She laughed, swung the typewriter from the side compartment of her desk, and announced, “It’s a good gag. Come back in half an hour, and I’ll have ‘em ready.”
She fed the stencil sheet into her typewriter and started playing a tune on the keyboard.
I told her I’d be back, went out, bought an early afternoon paper, and sat down at the lunch counter to read the account of the murder.
As yet, the newspapers didn’t have all the details, but they had enough to hit the high spots. Paul G. Nostrander, a popular young attorney, had been found dead in the apartment of Roberta Fenn. Roberta Fenn was missing. Employed in a secretarial position in a downtown bank, she had failed to show up for work. An examination of her apartment convinced police that if she had fled, she had taken no clothes with her, not even her facial creams, toothbrush, or even her purse. The purse was lying unopened on the dresser in the bedroom. Not only did it contain her money, but her keys as well. Police reasoned, therefore, that she was entirely without funds, without means of re-entering her own apartment. They expected either to find her body sometime within the next twenty-four hours, or that she would voluntarily surrender to the police. Police inclined to two theories. One was that the murderer had killed the young attorney, then forced Roberta Fenn to accompany him at the point of a gun. The other was that the murder had taken place during Miss Fenn’s absence from her apartment, that she returned to find the body in much the same position as police had found it, and, in a panic, had resorted to flight. There was, of course, the third possibility, which was that Roberta Fenn had been the one who pulled the trigger on the gun.
Apparently police were inclined to give more credence to the first theory.
Police were making a diligent search for a young, well-dressed man wearing a gray checkered suit who had been waiting for Roberta Fenn when she finished her work at the bank the evening before. Witnesses had seen him escort her into a taxicab. Police had a good description: Height, 5 feet 5½ inches; weight, 130 pounds; hair, dark, wavy; eyes, gray and keen; age, 29; suit, gray, double-breasted; shoes, brown and white sport.
Nostrander had been practicing law for about five years. He was 33 years of age, and among lawyers was noted for his ingenuity as well as his mental agility in the trial of a case. He was a bachelor. Both parents were dead, but he had an older brother, 37, who was employed in an executive capacity with one of the bottling companies. So far as was known, the dead lawyer had no enemies, although he had a host of friends who were shocked to learn of his passing.
The crime had been committed with a .38 caliber police special. Only one shot had been fired, and only one shot had been needed. Doctors said death was almost instantaneous. The position of the body and the distance from the hand of the corpse to the gun which was found lying on the floor made it almost impossible to consider the death as other than deliberate murder. Police were also investigating the theory that the death might have been part of some strange suicide pact, that Roberta Fenn had become too nervous or frightened to carry out her part of the bargain, and so had disappeared.
Police fixed the time of the murder as being almost exactly at 2:32 in the morning. Because a pillow had been held over the gun, the report had been muffled. Only one person had actually heard the shot. That person, Marilyn Winton, a hostess at the Jack-O’-Lantern, had been returning home. She had the apartment directly across the hall from that of Miss Fenn. It had been just as she was fitting her latchkey to the street door to the apartment house that she had heard what she took to be a shot. Two friends, who had driven her home, were waiting at the curb to “see that she got in all right.” Miss Winton had immediately returned to their car to ask if either,of them had heard a shot. Neither had. Police attached some significance to this, as it indicated that the pillow had muffled the explosion sufficiently to make the single shot inaudible above the sound of the idling motor.
The friends had convinced Miss Winton that she had merely heard a door slam. She had gone on upstairs to her apartment, but still only half convinced that it was not a shot she had heard, had looked at her watch to note the exact time. The time was then exactly 2:37. She estimated it had then been not over five minutes since she had heard the shot.