'Personally, I'd like to get around to the topic of the sale of the Marini Horse. Focusing our attention particularly on what profit I can expect from it.'
Strange laughed. 'In due course. After all, we're still not absolutely sure that you are going to survive this interrogation, are we? Come along.'
The center mirror hinged open like a door, swilling the scores of reflected images around the room in a blurred rush. They passed into a small sitting room about the size and shape of a projection booth, dimly lit, its walls made of glass. Three sides looked out onto the principal salon of The Cloisters: a large, brilliantly illuminated room in the Art Deco style. Glass beads, mechanical foliage, repetitious angular motifs, rainbow and sunrise patterns pressed into buffed aluminum wall panels.
The patrons were dressed in extravagant costumes provided by the management; and shepherdesses, devils, inquisitors, cavaliers, and Mickey Mouses lounged about, chatting, drinking, laughing. But all this panoply was in pantomime; the glass walls were soundproof.
Moving among the patrons were half a dozen hostesses dressed in flapper style: long loops of beads, cloche-bobbed hair, bound breasts under silk frocks, rolled-down hose exposing rouged and dimpled knees. With their artificial lashes of the stiff 'surprise' style, their beauty spots, and their bee-stung lips, they looked like mannequins in back issues of high fashion magazines as they served drinks and exotic canape's, or bent over patrons in teasing, flirtatious conversation.
One of the patrons, a Catherine de Medici of uncertain years, with face skin tight from cosmetic surgery that had not included her wattle, approached the glass wall and stared in unabashedly. She moistened the tip of her little finger with the tip of her tongue and made a minute adjustment in her eye liner, then she patted the back of her hair, turned and took a long appreciative sideways glance into the room before pivoting away to greet an approaching highwayman with the boneless face, whimpering smile, and lank hair of his class.
'One-way mirrors,' Strange said unnecessarily as he settled into a deep leather chair after carefully hitching up the crease of his trousers. 'The decor was Grace's idea. There is something fundamentally evil about the New People of the 1920s that seems to liberate our customers.'
Jonathan stood near the one-way glass wall and looked out, his arms folded on his chest. 'Art Deco was a monstrous moment in art. When the flamboyant decay of Art Nouveau percolated down to the masses, through the intermediary of machine reproduction, it was unavoidable that the half-trained, ungifted, self-indulgent artists would proclaim the resultant hodgepodge a new art form. After all, here was something even
'Oh, I am terribly sorry that our taste doesn't please you. But,
'Nonsense. It's the only thing really worth disputing.'
Strange laughed shallowly. Laughter was his substitute for smiling, preferred because it did not necessitate creasing the cheeks. And there were as many tones to his laughter as there are nuances in other people's smiles. 'At all events, I enjoy this little chamber here. We call it the Aquarium. But it's an aquarium in reverse. The fish are out there in the salon, and the amused observers here in the bowl. And it is charming to realize that that room out there contains a good fifty percent of the real governmental power in Britain.'
'All gathered here to find respite from the heavy burdens of leadership by losing themselves in the ecstasy of your contrived orgies?'
'You shouldn't sneer at the exoticism of our offerings. Quite naturally, our patrons expect something out of the ordinary: prenubile girls, catamites, fellatio—that sort of thing. One cannot blame them. Coming here for common garden variety sex would be like ordering sausage, chips, and two veg at Maxim's. But what is really amusing is that half the silly asses out there don't even know what goes on in our splendid cloaca. They believe The Cloisters is only a fashionable, bizarre, and exclusive club with excellent food and wine and charming hostesses.'
'Oh? The flapper types aren't hookers?'
'Oh, no. Young models, aspiring actresses, university girls—just window dressing. The costuming goes with the decor. The more enterprising and promising graduate to the more lucrative activities upstairs, but most of them stay with us only a month or so, then pass on to duller activities: careers, marriages, such like. We're constantly replacing hostesses. But I am forgetting my duties as host. I have promised you refreshment. May I suggest brewer's yeast in fresh tangerine juice?'
'It's tempting. But I think I'll have scotch. Do you have Laphroaig?'
Strange turned the question to the dapper, two-mouthed minion who stood behind them, having accompanied them into the Aquarium while Leonard was dressing.
'I'll see, sir.' But he did not depart until Leonard came in to relieve him.
'I'm afraid I'm not up on the finer points of scotch,' Strange said. 'I never drink alcohol. By the way, tell me about the man we found dead in your bathroom. Who was he?'
'I don't know,' Jonathan said as smoothly as possible. He had been anticipating this tactic of the sudden question.
'Who killed him?'
'I did.'
Strange looked at Jonathan with frank admiration at the immediacy of the answer. 'Go on,' he said, after a nod of approval.
'It was because of that man that I came looking for you. You've discovered that I used to work for CII in counterassassination. The work was not so dangerous as one might think. Since my targets were men who had assassinated CII agents, they typically came from a level of society neither lamented nor avenged—not by the various law enforcement agencies, at any rate. And, because I took random assignments, I could never be tied to the death by motive. Typically, I never met the mark before the moment of the hit. But... but because society is not yet prepared to counter the problem of overpopulation by sterilizing and terminating rotten and unproductive genetic stock, my targets were not without relatives.
'From the few babbled words he got out before I shot him, it appears that he was the brother of some forgotten mark. He had come to retrieve the family honor, such as it was.'
'But you shot him first.'
'Just so.'
'And left him in your
'I didn't pick the meeting ground. Bathrooms have tile floors that are easily cleaned up.'
Strange nodded appreciatively. 'I see.'
Leonard entered from behind and replaced Two-mouths, who went off to fetch the drinks.
'You certainly got rid of the body quickly. Our men returned to your rooms a few hours after first discovering the corpse, and it was gone. How did you manage that?'
'I'll make you a deal. I won't ask you how to run a whorehouse, and you don't ask me about assassination.'
'That seems fair enough. You mentioned that this business in your bathroom was linked in some way to your desire to penetrate The Cloisters. Would you amplify that a bit?'
'While that poor ass was babbling about how he had been on my trail for years, he let slip the name of the person who had fingered me. He was waving a gun in my face, and I suppose he imagined I would not live to benefit from the information.'
'By the way, how did you kill this man?'
'With his own gun.'
'How did you get it from him?'
'How do you keep your girls from getting clap?'
Strange laughed. 'All right, all right. Go on.'
'The informant was a man highly placed in CII. A man who never liked me because I could not pass up opportunities to point out the more blatant stupidities of that asinine and bungling organization. I have every reason to believe that he will continue putting the finger on me. And someday, someone may get lucky.'
'Why don't you kill this man?'
'He knows me. I'd never get close enough to him. So I have to hire the job done. And for that, I need a lot of money. And that is why the deal with the Marini Horse attracted me.'
