LITMIR.BIZ

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line entirely.”

      “And the test signal red—?”

      “Just before seven o’clock.”

      “And he was here then? I’d like,” said Kenmore, “to fix the time as closely as I can.”

      “Well,” Elliot thought, “you can come closer to it than that. Because he phoned in a couple of reports tonight.”

      “Yes,” Kenmore agreed, thumbing the pink sheets on the desk, “these. At 7:03 and 7:17.”

      “A little later than that. Those are the incicfent times. It’d take a few minutes for the post wardens to put through their reports to him, and for him to call the control room.”

      Kenmore said, “So death occurred, say, between 7:20 or thereabouts, and approximately eight o’clock.”

      He jotted this into his pocket notebook.

      Dr. Lauren Wallace interrupted. “But, inspector—” he paused, “—I mean, lieutenant.”

      This slip of the tongue recalled the unpleasant memory.

      John Kenmore had been only a detective-inspector when Catherine Hope was slain. Dr. Wallace had been Director of the Marine Research Institute at that time. (He was Director Emeritus now.)

      La Jolla took the institution rather for granted, but M.R.I, enjoyed a very substantial reputation in scientific circles, and to the establishment of this reputation Lauren Wallace had contributed notably. The Director Emeritus was not a great scientist nor scholar; and did not pretend to be. Dr. Wallace’s talent inclined to administration, and his genius to money-raising. By means of this genius he had made possible the 1923-’29 Expeditions, whereon was founded the Institute’s unique position in its field. Those were the years of the seven fat kine. And in the starveling years that followed, the good doctor’s administrative talent had at least kept the institution afloat in shoal waters.

      The shocking demise of Catherine Hope—whose nude body had been discovered in one of M.R.I.’s aquarium tanks in April, 1937—served to darken the final months of his directorship.

      It was not so much the three-day wonder (and that had been bad enough, with the headlines, with the curious wearing footpaths across the grounds, with the morbid threatening to dismember the aquarium in their search for souvenirs). It was the dismal three-week police investigation which did the damage. The revelations had led to the enforced resignations of three professors—not that these marine biologists were probably any better or worse than other mortals; they had been merely more naive in their transgressions.

      The scandal cost M.R.I. a number of annual contributors; and it cost Dr. Lauren Wallace his hope of building the edifice which would have been Wallace Hall and the fitting monument to his life labors.

      Inspector, said Lauren Wallace, and brought home the jarring fact:

      The murder of Catherine Hope remained unsolved to this day.

      That affair had run the predictable course of violent crime in a small locality; it had fattened indecently upon the unfortunate professors, and then withered profitlessly away.

      Kenmore could hardly blame himself; Captain Harry Whipple had commanded the homicide detail then; but Kenmore had worked on the case, and the recollection of frustration made his grey eyes momentarily bleak.

      “Yes?” said he. “What is it?”

      Dr. Lauren Wallace shook his white-maned head. “I was going to say, lieutenant, there should be three of those.”

      “Three pink sheets?”

      “Yes. It’s a new form we were trying tonight. Mrs. Rhine didn’t mimeograph enough copies to waste any, The sector wardens each got exactly three, because we planned three incidents in each sector.”

      Kenmore considered that.

      “Well, did Bowling actually get three? Is there any certainty he did?”

      Dr. Lauren Wallace said, Yes, the copies had been handed around at yesterday’s sector warden meeting; a meeting he had called especially to acquaint the men with the new form.

      “And as a matter of fact, Bowling came up to me before the meeting. It was about his messengers, the Chapman twins. They are table tennis addicts, and are playing in a tournament in San Diego tonight. Bowling wanted to know whether he should make other arrangements, and I told him the boys wouldn’t be needed. We talked about the pink sheets, I gave him them to look over, and counted them as I did so.”

      Dr. Wallace spoke positively. He was a positive figure of a man; a big ruddy individual with a tall forehead under his shock of white hair; with the forceful manner of the experienced executive and administrator.

      Kenmore respected the incident officer’s ability.

      “Well,” said he casually, “then Bowling misplaced the other.”

      “That would hardly be like Henry Bowling,” Lauren Wallace objected, puzzled. “He was so systematic in everything. Still, none of fos are perfect, are we? I suppose he must have lost it.”

      But Dr. Wallace was not through thinking of the third pink sheet. Rather sharply, his glance rested on Kenmore. “You must have hurried here,” said he.

      The lieutenant told exactly as much of the truth as he considered Dr. Wallace, or any of them, were entitled to hear.

      “It happened I was in La Jolla. I had an appointment with a chap nearby.”

      “I see.” Wallace dabbed at his tall forehead with a folded square of handkerchief. “How very hot it is . . . Nobody seems to have remembered to turn off that heater.”

      “Yes,” said Kenmore, attending to it. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d better notify the coroner’s office.”

      Then, having dismissed the two gentlemen, he lifted the phone to dial operator and give her the headquarters number . . . and summoned the police photographer-and-fingerprint-man from the farewell party on Market Street.

      Kenmore, when he had finished talking, stood frowning at the two pink sheets. His frown was cautious in its concentration, for police work makes a literal man. Dr. Wallace had pounced on an interesting detail. If he had noticed the pipe and the eyeglasses and the alarm clock as well, he was as near to a solution as Kenmore himself. But that was not anywhere near enough to satisfy the district attorney. District attorneys want clues—forthright clues whose value as evidence will impress even an unsympathetic jury.

      In this sense, Kenmore did not have a case at all and he knew it. He could not prove a crime had been committed; and if he could not prove that, obviously he could not arrest anyone on suspicion of having committed it. He could ask questions, to be sure; but he could not demand answers. The fact that a man has died apparently by accident does not give a police officer the right to probe into the private affairs of his family—and families of relative wealth generally know their Constitutional rights. If Kenmore asked himself why he believed Henry Bowling had been murdered, the answer would be, firstly: because of the telephone call. From the legal point of view, there were three things wrong about the telephone call. It might be excluded from the testimony altogether. It might be objected that Kenmore could not positively identify the voice as Bowling’s. It might be argued, supposing Bowling had made the call, he had nevertheless died by accidental means. Just as, if he had set forth afoot to deliver his information at the substation, he could conceivably have been run down and killed by a motorist having no connection with the case. No law of nature exempts informers from the hazards of traffic, defective heaters, and electric short-circuits. In fact, being preoccupied with the business in hand, Bowling would have been less than ordinarily apt to notice gas fumes in the room.

      Secondly, there were the items of a missing pink sheet, a pipe, eyeglasses, and alarm clock. Kenmore considered these were items he assuredly could not act upon, but he could think from them . . . He lighted his own pipe; walked around and sat in Henry Bowling’s chair; and locked his hands behind his head.

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