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behind us. Madeleine went on as if there had been no pause.
    “I waited and waited, getting madder and madder of course. He was spoiling that wonderful bonus glow I’d had. The doorbell rang. When I opened, they shoved their way in with their warrant and a couple of them grabbed me and… and suddenly I was standing there staring incredulously at the handcuffs on my wrists! Handcuffs! They took me away like that in full view of the neighbors—that popular young Mrs. Ellershaw being roughly marched away between two big men, stumbling down the front walk of her fine house in her high-heeled party pumps with those… those
things
shining on her wrists! And then making my phone call downtown and trying to explain the mad things that were happening and not being able to get hold of anybody but Walter.”
    “Walter?”
    “Walter Maxon. A young attorney who’d just joined the firm. Well, actually he was a year older than I was, but he acted very young. I will say he came right away; but he might as well not have. He was a shy boy and he’d had no experience at all with criminal cases; he’d never had to deal with anything like that before. They bullied him mercilessly; he was no use at all.”
    She paused again, and sipped her coffee, staring into space, into the past, but at last her voice continued: “Hours and hours of questioning! Where was my husband? Where did he say he was going when he left? Who helped him slip away so neatly right from under their noses? Who’d tipped him off that the warrants had been issued? Where was I going to meet him? When was I going to meet him? Liar, liar, liar, don’t try to pull that innocent line on us, we know you’re in it up to your pretty neck, where did he go? And was this my signature on this safe-deposit form or wasn’t it? Come on, baby, forget that stuck-up lady-of-the-manor crap. It’s no good, we’ve got you cold and you know it, so why don’t you come clean and make it easy for all of us, the court will take your attitude into consideration and maybe you’ll only have to serve four-five years, think about it, the Rosenbergs got the chair, remember?” She drew a long, ragged breath. “And Walter trying to protest, trying to remember his law, and I sitting there stupidly trying to explain that I didn’t know what in the world they were talking about—my God, they were threatening me with imprisonment and execution and I didn’t know
anything
! And knowing I was the more experienced attorney there, I should take charge and put a stop to it. Knowing they were way out of line, legally, and Walter was being no help at all so it was up to me, but I… I was just so shocked by it all, and so worried about Roy, that I couldn’t seem to pull myself together… And being shoved into that cell at last with my eyes aching from the lights, my head aching, crying helplessly as I fell on the cot, like a dumb ingenue instead of a competent professional woman. And then the dream, if it was a dream.”
    I saw her hand reach out for still another doughnut; but she glanced down at her fairly substantial figure and drew it back empty. We sat for a little in silence, listening to the cars and trucks roaring by beyond the trees.
    “And then it was morning,” she said. “I’d finally gone to sleep, exhausted; and they came and told me that Walter had arranged for immediate arraignment, and I hardly recognized the awful creature in the mirror. My elaborate hairdo was a crazy bird’s nest, my face was a streaky mess of tears and makeup, and my lovely new cocktail dress was a wrinkled and slept-in ruin with a big smear of mustard on the front from a hamburger they’d given me in the middle of the night—I’d never got to dinner, remember? And my sexy black hose had runs in them. They made me look like a cheap whore after a hard night on the streets, so I peeled them off and threw them away; and I managed to clean myself up a bit, tidy myself up, but I still wasn’t exactly the