About ten minutes later, Gail came trippingly out of her place of residence. Remarkably, she had changed into the identical outfit her twin sister had been wearing in the drugstore.

“Sorry if I took too long,” she said, somewhat out of breath. “There was a personal matter I had to attend to.”

“A phone call?” I asked.

It was an innocent enough question, as was the look she gave me. “No, we don’t have phones in our rooms. There’s one at the desk, but we’re supposed to use that sparingly, as it’s the only line for everybody. You all torn up with me for keeping you waiting?”

I told her I was still of a piece. Her eyes looked okay, as much as I could see of them. Of course, I couldn’t exactly stare into them, although I very much would have enjoyed doing so. Either the boric acid had been effective as prescribed or the pharmacist had exaggerated her distress.

You’re making too much of this, I told myself. There were any number of reasonable explanations why she might need to place a telephone call surreptitiously. Maybe she wanted to cancel a date she’d already made but didn’t want me to know how willing she was to do this. Maybe her boyfriend had then yelled at her and caused her to cry. I wondered how old a boyfriend of Gail’s might be.

I asked casually, “By the way, who’s that fellow I met named Russ?”

A much younger man than I approached, dressed in casual clothes that clearly cost as much as most people’s Sunday best. “Hi, Gail,” he said. “You look like you jumped into something comfortable and missed.” He laughed the hardest of the three of us.

Gail did the honors. “Ray, this is Toby Ackland. He’s a major in economics. Toby, this is Ray Sherwood. He’s a major talent.”

Toby’s eyes flashed green with either envy or old money. “A talent at what?” he inquired.

“Ray does arrangements.”

Relieved, Toby turned to me. “You’re a florist?”

“Well, I’ve done ‘Second Hand Rose,’ ” I conceded.

His brow furrowed. “Used flowers? Doesn’t sound very appealing.”

“Neither does economics,” I responded.

We were well on our way to a bad start when Gail intervened. “Ray plays tenor sax with Jack Donovan’s band.”

“Oh. You’re that man who writes out music,” he said, making me sound like a calligrapher. He nodded toward Gail’s residence and told her, “I was about to leave word at your boardinghouse that I can give you that lift to the Claremont you wanted.”