She nodded. If she was unhappy, there was nothing he could do about it. Her husband’s apparently leisurely approach to his business prodded Leland: certainly it didn’t account for the estate that MacIver had amassed. His dealings with people were interesting, too. A young man, capable of saying no, who could calmly roll a sucker bet from ten to fifty dollars. Norma had called him slick. Yes. And cool: yes, that, too. This had been the man who had married this little girl. Slick, cool characters usually installed girls like her in apartments and bragged to their friends. Colin MacIver had not been one of these. Leland could not forget what Norma had told him about the night in the car when MacIver had fallen asleep against her breast. Dr. Roberts had liked him. MacIver had known a little about everything in a conversational way. Thoughtful and fun-loving, but quiet and withdrawn. If Colin MacIver had been murdered the reasons would show themselves—but how, really, was a man thrown off the roof of a racetrack on a meeting day? Leland would have to see. If MacIver had killed himself, why had he made such a spectacle of it? He left a pregnant wife. An accident? Why had he been on the roof of the track? There was a lot that Norma did not know, because there was a lot that Colin MacIver had concealed. Leland was very interested in a meeting with the mother and the first wife.

At the office, he tried Mike on the addition trick. Even slowly, Mike could not handle the figures. He could do it, he thought, if he practiced picturing the moves of the beads of an abacus. Leland thought that it might be the way MacIver had done it, and if true, it was an interesting look into the workings of MacIver’s mind.

The souvenir book and the insurance file arrived before Leland left for Bonney’s, but there was no time to look at them. Sheila reported that Steffie was dressed and feeling better.

There were three telephone messages on his desk when he returned. For the fourth day in a row a tool-and-die man at the Kelso Chain Works was out sick. He had a history of short illnesses and Personnel suspected alcoholism. In a matter like this they had to have something substantial to take to the union. Leland had done a half-dozen jobs for them in the past and there was nothing to negotiate.

The second message was Hugh Thoms’ report for the weekend, a diary of the ordinary business of an ordinary woman. He had included last night’s incident, when the woman had walked by him. The report would be phrased in the third person. Leland added the note that the operative was subsequently replaced. If, in a day or two, the woman’s movements showed no change, he would strike the item and forget about it.