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But—but I heard a heavy thud, like someone falling. I waited for him to make his next move—like an exaggerated moan or a cry for help. There wasn’t anything. I—I have to admit I couldn’t resist looking to see what he was up to.” Her lips trembled. “I went to the door—and looked. Then I called you.”
    “You didn’t hear anything else—like the outside door closing?” Chambrun asked.
    She shook her head.
    “If you hold a gun close to your head and fire it, there will be powder burns around the wound,” Chambrun said. “There weren’t any. The shot that killed Slade wasn’t fired at that kind of close range.”
    She stared at him.
    “Had you given anyone the key to this suite, Miss Standing?”
    “No.”
    “Where is it?”
    “On the bureau—I think.”
    It was.
    “I’ve been playing around with this, Miss Standing,” Chambrun said, “without using the word that goes with it. Murder. Someone shot and killed Jeremy Slade. Since you were the only person in the suite with him, the police are going to be justifiably interested in you. I think you should let me call your attorney.”
    She took a long, deep breath. I could see she was fighting for control. “His name is T.J. Madison,” she said. “You’ll find him in the phone book.”
    T.J. Madison. It rang some kind of a bell but I couldn’t place it. I looked at Chambrun but his face was expressionless.
    “I’d like to ask you one more question, Miss Standing,” he said.
    “Yes?”
    “Did you find what you were looking for in the back issues of The Times and the Examiner ?”
    Her right hand rose quickly to cover her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fright.
    “I’m only guessing,” Chambrun said, almost gently. “Am I right in thinking you’ve drawn some kind of a blank, covering the last three weeks?”
    Tears welled up into her eyes. “Oh, my God!” she whispered.
    “Care to tell me about it?” Chambrun asked. “That’s why you walked out on Slade, isn’t it? Why you didn’t want to talk to him? You were afraid he’d bring up something that for the moment was blanked out for you.”
    She began to rock back and forth in the chair, arms crossed over her stomach as if she was fighting pain.
    “Since you’ve guessed,” she said. “This morning—I was asleep. Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes and saw a man in a blue uniform looking down at me, smiling. He was the conductor on a railroad train. ‘End of the line, miss,’ he said. ‘Grand Central.’ There I was, sitting on a stopped train. Everyone else had left or was leaving. New York. I had no memory of any train trip, or why I was there. I knew who I was, I knew where I was. But I had no idea why I was there or where I’d come from. I didn’t have any luggage.
    “I—I didn’t want to tell all this to the conductor, so I walked out into the station. I—I’ve had hangovers in my time, but I’ve never drawn a complete blank. It was like walking out of a fog. The station was relatively empty at that time of morning. I walked over near the information booth to try to gather my wits. I remembered I’d started out from my home in Beverly Hills to have dinner with a friend. The next thing was the conductor—shaking me—in New York! I wasn’t wearing the clothes I’d started out for dinner in. I had an explanation, but I don’t think you’d understand it.”
    “One of Emlyn Teague’s elaborate games?” Chambrun suggested.
    She looked at him like a child looks at her first magician.
    “Since the Julie Frazer affair, I’ve made something of a study of you and your friends, Miss Standing,” Chambrun said, the gentleness gone from his voice.
    “You must have!” she said. “Well, you’re right. It was Emlyn I’d set out to have dinner with. I told myself he must have fed me some kind of knockout drops. Then he’d have flown me East in his own plane, unconscious, and put me on a train somewhere outside New York. The conductor would have been