"He's in Washington," Irene said. "She's pretty upset. She's been robbed."

"Robbed?"

"Robbed. I think you better see her."

"Where's the colonel?" Payne asked.

"If he was here, I wouldn't be in here," she said. Payne couldn't tell if she was annoyed with him, or tolerating him. "He's with Bull Bolinski."

"With whom?"

"World-famous tennis player," Irene Craig said.

"I don't place him, either," Payne said, after a moment.

"Oh, God," she said, in smiling exasperation."Bull Bolinski. He was a tackle for the Green Bay Packers. You really never heard the name, did you?"

"No, I'm afraid I haven't," Payne said. "And now you have me wholly confused, Irene."

"The colonel's at the Bellevue-Stratford, with the Bull, who is now a lawyer and representing a reporter, who's negotiating a contract with theBulletin."

"Why is he doing that?" Payne asked, surprised, and thinking aloud. The legal affairs of thePhiladelphia Bulletin were handled by Kenneth L. McAdoo.

"Because he wanted to meet the Bull," Irene Craig said.

"I think I may be beginning to understand," Payne said. "You think I should talk to Mrs… Whatsername?"

"Peebles," Irene Craig replied."Miss Martha Peebles."

"All right," Payne said. "Give me a minute, and then show her in."

"I think you should," Irene Craig said, and walked out of the office.

"Damn," Brewster C. Payne said. He slipped the thick brief he had in his lap and the notes he had made on the desk into the lower righthand drawer of his desk. Then he stood up, rolled down and buttoned his cuffs, buttoned his collar, pulled up his tie, and put his suit jacket on.

Then he walked to the double doors to his office and pulled the right one open.

A woman, a young one (he guessed thirty, maybe thirty-two or -three) looked at him. She was simply but well dressed. Her light brown hair was cut fashionably short, and she wore short white gloves. She was almost, but not quite, good-looking.

Without thinking consciously about it, Brewster C. Payne categorized her as a lady. What he thought, consciously, was that she, with her brother, held essentially all of the stock in Tamaqua Mining, and that that stock was worth somewhere between twenty and twenty-five million dollars.

No wonder Irene made me see her.

"Miss Peebles, I'm Brewster Payne. I'm terribly sorry to have kept you waiting. Would you please come in?"

Martha Peebles smiled and stood up and walked past him into his office. Payne smelled her perfume. He didn't know the name of it, but it was, he thought, the same kind his wife used.

"May I offer you a cup of coffee? Or perhaps tea?" Payne asked.

"That would be very nice," Martha Peebles said. "Coffee, please,"

Payne looked at Irene Craig and saw that she had heard. He pushed the door closed, and ushered Martha Peebles onto a couch against the wall, and settled himself into a matching armchair. A long teakwood coffee table with drawers separated them.

"I'm very sorry that Mr. Foster is not here," Payne said. "He was called to Washington."

"It was very good of you to see me," Martha Peebles said. "I'm grateful to you."

"It's my pleasure, Miss Peebles. Now, how may I be of assistance?"

"Well," she said, "I have been robbed… and there's more."

"Miss Peebles, before we go any further, how would you feel about my turning on a recording machine? It's sometimes very helpful…"

"A recording machine?" she asked.

"A recording is often very helpful," Payne said.

She looked at him strangely, then said, "If you think it would be helpful, of course."

Payne tapped the switch of the tape recorder, under the coffee table, with the toe of his shoe.

"You say you were robbed?"

"I thought you said you were going to record this," Martha Peebles said, almost a challenge.

"I am," he said. "I just turned it on. The switch is under the table. The microphone is in that little box on the table."

"Oh, really?" she said, looking first at the box and then under the coffee table. "How clever!"

"You were saying you were robbed?"

"You could have turned it on without asking, couldn't you?" Martha Peebles said. "I would never have known."

"That would have been unethical," he said. "I would never do something like that."

"But you could have, couldn't you?"

"Yes, I suppose I could have," he said, realizing she had made him uncomfortable. "But you were telling me you were robbed. What happened?"

There was a brief tap at the door, and Edward F. Joiner, a slight, soft-spoken man in his middle twenties who was Irene Craig's secretary, came in, carrying a silver coffee set. He smiled at Martha Peebles, and she returned it shyly, as he set the service on the table.

"I'll pour, Ed," Payne said. "Thank you."

Martha Peebles took her coffee black, and did not care for a doughnut or other pastry.

"You were saying you were robbed?" Payne said.

"At home," she said. "In Chestnut Hill."

"How exactly did it happen? A burglar?"

"No, I'm quite sure it's not a burglar," she said. "I even think I know who did it."

"Why don't you start at the very beginning?" Payne said.

Martha Peebles told Brewster Payne that two weeks before, two weeks plus a day, her brother Stephen had brought home a young man he had met.

"A tall, rather good-looking young man," she said. "His name was Walton Williams. Stephen said that he was studying theater at the University of Pennsylvania."

"And is your brother interested in the theater?" Payne asked, carefully.

"I think rather more in young actors than in the theater, per se," Martha Peebles said, matter-of-factly, with neither disapproval nor embarrassment in her voice.

"I see," Payne said.

"Well, they stayed downstairs, in the recreation room, and I went to my room. And then, a little after midnight, I heard them saying good night on the portico, which is directly under my windows."

"And you think there's a chance this Williams chap is involved in the robbery?"

"There's no question about it," she said.

"How can you be sure?"

"I saw him," she said.

"I'm afraid I've become lost somewhere along the way," Payne said.

"Well, the next night, about half-past eight, I was having a bath when the doorbell rang. I ignored it-"

"Was there anyone else in the house? Your brother? Help?"

"We keep a couple," she said. "But they leave about seven. And Stephen wasn't there. He had gone to Paris that morning."

"So you were alone in the house?"

"Yes, and since I wasn't expecting anyone, I just ignored the bell."

"I see. And then what happened?"

"I heard noises in my bedroom. The door opening, then the sound of drawers opening. So I got out of the tub, put a robe on, and opened the door a crack. And there was Walton Williams, at my dresser, going through my things."

"What did you do then?" Payne asked. This is a very stupid young woman, he thought. She could have gotten herself in serious difficulty, killed, even, just walking in on a situation like that.

And then he changed "stupid" in his mind to "naive" and " inexperienced and overprotected."

"I asked him just what he thought he was doing," Martha Peebles said, "and he just looked at me for a moment, obviously surprised to find someone home, and then he ran out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house."

"And you believe he stole something?" Payne asked.

"Iknow he stole things," she said. "I knowexactly what he stole from me. All my valuable pins and pendants, and all of Mother's jewelry that was in the house."

"And where was your mother when this was going on?" Payne asked.

This earned him a cold and dirty, almost outraged, look.

"Mother passed on in February," she said. "I would have thought you would know that."