against his cheek each time they turned a corner. He was cramped and stiff, but there was no pain in his head, as there ought to have been. The sick dream of it all was intensified by the dark, so he opened his eyes, and he found himself looking strabismally at the glossy tips of a pair of patent leather shoes not four inches from his nose. Light came and went in raking flashes as they passed by lights.
It was as he tried to sit up that the pain came—a vast swooning lump of it, as though someone were forcing a sharp fragment of ice through the arteries of his brain. His eyes teared involuntarily with the pain, but when it passed, it passed completely, not even leaving behind the throb of a headache. He struggled to a sitting position. They were in a taxi. The three men with him watched his efforts dully, without speaking or offering help. He got to his knees, pulled down the jump seat, and sat on it heavily. There were two men across from him on the back seat, and a third beside him on the other jump seat. The streaked drops of rain on the windows glittered with each passing streetlamp.
He looked down. There was no registration number for the cab in the usual frame between the jump seats. They had evidently taken a leaf from the Chicago gangs, using a private taxi for basic transportation because its vehicular anonymity allowed it to prowl the streets at any hour of the night without arousing undue attention.
The driver, unmoving on his side of the glass partition, was undoubtedly one of them. There were neither door nor window handles on the inside of the passenger compartment. Very professional. Unaided, the driver could deliver a man without additional guard.
Jonathan took stock of the men with him. He could forget the driver. Drivers are never leaders. The man on the jump seat lifted his hand to his swollen, discolored mouth from time to time, gingerly touching the split upper lip. That must be the one who had the misfortune to stick his head out the bathroom window. He inadvertently inhaled orally, and winced with pain as the cold air touched the exposed nerves of his broken front teeth. Jonathan was glad he wasn't alone with this one. The owner of the patent leather shoes who sat facing him was a furtive little man with nervous eyes and a tentative moustache. A diagonal scar, more like a brand than a cut, ran in a glairy groove from the right cheek to the left point of his chin, intersecting his lips and moustache, and giving him the appearance of having two mouths. He sat well over against his armrest to make room for the third man, whose great bulk was arranged in an expansive sprawl. That would be the leader of this little squad. Jonathan addressed him.
'I assume we're going to The Cloisters?' Viscously, the big man brought his heavy-lidded eyes to rest on Jonathan's face where they settled without recognition, not even shifting from eye to eye. The broad face was dominated by an overhanging brow, and his slab cheeks flanked an oval mouth, the thick, kidney-colored lips of which were always moist. So extreme was the droop of his eyelids that he tilted back his head to see, exposing only the bottom half of his pupils. Jonathan recognized the psychological type. He had met them occasionally when working for CII. They were used in low priority sanctions because they were effective, cheap, and expendable. Often they would do 'wet work' without pay. Violence was a pleasurable outlet for them.
Attempts at conversation were not going to be fruitful, so Jonathan set to examining his condition. He explored the base of his skull with his fingers and found it only a little tender. The nose was clear, and he could focus his eyes rapidly, so there hadn't been any concussion. The openhanded slap to the back of the neck with which P'tit Noel had put him away is one of the premiere blows in the repertory of violence. It can kill without a bruise and is undetectable without an autopsy to reveal blood clots and ruptured capillaries in the brain. But to use the blow in its middle ranges requires a fine touch. Jonathan had to admire P'tit Noel's skill. Not bad... for a lawyer.
Despite the Haitian's professional art, Jonathan was a mess. His trousers were torn and filthy, his jacket was scuffed from the chimney climb up the brick wall, and he had no shoes. For his meeting with Maximilian Strange, he would lack the social poise and sartorial one-upmanship he usually enjoyed. Even among these goons, he felt awkward.
'Sorry about those teeth of yours, pal,' he said unkindly. 'You're really going to make a haul when the Tooth Fairy comes around.'
The man on the jump seat produced a compound of growl and sneer, which he instantly regretted as the in- suck of air made him twist his head in pain.
The taxi was easing down a steep cobble street, past what appeared through the streaked windows to be large villas of the late eighteenth century. But then they passed an anachronous modern shopping plaza that looked like a project by a first-year design student in a polytechnic. It seemed carved in soap, and the dissonance it obtruded into the fashionable district spoke eloquently of the truism that the modern Englishman deserves his architectural heritage as much as the modern Italian merits the Roman heritage of efficiency and military prowess. Then they turned and reentered an area of fine old houses. Jonathan recognized the district as Hampstead: Tory homes amid Labour inconveniences.
The taxi turned up through open iron gates and into a driveway that curved past the front entrance. They continued around and to the back of the sprawling stone house and pulled up at the rear. The driver stepped out and opened the door for them.
Directed by small unnecessary nudges from behind, Jonathan was conducted into a dimly lit waiting room where two of them stood guard over him while the kidney-lipped hulk passed on upstairs, ostensibly to announce their arrival. Jonathan used this time to sort himself out. Alone, unarmed, rumpled, and off pace, he had to ready himself for whatever turns and twists this evening might take. He stood with his back against a wall and his knees locked to support his weight. Closing his eyes, he ignored his guards as he touched his palms together, the thumbs beneath his chin, the forefingers pressed against his lips. He exhaled completely and breathed very shallowly, using only the bottom of his lungs, sharply reducing his intake of oxygen. Holding the image of the still pool in his mind, he brought his face ever closer to its surface, until he was under.
'All right! You! Let's go!' The dapper little man with two mouths touched Jonathan's shoulder. 'Let's go!'
Jonathan opened his eyes slowly. Ten or fifteen minutes had passed, but he was refreshed and his mind was quiet and controlled.
They led him up a narrow staircase and through a door.
He winced and held up his hand to screen away the painfully bright light.
'Here,' Two-mouths said, 'put these on.' He passed Jonathan a pair of round dark glasses that cupped into the eye sockets and had an elastic cord to go around the head.
Six sunlamps on stands were the source of the painful ultraviolet light, and on one of the low exercise tables between the banks of lamps was a man, nude save for a scanty posing pouch, doing sit-ups as a flabby masseur held his ankles for leverage.
Everyone in the room wore the dark green eyecups. Looking around, Jonathan was put in mind of photographs he had seen of Biafran victims with their eyes shot out.
'Welcome...' The exerciser grunted with his sit-up, and he swung forward to touch his forehead to his knees, then lay back again. 'Welcome to the Emerald City, Dr. Hemlock. How many is that, Claudio?'
'Seventy-two, sir.'
Jonathan recognized the voice just an instant before he recalled the face behind the green eyecups. It was the classically beautiful Renaissance man he had met with Vanessa Dyke at Tomlinson's Galleries. The man with the Marini Horse.
'I assume you're Maximilian Strange?' Jonathan said.
'All right, Claudio. That will be enough.' Strange sat on the edge of the padded exercise table and pulled off the eye guards as the ultraviolet lamps were turned off. Taking his glasses off, Jonathan found the normal light in the room oddly cold and feeble in contrast to the glare of the lamps in the hotter end of the spectrum. 'I regret your having to wait downstairs while I finished my exercise, Dr. Hemlock. But routine is routine.' Strange lay down on the table, and Claudio started to cover him with a thick, cream-colored grease, beginning with the face and neck and working downward. 'There is a popular myth, Dr. Hemlock, that exposure to the sun ages one's skin and causes wrinkles. Actually, it's the loss of skin oils that sins against the complexion. An immediate treatment with pure lanolin will replace them adequately. You said you
'No. How could I?'
'How indeed? Do you take good care of your body?'
'No particular care. I try to keep it from being stabbed and clubbed and suchlike. But that's all.'
