"What did you consider it then? The girl's what, a year older than your daughter."

"I didn't consider it anything. I didn't put a label on it." He wasn't sure what to say next and the sound of the buzzer on his telephone saved him. He picked it up. "Yeah?… All right, tell him I'll be out in a couple minutes."

Mitchell hung up. "Victor wants me." He took a reel of tape from his desk drawer and held it in front of him with both hands, as though it might be fragile or of special value.

"I came back here after I talked to you on the phone last night, while it was fresh in my mind. Jim, I put it all down on the tape recorder, everything I could remember that happened. What the guy said, what he sounded like, what the film showed, everything I could remember that might mean something."

"But you never saw any of them before. You're sure of that."

"Jim, I don't know. I didn't see them last night, just a glimpse like half a second, how do I know? The machine's over there. Listen to it, Jim, I'll come back soon as I can." Moving around the desk he said, "I got a plant supervisor pulling his hair out because the fucking machines keep breaking down or the bearings freeze up. I got more down-time than production and now I got these clowns who want to sell me a movie for a hundred and five thousand bucks. You ever have one like that before?"

"Go fix your machines," O'Boyle told him.

And Mitchell said, "Yeah."

In the outer office his secretary, Janet, who was efficient and always in control, gave him a funny look, a quick, warning expression.

The man standing by her desk said, "Are you Mitchell?"

He's a cop, Mitchell thought. That was the instant impression the man gave him. But there was also something familiar about him. He had seen him before, somewhere.

Janet said, "I've tried to tell this gentleman you can't see anyone. He walked right in, said he'd wait."