Deadline at Dawn

“Whew! He sure must have been excited. Look how many he used up, just on that one cigar. Can’t you see him lighting one after the other, through the whole conversation, and maybe even forgetting to use half of them, or the cigar going out every other minute by his forgetting to draw on it, he was talking so fast?”

“The folder could have been half used-up before he began on it,” she tried to suggest. “It didn’t have to start out brand-new, even with the cigar.”

But he’d already gone on past that point, evidently. He made no rejoinder. He was still staring, for far more than the object was worth in the ordinary course of events.

“Come here a minute,” he said, without taking his eyes off it. “What does this tell you? I want to see if you get what I do.”

“Chew Doublemint Gum?”

“Not the cover. The match part itself, inside.”

Her head was down close, beside his. They were holding it like some sort of a precious talisman. “Wait a minute, there’s usually twenty matches come to one of those things. Two rows of ten each, front and back. There’s — get your thumb out of the way — five left, two in front, three in back. That means he used up fifteen separate lights just on that one cigar, is that what you mean?”

“No, you still don’t get what I mean. All right, look. The five left are the end ones in both rows, over to the right.”

“Oh, sure—” she said belatedly. “I saw that from the start.”

“Now, wait. Here. Here’s a folder from my own pocket.” He passed it over to her. “Tear one off and strike it and blow it out. Don’t stop to think what you’re doing. Just strike a match, like you would at any other time. You’re lighting the ring under the coffee-pot. Go ahead, don’t stop now.”

She struck one, blew it out, then quirked her head at him with a sort of charming uncertainty.

“Look at it now. See where that came off of? The right-hand side. Every man, woman, and child that uses one of these things starts at the outside, on the right, and works their way along the line, match by match, over to the left. His folder was worked in reverse. Now do you get what I mean? The guy sitting in this chair facing Graves tonight was a left-handed guy.”

Her mouth opened into a soundless oval of sudden perception, and stayed that way.

“I don’t know who he was, what he looked like, if he killed him or not. But I do know these things about him: he was all steamed up or rattled about something, whittled away fifteen matches to one cigar and mangled it to ribbons between his teeth; he was on bad terms with Graves; and he was left-handed.”

She’d reached out for it, the folder, and he’d relinquished it absently to her; this was several moments before. He caught a strange look in her face now.

“I’m sorry, Quinn,” she said with an odd air of compassion.

“What do you mean?”

“The whole thing just fell all to pieces.”

This time he did the strange-looking. “Why? How?”

“It was a woman.”

She took his hand first, and held it. Then planked the folder down into it with her other. “Smell this,” she said laconically. “Just hold it about even with your upper lip, that’s all.”

He wanted to argue before he’d do it. “A woman chopped that cigar into spinach?” He gestured violently behind him. “A woman sat in that chair?”

“I don’t know anything about the cigar or the chair. All I’m asking you to do is hold that steady up by your lip for a minute.”

“Sulphur and stuff, like matches always—”

“Give that a minute to clear away. That’s the stronger of the two, it tops the other. Now.”

His face gave in with a disheartened grimace. “Perfume,” he said wryly. “Faint perfume.”

“It came out of somebody’s handbag. It’s been carried around all day in a handbag. A handbag that stinks of perfume. Just being in it skunked the cardboard. Just the opening of the bag, once or maybe twice, while she was in here, gave the air a shot of it. I noticed it out in the hall, in the dark, when we were coming in. There’s been a woman here in this room tonight.”

He didn’t want to give in. He had to, but he didn’t want to. “What about the cigar? Who smoked the two cigars, one strong, one weak? One calmly, one all riled up? You mean he did, at one and the same time?”

“Maybe there was a man here before she was here. Or maybe he was here after her. Maybe they were both here at the same time.”

“Nah, they couldn’t,” he said arbitrarily. “The cigar-butt shows the man was in this chair, facing him. The matches show a woman was. They couldn’t have both been in it at one and the same time.”

“If his nerves were all frazzled, and he’d used up all his own matches, he might have had to borrow hers from her. He was in the chair here talking away to Graves, and she was across the room somewhere, listening to them.”

He killed it with a pitch of his head. “That don’t hold together. Graves was smoking away right opposite him, much nearer than wherever it is she was supposed to be. There’s no third chair handy. He would have borrowed from him instead.”