I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn't supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn't been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course--"

"If you please," Wolfe put in crossly. "Everything is sometimes too much. You haven't even hinted at the trouble you're in."

"I'll get to it--"

"But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a

Curtains for Three 7

i of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor | beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the No . There was no sign of any struggle and no mark f any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an scellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine vestigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man's pnouth without arousing him to protest, it was retried as suicide. Isn't that correct?" R* They both said yes.

"Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at kf

They both said no.

"Then let's get on. Where's the trouble?" "It's us," Peggy said. "Why? What's wrong with you?" "Everything." She gestured. "No. I don't mean that not everything, just one thing. After my husband's ath and the--the routine investigation, I went away a while. When I came back--for the past two onths Fred and I have been together some, but it sn't right--I mean we didn't feel right. Day before ay, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for s weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last and this morning, and we decided to come and ; you to help us--anyway, I did, and he wouldn't let i come alone."