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bribed to play along. I—I looked around the station, expecting to see Emlyn and Jeremy and Bobby and Oscar and some of the others come out from somewhere, screaming with laughter. But they didn’t.”
    “I—I looked in my handbag. I had quite a little money. So I did the only thing I could think of doing. I took a taxi to the Beaumont and registered. Then—then I saw the calendar behind the desk. March fourteenth, it said. The night I’d started out to have dinner with Emlyn was February twentieth—three weeks ago!”
    “It didn’t seem like a very funny joke then,” Chambrun said.
    “Oh, my God!” she said, rocking back and forth again. After a moment she went on. “I put in a long-distance call for Emlyn in Beverly Hills. His houseman answered. Out there, it was only a little after two in the morning. Emlyn was out on the town, somewhere. I tried some of the others and finally got Bobby Towers—Barbara Towers ‘Where on earth have you been?’ she wanted to know. ‘We’ve been frantic with anxiety for you. I wanted Emlyn to call the police, but he was against it. He said you wouldn’t like it—in case you were up to something.’
    “That’s about it, Chambrun. I remember starting out for dinner in my car and waking up, three weeks later, in Grand Central Station.” She hesitated a moment. “There’s something I didn’t quite tell you all of. When Jeremy came in here a little while ago, he said, ‘ “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—of cabbages and kings …” and the night of February twenty-fifth.’ That’s when I walked in here and left him. Because I don’t know anything about the night of February twenty-fifth.”
    “The papers?” Chambrun asked.
    “Nothing. Nothing that tells me anything.”
    Chambrun walked over to a little side table and put out his cigarette in the ash tray there. “There’s one difficulty with your way of life, Miss Standing,” he said. “It’s made up of elaborate games, of fancy falsehoods, of traps for the unwary, of cruel jokes. Because of that, I can’t be sure you’ve told us one word of truth. If I believe you, I may find the donkey’s tail pinned squarely on my derriere.”
    “Chambrun, I promise you I—”
    She was interrupted by Jerry Dodd opening the bedroom door. “Lieutenant Hardy from Homicide,” he said.
    Chambrun turned to me. “Games or no games, Miss Standing needs her lawyer, Mark. Have Ruysdale get in touch with Mr. T.J. Madison.”
    “Right.”
    Hardy and I passed in the doorway. We weren’t strangers. He’d been involved in the Cardew case, about a year ago. He has a kind of pleasant, shaggy-dog look, bewildered and earnest. He’s actually a very shrewd operator. “Happy anniversary,” he said. I took an elevator down to the second floor. There were other people in the car. The elevator man looked as if he was about to burst with questions, but he was too well trained to ask them in front of guests.
    Betty Ruysdale was at her desk, cool and unruffled. I gave her a quick rundown on what was cooking and Chambrun’s instructions to get in touch with Doris Standing’s lawyer, one T.J. Madison. When I said the name out loud, it hit me right between the eyes.
    “All-American fullback,” I said. “Big star in the National Professional Football League for nearly ten years. T.J. Madison! He’s—”
    “Yes, he’s a Negro,” Ruysdale said. “Something wrong with that?”

Four
    M URDER IS USUALLY A climax. I think Chambrun was the only one of us who suspected that the murder of Jeremy Slade was just the beginning of a series of events with an unthinkable potential for violence and horror.
    The death of Slade was murder; no ifs, ands, or buts. When you broke Slade’s gun and looked at the cylinder, there was the one brass cartridge case visible; the gambling chance for the Russian-roulette player. But an examination of the shell itself showed that it