'You asked for me,' the Boy said. 'I got your letter.'
'Surely,' Mr. Colleoni said, making a little bewildered motion with his hands, 'you are not Mr. P.
Brown?' He explained: 'I expected someone a good deal older.'
'You asked for me,' the Boy said.
The little raisin eyes took him in: the sponged suit and the narrow shoulders, the cheap black shoes. 'I thought Mr. Kite...'
'Kite's dead,' the Boy said. 'You know that.'
'I missed it,' Mr. Colleoni said. 'Of course that makes a difference.'
'You can talk to me,' the Boy said, 'instead of Kite.'
Mr. Colleoni smiled. 'I don't think it's necessary,' he said.
'You'd better,' the Boy said. Little chimes of laughter came from the American Bar and the chink, chink, chink of ice. A page came out of the Louis Seize Writing Room, called: 'Sir Joseph Montagu, Sir Joseph Montagu,' and passed into the Pompadour Boudoir.
The spot of damp, where Billy's iron had failed to pass, above the Boy's breast pocket was slowly fading out in the hot Cosmopolitan air.
Mr. Colleoni put out a hand and gave him a quick pat, pat, pat on the arm. 'Come with me,' he said. He led the way, walking on glace tiptoe past the settee, where the Jewesses whispered, past a little table where a man was saying: 'I told him ten thousand's my limit' to an old man who sat with closed eyes above his chilling tea. Mr. Colleoni looked over his shoulder and said gently: 'The service here is not what it used to be.'
He looked into the Louis Seize Writing Room. A woman in mauve with an untimely tiara was writing a letter in a vast jumble of chinoiserie. Mr. Colleoni withdrew. 'We'll go where we can talk in peace,' he said and tiptoed back across the lounge. The old man had opened his eyes and was testing his tea with his finger. Mr. Colleoni led the way to the gilt grille of the lift. 'Number fifteen,' he said. They rose angelically towards peace. 'Cigar?' Mr. Colleoni asked.
'I don't smoke,' the Boy said. A last squeal of gaiety came from below, from the American Bar, the last syllable of the page boy returning from the Pompadour Boudoir: 'Gu,' before the gates slid back and they were in the padded sound-proof passage. Mr. Colleoni paused and lit his cigar.
'Let's have a look at that lighter,' the Boy said.
Mr. Colleoni's small shrewd eyes shone blankly under the concealed pervasive electric glow. He held it out. The Boy turned it over and looked at the hall mark. 'Real gold,' he said.
'I like things good,' Mr. Colleoni said, unlocking a door. 'Take a chair.' The armchairs, stately red velvet couches stamped with crowns in gold and silver thread, faced the wide seaward windows, and the wrought-iron balconies. 'Have a drink.'
'I don't drink,' the Boy said.
'Now,' Mr. Colleoni said, 'who sent you?'
'No one sent me.'
'I mean who's running your mob if Kite's dead.'
'I'm running it,' the Boy said.
Mr. Colleoni politely checked a smile, tapping his thumb nail with the gold lighter.
'What happened to Kite?'
'You know that story,' the Boy said. He gazed across at the Napoleonic crowns, the silver thread.
'You won't want to hear the details. It wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been crossed. A journalist thought he could put over one on us.'
'What journalist's that?'
'You ought to read the inquests,' the Boy said, staring out through the window at the pale arch of sky against which a few light clouds blew up.
Mr. Colleoni looked at the ash on his cigar; it was half an inch long; he sat deep down in his armchair, and crossed his little plump thighs contentedly.
'I'm not saying anything about Kite,' the Boy said.
'He trespassed.'
'You mean,' Mr. Colleoni said, 'you aren't interested in automatic machines?'
'I mean,' the Boy said, 'that trespassing's not healthy.'
A little wave of musk came over the room from the handkerchief in Mr. Colleoni 's breast pocket.
'It'd be you who'd need protection,' the Boy said.
'IVe got all the protection I need,' Mr. Colleoni said. He shut his eyes; he was snug; the huge moneyed hotel lapped him round; he was at home. The Boy sat on the edge of his chair because he didn't believe in relaxing during business hours; it was he who looked like an alien in this room, not Mr. Colleoni.
'You are wasting your time, my child,' Mr. Colleoni said. 'You can't do me any harm.' He laughed gently. 'If you want a job though, come to me. I like push. I dare say I could find room for you. The world needs young people with energy.' The hand with the cigar moved expansively, mapping out the world as Mr. Colleoni visualised it: lots of little electric clocks controlled by Greenwich, buttons on a desk, a good suite on the first floor, accounts audited, reports from agents, silver, cutlery, glass.
'I'll be seeing you on the course,' the Boy said.
'You'll hardly do that,' Mr. Colleoni said. 'I haven't been to a racecourse, let me see, it must be twenty years.' There wasn't a point, he seemed to be indicating, fingering his gold lighter, at which their worlds touched: the week-end at the Cosmopolitan, the portable dictaphone beside the desk, had not the smallest connexion with Kite slashed quickly with razors on a railway platform, the grubby hand against the skyline signalling to the bookie from the stand, the heat, the dust fuming up over the half-crown enclosure, the smell of bottled beer.
'I'm just a business man,' Mr. Colleoni softly explained. 'I don't need to see a race. And nothing you might try to do to my men could affect me. I've got two in hospital now. It doesn't matter. They have the best attention. Flowers, grapes... I can afford it. I don't have to worry. I'm a business man,' Mr. Colleoni went expansively and good-humour edly on. 'I like you. You're a promising youngster. That's why I'm talking to you like a father. You can't damage a business like mine.'
'I could damage you,' the Boy said.
'It wouldn't pay. There wouldn't be any faked alibis for you. It would be your witnesses who'd be scared. I'm a business man.' The raisin eyes blinked as the sun slanted in across a bowl of flowers and fell on the deep carpet. 'Napoleon the Third used to have this room,' Mr. Colleoni said, 'and Eug&iie.'
'Who was she?'
'Oh,' Mr. Colleoni said vaguely, 'one of those foreign polonies.' He plucked a flower and stuck it in his buttonhole, and something a little doggish peeped out of the black buttony eyes, a hint of the seraglio.
'I'll be going,' the Boy said. He rose and moved to the door.
'You do understand me, don't you?' Mr. Colleoni said without moving--holding his hand very still he kept the cigar ash, quite a long ash now, suspended.
'Brewer's been complaining. You don't do that again.
And Tate... you mustn't try tricks with Tate.' His old Semitic face showed few emotions but a mild amusement, a mild friendliness; but suddenly sitting there in the rich Victorian room, with the gold lighter in his pocket and the cigar case on his lap, he looked as a man might look who owned the whole world, the whole visible world, that is: the cash registers and policemen and prostitutes, Parliament and the laws which say 'this is Right and this is Wrong.'
'I understand all right,' the Boy said. 'You think our mob's too small for you.'
'I employ a great many people,' Mr. Colleoni said.
The Boy closed the door; a loose shoelace tapped all the way down the passage; the huge lounge was almost empty: a man in plus fours waited for a girl. The visible world was all Mr. Colleoni's. The spot where the iron hadn't passed was still a little damp over the Boy's breast.
A hand touched the Boy's arm. He looked round and recognised the man in a bowler hat. He nodded guardedly. ' Morning.'
'They told me at Billy's,' the man said, 'you'd come here.'
The Boy's heart missed a beat: for almost the first time it occurred to him that the law could hang him, take him out in a yard, drop him in a pit, bury him in lime, put an end to the great future....
