"Well, Jonathan?" Vanessa had been standing back out of the light. Her voice was hushed most uncharacteristically.

Jonathan glanced again at the Renaissance man. Something in his demeanor made it clear that he did not intend to speak and did not wish to be spoken to. Jonathan decided to let him play out his silly game.

"Well what?" he asked Van.

"Is it genuine?"

Jonathan was surprised at the question, forgetting as often he did that his gift was quite unique. As some people have perfect pitch, Jonathan had a perfect eye. Once he had seen a man's work, he never mistook it. It was, in fact, upon that gift that his reputation had been founded and not, as he preferred others to believe, on his scholarship. "Of course it's genuine. Marini cast three of these and later broke one. No one knows why. Some defect probably. But only two now exist. This is the Dallas Horse. I didn't know it was in England."

"Ah-" Vanessa fumbled for a Gauloise to cover her tension, then she asked offhandedly, "What price do you think it would bring?"

Jonathan looked at her, startled. "It's for sale?"

She took a deep drag and blew smoke up at the ceiling. "Yes."

Jonathan looked across at the Renaissance man who had not moved a muscle and who still watched him, the colorless eyes picked out by a shaft of light just under the dark eyebrows.

"Stolen?" Jonathan asked.

"No," Vanessa answered.

"Doesn't he talk?"

"Please, Jonathan." She touched his arm.

"What the hell's going on? Is he selling this?"

"Yes. But he wanted you to have a look at it first."

"Why? You don't need me to authenticate it. Its provenances are impeccable. Even a British expert could have certified it." He addressed this to the man standing on the opposite side of the bar of light illuminating the Horse. When the man spoke, his tessitura was just as one would have predicted: precise, carefully modulated, colorless.

"How did you know it was the Dallas Horse, Dr. Hemlock?"

"Ah, you speak. I thought you just posed."

"How did you know it was the Dallas Horse?"

As curtly as possible, Jonathan explained that everyone who knew anything at all about the Marini Horses knew the story of the one purchased by the young Dallas millionaire who subsequently picked it up at the plane himself, loaded it into the back of his pickup, then brought it to his ranch. In unloading, it was dropped and broken. Subsequently it was brazed together by an auto mechanic and, because it was imperfect, it was relegated to adorning the barbecue pit. "Any novice would recognize it," he said, pointing to the rough brazing.

The Renaissance man nodded. "I knew the story, of course."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Testing. Tell me. What do you suppose it will bring in an open sale?"

"I'm a professional. I get paid for making evaluations."

Vanessa cleared her throat. "Ah, Jon, he gave me an envelope for you. I'm sure it will be all right."

Neither the voice nor the words were in character for the gruff, hard-drinking Vanessa Dyke, and Jonathan's distaste for this whole theatrical setup grew. He answered crisply. "Impossible to say. Whatever the buyer can afford. It depends on how much he wants it, or how much he wants others to know he owns it. If my memory serves me, the Texan you got it from gave something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million for it."

"What would it bring now?" Vanessa asked.

Jonathan shrugged. "I told you. I can't say."

The Renaissance man spoke without moving even a fold in the fabric of his suit. "Let me ask you an easier question. Something you cananswer."

Jonathan's slum boyhood toned his response. "Listen, art lover. Keep your fee. Or better yet, shove it up your ass." He turned to leave, but Vanessa stood in his way.

"Please, Jon? A favor to me?"

"What's this yahoo to you?"

She frowned and shook her head, not wanting to go into it now. He didn't understand, and he was angry, but Vanessa was a friend. He turned back. "What do you want to know?"

The Renaissance man nodded, accepting Jonathan's capitulation. "The Horse will be offered for sale soon. It will bring a very high price. At what point would people in the art world find the price unbelievable? At what point would the newspapers make something of it?"

Jonathan assumed there was a tax dodge on. "There would be talk, but no one would be unduly astonished at, say, half a million. If it came from the right sources."

"Half a million? Dollars?"

"Yes, dollars."

"I paid more than that for it myself. What if the price were well beyond that?"

"How much beyond?"

"Say... five million... pounds."

Jonathan laughed. "Never. The other privately held one could be loosened for a tenth of that And that one's never been broken."

"Perhaps the buyer wouldn't want the other one. Perhaps he has a fondness for flawed statues."

"Five million pounds is a lot to pay for a perverted taste for things flawed."

"Such a price, then, would cause talk."

"It would cause talk, yes."

"I see." The Renaissance man looked down to the floor. "Thank you for your opinion, Dr. Hemlock."

"I think we'd better get back now, Jon," Vanessa said, touching his arm.

Jonathan stopped in the hall and collected his coat from the porter. "Well? Are you going to tell me what that was all about?"

"What's to tell? A mutual friend asked me to arrange a contract between you two. I was paid for it. Oh, here." She gave him a broad envelope, which contained a thick padding of bills.

"But who is that guy?"

She shrugged. "Never saw him before in my life, lover. Come on. I'll buy you a drink."

"I'm not going back in there. Anyway, I have an appointment tonight."

Vanessa looked over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Farquahar. "I think I have too."

As he slipped into his overcoat, he looked back toward the door to the private showroom. "You have some weird friends, lady."

"Do you really think so?" She laughed and butted her cigarette in the salver meant to receive tips, then she walked into the crowded reception room where the singer with the gold-tinsel wig and the green mascara was bobbing over the heads of the company, chanting in thin falsetto something about a cup of coffee, a sandwich, and you.

The Renaissance man settled into the passenger seat of his Jensen Interceptor and adjusted his suit coat to prevent its wrinkling. "Has he left?"

The Mute nodded.

"And he's being followed?"

The Mute nodded again.

The Renaissance man clicked on the tape deck and settled to listen to a little Bach as the car crunched along the driveway, its lights out.

A young man with a checked sports coat and a camera depended from his neck stood in a red telephone kiosk beneath a corner streetlamp. While the phone on the other end of the line double-buzzed, he clamped the receiver under his chin awkwardly as he scrawled in a notebook. He had been holding the license number on the rim of his memory by chanting it over and over to himself. Hearing an answering click and hum, he pressed in his twopence piece and said in a hard "r" American accent, "Hi, there."

A cultured voice responded, "Yes? What is it, Yank?"

"How did you know it was me?"

"That hermaphroditic accent of yours."

"Oh. I see." Crestfallen, the young man abandoned his phony American sound and continued with the nasal drawl of public school. "He has left the party, sir. Took a cab."

"Yes?"

"Well, I thought you would like to know. He was followed."

"Good. Good."

"Shall I tag along?"

"No, that wouldn't be wise." The cultured voice was silent for a moment. "Very well. I suppose you have the Baker Street ploy set up?"

"Right, sir. By the way, just in case you want to know, I took note of the time of his departure. He left at exactly... Good Lord."