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might be in.”
    Applause broke out behind us. I assumed it wasn’t because of his performance but the end of a piano roll in the Tap Room across the lobby.
    “It’s a signature,” I explained.
    “And this has some scientific importance?”
    “Yes,” I said emphatically.
    “What?” he asked reasonably.
    “Professor Einstein’s son is missing,” I explained. “Break-down. We think he might be hiding in the hotel under an assumed name. The pressure on him has been enormous what with the war and … you know. Professor Einstein and I have been very concerned about him.”
    Sudsburry’s smile was fixed and tolerant.
    “Hans Albert Einstein is in Zurich,” Sudsburry said.
    “Zurich?”
    “Zurich, Switzerland,” said Sudsburry. “Pardon me, Professor, but are you sure it’s Einstein’s son who is under pressure?”
    “We’re all under great pressure,” I said. “How do you know that …”
    “… Hans Albert is in Zurich? The radio.”
    “Thank you. Professor Einstein will be very relieved, very relieved. Zurich, you say?”
    “Zurich, I say,” said Sudsburry. “Now if you will excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”
    He went back to work and I went into the Tap Room to see what all the applause was about and to plot a new strategy.
    I considered stealing Sudsburry’s false teeth for simple revenge and trying my luck with the night clerk for possible results, but I had the feeling that a Taft rule was a Taft rule. I ordered a Rheinhold beer in a big glass at the bar and looked around for Charlie Drew to amuse me, but it was too early for professional entertainment. Some sailors were at the piano. One was playing, the other two singing. They were all young, all awful. The handful of people in the Tap Room loved them. The gallant gobs messed up a medley of show tunes and forgot the words to “After You’ve Gone,” but the afternoon drinkers went wild and asked for more. If there weren’t a war on, they would have been ordered to leave by the management, but they were having fun. I tried not to feel like Baby Snooks’ Daddy, but I had gone through some rough nights in a few hotels with kids like this who wanted trouble, and something to remember before they sailed out to be shot at and maybe killed.
    “Not bad,” said a woman, sitting next to me. With a quick glance, she looked all right. A second glance, even in the dark, put her near my age and carrying a lot of memories.
    “Not bad,” I agreed, finishing off the beer and wiping my mouth.
    “Alone?” she asked.
    “But not lonely,” I said. “How about I buy what you’re drinking, I have another beer, and we listen to the aquatic Mills Brothers before I take off for work?”
    “I’ll settle for that,” she said with a grin that made it clear she had been this route too. “Make it Scotch on the rocks, but not too many rocks. We don’t want a shipwreck. I’ve got to get to work myself.”
    The bartender indicated that he had heard the conversation and showed up with the drinks, as the trio did to “I Guess I’ll Have to Dream the Rest,” what we’d all like to see them do to the Nazi fleet. We all clapped our hands and I launched into my second beer, feeling better about them and our chances of coming out of the war a winner.
    “You got a problem?” the woman said, the slight tinge of a South-of-the-Border accent in her question.
    “I’m working on one,” I admitted as one of the people in the darkness called for “Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me.” The sailors obliged with a heavy dose of dah-de-days in place of Hoagy Carmichael’s words.
    “Maybe I could help,” she said, looking into her glass at a melting ice cube.
    “Don’t think so,” I said, considering a third beer.
    As she returned to face me on her stool, the light from the bar hit her face, and either two beers or a new perspective said she wasn’t as old as I had thought. She looked as if she really wanted to help. There are people like that in the