“The house dick here,” Courlander said, “insists the guy couldn’t write and is short forty-five bucks. He planted him up here because he has an idea those other three cases—the ones I covered, you know—were murder.”

They started to question Striker rigorously as though he himself were the culprit. “What gave you the idea it would happen tonight?”

“I didn’t know it would happen tonight. I took a stab at it, that’s all. I figured it was about due somewhere around now.”

“Was the door open or locked when you got up here?”

“Locked.”

“Where was the key?”

“Where it is now—over there on the dresser.”

“Was the room disturbed in any way?”

“No, it was just like it is now.”

They took a deep breath in unison, a breath that meant they were being very patient with an outsider. “Then what makes you think somebody beside himself was in here at the time?”

“Because that note is in here, and he couldn’t write! Because there’s forty-five dollars—”

“One thing at a time. Can you prove he couldn’t write?”

“He proved it to me!”

“Yes, but can you prove it to us?”

Striker caught a tuft of his own hair in his fist, dragged at it, let it go again. “No, because he’s gone now.”

The other one leaned forward, dangerously casual. “You say you warned him what to expect, and yet he was willing to go ahead and chance it, just for the sake of a meal, a suit of clothes, a bed. How do you explain that?”

“He was at the end of his rope. He was about ready to quit anyway.”

Striker saw what was coming.

“Oh, he was? How do you know?”

“Because he told me so. He said he was—thinking of the river.”

“Before you explained your proposition or after?”

“Before,” Striker had to admit.

They blew out their breaths scornfully, eyed one another as though this man’s stupidity was unbelievable. “He brings a guy up from the beach,” one said to the other, “that’s already told him beforehand he’s got doing the Dutch on his mind, and then when the guy goes ahead and does it, he tries to make out he’s been murdered.”

Striker knocked his chair over, stood up in exasperation. “But can’t you get it through your concrete domes? What was driving him to it? The simplest reason in the world! Lack of shelter, lack of food, lack of comfort. Suddenly he’s given all that at one time. Is it reasonable to suppose he’ll cut his own enjoyment of it short, put an end to it halfway through the night? Tomorrow night, yes, after he’s out of here, back where he was again, after the let-down has set in. But not tonight.”