The indication had been that it was a part for a tenor sax. She’d drawn an arrow pointing at the clef sign on the first line. Above the arrow, she’d written a little memorandum to herself—“Clef?”—as if she wasn’t sure if that was the correct sign. But the arrow pointed just as much to the key signature. If you knew that she’d written the melody for a B-flat tenor sax, as she’d indicated on the part itself, then you’d also know that you should transpose the notes a whole tone lower to read their correct letter names in the piece’s true key. . . .

The word clef means “key.” Not just in music. In French, it’s the word for that which unlocks things.

Was Gail’s harmless little sketch, this “Bach Ache,” the key to something more than a pun at the top of the page?

The only musical part for “A Bach Ache” had been written in the key of D, and when you transposed it down to its “home” key of C, it spelled its own title because you had unlocked its musical code, so to speak.

Swing was also written in the key of D. What would happen if you transposed it down a whole tone?

The taxi pulled up to the Claremont. I was late; I had less than half an hour before the first set started. Damn Dave Wooster for not being there. There was no way on earth I could beg off.

I ran up to my room, taking the steps three at a time. I reached into my wallet for my key and let myself in, moving quickly to the dresser and opening the drawer where I had put the Photostat of Swing. Except for the copy in my room, whose existence was known to no one but Haffner, Gilbert Rice, and myself, the only remaining version of Swing (meaning the sixteen individual instrument parts of my arrangement) was now in the hands of a representative of the Japanese government.

I pulled out the score from where I had hidden it, under the white paper that lined the dresser drawer.

Something was adhering by static to its surface. I peeled it back, and it came away easily.

It was an eight-by-ten photograph. It must already have been lying facedown under the white paper lining.

It was a photograph of, from right to left, Gail, myself, and several of the unsavory fellows from the Heritage Picnic, including the fellow in the Bund uniform who had sieg heiled the crowd. I had a look of delirium on my face, owing to Gail’s proximity. I hadn’t been paying attention to who else was in the shot with me. We all looked like the very best of chums.

Could it be that when my room was broken into, someone had planted this photo? But that made no sense. Why turn the place upside down to plant something?