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right, Rue. I’ll go. But remember what I’ve said tonight. Remember I love you. And I’ll do anything in God’s world to help you. Will you remember that?”
    His voice was serious, weighted with awareness of the horror that lay before her. She shivered a little, not from cold.
    “Yes, Andy,” she said and the door opened.
    Light from the hall streamed out. Gross, the dourly efficient German butler, dating from Crystal’s regime, stood in the doorway with an expression of painfully withheld but painfully curious disapproval. He did not wait for Andy’s departure. He said as Rue entered:
    “Two persons are waiting to see Madam. They insisted on waiting. I told them Madam was at the opera —”
    Rue’s heart gave a heavy throb in her throat. She turned slowly toward the butler.
    “Who?”
    She was aware that Andy had come into the hall too. Gross closed the door, shutting off escape.
    “They say they are from police headquarters, madam.”

CHAPTER IV
    T his is preposterous,” said Andy. “Mrs Hatterick can’t possibly see them tonight, Gross. Tell them—”
    They were all aware of the man who stood suddenly in the doorway opposite them. Although he was actually only a symbol, impersonal, commonplace, completely, utterly ordinary. He was mediumly tall, mediumly bulky, his face was full, and his cheeks puffed below small, cold eyes; he was partially bald, and the most minute description of him would equally well have described a hundred other men you’d encounter in the Loop, say at Madison and State streets on a busy noon hour. His name was Oliver Miller; he was important then and always to Rue merely as a symbol, as a mouthpiece, as a voice through which a hidden, massive, utterly forbidding power expressed itself.
    “Mrs Hatterick,” he said. “We are waiting for you. I am Oliver Miller of the police. Will you be so good as to give me a few moments? The district attorney sent me here.” He had actually, in the most ordinary way in the world, a card in his hand. One that, apparently, he had not chosen to relinquish to Gross. Gross murmured and was still.
    Andy said: “By what authority —”
    “Good evening, Doctor Crittenden. By the authority of police headquarters, as you know. It’s only a short interview; if you wish anyone else to be present, Mrs Hatterick, it’s quite all right.”
    Rue turned swiftly to Gross: “Has Doctor Hatterick returned?”
    “No, madam.”
    “Rue, there’s no need for you to see them now. We’ll get Guy —”
    Guy — that was Guy Cole, their next-door neighbor and one of the best criminal lawyers in Chicago. Something stiffened and tightened about Rue’s throat.
    Miller said easily: “Only a few questions, Mrs Hatterick. It won’t take long. I assure you we’ll not distress you. You can be present, Doctor Crittenden, if Mrs Hatterick wishes it. It isn’t important.”
    Not important!
    Rue nodded dismissal to Gross. She walked into her own drawing room, followed by Miller and Andy. Another man was waiting there; his name was Funk, said Oliver Miller in the most polite way, like an introduction. She found herself acknowledging the mousy, thin, gray little man; he looked like a rabbit, and scared, as if he might pop under the Louis Quatorze sofa at any moment. Yet in his way he was as commonplace and as ordinary and as unthreatening as Miller.
    She sat down, trying to appear self-possessed and calm. Andy, still in his black overcoat and white scarf, took up a position near her.
    “Won’t you sit down,” she said, and Miller did so — in a fragile French armchair which looked as if it might collapse at any moment under the man’s bulk. Funk discovered himself in the shadow of the stiffly draped, pale green satin curtains, and no one knew how he’d got there.
    That drawing room, too, had been Crystal’s; she had decorated it. Its pastels, its French chairs, its gilded mirrors and crystal-hung lamps had been Crystal’s selection. Rue had never liked the