Murder in Black Letter

Except, of course, for Taffimai Metallumai, all characters in this book are fictitious, without intentional resemblance to any actual person, living or dead. The events described are made up out of whole cloth. The hotels, restaurants, companies, and other business enterprises herein mentioned are equally nonexistent. Two real institutions occur: the University of California and the Berkeley Police Department. There is no implication intended that either of these would condone all the actions and opinions of the imaginary people I have wished onto their payrolls.

1

Steel talked between roses. Kintyre parried Yamamura's slash; his riposte thumped on the other man's arm.

"Touché!" exclaimed the detective. He took off his mask and wiped sweat from a long, high-cheeked face. "Or is it you who's supposed to say that? Anyhow, enough for today."

"You're not doing so badly, Trig," Kintyre told him. "And I have some revenge due for all those times you've had me cartwheeling through the air, down at the dojo."

Trygve Yamamura clicked his tongue. He stood over six feet tall, lanky, the Oriental half of him showing mostly in narrow black eyes and smoked-amber skin. "You would use sabers, wouldn't you?" he said.

Robert Kintyre shrugged. "A foil is for women and I'm not fast enough for an épée. Also, there's professional interest. A saber is a wee bit closer to the Renaissance weapon."

"I think I'll stick to Japanese swords."

Kintyre nodded. He was a stocky man of medium height, with straight dark hair above a square, snub-nosed, sallow-complexioned face. His eyes were gray under level brows, and set unusually far apart; there was little else to mark him out physically, until you noticed his gait. To an only slightly lesser degree than Yamamura's, it had the indefinable compactness of a judo man.

They stood in a garden in Berkeley. Walls enclosed them: the main house, now vacant while its owner and family were on vacation; the three-room cottage to the rear which Kintyre rented; a board fence strewn with climbing blossoms on either side. Overhead lay a tall sky where the afternoon sun picked out the vapor trail of a jet sliding above San Francisco Bay.

"I agree, Samurai swords make these look like pitchforks," said Kintyre. "But you can't do much with them except collect them. Too damned effective!"

Yamamura removed his padded coat and fished for his pipe. "You off work now?" he asked.

"Yep. Last bloody paper corrected, last report in, term's over, and I'm not teaching again till fall. It's great, though impoverished, to be free."

"You're making a pack trip into Kings Canyon, aren't you?"

"Uh-huh. Bruce Lombardi and I were supposed to leave tomorrow. Only what the devil has become of Bruce?" Kintyre scowled. "His girl called me last night, said he'd left the day before--Saturday--and hadn't come back yet. She was worried. I'm beginning to be."

"Hm." Attentiveness flickered up in Yamamura. His agency, small and new, had no engagements at the moment. However, he spoke with no more than friendly concern. "Is it like the kid to go tearing off that way? I don't know him especially well, he's just somebody I meet now and then at your place."