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  I wondered if Kay Raymond had ever put it on. I didn't think it would do a thing for her. She didn't look very tame even without a leopard mask. "Lot of superstition," I said.

  She yawned and stretched sinuously. "I wonder," she said. "Well, let's discuss your problem. I really can't remember where the light switch was, so perhaps I can't help much."

  "Who was standing near you when the lights went out?"

  "The room was so full of people, I wouldn't have any idea."

  "Whoever turned out the lights also jammed the switch with a bobby pin."

  She stroked the hair beside one of her temples, touching the bobby pin lazily. "That sounds like a woman, doesn't it? Or like a man trying to throw suspicion on a woman. Now where does that leave us?"

  The faint smile on her face annoyed me. A well fed leopard might play with a small worried rabbit like this. To get anywhere at all I had to throw a scare into her. Since I didn't have any facts, that meant inventing some. "There was a strand of hair caught in the bobby pin," I said.

  The smile flickered, like a candle flame in a draft. She sat on one side of the couch and motioned to me to sit at the other end. "Blond, I hope," she said. "I'm always inclined to suspect blondes."

  "The crime laboratory at City Hall is going to check into it."

  "So if anybody happened to lose a bobby pin and someone else picked it up and jammed the light switch with it, she'll be suspected, will she? I do hope you won't get yourself into any suit for false arrest."

  That sounded promising. She was taking me seriously enough to let the claws peep out. "We have more to go on than that," I said. "There were fingerprints on the strip of canvas that was left on the stretcher."

  She made a quick impatient gesture with her right hand. "Let's see now," she said. "There must be quite a collection. Your fingerprints, and Nancy Vernon's, and the painter's. In fact I might even have straightened the painting once during the evening."

  "Miss Raymond," I said, "you're thinking too fast."

  She sat up and said, "I don't know what you mean."

  "You get your answers out before I ask the questions."

  "What questions are you talking about?"

  "To start with, you wanted the stolen painting. You wanted it badly enough to try to buy it before the show opened, and by the way it wasn't in that newspaper photo. It seems that you were standing near the light switch when the lights went out,

  and that you may have lost a bobby pin with a strand of your hair caught in it and that your fingerprints may be on the strip of canvas left on the stretcher. I haven't asked you to explain any of those things, but you've already done it. Have you the answer to one more question?"

  Her eyes looked as if they belonged in one of those African masks. "It had better be a good one," she said.

  "It's the best I can think of. Where's the picture?"

  Her body twitched and then her left hand lashed out and slapped me. It was a queer kind of slap. It was awkward and didn't sting the way I expected. She jumped up and pointed to the hallway. "Get out," she said. "Get out right now."

  I stayed on the couch and grinned up at her. She was a good actress but she hadn't rehearsed this role. She had made one mistake by getting in her alibis too fast. Now she had just made a series of little mistakes that added up to a big one. I hadn't noticed them when they started but they had caught my attention at last. I said, "When did you turn into a southpaw?"

  "Did you hear me say to get out?"

  "Something's wrong with your right hand, isn't it?"

  "I'm going to call the night clerk."

  "Tell him to get the cops. I'd like them to take a look at your right hand."

  "There's nothing wrong with my right hand," she said furiously.

  "The first time I mentioned fingerprints, you made a quick move with your right hand. I didn't click on it then, but what you did was pull it back out of sight. You slapped me with your left hand. It was a poor job because you're right handed. You pointed toward the door with your left hand so you could keep on hiding your right. Let's take a look at it."

  She gasped, "I think you're crazy. I—"

  I came off the couch fast, grabbed her wrists. She started to kick me in the shins and I gave a quick wrench and yanked her right hand out into view. There was a small adhesive bandage on the index finger. "See?" I said. "You hurt that finger, didn't you?"

  "I've got a blister! Let me go!"

  She was still trying to kick me down to size. She had a nasty technique, too. Instead of kicking straight out with her toes she was kicking sideways, trying to catch me with the high heel. One kick flamed across my ankle. I fell back onto the couch, dragging her with me. For a moment things were lively but I hung onto her wrists and pinned her down.

  I said breathlessly, "That painting was slashed from the stretcher with a razor blade. Whoever did it had to work fast and in the dark. I'm guessing it was a double-edged blade. Shall I yank off that hunk of bandage and see if it covers a blister or a razor blade cut?"

  I was ready for almost anything except what happened. Her body went soft. Huge crystal tears wobbled from her eyes. She turned her face away from me and pressed it against the back of the couch and began to cry.

  "Come on, now," I mumbled. "It isn't as bad as all that."

  "Oh but it is," she wailed. "I knew you'd suspect me. I knew you would! But I really didn't take the thing. Please believe me.

  "But all those little facts put together made it look—"

  "Of course they do! The minute everybody saw the painting was gone I started thinking of all the clues that would point to me. I don't suppose you're one of those insecure people who feel guilty when anything goes wrong. But I am. When I'm driving a car and a policeman blows his whistle I always think I've broken a traffic law. Even when I was a little girl I felt that way. If somebody lost a nickel I always had a horrible feeling that people thought I took it. But you can't understand that. You're big and strong and confident. You don't know what it's like to feel small and insecure."

  Her face was still pressed against the couch. The words came out muffled but with those mandolin tones thrumming softly in them. My eyes began stinging a bit and my throat felt tight. "Sure I do," 1 said, patting her shoulder. "Lots of people have those insecure moments. But the way you kept hiding your right hand—"

  "I'll show it to you," she said in a broken voice, lifting her face. "It is cut. When I came home tonight there was a package waiting for me and I used a knife to cut the string and it slipped and cut my finger. There!" She ripped off the tiny bandage and showed me the cut. "And all I could think of," she said, crying harder than ever, "was that it would look like a razor blade cut and it's been hurting just awfully!"

  I was feeling badly about the way I had bullied her. She was just an unhappy kid, under all the gloss and glamour. "Now you stop worrying," I told her. "If you had been as frank as this at the start we wouldn't have had any trouble. Sorry I've been acting so tough."

  She gulped a few times and tried to smile at me. The tears had matted her eyelashes into lovely little fishhooks. "I could see you getting more suspicious every moment. And it frightened me so."

  I patted her shoulder again. My hand must have slipped because it ended up around her shoulders. I didn't mean to pull her toward me but somehow there she was in my arms. Her breath came in warm little puffs against my face.

  "You don't have to be frightened," I said.

  "I wanted so much for you to like me, Pete. Do you trust me a little bit now?"

  I was going to answer but something interfered. It seemed to be a warm mouth, pressed against mine. Her body touched me here and there, and left scorched places on me. My fingers tingled from the electric feel of the housecoat sliding over bare flesh. My brain was cool and under control, but inside my arteries the corpuscles were screeching around corners on two wheels. I kept telling myself that this wasn't the girl I wanted to make love to, but I didn't have a very good audience. I thought desper
ately: What would Nancy think?

  There was a noise a few feet away. It could have been a bomb going off or someone clearing a throat politely. I twisted around, looked up. One of my guesses was right but I would rather it had been the bomb. A moment ago I was wondering what Nancy would think. Now I could find out. There she was.

  Before I could choke out a word Nancy said in a pleasant tone, "Nice work, Pete. She never heard a thing, did she? I could have taken the whole place apart and she wouldn't have known."

  Kay Raymond tensed. One moment her body was soft and flowing in my arms and the next it was ready to spring.

  I said dizzily, "How did you—"

  "How did I find it?" Nancy said. "I just kept looking all through the place. Here it is."

  She whipped out something she had been holding at her side and unrolled it quickly and flashed it at me. Lightning bolts of color glowed from the canvas: chrome yellow and vermilion and ultramarine and oxide of chromium. The Accardi painting.

  Kay Raymond jumped up, glanced at a spot across the room. "You little sneak!" she cried. "Creeping into my apartmentl Crawling under my rugs—"

  "Hold her, Pete!" Nancy snapped.

  "Huh?" I said, dumbly.

  "Hold her!"

  I reached out stupidly and grabbed Kay. I didn't know the score or even what game we were playing. But I tightened my grip on Kay as she tried to wrench free. Nancy made a dive across the room. She dropped the rolled-up canvas and yanked up a corner of the big creamy rug and let out a pleased squeal and came up with another canvas. As she lifted it the thing curled up on itself but not before I had seen more swirls and slashes of chrome yellow and vermilion and all the rest.

  "Thanks for telling me, Miss Raymond," Nancy said. "I wouldn't have known where to start looking. The first canvas you saw wasn't the real one. It's just a copy Pete made."

  52

  "You'd better send out the search parties," I said. "I got lost a while back. Now what—"

  "I'll tell you later, Pete," Nancy said. "You can let her go now."

  I relaxed my grip on Kay Raymond, and it was nearly a bad mistake. Just in time I saw her swing at my face. I jerked my head back and a set of bright red fingernails flicked past my cheek. An inch closer and I'd have been doing my shaving on that side with a nail file. As she completed the swing I grabbed her wTist and gave a twitch and a heave and sent her sprawling onto the couch. She huddled there for a moment, glaring up at me.

  "Let's not have any more of that," I said. "That's a judo trick they taught me in the army. I don't do it very well and next time you might end up looking for a new wrist."

  Nancy said, "Ask her why she stole the painting."

  "You bore me," Kay said. "Go away and chatter at somebody else."

  "All right," Nancy said. "We'll chatter at the police."

  "When they come around," Kay said, "I have a nice story for them. Of course I took the painting. I did it because the pair of you asked me to take it. The idea was to get another big story in the papers about Accardi. But when you came here tonight, Miss Vernon, to talk about how nicely the trick had worked, you found your boy friend putting in a little couch time with me. That made you so furious you decided to frame me with a charge of stealing the painting."

  Nancy looked at her with wide startled eyes. "You couldn't possibly say things like that and get away with them."

  "Oh, I don't know," Kay said. "It might be fun to try. There's just enough truth in that story to cause you a lot of trouble."

  "She's got something there," I said.

  "Don't decide too hastily," Kay said in a purring tone. "I wouldn't mind seeing Pete on the witness stand. Mr. Meadows," she said, making her voice gruff, "isn't it a fact that you actually were on the couch, forcing your attentions on Miss Raymond, when—"

  "Oh shut up," I snapped.

  "Look at the poor boy," Kay said. "You could hang his face up for a stop light."

  Nancy said, "All right. There's no use asking a creature like you any questions."

  "My, but you scare easily," Kay said. "Maybe you'd better leave that painting here and forget all about it. You don't know what league you're playing in. But I can tell you right now, it's not the Junior League, dearie."

  "Let's go, Pete," Nancy said. "After all, we got what we came for."

  Kay said, "You'll go away thinking you're very clever. You had Pete come here first and leave the door ajar so you could get in. You had him put on an act to hold my attention, so you could pretend you found the painting. But after you think it over, Miss Vernon, you'll realize that one part of your plan wasn't very clever. It got a result you didn't expect."

  "Oh yes?" Nancy said. "Just what was that?"

  "The part on the couch," Kay murmured. "Pete forgot he was supposed to be acting. You'll regret letting him off the leash."

  "Come on, Pete," Nancy said. "I wouldn't want to lose my temper."

  "Go ahead, Pete," Kay said in a mincing voice. "She wouldn't want to lose her boy friend, either."

  I trailed after Nancy to the door. Something ought to be said in my defense, but I didn't know what. We walked silently down the corridor and waited for the elevator and rode down and went outside without having exchanged a word.

  "I would like you to know," Nancy said at last, "that I do not consider you my boy friend."

  "Naturally," I said.

  "You are merely a casual acquaintance."

  "Of course."

  "After Nick Accardi's troubles are settled, you will go your way and I will go mine."

  "Exactly."

  "How dare you say that! Wouldn't you even have the decency to come around and see if I was sick or anything?"

  "If you'll start this conversation over again," I said, "maybe I can make sense out of it."

  "Please don't try."

  "Okay," I said wearily. "You go your way and I'll go your way. What direction are we headed right now?"

  "We're going back to your shop. Perhaps by the time we get there you can think up an explanation for that romp on the couch."

  I said angrily that I didn't have to think one up, and told her exactly how I had cross-examined Kay Raymond and broken down her defenses and—

  "Are we," Nancy said, "talking about the same kind of defenses?"

  I said coldly, "I am talking about her defense against the charge of stealing the painting."

  "Don't put too much Dragnet music into it, Pete. Remember, you don't know how long I was standing there watching."

  "You wanted me to get the painting from her. What was wrong with using a little sex appeal?"

  "Nothing. Except that she was the one using it."

  "Let's change the subject," I muttered. "Let's talk about how smart you were instead of how dumb I was. How did you happen to get there?"

  "Well, I sat in your office after you left, and happened to see that copy you had made of Nick's painting. And I was beginning to worry about you. Sending you to that creature's apartment was like throwing a minnow to a shark."

  "A shark!" I said disgustedly.

  "All right. Like throwing a minnow into a minnow net. I decided you wouldn't get anywhere. I thought if I went to her apartment with the painting rolled up under my coat, and rang the bell and came in and joined you, maybe I would have a chance to ask to powder my nose or something and come back pretending I had found the painting. I didn't have any idea it would work so perfectly. The door was caught on the carpet and

  hadn't shut all the way, and I could hear your voices. I was debating whether it was honorable to sneak in, and then the voices stopped and I decided that it wasn't my honor that was at stake. So I came in. I wish I had arrived sooner. But it took me ages to find a razor blade and cut your painting off the stretcher the way she had cut Nick's."

  We reached the shop just then, and I unlocked the door and we went into the office. Nancy handed me the two rolled-up canvases. I started putting them away.

  "Wait a minute," Nancy said. "What are you doing?"
/>   "Hiding them in a safe place."

  "But Pete, I want you to sit down and study them, and tell me why people will fight and lie and steal to get the one Nick painted."

  "It's after twelve o'clock," I complained. "I'm tired and I don't have any better answer to that question than I ever did. So—" I stopped suddenly. I was holding Accardi's painting with my right hand and the copy with my left. They were the same size and had been painted in about the same way, but they didn't feel the same. "Pull down the shades on the outside door," I said. "And there's a curtain that closes off the show window. Make sure nobody can see in."

  "You found something!" she gasped. "What is it?"

  "I don't know. It may be just a wild idea."

  By the time she came back, I had both paintings spread out on my desk with the edges weighted so they couldn't curl up. I took a magnifying glass and studied the edges, where the razor blade had sliced through pigment and canvas. Finally I handed the glass to Nancy. "See what I see?" I said.

  She took a long look. "He used more paint than you did. His painting is twice as thick as yours. Is that what you mean?"

  "Yes. But I knew he had slapped paint on heavily and so I tried to use just as much."

  "Maybe Nick changed his ideas as he went along, and painted over what he had done at first."

  "I don't think so. This thing was done fast and boldly. He knew what he wanted to do right from the start."

  "Then that doesn't seem to get us anywhere."

  "It gets us to this," I said. "There may be an entirely different painting underneath."

  "Would that mean anything?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea. It's not unusual for an artist to take one of his old paintings and do a new one on top. Especially if he's just experimenting and wants to save a few bucks. Of course in time the colors of the first picture will strike through the second one, and give it a muddy look. But that doesn't matter if the guy's just playing around."

  "Pete, how can we find out what the first painting looks like? Aren't there ways the experts use?"