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.