her
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 69th 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.

It was a hell of 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?

"Hotel New Yorker," 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.

"The hell with it," Malone announced loudly to no one in particular.
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 pedestrians
floated up and filled Malone's ears.

He got up, turned over in bed, and tried to go back to sleep.

But sleep wouldn't come. After a long time he gave up, and swung
himself over the edge of the bed. Standing up was a delicate job, but
he managed it, feeling rather proud of himself in a dim, semiconscious
sort of way.

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and then opened the
connecting door to Boyd's room softly.

Boyd was home. He lay in a great tangle of bedclothes, snoring
hideously and making little motions