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I DID NOT GET my question answered-which was just as well, since
probably I should not have liked the answer- because at that moment
the little bell on the front door jingled and someone called out,
in a rather timid voice, "Hello?"

"I'll go," I said quickly, and sped away.

I arrived in the front office (the former parlor) just as a
young man in a Western Union uniform came to a halt in the doorway,
with a confused look on his face.

"Come in," I said in a manner I hoped would encourage him to
overcome his hesitation.

He looked down at the envelope in his hand, then at me, and took
two steps forward. He was a pale fellow, and from beneath the
uniform's cap his yellow hair stuck out like straw, suggesting a
truly dreadful haircut. He had a lost air, and my heart went out to
him.

"I'm looking for somebody named Fremont Jones," he said. "This
is the right address. But is it a house or a business? I got a
residence address."

"It is both, my residence being upstairs and my business being
right here. I am Fremont Jones." I smiled warmly and moved forward.
"You are in the right place. I take it that you have a telegram for
me?"

"Yes, ma'am." He made as if to hand me the envelope with one
hand, while getting a notebook from an inner pocket with the other.
For a less awkward person this would have been easy, but this poor
fellow became all elbows and angles, as the notebook stuck in his
pocket and he let go of the envelope before it was quite in my
hand.

I restrained my impulse to retrieve the telegram, else we should
have bumped heads; I had to restrain my impulse to laugh, too. He
would have thought I was laughing at him, although I would have
been laughing at the situation, and at the awkwardness of boys in
adolescence. He could not be long out of school. Or perhaps
circumstances had forced him to work when he would have preferred
to be at his lessons.

"Sorry, ma'am," he muttered, handing over the envelope a
second time.

"That is perfectly all right," I replied, moving to my desk and
opening the top drawer, while glancing curiously at the telegram. I
would have loved to rip it open right on the spot but a desire to
be kind to its deliverer took precedence.

"You have to sign for it
¹
." he cried, as if afraid I
would disappear, although I had moved only a few feet.

"Of course," I said, rummaging in the drawer and coming up with
a half dollar, "and so I shall, if you will be so good as to come
over to the desk."

He came like a cautious cat investigating new territory,
shoulders hunched and eyes wide. "I don't get asked in much. I
mean, mostly people just keep me standing at the door."

He fumbled his notebook open and offered it to me, indicating
with a callused finger the line for me to sign. This boy had until
recently done some heavy physical work, judging by the condition of
his hands.

I signed with a bit of a flourish and returned the notebook.
"And this is for your trouble," I said, slipping the large coin
into his hand.

"Oh," he said, shaking his head, "I got no troubles now. I got a
fine job, soon's I learn how to do it some faster, learn my way
around the big city and all."

Now I did laugh, lightly; and I sensed that Michael had arrived
somewhere behind me, but he was hanging back. I cannot tell how I
am able to do it, but I usually know when Michael is anywhere
about, whether I can see him or not. To the Western Union boy I
said, "You must keep the money anyway-it's a gratuity for services
rendered. A tip."

His face shone as if the sun had come up behind his light brown
eyes. "Oh, a tip! Yes, ma'am, thank you, ma'am. It's my first one
of those."

"How many days have you been on the job, then?"

"This is my second, and I best be moving on. Thanks again."

"You are entirely welcome."

Michael came forward as the bell jingled behind the delivery boy
letting himself out.

"You were lurking at the other side of the arch, I take it," I
commented without turning around. There is a deep archway between
the office and the conference room-it is, in effect, a little
tunnel about three feet in depth. It is an architectural anomaly
that neither Michael nor I have accounted for, as the space between
the walls of what used to be parlor and dining room is not occupied
by any cabinet or closet.

"I was listening to you flirt with the delivery boy."

"Eavesdropping." I slit the envelope with a letter opener.

"Spying," said Michael with his version of an evil chuckle.

"Michael!" I exclaimed. "This is astonishing! I do believe I had
better sit down." I sat in the chair at the desk and read the
telegram again.

"May I inquire who it is that has so astonished you?" Michael
leaned against a corner of the desk, crossing his ankles.

"My father! First of all, he has addressed the telegram not to
Caroline but to Fremont, and he's
never
done that before!"
In fact, my use of my middle name rather than my first name had
been a sore spot between us ever since I began the practice on my
move to California three, going on four, years ago. "Let me read it
to you:

" 'DEAREST DAUGHTER STOP AM COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO TO CELEBRATE
YOUR BIRTHDAY WITH YOU STOP HAVE MADE RESERVATIONS AT HOTEL SAINT
FRANCIS STOP ARRIVING NEXT MONTH ON THE NINTH AT FOUR PM STOP
COMING ALONE STOP YOUR LOVING FATHER.'

"I must say, I'm stunned."

"So I gather. But why? Other than speaking of the devil, of
course."

I frowned up at my partner, my friend, my lover, about whom my
father knew absolutely nothing. Yet. "I beg your pardon?"

"Speak of the devil and he sends you a telegram. I mentioned
your father not long ago, when we were in the kitchen. I said he
must be an unusual man. Surely, Fremont, you will be glad to see
him. Especially as he says he's coming alone. As I recall, it is
your stepmother you're not too fond of."

"Don't call her that! Eeuw! I prefer not to hear the word
'mother,' in any form, in the same sentence with that woman. Just
call her by her name, which is Augusta. Anyway, you are quite
right, I'm not at all fond of her, but Father is besotted. He
positively adores Augusta. How odd that he would come alone!" I
jiggled my foot and tapped the telegram against my lip,
thinking.

"If he's coming to celebrate your birthday, and he knows how you
feel about Augusta, then I should say he's being considerate of
your feelings."

"Yes, I suppose so, but still, it's most peculiar."

"You don't look very happy about it. You haven't seen your
father in, let's see, how long?"

"Since January of 1905. As it is now mid-March of 1908, it has
been three years and three months." As I toted up the months and
years in my head, I felt a pang, a deepening ache that told me I
had indeed missed my father more than I wanted to allow myself to
know, or to feel.

"And how old will you be on this birthday, which, as well as I
remember, will take place on the tenth of next month?"

"I will be twenty-five." I looked up at my lover. "So old."

"No, my darling," he said, bending to kiss my lips, "so
young."

I had a job to do, I could not hang around the office fretting
over Father-or rather, fretting over what I suspected Father would
think about my chosen style of life when he saw it with his own
eyes. It was one thing to persuade myself I did not care, with
Father a whole continent away; quite another thing entirely, now I
knew he was coming. But I mustn't think about that now.

I went upstairs to my abode, which was quite spacious, lacking
only a kitchen; this was not inconvenient in the least because I
generally joined Michael for meals, in his side of the house. If
for some strange reason I felt inclined to prepare a meal, I could
always do it in the kitchen downstairs on the first floor. I had
turned my second-floor rooms into a parlor, a bedroom, and the
beginnings of a library. As I was furnishing them myself out of my
meager means, everything looked rather sparse still.

Father will be shocked,
I thought as I opened my shabby
little wardrobe cabinet and retrieved the garment that constitutes
my disguise.

I was dismayed by my inability to put his visit out of my head,
and to stop caring what he would think. It is so hard to bear the
disapproval of a parent, especially so for me with Father. I was
only fourteen when my mother died, and he did not marry again until
after my twenty-first birthday, so the bond between us had grown
especially strong.

When I looked at myself in the long mirror, to be sure I'd done
up all my buttons properly, there was a film of tears in my eyes. I
swiped at them once with the back of my hand, pressed my lips
together firmly, and stood tall with shoulders square. That would
do, but my disguise was not yet complete. It lacked the hat, which
I was loath to put on because I hate hats.

To tell the truth I was none too fond, either, of the long gray
coat that covered me from neck to toe. It was absolutely plain yet
tolerably well cut, buttoned all down the front with cheap but
matching mother-of-pearl buttons. A more boring garment can
scarcely be imagined, but that was the point: to render me
unremarkable. Michael said it was quite a chore to render me
unremarkable, due to my height-five feet eight inches, which is
tall for a woman-and a number of other factors he declined to
mention. Nor did I insist upon enlightenment, being somewhat wary
of what he might say.

It was the loathsome hat that made my disguise most effective.
In a style that had been popular a couple of decades earlier, this
hat came down low in the back to cover my hair, almost like a
bonnet; it had a little peaked brim, trimmed in ruching, from which
hung a half veil. That is to say, the veil covered half my face:
forehead, eyes, nose. Altogether this did not leave much of me to
be recognized.

A few moments later I tapped on the door of Michael's little
private room downstairs and said in a slightly raised voice, "I'm
off. Wish should be back here shortly but in the meantime-"

The door opened so abruptly it startled me, and Michael was
standing there with a gleam in his eyes, finishing the sentence: "I
know, I'll answer the telephone and listen for the door. You look
so demure in that outfit, Fremont; it makes me want to ravish
you."

I took a couple of steps backward. "Don't you dare! I haven't
time to do up all these buttons again."

"A kiss then," said Michael, aiming his lips toward the one
section of my anatomy that remained uncovered. And a fine kiss it
was, too.

With a deep, abiding surge of affection I touched his cheek,
replied, "I will," to his counsel that I be careful, and sailed out
of the house.

When Michael proposed, several months ago, that he and I start
up a business of private investigation, I had felt in one way
excited by the prospect, and in another resigned to it-the latter
due to something very bad, indeed irrevocable, that had happened to
me the previous year. I didn't like to think of it, and never spoke
of it, not even to Michael; yet this bad thing had changed me. Even
more than the Great Earthquake did-and that event had changed all
of us who went through it.

I parked the Maxwell a few blocks from my destination and walked
the rest of the way, into a part of the City called North Beach. As
I walked, I thought of the days when I'd first come to San
Francisco, with nothing but a typewriter and a lot of hope. The
memory seemed to shine with a kind of innocence, now gone
forever.

If Father ever finds out what I did last year, it
will kill him.

A
shudder passed through me, but I raised my chin higher
and quickened my steps, and the moment of unpleasantness was soon
behind me. I walked briskly until Columbus Avenue came in sight,
then I slowed to a sedate pace, relaxed my shoulders into a kind of
Victorian slope, and directed my gaze downward. Or so it should
appear. In reality, though the angle of my head suggested demurely
downcast eyes, I was making the fullest use of my peripheral
vision-albeit through a haze of gray veil.

The J&K Agency had been hired to identify a petty thief
whose crime sounded negligible until one realized that when small
items are stolen day after day, month after month, the cost does
mount. The police, when told of missing cabbages and spools of
thread and suchlike, had not been particularly zealous in their
attention to the problem. So the victims, Mr. and Mrs. Garofalo,
had asked us to find out who was repeatedly robbing their corner
grocery and dry goods store in broad daylight. This was my third
day on the job. I suppose I needn't say I had not yet had any
results. As the Garofalos had been none too keen to have a woman
investigator to begin with, I hoped to come through for them
soon.

I felt my pulse quicken, and a pleasant little tingle of
alertness that comes when I arrive on the scene. Surveillance does
not bore me as it does our more experienced investigator, Wish
Stephenson. He says that's because I'm new at it, and he may be
right; but I think this business excites me because I know I have a
talent for it. From the time when Michael first took me in hand
(professionally, that is] and began to train me, I had excelled-for
example, at being taken into a room, left there for five minutes,
and then removed and asked to name the objects I had seen. Right
away I'd been able to recite almost all. When it comes to
remembering what I have heard, as opposed or in addition to what I
have seen, I possess the curious ability of total recall. Entire
conversations implant themselves in my brain word for word-yet if I
were to read the same on a printed page, from memory I should only
be able to paraphrase it. This total recall is not something I ever
had to learn; I seem to have been born that way.