«You're in the clear now, stop worrying.»

«Thank you,» she said, and hung up.

The phone had hardly been cradled when there was a buzz at the door of her apartment.

Virginia crossed over and opened the door a few inches.

The man who stood in the doorway was somewhere around forty-five years of age, with dark wavy hair, a closeclipped mustache and intense obsidian black eyes.

«You're Mrs. Baxter?» he asked.

«Yes.»

«I'm very sorry to bother you at this time, Mrs. Baxter. I know how you must be feeling, but I come to you on a matter of some importance.»

«What is it?» she asked, still keeping the chain on the door.

«My name,» he told her, «is George Menard-I read about you in the paper. I don't like to bring up a disagreeable subject, but of course you know that the news of your trial has been in all the papers.»

«Well?» she asked.

«I noticed in the paper that you had been the secretary of Delano Bannock, an attorney, during his lifetime.»

«That's right.»

«Mr. Bannock died several years ago, I believe.»

«That also is correct.»

«I am trying to find out what was done with his files,» the man said.

«Why?»

«Frankly, I want to locate a paper.»

«What sort of a paper?»

«A carbon copy of an agreement which Mr. Bannock drew up for me. I've lost the original and I don't want the other party to the agreement to know it. There are certain things that I have to do under that agreement and while I think I can remember what they are, it would be an enormous help if I could locate a carbon copy.»

She shook her head. «I'm afraid I can't help you.»

«You were employed by him at the time of his death?»

«Yes.»

«What happened to the office furniture and all that?»

«Why, the office was closed up. There was no reason for the estate to go on paying rent.»

«But what happened to the office furniture?»

«I believe it was sold.»

The man frowned. «To whom was it sold? You know who bought the desks, filing cases, chairs?»

«No, they were sold to some second-hand office furniture outfit. I kept the typewriter I had been using. Everything else was sold.»

«Filing cases and everything?»

«Everything.»

«What happened to the old papers?»

«They were destroyed-No, wait a minute, wait a minute. I remember talking with his brother and telling him that the papers should be kept. I remember now, I wanted him to keep the filing cases intact.»

«The brother?»

«That's right. Julian Bannock. He was the sole heir. There weren't any other relatives. The estate was a small one.

«You see, Delano Bannock was one of those devoted attorneys who was more interested in doing a job than in getting a fee. He worked literally day and night. He had no wife or family and he spent four or five evenings a week in his office, working until ten or eleven o'clock. But the modern idea of keeping track of time by the hour just never occurred to him. He would put in hours and hours on some little agreement that had a point that interested him and then he'd make only a moderate charge. The result was that he didn't leave much of an estate.»

«What about the fees that were due him at the time of his death?»

«I wouldn't know about that, but it's very well known that the estates of professional men have a lot of trouble with outstanding accounts.»

«And where could I find Julian Bannock?»

«I don't know,» she said.

«Do you know where he lived?»

«Someplace in the San Joaquin Valley, I think.»

«Could you find out where?»

«I might be able to.»

Virginia Baxter had been sizing up the man and finally unlatched the door chain. «Won't you come in?» she invited. «I think perhaps I can consult an old diary. I have been keeping diaries for years-«She laughed nervously-«not the romantic type, you understand, but business diaries that contain little comments about when I went to work at a certain place and how long I worked there, events of the day, when I received raises in salary and things of that sort.

«I know that I made some entries at the time of Mr. Bannock's death-oh, wait a minute, I remember now, J ulian Bannock lived near Bakersfield.»

«Do you know if he still lives there?»

«No, I don't. I remember now that he came down driving a pickup. The files were loaded into the pickup. I remember that after the files were loaded, I felt that my responsibility was ended. I turned the keys over to the brother.»

«Bakersfield?» Menard said.

«That's right. Now, if you can tell me something about your agreement, perhaps I can remember about it. Mr. Bannock had a one-man office and I did all of the typing.»

«It was an agreement with a man named Smith,» Menard said.

«What was the nature of the agreement?»

«Oh, it involved a lot of complicated things about the sale of a machine shop. You see, I'm interested, or was interested, in machinery and thought for a while I'd go into the machinery business, but-Well, it's a long story.»

«What are you doing now?» she asked.

Menard's eyes suddenly shifted. «I'm sort of freelancing,» he said, «buying and selling.»

«Real estate?» she asked.

«Oh, anything,» he said.

«You live here in the city?»

He laughed, obviously ill at ease. «I keep going from place to place-you know how it is when a person is looking for bargains.»

Virginia said, «I see. Well, I'm sorry I can't help you any more than I have.»

She stood up and moved toward the door.

Menard accepted the dismissal.

«Thank you so much,» he said, and walked out.

Virginia watched him to the elevator then, when the door of the cage had slid shut, took to the stairs and raced down them.

She was in time to see him jump into a dark-colored car which had been parked in the only vacant parking space at the curb, a space directly beside a fireplug.

She tried to get the license number but was unable to get it all, because of the speed with which the driver whipped out into the street and drove away.

Her eyes focused on a distinctive zero as the first of the numbers and she had a somewhat vague impression that the last figure of the license was a two.

The car she thought was an Oldsmobile, perhaps two to four years old, but here again she couldn't be certain. The man gunned the car into speed and drove away fast.

Virginia returned to her apartment, went into her bedroom, pulled out a suitcase, started rummaging through her diaries. She found the address of Julian Bannock in Bakersfield, an R.F.D. box and a notation in parentheses, «no telephone.»

Then her phone rang. A woman said, «I found your name in the telephone directory. I just wanted to call you to tell you how glad I am that you beat that horrible frameup.»

«Thank you very much,» Virginia said.

«I'm a stranger to you,» the woman went on, «but I wanted you to know how I felt.»

Within the next hour there were five more calls, including one from a man who was obviously drunk and certainly offensive, and another from a woman who wanted a willing ear to hear about her case.

Finally, Virginia ignored the telephone, which continued to ring, until she went out to dinner.

The next morning she asked the telephone company to change her number and give her an unlisted one.