he door. "But I got to get back to my beat," he
said. "Listen, I'll see you. And if I can be any help--"

"Sure," Malone said. "I'll let you know. And thanks again."

"Welcome," Bill said, and opened the door. He strode out with the air of
a man who has just been decorated with the Silver Star, the Purple Heart
and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Malone tried a few more steps and discovered that he could walk without
falling down. He thanked the doctor again.

"Perfectly all right," the doctor said. "Nothing to it. Why, you ought
to see some of the cases we get here. There was a guy here the other
night with both his legs all mashed up by a--"

"I'll bet," Malone said hurriedly. "Well, I've got to be on my way. Just
send the bill to FBI Headquarters on Sixty-ninth Street." He closed the
door on the doctor's enthusiastic: "Yes, _sir_!" and went on down the
hallway and out into the street. At Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue
he flagged a cab.

What a place to be, Malone thought as the cab drove away. Where but in
Greenwich Village did avenues intersect each other without so much as a
by-your-leave?

"Statler-Hilton Hotel," he said, giving the whole thing up as a bad job.
He put his hat on his head and adjusted it painfully to the proper
angle.

And that, he thought, made another little problem. The car had not only
hit him on the head; it had removed his hat before doing so, and then
replaced it. It had only fallen off when he'd started to get up against
the lamp post.

_A nice quiet vacation_, Malone thought bitterly.

He fumed in silence all the way to the hotel, through the lobby, up in
the elevator and to the door of his room. Then he remembered the
notebook.

That was important evidence. He decided to tell Boyd about it right
away.

He went into the bathroom and tapped gently on the door to Boyd's
connecting room. The door swung open.

Boyd, apparently, was still out painting the town--Malone considered the
word _red_ and dropped the whole phrase with a sigh. At any rate, his
partner was nowhere in the room. He went back into his own room, closed
the door and got wearily ready for bed.

* * * * *

Dawn came, and then daylight, and then a lot more daylight. It was
streaming in through the windows with careless abandon, filling the room
with a lot of bright sunshine and the muggy heat of the city. From the
street below, the cheerful noises of traffic and pedestri