The door opened.

Our visitor was carrying a gun—and it was the gun that I looked at first. It was small, snub-nosed, a dull, metallic gray. So was the visitor. He was only a little taller than me and he was so pale he could have just stepped out of one of those old black-and-white films they show on TV. He had a square chin, close-cropped hair, and small eyes that seemed to be hiding behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Either he was extremely shortsighted or his optician was. Or maybe it was just that he felt safer behind bulletproof glasses.

He shut the door behind him. It must have been raining outside because there were big drops clinging to his forehead and dripping off the hem of his coat. Or maybe he was sweating. “You Tim Diamond?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m Tim Diamond,” Tim agreed.

The man moved farther into the room and saw me. For a moment the gun pointed my way and my hands flickered automatically toward a position somewhere above my head. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m Nick Diamond,” I said. “His brother.”

His eyes traveled down. “Why are you sitting on a tray?” he demanded.

“Because I feel like a cup of tea.” It was the first thing to come into my head but the answer must have satisfied him because a moment later, walking over to the window, he’d forgotten me.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Tim said.

“Jake McGuffin.” The man peered out of the window, his eyes as narrow as the venetian blind we’d sold the week before. He glanced back over his shoulder at the door. “Is that the only way in?”

Tim nodded. “Are you in some sort of trouble?” he asked.

“Somebody’s trying to kill me,” McGuffin said.

He turned away from the window just as a high-velocity bullet fired from the street drilled a neat hole through the pane, flashed across the room a bare inch from his face, smashed the vase on the shelf opposite, and exposed the carton of milk I had hidden there earlier. Milk fountained out.

“What makes you think that, Mr. McStuffing?” Tim inquired.

I was staggered. Even McGuffin had gone pale. But evidently Tim just hadn’t noticed there was anything wrong. The truth was he was so wrapped up in his own performance that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if his visitor had been hit then and there. I edged closer to the filing cabinet, ready to hurl myself behind it if any more bullets blasted into the room.

McGuffin slipped the gun into a shoulder holster and moved across the carpet, keeping clear of the window. “I need to use a phone,” he said. The words came out fast, urgent.

“Why?” Tim asked.

McGuffin hesitated. I think he still hadn’t figured Tim out. But then he had other things on his mind.

“You can tell me, Mr. McMuffin,” Tim went on. He tapped his nose. “I’m a private nose with an eye for trouble. Trouble is my middle name.”