Starbuck told all, and the telling seemed pathetic to him, as pathetic as that far off day when he had confessed his foolishness to Washington Faulconer. Now he limpingly talked of a promise made in a dusky night, of an obsession he could not properly describe and could not justify and could not really account for, except to say that life would be nothing unless he could find Sally.

“And you thought she might be here?” Delaney asked with friendly mockery.

“I know she was given this address,” Starbuck said pointedly.

“And so you came to me,” Delaney said, “which was wise. So what do you want of me?”

Starbuck looked across the table. To his surprise he had smoked the cigar down to an inch-long stub, which he now abandoned with the mangled remains of his pie. “I want to know if you can tell me how to find her,” he said, and he thought how futile this quest was, and how demeaning. Somehow, before he arrived in this elegant room, Starbuck had believed that his search for Sally was a practical dream, but now, faced with confessing his obsession to this man who was a virtual stranger, Starbuck felt utterly foolish. He also sensed the hopelessness of searching for one lost girl in a town of forty thousand people. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I should never have come here.”

“I seem to remember telling you to seek my help,” Delaney reminded him, “though admittedly we were both quite drunk at the time. I’m glad you came.”

Starbuck stared at his benefactor. “You can help me?”

“Of course I can help you,” Belvedere Delaney said very calmly. “In fact I know exactly where your Sally is.”

Starbuck felt the elation of success and the terror of confronting that success to discover it was a sham. He felt as if he were at the very edge of a chasm and he did not know whether it was to heaven or to hell that he would leap. “So she’s alive?” he asked.

“Come to me tomorrow evening,” Delaney said in oblique answer, then held up a hand to check any further questions. “Come here at five. But—” He said the last word warningly.

“Yes?”

Delaney pointed his cigarette across the table. “You will owe me a debt for this, Starbuck.”

Starbuck shivered despite the warmth. A soul was sold, he suspected, but for what coin? But nor did he really care because tomorrow night he would find Sally. Perhaps it was the wine, or the heady tobacco fumes, or else the thought of all his dreams coming to a resolution, but he did not care. “I understand,” he said carefully, understanding nothing.