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presumably medical men are more informed in these matters. I tried to picture the doc holding his Webley upside down with his head bent back as if he were administering eye drops. It didn’t add up.
    The door was locked, and I had the key in my pocket. Suicide was the only logical explanation. “If thine eye offend thee,” I muttered, trying to put my finger on what was out of place. The room looked exactly the same, military hairbrush and mirror at attention on the bureau, an undisturbed assortment of socks and underwear in the drawers.
    I picked the leatherbound Bible off the bedside table and an open box of cartridges tumbled out onto the throw rug. The book was hollow inside, a dummy. I was the dummy for not finding the bullets earlier. I picked them off the floor, groping under the bed for strays, and put them back inside the empty Bible.
    I went over the room with my handkerchief, wiping everything I had touched during my initial search. The Poughkeepsie police wouldn’t exactly be charmed by the idea of art out-of-town private eye bullying one of their prominent citizens into suicide. I told myself if it was suicide they wouldn’t look for prints and kept on wiping.
    I cleaned the knob and the key and closed the door, leaving it unlocked. Downstairs, I emptied the ashtray into my jacket pocket, carried it to the kitchen and washed it, stacking it with the dishes on the drainboard. I put the morphine and the milk carton back in the icebox and went over the kitchen carefully with my handkerchief. Backtracking through the cellar, I wiped the banisters and doorknobs. There was nothing I could do about the hasp on the lean-to-door. I set it in place and pushed the screws into the spongy wood. Anyone doing his job would spot it right away.
    The drive back to the city provided plenty of time for thinking. I didn’t like the idea that I had hounded an old man to his death. Vague feelings of sorrow and remorse troubled me. It was a bad mistake locking him up with a gun like that. Bad for me because the doc had a lot more to tell.
    I tried to fix the scene in my mind like a photo. Dr. Fowler stretched on the bed with a hole in his eye and his brains spread across the counterpane. There was an electric lamp burning on the bedside table next to the Bible. Inside the Bible were bullets. The framed photograph from up on the bureau was locked in the doctor’s cooling grip. His finger rested on the revolver’s trigger.
    No matter how many times I went over the scene there was something missing, a piece gone out of the puzzle. But which piece? And where did it fit? I had nothing to go on but my instincts. A nagging hunch that wouldn’t let go. Maybe it was just because I didn’t want to face my own guilt, but I was sure Dr. Albert Fowler’s death was not suicide. It was murder.

SEVEN
    Monday morning was fair and cold. What was left of the snowstorm had been hauled off and dumped in the harbor. After a swim at the “Y” across the street from my place in the Chelsea Hotel, I drove uptown, parked the Chevy at the Hippodrome Garage and walked to my office, stopping to buy a copy of yesterday’s Poughkeepsie New Yorker from the out-of-town newsstand at the north corner of Times Tower. No mention anywhere of Dr. Albert Fowler.
    It was a little after ten when I unlocked the inner-office door. The usual bad news across the street: … NEW IRAQ ATTACK ON SYRIA ALLEGED … GUARD WOUNDED IN BORDER INCURSION BY BAND OF THIRTY … I phoned Herman Winesap’s Wall Street law firm, and the machine-tooled secretary put me straight through without delay.
    “And what might I do for you today, Mr. Angel?” the attorney asked, his voice smooth as a well-oiled hinge.
    “I tried calling you over the weekend but the maid said you were out at Sag Harbor.”
    “I keep a place there where I can relax. No phone. Has something important come up?”
    “That information would be for Mr. Cyphre. I couldn’t find him in the phone book