Next to him, with her legs crossed just right to be photographed from any angle, was Fifi Goheen. The leg-crossing technique was automatic, from an old habit. Seven or eight years ago she had been the Deb of the Year and no magazine would have dared to go to press without a shot of her; then it became all a memory; and now she was a front-page item as a murder suspect. She hadn't married. It was said that a hundred males, lured by the attractions, opening their mouths for the big proposition, had seen the hard glint in her lovely dark eyes and lost their tongues. So she was still Miss Fifi Goheen, living with Pop and Mom on Park Avenue.

Beyond her in the arc facing Wolfe's desk was Benjamin Rackell, whose check had been deposited in our bank that afternoon, with his long narrow face more mournful even than the day before. At his right was a specimen who was a female anatomically but otherwise a what-is-it. Her name was Delia Devlin, and her age was beside the point. She was a resident buyer of novelties for out-of-town stores. There are ten thousand of her in midtown New York any weekday, and they're all being imposed on. You see it in their faces. The problem is to find out who it is that's imposing on them, and some day I may tackle it. Aside from that there was nothing

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visibly wrong with Delia Devlin, except her ears were too big.

Next to her was a celebrity--though of course they were all celebrities for the time being, you might say ex officio. Henry Jameson Heath, now crowding fifty, had inherited money in his youth, quite a pile, but very few people in his financial bracket were speaking to him.