“And who are you, if I may enquire?”

“I just came about the car payment,” I said. “The door was open just a teensy weensy bit and I kind of shoved in. I don’t know why.”

I made a face like a man from the finance company coming about the car payment. Kind of tough, but ready to break into a sunny smile.

“You mean Mr. Lavery is behind in his car payments?” she asked, looking worried.

“A little. Not a great deal,” I said soothingly.

I was all set now. I had the reach and I ought to have the speed. All it needed was a clean sharp sweep inside the gun and outwards. I started to take my foot out of the rug.

“You know,” she said, “it’s funny about this gun. I found it on the stairs. Nasty oily things, aren’t they? And the stair carpet is a very nice gray chenille. Quite expensive.”

And she handed me the gun.

My hand went out for it, as stiff as an eggshell, almost as brittle. I took the gun. She sniffed with distaste at the glove which had been wrapped around the butt. She went on talking in exactly the same tone of cockeyed reasonableness. My knees cracked, relaxing.

“Well, of course it’s much easier for you,” she said. “About the car, I mean. You can just take it away, if you have to. But taking a house with nice furniture in it isn’t so easy. It takes time and money to evict a tenant. There is apt to be bitterness and things get damaged, sometimes on purpose. The rug on this floor cost over two hundred dollars, secondhand. It’s only a jute rug, but it has a lovely coloring, don’t you think? You’d never know it was only jute, secondhand. But that’s silly too because they’re always secondhand after you’ve used them. And I walked over here too, to save my tires for the government. I could have taken a bus part way, but the darn things never come along except going in the wrong direction.”

I hardly heard what she said. It was like surf breaking beyond a point, out of sight. The gun had my interest.

I broke the magazine out. It was empty. I turned the gun and looked into the breech. That was empty too. I sniffed the muzzle. It reeked.

I dropped the gun into my pocket. A six-shot .25caliber automatic. Emptied out. Shot empty, and not too long ago. But not in the last half hour either.

“Has it been fired?” Mrs. Fallbrook enquired pleasantly. “I certainly hope not.”

“Any reason why it should have been fired?” I asked her. The voice was steady, but the brain was still bouncing.

“Well, it was lying on the stairs,” she said. “After all, people do fire them.”

“How true that is,” I said. “But Mr. Lavery probably had a hole in his pocket. He isn’t home, is he?”

“Oh no.” She shook her head and looked disappointed. “And I don’t think it’s very nice of him. He promised me the check and I walked over—”

“When was it you phoned him?” I asked. “Why, yesterday evening.” She frowned, not liking so many questions.

“He must have been called away,” I said.

She stared at a spot between my big brown eyes.

“Look, Mrs. Fallbrook,” I said. “Let’s not kid around any longer, Mrs. Fallbrook. Not that I don’t love it. And not that I like to say this. But you didn’t shoot him, did you—on account of he owed you three months’ rent?”

She sat down very slowly on the edge of a chair and worked the tip of her tongue along the scarlet slash of her mouth.

“Why, what a perfectly horrid suggestion,” she said angrily. “I don’t think you are nice at all. Didn’t you say the gun had not been fired?”

“All guns have been fired sometime. All guns have been loaded sometime. This one is not loaded now.”

“Well, then—” she made an impatient gesture and sniffed at her oily glove.

“Okay, my idea was wrong. Just a gag anyway. Mr. Lavery was out and you went through the house. Being the owner, you have a key. Is that correct?”

“I didn’t mean to be interfering,” she said, biting a finger. “Perhaps I ought not to have done it. But I have a right to see how things are kept.”

“Well, you looked. And you’re sure he’s not here?”

“I didn’t look under the beds or in the icebox,” she said coldly. “I called out from the top of the stairs when he didn’t answer my ring. Then I went down to the lower hall and called out again. I even peeped into the bedroom.” She lowered her eyes as if bashfully and twisted a hand on her knee.

“Well, that’s that,” I said.

She nodded brightly. “Yes, that’s that. And what did you say your name was?”

“Vance,” I said. “Philo Vance.”

“And what company are you employed with, Mr. Vance?”

“I’m out of work right now,” I said. “Until the police commissioner gets into a jam again.”

She looked startled. “But you said you came about a car payment.”

“That’s just part-time work,” I said. “A fill-in job.”

She rose to her feet and looked at me steadily. Her voice was cold saying: “Then in that case I think you had better leave now.”

I said: “I thought I might take a look around first, if you don’t mind. There might be something you missed.”

“I don’t think that is necessary,” she said. “This is my house. I’ll thank you to leave now, Mr. Vance.”

I said: “And if I don’t leave, you’ll get somebody who will. Take a chair again, Mrs. Fallbrook. I’ll just glance through. This gun, you know, is kind of queer.”

“But I told you I found it lying on the stairs,” she said angrily. “I don’t know anything else about it. I don’t know anything about guns at all. I—I never shot one in my life.” She opened a large blue bag and pulled a handkerchief out of it and sniffled.

“That’s your story,” I said. “I don’t have to get stuck with it.”

She put her left hand out to me with a pathetic gesture, like the erring wife in East Lynne.

“Oh, I shouldn’t have come in!” she cried. “It was horrid of me. I know it was. Mr. Lavery will be furious.”

“What you shouldn’t have done,” I said, “was let me find out the gun was empty. Up to then you were holding everything in the deck.”

She stamped her foot. That was all the scene lacked. That made it perfect.

“Why, you perfectly loathsome man,” she squawked. “Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you take a single step towards me! I won’t stay in this house another minute with you. How dare you be so insulting—”

She caught her voice and snapped it in mid-air like a rubber band. Then she put her head down, purple hat and all, and ran for the door. As she passed me she put a hand out as if to stiff-arm me, but she wasn’t near enough and I didn’t move. She jerked the door wide and charged out through it and up the walk to the street. The door came slowly shut and I heard her rapid steps above the sound of its closing.

I ran a fingernail along my teeth and punched the point of my jaw with a knuckle, listening. I didn’t hear anything anywhere to listen to. A six-shot automatic, fired empty.

“Something,” I said out loud, “is all wrong with this scene.

The house seemed now to be abnormally still. I went along the apricot rug and through the archway to the head of the stairs. I stood there for another moment and listened again.

I shrugged and went quietly down the stairs.