Otto Orfìzzi having attempted unsuccessfully to form an alliance with the sheikh by telling an anti-Semitic joke at which no one had laughed – not because it was anti-Semitic, but because it had been told badly, and because two of the guests happened in fact to be Jewish, and because in any case it wasn't very funny – Mavis Orfizzi turned her imitation-pitying smile toward Chauncey, saying, "I do apologize for Otto. He can be such an incredible boor."

It was only the thought that these witches and toadies were about to be burgled through his own intervention that kept the smile on Chauncey's face. "Oh, well, Mavis," he said. "Don't trouble yourself on my account. I think we should all take life as it comes."

"Do you?" An imitation-self-pitying smile took its place on Mavis's lips. "It must be comforting to have that philosophy."

"It is," Chauncey assured her. "After all, we never know what misfortunes may be heading our way, do we?" And for the first time all evening, the smile he bestowed on his guests was absolutely genuine.

Stately, plump Joe Mulligan paused in the privacy of the hallway to pull his uniform trousers out of the crease of his backside, then turned to see Fenton watching him. "Mp," he said, then nodded at Fenton, saying, "Everything okay down here."

Fenton, the senior man on this detail, made a stern face and said, "Joe, you don't want any of them princes and princesses see you walking around with your fingers up your ass."

"Aw, now," Mulligan said, embarrassment combining with a trace of indignation. "They're all at table up there. Besides, every man has to give a tug to his trousers from time to time."

"Stately plump men more than others," said Fenton, himself a skinny little dried-up man with porcelain teeth in his head. A bit of a martinet and a stickler for regulations, he liked the boys to call him Chief, but none of them ever did.

"Have another look at that back door while you're down here," he added, gave a sort of casual one-finger-to-forehead salute, and turned back to the stairs.

Joe Mulligan was one of the team of seven private guards on duty in the Chauncey house tonight, dressed like the others in a dark blue police-like uniform with a triangular badge on the left shoulder reading Continental Detective Agency. In his flatfooted walk and meaty bigness, Mulligan himself was police-like, as well he might be, having spent twelve years on the New York City force before deciding to get out of the city and joining Continental's Long Island office in Hempstead.

It used to be that policemen who displayed ineptitude or stupidity were sent from the city to the boondocks – "Pounding a beat on Staten Island" was the popular version of the threat – but as the Swinging Sixties swung more and more in the manner of a wrecker's ball, that usual direction of transfer became reversed. The quiet safe Staten Islands of duty became more highly prized, while the terrifying city lost its former attraction. For instance, Mulligan and his team were working in Manhattan now as direct punishment for having lost a bank out on Long Island two years ago. None of them had quit, all seven were still together, and Fenton himself had summed it up for all of them: "We'll do the job the same as ever. We're good men and we know it, and sooner or later we'll get back to the top. Out of New York and back to Long Island where we belong."

So they treated every unimportant minor assignment, every wedding, dog show and book fair, as though it were the D-Day landing. Tonight, they operated in three two-man teams, with Fenton roving among them. Each team was responsible for one area of the house, including the upper floors, though this last part was against the stated wishes of the client, who'd said, "Concentrate on the entrances downstairs, and let the upstairs go." But, as Fenton had told the team, "The reason they hire us is because we know the job and they don't."

Also, the teams traded places every half hour, to keep from becoming stale, too used to a single environment. Mulligan was alone now because his partner, Garfield, had gone to the second floor to replace Morrison and Fox, who would transfer to the first floor, releasing Dresner and Block to come down here, so Mulligan could go upstairs and rejoin Garfield.

But first the rear door, which continued as locked and unsullied as ever. Mulligan peeked through the tiny diamond-pane window at the dark back yard, saw nothing, and let it go at that.

Footsteps on the stairs; Mulligan turned and here came Dresner and Block. "Hello, boys," Mulligan said.

Block nodded. "What say?"

Dresner said, "All quiet?"

"I believe we could have phoned in our part," Mulligan said. "See you, boys." And, with a certain amount of puffing he made his way up two flights of stairs to where Garfield, whose law-enforcement career had begun when he was a Military Policeman in Arizona and Paris, and who sported a Western-Marshall moustache of amazing ferocity, was practicing his quick draw before the full-length mirror in Chauncey's bathroom. "Well, now," Mulligan said, a bit out of sorts from the combination of Fenton's remarks and the long climb upstairs, "it's Wyatt Earp you're expecting, is it?"

"Has it ever occurred to you," Garfield said, holstering his pistol and fingering his moustache, "that I'd be a natural for the movies?"

"No," Mulligan said. "Let's make our rounds."

So they went up another flight of stairs. The top floor, oddly enough, was grander than any of the others, possibly because its being strictly for guests had meant the decorators hadn't needed to worry overmuch about comfort and function. Chauncey's own bedroom suite on the next floor down was also sumptuously furnished, of course, but it was clearly a working bedroom, whereas the rooms on the top floor, with their delicate chairs and tables, canopy beds, Persian carpets, hand-ironed cotton curtains, complementary wallpapers and upholstery and bedspreads, were like display models in a museum; one expected a plush rope across each doorway, permitting the visitor to look without touching.

Two of the suites were in current occupancy – by utter pigs. Garments, cosmetic jars, open luggage, pieces of paper and other litter formed a kind of archaeological layer over the original impersonality. Mulligan and Garfield strolled through these rooms, commenting to one another on stray artifacts–"I didn't know women wore brassieres like that any more," Garfield said, and Mulligan replied, "They don't"–and also discussing their hopes for an early return to Long Island. "Two years is long enough," Mulligan said truculently. "It's time we got out of New York and back to the bigtime."

"You couldn't be more right." Garfield said, touching his moustache. "Fenton ought to go see the Old Man for us, argue our case."

"Absolutely," Mulligan agreed. The two of them were returning to the central corridor then, and it was at that point Mulligan suddenly felt the unmistakable pressure of a gun barrel thrust against the middle of his back, and heard the quiet voice behind him speak the words of doom. Long Island flew away on mighty wings, and the voice said:

"Stick em up."