It might have been morning when I awoke to knocking. I answered the door and there stood Gloria, dressed in a uniform reminiscent of an Italian street policeman, blue, complete with the white cross-body leather sash that held up a holster. There was, however, no pistol in the holster, but an old-fashioned slide rule. Of all the questions I could have asked, I, in fact, asked, “Do you know how to use the slide rule?”

“Why, yes,” she said.

“How did you find me in this room?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” She seemed to lean toward me. “Mr. Sill likes that I can use the slide rule. It doesn’t have a battery that can go dead. That’s a wonderful feature, don’t you think?”

“How did you know I was in this room?” I asked.

“I knew because you were not in any of the others.”

“You checked them all,” I stated, as a question.

“Of course not. Why would I check for you in a room you’re not in?”

“But how did you know I wasn’t in another?”

“Because you cannot be in two places at once. That would be physically and, especially, logically impossible.”

“Again, how did you know I was in this room?”

She seemed to laugh or sigh. “Because if I had found you in another room you could not be here.”

I didn’t know which of us was Socrates and which was Dionysodorus. I let the matter go. “What time is it?”

“Seven-zero-three,” she said without looking. “Time for breakfast. Rise and shine, Professor Kitu.”

“Are we returning to Miami?” I asked. “Today, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Time for breakfast.”

5

Breakfast was far more intimate than the previous day’s late lunch. Sill’s associates, confederates, accomplices were not there and so, aside from me, there was no candidate for the shark pool. For all I knew, they were all bathing in that special pool at that moment. The morning meal was served, thankfully, outside on a small tightly woven lawn, attended by Sill, Gloria, Eigen, and me. We ate omelets that Sill announced were made from gulls’ eggs. They tasted just like chicken eggs to me and I said so.

“But they are gull eggs,” he said.

“Why is that special?” I asked.

“Have you ever seen a gull’s egg?” he asked.

I said I hadn’t.

“Well, there you have it.”

“While I’m asking questions,” I said, “why are we here?”

“I had this meeting with the territories scheduled and, well, here we are. It’s the kind of whimsical thing that we villains do from time to time.”

It was difficult to argue with such reasoning. “Can we go back soon? I left my dog at your Miami house and though I believe DeMarcus is more than capable, I need to get back to him. And Eigen here has to teach next week.”

Sill smiled. “We’ll be on our way soon enough. We’ve got business in Tennessee coming, don’t we? We can’t forget that. That’s why I hired you in the first place. Nothing will be coming to us very soon.”