"Don't!" she said aloud. "Please don't."

He made a wry face at her histrionics. She shrugged; she had never pretended to be an actress.

"Do you remember last night?" he asked aloud. Then whispering he added, "You were fantastic." The danger of this double-talk was mischievously exciting, and they were in a docilely playful mood.

"Yes, I remember," she said aloud, as though ashamed. "I remember your name and... what we did. But how did I get here?"

"You don't recall that?"

"Something... a needle. I can't remember all of it." She whispered, "The Vicar wants to see you this evening at his place. Something important has come up."

"Well, don't worry about it, honey," he told the microphone. "I'm sure they'll pay you for your trouble. And it really wasn't all that bad, was it?"

"Was I... was I good?" Her voice carried that tone of nuzzling coyness Jonathan associated with sticky mornings after, once the phase of self-recrimination had been passed. He was sorry she knew it.

"Don't worry about it," he said aloud. "You're probably a fine cook."

By way of punishment, she ran the tip of her tongue into his ear.

"Hey!"

"What is it?" she asked aloud, all innocence.

"I just remembered the time. It's late and I have worlds to conquer." He rose from bed and went into the bathroom to bathe and shave.

"Will I see you again?" she asked, enjoying the game of acting for the microphone.

"What?" he shouted from the next room over the rush of water.

"Will I see you again?"

"Certainly. Certainly. I'll look you up!"

"You don't even know my name!"

"That's all right. I'm not nosy!"

"Bastard," she muttered quietly, feeling clever about introducing just the right note of the girl whose innocence has been around.

He arrived for breakfast in the paneled dining room to find that Strange and Grace had finished and were having a last cup of tea-Earl Grey for her, rose hip for him.

"Good morning," Jonathan said cheerily. "Sorry I'm late. Slept like a hammered steer."

"Doubtless the effect of a clear conscience," Strange observed, as he broke off a bit of dry toast and put it into his mouth, rubbing his fingers together lightly to flick off crumbs that might otherwise have dropped onto his spotless white flannels.

Jonathan lifted the covers of serving dishes on the sideboard and found some eggs with chives. "And how are you this morning-or early afternoon?" He addressed Amazing Grace, who was sitting nude in a broad shaft of sunlight, her body stretched out to receive the warmth, her eyes almost closed with feline pleasure. Her tea saucer was balanced on her ecu, and from Jonathan's angle it seemed that her crotch was steaming into the sunlight. He crossed to her and cupped one of her conical breasts in his palm. "I'm going to get you one of these days," he warned.

She opened her eyes. "God, you're a horny one. Didn't that Irish bit drain you off a little?"

"She's an hors d'oeuvre type; you, on the other hand, are meat and potatoes."

"You sure got a sweet way with words, honey bun."

Jonathan sat across from Strange and began to eat his eggs with appetite.

"You are in high spirits today, Dr. Hemlock."

"There's been a big load lifted from me."

"You speak of the official in Washington you intend to silence?"

"What else?" He poured himself some coffee. "Say, that girl was an odd one. Do you know what she said to me, right off the bat?"

"That she loved you?" Strange asked, unable to pass up the opportunity to show off.

Jonathan set his cup down and looked up in surprise, "Yes. How did you...?" Then he laughed. "The room was bugged. Of course."

"They all are. I listened to your tapes this morning as I went over my accounts. A kind of Muzak to lighten my labors."

"I'll be damned. That should have occurred to me. How do you think the girl will take being jabbed full of junk, then drilled by a stranger?"

"The process differs from romantic love only in degree and efficiency. She's a modern young lady. I judge she'll be satisfied with a handsome bonus. By the way, she called you a bastard while you were in the shower."

"Is that right? And I thought I had her by the heart. Just goes to show how vulnerable the congenital romantic can be. Would you pass the toast?"

Breakfast progressed with small talk of the kind designed to cover meaning. It was not until Grace left to dress and return to the Cellar d'Or that Strange got down to business.

"I assume you have thought about the task before you, Dr. Hemlock?"

"I have some ideas. If things work out just right, we should be able to get your asking price for the Horse without government inquiry. But I'll have to play it largely by ear, and I'll need your permission to use a free hand in making the arrangements."

Strange glanced at him. "What kind of arrangements?"

"I'm not sure yet. But I'll have to do something bold-some grand gesture that will blind them with its obviousness. By the way, I'll need some of that money for grease and baksheesh."

"How much?"

"All of it?"

Strange laughed. "Really, Dr. Hemlock!"

"Just thought I'd try. I suppose ten thousand pounds would do it."

Strange's pale eyes evaluated Jonathan for a long moment. "Very well. The money will be ready for you when you leave."

"Good."

"Ah-h, Dr. Hemlock... Don't think of doing anything foolhardy. Please remember that unfortunate fellow who was found impaled in the belfry of St. Martin's-In-The-Fields."

"I get the picture. Is there more coffee?"

"Certainly. Leonard did that business at my request, not that the impulsive devil didn't get pleasure from it on his own. The informer was drugged and brought to the church, where the stake had earlier been set in place. They lifted the fellow to just above it, the point lightly touching his anus. Then Leonard jumped down and swung his weight from his ankles, driving him well on. Gravity did the rest. But with that unhurried pace characteristic of natural forces." Strange laid his hand on Jonathan's arm and squeezed it paternally. "I hope you understand why I am burdening you with the lurid details."

"Yes, I understand."

"Good. Good." He patted the arm and withdrew his hand.

Jonathan's eyes were clouded with his gentle combat smile when he said, "Tell me. Would you mind passing the marmalade?"

The lone painter who worked with tunnel concentration before a vast canvas in MacTaint's converted fruit warehouse was the ragged, furious man with long skinny arms who had come to assume over the years that the space, the stove, and the tea were his by squatter's right. He snapped his head around angrily as Jonathan pushed open the corrugated metal door, allowing a gust of wind to enter with him. The painter continued to fix Jonathan with a wild stare until the door had been slid to, guillotining the offending shaft of blue daylight that had intruded on the yellow pool of tungsten light from the naked bulb hanging from a long frayed cord.

Jonathan's light greeting was parried by a rasping growl as the painter used the interruption as an opportunity to heap another shovelful of coal into the large potbellied stove. As a final gesture of impatience, he kicked the stove door closed violently, almost immediately regretting that he was not wearing shoes.

Receiving no answer to his light knock on the inner door, but hearing a voice from within, Jonathan pushed the door open and looked in. Lilla was sprawled in a deep wing chair before the television, a half-empty glass of gin dangling from her pudgy hand and the crumbs of some earlier feast decorating the front of her feathered dressing gown. In a self-satisfied drone of BBC English, a commentator was summing up the industrial situation which, it appeared, was not so bad as it might be. True, the gas workers were on strike, as were the train drivers, the teachers, the hospital workers, the automotive workers, and the truckers; but the dockers might soon return to work, and there was a chance that the threatened strikes of the civil servants, the electricians, the printers, the construction workers, and the miners might be delayed if the government conceded to their demands.