The fact that Carver Clements maintained a secret apartment in that building was known only to a few of Clements’s cronies. These people knew of Carver Clements’s domestic difficulties and knew why he maintained this apartment. Fortunately, however, they had never seen Anita. That was a big thing in her favor. Anita was quite certain Clements’s death hadn’t been due to a heart attack. It had been some quick-acting, deadly poison. The police would search for the murderer.

It wouldn’t do for Anita merely to remove her things from that apartment, and, besides, that wouldn’t be artistic enough. Anita had been in love with Dane Grover. If it hadn’t been for that dismal entanglement with Carver Clements. . . However, that was all past now, and Fay Allison, with her big blue eyes, her sweet, trusting disposition, had turned Dane Grover from a disillusioned cynic into an ardent suitor.

Well, it was a world where the smart ones got by. Anita had washed the dishes. Fay Allison had dried them. Her fingerprints would be on glasses and on dishes. The management of the apartment house very considerately furnished dishes identical in pattern, so it needed only a little careful work on her part. The police would find Fay Allison’s nightgowns in Carver Clements’s secret apartment. They would find glasses that had Fay’s fingerprints on them. And when they went to question Fay Allison, they would find she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.

Anita would furnish the testimony that would make it all check into a composite, sordid pattern. A girl who had been the mistress of a rich playboy, then had met a younger and more attractive man who had offered her marriage. She had gone to Carver Clements and wanted to check out, but with Carver Clements one didn’t simply check out. So Fay had slipped the fatal poison into his drink, and then had realized she was trapped when Anita returned home unexpectedly and there had been no chance for Fay to make a surreptitious removal of her wearing apparel from the upstairs apartment. Anita would let the police do the figuring. Anita would be horrified, simply stunned, but, of course, cooperative.

Anita Bonsal deliberately waited three hours until things began to quiet down in the apartment house, then she took a suitcase and quietly went to work, moving with the smooth efficiency of a woman who has been accustomed to thinking out every detail.

When she had finished, she carefully polished the key to Apartment 702 so as to remove any possible fingerprints, and dropped it in Fay Allison’s purse. She ground up all but six of the remaining sleeping tablets and mixed the powder with the chocolate which was left in the canister.