I looked at Adam Moss. He was a kid, eighteen or nineteen at most. He was husky and good-looking, with a mop of curly brown hair. He was wearing white boxer shorts and a pair of shoulders that the young Max Baer might have envied. He was patently annoyed.

“Moss?”

“Yeah. Who’re you? I don’t know you—”

I had my wallet in my hand and I flashed it. “You want to step back inside?”

He glanced at the card and then back at me, puzzled. “Police?”

And then his face brightened. Adam Moss grinned at me as if I’d just told him he’d earned his first varsity letter.

“Hey, that’s great. That’s sure what I call fast action!” He glanced at his watch. “Gee, not even five hours since I reported it. Where is it? You bring it back, officer? It wasn’t wrecked, was it? Come in, come in!”

He was beaming. My one lead. My only lead. I sat down on the kid’s rumpled bed and took a cigarette. I would have been · happier with a cyanide inhaler but I’d left it in my other suit.

“You leave the keys in it, Moss?”

“Yeah. Like I told them when I called. I parked it around midnight, up on Broadway near 111th, and then I had a couple of beers with some of the guys from school in the West End bar. I guess it was around 2:15 or so when I realized I’d forgotten them. We ran down, but you could see it was gone even before we got to the place. Boy, I was pretty worried for a while. What a dumb stunt. My old man would have booted me one. He just bought it for me last month. Can I get dressed and get it now? Is it here or do I have to pick it up someplace?”

“You never ran into a girl named Catherine Hawes?”

“What? Who?”

“Hawes?”

“No, why? She the one who had the car? You didn’t tell me — it isn’t smashed up or anything, is it?”

“Runs like a top. I use your phone?”

“Yeah, sure.” He gestured but I had already seen it. “Say, what do you mean, runs like a… you been driving it or something? What’s all this about a girl?”

“You call the local precinct?”

“Of course,” he said. He was eyeing me uncertainly.

I dialed Central and asked for 103rd Street. When I got the desk I said, “Hello, my name is Adam Moss, 113th Street. I called last night about 2:30 to report a stolen car. I wonder if you’ve gotten anything on it yet?”

He asked me the make and license number. I told him and he said to hang on.

Adam Moss was scowling at me. “Hey, what is all this?”

“Just checking.”

“Checking what? Now you look here, friend—”

The desk sergeant came back on. “Nothing yet, Mr. Moss. If s pretty early, but the listing has gone out on it. We’ll let you know if we find it.”

“Thanks.”

Adam Moss had his hands on his hips. “Relax,” I told him. “The car’s okay. I’m a EL, not a regular officer.” I showed him the card again and this time he stopped to read it. “There’s no trouble, Moss, but you might have had some if you hadn’t called in as soon as you did. A girl took it. She was in a hurry and she must have spotted the keys when she came out of one of the hotels up here. An hour and a half later she was killed.”

“Say, now—”

“The police will be checking you sooner or later. You go back to that bar after you found out it was gone?”

“Yeah, sure, that’s where I called from. The guys were with me. The bartender knows me too.”

“You’re all right then. The car’s around the corner but I’ll have to turn it over. They’ll probably hold it for a day or two until they get you squared away.”

“Well for crying out loud, my heap in a murder case. Isn’t that something?”

I had opened the door. I took two singles out of my wallet and tossed them on his dresser. “Gas,” I told him.

“Say, you don’t have to do that. Thanks. Who’s the girl, anyhow? She good looking?”

“Aren’t they always?”

Seabiscuit opened the stall across the way again as soon as I started out. I turned and winked at her. She slammed the door and something fell inside the room.

Young Moss was grinning at me. “Mishugganah,”he said. He had a good smile and he was a nice healthy kid who had most likely never seen the inside of a squad room in his life. It would have been no trouble to hate him for it.

“See you, Mr. Fannin. Thanks again. Boy, wait’ll I tell my old man.”

I went along the corridor and out into the lobby. The Chinese girl was coming back. She had dumped her plant and was carrying a man’s suit about Moss’s size on a cleaner’s hanger. I waited until she went past.

“Say, uh, just out of curiosity, you think maybe you could tell me why all Chinese girls wear dresses with—”

She had stopped and turned toward me. “Yes?”

“Never mind. I was being silly.”

I was grinning at her and she looked at me vaguely. Then she smiled. “It’s out of deference to old custom, obviously. Why, don’t you approve?”

She had a voice like a small bell tinkling under water. I told her I approved in spades and she laughed. I went out of there wondering if Moss’s old man knew about that personal valet service. In my day at school I’d had to room with a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound reserve fullback named Irving.

I took my time walking back to the Drive. I supposed I’d expected exactly what I’d gotten from Moss. I knew I’d expected it. I didn’t have a gun. I’d walked in on two of them already that morning, and I wouldn’t have rapped on the door to the vestry at St. John’s Cathedral without the Luger if I’d seriously thought I might run into a third.

I cut through Central Park and made it across town in the MG without getting squashed by any of the large economy-size models. It was just 7:42 when I swung off Lexington toward my apartment building. I didn’t go all the way down the block. I didn’t go down the block at all. I jerked the car over to the side just after I made the turn and pulled in at a fire plug. I sat there for a minute, watching him.

Anybody could stare at the house. At least a dozen other people were doing it, either at the building itself or at the three squad cars parked out front. Most of them were clustered on the other side of the street but there were also two or three near the door, talking to the plain-clothes cop on duty who wouldn’t be telling them anything but to move along. But the one I cared about was a good hundred yards up from the others, standing alone almost directly across from me.

He was wearing a brown tweed sports jacket that Brooks Brothers had never been ashamed of, and the lizard briefcase under his left arm would have gone for close to a hundred dollars in any shop on the same avenue. In the light of day the crewcut took ten years off his age, even with the gray at the temples. His tie was Countess Mara or Bronzini and every bit as sleek as the stained one he’d probably tossed under the bed a few minutes after I’d seen him that morning.

I was over there next to him before he noticed me, and then his head did an almost imperceptible nervous shudder before he turned fully. But if it should have been an ace of a hangover there wasn’t any other sign of it.

“You selling many of those policies?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is insurance?”

“Why, yes, only I don’t seem to recall—”

“Must have been at the lodge. I’ll tell you though, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. Maybe you’re right. Fellow shouldn’t go round with such inadequate coverage, certainly not a family man like myself. I’m afraid I’ve misplaced your card, but if you could spare another I’d—”

“Why certainly/’ I stood there while he slipped a calfskin wallet out of his jacket and fumbled in it. “Spragway,” he was saying. “Ethan J.” I’d already looked at him so I let him look at me while I read the card. It listed a Lexington Avenue agency address in one corner and a Park Avenue home address in the other. The home number would be only two or three blocks from where we were.

“I’m frightfully sorry, but I don’t seem to recall your name at all.” He had decided to frown slightly.