Before Midnight

Hansen was leaning forward, his palms on his knees. "Here's the crux of it. No one knew the answers in that contest but Louis Dahlmann. He had written all the verses himself-the original twenty, the five to break the first tie, with seventy-two contestants, and the five to break the second tie, with five contestants. Of course the answers for the first twenty had to be known to the crew of checkers and recorders, after the deadline had passed and they started to work, but he himself checked the answers of the seventy-two who were in the first tie. With the third group, the five in the second tie, he guarded the verses themselves almost as strictly as the answers. He typed the verses personally and made only seven copies. One copy was placed in a safe deposit vault, one he kept-I'm not sure where--and the other five were given by him last evening to the five contestants at the meeting."

"He kept it in his wallet," O'Garro said.

Hansen ignored it. "Anyway, the point is not the verses but the answers. I speak of the answers to the last group of five verses--the others don't matter now. Of course it was merely the names of five women, with an explanation of the fitness of the verses for them. There was supposed to be only one copy in existence. It had been typed by Dahlmann on an LBA letterhead, signed by him and initialed by Buff, O'Garro, and Assa, with the answers covered so they couldn't see them, and then put in the safe deposit vault, in a sealed envelope, with five men present. So as I said, no one knew the answers but Dahlmann."

"As far as we know," Oliver Buff put in.

"Certainly," the lawyer agreed. "To our knowledge."

"My God, reach the point," Assa rapped out.

"I am. But at the meeting last evening Dahlmann did an extremely reckless thing. When he-"

"Worse than reckless," Buff declared. "Irresponsible! Criminal!"

"That may be a little strong. But it was certainly ill-advised. When he was ready to hand out the new group of verses he took some envelopes from his inside breast pocket, and other things came with them-other papers and his wallet. He passed the envelopes around, and then -you tell it, Pat, you were there."

O'Garro obliged. "After he gave them the envelopes he started to return the other stuff to his pocket, then he hesitated a moment, smiled around at them, opened the wallet, took a piece of folded paper from it and held it up, and told them he wanted to make-"

"No. Exactly what he said."