Alleyn uttered a single violent expletive, relocked the covers and opened the second ledger.

It was inscribed: “Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes,” and contained names, dates and figures in what appeared to be a balance of expenditure and income. Alleyn’s attention sharpened. The company seemed to be showing astronomical profits. His fingers, nervous and delicate, leafed through the pages, moving rhythmically.

Then abruptly they were still. Near the bottom of a page, starting out of the unintelligible script and written in a small, rather elaborate handwriting, was a name — P. E. Garbel.

The curtain rings clashed in the passage. He had locked the drawer and with every appearance of avid attention was hanging over the de Sade, when Baradi returned.

iv

Baradi had brought Carbury Glande with him and Alleyn thought he knew why. Glande was introduced and after giving Alleyn a damp runaway handshake, retired into the darker part of the room fingering his beard, and eyed him with an air, half curious, half defensive. Baradi said smoothly that Alleyn had greatly admired the de Sade book-wrapper and would no doubt be delighted to meet the distinguished artist. Alleyn responded with an enthusiasm which he was careful to keep on an amateurish level. He said he wished so much he knew more about the technique of painting. This would do nicely, he thought, if Glande, knowing he was Troy’s husband, was still unaware of his job. If, on the other hand, Glande knew he was a detective, Alleyn would have said nothing to suggest that he tried to conceal his occupation. He thought it extremely unlikely that Glande had respected Troy’s request for anonymity. No. Almost certainly he had reported that their visitor was Agatha Troy, the distinguished painter of Mr. Oberon’s “Boy with a Kite.” And then? Either Glande had also told them that her husband was a C.I.D. officer, in which case they would be anxious to find out if his visit was pure coincidence; or else Glande had been able to give little or no information about Alleyn and they merely wondered if he was as ready a subject for skulduggery as he had tried to suggest. A third possibility and one that he couldn’t see at all clearly, involved the now highly debatable integrity of P. E. Garbel.

Baradi said that Alleyn’s car had not arrived, and with no hint of his former impatience suggested that they show him the library.

It was on the far side of the courtyard. On entering it he was confronted with Troy’s “Boy with a Kite.” Its vigour and cleanliness struck like a sword-thrust across the airlessness of Mr. Oberon’s library. For a second the “Boy” looked with Ricky’s eyes at Alleyn.

A sumptuous company of books lined the walls with the emphasis, as was to be expected, upon mysticism, the occult and Orientalism. Alleyn recognized a number of works that a bookseller’s catalogue would have described as rare, curious, and collector’s items. Of far greater interest to Alleyn, however, was a large framed drawing that hung in a dark corner of that dark room. It was, he saw, a representation, probably medieval, of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent and it was part elevation and part plan. After one desirous glance he avoided it. He professed himself fascinated with the books and took them down with ejaculations of interest and delight. Baradi and Glande watched him and listened.

“You are a collector, perhaps, Mr. Allen?” Baradi conjectured.

“Only in a very humble way. I’m afraid my job doesn’t provide for the more expensive hobbies.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Indeed?” Baradi said. “One cannot, alas, choose one’s profession. I hope yours is at least congenial.”

Alleyn thought: “He’s fishing. He doesn’t know or he isn’t sure.” And he said absently, as he turned the pages of a superb Book of the Dead, “I suppose everyone becomes a little bored with his job at times. What a wonderful thing this is, this book. Tell me, Dr. Baradi, as a scientific man—”

Baradi answered his questions. Glande glowered and shuffled impatiently. Alleyn reflected that by this time it was possible that Baradi and Robin Herrington had told Oberon of the Alleyns’ enquiries for Mr. Garbel. Did this account for the change in Baradi’s attitude? Alleyn was now unable to bore Dr. Baradi.

“It would be interesting,” Carbury Glande said in his harsh voice, “to hear what Mr. Alleyn’s profession might be. I am passionately interested in the employment of other people.”

“Ah, yes,” Baradi agreed. “Do you ever play the game of guessing at the occupation of strangers and then proving yourself right or wrong by getting to know them? Come!” he cried with a great show of frankness. “Let us confess, Carbury, we are filled with unseemly curiosity about Mr. Allen. Will he allow us to play our game? Indulge us, my dear Allen. Carbury, what is your guess?”

Glande muttered: “Oh, I plump for one of the colder branches of learning. Philosophy.”

“Do you think so? A don, perhaps? And yet there is something that to me suggests that Mr. Alleyn was born under Mars. A soldier. Or, no. I take that back. A diplomat.”

“How very perceptive of you,” Alleyn exclaimed, looking at him over the Book of the Dead.

“Then I am right?”

“In part, at least. I started in the Diplomatic,” said Alleyn truthfully, “but left it at the file-and-corridor stage.”

“Really? Then perhaps, I am allowed another guess. No!” he cried after a pause. “I give up. Carbury, what do you say?”

“I? God knows! Perhaps he left the Diplomatic Service under a cloud and went big-game hunting.”

“I begin to think you are all psychic in this house,” Alleyn said delightedly. “How on earth do you do it?”

“A mighty hunter!” Baradi ejaculated, clapping his hands softly.

“Not at all mighty, I’m afraid, only pathetically persevering.”

“Wonderful,” Carbury Glande said, drawing his hand across his eyes and suppressing a yawn. “You live in South Kensington, I feel sure, in some magnificently dark apartment from the walls of which glower the glass eyes of monstrous beasts. Horns, snouts, tusks. Coarse hair. Lolling tongues made of a suitable plastic. Quite wonderful.”

“But Mr. Allen is a poet and a hunter of rare books as well as of rare beasts. Perhaps,” Baradi speculated, “it was during your travels that you became interested in the esoteric?”

Alleyn suppressed a certain weariness of spirit and renewed his raptures. You saw some rum things, he said with an air of simple credulity, in native countries. He had been told and told on good authority — He rambled on, saying that he greatly desired to learn more about the primitive beliefs of ancient races.

“Does your wife accompany you on safari?” Glande asked. “I should have thought—” He stopped short. Alleyn saw a flash of exasperation in Baradi’s eyes.

“My wife,” Alleyn said lightly, “couldn’t approve less of blood sports. She is a painter.”

“I am released,” Glande cried, “from bondage!” He pointed to the “Boy with a Kite.” “Ecce!”

“No!” Really, Alleyn thought, Baradi was a considerable actor. Delight and astonishment were admirably suggested. “Not—? Not Agatha Troy? But, my dear Mr. Alleyn, this is quite remarkable. Mr. Oberon will be enchanted.”

“I can’t wait,” Carbury Glande said, “to tell him.” He showed his teeth through his moustache. “I’m afraid you’re in for a scolding, Alleyn. Troy swore me to secrecy. I may say,” he added, “that I knew in a vague way, that she was a wedded woman but she has kept the Mighty Hunter from us.” His tongue touched his upper lip. “Understandably, perhaps,” he added.

Alleyn thought that nothing would give him more pleasure than to seize Dr. Baradi and Mr. Carbury Glande by the scruffs of their respective necks and crash their heads together.

He said apologetically. “Well, you see, we’re on holiday.”