"Dead?" Oliver Patton stopped scratching the fold of fat in front of his belly and his mouth gaped. "Drood?"

"I don't know. It's awful, Mr. Patton. You better get up there quick. She said murder. Should I call the police?"

"Murder?" Patton's voice took on a sharp note of authority. "Don't call anybody." He slammed down the phone and rose to his six feet two, his heavy face worried.

Murder in a hotel was real trouble. It was his job to keep the police out if there was any way possible. Of course, if it was murder, it wouldn't be possible. But he knew most of the boys on Homicide. Sometimes you could fix things so there wouldn't have to be any publicity.

He hurried out of his office and around a comer into the lobby where the clerk and bell-captain and elevator operator were grouped at the desk talking excitedly to Evelyn.

They all stopped talking and looked to him for advice as he came up with ponderous swiftness. He disregarded them and demanded of Evelyn, "What you got, girl?"

"Just that. A woman called from three-sixty and said there was a murdered man there. She hung right up on me and didn't answer when I called back."

"Come along, Bill," he snapped at the bell-captain. "You watch it here, Dick. Don't let anybody out-nobody up." He trotted heavily to the waiting elevator, and when the door slammed shut, asked the operator, "Bring anybody down recently?"

"They was a lady a few minutes ago, Chief. She come from five." As the elevator stopped and he opened the doors, he asked anxiously, "What must I do?"

"Hold it right here." snapped Patton. "No matter how many bells ring." He turned to his left with Bill at his heels, moved swiftly but quietly toward a door standing open with light streaming out of it.

The open door was numbered 360. The overhead lights were on, revealing an impersonal hotel bedroom with a double bed in the corner between two windows.