Fascination [antikvár]

Outside the apartment, on West Seventy-fourth Street, it was cold and wet, half-sleeting, half-raining. Near by, on Amsterdam Avenue and another block west on Broadway, men and women who, generally, on a miserable night like this one, might have been glad to be home, were still purposefully going about the business of pre-Christmas merrymaking. Shopping bags crammed with parcels, they hurried into bars, emerged flushed from restaurants, huddled under umbrellas, slipped on shiny sidewalks, ran for buses, hailed cabs and, often missing them, went on walking. Inside Maddy's apartment, snug and warm, the fairy-ht Christmas tree in one corner of the sitting room, Bing Crosby singing from the television set in the other, Gideon Tyler looked down at the small box on the dining table. It was made of glossy white cardboard, tied with blue satin ribbon. He knew that it was evidence and that he ought not to handle it, but he opened it anyway. It took several moments before he understood what lay inside the box, beside the note. It looked, at first sight, like a piece of brown fabric, like brown suede. But then he touched it, and knew. Dusty, the dachshund bitch Gideon had given to Maddy and her son at Thanksgiving, had disappeared the previous week whilst on a walk in Central Park with six-year-old Valentin and Jennifer Malkevitch, his sitter. One 11