Deadline at Dawn

“Green Light,” she murmured aloud, as her feet slowly side-stepped along. “Oil for the Lamps of China, Personal History—” Then dropped her eyes.

Tick-tock! A moment gone, a moment out of their scanty store.

Then raised them again on the right-hand side of it. “North to the Orient, The Tragedy of X— He wasn’t much of a reader,” she commented.

“How do you know?” he asked curiously from his side of the room.

“It’s just a hunch of mine. When a person’s a heavy reader, all the books on his shelves would be pretty much alike, I mean pretty much of one type. This is just a smattering; one of this kind, one of that. He probably only read one maybe once in six months or so, when he had a wakeful night or something.”

She was the one who first came to it, and stopped.

Then after a thoughtful moment she called over to him, “Quinn.”

“Yes?”

“A man that’s a cigarette-smoker — and we found that case in his pocket — would he also go in for cigars, as a rule?”

“He’d be apt to, yes. Plenty of people smoke both. Why, did you find a cigar-butt over there?”

“Well, would he be apt to smoke two? Alone, by himself? There are two butts on this tray here—”

He came over to her and looked at it.

“I think he had somebody up here with him,” she said. “Some man. You can’t tell which of these two chairs the stand goes with, it’s out where it can be reached from both. One butt’s in one notch of the tray, and the other’s in another notch, around on the other side from it.”

He bent down and looked more closely. “He didn’t smoke both. Those are two different brands, and nobody does that. There was somebody up here with him, all right. Here’s another thing. They were having an argument of some kind, too. Or at least, one of them was worked up about something, even if the other one wasn’t. Look at the butt on this side. Smooth at the mouth-end; a little soggy, but still intact. Now look at the one over here. Chewed to ribbons at the mouth-end; fringe. One of those smokers was all steamed up over something. That tells it.” He looked up at her. “This is the best thing we’ve had so far. This is the best of the lot.”

“Which was the keyed-up one and which the calm, though? Graves or the other man? We don’t know.”

“No, but that doesn’t matter so much. It does show us that there was another man up here, and that’s what counts for us. The mere fact that there were two different brands of cigars shows that the interview wasn’t a friendly one. One of them refused the other man’s offer of a cigar — or else it wasn’t even made — and smoked his own. They smoked at the same time, but not together, if you see what I mean. There was a strain, a row or an argument of some kind, going on.”

“It’s good, but it’s not good enough,” she agreed. “It doesn’t tell us who the other man was.”

He moved around to the wall-side of one of the chairs; not that they were pressed close up against the wall, but to the side away from the middle of the room, which their own bulk had kept screened until now.

“Here’s the drink of one of them, put down on the floor close up against his chair.”

“Is there one for the other?” she asked quickly, jealously protective of his theory of ill-will.

He moved over to the inside of the second chair, looked down. “No.”

She drew a quick breath of relief. “Then that proves they weren’t on friendly terms. For a minute I was worried. It also shows us that this must have been Graves, sitting over here, where the empty glass was. He was the host. He helped himself to a drink, but didn’t invite the caller. Or else did, but the caller, because he was sore, refused.”

“Yeah. That’s not a hundred proof, but it’s reasonable enough. It could be the other way around, but most likely it wasn’t. A host feeling unfriendly toward you wouldn’t ask you to have a drink, and then show his unfriendliness by not joining you. He wouldn’t offer in the first place. So let’s call it Graves, over on this side, and let it go at that.”

“It’s not where he was sitting,” she muttered frustratedly, “it’s who he was sitting with.”

“Wait a minute, here’s something—” His hand drove perpendicularly downward into the seam between chair-arm and seat, of the second chair, the one they had decided the visitor had occupied. Both their faces dropped a little when he’d brought it up.

“Match-folder,” she said, crestfallen.

“I thought it might be something else, for a minute,” he admitted. “I saw it peeping up out of there. Graves had his own on him; I took them out when we were over there. These must be the other guy’s. Slipped down in there, I guess, in his excitement.”

He flipped open the little folder, fitted it closed again, made to cast it back where he’d found it. Then he quickly brought it back toward him again, opened it a second time. He frowned at it.