The girl looked at them stupidly.

"The female naval officer who sat next to Professor Sutton," prompted Lieutenant Knight helpfully.

"Oh." her voice was flat. "Sorry. My mind's almost quit functioning. No, I thought I told you. I didn't know anyo f the contestants. Unless it was like Professor Sutton; somebody I'd met in the course of my work and whose name didn't register. I don't remember meeting her here, though. Or Mr. Wolferman or that policeman or any of the others either."

"One of the players thought that Commander Dixon kept looking at you last evening as if she knew you," said Sigrid.

"Really?"

"It was during Mr. Flythe's discussion of the game rules after everyone was seated."

The girl's fingers began to twine around the same brown curl as she struggled to remember where she had been at that point. "I must have been on the far side of the room then, going over arrangements with the room steward. There were dozens of people between us. Are you sure your witness wasn't mistaken?"

"She could have been," Sigrid conceded. "Or perhaps Commander Dixon was interested in the steward or another of your people. From the angle, thoughi t would almost have to be someone standing up, wouldn't it?"

The girl shrugged listlessly and Sigrid accepted the inevitable.

"That will be all for now, Ms. Baldwin. Thank you for your help today. We'll probably talk again another time."

"You're sure there's nothing else I can do right now? I don't mind, Lieutenant. Really I don't."

Even as she spoke, she had to stifle an involuntary yawn.

"I'm sure," said Sigrid.

As Molly Baldwin left them, Lieutenant Knight looked at Sigrid critically. "Didn't you just get out of a hospital this morning?"

Sigrid nodded stiffly.

"Then shouldn't you take a break? If you don't mind me saying, you look like you're pushing the edge."

"I'm quite all right," she told him. But she did stand to flex her neck and shoulders and, as long as she was up, she decided to call Metro Medical and check on Tillie's condition.

The telephone was at the end of the hall in a secluded alcove. Awkwardlyc lutching the phone with her wounded hand, she inserted coins and punched out the number she had hastily scrawled on a scrap of paper that morning. The hospital switchboard passed her from one extension to another until at last she was plugged in to the intensive care waiting room and heard Marian Tildon's voice on the other end of the wire.

Tillie's wife sounded tired but buoyant with relief. "You caught me on my way home for a few hours' sleep," she told Sigrid. "Oh Lieutenant, it's wonderful! Charles is out of the coma! He said my name. He knew who I was!"

Until that moment Sigrid had not realized how worried she had been about Tillie. Hearing Marian's report, she felt some of the day's tension drain away.

Up in Zachary Wolferman's comfortable Central Park apartment, Haines Froelick was succumbing to the housekeeper's care. A hot cup of tea and then straight to bed had been Emily's motherly decree. Outside the tall narrow windows.

October seemed poised to jump from Indian summer to true autumn. Curtains of rain swooped across the park below and sheeted the gold and scarlet leaves with cold water.

It had been a horrid day, Mr. Froelick thought, splashing in and out of the limousine in the rain, making arrangements for Zachary's body. The conference with the undertaker and another later with the minister, the notices to the papers, and the telephone that never stopped ringing. Fortunately, good old Emily had sensibly suggested that he ask Maritime National to send someone up and now a capable young lady, a Miss Vaughan, sat in Zachary's study and listened to their friends' condolences and courteously promised to relay them to Mr. Froelick.

Then after lunch had come those two awful police detectives in their damp wool jackets with so many questions: Who hated Zachary? Who wanted him dead? Whom had he recognized at the Maintenon last night? And then their interest in his photography: What sort of cameras did he own and didn't onea lmost need a degree in chemistry to develop one's own film? And each of his answers had been greeted with such skepticism…

Now he lay awake in the guest bedroom. Emily had tearfully offered to put fresh linens on Zachary's bed, but he wasn't quite ready for that yet.

It would come, of course, thought Mr. Froelick. Zachary had made no secret of his will. This was all his now. Zachary's apartment, his housekeeper, his chauffeur, his limousine, his villa in Florence, his chalet in Switzerland, his money. Zachary had been more than generous, but accepting his generosity had sometimes chafed.

No more of that. No more worrying and watching the dwindling buying power of his own tiny trusts.

No more long walks with the man who'd been a brother to him, though. No one to share childhood memories or match wits with over a cribbage board either.

He sighed and buried his head in the lavender-scented pillow and as he fell asleep, he told himself philosophically that every silver cloud had a dark lining.

On the Upper West Side, in an apartment she shared with two other young women, Molly Baldwin hung up the telephone and finished toweling her short brown hair. She'd gotten soaked in the downpour, but that was the least of her worries. She had learned nothing from the call and would probably never learn anything if she didn't go over and identify herself.

But if she did that-

What would Ted Flythe say? He might not make an issue out of it, but Madame Ronay would. If La Reine found out, she would probably fire her and then it would all have been for nothing and how could she stay in New York?

On the other hand, how could she explain? Much less justify?

Almost whimpering with indecision, Molly Baldwin did what she'd been doing for most of her twenty-three years when faced with a dilemma: she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

The parade of cribbage-playing witnesses continued through the afternoon in the Bontemps Room. Two more besides Jill Gill had noticed Commander Dixon's wandering attention during Flythe's lecture on cribbage rules. The room steward, Raymond George, was questioned at length, but denied knowing her. Vassily Ivanovich, however, was quite another matter. Not only did he admit knowing Commander Dixon when they spoke to him during a break in the competition, he insisted upon it. "Since T. J. Dixon is a little girl I am knowing her."

"Would you like an interpreter or someone from your legation here?" they asked.

The big Russian was scornful. Did they doubt his linguistic abilities? "Me, I speak very good the English," he informed them proudly.

Ivanovich was the embodiment of the Russian Bear: big, burly, and expansive. He had small bright blue eyes, short gray hair, and a flat, florid face. He wore American style clothes-a dark tweed sports jacket, a green wool shirt buttonedt o the neck, no tie, and brown corduroy pants-but something about their fit gave them a vaguely Slavic cast.

"Her papa and I are good friends from the war. We are all Navy together," he said, including Alan Knight in his statement. "You are working with her, Lieutenant Knight?"

"Not exactly with her," Knight hedged.

"ONI?" Ivanovich guessed shrewdly, revealing an unexpected familiarity with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

For a moment, various possibilities seemed to give him pause, then he shrugged broadly. "What the hell? My people know and your people know we are friends. They know we do not talk secrets. Me, I have no secrets."