me
feel pale. Alicia, however, was cheerfully figuring away on her own
hook; and presently she shoved a list of addresses across to me.

The first two were the head of our old firm, and the one celebrity
I had ever seen or spoken to, a novelist and lecturer with
record-breaking best sellers to his account. He once had some
business dealings with our firm, and I attended to the details,
thereby winning his cantankerous approval. He had very bad manners,
of which he was totally unashamed, and very good morals, of which
he was somewhat doubtful, as they didn't smack of genius; a notion
that he was a superior sort of Sherlock Holmes, having the
truffle-hound's flair for discovering and following up clews and
unraveling mysteries, most of which didn't exist outside of his own
eager mind; and such a genuine passion for old and beautiful things
as Balzac had. It was upon this last foundation that Alicia was
building.

"He has written that the average wealthy modern home is a
combination of Pullman Palace Car and Gehenna. And that the
so-called crime wave which sweeps recurrently over American cities,
is very likely nothing more than the inevitable reaction of our
damnable house decorations upon our immature intellects." Alicia
repeated it dreamily. "I have chosen for him the upper southwestern
room with the sunset effect and the pineapple four-poster. It has a
claw-footed desk of block mahogany, three hand-carved walnut chairs,
two Rembrandt prints, and a French prie-dieu with a purple velvet
cover embroidered with green and gold swastikas. He has a purple
soul with gold tassels on it, himself, Sophy, and he should be
willing to pay a thumping price for it. That room is worth at least
two lectures and one best seller, not to mention what he'll get out
of the rest of the house."

"First catch your hare," I reminded her skeptically.

"First set your trap, and you can reckon on hare nature to do the
rest. A few good photographs of this house, along with the
information that it runs back to the beginning of things American
and has never been exploited, will fetch him at a hand-gallop. Add a
hint that we have our own brand of family spook, and you couldn't
keep him away if you tried. The only trouble is that he may walk off
with your brass tongs up his trouser-leg, or a print or two tucked
under his shirt."

We had decided that we would have a series of photographs of the
house, with all particularly good points stressed;