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Sullivan.”
    â€œThanks, Mr. Kellogg. And if there’s anything the Em­bassy can do for you while you’re down here, let me know. The number is 39-95-00.”
    â€œThank you. Good-bye.”
    â€œGood-bye.”
    Miss Burton appeared in the doorway, slump-shoul­dered and spaniel-eyed, as befitted the gravity of the situ­ation. “I couldn’t help overhearing, people talk so loud over long distance.”
    â€œDo they?”
    â€œThat’s a terrible thing about Mrs. Wyatt, dying in a foreign country like that. All I can say is, God rest her soul.” It seemed enough. Miss Burton straightened her shoulders, put on her spectacles and said briskly, “I’ll call Western Air Lines right away.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAre you feeling all right, Mr. Kellogg?”
    â€œI—certainly. Certainly.”
    â€œI’ve got some aspirin.”
    â€œTake them yourself.”
    Miss Burton knew better than to argue. She merely dropped two aspirins on his desk and went out to the reception room to phone the air lines. Rupert stared at the aspirins for a long time. Then he got up and went over to the water cooler and swallowed them both at once.
    Miss Burton sailed in on a note of elation. “Success. You leave on flight 611. But goodness, the arguing I had to do. Some snip of a clerk kept saying that the people leaving on 611 were already checking in at the airport. And I said, listen, this is an emergency. I spelled it right out for him, e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y. . . . Oh, I see you took the pills. Good. How are you fixed for money?”
    â€œI’ll need some.”
    â€œO.K., Borowitz can run over to the bank. Now, here’s your schedule. Depart International at 11:50. Lunch on plane. Stopover in L.A. for about an hour. Leave L.A. at 2:30. Dinner on plane. Arrive Mexico City at 10:10, Central Standard Time.”
    Miss Burton might go to pieces over smaller crises, but when the larger ones came along she expanded to meet them. She arranged for money, tourist card, tooth­brush, clean socks and pajamas, care of the Scottie, Mack, and message to Amy’s brother, Gill Brandon. When she finally got Rupert on the plane and he waved good-bye to her from the window, she was moist-eyed but relieved, like a mother sending her son off to school for the first time.
    She drove Rupert’s car back to the city and parked it in the garage of his house on 41st Avenue. Then she let Mack out to run while she washed and dried the dishes Rupert had left in the sink. In all the years she’d worked for him, this was only the second time she’d been inside his house, and it gave her a curious feeling, like watching somebody sleeping.
    After she finished the dishes she wandered through each of the rooms, not snooping really but merely taking mental notes like any good secretary interested in her boss: Mahogany and lace in the dining room, that’s too formal for him, must be her doing . . . I’ll bet he sits in the yellow chair, there are hair oil marks on the back and a good lamp beside it. He loves to read, he’d need a good lamp. ... A grand piano and an organ, fancy that. She must be musical, he can’t whistle a note. . . . I’ll never get used to those colored johns. . . . The maid’s room, I bet. Every bit as nicely furnished as the others, which goes to show how generous he is. Or maybe it’s her. Borowitz says she comes from a very moneyed family. . . . The hall table looks like genuine rosewood, the kind you pol­ish with your bare hands if you’re crazy that way and have lots of time. A post card. I wonder who from. Well, post cards aren’t private. If you’ve got something private to say, say it in a letter.
    Miss Burton picked up the post card. It bore a colored photograph of the Old Faithful geyser on one side and a penciled message on the other.
    Â 
    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kel­logg:
    I am having a real good time on my