The dinner is held each year in the grand ballroom of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York, bringing together several hundred mystery writers from all over the country who meet with distinguished fans and guests to honor the Father of the modern Detective Story. Ceramic busts of Poe (known as “Edgars”) are presented to winners of awards in the various mystery fields for the preceding year, and everyone has a few drinks and there’s much shop-talk.

The bar was already well-crowded when I went in. Since I had been away from New York for many years, most of the people were strangers, with here and there the familiar face of a friend I had known in MWA from years ago. There were Ed Radin, Bruno Fischer, Clayton Rawson and Veronica Parker Johns, also Helen Reilly, the Grande Dame of the mystery field, who had just been elected the president of the Mystery Writers, and her four charming daughters (two already successful mystery authors on their own); there were editors like Frank Taylor of Dell, Cecil Goldbeck of Coward-McCann, Harry Maule of Random House, and many others, none of whom are important to this story.

I went up to the bar for a brandy, and looked down the seating list for my own name. I had been placed at table Seven, with my old friend David Raffelock from Denver, Robert Arthur, who was slated to receive an Edgar for his radio program, and Dorothy Cecil, whose novels I had long admired and whom I had always wished to meet.

When I reached the dining room, they and their wives were all circulating around the table, introducing themselves to each other. I said, “Hi,” to the Raffelocks, congratulated Bob Arthur on the Edgar he was receiving, and then began looking around for Dorothy Cecil.

She had already seated herself quietly at the table.

As soon as I saw her sitting alone, with her head slightly tilted and a faint smile on her lips, I knew she had to be the author of SERGEANT DEATH and TREASON FOR TWO-both favorites of mine. She had intelligent gray eyes, a wide, smooth forehead and soft brown hair brushed down over the temples. I suppose she was in her early thirties but there was a glint of gray in the brown hair, and it pleased me greatly to notice that she made no effort at all to brush it so the gray would be concealed.