And meetin’
there with ... M.”

“Plausible,” I said, and was unsure if I agreed or if I mocked. “I
suppose you know already who is ‘M’?”

He eyed me with omniscience. “That we don’t give out, sir. Even to a
distinguished friend.”

“But the wound, Gavegan! Have you looked at the wound?”

He was stupid. I prepared to tell my thoughts. Was it because or
despite that he was too stupid to receive them? “The wound might puzzle you, I think, if you had studied more anatomy. The man who dealt it did so from above, for it struck the right auricle
of the heart at an angle of less than forty-five degrees! How could a
short man do that to a man six feet one and a half? And how could any
man murder LaMotte like that, if LaMotte were not literally _baring
his breast_: parting his arms, even raising his arms (the muscle wound
shows that, besides) in order to receive the blow?”

The image of a victim coöperating with his slayer was too much for the
law. The discomfort of my analysis struck Mr. Gavegan as an impertinent
invasion. He barred it with laughter. I could see his thought in his
mouth and his eye. “--These scientist cranks.”

I went on: not knowing, again, if my motive was to convince or was
bravado in the certainty that my man was beneath convincing. “Gavegan, have you ever noted the subtle stigmata of the hypnotic
trauma?”

Gavegan grumbled. “I’m afraid, sir, I’ll be havin’ to let you go. The Coroner’s cormin’
again. We always likes to be hospitable to the big doctors at the
Institutions, whenever we can help ’em in their studies.” He pulled a
huge silver timepiece from his vest, and went to the window, and looked
out. I was immersed so fully, that even now my action did not make my mind
break in amaze from the rhythm of events. The big man was at the window
looking out: for he believed he had heard the Coroner’s car, and
doubtless this meant that his night’s work was over and he could go to
his wife. I moved unhesitant to an open door that led into a little
passage. A strip of blue carpet covered the floor. And naked-clear
there lay on it a white envelope which I picked up and put into my
pocket. I thanked Gavegan: gave him two cigars, and left. _h_

When I reached my rooms, Mrs. Mahon was there with my breakfast tray,
and wondering what could have taken me out so early. Mrs. Mahon was the
Italian widow of an Irish policeman. I sat down to my fruit, and her
ample and unsubtle beauty was pleasant to my mood, so that I held her
with words. Mrs. Mahon loved to talk with me: but in her sense of my
state she was shrewd, and she had never intruded her wide hard rondures
and the brash clarities of her mind upon my silence. She stood over me
now, with her bare arms crowding her bosom, and told me of the latest
misdeeds of her lover. Mrs. Mahon was beautiful, and to me entirely
without charms. Her head was small, the black hair massed low on the
blandness of the forehead, and her nose was Roman. Her eyes bore out my
fancy of the moment, that she was not flesh; for in their heavy facets
was no expression. The mouth was long and quiet. Its sensuality seemed
a deliberate trait, somehow not born of her own flesh but of the will
of the artist who had made her. Finally, her body as I could sense it
under the loose white fabric of her gown, was an arrangement of obvious
feminine forms: high breasts, stomach and hips subdued: and yet to me
devoid of the mystery of her sex. She was the body unlit, goodly and
functioning: the sacrament of flesh without the spirit. So this day it
was cool nourishment to look at Mrs. Mahon, to drink in her clarities,
to convince myself that she was not sculpture, quite the opposite:
_real_. The tang of the grapefruit, the earthy pungence of the not too fresh
eggs, the bite of the coffee, merged with Mrs. Mahon: and I was happy
in a deep forgetfulness. I was sleepy. The thought came:--You have had
a bad dream. Your visit to the body may be real: but you can wipe it
out like a dream. It need have no consequence in the real world. And
that is the trait of the dream, is it not? the one trait that shuts
dream out from other planes of life? And I chatted with Mrs. Mahon, and
gave her advice. “His misdeeds,” I said, “save you from ever being bored by him. You
should be thankful.”

She smiled: “Oh, I guess he’s a man: and I guess I’m a woman. I suppose
I get him sore, too, sometimes, just because my ways are them of a
woman. And yet, if I wasn’t a woman, and if he wasn’t a man----”

“Precisely, Mrs. Mahon. What you’ve just said is philosophical and
deep.”

She shook her head at my solemn words which, I judged, tickled her
as the prickings of a poignard might titillate an elephant. She went
out with my tray, and the thought “Rome” came to me as I watched
her perfect carriage: the low spacing of her feet, the swing of her
hips, the breadth of her back, and the little head so rightfully
proportioned, like a rudder steering the life that dwelt within her
body. --Rome. How far I am from Rome. How sweet Rome would be, with its sure
shallow strength. I lit a pipe. Melancholy and the hint of an old anguish wiped out Mrs. Mahon.--This anguish is what moves me, moves me toward what seems the
cause of the anguish. A paradox that is a common law. Look at love: how
pain of unfulfillment moves us upon the loved one, and as we come ever
closer, ever deeper and more absolute grows the pain of unfulfillment. If I could analyze what this is that has taken me: if I could only know
where it began.... But I know that it must first fill out its life ere
my mind measure it. What did my poor analysis avail me? How wisely I
announced: “Your anguish moves you toward the source of your anguish. You cannot stay still because you must fulfill your own beginning.” And
how blindly I moved! I reached into my pocket and took out the envelope that I had not yet
examined, and that Mrs. Mahon had helped me to forget. It was addressed

  _Philip LaMotte, Esquire_

  _By Bearer_

and it was in the straight high script of Mildred Fayn! It was empty. I tapped it against my open palm and wondered why I felt that it had
any bearing on the case. There was no proof that this was the alleged
letter of the fatal messenger. On the contrary, how could I entertain a
thought that would implicate Mildred in this horrible affair? What was
I trying to find, or to think? I was abhorrent to myself. Doubtless,
Mildred had written more than once to a man so close. My reason flayed
my miserable thoughts: but did not break them: did not avail against
their issuance in deed. I telephoned to Mildred. “Yes?” she answered and her frail voice bloomed out of the wire,
drenching my sense in a languor of desired peace. “Mildred,” I said, “doubtless these days you would prefer not to see
me.” She did not answer this. “But something possibly important has
come up: I feel that I should speak to you.”

She hesitated. “Meet me at lunch, at Sherry’s ... at one-thirty.”


_i_

My work took me. I worked well.