The cop looked at the passport, and winced.
“Ooop!” he said. “Sorry. Keeping a watch on this place was the coloners idea. We was supposed to pay special attention to this house. I didn’t know you was home yet. You see, you’re still on the vacant-house list. I’ll take you off when I go back to report.”
“Thank you,” Leonidas said. “Perhaps you’ll report my return to the colonel, personally, will you? Tell him I appreciate your watchfulness and—er— zeal. And if Cuff Murray’s still on the force, tell Cuff I’m home.”
“Cuff’s on sick leave—you know Cuff?”
“Cuff,” Leonidas said, “is also a personal friend.” The cop choked back whatever comment he had on the tip of his tongue.
“Friend, huh? That so. He certainly is a big boy, Cuff is. Built like a stadium. He’s sure a big fellow.”
“Physically speaking, Cuff is a remarkable specimen,” Leonidas said. “Mentally—er, tell me. How did he get on the force? It happened while I was away, and I’ve been very curious to know. He’s a protege of Mrs. Price’s, but I didn’t want to ask her. I didn’t want her to know that I doubted his ability to read.”
“He can, all right. He passed his exams high. Then of course he’s a swell shot—he stopped a bank robber last month. And he’s athaletic. And honest, I never seen a guy pick up so many stolen cars!”
Leonidas smiled. That was not unusual, in view of Cuff’s former occupation. Cuff had stolen cars for a living.
“I know Mrs. Price was rooting for him, but that wouldn’t cut any ice with the colonel,” the cop went on. “Cuff got his rating. Me, I never thought he could pass. I’ll have Sweeny tell him you’re home.”
Leonidas extracted a bill from his wallet.
“Thank you. And there was a woman, you know. There really was. Lurking behind the hedge, and peeking at me as I unlocked the door.”
“Peeking around, huh? Well, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, Mr. Witherall. There’s been an awful lot of people come to look at this house of yours. It’s different from any other house in Dalton, see, and that made ‘em curious. A lot of women come to look at it, particularly with Mrs. Price around so much. I spoke to the colonel about it, but he just said if I could manage his sister Cassie, I was a better man than him. You know how Mrs. Price is. She knows everybody.”
Leonidas nodded.
He wanted to say that he was aware of Cassie Price’s vast circle of acquaintances, but that this woman was different.
This woman, he wanted to say, was the woman who cracked me over the head on the train this morning. This was the woman who hid a gun and a pair of handcuffs in the water cooler. The woman who rushed off the train at Back Bay with a beautiful girl. The woman who left me for dead on the floor of Drawing Room B, and apparently caused a body under those gray blankets to dissolve into thin air.
But he couldn’t say it. However clear all those facts were in his own mind, they were nothing to throw casually at a cop, even to one of Colonel Carpenter’s cops.
“In and out, in and out, all the time,” the cop said. “Those women! Look, you can’t see no special tracks in the snow. She just walked around where the men walked that knocked the snow off your trees. The fellows that shoveled. They’re the Italians that do Mrs. Price. The woman was just gawping around, Mr. Witherall. Something to gawp at, too. That’s a fine house you got there. I wish I owned that heater of yours. Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do. Peters in Car Fifteen. We hang out around the hill. So long.”
“Wait,” Leonidas said. “Tell me about the snow- removal system. For the streets, I mean. I notice that Main Avenue was clear, but what about all those streets on the other side of the hill, like Elm and Lime and Cherry?”
“Them? Oh, they’re unfinished streets. Did you try to come up that way? You can later on, over the rough ends, but they only plow as far as the last house. Couple of ‘em ain’t accepted streets, so they ain’t plowed till last. Just use Main. The rest of the hill here’s always fixed up. Let me know if it ain’t. Good-by, now.”
All thoughts of the mousy woman erased themselves from Leonidas’s mind as he entered his house.
The kitchen was a gay, shining room, with red and gray linoleum floor and walls. His glance jumped from the highly burnished copper pots and pans on a wall rack to closets and cupboards, and the potted plant on the window sill.
There seemed to be a lot of red things running in an unbroken line around the walls. One, with slashes of chromium, was a stove. A lot of the others were red linoleum tops to cupboards and drawers, which formed a sort of working space, Leonidas decided. One red thing turned into a sort of sink, when the metal cover was raised, an amazing sink with an electric dishwasher and a garbage chopper tucked away in it.
Leonidas set both going, and listened with pleasure to the motors humming.
But of all the red things, the prize was the red refrigerator. He opened the door, and the interior instantly lighted up, a phenomenon which almost caused Leonidas to crow. Probably a floodlighted red refrigerator was a hackneyed, commonplace fixture to the average housewife, but to Leonidas it was both satisfactory and thrilling. He opened and closed the door half a dozen times for the sheer joy of watching the light go on.
Then he realized that the refrigerator, like the cupboard shelves, was stocked with food. Eggs, butter, a magnificent cooked Virginia ham.
“What,” Leonidas said, “am I waiting
