Her eyes were smiling at me, and then suddenly she was laughing. “That was a splendid recovery, but you must take me for an awful simp.”
“What now?”
She said, “It’s the first time I ever heard of anyone trying to find a missing heir by that sort of an approach. Usually, some lawyer says, ‘Now before we can close up the estate, we have to find an Archibald C. Smith who was the son of Frank Whoosis who died in nineteen hundred and umpty. The last we heard of Smith was that he was in Chicago, running a haberdashery store.’ So then the detectives start looking, and one of them comes to me, and says, ‘Pardon me. Miss, but do you happen to know a Mr. Smith who is in Chicago running a haberdashery store?’ And I say, ‘No, but I know a Mr. Smith who’s in Chicago in the insurance business. What does the man you want look like?’ And the detective says, ‘Good Heavens, I don’t know. All I’m looking for is a name.’ ”
“So what?” I asked her.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You mean that this is unusual?”
“Yes. Very.”
I smiled and said, “Isn’t it?”
There was exasperation on her face. She was getting ready to let me have a verbal broadside when knuckles sounded on the door. She let her attention swing from me to the door, regarding it with a puzzled frown.
The knuckles sounded again.