I left Upshur Pavilion and came back to what I was looking at. Should I have recognized him? No. Then he had been young and slim with no extra meat on his face muscles; now he was middle-aged, going bald, with saggy cheeks, wearing cheaters with black rims. But the name, Whipple, should have rung a bell, and it hadn't. It had for Wolfe. I did not like that. I will concede that he is a genius and I am not, but on memory I'll concede nothing.

He stopped-in the middle of a sentence, because that was where he had interrupted Wolfe that night. He glanced at me with a little smile, settled back in the chair, and shifted the smile to Wolfe.

Wolfe grunted. "You have a good memory, Mr. Whipple."

He shook his head. "Not really. Not usually. But that speech was a high spot in my education. I wrote it down that night. If I had a good memory I could do a better job at my work."

"What is your work?"

"I'm a teacher, an assistant professor at Columbia. I'm afraid I'll never move up."

"Anthropology?"

Whipple's eyes widened. "Good lord, talk about memory. You remember that?"

"Certainly. You mentioned it." Wolfe's lips puckered. "You have me cornered, sir. I know I am beholden to you. But for you I might have been stuck there for days-weeks. And of course you have tickled my vanity, quoting me verbatim at length. So you need me for something?"

Whipple nodded. "That's putting it bluntly, but I know you're always blunt. Yes, I need you." He smiled, more of a smile than before. "I need help on a very confidential matter, and I decided to come to you. I doubt if I can pay what you would normally charge, but I can pay."

"That can wait. I have said I have an obligation. Your problem?"

"It's very… personal." His lips worked. He looked at me and back at Wolfe. "In a way, it's related to what you said that night; that's why I quoted it. I have a son, Dunbar, twenty-three years old. Do you remember that you quoted Paul Laurence Dunbar that night?"