Pale Betrayer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

before or after Miss Russo got off the bus that you saw the Professor, Hank?”
    “If I did see him,” Hank said, now full of doubts again, “it must’ve been before. Once the Timeses come in, you see …”
    It was remarkable, Marks thought, driving away and once more forgetting lunch, how the events of the night seemed to dovetail. And as Inspector Fitzgerald would be the first to point out, it was amazing how Miss Russo had avoided bumping into Bradley himself. Hers had been the one unpredicted—unchartered—course so far as Bradley’s assailants were concerned. Or had it been? Without stronger proof, no reasonable detective could eliminate her from complicity.
    It now, more than ever, had to come down to motive.

ten
    B Y MID-AFTERNOON MARKS was able to compare the statements of all those who had attended the Bradley dinner. The physics group had been invited through Bob Steinberg whom Louise had called at the office just before lunch. “Janet wants us to come up for a drink and a bite to eat about six. Peter will be home.” The wording of Steinberg’s announcement to the group did not vary much from one man’s version to another’s. Nor indeed did any other testimony, including Anne’s and Bob Steinberg’s.
    They had all known about the film, but until talking with Peter, they had tended to be suspicious of a gift the Russians were making such good propaganda out of. Peter, however, as young O’Rourke put it, had caught fire in Athens. He had a hunch they might have been given something worthwhile.
    None of them had arrived for dinner thinking they would be going on to the laboratory afterwards. But none of them was surprised when it was decided to go. The curious thing was—and Marks had been particularly careful in his uniform phrasing of the question to each of them—no one was able to say positively who had brought the matter to a head. Anne thought it happened when Louise said: “You aren’t going to the lab tonight, are you?” Steinberg assumed they were going from the moment Bradley himself said: “It wouldn’t take long after setting up.” O’Rourke had suggested that he and the other fellows would go along early and set up. Steinberg said they would all go together. It was understood that Bradley would come later, so thoroughly understood that not even a passing reference was made to the fact.
    No one remembered Eric Mather to have been in on any part of their conversation. But then not one of the scientists mentioned Mather in his statement beyond listing him among those present, except Anne. Two of the boys could not even remember his name. Anne recalled having facetiously invited him to come along and see the film.
    Marks probed her on why she had asked him.
    Anne bit at her thumb while she thought about it. She looked so earnest, Marks thought, so eager to help, he would turn in his badge if she were in any way implicated. “I guess I must have thought he would say something clever,” she answered finally.
    “And did he?”
    “Not very. He said Russian movies were too hammy. Something like that.”
    Marks was also particularly careful in the way he asked: “If the dinner party had been given at Mather’s, say, would you have gone?”
    The answer was the same from all of them: if the party had been given for Peter Bradley, yes. But the three young men added that if it had been given there they did not think they would have been invited. Steinberg had been at Mather’s place on a few occasions. He had had a couple of good chess games with Mather. Except for that, he said, he’d rather go to the Dean of Women’s tea party. For one thing you got as much to eat there as at Mather’s.
    The three male students had not been out of each other’s presence from the time of their arrival at Bradley’s until they left the laboratory at ten forty-five. Marks saw no need to involve them further in the investigation, and Fitzgerald agreed.
    “They’re a tribe to themselves, aren’t