But the words wouldn’t come. In the years of repression, of rejection, the loving and confiding words had withered and died. Now there was only awkward silence, the ticking away of the moments as she and Karen faced each other on the stairs.

Mrs. Havermann licked her lips. The warm turmoil was dying in her, and Karen seemed to be receding to a more proper perspective. She tried to think of something to say. “I’ll be going soon,” she got out.

Karen waited as if still not giving up hope, her face full of the ache to be accepted. But Mrs. Havermann brushed by her and went on up the stairs.

CHAPTER TEN

“When Mrs. Havermann came out of the front door, wearing her hat and coat and carrying a purse, she found the big collie lying on the porch. His fur was golden in the sun. He lifted his head and wagged his tail, blinking his eyes against the light. She stopped abruptly to stare at him. Where had he been during the night? She hadn’t heard a bark out of him, though his little house was just beyond the garage.

He greeted everyone, she knew, with a happy frisking, often too exuberant to be welcome. But surely, if a stranger had gone so far as to put a ladder on the wall, he’d have at least barked a little. The dog’s silence became a part of the menacing and incomprehensible whole, like the misplacement of the coat on Stolz’s bed and the thief’s directness in going straight to Stolz’s window and no other.

She hurried down the front walk, then down the paved street to the main boulevard where the bus passed. A cab happened to come by before the bus did, and she took that. She got out at the shopping center.

The locksmith had a small office in a corner of one of the supermarkets. There was a counter, beyond it a desk and a table full of tools, shelves of stock, and some key-cutting equipment. The man who came forward when she stopped was about thirty, very clean-looking in a smart gray apron. “Yes, ma’am.”

She had taken his mailed notice from her bag. “I received this today.”

“One of our ads. What can I do for you?” He was sizing her up and perhaps he saw the fear she tried to repress, for his glance sharpened with interest.

“I wish to have a lock installed. Locks, rather. A door and two windows.”

“Yes, ma’am. Any particular make or type in mind?” He was pulling a scratch pad and a pencil toward him on the counter.

“The best. The very strongest. You choose them.”

“We have some remarkable new locks for windows now,” he said pleasantly. “Absolutely burglar-proof. What’s the address, please?”