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carried them into the squad room to put them in one of the lockers.
    â€œShake him down,” Saxon said to Chaney.
    Chaney ran his hands down the man’s sides from beneath his armpits to his ankles, patted his hips, and rose from his stooped position. “He’s clean, Chief.”
    â€œTake off your belt,” Saxon said to Coombs.
    The man raised his eyebrows. “Think I might hang myself?”
    â€œIf I thought it probable, I’d let you keep it,” Saxon said dourly. “Get it off.”
    Slipping it off, Coombs laid the belt on the counter. Coiling it, Saxon laid it on top of the manila envelope on the shelf beneath the counter.
    Saxon lifted the cell key ring from its hook beneath the counter and tossed it to Chaney. “Stick him in cell number one.”
    When the prisoner was lodged in the first of the three cells, Chaney and Ross prepared to go back out on cruise. At the door Chaney looked back and said, “Think he’s nuts, Chief?”
    â€œHe certainly has a defective personality,” Saxon said. “He did everything possible to get himself jailed.”
    â€œGuess we obliged him,” Chaney said with a grin.
    He and Ross went out.
    It was quiet again for another hour. Twice Coombs called for cigarette lights and Saxon went back to the cell block to hold lighted matches between the bars. Otherwise, nothing at all happened.
    At 10 P.M . the street door opened and a slimly built woman of about thirty preceded a man inside. The woman wore a full-length mink coat and a white headscarf that completely hid her hair but exposed a round, full-lipped, rather attractive face. She was wearing handcuffs.
    The man was about forty, well over six feet tall, and with a burly frame. He had a heavy-featured, rather glowering face and his expression suggested that he was in some pain.
    Saxon rose and rested his arms on the counter as they approached. The man held out his open wallet to display a Buffalo police badge that read: Sergeant of Detectives .
    â€œI’m Harry Morrison of Buffalo’s Homicide and Arson,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice.
    â€œTed Saxon, acting chief of police,” Saxon said, extending his hand across the counter.
    Morrison looked surprised. Clasping the hand, he said, “Glad to know you, Chief. How come you work New Year’s Eve? Shorthanded?”
    â€œJust a favor for one of the men who wanted to go to a party. I didn’t have anything planned.” He looked at the woman with curiosity and she gazed back at him sullenly.
    â€œThis is Grace Emmet,” Sergeant Morrison said. “I’m bringing her back to Buffalo from Erie. Maybe you read about her.”
    Saxon had. Grace Emmet had been the purported mistress of Buffalo industrialist Michael Factor, who a month previously had been found shot to death in the apartment he had been maintaining for the woman. Grace Emmet had disappeared. Neighbors’ testimony of overhearing a violent lover’s quarrel preceding the shooting, plus the fact that someone, presumably the woman herself, had carefully removed from the apartment all photographs of Grace Emmet, resulted in a warrant for her arrest on a homicide charge issued by the district attorney of Erie County.
    The case had received considerable sensational coverage as a “love nest” murder, one of its most played-up factors being the woman’s cleverness in destroying all photographs of herself before fleeing. A composite drawing based on descriptions by acquaintances had been widely circulated, but Saxon saw that it was only a mediocre likeness of the woman. She possessed the same round face and full lips that he had seen pictured, but aside from that, he wouldn’t have recognized her from the drawing.
    â€œShe was in Erie all this time?” Saxon asked.
    â€œYeah,” Morrison said disgustedly. “How do you like that? We’ve had reports of her being seen everywhere from Denver to