he put me
on a spot like that? I just--don't--get--it! Why should she go out of
her way to make trouble...." Dawning suspicion replaced his
bewilderment, "I get it! You cops put her up to this; that's it! You
need a fall guy and I'm elec--"

"Listen to me, Cordell," Kirk cut in impatiently. "You knew, or thought
you knew, your wife was having an affair with Professor Gilmore. You
tried to break it up, to get her to leave her job. She wasn't having any
of that; and the more she refused, the sorer you got. Yesterday you
walked in on them unannounced, found them in each other's arms, and
knocked them both off in a jealous rage. When you cooled down enough to
see what you'd done, you invented this wild yarn about a blonde in a
ball of fire, hoping to get off on an insanity plea."

"I want a lawyer!" Cordell shouted.

Kirk ignored the demand. "You're going back to your cell for a couple
hours, buster. Think this over. When you're ready to tell it right, I
want it in the form of a witnessed statement, on paper. If you do that,
if you co-operate with the authorities, you can probably get off with a
fairly light sentence, maybe even an outright acquittal, on the old
'unwritten law' plea. I don't make any promises. Gilmore was a prominent
man and a valuable one; that might influence a jury against you. But
it's the only chance you've got--and I'm telling you, by God, to take
it!"

Cordell was standing now, his face working. "Sure; I get it! All you're
after is a confession. What do you care if it's a flock of lies? My wife
wouldn't even _look_ at another man, and not you or anybody else is
going to make me say different. That blonde killed them, I tell you--and
I'll tell a jury the same thing! They'll believe me; they're not a bunch
of lousy framing cops! You'll find out who's--"

Lieutenant Martin Kirk wearily ground out his cigar against the chair
rung. "All right, boys. Take him back upstairs."

Chapter II

It was a gray chill day late in November, and by 4:30 that afternoon the
ceiling lights were on. Chenowich, the young plain-clothes man recently
transferred to Homicide from Robbery Detail, stopped at Martin Kirk's
cubbyhole and slid an evening paper across the battered brown linoleum
top of the Lieutenant's desk.

"This oughta interest you," he said, jabbing a chewed thumbnail at an
item under a two-column head half-way down the left side of page one.

CORDELL DRAWS DEATH NOD