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door under the stairs and switched on the light. “You must excuse the mess, but I’m just installing some new equipment.”
    I followed him down steps that led into a sort of cellar that was probably meant to house just the furnace and hot water boiler. But there was also a desk thrust close against one wall with a mass of radio equipment stacked round it like a barricade. Toys littered the floor, odds and ends of household gear, the remains of a Christmas tree, a pram, and over everything lay a sprinkling of tools and the insides of old radio sets. “Is this where you work?” I asked.
    â€œSure. Folk here are always asking me to fix something or other.”
    â€œI mean—is this where you send from?”
    He nodded and went across to the desk. “I told you it was a mess.”
    I don’t know what I’d expected. Something neat and tidy, I suppose. It seemed incredible that this junk room of a basement should be VO6AZ and that out of this muddle he could have made contact with my father on the other side of the Atlantic. “It doesn’t look much I know, not all spick and span like the D.O.T. station.” He was sitting down and rummaging amongst some papers in a drawer. “But I can tell you this, there’s equipment here that Goose Radio hasn’t got.” He slammed the drawer shut. “Here you are,” he said and held out a typed sheet of foolscap. I took it from him. It was headed: REPORT ON BRITISH AMATEUR RADIO STATION G2STO. “You must remember that when I wrote that I knew Briffe was dead,” he said, his smile half-apologetic. “And I didn’t know your father’s name. If I’d known his name it might have made some sense.”
    Seated at his desk he seemed a different person, more alive, more vital—I suppose because this was his world, as it had been my father’s. His hand strayed automatically to the key, the way my father’s always had. It was a different key, an American side-operated pattern known as a bug key. But though the key was different, the gesture was the same. “As far as I was concerned G2STO was nuts and that’s all there was to it.” His voice was easy and natural, all the hostility gone out of it. “I’m sorry,” he added. “But I guess I was pretty tired of the whole business by then. I should have checked his name in the book.”
    I stared down at the report, wondering why the name should have made any difference. He had detailed six contacts and two of the three that I didn’t know about concerned Briffe’s sending frequency. “I see my father first contacted you on August the eleventh,” I said. “He asked for Briffe’s transmitting time, and you gave it to him. The sending frequency, too.”
    â€œSure I did. There was nothing secret about it.”
    â€œWhat was the frequency?”
    â€œThree seven eight zero.”
    I got out my sheet of notes. August 11: Briffe. Briffe. Who is Briffe? “Is that it?” I asked, showing him the note I had made.
    He leaned forward, looking at it. “Seventy-five meter phone band. Net frequency three point seven eight zero. Yes, that’s it.”
    It explained the half-obliterated entry I had found. “Take a look at that,” I said. “I couldn’t read the date, but it was somewhere towards the end of August.”
    â€œThree point seven eight zero—nothing, nothing, nothing, always nothing.” He read it out slowly and then looked up at me. “Well?”
    â€œIt means my father was watching on Briffe’s frequency.”
    â€œIt means he was curious, sure. But then so were several other hams. There were two Canadians, one at Burnt Creek and the other right up in Baffin Island, listening regularly. It’ doesn’t mean anything. They were just interested, that’s all.”
    â€œThen what about this contact on September 26? That was the day