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Thompkins appeared to brush them from his mind.
    â€œSo Logan’s skipped,” he said. “Hm-m. How about Sandford?”
    â€œComing,” Bill Weigand told him, as the Norths started down the stairs. Then he went to the head of the stairs and spoke down to the Norths. “You want to call Dorian and tell her I’ve had it again?” he asked.
    â€œOf course,” Pam said. “Bill—”
    â€œLater, Pam,” Bill Weigand said. “When it clears a bit.”
    The police cars, except that which had brought Thompkins and his aides of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau; except for Weigand’s car from the Police Department’s Homicide Squad, had disappeared. The crowd had disappeared. A single uniformed patrolman stood in the entry. He watched the Norths and the Misses Whitsett without surprise, or comment.
    The street was empty, with that peculiar emptiness of a New York side street on Sunday. Jerry looked up it, shrugged, and started them toward Fifth Avenue.
    They had gone perhaps twenty feet when a tall man, carrying a light topcoat, met them and passed. He was walking quickly, as if late for an appointment. Pam North turned to look after him, and was in time to see him go into the Logan house.
    â€œI wonder who that is?” she said. “One of the family?”
    Jerry shrugged.
    â€œProbably Sandford,” Pam said. “They were expecting a Sandford. Whoever he is?”
    Again Jerry shrugged.
    They walked on, almost alone in the block. But then, as if he had suddenly come into existence there, there was a man on the other side of the street. He was walking slowly, sauntering, as if going nowhere. Then, when he was across from the Logan house, his slow movement slowed still further. It ceased. Then, in the shadowed street, the man on the other sidewalk ceased to exist as surprisingly as he had come into existence.
    â€œJerry!” Pam North said, her voice low, almost a whisper. “He’s following him! Did you see?”
    It looked, Jerry North agreed, uncommonly like it. The cops were thorough tonight. Then a cab came with its top lights on, and Jerry flagged it down.

3
    Sunday, 7:08 P.M. to 8:50 P.M.
    Weigand, as the downstairs door closed behind the Norths, went back into the living room and said, “Well?” to Assistant District Attorney Thompkins who, after a moment, shook his head. Bill said he didn’t either.
    â€œAll the same, it’s a coincidence,” Thompkins said. “Maybe the old girl had hated for years and finally boiled over. It happens.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “Damned near everything does, Tommy. At the moment, though, I shouldn’t think there was anything to go on.”
    Thompkins said “Nope” to that. He said it would be a help if the old girl turned up to have a reticule full of cyanide around, Weigand agreed that it would, and someone made vocal sounds of being present at the door of the living room. Thompkins and Bill Weigand looked at a tall, blond man, heavyish, with blue eyes spaced wide in an open countenance and a look of worry on the countenance.
    â€œBarton Sandford,” the man said. “This is a hell of a thing. You wanted me?” He looked at them. “I suppose it was you?” he said. “You’re the police?”
    Weigand told him who they were.
    â€œA damned awful thing,” Sandford said. “The poor old girl.”
    Weigand and Thompkins paid this obvious truth the tribute of a moment’s silence. Then Weigand motioned toward a chair, said that in things like this, they had to find out all they could; that, inevitably, for a beginning, they turned to relatives. Barton Sandford nodded.
    â€œSo—” Weigand began, but Thompkins interrupted. He interrupted to say he would be getting along; he added, “Nothing’s ready for us.” Bill Weigand said, “Right,” to that and walked with Thompkins to the door