Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“None whatever,” he said. “I pushed in and they both greeted me with smiles, forced smiles, true enough, but smiles.”

“Anyone else?” I said. “Anyone else on your list of possible suspects — aside from yourself?”

“No one else,” he said. “Not that I know of.”

I marched around quietly. He watched me march. Then I came back to him. I said, “I think the papers say she lived on East Sixty-fourth Street.”

“115 East 64th.”

“You visit her often, Mr. Phelps?”

“I never visited her, Mr. Chambers. I didn’t think it would be... er... circumspect. Let’s say... she visited here. Matter of fact, when I went off for vacations, she had carte blanche. She had a key to the place, of course.”

“Of course. When did she visit with you last, Mr. Phelps?”

He hesitated. “Last night,” he said.

“She was murdered last night,” I said.

“In her own apartment,” he said. “Not here.”

“When did she leave here?” I said.

“About midnight.”

“Wasn’t she working?”

“She took the night off.”

“She continue with the fifty thousand dollar trip to Europe?”

“She did.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“Told her I was still thinking about it.”

“And when she left — what did you do?”

“I went to sleep. I was dead tired.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“I slept terribly. I was up in about an hour. I was worried. I had a bite to eat and I put on the radio. That’s when I heard about — about what happened to Vivian.”

“What time was that? Do you remember?”

“I don’t know. About two-thirty, three, perhaps.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing. Sat glued to the radio, listening. I heard, after a while, that the police were interested in talking to Gordon Phelps.”

“Any idea how you got mixed up in it?”

“I assumed that she had mentioned my real name to some of her friends, and that the police had questioned these friends.”

“So why didn’t you go down and talk to the cops?”

“Simply because I didn’t want to get mixed up in it. There’s a difference between the police wanting to talk to Gordon Phelps — a friend of Vivian Frayne’s — and the police wanting to talk to, or having talked to, Gordon Phelps, Vivian Frayne’s lover. I didn’t want that smeared over the papers. Once they talked to me — they’d get it from me. On the other hand, once this damned murder is solved — it’s over. It’s off the front pages. It’s yesterday’s news. I’d be out of it.”

“So what did you do?”

“I wired my lawyer and had him come here. I had him go to the police and tell them that I was out of town on business, and that I was due back in a couple of weeks. I told him that he was to tell them that he didn’t know where I went, just out of town on business, back in a couple of weeks.”

“And then what’d you do?”

“Called your office, but you weren’t in. So I wired Sophia to get to you.”

“Why Sophia? Why not the lawyer?”

“Because, finally, I’m getting smart. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Lawyer, himself, might get suspicious when I’m cooking on all burners. Sophia, basically, is a friend. I’m a rich man. She knows that. Her very avariciousness keeps her being a friend.”

“Very clever,” I said. “Very psychological and all that. And now what do you do? Hide here until the thing blows over?”

“Or blows up.”

“Okay,” I said. I went to the door. “I’ve got your money and I’ve got your story. Let’s see what happens from here on out.”

“Please make it happen quickly,” he said. “And keep me informed.”

“Which necessitates my coming back here, doesn’t it?”

“How else?” he said.

“So let’s do it real whodunit, why don’t we? As long as you’re paying for my kind of brains, let’s do it with a system. Let’s make it five short rings, a pause, and then one long ring. When you hear that ring, you’ll be sure it’s me, you’ll know it’s Prometheus bringing fire to man.”

“Quite the card, aren’t you, Prometheus. But that ringing idea is a good idea, really. Hadn’t thought of it at all.”

There was a good deal, it appeared, that Mr. Gordon Phelps had not thought of.

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