"Oh, I am terribly sorry that our taste doesn't please you. But, de gustibus..."

"Nonsense. It's the only thing really worth disputing."

Strange laughed shallowly. Laughter was his substitute for smiling, preferred because it did not necessitate creasing the cheeks. And there were as many tones to his laughter as there are nuances in other people's smiles. "At all events, I enjoy this little chamber here. We call it the Aquarium. But it's an aquarium in reverse. The fish are out there in the salon, and the amused observers here in the bowl. And it is charming to realize that that room out there contains a good fifty percent of the real governmental power in Britain."

"All gathered here to find respite from the heavy burdens of leadership by losing themselves in the ecstasy of your contrived orgies?"

"You shouldn't sneer at the exoticism of our offerings. Quite naturally, our patrons expect something out of the ordinary: prenubile girls, catamites, fellatio-that sort of thing. One cannot blame them. Coming here for common garden variety sex would be like ordering sausage, chips, and two veg at Maxim's. But what is really amusing is that half the silly asses out there don't even know what goes on in our splendid cloaca. They believe The Cloisters is only a fashionable, bizarre, and exclusive club with excellent food and wine and charming hostesses."

"Oh? The flapper types aren't hookers?"

"Oh, no. Young models, aspiring actresses, university girls-just window dressing. The costuming goes with the decor. The more enterprising and promising graduate to the more lucrative activities upstairs, but most of them stay with us only a month or so, then pass on to duller activities: careers, marriages, such like. We're constantly replacing hostesses. But I am forgetting my duties as host. I have promised you refreshment. May I suggest brewer's yeast in fresh tangerine juice?"

"It's tempting. But I think I'll have scotch. Do you have Laphroaig?"

Strange turned the question to the dapper, two-mouthed minion who stood behind them, having accompanied them into the Aquarium while Leonard was dressing.

"I'll see, sir." But he did not depart until Leonard came in to relieve him.

"I'm afraid I'm not up on the finer points of scotch," Strange said. "I never drink alcohol. By the way, tell me about the man we found dead in your bathroom. Who was he?"

"I don't know," Jonathan said as smoothly as possible. He had been anticipating this tactic of the sudden question.

"Who killed him?"

"I did."

Strange looked at Jonathan with frank admiration at the immediacy of the answer. "Go on," he said, after a nod of approval.

"It was because of that man that I came looking for you. You've discovered that I used to work for CII in counterassassination. The work was not so dangerous as one might think. Since my targets were men who had assassinated CII agents, they typically came from a level of society neither lamented nor avenged-not by the various law enforcement agencies, at any rate. And, because I took random assignments, I could never be tied to the death by motive. Typically, I never met the mark before the moment of the hit. But... but because society is not yet prepared to counter the problem of overpopulation by sterilizing and terminating rotten and unproductive genetic stock, my targets were not without relatives.

"From the few babbled words he got out before I shot him, it appears that he was the brother of some forgotten mark. He had come to retrieve the family honor, such as it was."

"But you shot him first."

"Just so."

"And left him in your bathroom?"

"I didn't pick the meeting ground. Bathrooms have tile floors that are easily cleaned up."

Strange nodded appreciatively. "I see."

Leonard entered from behind and replaced Two-mouths, who went off to fetch the drinks.

"You certainly got rid of the body quickly. Our men returned to your rooms a few hours after first discovering the corpse, and it was gone. How did you manage that?"

"I'll make you a deal. I won't ask you how to run a whorehouse, and you don't ask me about assassination."

"That seems fair enough. You mentioned that this business in your bathroom was linked in some way to your desire to penetrate The Cloisters. Would you amplify that a bit?"

"While that poor ass was babbling about how he had been on my trail for years, he let slip the name of the person who had fingered me. He was waving a gun in my face, and I suppose he imagined I would not live to benefit from the information."

"By the way, how did you kill this man?"

"With his own gun."

"How did you get it from him?"

"How do you keep your girls from getting clap?"

Strange laughed. "All right, all right. Go on."

"The informant was a man highly placed in CII. A man who never liked me because I could not pass up opportunities to point out the more blatant stupidities of that asinine and bungling organization. I have every reason to believe that he will continue putting the finger on me. And someday, someone may get lucky."

"Why don't you kill this man?"

"He knows me. I'd never get close enough to him. So I have to hire the job done. And for that, I need a lot of money. And that is why the deal with the Marini Horse attracted me."

"And so you began to seek me out?"

"And so I began to seek you out." That was it. His story was improvised and thin, just covering the major events with little of that extraneous fabric that fills out the good lie. There was nothing to do now but sit and see how it went down.

Strange was silent for a time, his pale eyes looking phlegmatically out onto the salon scene playing mutely before him. Then he nodded slowly. "It is possible. Both your recent actions and my research into your past would seem to bear your story out. The only thing that disturbs me is the coincidence of it all. But then... I suppose coincidence exists." He turned to Jonathan and rested his pale eyes on him. "Why don't you take supper with Grace and me this evening. We can talk over the details of the Marini sale. Assuming all goes well, you might care to sample our exotic entertainments later. By way of a nightcap."

"I've had a hard day."

Strange laughed. "If it weren't so late and the streets weren't empty, I would tempt your fatigued appetite by sending a couple of my men out in a van to pick up something from the streets for you-fresh from the garden, you might say. A schoolgirl on her way home, perhaps, or a nun just back from confessional?"

"Don't you have some trouble with cooperation from those you abduct?"

"Oh... not if they're properly prepared. We use a concoction of hallucinogens and cantharis that seems to be effective-Oh, my dear Dr. Hemlock! I wish you could have seen the cloud of disgust that just swept over your face! I would have thought you had a more leathery conscience than that."

"It's not conscience. Just taste."

"In this business only the bizarre is profitable. The basic components of sex are so mundane: a little heat, a little friction, a little lubrication. One must dress up such cheap raw materials considerably if he hopes to vend them at high profit. Packaging is everything. But, ah... here we are at last."

Two-mouths entered through the mirror door bearing a tray with two glasses. Jonathan could not repress a surge of repulsion when he looked at Strange's glass, the gray-tan yeast powder already settling in the tangerine juice and collecting at the bottom. Strange sipped off some of the liquid, then swirled the remainder to carry the yeast back into temporary suspension while he drank it.

"Looks ghastly," Jonathan commented.

"You get used to it. In fact, one comes to rather like it."

Jonathan turned away in gastronomic self-defense. Out in the salon, one of the flapper hostesses caught his eye. As she chatted with a costumed customer, she brushed aside a vagrant wisp of amber hair with the back of her hand. She was only a few feet from the wall of one-way mirrors, and he could see the bottle green of her eyes.