"What interests you so much out there?" Strange asked, joining him at the glass wall.

"Your clients," Jonathan said, indicating a group of men chatting with supercilious gravity, blithely ignorant of the risible effect of their outlandish costumes.

"Hm-m. Silly asses. Look at them, playing out their dumb show of authority and power. Pompously going through the motions of statecraft. They are finished as a people, the English, but they haven't sense to know it. There was a time when Darwinian laws applied to nations as well as to individuals-when the weak and incapable disappeared. If it hadn't been for the sentiment of other nations-yours particularly, Dr. Hemlock-1950 would have marked the end of this effete social organism. I enjoy making them dress up like that, and they take great delight in doing it. It's a national trait-pageantry, make-believe. A nation of people who thirst to be what they are not. That probably accounts for their production of so many gifted actors."

"You despise the British, then?"

"More scorn, I should say."

"But I thought the Germans rather admired and imitated them."

"Oh, we have much in common. Our weaknesses, to be specific. Our army organizations were modeled after theirs. It was the British, you know, who first experimented with the concentration camp as a vehicle for the final solution to genetic problems."

"No, I didn't know that."

"Oh, yes. In the Boer War. Twenty-six thousand women and children died of disease, malnutrition, and neglect. Vitriol in their sugar; small metal hooks implanted in their meat-that sort of business. Oh yes, the British have been world leaders in many things. But no longer. Now they inflict themselves on the Common Market and become the economic sick man of Europe. In fifteen years only Spain and Portugal will boast a lower standard of living. And it's their own fault. With myopic management and the laziest, least competent workmen in Europe, they suffer from congenital inefficiency. Not the placid, happy inefficiency of the Latins, with their manana mentalities and hedonistic lassitude. No, the British brand of incompetence is involute and labored. It's a bustling, nervous inefficiency that fails to make up in charm and quality of life what it sacrifices in productivity. The Briton has become a compromise between the Continental, whom he used to despise out of contempt, and the American, whom he now despises out of envy. His is a land of Old World technology and New World beauty. And that's all there is to say about the British."

Jonathan was going to protest against this gratuitous attack on their hosts when Strange continued, "You know, during the war there used to be a riddle in contempt of the Belgian army. One used to ask, 'What would you do if a Belgian soldier threw a hand grenade at you?' And the answer was, 'Pull out the pin, and throw it back.' If the question were asked of the British soldier, it would be totally academic because the hand grenades would arrive six months after the promised date of delivery, the workmanship would be faulty, and the army would be on strike anyway."

"If they disgust you so, why are you here?"

"The police, old man! It is a popular myth that British criminals are Europe's most clever, just barely kept in rein by the brain-children of Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming. These people glory in their train robbers and confidence men, their Robin Hoods from Stepney Green. It is typical of their blinkered Weltanschauung that it never occurs to them that it is not the dash and cleverness of their petty hoodlums that win the day, it is the monumental incompetence of their police. For a man in my profession, the British police are the most comfortable in Europe, just as the Dutch are the least. Of course, if you were interested in civil liberties, it would be quite the other way around. Surely the table is laid for supper by now. You must be looking forward to meeting Amazing Grace again."

Conversation in the small paneled dining room was light and oblique, never touching on the matter of the Marini Horse, nor indeed on the events that had led to this peculiar early morning supper. Amazing Grace conducted the chat with the skill of a geisha, giving both men opportunities to display wit, and leavening all with her personal touch of ribald earthiness. As was her preference in social moments, she was nude, and so the room was kept warm and cozy by a gas fire set in a fireplace of curiously wrought iron. While she and Jonathan dined on rack of lamb, Strange went through a series of dishes featuring pallid substances with mealy aromas. In place of the wine they enjoyed, he drank goat's milk. It was only with the fruit and cheese that his diet and theirs converged. The cheese board bore many cheeses, yet only one. There was Danish blue, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and Stilton. Strange explained that, next to yogurt, the blue-veined cheeses were best for digestion. The fruits were all organically grown and free from insecticides, and there were no bananas which, it seemed, were eatable only in the tropics where they were allowed to ripen naturally.

Jonathan admired the way in which Amazing Grace excelled as hostess, enthroned on her special elevated chair, and he remarked in passing that she had all the social graces of a parson's daughter, together with some of the traditionally suspected appetites.

"But I wasa parson's daughter," she said with a rich laugh. "Not that all that many people have heard of The First Evangelical Synagogue of the Blessed Lord and All His Works."

Two-mouths brought in the brandy and coffee on a tray, then joined Leonard against the wall in silent vigil.

"There's a certain social advantage to eating in the destructive way you two seem to enjoy," Strange said. "The arrival of brandy is the accepted signal for talk of business. And, as I have none of my own, may I use yours for that purpose?"

"Well, if things are going to get serious," Grace said, "I'll slip into a robe. I wouldn't want my bobbing little boobies distracting anyone."

Jonathan said that was a thoughtful gesture.

"All right," Strange began, flicking an imaginary bit of lint from his sleeve. "As you know, I intend to turn the Marini Horse into liquid money. The other evening, when I broached that possibility to you, you said that the five million pounds I was expecting to get would cause some comment in art circles."

"More like a riot, I'd say."

"Even if the figure were arrived at in public auction at Sotheby's?"

"Particularly then. Marini is still alive; his work lacks the fiscal kudos of his death. And after all, the man is a Modern."

"Yes, I am aware of your reactionary preferences in art. I've read a couple of your books by way of trying to understand your personality. But the abstract artistic value of the casting is not to the point here. What I am interested in is getting the price I want without undue public notice. More specifically, Dr. Hemlock, I want forty-eight hours from the time of the sale before there is any official reaction. Can you arrange that?"

"At a price."

"That's my kind of man!" Grace interjected.

"What price?" Strange asked.

"Well, naturally, I would like to get whatever the market will bear. But I'm afraid my native greed will have to give way to a very real interest in survival. I told you that I have to hire a man to put that CII official away before he fingers me again. I estimate that that will cost me about fifty thousand dollars."

"So much?"

"He's a deep man, hard to get at."

"Very well, fifty thousand then."

"A little more, I'm afraid. To pull this off, I shall need baksheesh to spread around among the local critics and newspaper people-mostly indirect baksheesh, of course."

"Give me a total," Strange said curtly.

"Thirty thousand pounds."

Strange and Grace exchanged glances. "Your services are dear," Strange said.