extricated the rest of Doris from the slip and was rewarded by another snore and an overpowering aroma of liquor, mingled with expensive perfume.
With the slip removed from her head, Doris Quinn was unveiled as a well-tended forty, who probably waged a daily battle with calories, but whose slight plumpness had doubtless helped keep her soft white skin so smooth and unwrinkled. Her tousled tresses were unnaturally blond but too expertly managed to show anything so crass as dark roots. Altogether a small and cuddly, pampered, indulged and thoroughly sexual woman. The kind that always made Sigrid feel gawky even though scornful of so much feminine artifice.
Irritably she turned down the covers and rolled Doris Quinn under, tucked her in, then firmly closed the rose- bud mouth. She glanced over at Piers Leyden, comatose on the furry chaise, shrugged and switched off all but one of the ruffled lamps before tiptoeing to the door. A final and distinctly unfeminine snore goaded her into banging the door shut behind her.
On the landing she paused again to glare at that offensive black painting. What on earth had impelled Quinn (and after seeing his wife's taste in bedroom furnishings, she was sure it
But even as she frowned at the picture, she became aware of hidden depths beneath its smooth surface. The longer she stared, the more there was to see. Instead of being one shade of matte black, the painting was actually a harmonious blend of transparent blacks and browns; and each subtle tonal difference assumed a different geometric form, the shapes seeming to float in a dark void, shifting and realigning to form a rich angular pattern.
She looked away, and the canvas resumed its blank surface. She concentrated, and again veiled complexities revealed themselves. Sigrid was obscurely pleased by its elusive beauty and came downstairs in a much better humor than when she'd gone up.
Her crossness returned, though, when she stepped out into the cool spring evening and found Oscar Nauman lounging against her car, a cold pipe clenched between his teeth.
'I thought you'd gone.'
'How the hell could I go?' His crossness matched hers. 'One of your damned cohorts towed my car away again.'
'And there are no taxis?' she inquired sweetly.
'Be my guest,' he offered, sourly gesturing toward the busy avenue.
Feeling vastly superior, Sigrid walked the few steps to the corner, stepped to the curb edge beneath a streetlight and signaled an oncoming cab. It ignored her. As did the next two. The following four were either occupied or displayed off-duty signs.
Annoyed, she took out the brass whistle she carried in her shoulder bag and blew several sharp blasts. The only response this elicited was from an excited little Scottish terrier out for an evening stroll along the avenue, which jerked the leash free from its master's hand and bounded down the sidewalk to dance around Sigrid's feet and jump up at her knees.
'Oh, dear! Oh, I'm so sorry!' apologized the owner, a plump little man in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, who bustled up to collect the bouncing animal. 'Heel, Mischief! Heel, I say! It's the whistle, you see,' he told Sigrid in a clipped English accent. 'She blows it-sit, Miss! My daughter, I mean. It's her signal-sit you naughty dog-when it's time for a romp. For the dog I mean. Come along, Mischief. No, that's not Sally. That's a strange lady.'
The man moved away, still admonishing his dog; and Nauman, his sense of humor restored, broke into rich deep laughter. 'That's a strange lady, that is,' he repeated in a burlesqued cockney accent.
Wryly Sigrid pocketed the whistle. She walked back down to her car, unlocked it and said, 'Get in, and I'll give you a lift downtown. I need to talk to you anyhow.'
'Only on condition that we stop for dinner first. I haven't had mine yet, and you probably wouldn't be so bitchy if you'd had yours.' He climbed in beside her, and she was aware of a clean smell of turpentine and mellow tobacco. A not unpleasant combination.
'I'm not a health-food, wheat-germ addict,' she warned nastily, turning the ignition key.
'Neither am I,' he answered serenely. 'I had in mind a thick and bloody steak.'
7
There was no gateway into Central Park opposite the street Quinn's brownstone stood on, only tall iron railings. Behind the railings, in the deepest shadows where the illumination of one mist-blurred streetlight barely met the next, stood a man. He was concealed from casual notice by the thickly overgrown bushes, which pushed tender twigs through the rails in front of him. From his camouflaged position he had a clear view across the wide avenue and down the side street to the third house from the corner-Quinn's house-from which a trickle of people had been coming and going since he arrived late that afternoon.
He had watched Sigrid Harald's attempt to whistle down a cab for Professor Nauman; and when they had finally driven away, he was fairly certain no one remained in the house except Riley Quinn's widow. Nevertheless, he patiently waited another half hour to be sure, then made his was through the dew-wet bushes to the nearest park exit half a block away and from there to Quinn's front door. At last, abandoning all signs of his previous stealth, he marched boldly up the broad stone steps.
Distracted by finding Nauman still there when she emerged earlier, Sigrid had not noticed that the latch was off, so the knob turned smoothly under the intruder's gloved hand, and he didn't need the crowbar he carried concealed in his jacket sleeve.
He slipped inside and closed the door even more quietly than he'd opened it. No one challenged his entry. No sound reached him at all, in fact, apart from the muted traffic noise from outside. He felt he could handle Mrs Quinn, but it was simpler if the point didn't arise.
Lamps had been left lighted throughout the house. The intruder glanced disdainfully at the paintings that had looked like cartoons to Sigrid, scrutinized their signatures, then passed down the entry hall into a spacious living room stale with the odors of cigarette butts and a spilled bottle of Scotch. Someone had made a stab at tidying up, had gathered dirty ashtrays and emptied cocktail glasses onto a large wood tray that had been left on an open liquor cabinet. There were still ice cubes in the silver icebucket and open bottles of every persuasion stood about.
Everywhere he turned, there were more drawings and paintings. He circled the room like a near-sighted museum visitor, then toured the dining room, the butler's pantry and, briefly, the kitchen. No sign of what he'd come for. He moved back into the living room and considered the stairs. Perhaps up there? But Mrs. Quinn was up there, too.
He hesitated, undecided, then noticed an inconspicuous door, paneled like the rest of the entry hall, just beneath the stairs. He opened it, groped in darkness, and lights came on inside Riley Quinn's study.
The room was windowless, about fourteen feet square and had probably started life as a storage area. Whatever its origin, it now looked like something ordered from an office-furniture catalog: 'one middle-class study, college-professor type.' A leather-topped desk stood before the rear wall. Nearby were a leather swivel desk chair and matching leather armchairs, a globe stand, a large dictionary on its own little table and several brass lamps.
