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the center fold.
    Corrigan went quickly back. “Okay,” he said. The pair and Chuck Baer got out of the car, and Gerard Alstrom locked it. From the confident way in which their charges moved about, Corrigan got the impression that they had been thoroughly briefed to the setup. Probably neither had been here before.
    Corrigan said, “There’s a maintenance man in the room off the furnace room, Chuck. For what it’s worth, when you get a moment you might arrange for him to tip you to any new tenants who move into the building. Or ones who got here very recently.”
    Baer nodded.
    Gerard jabbed the elevator call-button. Corrigan and Baer blocked their way when the door opened, but the elevator was empty.
    It was self-service.
    â€œWhich floor?” Corrigan said.
    Gerard did not deign to answer him. He pushed the 11 button, and they sailed up. When the door opened, Corrigan got out first. The way was clear.
    â€œWhere now?” Corrigan said.
    The blond one crossed the hall to another elevator. There was a telephone on the wall beside it. Obviously a house phone; instead of a dial, it had a single push-button.
    Gerard pushed the elevator button. When the door failed to open he reached for the wall phone, but at the moment the elevator opened, and he hung up and stepped in. They followed.
    Impatient, Corrigan thought. So he’s not the Fearless Fosdick he makes out to be. Frank Grant seemed content to let his friend take the lead.
    The elevator car was much smaller than the one they had come up on. Its capacity was about six passengers. There were three buttons on the control panel. One said “U,” one “D”; the third was red, an emergency button.
    Gerard pushed the “U” and the car rose to the roof. They stepped out into a small windowless foyer with a single door opposite the elevator. There was nothing in the foyer but a mail chute, and a trash chute that must have led to the basement incinerator.
    Gerard opened a toggle switch on the wall near the elevator.
    â€œImmobilizes the penthouse car at the roof,” he explained. “Anyone getting off at eleven has to phone from there and identify himself; only then do we send the car down. Clever, eh?”
    â€œHow about going in?” Baer growled.
    Gerard unlocked the apartment door with another key, opened it, and led the way into a large living room furnished in far-out modernism. There was a real fireplace to the right, a door to a hall in the left rear corner. Through a sliding glass door that ran almost the width of the room, Corrigan could see a wrought-iron lawn table on a genuine lawn. The lawn went to flower beds that edged the three-foot-high wall at the roof line.
    This was not just a penthouse apartment, Corrigan thought. It was a private house, surrounded by lawn, and all on a rooftop. Apparently the elevator shaft and the foyer were central in the building, for the living room ran the entire width of the house. The hall in the corner must lead to rooms on the opposite side of the elevator shaft.
    Chuck Baer set down his suitcase. Chuck was looking incredulous.
    At a movement in the doorway from the hall, Corrigan and Baer spun about, hands snatching their guns.
    It was a woman.
    She was a tall brunette in her late twenties, with a fashion-model figure in every department except the bust, which was formidable. Jet hair framed a face of pale, almost Spanish, beauty. Her large eyes were a striking violet-blue, not Spanish at all.
    â€œHello, Tim,” she said. She had paused in the doorway, and it framed her. She had a throaty voice which seemed natural, not cultivated. Corrigan could see that Baer, who had a discriminating eye, was impressed; the redhead’s lips were framed in a silent whistle.
    â€œNorma,” Corrigan said. In spite of himself his blood raced. She had always had a powerful hold on him. He realized now that he must have been bracing himself for this encounter for some time;