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I'm not getting a secretary,' I said.
    'You gather correctly,' he said, sucking his incisors noisily.
    I looked at him with loathing. But if I couldn't outwit that beast, I'd turn in my Machiavelli badge. I spun away from him, marched down to my office, slammed the door.
    The first thing I did was call Marty's number. I let it ring ten times, but there was no answer. So I gathered up my notebook, stopwatch, and coat, and started out on a routine investigation.
    Yetta Apatoff was at her desk, but she was busy with an elderly couple who were trying to explain something to her in heavily German-accented English. Yetta waggled her delicious fingers at me as I went by. I waggled back.
    I spent the morning establishing that a young client 33
    could not have robbed a camera store in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue at 40th Street at 12.06
    p.m. and travel nineteen blocks in time to be positively identified at an electronics trade show at the Coliseum on Columbus Circle at Eighth Avenue and 59th Street at 12.14.
    Three times I travelled from the Bus Terminal to the Coliseum by taxi, three times by subway, three times by bus (making the return trips by cab in all cases). I used the stopwatch and timed each northbound run to the split second, keeping very careful notes.
    I completed the time trials at about 2.30 in the afternoon. I had a hamburger and dialled Marty's number from a pay-phone. Still no answer. I was getting a little antsy.
    Marty had said the deadline was 5.00 p.m.
    Yetta Apatoff was on the phone when I entered the TORT building at approximately 3.20. She smiled up at me (a glory, that smile!) and, still speaking on the phone, handed me a small sheet of paper. Another memo. This one was from Mr Teitelbaum's secretary. I was to call her as soon as I returned.
    I went into my office, took off my coat, dialled Marty's number. Still no answer. I then called Ada Mondora, Teitelbaum's secretary. She said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, but was busy with a client at the moment; she'd buzz me as soon as he was free.
    Then I took off my jacket, sat down at the typewriter, and began to bang out a report on the time trials.
    My office, on the first floor, was not quite as small as a broom closet. There was room for one L-shaped desk, with the typewriter on the short wing. One steel swivel chair.
    One steel armchair for visitors. One steel file cabinet. A wastebasket, a coat tree, a small steel bookcase. And that was it. When Roscoe Dollworth, with his explosive girth, had occupied the premises, this cubbyhole seemed filled to overflowing. I provided a little more space, but the room 34
    was still cramped and depressing. No windows. If I succeeded in obtaining a secretary, my next project would be larger quarters to accommodate the secretary. My ambition knew no limits.
    I had almost finished typing my report when Ada Mondora called and said I could come up now. I put on my jacket, went into the men's room to make myself presentable, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.
    'Hi, Josh,' Ada said in her bass rumble. She was pushing fifty and sounded as if she had smoked Coronas all her life. 'He's been trying to reach you all day. You can go right in.'
    'Thank you, Ada,'
    I went through the approved drill: knocked once, opened the door, stepped in, closed the door gently behind me.
    Ignatz Teitelbaum was six years older than the day he hired me, but you'd never know it. Apparently he had reached a plateau, a certain number of years (seventy?
    seventy-five?), and then just didn't age anymore. He would go to his grave looking exactly as he did at that moment, the skin leathery, the blue eyes bright, the voice vigorous.
    'Sit down, young man,' he said to me.
    I chose the club chair closest to the desk. The light from the student's lamp fell on me, but his face was in shadow.
    'A client,' he said abruptly. 'Yale Stonehouse. Professor Yale Stonehouse. A very litigious man. You are familiar with the term?'
    I