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and drop in after lunch for coffee? I’m sorry to say that I have a lunch engagement; our local citizen’s committee meets when it can.”
    â€œHalf past two?”
    â€œSplendid. I’m sorry that I shan’t have all the family books to show you; a good many of them are still up at Fenbrook. I’m having the more valuable things sent down by degrees. I never realized until now, when I have a certain amount of leisure, that Fenbrook isn’t the safest place for books in case of fire.”
    â€œThese are not times to risk losing anything that’s old.”
    â€œNo, are they? Tomorrow, then.”
    â€œThank you very much.”
    Gamadge returned the telephone to Sergeant Bantz. He said: “Mr. Blake Fenway is not my client. He goes where he likes.”
    â€œI heard that part of it. Nice-sounding feller.”
    â€œI should judge him the kindest, most considerate and least harmful of created beings.”
    â€œWhich makes it all a little crazier. What’s going on in his house?”
    The first of the cocktail guests entered the library; Miss Arline Prady, a tall, plain, bony girl with large dark eyes. She was a ballet dancer out of a job, at present engaged in filling out programmes for camp entertainments. She liked to wear the latest thing, if that thing happened to be inexpensive and conspicuous, and this evening she wore a knitted woolen head-shawl or fascinator of the brightest purple, a short, woolly coat, a red dress, and high boots. The slightly leftist effect of the costume was far from Miss Prady’s intention, for she had no politics.
    Corporal Lipowitsky was not far behind her, and Clara hurried in a minute later, dressed in her best for the corporal. Gamadge exerted himself for the party, which (but for Clara) looked as if it were going to be a solemn one. Gamadge rather wished he knew what the dinner conversation was going to be like. He poured cocktails, passed canapés, and tried to introduce a note of frivolity into the proceedings. At last he adjusted snow boots to Clara’s feet, and saw the revellers off.
    He returned to eat his own dinner. Was he getting an occupational disease, he wondered? This case, if it was a case, oppressed and frightened him. He couldn’t settle down to other work, and after he had had his coffee he dragged on his outdoor things again and went doggedly into the dark streets. He walked uptown, approaching the Fenway house from the rear.
    It reminded him of those pleasant old chromos that used to hang in pairs on cottage walls— Life In The City, Life In The Country . Here was Life In The City , its very tone and quality restored by the dim-out and the storm. The big, square brick house in its snowy grounds looked cosy and festive; yellow light from its windows filtered out on the whiteness of the garden, and on its bushes and leafless trees. One was a sycamore; each of the brown balls that adhered to its upper branches had a little cap of snow.
    He went on to the corner. A taxi—it would no doubt have been a fine town car some days earlier, but the pleasure-driving ban was in force—drove up to the curb opposite the double flight of steps. Two silk-hatted men stepped out, and one lady. She was furred to the ears in sable, with multicolored earrings just showing above her collar. She had dark hair, and a plain, dark, aquiline face.
    â€œBe careful, Miss Fenway,” said one of the men, and the other raised an umbrella. Strange, hard times for these people.
    The front door closed behind them. Gamadge lighted a cigarette and turned to walk home. A double shadow moved in front of him, the paler half of which did not seem to have any connection with the other or with himself. Like this phantom of a case, he thought; a dim, doubtful, formless thing that couldn’t be accounted for unless one had special knowledge.
    He went home and did some work. Clara and Sergeant Bantz came in, not very late; Harold looked