up unsteadily, went through the bedroom without looking at her, and started down the stairs.

It struck me then. Wasn’t I overdoing the righteous indignation just a little, and being a trifle dramatic? It hadn’t been three hours since I’d been trying to think of some way. . . . I closed my eyes and shuddered. Good God, no. Not like that. Nor any way. I hadn’t, had I?

Hang him? Him? I stopped dead.

They’d hang me. She was strangled in my bedroom with the cord of my electric razor while my wife was away. That torn clothing— And I had just five minutes ago told the police I hadn’t seen her. Right after drawing fifteen hundred dollars from the bank so I could skip the country. Oh, they’d hang Nunn, all right. I’d be lucky if they didn’t hand him a gun and tell him to shoot me.

I was at the foot of the stairs. The telephone went on ringing. Maybe if I answered it, it would stop, but I wasn’t sure. I picked it up.

“Mr. Godwin?” a bright female voice asked. “We have a long-distance call from Felton.”

“I don’t know anybody in Fel . . .”

“Barney, darling!” It was Jessica. “Oh, it’s good to hear your voice again.

I leaned against the wall. “Where . . .?” I began, and then stopped as it occurred to me in a great burst of deductive reasoning that if she were calling from Felton that must be where she was.

“How are you?” I asked stupidly.

“Just fine, dear. And dying to see you. I’m on my way home now, and I’ll be there in about two hours. I stopped here for a cup of coffee, and I just thought I’d call and let you know.”

“You’ll be here in about two hours?” I could absorb practically anything if it were repeated two or three times. “Good. That’s fine.”

“You lamb. You great, big, beautiful, woolly lamb you. I’ll run now, honey, and be on my way. See you soon.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

I hung up. A very white gesture, I thought. After two years of accusing me of chasing everything in this end of the State that didn’t shave twice a day, she wanted to give me enough advance notice to clear the place of women if I had any here, so there wouldn’t be a fight when she got home. That was really decent. Well, for once she was right. There was one here.

Sixteen

It was all piling up too fast for me. I stood still for a minute with my face in my hands and tried to think. Did I have any chance at all of convincing them? I didn’t have a scratch on me. But, then, neither would Nunn. He’d hit her first and knocked her out, down here in the dining-room, and then after he’d strangled her he faked the assault. It would just be my word against his. I could show them the guns in the lake, and that lump on his head. But what would that really prove? Nothing, except that we’d had a fight. It wouldn’t count for much against the fact he had called the police and tried to get them to pick her up so he could talk to her and try to get her to come home. And that I had told the police, after she was already dead in my bedroom, that I hadn’t seen her.

I considered that. It was neat, when you thought of it. I’d under-estimated him all along, dismissing him as a muscle-brained tough boy, and he’d got me. He knew I’d deny knowing where she was, so I could hang myself. He’d probably called them from right here.

Well, he hadn’t quite got me yet. I could get her out of here; it could be done but it wasn’t going to be easy, not being able to wait until dark. I had less than two hours. I snapped out of it and ran toward the stairs. It took an effort to go back in that room. The nausea was working on me again, but I had to get the razor cord off her throat. It had been wrapped around twice and then tied in back. I had to look at her face once. Well, she was unconscious, I thought. Maybe that helped; I didn’t know.

I worked the cord free and put it back in the bathroom. Going out in the hall, I took a blanket from the linen closet. I spread it on the floor beside