She sat looking at me as though she were just recovering from a terrific punch on the jaw.

“But what are you going to do?”

“ I’m not going to do anything. You’re the one that’s going to do it.”

“Do what?”

I said, “You’re going to trump the old man’s ace.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“You disappeared,” I said, “under such circumstances that you might have had a sudden attack of amnesia.”

“Yes. That was the way he wanted it to appear.”

“He, of course, suggested you write Helen Framley, so Sidney wouldn’t write Philip?”

“Yes.”