The Fourth Side of the Triangle

Dane moved toward her; she turned around and they almost collided.

“Judy!”

It was Judith Walsh, his father’s secretary. He had seen nothing of Judy since the fateful night; he had supposed that in his father’s trouble she was holding down the fort at the McKell offices.

“Dane, what are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are, apparently. Trying to prove Dad’s alibi.”

He took her to a booth and ordered beers.

“How long have you been at this?” he asked her.

“Seems like ten years,” she said disconsolately. “I simply didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just do nothing.”

Dane nodded; he knew something — not much — of the story behind her devotion to his father. The elder McKell had given Judith Walsh her first and only job, at a time when she could see for herself nothing but the fate of most girls from her economic class — a hasty and overfertile marriage, and a life of drudgery. She had made herself indispensable to Ashton, and he had repaid her handsomely.

“Look, Judy, we’re both pulling on the same oar,” Dane said. “Why don’t we hook up? What places have you covered?”

“I have a list.”

“So have I. Between the two of us, we ought to turn it up.”

Judy set down her half-finished beer. “We’re wasting time, Dane. Let’s get back on it.”

They kept going by day and by night; after a while, in a sort of sleepwalking daze. The photographs became cracked and dog-eared.

It was bitterly interesting to see how the news of the indictment handed down by the grand jury affected people Dane knew. A girl who had been in pursuit of him since the spring, phoning him several times a week, vanished from the face of the earth. Friends these days were always hurrying somewhere, unable to chat for more than a minute or two. On the other hand, old Colonel Adolphus Phillipse, Lutetia’s cousin, appeared at the McKell apartment for the first time since the funeral of Lutetia’s grandmother’s sister — pausing en route just long enough to whale away at a cameraman with his walking stick — and announced that he had pawned his mother’s jewelry, offering the proceeds, $10,000, as a reward leading to the arrest and conviction of what he termed “the real culprit.” He was persuaded with difficulty that his generosity was not needed.

By November 1st, Dane and Judy were worn out, stumped. The only thing they did not doubt was the truth of Ashton McKell’s story. As Dane said, “If for no other reason than that, if he’d made the story up, he could hardly have helped inventing a better one!”

And on November 1st, in a crowded courtroom, Judge Edgar Suarez presiding, the trial of Ashton McKell began. It was a Tuesday.

On Wednesday, after another night’s fruitless search, not concluded until the bars closed, Dane insisted on taking Judy home to her West End Avenue apartment. Her eyes were deeply stamped with fatigue. Outside her building he said, “You swallow a sleeping pill, missie, and hit the sack.”

“No,” Judy said. “I want to check off the places we covered tonight against the list of licenses I have upstairs. To make sure we didn’t skip one.”

She swayed, and he caught her. “Here! I’d better come up and help you tick them off. Then you’re going to bed.”

He had never been in her apartment before. It was tailored but feminine, with some creditable pieces of bric-à-brac, and an impressive hi-fi set backed up by a formidable collection of recordings.

“All my money goes into it,” Judy laughed, noticing his respectful eyebrows. “I’m a frustrated musician, I guess. How are you on music?”

“Long-haired,” said Dane.

“Wonderful! Maybe we can spend an evening listening to a whole nightful of music. I mean when this is, well, over.”

“I’d like that.”

“I have some simply marvelous old 78s. Do you know the prewar Beethoven symphonies recorded by Felix Weingartner and the Vienna Philharmonic? In my opinion they’re still the definitive performances...”

They checked their list of the evening. In the area they had covered, not one place that sold liquor over a bar had been passed by. “There,” Judy said, putting down her pencil. “That’s done. Funny, I don’t feel as tired—”

Dane took her in his arms, kissed her mouth. After one gasp of surprise, she returned the pressure.

Later, he told himself it had been inevitable. The attraction between them — how old was it? It seemed to him now that it dated from their first sight of each other, years before. He had always been drawn to a certain quality of sweet cleanliness about her, dainty and uncomplicated and altogether feminine. Why hadn’t he realized it sooner? And where now was his passion for Sheila Grey? Already her memory was a vestigial relic of the past. Was he so shallow, or had his love for Sheila been no love at all?