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wouldn’t clean up the police force. And don’t call me a liar, because I know what I’m talking about. I’ve had my cut.”
    I didn’t want to believe it, but it sounded like the truth. It gave my stomach a queer twist. Except where women were concerned, I had always thought my father was the straightest man in the Middle West.

chapter
4
    Taxis were costing me more than I could afford, but I was in a hurry and the evening was slipping away. The driver took me straight down Main Street into the heart of town. The night streets were crowded with noisy couples, young girls in twos and threes looking for a pickup, boys and young men in threes and fours marching abreast and wearing bright ties like banners. Spring ran in the gutters like a swift, foul stream, and the people in the streets moved and regrouped in a slow, enormous Bacchic dance. We turned at the Palace Hotel and went up Cleery Street into the north side of town.
    All the windows were dark on the second floor of the Mack Building, and there was no bronze plaque on the sidewalk where J.D. Weather had died.
    Even his house looked the same, though it was smaller than I remembered. Nothing had changed, except that I couldn’t walk in without knocking, and nobody there would be glad to see me. When I went up the front steps I had the feeling that I was about to do something I had often done before. I rang the bell and waited. The feeling went awaybefore the door opened, and left me half-angry and half-embarrassed.
    The porch light came on over my head, and the door opened on a chain. Through the opening I could see a four-inch section of a woman: carefully lacquered, upswept auburn hair, dark eyes in a pale face, a white neck rising from a low, plain neckline.
    “Mrs. Weather?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d like to talk to you. I think you must be my stepmother.”
    She made a noise in her throat, a little chuckling gasp. “Are you John Weather?”
    “Yes. May I come in?”
    “Of course. Please do.” She unhooked the chain and stepped back to open the door. “I shouldn’t have kept you standing outside. But I’m alone in the house tonight, and you never know about night callers. This is the maid’s night off.”
    “I know how you feel,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking of her. The old hall tree was gone, and the moose head was missing from over the door. The floor had been refinished, and there was a new pastel rug on it. Ivory enamel made the staircase look unreal. Everything was too pale and neat.
    “You used to live in this house, didn’t you?” she said.
    “I was just thinking of that. It’s different.”
    “I hope you approve of the changes.” Her tone was a subtle blend of arrogance and feminine cajolery.
    Her voice interested me. It was a good voice, low, rich,and complex, with a more frankly female quality than perfect ladies allow themselves. I looked into her face and said: “There have been too many changes to generalize about, haven’t there? Not that my opinion matters one way or the other.”
    She turned on her heel and walked to the door of the living-room. “Won’t you come in and sit down and have a drink? We must have things to talk about.”
    I said: “Thank you,” and followed her. If her breasts and her hips were her own, her figure was very handsome. Even if they weren’t, she had her legs, and the way she moved her body. In her dark silk dress she moved with the free, shining fullness and flow of a seal in water.
    The face she leaned towards me, as we sat down facing each other, was in contrast to her body. It had a bloodless kind of beauty, emphasized by her scarlet mouth, but it was thin and worried-looking. Her wide, dark eyes seemed to have drawn out and to hold all the life and energy of her face. Her bright hair stood above her pale face and neck like a curled red flower on a stalk that the sun had missed.
    She smiled nervously under my stare. “Do you think you’ve got my Bertillon measurements by now?”
    “Excuse