"I love this country," said the cabby.

She sat across the kitchen table from Riker while the coffee-maker gurgled between them. Her head throbbed, and it crossed her mind that the doctors had packed her brain case with cotton batting.

"Why didn't Charles come back to the hospital with my stuff and my keys?"

"Maybe he did," said Riker. "You didn't hang around very long."

Mallory shook her head. Charles had already been here, so the doorman said, and left in a hurry. She got up from the table.

"Where are you going, kid?"

"Well, not out the front door." Even the Shadow could not pass through solid oak.

After the doorman had let them in with a master key, they had reached a mistrustful stand-off when Riker locked the front door deadbolt from the inside and pocketed the spare key from the ring in the kitchen. Next, he had gone to the bedroom window's burglar guard leading out to the fire escape. He had found the key to the padlock and secured that exit, too.

Now she had drunk as much coffee as she could stand, and Riker had matched her cup for cup. Her mind had cleared only a little, and he was showing no signs of the lost night's sleep. If anything, he was jazzed with caffeine, and for the first time, capable of thinking rings around her, anticipating every ploy.

Maybe.

When he was safely lost in the sports section of the morning paper, she walked into her den and pulled the door shut behind her. She dragged a chair from its position at the computer to the center of the room and sat before the board, scanning the whole of the cork wall as one unit, one mind at work. Despite the mess of papers at the baseboard, she was slow to focus, to realize there had been an intrusion here, another mind at work on the board.

Charles.

He had torn off layers of paper and rearranged the photos and printouts. Samantha Siddon had come to prominence in a centered and solitary position. Anne Cathery, Estelle Gaynor and Pearl Whitman were grouped together and off to the side, lined up in the order of their deaths. The financial data came next in Charles's own hierarchy of paper-shuffling.

She was staring at the small white beads, Anne Cathery's, torn from her neck on the day of the murder in Gramercy Park. They lay scattered all over the pile of papers and the plastic bag. The ground had been soaked in blood, strewn with beads. In the slide show inside her head, the Cathery murder scene was blending with Markowitz's. She could see herself lining up the blood pools of Markowitz's face. "Line 'em up flat with the floor," Dr Slope had told her then.

She walked to the baseboard and knelt down by the pile of Charles's rejects and the plastic bag. Something was missing. What had Charles taken away with him? Her drugged brain would not move quickly enough. She turned to the faster brain of her computer and called up the files to match the missing sequence numbers. And now she could see all that Charles had seen.

There was writing on the wall, and there was writing on the wall.

Charles hammered on the door.

No response.

He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He entered slowly. The front room was curtain-drawn dark. Down the hall, a rectangle of light reflected off one wall opposite the door to the library. When he rounded the wall and stood in the open doorway, he faced a dark shape in an armchair pulled out to the center of the room and back-lit by the bright light of a table lamp.

"Oh, it's you," said Edith's voice.

His eyes were slow to sort out the details of the gun's barrel and bullet chambers as she lowered it to her lap.

Edith smiled. "I suppose you think I'm a foolish old woman to be so frightened."

"Oh, no. I don't take you for a fool. And you left your door unlocked – that doesn't argue well for fear. Herbert's gun, I presume? How did you convince him to part with it? Ah, but wait. I forget. You're the one who talked him into getting it. And you were the one who sent one of the seance ladies that threatening letter. That was for Mallory's benefit, wasn't it? To send her after Redwing. Whom else have you been sending notes to?"

"What are you saying?"

"This isn't a case of second sight." The wave of his hand took in the gun, and the lamp. "It's a sure thing. You're expecting an invited guest. Did you telephone or write?"

"You believe that I would deliberately use myself as bait? I'm not so brave."

"I'd say it was more like an ambush. Oh, Mallory is alive. That must be a great disappointment to you."

"Charles, how can you – "

"You knew who the murderer was. The last thing you wanted was to have the monster caught by Mallory. You were going to do that job yourself. What a coup. You protect yourself from prison and make a career comeback in one shot."

"If your mother could hear the things you're say – "

"My mother knew what you were," said Charles. "You've branched out a bit, though, added on a few more enterprises. I might have worked this out sooner, but it was so out of character for you to let a mark in on the action. Now there are forty of them, all in on it. Getting a bit out of hand, isn't it?. Were you craving a little excitement? All those people involved in the scam. Did you enjoy the thrill to the threat of discovery? A young chess-player tried to explain that special joy to me the other day. You look frightened, Edith. I think the killer has the same fears."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Read my mind – if the prospect doesn't frighten you. The Whitman merger wasn't your first or last bit of larceny. It wasn't sufficient to account for the amounts in your stock portfolio. You see these?" He pulled a wad of computer printouts from his pocket. "Mallory knew, but I wouldn't listen to her. She backtracked the increases in your fortune and tallied them with details of insider trading. The forty partners told you everything – a new product that led to an increase in stock value, a pending merger, a sale, a takeover. They even allowed you to set the dates of their transactions, just as Pearl Whitman did when her company went into merger. Then somebody started killing off your partners. The police started investigating commonalities among the victims. Exposure was a threat."

"Stop this, Charles, before you – "

"You and the murderer had so much in common. First, killing for the money, then learning to love it. You were soul mates, twins, and the two of you were bound together by the same racket."

"This is ludicrous. You can't hold me responsible for – "

"I see your hand in everything, Edith. You primed Redwing and baited Mallory. You set Mallory up to die. That's your forte, isn't it? First you predict the death and then you make it happen. She was bright enough to expose you. That would have meant the loss of your fortune and freedom. Hers would have been a challenging death and so functional too. How neat. But you're not orchestrating things anymore. When the killer walks in. I'll be here. Not you. Now get out of here. Go across the hall to Henrietta's apartment."

"I assure you, I'm capable of – "

"Get out!"

Mallory closed out the file raided from the last financial house on her list and pushed her chair away from the computer. Well, Edith had told her, straight out, you can get away with a lot when you're old.

She slipped by the open kitchen door. Riker was still immersed in the sports section. She walked through her bedroom and into the bathroom to turn on the shower. She left the shower running as she opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out the old.38 Long Colt which had belonged to Markowitz and his father before him. Riker had thoughtfully confiscated her Smith & Wesson, but this would do. The holes would not be so big, but the bullets would travel as far and nearly as fast. The shower was steaming the bathroom mirror as she strapped on her shoulder holster.