She nodded positively. ‘I understand-but there is the chance, and that’s all that matters now.’

‘If I do locate him, my liability terminates with that location. I would simply tell you where he is, and after that it’s up to you.’

She caressed her ring in that secret way again. ‘Yes, that’s fine,’ she said softly.

I told her what I charged, plus expenses, and she said that was perfectly acceptable. I got one of the standard business contract forms from my desk and filled it in and had her sign it; then I gave her a copy and she gave me a check for one hundred dollars as a retainer.

I said, ‘Will you authorize my going up to Oregon? It would seem necessary, and I’ll have to fly.’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Do you have a picture of your fiancé, by any chance?’

‘I gave the only good one I had to the Missing Persons-but I do have a sketch of him.’

‘Sketch?’

‘Yes, he must have had it done by one of those sidewalk artists in Europe somewhere. He had all his belongings sent to me in Fresno just before he came home. Naturally, I didn’t look through them right away, I don’t believe in prying-but when he disappeared as he did, I… well, I went over everything very carefully. There was no clue to where he might have gone, but I did find the sketch. I think he must have intended to surprise me with it later on.’

‘Did you happen to bring it with you?’

Elaine moved her head affirmatively. ‘I knew you’d need a picture,’ she said. She took from her coat pocket a rolled sheet of that type of heavy rag paper which comes as part of an artist’s sketch pad. She handed it across to me. I took it and slipped off a blue rubber band and unrolled the paper, smoothing it out flat on my desk.

It was fourteen-by-eighteen in size, a head-and-shoulders sketch without background, done in pastel chalk over which a lacquer-type fixative had been applied. I know very little about art, but it seemed to me that the artist who had drawn the portrait was gifted with real talent; it was faintly expressionistic, with bold lines and heavy shadows and somewhat enlarged features, rather than an example of classic portraiture.