A young writer who had wanted to kill Helen Lathrup badly enough to have gone out and purchased a gun and visited the office on the very morning of the slaying! Now he would have to be released, in all probability. There was actually nothing to hold him on that would stand up in court, because Ballistics had confirmed that the gun he'd purchased had not been the murder weapon. He'd violated the Sullivan Law, of course-- The comments of Lieutenant of Detective Joseph Fenton on that particular aspect of the case would not have been printable. But there was nothing unprintable about the conversation of the four men who sat now in the Eaton-Lathrup offices discussing the case. In Macklin's office, to be precise, because Macklin was the calmest, most unbiased and level-headed of the four and seemed to know just how comforting a cushion a little sensible talk could provide for pent-up or over-charged emotions. "I still think we'll have to look for a pathological killer and will get nowhere if we write off that probability," Eaton was saying. He sat in a chair by the window, the sunlight bright on his wide bald patch, the lenses of his frameless glasses and the dial of his costly wrist-watch. He was of medium-height, medium-build and had a gray executive look--a top-echelon executive look--although he was sincerely trying to relax and fraternize. "I think so too," Ellers said. "I've thought so from the first. I was pretty sure, when they arrested Gilmore and Lieutenant Fenton told me they'd traced the purchase of a gun to him, that they had the right man. That's doubtful now, but I agree with you about the psycho likelihood." "It's very curious," Eaton said. "This whole pathological killer possibility ... stranger and more chilling that you might suspect. You'd understand better why I'm saying that if you'd known Helen as well as I did. There are people insurance companies shy away from or label very high risks. They're known as the 'accident prone.' It may be based on nothing but superstition, but you'd have a hard time convincing an experienced insurance-policy salesman of that. "Some people seem to have a rare gift for making accidents happen, of drawing down the lightning upon themselves. They become seriously injured time and time again. And Helen ... well, you might almost say she invited a psychopath to kill her ... just because she dwelt on the horror of that kind of occurrence so often in her mind. The more gruesome aspects of crime fascinated her, and she liked to read about 'ripper cases' and brutal slayings in general. A lot of us do--normal, well-adjusted people in search of exciting reading in the mystery story field. But I always felt, with her, it went considerably beyond that. It was a horror which she acutely feared, a horror of the mind--"