"Now, miss," Grijpstra said pleasantly, "maybe there's no reason to worry. He has only been gone two days, hasn't he? And he is a businessman you say, an art dealer. Perhaps he suddenly got a tip and went away for a few days. Didn't you say that he travels a lot? Selling art from the Far East to European dealers? Maybe he is in London and or Paris and hasn't got time to telephone."

"No," she said, trying to control her voice. "He is very reliable. And we had a date, day before yesterday. He was going to pick me up at the restaurant and take me to a nightclub. That night a young jazz pianist was scheduled to play at the club, just for one night, and Kikuji really wanted to hear him play. He had only heard him on records and the artist is supposed to be very good and Kikuji wanted to see him play. He was looking forward to it. But he never came. I went to the club alone and he wasn't there. I checked at his hotel and his luggage was in his room. He had gone out in the afternoon and he had told the clerk at the desk that he would be back for dinner. He had an appointment with a buyer and the buyer came but Kikuji wasn't there. It was an important appointment; the buyer was interested in some very expensive old sculpture which Kikuji had in his room. The sculpture was still there."

"Well, well," Grijpstra said.

"You must help me," Joanne Andrews said. "You really must help me. I brought a photograph, here."

She put it on Grijpstra's desk and de Gier got up and walked over to look at it. It was a color photograph and showed a fairly tall, thin-looking Japanese, slouched in a cane chair on the sidewalk in front of a cafe\ A narrow face under a crew cut, peering anxiously at the lens. He was looking over his glasses which had slid to the end of the slightly hooked nose. A stack of pocketbooks and a camera in a leather case had been dropped next to the chair. The telephone on de Gier's desk was ringing and he excused himself and picked it up.