“So,” he was going on, “I’ll sketch it briefly. Looking over some reports recently, I noticed that our employee turnover here in the home office, exclusive of the technical staff, was over twenty-eight per cent for the year nineteen forty-six. That was excessive. I decided to look into it. As a first step I had a form drawn up and two thousand copies of it multigraphed, and sent a supply of it to all heads of departments, with instructions that one be filled out for each person who had left our employ during nineteen forty-six. The forms were to be returned direct to me. Here’s one that came from the head of the stock department.” He extended a hand with a paper in it. “Take a look at it.

Read it through.” It was a single sheet, letter size, with a neat job of multigraphing on one side. At the top it said: RETURN TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT BY MARCH TENTH

The blank spaces had been filled in with a typewriter. First came the name of the ex-employee, which in this case was Waldo Wilmot Moore. Age: 30. Unmarried.

Home address: Hotel Churchill. Employment began: April 8,1946. Hired through: Applied personally. Job: Correspondence checker. Salary: $100 weekly. Rises: To $150 weekly September 30, 1946. Employment ended: December 5, 1946.

Other spaces had been filled in, about how well he had done his job, and his relations with other employees and his immediate superiors, and so forth, and then at the bottom came what was of course the key question: Reason for ending of employment (give details). There was three inches of space after it, plenty of room for details, but for Waldo Wilmot Moore only one word had been thought necessary and there it was: Murdered.

CHAPTER Three

So apparently it wasn’t a lead pencil leak.