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and afraid, she spoke in a low monotone. Her voice was borne on a heavy breath in which Sen-Sen struggled for dominance. You inhaled it as much as heard it.
    “Is Mr. Hallman here?”
    “No, thank God for small mercies. He hasn’t been here. But I’ve been expecting him ever since she got that call from the hospital.” Her gaze, which had swiveled past me to the street, returned to my face. “Is that your taxi?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, that’s a relief. Are you from the hospital?”
    “I just came from there.”
    I’d intended some misrepresentation, which she made me regret immediately:
    “Why don’t you keep them locked up better? You can’t let crazy-men run around loose. If you knew what my girl has suffered from that man—it’s a terrible thing.” She took the short easy step from motherly concern to self-concern: “Sometimes I think I’m the one who suffered most. The things I hoped and planned for that girl, and then she had to bring
that
one into the family. I begged and pleaded with her to stay home today. But no, she has to go to work, you’d think the office couldn’t go on without her. She leaves me here by myself, to cope.”
    She spread out her hands and pressed them into herbosom, the white flesh rising like dough between her fingers.
    “It isn’t fair. The world is cruel. You work and hope and plan, then everything goes to pieces. I didn’t deserve it.” A few easy tears ran down her cheeks. She found a ball of Kleenex in her sleeve and wiped her eyes. They shone, undimmed by her grief, with a remarkable intensity. I wondered what fuel fed them.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gley. I’m new on this case. My name is Archer. May I come in and talk to you?”
    “Come in if you like. I don’t know what
I
can tell you. Mildred ought to be home over the noon-hour, she promised she would.”
    She moved along the dim hallway, a middle-aged woman going to seed, but not entirely gone. There was something about the way she carried herself: old beauty and grace controlling her flesh, like an unforgotten discipline. She turned at a curtained archway behind which voices murmured.
    “Please go in and sit down. I was just changing for lunch. I’ll put something on.”
    She started up a flight of stairs which rose from the rear of the hallway. I went in through the curtains, and found myself in a twilit sitting-room with a lighted television screen. At first the people on the screen were unreal shadows. After I sat and watched them for a few minutes, they became realer than the room. The screen became a window into a brightly lighted place where life was being lived, where a beautiful actress couldn’t decide between career and children and had to settle for both. The actual windows of the sitting-room were heavily blinded.
    In the shifting light from the screen, I noticed an empty glass on the coffeetable beside me. It smelled of gin. Just to keep my hand in, I made a search for the bottle. It was stuffed behind the cushion of my chair, a half-emptyGordon’s bottle, its contents transparent as tears. Feeling a little embarrassed, I returned it to its hiding place. The woman on the screen had had her baby, and held it up to her husband for his approval.
    The front door opened and closed. Quick heels clicked down the hallway, and paused at the archway. I started to get up. A woman’s voice said:
    “Who—Carl? Is that you, Carl?”
    Her voice was high. She looked very pale and dark-eyed in the light from the screen, almost like a projection from it. She fumbled behind the curtains for a lightswitch. A dim ceiling light came on over my head.
    “Oh. Excuse me. I thought you were someone else.”
    She was young and small, with a fine small head, its modeling emphasized by a short boyish haircut. She had on a dark business suit which her body filled the way grapes fill their skins. She held a shiny black plastic bag, like a shield, in front of it.
    “Mrs. Hallman?”
    “Yes.” Her look said: who are you,