Despite the Haitian's professional art, Jonathan was a mess. His trousers were torn and filthy, his jacket was scuffed from the chimney climb up the brick wall, and he had no shoes. For his meeting with Maximilian Strange, he would lack the social poise and sartorial one-upmanship he usually enjoyed. Even among these goons, he felt awkward.

"Sorry about those teeth of yours, pal," he said unkindly. "You're really going to make a haul when the Tooth Fairy comes around."

The man on the jump seat produced a compound of growl and sneer, which he instantly regretted as the in-suck of air made him twist his head in pain.

The taxi was easing down a steep cobble street, past what appeared through the streaked windows to be large villas of the late eighteenth century. But then they passed an anachronous modern shopping plaza that looked like a project by a first-year design student in a polytechnic. It seemed carved in soap, and the dissonance it obtruded into the fashionable district spoke eloquently of the truism that the modern Englishman deserves his architectural heritage as much as the modern Italian merits the Roman heritage of efficiency and military prowess. Then they turned and reentered an area of fine old houses. Jonathan recognized the district as Hampstead: Tory homes amid Labour inconveniences.

The taxi turned up through open iron gates and into a driveway that curved past the front entrance. They continued around and to the back of the sprawling stone house and pulled up at the rear. The driver stepped out and opened the door for them.

Directed by small unnecessary nudges from behind, Jonathan was conducted into a dimly lit waiting room where two of them stood guard over him while the kidney-lipped hulk passed on upstairs, ostensibly to announce their arrival. Jonathan used this time to sort himself out. Alone, unarmed, rumpled, and off pace, he had to ready himself for whatever turns and twists this evening might take. He stood with his back against a wall and his knees locked to support his weight. Closing his eyes, he ignored his guards as he touched his palms together, the thumbs beneath his chin, the forefingers pressed against his lips. He exhaled completely and breathed very shallowly, using only the bottom of his lungs, sharply reducing his intake of oxygen. Holding the image of the still pool in his mind, he brought his face ever closer to its surface, until he was under.

"All right! You! Let's go!" The dapper little man with two mouths touched Jonathan's shoulder. "Let's go!"

Jonathan opened his eyes slowly. Ten or fifteen minutes had passed, but he was refreshed and his mind was quiet and controlled.

They led him up a narrow staircase and through a door.

He winced and held up his hand to screen away the painfully bright light.

"Here," Two-mouths said, "put these on." He passed Jonathan a pair of round dark glasses that cupped into the eye sockets and had an elastic cord to go around the head.

Six sunlamps on stands were the source of the painful ultraviolet light, and on one of the low exercise tables between the banks of lamps was a man, nude save for a scanty posing pouch, doing sit-ups as a flabby masseur held his ankles for leverage.

Everyone in the room wore the dark green eyecups. Looking around, Jonathan was put in mind of photographs he had seen of Biafran victims with their eyes shot out.

"Welcome..." The exerciser grunted with his sit-up, and he swung forward to touch his forehead to his knees, then lay back again. "Welcome to the Emerald City, Dr. Hemlock. How many is that, Claudio?"

"Seventy-two, sir."

Jonathan recognized the voice just an instant before he recalled the face behind the green eyecups. It was the classically beautiful Renaissance man he had met with Vanessa Dyke at Tomlinson's Galleries. The man with the Marini Horse.

"I assume you're Maximilian Strange?" Jonathan said.

"All right, Claudio. That will be enough." Strange sat on the edge of the padded exercise table and pulled off the eye guards as the ultraviolet lamps were turned off. Taking his glasses off, Jonathan found the normal light in the room oddly cold and feeble in contrast to the glare of the lamps in the hotter end of the spectrum. "I regret your having to wait downstairs while I finished my exercise, Dr. Hemlock. But routine is routine." Strange lay down on the table, and Claudio started to cover him with a thick, cream-colored grease, beginning with the face and neck and working downward. "There is a popular myth, Dr. Hemlock, that exposure to the sun ages one's skin and causes wrinkles. Actually, it's the loss of skin oils that sins against the complexion. An immediate treatment with pure lanolin will replace them adequately. You said you assumedI was Maximilian Strange. Didn't you really know?"

"No. How could I?"

"How indeed? Do you take good care of your body?"

"No particular care. I try to keep it from being stabbed and clubbed and suchlike. But that's all."

"You make a common mistake there. Men tend to consider indifference to their appearance to be a mark of rugged virility. Personally, I celebrate beauty, and therefore, of course, I celebrate artifice. Growing old is neither attractive nor inevitable. The mind is always young. The challenge resides in keeping the body also young." There it was again: that slight jamming of sentence structure that hinted of Strange's German origins. The only other clue was his pronunciation, neither exactly British nor exactly American. A kind of midatlantic sound that one found only on the American stage. "Exercise, sun, diet, and taking one's excesses in moderation," he continued. "That is all that is required to keep the face and body. How old do you think I am?"

"I can only guess. I'd say you were about... fifty-one."

Strange stopped the masseur's hand and turned to look at Jonathan closely for the first time. "Well, now. That is remarkable. For a guess."

"I'd go on to guess that you were born in Munich in 1922." It was showing off, but it was the right thing to do. Jonathan was pleased with the way it was going so far. He was giving the appearance of holding nothing back, not even the fact that he had background knowledge about Strange.

Strange looked at him flatly for a moment. "Very good. I see you intend to be frank." Then he broke into a deep laugh. "Good God, man! What happened to your clothes?"

"I fell down the side of a brick wall."

"How exhibitionistic. Did you have trouble with Leonard?"

"Is Leonard this droopy-eyed ass here?"

"The very man. But your taunts will go unanswered. Poor Leonard is incapable of banter. He is a mute."

Leonard watched Jonathan glassily from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. His meaty face seemed incapable of subtle expression, its heavy-hanging muscles responding only to broad, basic emotions.

Strange climbed from the exercise table and picked up a thick towel. "Will you join me in a steam bath, Dr. Hemlock?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No, of course not. And you could use a wash anyway." He led the way. "Few people know the proper way to use lanolin, Dr. Hemlock. It must be applied thickly just after your sunbath. Then you allow the steam to melt off the excess. The pores of the skin retain what is necessary for moisture." He stopped and turned to make his next point. "Soap should never be used on the face."

"You'll forgive me, Mr. Strange, if I find this concern for beauty and youth a little grotesque in a man of your age."

"Certainly not. Why should I forgive you?"

Leonard accompanied the two of them to the tiled dressing room that separated the steam bath from the exercise area. As Jonathan stripped down and wrapped a towel around his waist, Strange informed him that his stay at The Cloisters might be a prolonged one, so they had taken the precaution of having his room broken into and some of his clothes brought back.