The Murder of a Fifth Columnist by Leslie Ford Page B

they’ll have to put in censorship.”
    “But that’s not the press!” I protested.
    “It’s some member of it—Bliss says.”
    “But not Pete Hamilton!”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t mention any name.”
    She raised her head slowly, listened a minute and closed her eyes. “The detective’s going to stay here. You’d better go now. Will you see that Betty gets off first thing in the morning? I don’t want to run the risk of seeing her again.”
    “—And you’d better go to bed,” I said. “Have you got something to make you sleep?”
    She nodded. “Good-night. And thank you, Grace—thank you so much.”
    The idea that Pete Hamilton was writing a newsletter designed to upset and terrify his country seemed to me so utterly ridiculous that I’d forgot all about the fact that Corliss Marshall was dead… until I got into the other room and saw the detective standing in the terrace window looking out curiously at the place where we’d found him. It came as a shock, and I glanced around at the sofa. His hat and coat and fringed muffler were gone. He was gone too, of course. I had a queer empty feeling inside me, realizing how gone he really was, and that I’d never open the paper again and be annoyed by the strident arrogant partisanship of “Marshalling the Facts.”
    I hurried up the stairs. As I got half way up the buzzer of the telephone on the table sounded discreetly. It sounded again as I reached the top step. With Ruth Sherwood in the library the thing to do seemed obvious. I reached out and picked it up before it could buzz again and bring the detective dashing back. As I raised it to say “Hello” I heard a voice saying—and not very pleasantly—, “Why did you have that woman there tonight, Mrs.—”
    It was so completely to my astonishment that my arm was too paralyzed to move before I heard Ruth Sherwood’s sharp, almost frantic whisper breaking him off—and then I couldn’t move.
    “Stop it! The police will hear you!”
    “The police?”
    “—Corliss Marshall was murdered here tonight. I can’t talk to you now. I didn’t know you knew Alicia Wrenn. Goodbye.”
    I put my finger quickly on the bar, holding it down while I slipped the phone back into place. I don’t think I ever got through a door and closed it behind me as fast as I did just then. I was completely flabbergasted. What possible right Kurt Hofmann had to speak to her that way about a guest at her table I didn’t know. It seemed to me the most insolent thing I’d ever heard in all my life.
    And that wasn’t all. She’d said he’d come to her with a letter of introduction from a friend, and yet there was an assumption of familiarity in his demand that was unmistakable. It was in her reply too. It just wasn’t the way people who didn’t know, each other on any except formal terms would speak.
    I started slowly along the corridor toward my apartment door. About half way there I saw the red down light of the elevator go on, and heard the whirr of the opening door. A man got out. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. It was Colonel Primrose, and he was coming down the hall. I should have known he wouldn’t let me get off as easily as I had so far that evening. And I didn’t know what to do.—What if Barbara hadn’t gone to sleep? I thought anxiously. What if she was as bright as she looked, and knew something had happened, and was just waiting up to ask a lot of questions?
    I got to the door, put the key in the lock, opened the door a little and waited, smiling as cordially as I could. I glanced at the mirror over the table in the foyer that had the water bottle on it, and relaxed a little. The bedroom door was closed. Then I noticed the brandy bottle still on the table where I’d left it. The cork was out and the glass was lying on its side about an inch from the edge, a dribble of brandy running down the inlaid mahogany apron. It was a complete graphic picture of disordered haste… and