She began to sob, dry-eyed. She took a step toward Malone. “You believe me, don’t you? Don’t let them drag me away to—to a hospital. They’re the police. Make them find him. Make them protect me.”

“What I always say is,” Malone murmured, lighting his cigar, “what do we pay taxes for?” He paused long enough to glare at the police officer and his aide. “But what you need is a good lawyer.”

“Find me one!”

Malone smiled at her reassuringly. “I have found you one.”

“Listen,” Klutchetsky said. “This is the third time she’s tried this. She’s bats. Just ask Doctor Updegraff.”

“A very interesting case,” Doctor Updegraff purred. “Of course, after I have given it some study—”

“Nuts!” Malone said rudely.

“Precisely,” the psychiatrist said.

Malone thought of a number of things he would like to do to Doctor Updegraff, all of them unkind, and most of them unmentionable. He thought, also, about the immediate problem. If Klutchetsky and Dr. Updegraff happened to be right, Doris Dawn would be better off in a hospital, and the sooner the better. On the other hand, if she was telling the truth—and Malone believed she was—she would be safer in jail, right now.

“As this young lady’s lawyer,” he began.

Klutchetsky said, “Now Malone. You heard what the doc here said. And maybe you remember this babe’s mother.”

“I do,” Malone said, “I was secretly in love with her for years.” He reflected that every impressionable male who’d been to the theater between 1925 and 1936 remembered Diana Dawn who’d committed suicide at the very height of her career.

“Okay,” Klutchetsky said, “this babe takes poison, only she’s found in time and luckily she didn’t take much. Then she goes to work on her wrists with a razor blade, but she misses the right spot and anyhow a hotel maid finds her before she bled too much. Now she takes a room here under a phony name, and decides to jump.”

The little lawyer was silent for a moment. Maybe, this time, Klutchetsky was right and he was wrong. Still—

“How about notes?” he asked. “Did she leave any?”

“Notes!” the police officer snorted, “what do you call these?” He waved an arm around the room.

Malone looked, and realized that the room was filled with mirrors. On every one of them was written, in lipstick, “Good-bye, Good-bye.” The letters were the color of dried blood. The bathroom door was a full-length mirror, and on it was scrawled, over and over “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye—”

“I didn’t write it!” Doris Dawn said.

Malone looked at her closely, then back at the dark red letters. He said to Klutchetsky, “I’m convinced.”