once more. He opened the top folder and leafed through its contents until he came to an application form. There was a photograph pasted in the corner of it 'Dark hair,' he said, and put the folder on his left.
When he had gone through all of them, there were two uneven piles. Twelve with dark hair and five with light,' the Dean said.
Ellen leaned forward. 'Dorothy once told me he was handsome...'
The Dean drew the pile of five folders to the center of his desk blotter and opened the first one. 'George Speiser,' he said thoughtfully. 'I doubt if you'd call Mr. Speiser handsome.' He lifted out the application form and turned it towards Ellen. The face in the photograph was a chinless, gimlet-eyed teen-ager. She shook her head.
The second was an emaciated young man with thick eyeglasses.
The third was fifty-three years old and his hair was white, not blond.
Ellen's hands were damp on her purse. The Dean opened the fourth folder. 'Gordon Gant,' he said. 'Does that sound like the name?' He turned the application form towards her.
He was blond and unarguably handsome; light eyes under full brows, a long firm jaw and a cavalier grin. 'I think so...' she said. 'Yes, I think he...'
'Or could it be Dwight Powell?' the Dean asked, displaying the fifth application form in his other hand.
The fifth photograph showed a square-jawed, serious-looking young man, with a cleft chin and pale-toned eyes.
'Which name sounds familiar?' the Dean asked.
Ellen looked impotently from one picture to the other.
They were both blond; they were both blue-eyed; they were both handsome.
She came out of the Administration Building and stood at the head of the stone steps surveying the campus, dull gray under a clouded sky. Her purse was in one hand, a slip of paper from the Dean's memo paid in the other.
Two... It would slow her up a little, that's all. It should be simple to find out which was the one... and then she would watch him, even meet him perhaps-though not as Ellen Kingship. Watch for the darting eye, the guarded answer. Murder must leave marks. (It was murder. It must have been murder.)
She was getting ahead of herself. She looked at the paper in her hand: Gordon C. Gant 1312 West 26th Street Dwight Powell 1520 West 35th Street Her lunch, eaten in a small restaurant across the street from the campus, was a hasty mechanical affair, her mind racing with swift thoughts. How to begin? Ask a few discreet questions of their Mends? But where do you start? Follow each men, learn the identity of his friends, meet them, find the ones who had known him last year? Time, time, time... If she remained in Blue River too long, Bud might call her father. Her fingers tapped impatiently. Who would be sure to know about Gordon Gant and Dwight Powell? Their families. Or if they were from out of town, a landlady or a roommate. It would be impetuous to go straight to the center of things, to the people nearest them, but still, no time would be wasted... She bit her lower lip, her fingers still tapping.
After a minute she put down her half finished cup of coffee, rose from the table and threaded her way to the phone booth. Hesitantly she raffled the pages of the thin Blue River book. There was no Gant at all, no Powell on 35th Street That meant they either had no phones, which seemed unlikely, or they were living with families other than their own.
She called Information and obtained the number of the telephone at 1312 West 26th Street; 2-2014: 'Hello?' The voice was a woman's; dry, middle-aged.
'Hello.' Ellen swallowed. 'Is Gordon Gant there?'
A pause. 'Who's calling?'
'A friend of his. Is he there?'
'No.' Snapped out sharply.
'Who is this?'
'His landlady.'
'When do you expect him back?'
'Won't be back till late tonight.' The woman's voice was quick with annoyance. There was a click as she hung up.
Ellen looked at the dead receiver and placed it on the hook. When she got back to her table the coffee was cold.
He would be gone all day. Go there?... A single conversation with the landlady might establish that Gant was the one who had gone with Dorothy. Or, by elimination, it might prove that Powell was the one. Speak to the landlady... but under what pretext?
Why, any pretext! Provided the woman believed it, what harm could the wildest story do?-even if its falseness were completely obvious to Gant when the landlady reported it. Either he wasn't the man, in which case let him puzzle over a mysterious questioner pretending to be a friend or a relative, or he was the man, in which case: A) He had not killed Dorothy-again let him puzzle over a mysterious questioner, or: B) He had killed Dorothy- and the story of a girl seeking information about him would make him uneasy. Yet his uneasiness would not interfere with her plans, for should she later make his acquaintance, he would have no reason to associate her with the girl who had questioned his landlady. Uneasiness on his part might even be a help to her, making him tense, more likely to betray himself. Why, he might even decide to take no chances and leave town-and that would be all she'd need to convince the police that there was a sound basis to her suspicions. They would investigate, find the proof...
Go straight to the center of things. Impetuous? When you thought about it, it was really the most logical thing to do.
She looked at her watch. Five past one. Her visit shouldn't be made too soon after the telephone call or the landlady might connect the two and become suspicious. Forcing herself to sit back in the chair, Ellen caught the waitress' eye and ordered another cup of coffee.
At a quarter of two she entered the 1300 block of West 26th Street. It was a quiet, tired-looking street, with pallid two story frame houses sitting behind pocked brown lawns still hard from winter. A few old Fords and Chewies stood immobile along the curb, some aging naturally, some trying to stay young with unprofessional paint jobs, bright colored but lusterless. Ellen walked with the enforced slowness of attempted nonchalance, the sound of her heels the only sound in the still air.
The house where Gordon Gant lived, 1312, was the third one in from the corner; mustard colored, its brown trim the shade of stale chocolate. After looking at it for a moment, Ellen walked up the cracked concrete path that bisected the dead lawn and led to the porch. There she read the nameplate on the mailbox affixed to one of the posts: Mrs. Minna Arquette. She stepped to the door. Its bell was of the old-fashioned kind; a fan-shaped metal tab protruded from the center of the door. Drawing a deep initiatory breath, she gave the tab a quick twist. The bell within rang gratingly. Ellen waited.
Presently footsteps sounded inside, and then the door opened. The woman who stood in the doorway was tall and lank, with frizzy gray hair clustered above a long equine face. Her eyes were pink and rheumy. A busily printed housedress hung from her sharp shoulders. She looked Ellen up and down. 'Yes?'-the dry Midwestern voice of the telephone.
'You must be Mrs. Arquette,' Ellen declared.
'That's right.' The woman twitched a sudden smile, displaying teeth of an unnatural perfection.
Ellen smiled back at her. 'I'm Gordon's cousin.'
Mrs. Arquette arched thin eyebrows. 'His cousin?'
'Didn't he mention that I'd be here today?'
'Why, no. He didn't say anything about a cousin. Not a word.'
'That's funny. I wrote him I'd be passing through. I'm on my way to Chicago and I purposely came this way so I could stop off and see him. He must have forgotten to-'
'When did you write him?'
Ellen hesitated. 'The day before yesterday. Saturday.'
'Oh.' The smile flashed again. 'Gordon leaves the house early in the morning, and the first mail don't come till ten. Your letter is probably sitting in his room this minute.'*
'Ohh...'
