Striker said in a humble, placating voice: “Mind if I ask you something personal?”

“What?” said the precinct man sourly.

“Are you a married man?”

“Sure I’m married. What’s that to—?”

“Think hard. The night you became engaged, the night you first proposed to your wife, did you feel like taking your own life afterward?”

The police dick went “Arrrr!” disgustedly, flung around on his heel, and stalked out, giving the revolving door an exasperated twirl that kept it going long after he was gone.

“They get sore, when you’ve got ’em pinned down,” Striker remarked wryly.

Perry remonstrated impatiently, “Why are you always trying to make it out worse than it is? Isn’t it bad enough without looking for trouble?”

“If there’s something phony about his death, isn’t it worse if it goes undetected than if it’s brought to light?”

Perry said, pointedly thumbing the still-turning door, “That was the police we just had with us.”

“We were practically alone,” muttered his disgruntled operative.

And so they couldn’t blame it on the depression this time. That was starting to clear up now. And besides, Allan Hastings had come from well-to-do people. They couldn’t blame it on love either. Perry half-heartedly tried to suggest he hadn’t loved the girl he was engaged to, had had somebody else under his skin maybe, so he’d taken this way to get out of it.

“That’s a woman’s reason, not a man’s,” Striker said disgustedly. “Men don’t kill themselves for love; they go out and get tanked, and hop a train for some place else, instead!” The others both nodded, probing deep within their personal memories. So that wouldn’t wash either.

In the end there wasn’t anything they could blame it on but the room itself. “That room’s jinxed,” Maxon drawled slurringly. “That’s two in a row we’ve had in there. I think it’s the thirteen on it. You oughta change the number to 912½ or 914½ or something, boss.”

That was how the legend first got started.

Perry immediately jumped on him full-weight. “Now listen, I won’t have any of that nonsense! There’s nothing wrong with that room! First thing you know the whole hotel’ll have a bad name, and then where are we? It’s just a coincidence, I tell you, just a coincidence!”

Dennison sold the room the very second day after to a middle-aged couple on a visit to the city to see the sights. Striker and Maxon sort of held their breaths, without admitting it to each other. Striker even got up out of bed once or twice that first night and took a prowl past the door of 913, stopping to listen carefully. All he could hear was a sonorous baritone snore and a silvery soprano one, in peaceful counterpoint.

The hayseed couple left three days later, perfectly unharmed and vowing they’d never enjoyed themselves as much in their lives.

“Looks like the spirits are lying low,” commented the desk man, shoving the red vacancy-tag back into the pigeonhole.