As she moved through the apartment switching off lights, Sigrid was suddenly alerted to a furtive noise at the front door. Adrenaline flowing, but without panic, she quickly doused the remaining lights and positioned herself behind it. Another soft click and it opened slowly. Light from the hallway spilled in along with a case of some sort. A figure followed, someone who carried a small penlight that flashed along the floor and walls and hesitated on the Anne-figure hat rack.

Moving to catch him off balance, Sigrid yanked the door all the way back.

"That's far enough!" she told the dark figure silhouetted in the bright doorway. "Hands on the wall, mister, feet spread. Now!"

The penlight jerked across her face, touched on the gun she held in her right hand. There was a sharp intake of breath, then the penlight wavered and slipped to the floor from limp fingers. The man himself followed close behind, crumpling softly, almost noiselessly.

Sigrid had never had anyone faint on her before. Bemused, she switched on the lights again, pulled the man all the way across the threshold, then closed the door and turned to examine her catch.

Male Caucasian, she thought, automatically falling into official-report jargon. Age? Late thirties? Hair (what there was of it) a sandy brown, almost no gray. Long on the sides and probably usually brushed forward to augment a hairline that had receded to the dome of his head. Eyes closed now, of course. Well nourished but not actually fat. He was dressed rather like someone out for a day of elephant hunting in the Serengeti: wide-brimmed canvas hat, rumpled khaki safari suit, open-necked shirt and leopard-print silk scarf. Instead of boots he wore fawn-colored suede shoes with thick crepe soles.

Since he wasn't actually carrying an elephant gun, Sigrid put her own.38 away and slipped her hand inside his breast pocket. She came out with a wallet, an airline folder and a passport. Passport and wallet indicated that the man was Roman Tramegra, age forty-two. According to the ticket stubs in his Alitalia folder, his flight had arrived at Kennedy International an hour or so earlier: but the whole trip had originated with a flight from Sardinia.

Which came very near to explaining everything. Her mother was at last report in Italy on assignment for Eyewitness. The newsmagazine planned to devote a fall issue to the state of worldwide violence and terrorism, and Anne and two other freelance journalists were gathering background material and local color on how kidnapping had become almost a cottage industry in Italy.

Another of Anne's displaced persons, and she had just terrified him into fainting.

Ever since Sigrid could remember, an odd assortment of characters had wandered in and out of her mother's life. Anne attracted them the way some people attract stray dogs and cats; and just as an animal lover always manages to find good homes for his waifs, Anne was equally successful at finding homes or jobs or sanctuary of some sort for her strays. Sigrid wondered what category Roman Tramegra would fall into.

She rolled him onto a small Turkestan rug and dragged it across the vinyl-tile floor to a couch in the living room. There she shoved aside a couple of Anne's geopolitical maps, hoisted him onto the couch and slid cushions under his feet. Returning from the bathroom with a cold cloth for his forehead, she found him blinking heavy-lidded blue eyes in her direction.

"Oh, good, you're awake," she said. "Can I get you something? Coffee, tea or bourbon?"

"Don't bother. You've done quite enough already," he said coldly, sitting up and adjusting the leopard-print scarf at the neck of his shirt. His voice was unexpectedly deep, a bit pompous and with more than a touch of affronted dignity.

"Look," Sigrid told him, "I do apologize for what happened. My mother didn't tell me she was lending the apartment, and I thought you'd picked the lock. I'm sorry."

He smoothed the long piece of side hair carefully into place across the top of his head. "She said you were a policewoman, so I quite understand your reaction. Please don't give it another thought. My fault for not ringing the doorbell first. Still it never occurred to me that anyone was inside. Anne said the place was here going idle, and I thought-" He took a deep breath and gave her an abashed smile, which made him look more human. "I'm simply chattering, aren't I? I always talk too much when I've been upset. Reaction, I expect. You mentioned tea. I do hope it's souchong."

Sigrid shook her head. "Lipton."

"Loose?" he asked, clutching at straws.

"Sorry, only tea bags, I'm afraid," Sigrid said gravely, privately amused rather than insulted by the man's air of having landed among savages.

There was a brief internal struggle, then he shrugged his shoulders in a what-more-can-one-expect gesture of resignation. "Tea bags will be fine."

As Sigrid started for the kitchen, he exclaimed, "How careless of me! I almost forgot I have a letter for you." He fumbled in his breast pocket. "Gone! My wallet-"

"There on the coffee table," she said; and as he drew himself up, she said defensively, "For all I knew, you could have been a thief."

"And you thought I might have been carrying my own Wanted Poster, Miss Harald?" he said icily. Then in another of abrupt about-faces, he asked curiously,

"Do they?"

Sigrid was caught off guard. "Do who what?"

"Thieves. Do they ever carry clippings of their exploits? You know: Tiffany's robbed of half a million in diamonds during daring morning theft.' Things of that nature." He had found the letter in his wallet and handed it to her as he waited for her answer.

"I really don't know," she said nonplussed. "I suppose it's possible, but I've never heard of it. I've never worked Burglary, though."

"I may do a detective novel. I'm a writer, you see." he confided, padding down the hall behind her as she headed for the kitchen. "I could have the criminal keep a scrapbook with newspaper clippings of all his nefarious deeds, and after he was caught, there would be a marvelous denouement with my detective realizing that he hadn't known half the crimes my gangster had committed. He'd be simply flabbergasted!"

Tramegra beamed at her. "You'll probably find me a complete nuisance before I've finished, Miss Harald, but I warn you I'm going to pick your brain for technical details. They're very important in a book. Attention to detail is what separates the careful writer from the hack, you know."

His accent was an amalgam of cinema British, Boston Yankee and American Midwest, and he was still burbling as Sigrid pointed him in the direction of the bathroom to freshen up.

In the kitchen she filled the kettle, unearthed a seldom used teapot, rinsed out the dust and put in two tea bags, their tagged strings dangling over the edge. As she waited for the water to boil, she read Anne's letter:

Cagliari, April 12 Siga, dear.

Sorry not to have written before. Italy 's got weird. The kidnappings would be funny if none of them were violent. Can you believe that a carabiniere's wife was held for $110 last week? None of us go anywhere alone, and we dress and look like retired school-teachers without a sou in the world to pay even a $10 ransom.

Sigrid paused for a moment to imagine what her mother's idea of a retired schoolteacher would be. She doubted Anne could make herself look that dowdy. Then back to the letter:

But I'll write you all about it another time because this is supposed to be introducing Roman Tramegra. I've told him he can use my place while I'm gone. That'll save you having to come over. Be nice to him. He's had a very difficult time lately-someone rooked him of his money, and he doesn't want to talk about it. Not that you would ask, I know, but you do have a way of looking at people until they feel so guilty that they start babbling too much.