“No burglar here,” I said, “and no burglar at the Gilmartin residence. No break-in at either location.”

I caught a glimpse of Marty’s face, and he did not look terribly happy at the direction the discussion was taking.

“We’ll let that pass for the moment,” I said smoothly. “Let’s just note that the Gilmartin cards had disappeared. That’s one of the reasons we’re here. The other phenomenon that has drawn us together is not a disappearance but an appearance, and an astonishing manifestation it was. A man turned up in one of the Nugent bathrooms. He didn’t have any clothes on, and he didn’t have a pulse, either. He’d been shot, and he was dead.”

“Who was he?” Patience wanted to know.

“His name was Luke Santangelo,” I said, “and he lived two floors below the Nugents in this very building. Like half the waiters and a third of the moving men in this city, he’d come here to be an actor. Well, de mortuis and all that, but I’m afraid Luke was something of a bad actor, and that’s irrespective of how he may have acquitted himself on stage. He was a small-time drug dealer and a petty criminal.”

“I was so shocked to learn that,” Joan Nugent put in. “I knew him, you see. He posed for me, as it happens, in this very apartment.” She hazarded a smile. “I paint, you know. He was happy to pose for me, even though I couldn’t afford to pay him very much.”

Her husband snorted. “While you were painting him,” he said, “he was figuring out how to break in.”

“Two incidents,” I said. “On Thursday, Mr. Gilmartin finds his cards are missing. On Sunday, the police find a dead man in the Nugents’ bathroom. But what’s the connection?”

“No connection,” Borden Stoppelgard said. “Case closed. Can we all go home now?”

“There has to be a connection,” Carolyn told him. “You’re the one who collects mystery novels, aren’t you? It’s a shame you don’t take the trouble to read them. If you did, you’d know that whenever there are two crimes in the same story, they’re related. The connection may not turn up until the last chapter, but it’s always there.”

“There’s a connection,” I agreed. “And you’re part of it, Mr. Stoppelgard.”

“Huh?”

“We’ll start with the cards,” I said. “Your brother-in-law owned them. And you coveted them.”

“If you’re trying to say I took ’em—”

“I’m not.”

“Oh. But you just said—”

“That you coveted them,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

He looked at Marty, then at me. “No secret he had some nice material there,” he said.

“You wanted the Ted Williams cards.”

“I admired them. I wouldn’t have minded having a set of them myself. But I didn’t want ’em bad enough to steal ’em.”

“You thought I stole them.”

“Well, yes,” he said. “That’s what the police were saying, and I didn’t have any reason to think they were wrong.”

“And, thinking that I’d stolen them, you came to my shop and offered me a deal. If I gave you your brother-in-law’s baseball cards, you’d cut me a sweetheart deal on an extension of the store lease.”

“Borden,” Marty Gilmartin said, his tone one of bottomless disappointment. “Borden, Borden, Borden.”

“Marty, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Oh, Borden,” Marty said. “I’m surprised at you.”

And he sounded it, all right. I have to tell you, I was impressed with Marty. I’d told him days ago about his brother-in-law’s offer, and what he’d said at the time was along the lines of “That’s typical of the avaricious son of a bitch.” The Pretenders would have been proud of the show he was putting on.

“I was testing the waters,” Borden said now. “Trying to find out for certain if you were the burglar, and laying a little trap for you if you were. Obviously it didn’t work, because you never had the cards in the first place, but all it proves now is that I didn’t have them either. So I’ll ask you again—can we go home now?”

“I think you might want to stick around,” I said. “You didn’t take them, and it’s also true that you didn’t know who took them. But the person who did take them got the idea from you.”

“Oh, yeah? You want to tell me who that was?”

“You’re sitting next to her,” I said.

Logically enough, everybody turned to stare at Lolly Stoppelgard, who looked understandably puzzled. Not that one, I wanted to cry. The other one. But they all figured it out for themselves, and eyes turned to the woman sitting on the other side of Borden Stoppelgard.

“Gwendolyn Beatrice Cooper,” I said. “Like Luke Santangelo, she came to New York hoping for acting success. In the meantime, though, she got a job at a law firm called Haber, Haber & Crowell.”

“My attorneys,” Marty said.

“And your brother-in-law’s as well. Ms. Cooper worked there, doing general office work, sometimes filling in as the relief receptionist. She was a natural choice for the front desk because she’s personable and eye-catching, and two of the eyes she caught belonged to Borden Stoppelgard. He was a happily married man. She was a young working woman going about her business. So he did the natural thing under the circumstances. He hit on her.”

“Oh, Borden,” said Lolly Stoppelgard.

“He’s full of crap,” her husband said. “I may have passed the time of day with Wendy.” Wendy! “I’m a friendly guy. But that’s as far as it went, believe me.”

“You asked her to meet you for a drink,” I said. “Then lunch, and then another lunch, and—”

“One drink,” he said, “to be sociable. On one occasion, and that’s it, total, the end. No lunches. Ask her, for God’s sake. Wendy—”

“Oh, Borden…”

“Lolly, who are you gonna believe, some convicted felon or your own loving husband?”

“I’m certainly not going to believe you. That’s just the way you hit on me, Borden.”

“Lolly—”

“You met me when I was working reception, you passed the time of day, you invited me out for a drink, you asked could we have lunch—”

“Lolly, that was completely different.”

“I know.”

“I was single then. I’m married now.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Which is why it was okay then, and why it’s not okay now, you dirty cheating son of a bitch.”

There was nothing much to say to that, and nobody did. I let the moment stretch—rather enjoying it, I have to admit—and then I said that I didn’t think it had gone very far.

“One occasion,” Borden cried. “One drink, for God’s sake!”

“Perhaps a little farther than that,” I said, “but I don’t think your husband made a very favorable impression on Miss Cooper. I’ve heard her compare him to pond scum.”

“If pond scum had a lawyer,” Lolly Stoppelgard said, “pond scum could sue for libel.”

“Say, Bernie,” Ray Kirschmann said, “this here ain’t Divorce Court, if you take my meanin’. Whether or not he’s been puttin’ her away—”

“One miserable drink, dammit!”

“—don’t really constitute police business. You were startin’ to say somethin’ about how she took the cards. He didn’t give ’em to her, did he?”

Borden Stoppelgard looked as though he might turn apoplectic at the very thought.

“No,” I said, “but he gave her the idea to steal them. Borden’s the sort of fellow who likes to brag about what he has. He started out that way with Wendy”—I’d almost called her Doll—“but before he knew it he was off on his favorite theme, his brother-in-law’s great collection and how he kept it right out in plain sight instead of tucking it away in a safe deposit vault where it belonged.”

Doll raised her eyebrows. She said, “You sound as though you must have been at the next table, Bernie. It’s funny, but I don’t remember any conversation like that. Do you, Mr. Stoppelgard?”

“Jesus,” Borden said, and turned to his left. “Wendy,” he said, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Tell the truth. Did I ever say anything to you about stealing Marty’s cards?”

“Never,” Doll said.

“I said he had some valuable material and he ought to take better care of it. I said there was stuff of his I’d love to get my hands on but he wouldn’t sell it to me. I said—”