Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page A

dome of nothing at all. Suddenly, his hands full of dust.”
    â€œHe say something to tell you that?”
    Willings turned and looked at Bill Weigand, and with surprise. His look, Bill thought, is to say that I’m even dumber than he had thought. But when Willings spoke it was with resignation.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Said nothing. I see things, copper. It was the way I saw it.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “This Self—James Self? I thought he ran a bookstore.”
    â€œHe runs a bookstore. Runs a bookstore. Writes reviews for—oh, Partisan Review . Gets out a magazine of his own. The poor bastard can’t write, you see.” There was a note of deep sorrow in Willings’s heavy voice, as he mentioned, with a kind of awe, this most tragic of human predicaments. “Got to do something.” He finished his drink and looked at his empty glass. He shook his head at it. He said, “You know Self?”
    â€œHeard of him today,” Bill said. “He was at the party here.”
    â€œGirl with him?”
    Bill didn’t know.
    â€œDidn’t see him,” Willings said. “Hell of a lot of nobodies. As you’d expect. Why does anybody give a party like that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Bill said, and reached the bottom of his own glass and stood up. “You’ll be in town a few days?”
    â€œProbably. Why?”
    â€œWe like to know where people are.”
    â€œI didn’t kill the bastard. Not worth the trouble.”
    Bill Weigand said, “Right,” and went out of “The Bottom of the Well.” It was, he thought, mildly interesting that Gardner Willings had, more or less unprompted, brought up the “confrontation” scene which had involved James Self and a pretty dark girl with big dark eyes. And Anthony Payne. A small present to a deserving policeman? Present of small red herring?
    Call it a night, now. Bill went out of the Hotel Dumont. On the sidewalk, Captain Jonathan Frank said, “Hey!” to him. Frank looked pleased. “Got him?” Bill said, and Frank, his voice sounding pleased, said it looked like it.
    â€œHiding on the roof,” he said, and pointed across the street toward the Hotel King Arthur. “Tried to make a run for it, and one of the boys had to stop him. Knocked him out, sort of. But he’ll come around, O.K.”
    â€œSure,” Bill said. “So that’s that.”
    â€œLooks like it,” Frank said. “Lucky break. Find out where he ditched the gun, and we’re in.”

5
    From the bedroom there came the cry of a Siamese cat in agony. “Then you feel,” Dave Garroway said, from a twenty-three-inch screen, in a tone of anxiety, “that we tend to underestimate the menace of communism here at home?” “It’s frightening,” the author of The Unseen Menace said, and Dave Garroway looked properly frightened. “Of atheistic communism?” Garroway said, getting it clear, and the author said, “I’m afraid that’s true, Dave.” Garroway looked at the camera, and it was clear to Pam North that he was scared stiff. From the bedroom the cat wailed.
    Mr. Garroway’s such a nice man, Pam thought. So—she paused for the word. The word came. “Sincere.” Precisely the right word. The cat wailed. It was clear that the cat was undergoing torture.
    â€œHere, Shadow,” Pam said. “She’s out here.”
    The cat named Shadow had lost the cat named Stilts. Stilts was lying on the floor at Pam’s feet. When Shadow wailed first, Stilts lifted her head and listened. Then she put her head down again. Nothing wrong with her, the movement said. Silly cat, but not in any trouble.
    There was the quick click of cat claws on the hall’s bare floor. Shadow appeared, crying. She looked at Pam and wailed. “There,” Pam said, and pointed. Shadow ran to Stilts, rubbed against Stilts,