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momentarily empty, which told Foster that his receptionist-bookkeeper-secretary, Irene Myers, was most likely in his office preparing his coffee in the small kitchen.
    Down the unadorned corridor there were three offices, the first occupied by his draftsman, Frank Nishimura, the second by his production man, Don Graham. The last and largest, his own office, was an airy room that had a wooden drafting table at one end and his oversized waxed pine desk, with a cluster of chairs ringing it, at the other.
    Sure enough, in his office, Foster found Irene Myers at his desk, setting down his mug of hot black coffee and spreading out the morning's Los Angeles Times for him.
    "Good morning, Mr. Foster," Irene greeted him cheer-fully. She was a short, shapely brunette, invariably ebullient.
    "Hi, Irene," he said, rarely talkative in the morning until he'd had his first cup of coffee.
    She hesitated. "I'd hoped to clean up your desk a little before that lady comes."
    "Lady?" he said blankly.
    " The Los Angeles magazine reporter, Joan Sawyer. At ten-fifteen. She's doing a story on Southern California's leading architects. She'll be here in ten or fifteen minutes."
    "I forgot," Foster groaned. "Okay, skip the desk. It looks clean enough. Just let me have my coffee before she gets here."
    He waited for Irene to pass him and leave the office, and then he went behind his desk and settled down with his steaming coffee and the morning paper.
    Sipping contentedly, he reflected for a moment on the blonde he'd had dinner with at Matteo's in Westwood last night. A young actress, maybe twenty-four, Cindy Something-or-other whom he had met at a large cocktail party. Impressed by her breasts and buttocks, he had invited her to dinner. A mistake. Too dumb and uninformed, but better in bed later, where she had proved to be innovative, acrobatic, and a squealer. Actually, enjoyable enough for an encore at midnight. However, he had been relieved when he had finally driven her back to her apartment at two in the morning. He had promised himself no repeat. He had more Important things on his mind.
    Drinking the coffee, mellowing, he lit his first pipeful of the morning and began to leaf through the Los Angeles Times , as was his custom before beginning the day. Terrible world, he thought, scanning the headlines and leads, absolutely awful everywhere, and then on page five a smaller headline caught his eye and he began to read the story from Associated Press:
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Sir Harrison Ashcroft, the world-renowned author and a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University, England, was laid to rest in the family plot outside Oxford yesterday morning. Ashcroft had met with a fatal accident in West Berlin while doing the last researches on his definitive biography of Adolf Hitler. A hit-and-run driver...
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    The ICM button on Foster's telephone winked yellow, and Irene's voice came on. "Mr. Foster, are you free? Miss Sawyer of the Los Angeles magazine is here."
    He picked up the phone. "Irene, did you know that Dr. Ashcroft was killed in Berlin last week? I just read about it—"
    "Killed? No, I didn't know . .
    "Unbelievable," Foster said. He paused. "That changes everything. I had an appointment with him a week from Friday in Oxford."
    "Yes. I made your plane reservation."
    "Now what'll I do?" he asked helplessly. "Well, we'll talk it over after I finish the interview. All right, give me a minute to get my head together, then you can send in Miss Sawyer."
    He sat trying to work out his problem. He had been toiling for three years, in his spare time, preparing and laying out an oversized picture book, a coffee-table book entitled Architecture of the 1000-Year Third Reich . It was an idea that fascinated him, reproducing photographs of all the buildings constructed in Europe during Adolf Hitler's reign (many of them had been reduced to rubble but old photographs existed), as well as of models or designs of buildings that Hitler had planned and