He was fifty, still broad in the chest and erect in the spine, though his custom-made suit worked hard to disguise a beginning paunch. His grizzled auburn hair, brushed straight back, covered a long narrow head; nose and chin jutted out of a creased sinewy face which must once have been rather handsome. His eyes were deeply set, a darting dragonfly blue, without any burden of glasses. Kintyre liked him in a way, and felt sorry for him in a way, and sometimes wondered what the man was really thinking about. "I heard about young Lombardi," said Clayton in the elevator. "It's a terrible thing." "The police been after you too?" Kintyre's manner was abrupt; he didn't feel like more emotional scenes. "I had one interview. They weren't interested in my alibi at all. What a disappointment: I had such a beautiful one. Witnesses to every waking hour. I came to Berkeley about noon Saturday, had a long conference with the manager of a local motorcycle agency, and a theater party which lasted late. Sunday I was at church, then I played golf, in the evening you were over for drinks, and Monday I went back to the City and spent all day in the office." The elevator stopped and they got out and went down a long corridor. A little puzzled and annoyed, Kintyre said: "You protest too much." Clayton opened his door. "I'm sorry," he answered. "I was trying to lighten my own mood, and it came out sounding as if I were trying to be funny. Bruce was a good kid." He called room service. Kintyre's gaze strayed idly around the suite. Actually, Clayton's Bay Area interests centered in San Francisco. For the past several months he had kept an apartment there, while he went through the preliminary maneuvers of establishing a local branch of his import house. But the Eastbay was enough of a market in itself to justify Clayton in frequently staying at the Fairhill for days on end. Though his latest checking in had been on Thursday, the suite bore little trace of him. His San Francisco rooms were just as impersonal; Kintyre doubted that the New York penthouse or the luxurious flat in Rome had been given more of a soul. There were four pictures, which apparently went wherever Clayton did: a thin blonde woman, with a washed-out kind of prettiness, who had been his first wife; and two young men and a girl, the children she had given him. Otherwise, nothing but business mail and business documents could be seen. Oh, yes, Clayton smoked expensive cigars, and he had developed enough patter to get by in social circles whose small talk included the opera or Sartre's latest pronunciamento. But he had left no books lying around, only a news magazine; no chess set or cards or half-completed crossword puzzle; no private correspondence--well, if a man wanted to be simply a cash register, it was his privilege.