Leland was thirty-six, five feet ten, and weighed one hundred and forty pounds. His hair was dark brown, thick and cut short. He did not part it. His skin was fair and had a faint translucent quality, so that he had to work hard to look closely shaved. His lips were dark, the kind that seemed moist when they were not. His brown eyes were his most attractive feature—and most expressive, too, for he had had to practice drawing other people into talking, which required staying silent and conveying impressions, true or deliberately misleading, with the eyes. There was a scar, the result of an automobile accident, in his left brow, and there was another, from a different kind of accident, along the side of his jaw. Both scars were small, thin, and white; most people did not take much notice of them. It was only in recent years that Leland had begun to pay attention to his appearance—until two years ago he had parted his hair on the side and allowed it to grow as long as the barber would allow—and the impression that he made now was as crisp and conservative but at the same time as energetic as that of a young congressman still learning his job. But not quite: there were the scars which, if they blended in, nevertheless had their effect; and the eyes, which perhaps had had to mislead too much and looked tired. The young-congressman presentation was created in fact by habits that Leland regarded as bad: his suits ran to sober browns and grays—all of them two-buttoned, medium lapeled—today’s was a brown worsted—and he used bow ties. He had more than thirty of them. He liked them; they were easier for him to tie and more comfortable to live with than four-in-hands. Today’s tie was dark brown with dot-sized white doodads resembling blighted cloves. It had been a gift in celebration of nothing, and he liked it.

He came out of the bedroom with his topcoat over his arm and a five-dollar bill in his hand. The money was for the cleaning woman, Mrs. Walsh, who was due in the afternoon. This was the last thing he had to attend to before he could leave. Out of simple habit of living alone, Leland took a last look around.

The telephone rang. He knew who it was. “Relax, I’m on my way,” was his response into the receiver. The crisp impression that his appearance made was ruined when he spoke. His speech was city speech, roughly enunciated and slurred. His own thought was that it was no worse than the twang they spoke up here.

“This is important,” his secretary, Florence Cline, said. “You could have been asleep. I think you’d better hurry.”

“Where are you? At my desk?” She called him from there when she thought there was trouble.