He ate well, ordering the homemade vegetable soup, roast beef, rice pudding, and coffee. When he had been with the Port Smith Police Department, even as a detective, he had sought out the good diners and ordered the substantial food. The taste of the food, the sights and sounds of the place, his own full stomach, worked in a harmony to create an impression that was years old. He could close his eyes and almost believe—almost—that he was with the Department again. There was a commotion that surrounded a man who was a policeman. “I’m on the cops,” he could say, and the words themselves could evoke the scene, smells, voices, walk—a telephone in a police station had a ring that did not exist anywhere else. Now, as he worked up and out of the mood—reflection, fantasy, banal yearning, self-contempt—Leland tried to press his attention to business. There were questions he could ask that he could not have asked before. And for reasons he could not understand, he wanted to believe that the answers were not really out of his reach. He turned away from that; it could be still another trick he was playing on himself.

MacIver’s death had been published in the newspapers—Leland’s father had remembered reading the item—and therefore anyone who had had an interest in the contents of the office could have broken in. Leland discounted the idea of a chance burglary; too much coincidence and, as the watchman had said, only little things had been taken from the other offices. A professional would have had a better appreciation of the conditions—and would have wiped out every office in the building. Leland knew as well as professional burglars that office girls often kept items of considerable value in their desks. So it was not a coincidence; someone had been after part or all of the papers that Mike had now. There was one more conclusion that Leland could draw—he could feel it—but it stayed beyond him.

The execution of the break-in clarified the terms in which Mike had phrased his warning. If MacIver had been murdered for something he had had in his office, the murderers—this would involve professionals, too—would have made it to the office in time to get what they had wanted. Leland knew that they would not have taken such chances in the first place. Professional killings were always simple. They would have surprised MacIver in his office alone, searched the place for the thing they wanted, then picked him up and thrown him out of the window. It would have been convenient and above suspicion. Every cop knew how these people worked.