He took his hands from his pockets and dropped into a chair. Evidently this was the Koven personal living room, from the way it was furnished, and it looked fairly livable.
He spoke. “I was standing at the window thinking.”
“Yeah. Any luck?”
He sighed and stretched his legs out. “Fame and fortune,” he said, “are not all a man needs for happiness.”
I sat down. Obviously the only alternatives were to wrangle him into it or call it off.
“What else would you suggest?” I asked brightly.
He undertook to tell me. He went on and on, but I won’t report it verbatim because I doubt if it contained any helpful hints for you — I know it didn’t for me. I grunted from time to time to be polite. I listened to him for a while and then got a little relief by listening to the soap opera on the radio, which was muffled some by the closed door but by no means inaudible. Eventually, of course, he got around to his wife, first briefing me by explaining that she was his third and they had been married only two years. To my surprise he didn’t tear her apart. He said she was wonderful. His point was that even when you added to fame and fortune the companionship of a beloved and loving wife who was fourteen years younger than you, that still wasn’t all you needed for happiness.
There was one interruption — a knock on the door and the appearance of Byram Hildebrand. He had come to show the revise on the third frame of Number 728. They discussed art some, and Koven okayed the revise, and Hildebrand departed. I hoped that the intermission had sidetracked Koven, but no; he took up again where he had left off.
I can take a lot when I’m working on a case, even a kindergarten problem like that one, but finally, after the twentieth sidewise glance at my wrist, I called a halt.
“Look,” I said, “this has given me a new slant on life entirely, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but it’s a quarter past four and it’s getting dark. I would call it late afternoon. What do you say we go ahead with our act?”