think of some rational argument to the assertions of all the other delegates that Britain's colonial role in Ulster was as detrimental to world peace as the Middle East question, U.S. involvement in South America and Russia's in Afghanistan and Poland, about which topics there was no such agreement. Since his expertise was in tropical medicine, he hadn't come up with an answer.
'What on earth...' he began as Peregrine ran into him but this time Peregrine was determined to get a straight answer.
'See this?' he said jamming the revolver under Sir Arnold's nose with a ferocity that left no doubt what it was. 'Well, one sound out of you and I'm going to pull the trigger. Now, where's the Countess?'
'You tell me not to utter a sound and then you ask me a question? How do you expect me to answer?' asked Sir Arnold, who hadn't been debating the Irish question for nothing.
'Shut up,' said Peregrine and forced him through the nearest doorway and shut the door. 'Any funny tricks and your brains will be all over the ceiling.'
'Now look here, if you'd kindly remove that firearm from my left nostril we might be able to get down to the agenda,' said Sir Arnold, jumping to the natural conclusion that he was either dealing with one of the other delegates who'd gone clean off his head or, more probably, with the I.R.A.
'I said where's the Countess,' growled Peregrine.
'What Countess?'
'You know. If you don't answer it's curtains.'
'It rather sounds like it,' said Sir Arnold, buying time.
Upstairs a fresh problem had obviously arisen. 'Let me out,' bawled the erstwhile lover.
'I can't,' screamed the woman, 'I'm all tensed up.'
'As if I didn't know. And stop pulling my legs, you bastards. You want me to be disembowelled or something? Can't you see I'm dog-knotted?'
'Dear God,' said Sir Arnold, 'This is terrible.'
'Answer the question.'
'It rather depends on which countess you mean.'
'The Countess of Montcon.'
'Really? An unusually revealing name, and one that by the sound of things upstairs that young man would have found infinitely more inviting, don't you think?'
'Right,' said Peregrine. 'You've asked for it and you're going to get it.' And shoving Sir Arnold against the wall he aimed the revolver at him with both hands.
'All right, all right. As a matter of fact she's not here,' said the expert on bilharzia, deciding that, while he hadn't asked for anything, the time had come to invent something in preference to being shot. 'She's at Antibes.'
'And where's she live, this aunt?' asked Peregrine.
'Live?' said Sir Arnold, his sangfroid crumbling under this line of questioning and the discussion going on above. Some voluble woman who claimed to know all about dog-knotting from personal experience with her bull terriers had just tried throwing a bucket of cold water over the loving couple with predictably aggravating results.
'Shit,' yelled the young man. 'Get it into your stupid head I'm not a fucking bull terrier. Do that again I'll be clamped in a corpse.'
Sir Arnold dragged his attention away from this academic question and faced up to his imminent death. Peregrine had begun the countdown.
'Antibes is a place, for God's sake,' he said, beginning to gibber.
'I know that, but where?' demanded Peregrine.
'Near St Tropez.'
'And what's the address?'
