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“Listen, Nolly., I told you we shouldn’t let somebody like him mail it himself. Oh, and I forgot to say, the check’s postdated two weeks.” I didn’t say what I wanted to say. Marlene wouldn’t have minded, but sometimes the overseas operators listen in. I just said, “So now we have to figure penalties and interest—”
    “It’s already done, Nolly. Don’t holler on Jack; he’s got wife troubles. How’s Italy?”
    “I sat in the royal box at La Scala tonight,” I reported. “Same place Mussolini used to sit, before they hung him upside-down.”
    “Don’t let it give you ideas. Nolly? Listen.” Then a pause. There’s always that bit-of-a-second delay in transatlantic telephone calls, while the voices go to the satellite and back; it makes conversations sound a little strained. But Marlene was sounding a little strained on her own, too. “That Irene Madigan woman.”
    “Who?” I said. Then I remembered. “Oh.”
    “Yeah, that one. With the cousin. Well, she came into the office looking for y6u last night. She figures that this guy—you know who I mean? I don’t want to say the name. ” 
    “I know who you mean.”
    “Well, she figures he knows something about her cousin.” 
    “He swore to me he didn’t.”
    “I know, I told her all you said. But she still thinks so, and she wants to do something about it.”
    I swallowed. What in the world could an unknown woman from some place in Texas do about Henry Davidson-Jones? “Are you still there, Nolly?”
    “Sure. What’s she going to do?”
    “Well, for openers she’s following him around. She said he was on his way to Nice in his yacht. By now she’s probably there, too. In the Holiday Inn. The one at the airport.” Then she stopped talking. The satellite bounced silence back and forth between us.
    “You think I should talk to her,” I said.
    “Me? Nah, Nolly. I don’t know what you ought to do. I’m just telling you. But, you know, you could be going that way anyhow, couldn’t you? And, listen, Nolly, she’s not a nut. She’s a nice goyische kid, real worried about her cousin Tricia.”
    “Who is, I suppose, a soprano or something.”
    Marlene giggled. I hadn’t expected that. “Soprano, huh? You want to know what Tricia is? She’s the Texas state champion baton twirler.”
     
    There was, after all, no reason I shouldn’t go to the Côte d’Azur. A lot of my clients performed there now and then. Especially dancers, although I didn’t have many of those. The Coast isn’t what it used to be, but, after all, where did the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo come from?
    So I checked out of the Termini just in time to catch the late-night train to Nice.
    It didn’t have a real sleeping car, nothing but couchettes, but miraculously I managed to get a first-class one. So the only other person in my compartment was an elderly Spanish woman on her way to Port Bou. She snored, even above the noise of the train, but I slept well until the porter shook me awake.
    Irene Madigan wasn’t in the hotel. But she had checked with the reservations clerk to find out I was coming, and left a message that said she would phone me at noon. That was fine. After the train ride I needed to get the juices flowing again. So I worked out for an hour, not pressing very hard, in the Holiday Inn’s exercise room. I didn’t mind loafing a bit. I ate a very decent breakfast out on the sun deck, watching a Concorde take off from the airport just beyond the road, splashed around in the tiny pool for a while, and was in my room when the phone rang.
    “Mr. Stennis? I’m Irene Madigan. I really can’t thank you enough for coining here.”
    Nice voice. Nice manners. I said, “That’s all right. Where are you calling from?”
    Half a laugh. “Actually I’m in Monaco right now. I’ll be back at the hotel tonight—rather late, I’m afraid. I was thinking—I mean, well, I don’t suppose you’d like to come over here?”
    In for a penny, in for a pound. I