"All right, here it is. I put a trailer on the young writer. Not a shadow, no Squad close-check. Just did a little more digging, keeping him in view. He was just one of twenty suspects. Thought nothing important would turn up. His name's Ralph Gilmore, by the way. I gave you a brief run-down on him. Have you forgotten?" "Naturally not," Gallison said. "But when you just called him a young writer--" "All right, you remember. Good. I won't ask you how much you remember, because I went into most of this before and you failed to remember straight off. But anyhow, the digging paid off. All Gilmore did, about ten days ago, was go into a pawnshop on Park Row and buy himself a gun. The kind of under-the-counter deal that infuriates me, and this is one pawnbroker who'll wish he'd thought twice--or three times. He'll have the book thrown at him." Gallison narrowed his eyes. "What kind of gun was it, Joe." "What kind do you suppose? It couldn't have been any other kind, could it? She was shot with a forty-five, and if he'd bought a pearl-handled woman's gun did you think for a moment I'd have looked as stunned as I did just now?" "You might have. It would have shown he had murder on his mind. At the last moment, he might have decided that a big automatic was what he really needed." "Yeah, I can well imagine." "I'm serious in one way," Gallison said. "You can fit silencers on smaller guns. An amateur doesn't usually commit murder with a forty-five--a big Luger cannon or anything like that--unless he just happens to have such a weapon lying around ... a war souvenir, say." "You can't argue with a fact. Gilmore bought a big, long-barreled gun. Maybe the pawnbroker had only one gun to sell and that was it. Try buying a gun from a pawnbroker sometime. Gilmore was one of the lucky ones." "And now you think his luck is running out?" A weary, slightly embittered look came into Fenton's eyes. "How should I know, at this stage? If I was in his shoes I'd be plenty worried. But our job is simply to do what we can and take nothing for granted ... until we've checked and double-checked." "Then we'd better get right after it." "I think so," Fenton said. Chapter VI Ruth Porges could not have explained, even to herself, why the scream had unnerved her so. Like the others, she'd been unable to identify the voice. But she did have a faint, will-of-the-wisp kind of suspicion that it was Lynn Prentiss who had cried out in shock and horror. It hadn't sounded like Susan's voice at the desk or the voice of Joyce Sanderson from the linotype room. And somehow, all morning, she's been expecting something alarming to happen. She couldn't have explained that either. It was just that--well, things were coming to a head as far as Lathrup was concerned. She was reaching the saturation point in arousing bitter anger and adding fuel to long-standing grievances.