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“Where was she during the kidnapping?”

“Why . . . at home, I suppose. She leaves here between five and six every evening. She is a very reserved woman. Apparently has very little social activity. Generally she furthers her studies in the library rather than go out anywhere.”

“Okay, I’ll get to her. How about the others? Have they alibis?”

“Alibis?”

“Just checking, York. Do you know where they were the night before last?”

“Well . . . I can’t speak for all of them, but Arthur and William were here. Alice Nichols came in about nine o’clock then left about an hour later.”

This part I jotted down on a pad. “How did you collect the family . . . or did they all just drift in?”

“No, I called them. They helped me search, although it did no good. Mr. Hammer, what are we going to do? Please . . .”

Very slowly, York was starting to go to pieces. He’d stood up under this too calmly too long. His face was pale and withered-looking, drawn into a mask of tragedy.

“First of all, you’re going to bed. It won’t do any good for you to be knocking yourself out. That’s what I’m here for.” I reached over his shoulder and pulled a velvet cord. The flunky came in immediately and hurried over to us. “Take him upstairs,” I said.

York gave the butler instructions about putting the family up and Harvey seemed a little surprised and pleased that he’d be allowed in on the conspiracy of the room diagram.

I walked to the middle of the floor and let the funeral buzz down before speaking. I wasn’t nice about it. “You’re all staying here tonight. If it interferes with other plans you’ve made it’s too bad. Anyone that tries to duck out will answer to me. Harvey will give you your rooms and be sure you stay in them. That’s all.”

Lady sex appeal waited until I finished then edged up to me with a grin. “See if you can grab the end bedroom in the north wing,” she said, “and I’ll get the one connected to it.”

I said in mock surprise, “Alice, you can get hurt doing things like that.”

She laughed. “Oh, I bruise easily, but I heal fast as hell.”

Swell girl. I hadn’t been seduced in a long time.

I wormed out through a cross fire of nasty looks to the foyer and winked at Richard Ghent on the way. He winked back; his wife wasn’t looking.

I slung on my coat and hat and went out to the car. When I rolled it through the gate I turned toward town and stepped on the gas. When I picked up to seventy I held it there until I hit the main drag. Just before the city line I pulled up to a gas station and swung in front of a pump. An attendant in his early twenties came out of the miniature Swiss Alpine cottage that served as a service station and automatically began unscrewing the gas cap. “Put in five,” I told him.

He snaked out the hose and shoved the nose in the tank, watching the gauge. “Open all night?” I quizzed.

“Yeah.”

“On duty yourself?”

“Yup. ’Cept on Sundays.”

“Don’t suppose you get much to do at night around here.”

“Not very much.”

This guy was as talkative as a pea pod. “Say, was much traffic along here night before last?”

He shut off the pump, put the cap back on and looked at me coldly. “Mister, I don’t know from nothing,” he said.

It didn’t take me long to catch on to that remark. I handed him a ten-spot and followed him inside while he changed it. I let go a flyer. “So the cops kind of hinted that somebody would be nosing around, huh?”

No answer. He rang the cash register and began counting out bills. “Er . . . did you happen to notice Dilwick’s puss? Or was it one of the others?”

He glanced at me sharply, curiously. “It was Dilwick. I saw his face.”

Instead of replying I held out my right hand. He peered at it and saw where the skin had been peeled back off half the knuckles. This time I got a great big grin.

“Did you do that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, pal, for that we’re buddies. What do you want to know?”

“About traffic along here night before last.”

“Sure, I remember it. Between nine o’clock and dawn the next morning about a dozen cars went past. See, I know most of ’em. A couple was from out of town. All but two belonged