"I heard you. I never thought of that, but you're right. It could be a woman. So. While Fink's looking for the writer, I could be looking for the writee." "Where's your gimmick?" He waved around at the bar. "Right here in this Violent Ward." "You better explain. Take it from the top." "If I called in everybody on the show and just told them about the letters, they'd deny they were written to them. There wouldn't be any impact. They'd be able to cover up the secret." "Why should they cover?" "You don't get threatening letters unless you've got something dirty in your past." "Why should it be secret?" "Because the letters are anonymous. No addressee. No signature. It's got to be a secret between two people. Yes?" "I'll buy it." "Whoever's sending those letters knows the right man will recognize them as soon as he sees them. All right. I know how to tag the one out of the eight who's getting the threats." "How?" "They're all in the business. Mixed up, neurotic, sick in the head like this sunny straight-jacket crowd in here right now. You have to be sick to like this rat-race. The higher up you rise in the spiral, the more precarious your balance becomes ... like a kid on ten-foot stilts." "I think of them balancing like tightrope walkers." "But balance is the gimmick, Kitten." Lennox pounded his point like a piledriver. "Balance. Balance. Balance. Suppose I pulled these letters on them in private, one after the other. Mason. Sachs. Stacy. Kay Hill. Plummer. Charlie Hansel. Took the letters out and said: 'This was sent to you. Read it.' Watched them read it. You know how precariously they're balanced. On twenty-foot stilts. Living on nerves. Wouldn't the impact knock them off? Wouldn't the right one give himself away?" I thought that over. "The trouble with your idea," I objected, "is that if they're all precarious like you--" "They are. You know that. The whole damned business is. That's what I hate about it. I feel like a visitor in a booby-hatch." "Then they'd all be knocked off balance, guilty or not guilty. They'd all fall off their tightrope." "No, you're wrong." "What about Blinky? You said he threw a fit." "But not a guilty fit. That was obvious. No, by God! It'll work. I know it'll work. I'm going to try it. You want to place any bets? I'll make book." "My money's on Sachs. He stole that song he wrote back in Chicago." "What about Kay Hill? From Brooklyn. Trying to pass as English. She's from Canarsie where they really breed crooks. What about Charlie Hansel, the undercover queen? Trying to pass with that hoofer he married." "She's married? That fag?" "Yes. To a dame named Gretel. They used to be 'Hansel and Gretel, Dansomimes.'" "Oh no! Dansomimes?" "The queens could be catching up with Charlie. What about Oliver Stacy? He's run through every woman in town. He went through the Rehearsal Club like a plague. Forty-three ingenues in thirty-six days. And how about Johnny Plummer? He's a Commie." "You sure?"