I said I understood.
“See you at nine o’clock then,” he said, and hung up.
IV
Lieutenant Bradley of the Missing People’s Bureau was a thickset, middle-aged, disillusioned Police Officer who sat for long hours behind a shabby desk in a small office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters and tried to answer unanswerable questions. All day long and part of the night people came to him or called him on the telephone to report missing relatives, and expected him to find them.
Not an easy job when, in most cases, the man or woman who had disappeared had gone away because they were sick of their homes or their wives or their husbands and were taking good care not to be found again. A job I wouldn’t have had for twenty times the pay Bradley got, and a job I couldn’t have handled anyway.
A light still burned behind the frosted panel of his office door when I knocked. His bland voice, automatically cordial, invited me to come in.
There he was, sitting behind his desk, a pipe in his mouth, a weary expression in his deep-set, shrewd brown eyes. A big man: going bald, with a pouch and bags under his eyes. A man who did a good job, had no credit nor publicity for it, and who didn’t want any.
The placid brow came down in a frown when he saw me.
“Go away,” he said without hope. “I’m busy. I don’t have the time to listen to your troubles; I have troubles of my own.”
I closed the door and leaned my back against it. I wasn’t in the mood for a Police Lieutenant’s pleasantries and I was in a hurry.