Qwilleran returned to Maus Haus on the River Road bus, pondering the pieces of the puzzle: two missing persons, a drowned child, a slandered restaurateur, a lost cat, a black eye, a scream in the night. Too many pieces were missing.

Up in Number Six the cats were snoozing on the blue cushion. They had been busy, however, and several pictures were tilted. Qwilleran automatically straightened them, a chore to which he had become accustomed. The cats had to have their fun, he rationalized. Cooped up in a one-room apartment, they had to use ingenuity to amuse themselves, and Koko found a peculiar satisfaction in scraping his jaw on the sharp corners of a picture frame. Qwilleran straightened two engravings of bridges over the Seine, a Cape Cod watercolor, and a small oil painting of a beach scene on the Riviera. In the far corner an Art Nouveau print had been tilted so violently that it was hanging sideways. As he rectified the situation, he noticed a patch on the wall.

It was a metal patch, painted to match the stucco walls. He touched it, and it moved from side to side, pivoting on a tiny screw. Small arcs scratched in the wall paint indicated that the patch had been swung aside before, perhaps recently. Qwilleran swung it all the way around and discovered what it was concealing: a deep hole in the wall.

Leaning across the bookcase, he peered through the opening and looked down into the two-story kiln room behind his own apartment. The lights were tured on, and Qwilleran could see a central table with a collection of vases in brilliant blues, greens, and reds. Shifting his position to the left, he could see two of the kilns. Shifting to the right, he saw Dan Graham sitting at a small side table, copying from a loose-leaf notebook into a large ledger.

Qwilleran closed the peephole and replaced the picture, asking himself questions: What was its purpose? Did William know about it? Mrs. Marron said he had washed the walls recently. Had William been spying on Dan from this vantage point?

The telephone rang, and Odd Bunsen was on the line. "Say, what's the assignment you've got on the board forfive o'clock? It sounds like a sizable job. When do I get to eat?"

"You can have dinner here," Qwilleran said, "and shoot the pictures afterward. The food here is great!"

"The requisition saystwo-five-five-five River Road. What is that place, anyway?"

"It's an old pottery, now a gourmet boarding house."

"Sure, I know the place. There were a couple of murders there. We keep running stories on them. Any special equipment I should bring?"

"Bring everything," Qwilleran advised. He lowered his voice with a glance in the direction of the peephole. 'I want you to put on a good show. Bring lots of lights. I'll explain when you get here."

Qwilleran went downstairs to tell Mrs. Marron there would be and extra guest for dinner. She was in the Great Hall, nervously setting the dinner table, which had been moved under the balcony to make room for the pottery exhibit.

"I don't know what to do," she was whimpering. "They said they'd do a demonstration dinner, but I don't know how they want it set up. Nobody told me. Nobody's here."

"What's a demonstration dinner?" Qwilleran asked.

"Everybody cooks something at the table. Mr. Sorrel, he's making the steak. Mrs. Whiting, she's making the soup. Miss Roop, she's — "

"Have you seen William?"

"NO, sir, and he was supposed to clean the stove — "

"Any news from Mr. Maus?"

"No, sir. Nobody knows when he'll be back . . . You're not going to tell him, are you? You said you wouldn't tell him."

"We're going to forget the whole matter," Qwilleran assured her. "Stop worrying about it, Mrs. Marron."

Tears came to her dull eyes, and she rubbed them away with the back of her hand. "Everybody is so good to me here. I try not to make mistakes, but I can't get little Nicky off my mind, and I don't sleep nights."

"We all understand what you've been through, but you must pull yourself together."

"Yes, sir." The housekeeper stopped her nervous puttering and turned to face him. "Mr. Qwilleran," she said hesitantly, "I heard something else in the night."

"What do you mean?"

"Saturday night, when I couldn't sleep, I was just lying there, worrying, and I heard a noise."

"Outside my window. Somebody coming down the fire escape."

"The one at the back of the house?"

"Yes, sir. My room is on the river side."

"Did you see anything?"

"NO, sir. I got up and peeked out the window, but it was so dark. All I could see was somebody crossing the grass."

"Hmmm," Qwilleran mued. "Did you recognize the person?"

"No, sir. But I think it was a man. He was carrying a heavy load of something."

"What kind of load?"

"Like a big sack."

"How big?"

"This big!" The housekeeper spread her arms wide. "He was carrying it down to the river. When he got beyond the bushes, I couldn't see him anymore. But I heard it."

"What did you hear?"

"A big splash."

"And what happened then?"

"He came back."

"Did you get a look at his face then?"

"No, sir. There wasn't enough light at the back of the building — just the bright lights across the river. But I could see him moving across the grass, and then I heard him going up the fire escape again."

"Is that the one that leads to the Grahams' loft?"

"Yes, sir."

"What time did that happen?"

"It was very late. Maybe four o'clock." The housekeeper looked at him hopefully, waiting for his approval.

Qwilleran studied her face briefly. "If it was Mr. Graham, there was probably some logical explanation. Think nothing of it."

"Yes, sir."

He went upstairs wondering: Did she really see Dan Graham dropping a sack in the river? She made up a story once before, and she could do it again. Perhaps she thinks I'm the kind that drools over mysteries, and she's trying to please me. And why all that yes-sir, no-sir business all of a sudden?

In his apartment Qwilleran's eye went first to the Art Nouveau print over the bookcase, and it gave him an idea. A few months before, he had interviewed a commercial potter who specialized in contemporary figurines, and now he telephoned him.

"This may sound like a crazy question," he told the potter, "but I'm trying my hand at writing a novel — kind of a Gothic thriller about skulduggery in a pottery. Would it be too farfetched to have a peephole in a wall overlooking the kiln room?"

"So the firing operation could be observed?"

"Yes. Something like that."

"Not a bad idea at all. I once suspected an employee of sabotaging my work, and I had to set up an expensive surveillance system. A simple peephole might have saved me a lot of money. Why didn't I think of that? All potters are professional voyeurs, you know. We're always looking through the spyholes in the kilns, and I can't pass a knothole in a board fence without taking a peek."

Odd Bunsen arrived at Maus Haus at five o'clock, and Qwilleran invited him to Number Six for a ; drink.

"Hey, you're getting taller," the photographer said. "It couldn't be thinner."

"I've lost seven pounds," Qwilleran boasted, unaware that three of them had been contributed in the beginning by Koko.

"Where are those crazy cats? Hiding?"

"Asleep on the shelves, behind the books."

Bunsen flopped in the big lounge chair, propped his feet on the ottoman, lit a cigar, and accepted a glass of something ninety-proof. "I wish the boss could see me now. Do you realize the Fluxion is paying me for this?"

"The work will come later." Qwilleran went to the peephole and checked the metal patch.

"What kind of hanky-panky did you have in mind?"

"Keep your voice down," Qwilleran advised. "If possible."