She asked, “May I help you?” like a floorwalker to a shoplifter. Her nameplate said Ms. Stern. Really.

“Your boss is expecting me. Mike Hammer.”

Her manner shifted. She’d been given that name, it was on her list too; but the moniker itself had meant nothing to her. There was a time…

“May I take your coat and hat?” she asked, butter wouldn’t melt.

I nodded, she rose, and I gave them to her.

“Now, if you’ll take a seat,” she said, squeezing out a smile, gesturing to the little row of chairs, “it will be just a few moments.”

In the weeks that had passed since my visit to Vincent Colby at Bellevue, my life—and business—had gone on. The peculiarities of the hit-and-run at Pete’s, and what I was now taking for a love triangle between Colby, Sheila Ryan and whatever that bartender’s name was, continued to linger. And linger for no good reason, as Velda would remind me (ever more impatient) whenever I brought it up.

Then this morning Vincent Colby’s father had called the offices of Michael Hammer Investigations—not this secretary or receptionist, whichever Ms. Stern was, but Vance Colby himself, the president of the firm. Velda had been suitably impressed, so my ice queen here wasn’t the first female today to underestimate me.

And, as promised, in a manner of moments, I was ushered in to a world apart from that bustling boiler room out there. This chamber, with not a computer monitor in sight, might have been a Financial District office fifty years ago. The walls were dark lush wood with gleaming parquet flooring and an occasional Oriental carpet under a high, elaborately-molded ceiling—no acoustic tiles here.

The furnishings were fine wood with plush upholstery, and framed landscapes spruced up the palatial walls—none of this modern art nonsense that had only been around for a hundred years or so. A fireplace big enough to accommodate a couple of St. Nicks and their bags of goodies was overseen by a huge gilt-framed standing portrait of a middle-aged man in formal attire, circa 1920—the late Vernon P. Colby (a nameplate boldly read), who resembled a more severe, dignified but every bit as handsome version of his grandson Vincent.

The man who came trundling around a mahogany desk, which was smaller than a tank but not much, had similar facial features to his son and that of his own gilt-framed father. But this was a smaller man, made even more so by the vastness of the chamber, somewhat portly—no matter how hard his well-tailored charcoal pinstripe suit tried to conceal it. His silver hair lay in curls like his son’s, that Roman Emperor effect again, but his well-grooved face was home to a skinny salt-and-pepper mustache, while his gilt-framed father and window-enclosed son were clean shaven.

“Mr. Hammer,” Vance Colby said, his hand extended even before he’d reached me, his voice mellow like his son’s, “you’re kind to respond to my entreaty so quickly.”

“Sure,” I said, as we shook. His hand was small but his grip large. “But you didn’t indicate the nature of your, uh, entreaty.”