"The Morton case?" she asked.
"Yeah. There's something fishy about the wreck of the spaceship Morton, and I want Pelham to let me work on it."
He went on into his office and had barely sat down when the phone hummed. "Yes?" he said, depressing the switch.
"Mr. BenChaim would like to speak to you, sir," Helen said formally.
"Oh?" In order to have gotten here so quickly, BenChaim, too, must have left before the verdict was delivered. He was hardly more than a minute behind the detective. And that was unusual in a man who was waiting at the trial of the kidnappers of his own son. Still, Moishe BenChaim was an unusual man.
"Tell him to come right on in," the detective said. "Oh, and Helen ... hold off on that Pelham call for a little while." He didn't want to be talking business while BenChaim was in the office.
"Yes, sir," she said.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and Moishe BenChaim came in. He was not a big man, but he was broad of shoulder and broad of girth, built like a wrestler. He had a heavy, graying beard, and wore it with a patriarchal air. He was breathing rather heavily as he came through the door, and he stopped suddenly to pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He began coughing—harsh, racking, painful coughs that shook his heavy frame.
"Sorry," he said after a moment. "Damn lungs. Shouldn't try to move so fast." He wiped his lips and put the handkerchief away.
The detective didn't say anything. He knew that Moishe BenChaim had injured his lungs eighteen years before. An accident in space had ruptured his spacesuit, and the explosive decompression that had resulted had almost killed him. He had saved his own life by holding the torn spot with one hand and turning up the air-tank valve full blast with the other. The rough patch job had held long enough for him to get back inside his ship, but his lungs had never been the same, and his eyes were eternally bloodshot from the ruptured and distended capillaries.