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“Burrrrrrr?”
    “Dora, I am very sorry for what I said.”
    “Burr.”
    “Dora, please come out. I’ve written to this Porter fellow, and he has agreed to meet us—meet me. But—you will come with me tomorrow when I go? I’m sorry if I hurt you.
    I didn’t mean to talk to you like that. Please, Dora, I cannot bear to go through this alone.”
    I thought of Peter Cartwright’s impish grin, his piercing eyes, and heard again the swell of his sudden laughter. He had gotten the best of me in our first meeting. But I had not really been myself that morning. Surely I deserved another chance? I could not leave him laughing at me, could I? Even in the safety of my room the memory of his mocking challenge made me flush, and my throat went tight with anticipation. Forgive me, Dora, and come back . Quickly I pushed the memory of his words away and roughly shoved my pillow to the side.
    “All right, Adelaide, I will come along,” I answered in an even voice. “If it means that much to you.”
     
    We set out for the investigator’s rooms the following morning. The flat was only a few blocks from Hanover Street at the northern corner of Portman Square. A little bronze plaque with the man’s name and profession was the only detail that distinguished it from the row of identical brick houses with their whitewashed doorways and iron railings. A pretty maid ushered us into the hallway and into an empty sitting room. “Mr. Porter and Mr. Cartwright will be in shortly. They like to enter after their guests are seated,” she told us with a patient smile and then departed. Adelaide and I seated ourselves on a sofa by the window and stared at the unusual sitting room.
    There is no simple way to describe Mr. Porter’s home, for it was a study of opposites rather than a simple living quarter. The left side from the large bay window to the door was decorated in a baroque and ornate style; from the cherub paintings to the vase of roses on the baby grand piano, the little London flat seemed to mimic the grandeur of a country mansion. The bookcases boasted a library of leather-bound volumes arranged alphabetically in perfect rows; the letters on the writing desk were stacked in self-conscious little piles of precisely ten envelopes per group; and every item from the folded newspapers to the iron coal tongs had been placed exactly in their correct spot in accordance with geometric harmony. But for a half-empty bottle of claret, it appeared that the area had been designed for display only and had never been soiled by human fingers. That describes the left side.
    The right side appeared to have declared war against the left. I could have traced just where the division of the room began, for a pile of debris seemed to grow from this imaginary line in a majestic mountain. Torn trouser legs, bits of journals, stacks of shoes and papers lay strewn about the floor as if half a hurricane had struck the flat. A little faded armchair sat like a battered throne amid the wreckage, with a halo of tidy carpet as the only sign of order in that area.
    “It’s a little like a scene from a Lewis Carroll story, isn’t it?” my cousin whispered to me. “I wonder which side belongs to whom.”
    I had opened my mouth to answer her (for I was fairly certain that it was Cartwright who ruled the clutter) when the two bedroom doors swung open, and the gentlemen entered. Mr. Porter strode slowly into the tidy section and bowed gravely to my cousin. Mr. Cartwright stumbled over an overflowing rubbish bin and collapsed awkwardly into his armchair.
    “Lady Forrester, Miss Joyce. A pleasure.”
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Porter. I want to thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”
    “All my clients come to me on such ‘short notice,’ madam. It is the nature of my work. I understand from your note that your case is a very sensitive one, and that you have come to London to resolve it without your husband’s knowledge.” There was a shade of sourness in