Against his own principles of respect for privacy, Kintyre found himself speculating. Where had Clayton picked up such intuitions? His first wife, whom he had loved, seemed by his few chance remarks and his _Who's Who_ biography to have been the conventional helpmeet of a conventional young man in the thirties: grocery clerk, salesman, pitchforked down by the Depression, up again via WPA to construction foreman to warehouse foreman to minor executive. Finally she got tuberculosis, with complications, and took a couple of years to die. The medical bills ruined him; he parked the three children with relatives for years. Afterward, on the way up once more in the defense boom and the early war boom, he married the boss's daughter. He got to be general superintendent of an aircraft plant before he learned what a bitch she was. The divorce cost him that job and his savings. He applied for an Army commission and got one in 1943. Kintyre knew little else; his information was only the gossip one is bound to encounter. Clayton had been a fairly large figure in Italy when Kintyre went over for the second time. "Eh?" he said, pulled back to awareness. "I asked if you wanted to take her out tonight," repeated Clayton. "Uh--" "Somebody ought to." As if he had heard Kintyre's thoughts, Clayton said with an enormous gentleness: "She reminds me a lot of my daughter." Clayton had never had any great chance to be a father, reflected Kintyre. After the war, his kids ended up in exclusive boarding schools while Dad was overseas reaping the money to keep them there. Now they were grown. The girl had been graduated last year and was still making her Grand Tour. Clayton sometimes bragged about her, in clumsy generalities: he scarcely knew her as a person. The second son was also worth a cautious boast or two, apparently a solid-citizen type, an engineer; he and his father doubtless exchanged very dutiful letters. The older boy, you didn't hear much about. You got an impression of a sinecure in the firm's New York office and divorce number three currently going through the mill. Kintyre wondered, suddenly, if he had ever known anyone more alone than Clayton. It came to him that an answer was expected. "No," he said, "I have another engagement this evening." "Not one you could break? She does need help." "So does Miss Lombardi. Bruce's sister. I have some news for her that could make a big difference." Clayton paused a moment. Then he grinned. "Well, in that case," he said, "d'you mind if I squire Miss Towne?" Kintyre looked up, startled. He had been slipping into a mood of utter oleaginous sentimentalism. Pity Clayton? The hell! You wouldn't think the man was past forty. He sat there with more life in his eyes than two buccaneer captains. "Good heavens, no," exclaimed Kintyre. "Why ever should I?"