I grabbed a quick lunch at home, changed my shirt, and went out again into the searing heat of early afternoon. It was one thirty when I stepped into the reception room of Becker & Strauss for the second time.

The secretary smiled when she saw me.

"Mr. Strauss is in," she said, "but he's in the middle of a meeting and it might take a while."

"How long do you think?" I said.

"Half an hour, give or take."

I told her I'd wait, and she asked me if I wanted anything to drink. When I said that I didn't, she pointed to a corner with a gray couch, a couple of chairs, and a hat stand bearing a fedora and a homburg. Then she proceeded to ignore my presence, fixing her attention on her typewriter.

I sat on the couch and smoked while she clacked away on her keys with impressive speed. A number of newspapers lay on a low table, and I riffled through them, catching up on the news. Shmuel Birnbaum had a column on the condition of Jewish refugees still stuck in various ports and camps in Europe, desperate to be allowed to come to Israel. He had a good writing style—factual, direct, without the proclivity to flowery language that some of his colleagues suffered from.

While I waited, four men in button-down shirts and ties wandered singly or in pairs in and out from adjacent offices, handing papers to the secretary or grabbing a cup of coffee from the small kitchen. None spoke to me. Maybe they were used to having people waiting.

After twenty-five minutes, the door to Mr. Strauss's office opened and out stepped two men. One was tall and slim, with a full head of metallic gray hair; the other shorter, fatter, with thinning hair combed desperately over his bald pate. They shook hands and exchanged a few parting pleasantries before the fat man walked to the hat stand, retrieved his homburg, and left.

The tall, slim man—Mr. Strauss, I presumed—was turning to go back into his office when his secretary called to him, informing him that he had a visitor. I crushed out the cigarette I'd been smoking, got up, and strode over to him. He watched me approach with an inscrutable expression on his face.