"… and I know we’ve all enjoyed and will much benefit from this morning’s fascinating presentation." The conference chairman, Pierre Chagny, Deputy Director of the Central Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the Police Nationale, paused with a smile on his round face and mimed the clapping of his hands, encouraging a spiritless spatter of applause for Professor Wuorinen, who acknowledged it from a seat at the back of the room with a gloomy frown and a curt nod.

"And now it will be my pleasure to introduce a speaker already known to many of you as the Skeleton Detective of America…"

Gideon winced. Obviously, this skeleton detective business, hung on him by a fanciful crime reporter years before, was not going to go away, and in fact he had begun to resign himself to living with it. But "the Skeleton Detective of America"? That was another rung up the ladder of absurdity. With luck, it might never get back to his academic colleagues, but he doubted it. They were maliciously efficient at ferreting out such tidbits, and it wouldn’t be long before he arrived at some committee meeting to find a meticulously printed place card labeled "Dr. G. P. Oliver, the Skeleton Detective of America." That or worse.

He sighed, laid down his note cards, and looked around the room. Ninety people, sitting on stackable plastic chairs and regarding him with the sleepy and unhopeful gaze of an after-lunch audience that believes it is in for a long, dry lecture. Since France was the host country this year, most of the attendees were French, but everyone was supposed to have a command of English, the organization’s official language. This Gideon doubted (certainly Professor Wuorinen’s command was dubious), and he had considered speaking in French, but his courage had failed him. They would have to settle for English, along with printed translations of his charts and tables.