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up his highball, saw that it was nearly gone, and got up to make himself another. He was tall, but thin and frail. He moved like an old man, but I suspected he wasn't much older than I was - fifty at most.

    When he'd made his fresh drink and comforted himself with part of it and resettled himself in his leather armchair, I said: "Does Ginny have money?"

    "Hardly enough to interest a confidence man. She isn't a girl who needs money to interest any kind of a man - in fact she's probably turned down more advances that most young women dream of. Frankly, I was surprised when she accepted Peter, and not so very surprised when she broke the engagement. I tried to tell him that last night. It was safe enough when they were high school kids. But a beautiful young wife can be a curse to an ordinary man, especially if he loses her."

    The flesh around his eyes was crumpling again. "It's dangerous to get what you want, you know. It sets you up for tragedy. But my poor son can't see that. Young people can't learn from the misfortunes of their elders."

    He was becoming faintly garrulous. Looking past him at the mountains, I had a feeling of unreality, as if the sunlit world had moved back out of reach.

    "We were talking about the Fablons and their money."

    Jamieson visibly pulled himself together. "Yes, of course.

    They can't have a great deal. The Fablons did have money at one time, but Roy gambled a lot of it away. The rumor was that that was one reason he committed suicide. Fortunately Marietta has her own small private income. They have enough to live comfortably, but as I said, certainly not enough to tempt a fortune-hunter. Let alone a fortune-hunter with a hundred thousand dollars in cash of his own."

    "Is a hundred grand in the bank all that Martel would need to get into the club?"

    "The Tennis Club? Certainly not. You have to be sponsored by at least one member and passed on by the membership committee."

    "Who sponsored him?"

    "Mrs. Bagshaw, I believe. It's a common enough practice, when members lease their houses in town here. It's nothing against the tenant."

    "And nothing in his favor. Do you accept the idea that Martel is some kind of political refugee?"

    "He may very well be. Frankly, I didn't discourage Peter from hiring you because I'd like to satisfy my curiosity. And I'd also like him to get this business of Ginny out of his system. It's hurting him more than you perhaps realize. I'm his father, and I can see it. I may not be much of a father to him, but I do know my son. And I know Ginny, too."

    "You don't want Ginny as a daughter-in-law?"

    "On the contrary. She'd brighten any house, even this one. But I'm very much afraid she doesn't love my poor son. I'm afraid she agreed to marry him because she felt sorry for him."

    "Mrs. Fablon said very much the same thing."

    "So you've talked to Marietta?"

    "A little."

    "She's a much more serious woman than she pretends. So is Ginny. Ginny has always been a very serious young woman, even when she was a child. She used to sit in my study here whole weekends at a time, reading the books."

    "The Book of the Dead."

    "I wouldn't be at all surprised."

    "You mentioned that her father committed suicide."

    "Yes." Jamieson stirred uneasily, and reached for his highball, as if the little death it provided was homeopathic medicine against the big one waiting. "The decimation among my friends these last ten years has been horrendous. Not to mention my enemies."

    "Which was Roy Fablon, friend or enemy?"

    "Roy was a friend, a very good friend at one time. Of course I disapproved of what he did to his wife and daughter. Ginny was only sixteen or seventeen at the time, and it hit her hard."

    "What did he do?"

    "Walked into the ocean with his clothes on one night. They found his body about ten days later. The sharks had been at it, and he was scarcely identifiable."

    He passed his hand over his gray face, and took a long drink.

    "Did you see the body?"

    "Yes. They made