She was already shaking her head, shaking it with a definitiveness and a finality which did not suggest-it stated. The decision was made. To look at her one saw delicacy and perhaps what might be mistaken for a feminine form of tenderness. But within there was a spirit as resistant as an anvil, as insistent as a hammer.

"You see," she began,

"I'm a scholar and an artist. I have the inquisitive temperament of one, the creative instincts of the other.

But I'm also the daughter of a vicious man. Arthur Sandler. I have some of his blood, too. I know how to hate."

"I hope you also know how to explain," he said.

"I'm not following this. I'm sorry." And, seeking now to keep an emotional and intellectual distance between them, he tried to tell her of his decision to leave the practice of law.

She interrupted.

"I'm here to ask you to fulfill two roles" she said.

"Attorney and detective."

"Neither suits me ' "Don't be too certain. People's marks in life have a way of finding them" "Do they?"

"That's what I've always observed. What is it that Camus said?A man gets the face he deserves'? I've always thought a man or woman also gets the mother he or she deserves' ' He shook his head.

"Very, very wrong" he said.

"I've spent the last eight years resisting this profession. Want to know the truth?

I've been burned out here. Want to know the real truth? Secretly I'm happy about it!"

"Happy?"

"It's my out. These files, these records which my father and Adolph Zenger spent a lifetime building. They're nothing now.

Nothing. Wiped out." An elusive smile crossed his face.

"It's like a clean slate" he said.

"It's like being liberated. You see, I can do what I want with my life. It doesn't include practicing law or playing detective' "What does it include?"

"I'll decide" he said.

"Eventually. You know what? I looked in the mirror this morning and I looked younger than I have for years. As if a burden had lifted. It has been "Don't be too sure," she said.

"Of what?"

"That it's lifted."

"Your tone of voice," he said.

"It sounds like either a threat or a warning. Which is it?"

"Neither, really. But one's fate often comes looking for him, not the other way around. That's what I've always found. You didn't happen upon a fire. It found you."

He gave her a look which mixed suspicion with intrigue, a look which seemed to ask a deeper explanation of who she was, what she wanted, and from where she'd materialized.

"You seem to know a lot," he said, feeling very much on the defensive now. "I know arson when I see it" she said.

"Or smell it." She smiled.

His own smile was gone.

"I'm sure you have a theory," he said.

"Of course. That's why I'm here."

"I hate theories" he said.

"I like facts. That's why I hate law. Law deals with permutations of truth and misrepresentations. Obscuring of facts " "You want facts, do you?" she said.

"I'll give you facts. I'll tell you a story which has a direct bearing on why I'm here. And why you had a fire."

"All right," he said, easing back in his chair.

"I'd love to hear it."

"I.

Chapter 5

"It's all past history now," she said.

"Cold war and all that..

Thomas frowned.

"Cold war?" he asked.

"Yes she said casually.

"I should think so. I should think that had very much to do with it She added matter-of-factly,

"My father did intelligence work. Or didn't you even know that much?"

Thomas fumbled for a response but felt himself drawn into her story.

"My father handled the bulk of the Sandler business," he said.

"You didn't know, did you?" she asked, surprised.