At noon he telephoned but there was no answer. In the afternoon he was very busy. Dr. Kender had come back, bringing with him from Cleveland a pair of visiting professors named Powers and Rogerson, and they all went on afternoon rounds together, a long-drawn and formal affair.

At six o’clock he telephoned again. This time when nobody answered he asked Lee to cover and drove to the apartment off Charles Street.

“Liz,” he called as he let himself in.

There was nobody in the kitchen; or in the living room. The study was unoccupied. In their bedroom he saw that certain bureau drawers had been left open and were empty. Her dresses were gone from the closets.

Her jewelry.

Hats, coats, luggage.

“Miguel?” he called softly, but his son did not answer, he had gone wherever his mother had taken all his things.

He went downstairs and drove to Longwood’s apartment, to which he was admitted by a gray-haired woman, a stranger.

“This is Mrs. Snyder, an old friend of mine,” Longwood said. “Marjorie, this is Dr. Meomartino.”

“Elizabeth is gone,” Rafe said.

“I know,” Longwood said calmly.

“Do you know where?”

“Off with another man. That’s all she told me. She said goodbye to me this morning. She said she would write.” He looked at Meomartino with loathing.

Rafe shook his head. There seemed to be nothing else to say. He started to leave, but Mrs. Snyder followed him into the hallway.

“Your wife called me on the telephone before she left,” she said.

“Yes?”

“That’s why I came. She told me Harland had to go to the hospital today for treatment on some kind of a machine.”

He nodded, looking at the concerned aging face without real comprehension of what she was saying.

“Well, he won’t go,” she said.

What do I care, he thought angrily.

“He absolutely refuses,” she said. “I think he’s very ill. Sometimes he thinks I’m Frances.” She looked at him. “What shall I do?”

Let him die, he thought; didn’t she know that his wife had left him, that his son was gone?

“Call Dr. Kender at the hospital,” he said. He left her standing in the hallway, staring after him.

On the following morning he was paged at the hospital and when he responded was told that a Mr. Samourian was at the reception desk and wished to see him.

“Who?”

“Mr. Samourian.”

Ah, he thought, remembering Kittredge’s list of fourth floor tenants. “I’ll be down in a moment.”

The man was a disappointment, in his mid-forties, with anxious brown spaniel’s eyes, a balding head and a mustache flecked with gray; it was unbelievable that his home had been broken by this short, pudgy person. “Mr. Samourian?”

“Yes. Dr. Meomartino?”