Before Midnight

The clock above the bank of elevators at the Churchill said five-seventeen. On the way up in the taxi I had considered three different approaches and hadn't cared much for any of them, so my mind was occupied and I didn't notice the guy who entered the elevator just before the door closed and backed up against me. But when he got out at the eighteenth, as I did, and crossed over to the floor clerk and told her, "Miss Frazee, eighteen-fourteen," I took a look and recognized him. It was Bill Lurick of the Gazette, who is assigned to milder matters than homicide only when there are no homicides on tap. I thought, By God, she's been croaked, and stepped on it to catch up with him, on his way down the hall, and told him hello.

He stopped. "Hi, Goodwin. You in on this? What's up?"

"Search me. I'm taking magazine subscriptions. What brought you?"

"Always cagey. The subtle elusive type. Not me, ask me a question I answer it." He moved on. "We got word that Miss Gertrude Frazee would hold a press conference."

Of course that was a gag, but when we turned the corner and came to eighteen-fourteen, and I got a look inside through the open door, it wasn't. There were three males and one female in sight, and I knew two of them: Al Riordan of the Associated Press and Missy Coburn of the World-Telegram. Lurick asked a man standing just inside if he had missed anything, and the man said no, she insisted on waiting until the Times got there, and Lurick said that was proper, they wouldn't start Judgment Day until the Times was set to cover. A man approached down the hall and exchanged greetings, and entered, and somebody said, "All right, Miss Frazee. This is Charles Winston of the Times."

Her voice came: "The New York Times?"

"Correct. All others are imitations. Do you think one of the contestants killed Louis Dahlmann?"