That was only when I first met you

and you did seem--"

"A scared virgin? All right, maybe I was. You wouldn't understand,

probably, if I told you what torments I went through before I met you;

what a high, terrible price I had to pay for feeling that way, for

being like that. Most people think it amusing."

"I never did. I thought it tragic but I loved you all the more because

of it."

"You felt sorry for me, did you? Pitied me?"

"I didn't say that. Do we have to talk about it now? Do you want to

spoil the rest of the night?"

"What rest of the night? Do you think after what happened this evening

there's going to be any more fun in bed for us?"

"Be quiet, will you? Drop it. I know what it cost you to say that.

You're not the kind of woman who thinks in those terms. What has

happened between us meant something to me. Why can't you believe it?"

"Oh, yes--it probably did mean something. Laying a round-heels would

mean something to even a young hoodlum with about as much sensitivity

as a chimpanzee. It's important to the male. I've been told that."

He said nothing in reply, but he withdrew his arm from her waist, and

sat very straight and still at her side. She could imagine what he

was thinking. He was afraid of angering her further, of saying the

wrong thing. What _could_ he say, really? There were no right words,

everything he told her would be a lie.

She'd seen the way he'd kissed Lathrup on the dance floor and the

burning outrage, the shame she'd felt, after all she'd meant to him--or

had allowed herself to think she'd meant to him--couldn't be driven

from her mind by anything he might say.

She looked down at her legs. She had fine legs, shapely legs, and she

had a good body too, a damned good body, but all that she had been

able to do was unleash a savage lust in him and now that lust had been

turned elsewhere.

If she'd known the truth about him at the beginning she wouldn't have

allowed him to touch her. She'd have--yes, scratched his eyes out. She

felt degraded, soiled, and the band of despair and bitter anger she'd

felt on leaving the night club continued to tighten about her heart.

She'd ask to be taken home. She'd demand that he tell the driver to

continue on to the Village. If he thought for one moment she'd go to

his apartment now and spend the rest of the night with him he was a

fool as well as an amorous opportunist with nothing but concealed evil

in his soul.

Concealed? That was good. He hadn't made any attempt to conceal it

on the dance floor, hadn't cared how much he hurt her or made her

feel ignored, rejected, degraded. And he had dared to call it a good

evening, had dared to pretend that she hadn't noticed, or would be

broad-minded enough to dismiss what he'd done as meaningless, just a

light flirtation that could be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.

For all his brazen disloyalty and the progress he'd made with Lathrup

in one short hour he didn't know enough about how a sensitive,

completely devoted woman would feel about such behavior to make him

anything but a clod at heart, a miserable excuse for a lover whom no

woman in her right mind would look at twice.

What was wrong with Lathrup? Couldn't she see what kind of man he was?

Hadn't she even suspected the truth about him? If she'd taken him away

from a completely unattractive woman, some ugly-looking strumpet or a

vicious nag, it would have been easy enough to find excuses for him and

to think of him as romantic and misunderstood. But couldn't she see

that he was a switch artist, and a very clumsy one at that, drawn to a

new face like a moth to a flame?

The more she thought about it the more she became choked with fury. She

found herself unable to say a word, even when the cab turned west on

Thirty-fourth Street and continued on toward his apartment.

He spoke again then, and there was a kind of pleading tenderness in his

voice.

"Let's pretend it didn't happen," he said. "I was pretty tight, I

guess. And I swear to you I didn't make a deliberate play for her.

Believe me, I didn't. That dance production was her idea--"

She turned on him, her eyes blazing. "What a stupid, conceited thing

to say! Production is good. It certainly was that. If you'd been

dancing naked together you couldn't have made more of a spectacle of

yourselves."

"She's a very attractive woman and I'm only human, darling. Sometimes

you seem to forget that."

"That's the oldest male excuse in the world. But just let a woman use

it--and see how far she gets."

"Oh, I don't know. Lots of women with a great deal of integrity,

completely devoted wives, let themselves go a little when they're

dancing with exceptionally good-looking guys, and their husbands don't

blacken their eyes or threaten to divorce them. Not if they're mature

and realistic enough to--"

"Shut up, will you? I've heard enough. I'm not married to you, remember

that."

"I don't see what that has to do with it, either way. I'm just trying

to be logical, that's all. I'm not stupid enough to believe that only

men are capable of thinking logically and realistically, as so many

people claim. Women have a logic of their own. I'll concede that. But

it's on a different plane entirely."

"Are you through? I'd think you were just talking to hear yourself

talk, if I couldn't read your mind like a book. You're trying to cover

up. You think if you pile up enough important-sounding excuses you'll

be able to get around me again."

"Will you listen to me--"

"I'm through listening. I'm not going home with you and that's final.

Tell the driver to turn south when we get to Eighth Avenue."

"Why? It doesn't make sense. You know I love you."

"I'll just bet."

How she ever allowed herself to be persuaded she never quite knew.

She no longer felt any real warmth toward him. She was quite sure,

in fact, that she hated him now ... loathed and despised him. But

something deep in her nature urged her to have it out with him, to come

to a complete showdown in the apartment they'd shared together, to let

him know, in an unmistakable way, with gestures as well as words, that

they were at the parting of the ways.

They'd kept their voices low, but she was by no means sure that the

driver hadn't overheard some of their conversation and the thought

brought a hot flush to her cheeks, made her even angrier than she had

been. What right had he to expose her to such an indignity, when he

knew how sensitive she was about discussing private matters in public?

He'd raised his voice at times, just a little, and she was sure that

though they had spoken in whispers most of the time the driver had

been all ears and was doubtless gloating over another choice tidbit of

Manhattan falling-out-between-lovers.

He'd talked about Lathrup, mentioned her by name, and probably nine

taxi drivers out of ten knew that the Eaton-Lathrup publications were a

big-time magazine group and that Lathrup herself was often mentioned by

Winchell. She'd been on TV often enough--and so had Ruth Porges.

"_I picked up a couple of real dog-and-cat fighting celebrities last

night. Brother! It happens about three times a night, when you're

cruising around Fifty-Second. They don't care what they say--get a big

kick out of airing their dirty linen when they know you can't help

overhearing what they're saying. Yap, yap, yap. The guy apologizing,

making excuses and the dame ready to stand off and lam him one. They

might as well stand in Times Square with a megaphone--_"

But the driver seemed courteous enough when the cab drew in to the

curb in front of Roger's apartment-house residence, perhaps because

Roger tossed him two dollars and told him to keep the change, but more

probably because he was a very young, pleasant-faced lad who looked as

innocent as a new-shorn lamb.

Roger had two cocktails with cherries aswim in them standing on a tray

five minutes after he'd turned the key in the door of his apartment. He

was very good at that and even now, despite her anger, she admired that

aspect of his woman-pleasing competence.

"Why don't you take off your dress and be comfortable, darling," he

said. "We're not exactly strangers, you know."

She shook her head. "You're entitled to believe what you wish. But we

started being strangers about two hours ago. Right now I feel as if I

knew absolutely nothing about you--beyond the fact that when you meet

an attractive woman for the first time she's tight in your arms a half

hour later. You don't believe in letting a single blade of grass grow

under your feet, do you?"

"Now look--" he protested. "Do you have to be _quite_ that touchy?

I'll go further than I did. It was partly my fault. You could say, I

suppose, that I put up no resistance, was carried away by the liquor,

the soft lights, the music. And I was plenty pie-eyed. It usually takes

a dozen Manhattans to make me as tight as I was a few hours ago. Too

much acid in the system or something like that. It happens sometimes."

"It's worn off now ... is that it? So you've got a perfect excuse and

any other woman would understand and fall into your arms and beg to be

forgiven for her lack of understanding."

"No, you've a right to be a little burned up. But do you have to work

over it the way you're doing, build it up into something criminal?

You'd think I'd tried to rape her or something."

"You almost did. I was afraid for a moment we'd be asked to leave ...

and not too politely."

"You're exaggerating a hell of a lot and I'm sure you know it."

"Nothing of the kind. The way you were dancing wouldn't have been

tolerated in half the dives in the Village. I mean the real dives--not

the kind that are reserved for tourists."

"You know all about them, I suppose. Have you been to them often?"

"I've never stepped inside one. But I wasn't born yesterday. I know

what goes on in such places."

"Look, we're getting nowhere. Will you believe me and listen? If I met

her tomorrow on the street I'd just say hello, and smile and tip my hat

and pass on. I swear it."

"I can just picture it. She'd smile back, and the way she smiles when

she knows what she wants and will have no trouble getting it--doesn't

require any effort on her part. It just comes naturally. And going home

with her would come naturally to you, too.

"She has a beautiful place. Have you seen it? Of course you haven't ...

because you met her tonight for the first time. So perhaps I'd better

describe it for you. You go up in a private elevator, and you step out

and there you are--in a real golden Rembrandt setting. The lighting is

the newest Paris importation, and there are a lot of abstract paintings

on the walls of her bedroom, you know, all little colored squares in

different colors that mean absolutely nothing but only hang on the

walls of the major league museums because the smaller museums can't

afford them.

"'I'll be back in a minute,' she'll say, and away she'll go, tripping

lightly, into the bathroom--all black onyx with gold fixtures--and

when she comes out you'll be sitting with a cocktail glass in your

hand--she'll have invited you to mix your own, with just the right

shade of icing, at a private bar that will knock your eyes out--and

when you see what she's wearing, or isn't wearing, you'll forget where

you are and think you're in a kind of glorified cathouse."

She became a little frightened when she saw the way Roger was looking

at her and lowered her eyes, wishing she'd kept silent. Simply had it

out with him, the way she'd intended and walked out of the apartment

for the last time, slamming the door behind her.

Why had she ranted on so recklessly? She'd talked like a shrew driven

half out of her mind by jealousy, and that had been a mistake. It was

giving him too much ammunition, giving him the kind of satisfaction he

wasn't entitled to. Angering him at the same time, making him look at

her in a strange way, a way new to her, as if the suggestive picture

she'd painted for him of a totally shameless Lathrup had aroused in him

instincts that were base and dangerous. Something about the look not

only scared her, it caused her to pale a little and move further away

from him.

Then her own anger came sweeping back and she said the worst possible

thing, and could have bitten her tongue out the instant it left her

lips. "Don't look so shocked, little man. I've a feeling it wouldn't

take much finesse on the part of any woman to seduce you."

It was cruelly insulting for two reasons, but she realized that too

late. He wasn't a little man. He was a very big man and completely sure

of himself as far as his masculinity was concerned. And no man likes to

think that it is the woman who is doing the seducing. It was almost as

bad as those ridiculous cases you read about in the newspapers, where a

man goes into court and claims he's been taken advantage of by a woman

in a physical way, his high-minded morality impaired. A male virgin,

backed into a corner by an Amazon determined to rape him.

She remembered one case in particular--it flashed across her mind in

that instant of wild folly completely unbidden. Three young hoodlum

girls had captured a man at the point of a gun, taken him for an auto

ride and forced him to make love to them. What she'd just said was

like telling Roger that, in circumstances like that, he wouldn't have

been more than eager to oblige, or found the experience less than

exhilarating.

"I asked you to take off your dress and get comfortable," Roger said,

still looking at her in that frightening way. "What's got into you,

anyway? What makes you think that Helen Lathrup would be so much more

attractive to me than you are? Right at this moment I'll waive the

soft lighting and the abstract paintings and even the gold-and-onyx

bathroom. I'm just a plain guy with plain tastes, anyway. In room

decorations, I mean. I like my women to be a little on the special

side, decorative and all that. I'm speaking in the plural, because you

insist on it so strongly, and seem to feel that I should have a lot of

women chasing after me. You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you

I've had only three serious affairs in my life and one of them ended in

divorce and the two I didn't marry I would have married under ordinary

circumstances, but death can move in fast sometimes and make even

marriage impossible.

"No--I didn't poison them. I'm not a bluebeard, whatever else you may

think me. One died in my arms and it kills me even now to think about

it and I'll probably never get over it. Died in my arms with the blood

running out of her mouth, in a hospital with an incurable disease and

she was glad that I could be there. There was one parting, years later,

on completely friendly terms, with a girl who didn't think I'd make too

good a husband, because we just happened to be temperamentally poles

apart in our thinking. And that's the whole of it--until I met you."

Ordinarily what he'd said would have moved her, and completely changed

the way she felt. Banished her fear even, all of it, made her willing

to forgive him. But she was beyond herself with anger still, too

confused to think clearly.

"I'm going to leave you," she said. "This is the end. I'm going right

out of here now and I'm not coming back."

"Sit down!" he said, his voice suddenly harsher than she'd ever known

it to be. "You love me and you know it. You're just being a stubborn

little fool. Sit down and relax. And drink this cocktail. It will do

you good."

"No," she said. "I'm leaving right now."

What he did then was totally unexpected, she wouldn't have thought him

capable of it.

He stepped forward, grasped the top of her dress and ripped it all

the way down her back to her waist. Then he half-swung her about and

planted a kiss in the middle of her back, so fierce a kiss that it

bruised her flesh, causing her to cry out in protest.

He held her firmly and continued to kiss the bare flesh of her

shoulders and back, and then he ripped more of the dress away, and

buried his face between her breasts, a strange, stricken, almost

sobbing sound coming from his throat, as if even in that moment of

primitive love-making he was begging her to relent a little, to forgive

him and be tender, to run her fingers through his hair, as she had so

often done in the past.

But she was too frightened to do anything but struggle violently to

free herself. Always in the past he had made love impetuously, his

great strength sometimes causing him to hurt her a little. But never

had his ardor gotten out of control and his hands moved over her

trembling body in quite so demanding a way. He was pressing her to him

so fiercely she felt half-smothered, his fingers bruising her thighs,

her buttocks, refusing to relinquish their grip.

She feared only his capacity for self-control, not that he would be

deliberately cruel or brutally force her to submit to him against her

will. But she did not know how far he could hold in check his desperate

need to make this renewal of their intimacy a kind of masculine triumph

so complete and overwhelming that it would bring them closer than they

had ever been before and put an end to all future uncertainty. And in

so doing, he might lose all awareness of his own strength and inflict

an irreparable injury upon her.

Her emotions were mixed, strange, verging on utter panic in that awful

moment of smothering proximity, when his body seemed like a rod of

steel bruising her from knee to shoulder and threatening to turn into

a steel trap with cruel jaws which might snap shut at any moment,

shattering the very bones of her body.

She began to kick and moan, to beat with her fists on his shoulders.

And then she was screaming at him, demanding that he release her,

increasing with an energy she hardly knew that she possessed the frenzy

of her twistings and turnings.

How she ever managed to reach down and get a firm grip on her right

slipper and wrench it off she never quite knew. Only that she had the

slipper in her hand suddenly and was beating him on the face with it,

hitting him on the side of his face with the high heel as hard as she

could, and then across his forehead and not even stopping when he cried

out and slapped her on the face with the flat of his hand.

She struck at him again and again, not caring if she hurt him severely,

because he was still refusing to release her and the slap had turned

her into a wild woman. Some instinct, some lingering trace of sanity or

compassion, prevented her from striking him across the eyes. But she

didn't stop hitting him even when she saw a bright splotch of blood

leap out on his right temple.

When the pressure of his arms fell away and went staggering back from

her she tossed the slipper into a corner of the room, snatched up the

cocktail from the center table--he'd set the tray down before seizing

hold of her--and emptied the glass in his face.

The liquor splashed across the right side of his face, wetting his

hair and running down his cheek, dissolving the blood. It drenched

both lapels of his dinner jacket and gave him an almost clownish look,

for his face remained faintly red-streaked, and he kept swaying for a

moment, with a sickly grimace on his face.

He closed his eyes and blinked twice furiously and when he opened them

again the grimace was gone. Hot anger flamed in his eyes instead. But

he didn't advance upon her and slap her again. He simply stood very

still, glaring at her.

"All right," he said. "Maybe you'd better go. I was a fool to think

I could reach you in any way. What did you think I was going to

do--ravish you? Sure, sure, I know. I was a little rough. But I'm not

an eighteen-year-old kid. I'm thirty-four and when two people are in

love--or are supposed to have been in love and one of the partners

still thinks along those lines, and hasn't forgotten the other

times when the big, important part has been welcomed and has meant

something--you let yourself get dizzy with longing and you don't think

you'll be mistaken for the kind of brute no woman would trust herself

alone with in a hotel lobby when the doorman's back is turned. Not for

more than ten or twelve seconds anyway."

"You shouldn't have torn my clothes off," she said, swaying a little

herself now, feeling sick inside.

"Oh, so I tore your clothes off. When will you outgrow that

exaggerating tendency of yours? You asked me to tear your blouse off

once, remember? You said: 'If I was wearing a dress, darling, I'd ask

you to unzipper me down the back. But just this flimsy blouse--Darling,

will you think me shameless if I ask you to tear it off. I'd like to

hear the silk rip, under your big, strong hands.'"

A hot flush suffused her cheeks. "I never said anything of the sort.

You're putting the words of a wanton into my mouth."

"No, I sincerely don't believe so. You may not have used those exact

words, but it's practically what you did say. And I didn't think you a

wanton. I loved and respected you and--I still do, I guess. But it's

hopeless. I realize that now. There is a streak of prudery in you

you'll never overcome. And when you add jealousy to it--"

"Do you dare stand there and tell me you don't think I had a right to

feel jealous, after the way you carried on with Lathrup tonight?"

He shook his head. "No, you had every right. But I told you I was

sorry ... damned sorry and ashamed of myself ... and I meant every

word of it. Jealousy can be flattering to a man. Some men don't like

it at all, but others do. I always have. It's the surest sign there

is that a man means something to a woman, that she really loves him.

And real love is too precious a commodity for a man to take the

other attitude--that jealousy is an annoyance and justifies anger or

resentment. But there's one kind of jealousy no man likes, unless

there's something wrong with him--unless he's a masochist and enjoys

torturing himself. It's the kind that won't listen to reason, that

makes no allowances for the fact that a man can look at another

attractive woman without bringing the world toppling down about his

ears. Or even hold her a little too tightly on a dance floor and kiss

her once or twice."

"Once or twice would have been quite all right with me. But the kind of

kiss--"

"All right. We've had a violent quarrel and you've hit me as hard as

you could with the heel of a shoe--and that ought to even things up.

Now I'm afraid it's goodbye. I'll always love you, I guess, but I've

never been a glutton for punishment."

"You went very far tonight--with Lathrup and what you call slightly

rough love-making. You went a hell of a long way."

"All right, I won't deny it. So it's hopeless, isn't it? We both agree

about that."

"Yes," she said, speaking very slowly and carefully, emphasizing each

word, but her heart felt dead within her. "We both agree."

Even though Ruth Porges dressed severely enough in the office she had

always--unlike Lathrup--had a liking for mink. An entire coat she

could not have afforded, but her mink stole was a very capacious and

expensive one. She removed it from the back of the chair where she had

tossed it on entering Roger's apartment and draped it carefully over

her shoulders. It concealed almost all of the torn parts of her dress.

A mink stole in July was an affectation but tonight she was grateful

that she had succumbed to the impulse to appear at the nightclub with a

fur piece draped over her arm.

She stopped by the door for an instant, bending to put on her slipper.

She wondered if, on arriving home, she would find the tip caked with

dried blood. She hoped she wouldn't. It might have made her break down

and sob half the night. She'd have to remember to take a Miltown on

retiring. There was another tranquilizer she was thinking of switching

to. It was a little stronger, but quite harmless, really. As harmless

as the memory of Roger would be a year from now. Every woman was

entitled to at least one mistake in her choice of a man, and, having

started late, she was well ahead in that respect.

She walked out into the entrance hall without a backward glance, opened

the front door and shut it very firmly behind her. She was glad that

Roger had not offered to see her to the elevator or to accompany her to

the street and put her into a taxi. She had a great many things to be

grateful for.

And she wished--she wished that she were dead.

* * * * *

It was six days after Helen Lathrup had been found slain in her office

by Lynn Prentiss that Ruth Porges found the murder weapon. She stumbled

upon it by pure accident, in a place where the police hadn't looked and

would scarcely have thought of looking.

That she found it at all was due to one of those almost unbelievable

blind flukes which fiction writers prefer to shun, but which persist in

occurring, with surprising frequency, in real life.

She not only found the weapon--a black metal, long-barreled forty-eight

calibre pistol equipped with a silencer--but she knew immediately who

the owner of the gun was, precisely when and how it had come into

his possession, and hence, by inference, who the murderer had to be.

Unless, of course, someone who was not the murderer had loaned the gun

to someone else. And that seemed unlikely, since a man or woman owning

such a gun would know exactly how it had been used and would have gone

immediately to the police and cleared himself of all suspicion by

naming the borrower and explaining the circumstances under which he had

allowed himself to be made an unwitting dupe to the one crime in which

a taste for silence could lead straight to the electric chair.

Ruth Porges found the gun in a sixty-foot-deep excavation. In New York

City, there are many scenic beauties and intricate works of engineering

construction which can be said to be typical of the city as a whole.

Every city has them, of course, but some cities are famous for their

numerous bridges and reservoirs, or high stately office buildings,

or parks and playgrounds, or triple-laned speedways, or museums and

schools. New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago and San Francisco all shine in

that respect, along with perhaps fifty other cities from coast to coast.

New York is a city of bridges, of course, the most beautiful bridges

in the world, if you're willing to waive the Golden Gate. It is also a

city of equally beautiful parks and its cluster of tall buildings is

second to none. But New York, in recent years, and perhaps more than

any other city in the throes of a refurbishing and a reconstruction, of

a tearing down and a putting up, is a city of excavations.

Everywhere there are excavations, three or four blocks apart, deep and

yawning and carefully encircled by board fences to keep absent-minded

people from falling into them in the dark or even in broad daylight.

Some are one hundred percent walled in and others are open a little on

one side and are hence a menace to the unwary and should painstakingly

be avoided if one does not wish to die.

If one does not wish to die! But if the psychologists and the

psychiatrists are to be believed, there are a great many people in

every large city who wish to die. People on the run, thieves and

murderers, wanted by the law, hiding out from day to day in dismal

furnished rooms and never knowing when the blow will fall, a knock on

the door, a voice demanding: "Open up, Buster--or we'll start shooting

through the door!"

Death, blood, a corpse on a mortuary slab. Violence and the aftermath

of violence--a grieving widow, fatherless kids, for a cop could die

too, and the law and its defiers were tragically intertwined.

The only real difference was, a cop or any reasonably normal person

didn't want to die. They wanted to go on living as long as they could.

It was the guilt-ridden, the guilt-tormented, who wanted to die.

They didn't know it, but they did. To beat their brains out against

a stone wall was one kind of temptation to them--a gun, a knife, a

noose another. To hang themselves was perhaps best of all, to their

distorted way of thinking. But everything that invited death through a

lack of foresight, a careless misstep, a needless risk was attractive

to them--including a yawning excavation between two towering office

buildings on a city street, only four-fifths boarded up.

But when Ruth Porges passed the excavation on her way to work, at nine

in the morning, she wasn't thinking of the guilt-ridden alone and how

appealing a leap downward through a gap in the boarding might have

seemed to some of them. The idea crossed her mind, curiously enough,

but only for an instant and then her thoughts went off on another

track.

How easy it was to put a quick end to your life if you really wanted

to. You didn't even have to go to the top of a tall building and jump.

You just had to be a little careless in crossing the street between the

early morning traffic--any day in the week.

True, you might be horribly injured and suffer pain and it certainly

wasn't the best way. But it _was_ a way, and a very simple one. Not

that it would have appealed to her even if her morbid, half-despairing

mood of several months ago had failed to depart, leaving only the ugly

scar that she was determined to keep from opening again. Lathrup's

tragic death had shaken and sobered her, making her realize how

uncertain any kind of happiness was and that wanting to die was a very

bad thing, because you never knew when it would be your turn to find

happiness for a month or a year.

To keep from remembering the shocking, horrible morning in the office

six days before, with the police making it harder for everyone, driving

Susan to the verge of hysteria and making Lynn Prentiss bite her nails

and look so pale that she expected the girl would faint at any moment

and Eaton himself bristle like a porcupine and then look worried and a

little frightened, as if losing his business partner and most important

editorial wheel--big wheel Lathrup, who specialized in messing up the

lives of people of no particular importance to her--might cut heavily

into his two-hundred-thousand-a-year-income. How could he hope to

replace her, unless he applied to some very high-class employment

agency for some exceptionally brilliant call girl who could step right

in and take over where Lathrup had left off.

To keep her mind off that kind of bitterness she looked straight

down into the excavation where it wasn't boarded over and a wave of

dizziness swept over her. Sixty feet wasn't a long drop, but it gave

her much the same sensation as standing on the roof of a fairly tall

building and staring down into the street below would have done. She

had a fear of heights, but there was a fascination in it too.

She was still standing there, leaning a little forward, when she felt

the chain at her neck break and saw the locket go spinning downward,

a flash of gold in the bright morning sunlight. She saw it strike the

torn-up earth far below and rebound and come to rest in a deep crevice

a foot or two from the base of the incline.

She cursed softly under her breath, reproaching herself for letting

the locket dangle on so fragile a chain and then craning her neck

unthinkingly. She'd been intending to have a heavier chain put on the

locket for months. It was the most fragile kind of chain, as thin as

a thread almost, the links so tiny you could barely see them with the

naked eye.

And the locket was valuable, an heirloom. She couldn't afford to

wait until the construction gang arrived at nine-thirty or ten and

work started up in the pit. If she told one of the men or even the

construction boss that there was a solid gold locket just waiting to be

picked up down there her chances of ever seeing it again wouldn't be

too good. She might and she might not ... get it back. Honesty was an

intangible in a situation like that, and the locket meant too much to

her to weigh the chances pro and con.

She'd have to climb down and recover it herself. Could she? Of course

she could. The incline wasn't steep enough to prevent her from

descending all the way to the bottom, if she moved with care and didn't

start an earthslide.

She looked up and down the street, feeling a little self-conscious

about it, knowing how foolish she'd look if anyone from the office

saw her. Macklin especially, with his slow, good-natured grin, which

could, on occasion, convey more than a hint of mockery. The excavation

was only three buildings away from the Eaton-Lathrup offices and she'd

probably be seen by someone she knew before she was back on the street

again. But to heck with that. She just couldn't afford to lose that

locket.

It was an act of folly to even hesitate. She climbed resolutely under

the rope which stretched between the break in the boarding and started

downward, leaning a little backwards and being very careful not to

dislodge any of the small stones embedded in the gravel.

Two minutes later she was at the base of the excavation, standing in

the shadow of an enormous crane which looked not unlike a Martian

monster on stilts--a Wellsian _War-of-the-Worlds_ kind of Martian. But

nothing like a war of the worlds was taking place about her and the

only really ominous thing about the pit was its proximity to the scene

of a brutal slaying.

In the depth of the excavation the sunlight seemed deeper and redder

than it should have been, the shadows so thickly clustering that they

seemed to be conspiring together to cast a pall upon her spirits. But

she refused to allow the dismalness of the pit to upset her. Any deep,

hewed-out hollow in the earth was dismal, with the damp smells of

freshly-turned earth conjuring up a cemetery-like atmosphere.

She didn't envy the men who had to work sixty feet beneath the sidewalk

all day long, in rain and slush on bad days and always with the

deafening clatter of steam-shovels and riveting machines to add to

their woes.

She found the locket without difficulty, because she had a quick eye

for tracing the course of small glittering objects falling from a

height and the crevice into which it had fallen was a yard long and it

stood out.

She picked it up, examined the chain and shook her head in chagrin.

One of the tiny links had simply parted and now the chain was in two

parts and she would throw it away and get a heavier one this time for

sure--no further putting it off. She snapped open the locket, looked at

the picture of her father and a twinge of guilt shivered through her.

She'd replaced her father's picture with a photograph of Roger, and had

carried Roger around her neck like an evil talisman for almost a year.

She was cured of that now and she hoped her father would forgive her,

if a man dead twenty years could forgive, for what she had done. All

of it--not just the disloyalty to his memory she'd committed by giving

Roger a preferred place close to her heart.

Her father had been old-fashioned enough to think any kind of an affair

a degradation, the equivalent of harlotry undisguised, a living in sin

which he could not have forgiven. He'd been a kindly, charitable man,

but not without a terrible, inward struggle which would have seared his

soul. "That a daughter of mine--"

She glanced at her wrist-watch, and saw that she was still quite

early--barely twenty minutes to nine. If she ascended to the street

again quickly none of the Eaton-Lathrup office staff would be likely to

see her emerging from the excavation, breathless and with a complete

lack of dignity, her skirt swirling up above her knees.

She opened her hand-bag, dropped in the locket and snapped the bag

shut, tightening her lips a little as her father's handsome, but

sad-eyed, rather melancholy face flashed again before her inward

vision. She was quite sure she _didn't_ have a father-complex, but the

thought of bringing any kind of pain to him--

Oh, damn such thoughts--damn such modern jargon silliness. You'd think

people today spent nine-tenths of their lives on psychiatric couches.

Perhaps they did--or that's what the head shrinkers wanted everyone

to believe. She liked that word--head shrinkers. It put them in their

place. A cult, that's what it was. Sweeping the country and poor old

Freud himself had known poverty and heartbreak and if he could have

gotten twenty dollars an hour he might have been able to smoke better

cigars, at least, and taken more rides through the beautiful streets

of old Vienna and have gotten in his personal life a few of the

compensations genius was entitled to as a young man. How was he to know

his theories would make perhaps a billion dollars for practitioners

he'd never set eyes on in a far-off land?

She had turned and was just starting back up the slope when she saw the

big flat stone. What is there about that kind of stone which fascinates

almost everyone, which few people can resist overturning to see what

lies beneath? Young school-boys do it all the time--young naturalists

in search of beetles and centipedes and all kinds of damp, hueless

crawling insects. And adults do it for a dozen reasons, often for the

same reason, or to see if there's any grass growing underneath, in a

region of barren, tumbled earth, or if it's covering a diamond necklace

someone dropped weeks before--just as Ruth Porges had dropped the

locket, but had given up more easily than she had done. Or just for

the sheer pleasure of overturning a big flat stone, covering dampness,

covering mold.

The stone was about forty feet from the base of the crane and almost

directly in the path of a sturdy-looking steam shovel with a large

enough scoop to lift it up and deposit it in a heap of tumbled earth

into which it would sink, and be carted away and dumped elsewhere,

along with the tons of earth which had already been scooped out of the

pit.

As soon as the construction gang arrived and the clatter started up the

stone would lose its identity, become just an impediment to be removed

and buried in tons of earth and rubble. Its position on the floor of

the excavation had quite possibly been changed already, shifted about a

bit by the upheavals going on about it. The earth on both sides of it

had a decidedly torn-up, worked over look.

Ruth Porges glanced at her wrist-watch again, hesitated for a moment

and told herself that she was a complete fool to allow the stone to

interest her.

Oh, well--why not? It would take her only a second or two to bend and

overturn it.

When she started to lift it she discovered that it was even heavier

than it looked, but she didn't let that discourage her. She tugged and

the end she was gripping came completely loose and the rest of the

stone began to rise also.

She toppled it with a single, vigorous heave, exposing the hard-packed

earth underneath--an oblong of earth about two feet in length and

twelve or fifteen inches wide.

She stared down at it, a cold chill coursing up her spine and all the

blood draining from her face. The gun was half-buried in the earth, but

its outlines were distinctly visible, as if it had been quite deeply

buried at first, but had arisen to the surface of the earth when the

ground about it had been shaken by the steam shovel, precisely as a

corpse will arise to the surface of a lake when a dynamite blast has

been set off in close proximity to it.

Closely packed as the earth was, it took her only a moment to work the

gun free from its clinging overlay of earth and small pebbles. Her lips

were shaking now and she could scarcely breathe, but she continued

to dig and wrench at the weapon with her fingers until the butt was

firmly in her clasp and the long black metal barrel, capped with a

bulky-looking silencer, was pointing directly toward the slope.

If the killer had materialized before her at that moment at the base of

the slope, ghostly and threatening, she would have screamed in terror

and fired and fired again, not caring at all that deep in her mind

another voice, also her own, would be screaming at her that it was only

a specter and that she was completely alone.

She had seen the gun before--it had been shown to her with pride. And

she had seen and talked with the killer, and even allowed the killer to

compliment her on her hair-do, and drop a dime in a jukebox and say to

her: "Just listen. Isn't that quite a song? Not the sort of song you'd

expect to come out of a jukebox, is it?"

She had seen the gun before and she had talked to Lathrup's slayer, not

once, but many times.

She knew exactly who the killer was. Knew, too, that that cunning,

fiendish individual was still at large. But when you met and talked

with a monster, a fiend--how could you know, if you had no warning, no

reason to suspect the truth?

The police, too, would not be likely to suspect the truth, ever--unless

she told them.

_Unless she told them!_ Unless she went to them and said: "There is

a remorseless slayer loose in the city and some night ... soon now

perhaps, very soon ... another woman may be found slain, more horribly

slain this time, her throat slashed from ear to ear." It may have been

only a solitary crime, brought about by uncontrollable rage. But how

can you know, how can you be sure ... when I myself suspected nothing

and we were such close, good friends?

There is nothing ordinary about a killer, nothing predictable ... even

a killer with completely innocent eyes, who can smile and order a

cocktail and say: "Heads I pay. Tails we go Dutch."

A little whimsical fun, on the part of a dangerous killer. You enter

one door and you meet a charming individual, light-hearted, brimming

over with a friendly interest in you, your problems, your daily

concerns. You enter another door and you meet the same individual, but

only for a moment. There's suddenly a tiger close to you, with an odor

of death everywhere and long, quivering flanks move in and out, in and

out, and, low-crouching, you see death creeping toward you with bared

fangs.

It seemed to her that her heart had become encased in ice--in a solid

block of ice--and was no longer beating.

Should she go to the police? Dared she tell, did ... did she really

want to send Lathrup's slayer to the electric chair?

Supposing it had been a solitary crime, brought on by a wrong so

terrible and cruel and heartless that the killer hadn't been a tiger

at all? Was there not a killer in everyone, if the provocation was

great enough, if all the civilized layers of the human mind were to

be stripped away by the inhuman conduct of someone who was bent on

destroying you, with no mercy shown, no slightest trace of compassion,

no yielding at any point?

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Had she not herself been one of Lathrup's victims? Had she not once

had an almost uncontrollable desire to make Lathrup suffer as she

had suffered, to pay in full measure for the crime which Lathrup had

committed in cold blood, with nothing really to gain, for she hadn't

wanted Roger to go to bed with her for more than a week or two, if she

could have endured him as a lover for even that short length of time.

Hadn't she taken Roger away from her, stolen his love just to indulge a

cruel whim, just because she happened to be a little bored at the time,

and also had a streak of sadism in her nature which made her enjoy

inflicting so cruel an injustice upon a woman she had no real reason to

dislike?

Hadn't that injustice made her want to die, and aroused in her so

furious a resentment that she had pictured herself fastening her

fingers in Lathrup's throat and forcing her backwards across the desk

and pressing and pressing until Lathrup ceased to draw breath?

She wouldn't have done it, of course. But did she really want to send

one of Lathrup's other victims to the electric chair, simply because he

was a little more primitive than she could ever be and had become, for

a moment, a kind of madman, driven to desperation by a wrong which, for

all she knew to the contrary, might have been much greater than the one

which Lathrup had inflicted on her?

She suddenly remembered that there was a term for that in law which

two or three states recognized as a justifiable legal defense in a

first-degree murder case. An irresistible impulse. A man might know the

difference between right and wrong and hence be legally sane and yet be

compulsively driven to kill.

It was horrible, yes. She'd always go in fear of such a man and you

couldn't think of him as entirely normal and he wouldn't deserve to

get off scot-free. You could be modern and enlightened and humane and

fight for a more civilized legal code, but there had to be a streak of

hard cruelty in all killers which set them apart from men and women

who merely killed in their thoughts. Or if you wanted to think of it

in another way, their ability to go all the way--irresistible impulse

or not--was a very terrible thing; it did make them wild beasts in a

sense, more tigerlike that the overwhelming majority of mankind.

Her hands shook so she had difficulty opening her hand-bag again and

putting the gun into it. But she was breathing a little more easily

now, and there was a less frightened look in her eyes. The killer

wouldn't know she'd found the gun, and she certainly had no intention

of confronting him with it. She'd hide it somewhere or get rid of

it--perhaps go right over to the East River at noon and very cautiously

throw it in. Unless--she did decide to ... to go to the police. Had she

any right to take so much for granted--that he wasn't a human monster

who might not kill again?

If she got rid of the gun she'd be committing a very serious crime.

She could be sent to prison for a long term of years. An accessory to

murder after the event was what concealing that kind of evidence would

make her.

She wasn't a criminal. She knew deep in her heart that she wasn't. But

the law took a very dim view of that kind of personal interpretation of

what was or wasn't a criminal act.

She'd have to decide. She'd have all morning to decide, to think about

it. She'd put the hand-bag in her desk and pretend that nothing had

happened to upset her, that it was a perfectly normal morning as far

as she was concerned, if a morning six days after a murder could be

thought of as normal. Eaton would come into her office, smiling a

little, still worrying about the problem of replacing Lathrup, and

putting twice the usual amount of responsibility on her shoulders, and

on the shoulders of Lynn Prentiss and Macklin and Ellers--who would

probably be too tight to give a damn. With Lathrup gone he probably

wouldn't be fired, although he deserved to be, with his inability to

remain sober two days in a row. The whole staff had been under quite a

strain.

It helped her to swear inwardly, to be as cynical and hard-boiled as

she could in a moment of torment and uncertainty such as this. Her

father's face in the locket flashed once more across her mind and she

thought: "Poor dad! Poor gentle, kind, moralistic, unworldly dad, who

never quite knew what it was all about and whom I loved so very much.

Do you know what your darling daughter has become? She has not only

slept with a man out of wedlock, she's about to become an accessory

to murder after the event. Or she may decide not to. It would make

her much more of a hypocrite and less honorable and decent, actually,

because she wanted to kill Lathrup herself. But maybe you'd prefer her

to stay on the right side of the law."

Climbing up out of the excavation took her less than three minutes but

she was conscious every moment of the bulge which the big pistol made

in her hand-bag--it was a miracle she'd been able to fit it in--and she

hoped no one would notice how lopsided and distended the bag looked

when she arrived at street level.

It was only when she reached the pavement above the pit again that

she realized that the worst possible calamity had taken place. Not

one member of the office staff but three saw her climb out of the

excavation, for it was now five minutes to nine and a rush to reach the

office on time was in progress.

Lynn Prentiss passed and stopped to stare, raising her eyebrows

slightly and then continuing on, as if she did not wish to embarrass

a fellow editor in any way. But there had been more than a glimmer

of bewilderment in her eyes, as if she found it difficult to picture

Ruth Porges scrambling out of an excavation in such haste and in so

undignified a manner. What could have prompted her to climb down in the

first place? A rendezvous with the foreman of the construction gang?

Unthinkable ... if you knew what kind of a girl Ruth Porges was--

Then Tommy Anders, the oldest of the two office boys passed, turning

what was probably the sports pages of a morning newspaper, and probably

not even seeing her, although he was looking straight in her direction.

Then Susan, who had the courtesy not to stare at all, but must have

been as startled as Lynn, and just as bewildered.

All she had to do was stand very still with the bag in plain view and

everyone who hadn't reached the office a little earlier would know that

she'd been behaving in a very strange manner, because there was dust

all over her skirt and she was still breathless from her exertions. A

half-dozen more Eaton-Lathrup employees would see her and perhaps even

Eaton himself. And they'd be sure to notice the bulge in her hand-bag.

The awful thought flashed across her mind that the very outlines of the

gun might be visible.

And of course it would be all over the office in another half hour,

and--_he_ would know. That was the really terrible, frightening thing.

Even if he didn't pass and see her, along with the others, he'd be

sure to know. At least twenty people would know and he'd be among

them. Lathrup's slayer, shaken as he'd failed to be by all the police

questioning, although she remembered--now that she thought about it and

knew the truth about him--he had paled visibly once and almost betrayed

himself. He'd said the wrong thing and had been forced to cover up

quickly.

The man who had entered Lathrup's office six days before and shot her

dead would know that a girl he couldn't possibly have imagined he'd

have any reason to fear had gone down into the excavation where he'd

hidden the murder weapon and had found it, and he'd remember that he

had once showed it to her, and if she went to the police with it--

Or was she taking too much for granted again, letting her fear

completely distort her thinking? He'd have no way of knowing she'd

climbed all the way down to the bottom of the excavation. He wasn't

stupid, he'd consider the possibility that she'd simply dropped

something--as she had--and climbed down a few feet to recover it. A

book perhaps, or her lipstick. He might not even give the matter a

second thought, even though he knew where he'd hidden the gun, and how

dangerous it would be if someone stumbled on it ahead of the steam

shovel.

It was all very strange anyway. Why hadn't he gotten rid of the gun

in a simpler, safer way--simply tossed it into the river, as she had

thought of doing? Or driven out into the country somewhere and tossed

it into a lake or buried it? It wasn't as easy to get rid of small

objects of a dangerous nature as some people thought--even small phials

of poison had a way of turning up again and sending murderers to the

gallows. She'd read about such cases often enough. But still--

She suddenly thought she knew why he'd hidden the gun under a stone in

the excavation, probably taking care to see that it was buried first

pretty deeply. The gun had probably been down there since the day of

the murder. He'd had to get rid of it quickly, had to make sure the

police wouldn't find it anywhere about the office and trace it to him

fast. And as the excavation was only a short distance from the office

his hiding it there made sense, was logical enough. He'd probably

climbed down during a lull in the construction work, when the pit was

deserted, and gambled on the steam shovel scooping the gun up and

carrying it off within a fairly short time. Possibly it hadn't even

occurred to him it would still be there after six days. Quite possibly

it had almost gone into the shovel. Been lifted up, tossed about and

reburied. A steam shovel functioned erratically at times and the

tumbled, heaved-up look of the earth all around the stone made that

guess--of course it was only a guess--seem quite plausible to her.

It had probably continued to worry him, kept him anxious, robbed him

of sleep--if a man with blood on his hands could ever not be robbed

at times of sleep. But even a nightmare kind of anxiety was better

than immediate apprehension by the police. If he'd climbed down into

the excavation again later, to make sure that the gun _had_ gone into

the scoop and been caught with the weapon in his hands or even just

searching for a weapon that had vanished he'd be taking the same kind

of risk a murderer with a psychopathic streak does when he returns to

the scene of his crime in the grip of a morbid compulsion.

She'd just taken, all unwittingly, the same kind of risk herself but

she was quite sure the police wouldn't suspect her, and if they did

she'd have no trouble in clearing herself. Only the killer would

suspect her--of knowing precisely who he was.

She felt suddenly that she'd been wrong about his not suspecting she'd

gone all the way to the bottom. He'd be sure to suspect a little, when

it went flying about the office that she'd been seen emerging from the

pit. He'd hardly dismiss it with a shrug, even though he'd have no way

of knowing for sure she'd succumbed to an irresistible impulse ... to

overturn a big, flat stone.

She came to a sudden, perhaps not completely wise decision. She

wouldn't go to the office at all this morning. She'd go straight back

home and decide what to do about the gun in the privacy of her own

apartment.

Let Eaton think what he wished, let all the others gossip about her.

Compared to what she'd just discovered it had about as much importance

as a microscopic hair on the leg of a gnat. She could plead illness, a

sudden attack of migraine. It was a good enough excuse.

Better to return home at once with the gun and come to as completely

wise a decision as she was capable of. If she decided to go to the

police, there was nothing to be lost by waiting until noon.

* * * * *

It was strange, it never ceased to amaze Ruth Porges, how much familiar

surroundings, a chair you sat in daily, a painting on the wall that had

become as well-known to you as the face and even the shared thoughts

of an old friend, a potted palm you'd watch grow and watered dutifully

for years--just how much such objects helped you to think clearly when

you were in a tormented frame of mind.

She'd made her decision now and she felt no remorse, no sense of guilt

at all. She was probably a very unusual person in some respects,

but she had long since ceased to reproach herself because she felt

compelled at times to behave in an unusual way.

She'd hid the gun where she didn't think it would be found easily, if

the police should suspect anything--they still kept dropping in at the

office--and called unexpectedly within the next few hours to question

her about her descent into the excavation and her sudden decision

to take the day off. As soon as it became dark she'd take a taxi to

the East River on the upper East Side, get out a few blocks from the

esplanade that overlooked the most turbulent part of the river, walk

calmly through the beautiful park that ended in an ascending terrace,

and make sure that all of the nearby benches were unoccupied. Then

she'd move quickly to the iron railing and toss the gun as far out into

the river as she could.

Did they ever drag the East River for a murder weapon? Could they, with

any real hope of finding it? She didn't know for sure, but she rather

suspected they couldn't.

And how would anyone ever know, or even remotely suspect, where she'd

tossed the gun? They'd have to drag the Hudson also and the bay all the

way to Staten Island, because you could drop a gun from a ferry too.

She knew she couldn't morally justify what she was planning to do. It

would have been useless to try. But if she had hated Lathrup herself

enough to want to kill her, she couldn't see herself in the role of a

hypocritical betrayer, sending to his death a man who had lost control

completely and gone all the way. If the police had stumbled on the

gun themselves, without her help, it would have been quite different.

But having opened a Pandora's box, the horror that had come out had

to be destroyed. It was her responsibility--hers alone. That the box

had been a big flat stone that she had overturned impulsively, with no

knowledge of what lay concealed underneath, changed nothing. The same

woman's curiosity which had betrayed Pandora had been at work in her.

It was the most destructive kind of curiosity in the world, but she had

succumbed to it and must pay the price, even if it would mean that she

would have to wear a gray prison uniform for four or five years.

Probably the killer should be caught and compelled to defend himself

before the law, bolstering his defense with whatever justification

he could offer. But she couldn't--she refused pointblank--to become

the instrument of his destruction. It was a twisted way of thinking,

perhaps, but it was her way and she would have to act upon it.

She had gone into the kitchen and was percolating some coffee when the

doorbell rang. It didn't alarm her particularly or even bring the image

of a policeman with one finger firmly pressed to the bell into her mind.

The doorbell usually rang eight or ten times a day when she was at

home. Tradesmen mostly, with groceries she'd ordered by telephone the

day before or a special delivery letter from the office with proofs

that required a quick checking-over, or just a neighborly visit from

the over-talkative girl who lived in the apartment across the hall.

Sally Draper could be an awful pest at times--

Then she remembered that no one would expect her to be home on a

week-day morning and did become a trifle uneasy. But salesmen and

peddlers were always calling, weren't they, defiantly ignoring the big

warning sign posted in the hall?

She turned off the gas under the percolator, removed the slightly

soiled apron she'd put on to protect the severe, freshly-laundered

office dress she'd been too emotionally upset to take off on arriving

home and went to answer the bell, crossing the living room with a

slight quickening of her pulse.

She paused for the barest instant with her hand on the knob of the

front door, trying quickly to decide just what she had better say if it

actually was a policeman.

Then she opened the door wide.

Her first impulse, prompted by sheer terror, was to close it again

instantly, slam it in his face with all her strength. But he just stood

there, staring at her so quietly, with not the slightest trace of

hostility in his eyes, that she forced herself to remain calm. And when

his expression changed, and his eyes narrowed to gleaming slits and his

jaw hardened, he was too quick for her.

He brushed past her into the apartment and swung about to face her,

nodding toward the door.

"Better put the chain on," he said. "I imagine the super has a key,

and this is one time when we can't afford to chance any kind of

interruption."

There was something about the way he was looking at her that compelled

instant compliance. She closed the door, clicked the lock on, and

inserted the head of the chain into the metal groove on the right side

of the door. Her fingers shook as she ran it the full length of the

groove.

He was staring at her very steadily now, his eyes still slitted. "You

found it, didn't you?" he asked.

"Found what? I just don't understand. I didn't go to the office this

morning because--"

"Because you found it," he said, not giving her time to finish, and

taking a slow step toward her.

"No, you must listen. Please ... I...."

"Where is it? What have you done with it?" he demanded.

She shook her head, her lips deathly pale now. She was trembling so

violently that it was like ... a confession. How could she hope to

deceive him when he already knew, when the truth was written in her

eyes?

"I showed it to you once," he said. "That's the bad part ... the really

bad part. Just one word from you could send me to the chair. You

wouldn't even have to turn it over to the police."

He took another slow step toward her and quite suddenly ... she knew.

He'd come here to kill her. Even if she told him where the gun was

hidden, even if she put it into his hands and swore that she'd keep

silent, that not even police brutality could force the truth out of

her, he'd never feel secure while she remained alive.

He'd never trust her completely ... because he didn't know her _that_

well. She'd never really been close to him. Oh, if only she had. If

only they'd been lovers, and she'd gone to bed with him ... anything.

The thought revolted her even now, but it was better than dying ... and

now she was going to die.

He wasn't the kind of man who propositioned every pretty woman he met.

She would have had to let him know unmistakably that she was ... that

kind. He'd respected her too much to make even a pass the few times

she'd gone out with him. There had been something terribly decent about

him ... and she'd admired him for it, respected him in return.

But it would have been better, far better, if she'd let him think her

a whore. A killer could trust a slum prostitute because that kind of

woman was herself an enemy of the law. Or felt put upon, an outcast,

just as he himself had now become, because when he'd killed Lathrup

he'd put himself beyond the pale.

She'd never been close to him, that was the trouble. He didn't know

that there was a fierce kind of loyalty in her that would never have

permitted her to turn informer, because she herself had been a criminal

in her thoughts and had wanted Lathrup to die.

He could never have thought her a street-walking strumpet, but if she

had slept with him he'd have known just what kind of woman she was, how

fierce and determined her loyalty could be. Now it was too late ...

much too late ... and she was going to die.

It seemed unjust, horribly cruel and unnecessary. But how could she

make him see that?

"You've hidden it somewhere about this apartment," he said. "I'm sure

of that. You'd better tell me--fast."

She shook her head, a faint glimmer of hope arising in her. If she

refused to tell him where she'd concealed the gun he might not kill

her until he knew. He'd have to know, have to find it. Or would he? If

she was dead, unable to testify against him, the gun might have been

so well-hidden it would never turn up again. He might even jump to the

conclusion she'd gotten rid of it already or take a chance on that and--

No, no, _no_! Now she was thinking crazily. Getting rid of the gun

would mean she was capable of sympathizing with what he'd done,

understanding it--would mean that she was on _his_ side. And that

was the very thing something deep in her nature, her every reasoning

instinct, told her he'd never believe. The closeness again. She could

plead with him until she was hoarse, but he'd never believe that. He'd

kill her anyway. Kill her first perhaps and search the apartment for

the gun afterwards....

And that seemed to be what he had made up his mind to do. He was losing

patience with her; she could see that plainly enough and the tight knot

of fear which was constricting her heart began to tighten even more,

and she swayed a little and had to bite down hard on her tongue to keep

from screaming.

It wasn't just that he was losing patience with her. There was a

heightened tenseness in him, a kind of muscular rigidity that was

making his neckcords bulge, his shoulders stiffen. She could sense it,

feel it--that dangerous tension mounting in him.

He might want to search for the gun first, but there were times when

the human mind went out of control, lost all of its capacity to reason

intelligently.

His face was twisting terribly. She tried not to look at him, tried

to avoid his eyes, and managed to do so for an instant. But she knew

he was still looking at her, that his eyes were burning with a slow,

merciless kind of rage simply because she had discovered the truth

about him.

He was drawing closer to her suddenly. His feet made a scuffling

sound as he advanced upon her and he was breathing in a strange way,

hoarsely, almost raspingly.

Closer he came and closer, but still she dared not look at him. And

then she did look and saw the glaze of fury in his eyes and she

screamed in wild terror, knowing even as she screamed that no help

could come to her.

She fought him desperately, trying to push his arms away, trying to get

free of his arms that were beginning to tighten about her. It wasn't a

lust-crazed lover's embrace. If only it had been there might have been

some hope for her. But how could she hope to escape from the embrace

of a man so goaded, the embrace of a man who thought that his own life

would be forfeited if he did not silence her quickly and forever.

The harder she struggled the closer his arms came and then it wasn't

his arms but his hands she had most to fear. They were reaching for her

throat and there was no way she could keep them from encircling her

throat and tightening cruelly, no way of avoiding the strangling grip

of his strong, muscular fingers.

His thumbs sank into the soft flesh just above her wind-pipe, and began

to press ... and to press....

She could only shake her head, frantically back and forth, and plead

dumbly. "No. Please don't. There's no need. I'd have thrown the gun--"

When he finally arose and left her she was lying stretched out full

length on the floor, her sightless eyes staring straight up at the

ceiling, as if it were a great, rushing river sweeping above her and

carrying with it a gun which he spent thirty-five minutes trying to

find, ransacking the apartment and cursing softly from time to time,

and even crying out once in savage rage and frustration.

He did not find it, and left the apartment without even stopping to

look once more at the swollen, purplish face and protruding tongue of a

woman who would have gone to prison to protect him.