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man on the other side. By bending an ear I could have caught what the man was saying, but I didn’t try because I assumed she was as much in favor of privacy as I was. Ten feet to my left a man on another chair like mine was also staring through the lattice, at a lad who wasn’t as old as Paul Herold had been when the picture was taken. I couldn’t help hearing what he was saying, and apparently he didn’t give a damn. The boy across the lattice from him was looking bored. There were three or four cops around, and the one who had brought me in was standing back near the wall, also looking bored.
    During the formalities of getting passed in, which had been handled by Freyer, I had been told that I would be allowed fifteen minutes, and I was about to leave my chair to tell the cop that I hoped he wouldn’t start timing me until the prisoner arrived, when a door opened in the wall on the other side of the lattice and there he was, with a guard behind his elbow. The guard steered him across to a chair opposite me and then backed up to the wall, some five paces. The convict sat on the edge of the chair and blinked through the holes at me.
    “I don’t know you,” he said. “Who are you?”
    At that moment, with his pale hollow cheeks and his dead eyes and his lips so thin he almost didn’t have any, he looked a lot more than eleven years away from the kid in the flattop.
    I hadn’t decided how to open up because I do better if I wait until I have a man’s face to choose words. I had a captive audience, of course, but that wouldn’t help if he clammed up on me. I tried to get his eyes, but the damn lattice was in the way.
    “My name is Goodwin,” I told him. “Archie Goodwin. Have you ever heard of a private detective named Nero Wolfe?”
    “Yes, I’ve heard of him. What do you want?” His voice was hollower than his cheeks and deader than his eyes.
    “I work for Mr. Wolfe. Day before yesterday your father, James R. Herold, came to his office and hired him to find you. He said he had learned that you didn’t steal that money eleven years ago, and he wanted to make it square with you. The way things stand that may not mean much to you, but there it is.”
    Considering the circumstances, he did pretty well. His jaw sagged for a second, but he jerked it up, and his voice was just the same when he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Peter Hays.”
    I nodded at him. “I knew you’d say that, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Herold, but it won’t work. The trouble is that Mr. Wolfe needs money, and he uses part of it to pay my salary. So we’re going to inform your father that we have found you, and of course he’ll be coming to see you. The reason I’m here, we thought it was only fair to let you know about it before he comes.”
    “I haven’t got any father.” His jaw was stiff now, and it affected his voice. “You’re wrong. You’ve made a mistake. If he comes I won’t see him!”
    I shook my head. “Let’s keep our voices down. What about the scar on your left leg on the inside of the knee? It’s no go, Mr. Herold. Perhaps you can refuse to see your father—I don’t know how much say they give a man in your situation—but he’ll certainly come when we notify him. By the way, if we had had any doubt at all of your identity you have just settled it, the way you said if he comes you won’t see him. Why should you get excited about it if he’s not your father? If we’ve made a mistake the easiest way to prove it is to let him come and take a look at you. We didn’t engage to persuade you to see him; our job was just to find you, and we’ve done that, and if—”
    I stopped because he started to shake. I could have got up and left, since my mission was accomplished, but Freyer wouldn’t like it if I put his client in a state of collapse and just walked out on him, and after all Freyer had got me in. So I stuck. There was a counter on both sides to keep us away from the