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was nobody on the sidewalk when Weigand reached the Hotel Dumont. There were several police cars around; there was a section of the sidewalk closed to pedestrians. Weigand went into the Dumont’s lobby. He heard his name spoken in a raised, familiar voice. They were over there. They were indeed.
    Now, half an hour later, they were a few blocks away, at the Hotel Algonquin, having dinner—four of them: the Norths and Weigand, a man named Tom Hathaway, to whom, after he had been identified, Bill had said, “Might help if you could come along, Hathaway. If you’re not tied up.” Hathaway had not been.
    It remained, Bill told them, a hundred to one that it was not Payne, as Payne, who had been killed. A man who happened to be named Payne, happened to be a moderately celebrated (Gerald North and Tom Hathaway had looked at each other a little gloomily at the modification) author, had also happened to be a target for a crackpot with a gun.
    â€œHe wasn’t wearing a hat,” Pam said. “His head—well, I suppose it would have stood out a bit. Like a—well, it would shine of course—I mean—”
    â€œPayne was very bald,” Jerry said. “That’s what she means.”
    â€œWell,” Pam said, “one has to take things into account. That is, there they are, aren’t they?”
    The point, to get back to it, was that it was only incidental that Payne was Payne. Hence, whatever might have happened at the party had nothing to do with what had happened after the party. So precinct had as good a chance as anyone; routine would serve if anything would serve. And routine was in progress. Foley and Pearson, and other detectives and uniformed men were going doggedly at it—were going, in the Dumont and the King Arthur opposite, from front room to front room, identifying, briefly questioning, guests who were in their rooms; sniffing, searching, in empty rooms. The smell of cordite lingers; it was hardly likely that a rifle—probably target, with telescopic sight; probably .22 calibre—would be found leaning against a wall, but one never knows until one looks. There were hotels—tall and narrow and elderly, like the Dumont itself—on either side of the Dumont. They, also, had rooms with windows on the street—many rooms. There was another hotel on one side of the King Arthur. On the other side of the King Arthur there was an office building and parking garage, with a roof. Snipers often use roofs. Now and then, although not often enough, they leave cartridge cases behind them. Once in a hundred times or so there may be identifiable fingerprints on cartridge cases. One never knows until one looks. It takes a long time to look in all possible places.
    â€œAll the same,” Pam said, bringing them again back to it, “he knocked Gardner Willings down. Mr. Willings wasn’t pleased. Mr. Willings isn’t used to things like that.”
    The statement was made for the record, rather than as an offer of information. They all knew Willings—knew of Willings. Every literate American knew of Gardner Willings. He hunted big game in Africa and had been photographed often with a foot on it. He had written about Africa. He had been, until recently, a sports-car racer. He had written about sports-car racing. He was flamboyant. Now and then he spoke of himself in the third person. And if he was not a great writer, he was so near it as made no difference until, as was so often said, time had told. About his influence on American writing there could be no doubt whatever.
    â€œNowadays, every American who doesn’t try to write like Hemingway tries to write like Willings,” one critic had said, which was saying it flatly, and in which there was unmistakable truth.
    Gardner Willings, in short, was not a man who would like to be knocked down.
    And there was, of course, another point: Gardner Willings was a notable rifle shot. Lions and tigers