"I shouldn't have thought a ring had that much power anymore."

"You'd be surprised."

"What happens when you're attracted to someone?" she asked curiously.

"I take it off. Or I tell her my wife and I are separated at the moment."

"So you have your cake and eat it, too."

"At least I'm not trying to pretend the cake doesn't exist," he said; then added boldly, "Why are you?"

"In case you hadn't noticed," she answered flatly, "I'm not a college sophomore. I did all the growing up and filling out I'm ever going to do and, unlike you, I didn't turn into a swan."

"But women are different," he said, "there's so much you can do to help the swanning along."

"Oh Lord, don't start on the hair-makeup-sexy clothes bit."

She pulled both knees up sharply and rested her strong chin on them.

"Why not? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of anything, andf rankly. Lieutenant, I can't see that it's any of your business."

"The guy you're living with-Is he the one trying to get you to nibble some of the cake?"

"Oh for God's sake," Sigrid groaned and swung herself up to leave.

"That's what my sisters always used to say when I got uncomfortably near the truth," he called, stridng after her.

"I'm surprised they didn't smother you in your crib," she muttered as he caught up with her.

"They tried. Mother wouldn't let them." He smiled at her persuasively.

"She did not smile back.

"Look, I'm sorry if I've insulted you. You're right. It's none of my business if you don't like cake. Truce?"

Her suspicious gray eyes probed his. The mischief that had lurked there a few minutes ago was gone now and he seemed serious again.

"I think it might be better if you worked with someone else in the department," she said doubtfully.

"I don't. Besides, your partner's still out and your captain mentioned you weres hort-handed. Why don't we head on up to the Maintenon," he suggested craftily, "and get Flythe's fingerprints?"

Sigrid glanced at her watch. Roman usually served Sunday's main meal in the middle of the day. If she stretched it out a little, she could probably miss his anised veal completely.

"First we'll drop in on Molly Baldwin," she told him.

Behind them, the crimson dragon with the golden face stalked sea gulls far out over the water.

18

DURING the week, Manhattan lives up to the image set forth in a thousand books, movies, songs, and sermons. It is indeed a money-grubbing, smart-talking, elbow-shoving, glitzy, rude, sophisticated, dirty, elegant, international metropolis. But on Sunday mornings, it becomes an astonishingly small town. Except for the Times Square area which never completely shuts down, the rest of the island grows hushed and lazy. Wall Street is a ghost canyon, footsteps echo through Grand Central Station, families stroll leisurely to church along empty sidewalks, and best of all, if you happened to be a nervous young sailor who learned to drive on a dirt road in rural New Hampshire, the streets unclog on Sunday mornings and become wide boulevards.

He and Lieutenant Knight had dropped the skinny lady police officer off at a green door in a high brick wall, theng one searching through the food stores along Hudson Street.

"Water biscuits?" he'd asked.

"Big round crackers," explained Lieutenant Knight, and gave him a brief history of what food used to be like on clipper ships.

By the time they returned with her crackers, the lady officer had changed from jeans into gray slacks and a navy blue jacket. Soon they were zipping along up Tenth Avenue, catching green lights all the way.

Now this was more like it, thought the yeoman.

Tenth Avenue became Amsterdam Avenue as they sped north paralleling the park. Upon approaching the West Nineties, he slowed down and eventually turned left to pull up before the address Lieutenant Harald gave him.

"We shouldn't be long," said Lieutenant Knight as the two officers got out of the car.

In fact, they were back in less than three minutes, the time it took to lean on the intercom button in the lobby until they roused one of Molly Baldwin'sl ate-partying roommates and were told that Miss Baldwin herself had left for work at least two hours ago.

"Never mind," said Alan Knight when Sigrid started to apologize for taking them out of the way. "It was a good idea to try to catch her off guard. To the hotel?"

"To the hotel," she agreed.

"To the hotel!" echoed their neophyte driver. With renewed confidence, he boldly cut across Central Park, cruised down Lexington Avenue, and swerved in at the hotel's curb with style and panache..

It was exactly three minutes past eleven.

They found the Bontemps Room much as they had left it yesterday, although some of the older players beneath the glittering chandeliers were beginning to look a bit weary around the edges. They had been split into two groups after the mid-morning break at ten thirty. The smaller section competed for the mainp rize, now reduced to seven thousand dollars; the others were playing for small but numerous consolation pots.

Sigrid saw that Jill Gill was still in the running for the main prize. The entomologist gave her a distracted wave, but her attention was all on the cards.

"They have to keep at it if we're going to finish by five," Ted Flythe told them. "The breaks are supposed to last fifteen minutes, but it takes almost a half hour to get them settled down again."

As they spoke, Sigrid tried to visualize him without a beard, as he might have looked fifteen years ago without bags under his hooded eyes, his dark hair longer and without the beginning traces of gray. One thing about his habit of smoothing his beard into a sharp point: his fingers would leave nice clear prints.

If he were Fred Hamilton, the main thing was not to alert him of her suspicions. Let him continue in this role of laid-back aging roué.

After a few desultory remarks, she took out a fresh white index card and, casually holding it by the edges, said, "Would you mind jotting down your address andt elephone number, Mr. Flythe, in case we should need to contact you after the tournament's over?"

"Sure, Lieutenant, but let me give you my card."

He pulled a thin leather case from an inner pocket of his jacket and extracted a card with a Graphic Games logo and his business address on the front. He turned it over and scribbled down a number in the East nineties.

"I'm on the go a lot, all up and down the East Coast," he warned, handing Sigrid the card, "but the office usually knows how to reach me."

Sigrid thanked him and carefully stowed his card between the pages of her note pad. Before leaving the house earlier, she had called headquarters and set in motion a rush request for Fred Hamilton's fingerprints. With even minimal efficiency, they should be able to do a rough comparison by tomorrow morning.

The ranks of cardplayers semed to have thinned slightly. Flythe told them that several of the losers had opted to drop out after elimination rather than playf or the consolation prizes. Sigrid spotted Vassily Ivanovich among the also-rans, as well as several others she had helped to interview the day before.

"We were looking for Miss Baldwin," said Alan Knight. "Is she here?"

"Yeah, she's been in and out all morning." Flythe looked around vaguely. "Talking to the busboys and things. I haven't seen her since the break, though."

"Did you remember to bring those copies of the first pairings?" asked Sigrid.

Flythe nodded. "As a matter of fact, I gave them to Miss Baldwin. I didn't realize you people were going to be back today, so I thought she could pass them along to you."