But Striker wasn’t thinking about all that particularly, just then. He was interested only in what the condition of the room could tell him: whether it had been suicide or an accident. The only thing disturbed in the room was the bed, but that was not violently disturbed as by a struggle, simply normally disarranged as by someone sleeping. Striker, for some reason or other, tested the sheets with the back of his hand for a minute. They were still warm from recent occupancy. Hopper’s trousers were neatly folded across the seat of a chair. His shirt and underclothes were draped over the back of it. His shoes stood under it, toe to toe and heel to heel. He was evidently a very neat person.

He had unpacked. He must have intended to occupy the room for the full week he had bargained for. In the closet, when Striker opened it, were his hat, overcoat, jacket, and vest, the latter three on separate hangers. The dresser drawers held his shirts and other linen. On top of the dresser was a white-gold wristwatch, a handful of change, and two folded squares of paper. One was a glossy handbill from the show the guest had evidently attended only two hours ago. Saturday through Tuesday—the laugh riot, funniest, most tuneful picture of the year, “Hips Hips Hooray!” Also “Popeye the Sailor.” Nothing in that to depress anyone.

The other was a note on hotel stationery—Hotel Management: Sorry to do this here, but I had to do it some-where.

It was unsigned. So it was suicide after all. One of the two window halves, the one to the right, stood inward to the room. The one he had gone through.

“You the house man?” a voice asked from the doorway.

Striker turned and a precinct detective came in. You could tell he was that. He couldn’t have looked at a dandelion without congenital suspicion or asked the time of day without making it a leading question. “Find anything?”

Striker handed over the note without comment.

Perry, the manager, had come up with him, in trousers and bathrobe. He was a stout, jovial-looking man ordinarily, but right now he was only stout. “He hadn’t paid yet, either,” he said ruefully to the empty room. He twisted the cord of his robe around one way, then he undid it and twisted it around the other way. He was very unhappy. He picked the wristwatch up gingerly by the end of its strap and dangled it close to his ear, as if to ascertain whether or not it had a good movement.

The precinct dick went to the window and looked down, opened the bath door and looked in, the closet door and looked in. He gave the impression of doing this just to give the customers their money’s worth; in other words, as far as he was concerned, the note had clinched the case.