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
AS twilight fell the spring evening was infused with a pervasive moistness somewhat between a heavy dew and a thin fog. It haloed streetlights and gave the air a soft texture that would make country-reared, transplanted city dwellers remember seedtime and spring rains. Restless with vague yearnings for new-turned earth, they would drift home from work tomorrow instead of rushing along in their usual blind fashion. Their eyes would see what they had previously ignored: flats of petunias, marigolds, candytuft and salvia displayed for sale in front of a dozen different stores. And many a New Yorker, suddenly and unaccountably homesick for the green fields of Kentucky, Ohio or Minnesota, would stop and buy as many tender seedlings as his bit of earth-be it only a single narrow window box-could accommodate. "You can take the boy out of the country…" they would tell each other sheepishly as they exchanged advice on potting soils and tomato varieties.
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. The door wall held framed diplomas and various certificates of honor interspersed with small engravings. The two side walls were lined with glass-fronted mahogany bookcases filled with books.
For all his posing, Quinn had been a diligent worker. On his desk were an electric typewriter and several folders with the nearly completed manuscript of his latest book. Behind the desk, on the fourth wall, was a section devoted to slide-sized wooden files, each drawer labeled by dates, artists or movements. Beside them was a built-in viewing counter of frosted glass, which could be lit from beneath whenever Quinn wanted to arrange the slide sequence of a lecture.
A bank of letter-size file cabinets three drawers tall formed a continuation of the counter. Again they were of the same dark wood, and on the front of each drawer was a brass-rimmed card holder with detailed labels of content. It was to these that the intruder was drawn after his careful examination of the bookcases yielded nothing tangible.
He found the section of the alphabet that interested him, set his crowbar in a corner and tugged at a drawer pull. It opened with a harsh squeak, and the man froze, listening for alarms.
From upstairs came only a muffled duet of snores.
Sandy Keppler's apartment building was near Tompkins Square, and had been built around the turn of the century in a more expansive age when every household comprised several children and at least one live-in servant girl. Back then a single floor barely sufficed for a proper apartment. Now each room was a separate efficiency and considered spacious by modern standards.