‘Now, if we’re through discussing my visibility, or lack of it, would you care to know what I was doing?’

‘That one I’ve already figured out. You were listening.’

She gave me an approving glance. ‘Right.’

‘But why? What was it about my voice? If you’re a talent scout for Decca, I can’t sing a note.’

‘For the moment, let’s just say your voice has a certain unique quality that interests me. And it might make you a great deal of money.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘I can’t tell you right now; maybe I won’t at all. I don’t know. But at any rate you know now why I started investigating you—especially after I began to suspect your name wasn’t really George Hamilton.’

‘What tipped you off about that?’ I asked. ‘I thought I was pretty careful.’

‘Pure chance,’ she replied. ‘It just happened there was a man named Forbes registered there at the same time—’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sure. I remember now. And he was paged, there by the pool. But, dammit, I wouldn’t have believed it was that obvious.’

‘It wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘On the contrary, you recovered beautifully. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking right at you. Naturally it made me wonder, since I’d just heard you tell the girl your name was Hamilton. I don’t remember whether that was before or after you told her your father was Chairman of the Board of Inland Steel.’

‘It was a waste of breath,’ I said. ‘She was a girl who liked to strike closer to the source. She collected the board chairmen themselves. But what did you do then?’

She finished her drink and started to get up. ‘Let me,’ I said, and refilled the glasses with what was left in the pitcher. I sat down again. ‘Go on.’

‘I went up to my room,’ she said. ‘It was on the second floor, overlooking the patio and the pool, and I could watch you from the window. I called the desk and asked them to page Mr. Hamilton.’

‘Oh. I remember that call. So you were the mixed-up type from Eastern Airlines that kept insisting she’d found the luggage I hadn’t even lost?’

She nodded coolly. ‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘Several reasons. I had to find out if you really were registered under that name, or just lying to the girl on the grounds that you should always lie to girls. And I wanted to hear your voice over the telephone—’

‘And that was the same deal last night?’ I interrupted.