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it, Continental fashion. I wasn’t up to that. I just touched her fingers with mine and gave her a half-comic little bow. At the same moment I felt as if a mild charge of electricity had gone through me. …
    Sam Culver lives at the Beaumont. He owns one of the smallest cooperative units in the upper regions of the hotel, a comfortable living room, small bedroom and bath, and a tiny kitchenette. The living room, except for casement windows looking out over the East River and the 59th Street bridge, is walled-in by books. The furniture is heavy and comfortable. Sam does quite a bit of traveling and often the small apartment stands empty. Maintaining this pied-à-terre is the only indication in Sam’s way of life that he is anything more than very modestly well-off.
    When Sam was reached with the message that Chambrun wanted to see him in his office, he called Chambrun on the house phone and suggested that they get together in Sam’s apartment.
    “I think I know what you want to see me about, Pierre. Wouldn’t there be less chance of interruption up here? It’s not a simple story.”
    And so, while I was being subjected to the special charms of the Baroness Zetterstrom, the mountain went to Mohammed.
    When Chambrun was settled comfortably in a deep armchair, a Dubonnet on the rocks—the strongest drink he ever takes during working hours—on a side table by the chair, Sam began to talk, filling a pipe from a variety of tobacco tins on his desk.
    “Mark has told you, Pierre, that I said Stephen Wood might turn Charmian Zetterstrom’s blood cold when he confronted her. It didn’t happen. Either she didn’t know him or she has at last become the greatest actress in the world.”
    Chambrun flicked the ash from his Egyptian cigarette into a silver ashtray next to his drink. Sam was holding a lighter to his pipe.
    “You know Wood and some history that connects him with the Baroness?” Chambrun asked. “She ignored him, says he is a complete stranger; he says he made a mistake. She is not, he says, the woman he thought she was.”
    Sam puffed blue clouds. “You know me, Pierre, on the subject of surface facts versus subsurface truths. The surface facts may be a little puzzling to you. I think it’s true that Charmian never laid eyes on Stephen Wood before. I think it may also be truth of a sort when Wood says Charmian isn’t the woman he thought she was.” Sam grinned at Chambrun. “You think of me, I imagine, as a reasonably sober, well-oriented, unneurotic, fundamentally moral person. If you were to discover that I was, in fact, the Boston Strangler, you might say, ‘He’s not the man I thought he was.’ Wood was speaking that way, I think. He wasn’t mistaken in thinking she was Charmian Zetterstrom. But when she didn’t react at the sight of him he concluded she was not the woman he’d thought she was.”
    “Which in plain English means—?”
    “Stephen Wood is a German Jew by birth,” Sam said. “His name originally was Wald, German for ‘wood.’ Ten years ago his twin brother, Bruno Wald, was perhaps the top romantic leading man in German films. You have to realize, Pierre, that over here the Zetterstroms and Zetterstrom Island had never been heard of by more than a couple of dozen people. In Europe they were famous. There was endless talk about the wild parties, the incredible luxury, the debaucheries. Everybody and his brother in the upper echelons of society and the arts, and the simply rich, tried to wangle invitations to the Island. They were few and far between, and the people who did get there came back curiously silent about what had actually gone on. Perhaps because they hoped to be reinvited; perhaps because they couldn’t risk talking lest they themselves be talked about. This enhanced the mystery of the place, and made the uninvited all the more eager.
    “If you can imagine Stephen Wood with more flesh and muscle on his bones, his dark eyes laughing and not tortured, the grim lines of