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and out into the hall.
    â€œBetween us,” Thompkins said, “I’ve got a date. You know how it is. Another five minutes and they wouldn’t have caught me. Or if your inspector hadn’t been sure he had it sewed up.”
    â€œHe’s a good cop,” Bill told the assistant district attorney. “I’ll give you he likes to get things sewed up. Who doesn’t?”
    Thompkins started down the stairs. He stopped to say that Weigand would keep an eye on the old girls. “The Misses Whitsett,” he amplified. Again, Bill Weigand said, “Right.” He said, “Leave it to us, Tommy. Don’t you always?” Thompkins only waved, and went. Bill Weigand returned to Barton Sandford, who had risen, had walked to the windows at the end of the living room and was looking down at the street. He turned as Weigand came in. He said it was hard to believe. “This room without Grace,” he amplified.
    â€œI know,” Bill said. He paused a moment. “Tell me what you can about your aunt, Mr. Sandford,” he said. “That is, your wife’s aunt. That was it, wasn’t it?”
    It was, Sandford said. He said he was sorry Sally wasn’t in town; he said he was trying to reach her.
    â€œMy wife loved Grace,” he said. “They were almost like mother and daughter, in some ways. She used to live here, you know, before we were married.”
    â€œTrying to reach her?” Bill said.
    â€œShe’s—she’s on a trip,” Sandford said. He spoke slowly. “A—a kind of vacation, I guess you’d call it.” Then he reddened a little. “I guess that’s what you’d call it,” he repeated. “But I’ll get hold of her.”
    He was, evidently, embarrassed; he was, Bill thought, speaking in euphemisms. The chances were that “vacation” meant departure, more or less permanent; that Sandford didn’t want to admit it, perhaps even to himself. Well, Bill thought, I’m no marriage counselor.
    â€œWe’ll want to talk to her when you do,” Bill said. “Unless, of course, we’ve got what we need before then. Meanwhile—”
    Meanwhile, Barton Sandford told what he knew about Grace Logan. It was considerable. He had been “damned fond of Grace” and had seen more of her than one usually sees of an aunt by marriage. He had been at her house often, even since Sally left. She had now and then visited his apartment and they had talked about Sally’s disappearance. “Particularly—” he said, and then decided not to finish that. Bill waited, then led.
    Mrs. Logan had been, for five years, the widow of Paul Logan. They had one son, Paul, Jr., who now was about twenty-three or twenty-four.
    â€œGrace was almost forty when they were married,” Sandford said. “Thirty-nine, maybe. She’d been married before and her first husband died. Logan was—oh, maybe ten years older. All the same, they had Paul. She hadn’t had any children before and, so far as I know, he hadn’t either.”
    Sally was the daughter of Grace Logan’s only brother; both he and Sally’s mother had died when Sally was about ten. Grace Logan had raised her.
    â€œI don’t know if this is what you want?” Barton Sandford said, interrupting himself.
    â€œNeither do I,” Bill told him, and offered a cigarette. “It would be simple if I knew what I wanted, of course. Meanwhile I want everything.” He lighted his own cigarette. “Most of it won’t matter,” he added.
    â€œBy the way,” he said then, “wasn’t Logan about to marry somebody else? A Miss Whitsett? Change his mind suddenly when he met your wife’s aunt? Very suddenly?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Sandford said. “I remember vaguely there was something like that. Of course, I didn’t know any of them until I met