Текст книги "The Power Cube Affair"

Автор книги: John T. Phillifent

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"Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin, sir."

Miss Thompson's room had been filing cabinets, a desk and a long window expanse. This room carried on the window along the whole of one wall, but the other three walls were solid with maps. From behind a cluttered desk with four telephones, each a different color, Barnett rose and stood, unfriendly. He was tall, broad shouldered, giving the impression of having been tailored to fit his uniform. And handsome enough to assure him a living as a toothpaste model if ever the navy decided to dispense with his services. As soon as the door was safely shut he barked:

"Very well, what is this all in aid of?"

Solo shrugged, not liking the tone at all. By way of reply he stepped up to the desk, pulled the newspaper out of his pocket and spread it out for Barnett to stare at. There was no need for speech, yet. Barnett looked down, stiffened, and the fresh color drained from his face. He sat, groping for the chair, picked up the newspaper with a shaking hand, and read it carefully.

"My God!" he breathed. "That's—but it can't be! At Hastings? In a delinquent mob? There must be some mistake."

"No mistake," Solo assured him. "That is who you think it is. And she didn't die at Hastings, but somewhere else. She talked, just a little, before the end. Enough to identify."

I'm curious," Kuryakin said, in a deceptively mild tone. "Naval Intelligence, and you can't get as far as the front page of this morning's newspaper without help?"

"She never told you that!" Barnett was suddenly savage.

"She never said anything like that," Solo admitted. "We deduced it. Wrongly, maybe. But she gave us a message to pass on to you."

Barnett had control of himself now, his face gray but calm.

"Very well. Deliver it. No, just a moment!" He rose suddenly, almost ran to the door to open it and call, "Louise, dear, lay on some coffee, would you? Better get it yourself, you know how slack they are in the canteen." He came back, walking heavily. "All ears and tongue, that girl. Now, that message, if you please. And you do understand, I hope, that I can't do any explaining. At all. I could be up to the neck in trouble as it is just by having you two here."

"I was hoping for explanations. In fact I intend to have them. I want to know what kind of brainless setup let her in for what she got—before I deliver any message, to you or anyone else. You say you're not in Intelligence?"

"I am not. This is my job, right here." Barnett flung out an arm to embrace the walls full of maps. "Home and Mediterranean Fleet disposal. Nothing else. My relationship with—her—is—was—something utterly private. Nothing to do with this. Or you."

"You're not the big man," Kuryakin said, with sudden insight. Barnett stared at him. The Russian agent went on deliberately. "You're just a cog, or a link in some chain. If we gave you this message, you'd pass it along to somebody else."

Solo listened approvingly. Barnett's face gave away the accuracy of Illya's guessing. "We want to meet the man who tells you what to do, the man to whom you'd pass this message. Or we don't deliver."

"That's telling him, Illya. Look, mister, a very good friend of ours is on his back in the hospital right now because he stepped in to help—her. We are making this our business, and we deal with the head man, or nothing."

Barnett sagged, reached for his chair again and slumped into it. His handsome face was wet with perspiration. "You don't know what you're asking. I can't make that kind of decision!"

"You don't have to. Just talk to him. Tell him what we've said."

Barnett shook his head, not as a negative but like a man recovering from a solid punch. "I don't know. This is so– damnable! Mary! I can't take it in yet." The outer door clicked open and the gorgeous Miss Thompson came in pushing a tea cart. Barnett rose urgently, came around his desk at a trot and swerved to pass Miss Thompson.

"Look after them, dear," he muttered. "Give them anything they want. I won't be long!"

"Well!" She stared wide eyed, then busied herself with the ceremony of pouring, a process involving a degree of stooping and wriggling that Solo couldn't bear to watch. "Milk and sugar for both of you?"

"Please!" Solo said, then before he could help himself he added, "The view is certainly something, up here!"

"Yes, isn't it?" she cooed. "It's a pity, really, that not many people get this far, to see it properly." She finished pouring, took a cup herself, and hitched herself recklessly onto the edge of the desk, perching one foot on Barnett's chair. "I wonder why Roger ran off like that."

"Went to phone someone," Solo answered, then looked at the colored array on the desk and frowned. To cover the gaffe he ventured, "Just you and Captain Barnett up here alone all day?"

"It's dreadfully dull," she confessed. "After all, you can get fed up with just looking, can't you?"

Solo smiled uneasily, eased the collar from his neck and turned away to look out of the window. The click of the door saved him from trying to go on with the impossible conversation. Miss Thompson slid leggily down from the desk and departed. Barnett shut the door firmly after her, his face set.

"You're in," he said forcefully, "and don't blame me if you find yourself something a lot bigger and nastier than you imagine. You have a last chance to deliver that message to me and forget all about it—"

"Nothing doing!"

"All right. On your own heads. By eight o'clock tonight you're to find your own way to a place called Ferrier's. It's a club, of a sort, not hard to find. There'll be a table for you. The headwaiter's name is Mario Scarabella. You'll be met."

"Cloak and dagger stuff," Kuryakin snorted, from his stance by the big window. "Should we give some password or other?"

"You'll be met," Barnett repeated between his teeth. "And you'll be judged. On trial. All right?"

"Fair enough," Solo admitted. "We'll be there."

Miss Thompson gave them a beaming smile as they left.

Outside, they managed to hail a taxi and told him where to go.

"And what do you make of all that, Illya?" Solo murmured.

"Chiefly, that we have been fed a lot of myths, what with the Royal Navy being all stern and seaworthy, and the British being a law abiding people, according to you."

"You can do your funny act later. Right now it looks as if somebody doesn't want us in on whatever is going on."

"That much, at any rate, is familiar. What is puzzling me just a bit is what I saw in Miss Thompson's office."

"What?" Solo was mildly curious. He hadn't been able to notice anything beyond the gorgeous Miss Thompson herself.

"On her window ledge. The biggest pair of binoculars I ever saw!"

"Hah!" Solo snorted in disgust. "According to Barnett she's all ears and tongue. According to you she has big binoculars. What's wrong with everybody all of a sudden?" The taxi purred on in silence for a while, then Solo gave tongue again. "Hold it, driver, we'll get off here!"

"What now?" Kuryakin queried as the cab slid away.

"We can walk to the hotel, it's not far. I want a paper, see if there's anything more about the girl, if they've identified her yet."

They hadn't, and the midday account was patently a blowup of the few details in the first edition. The two men strolled the rest of the way, and thus came to the side road leading to their destination in time to see a remarkable incident. Just ahead of them a taxi pulled in to the curb to discharge two men, and whirled away again. The two turned to go down the same lane that Solo and Kuryakin were heading for.

Out of the casual mill of midday pedestrians, from archways and doorways, from behind corners and lamp posts, a dozen leather-jacketed long-haired youths seemed to materialize, to group, to close in on the unsuspecting two. And then, so fast and unexpected that it caught the two observers completely by surprise, the group exploded into a savage melee of fists and kicks, bashings and stampings, and then, as rapidly as it had gathered, the mob dispersed, and all that remained were two crushed and unconscious bodies on the pavement.

The whole thing had taken no more than fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds more and there was mild uproar, a pressing crowd, policemen, and the urgent clang of an ambulance.

Solo stirred, shook himself, and looked at his companion.

"You notice anything odd about those two, Illya?"

"I did. To the casual glance, the uninformed eye, they might have been mistaken for us."

"Coincidence, you think?"

"Or a pair of big binoculars and some fast work on the telephone. The law abiding British?'

"She's such a pretty girl, too. I'm looking forward to Ferrier's!"

THREE

FERRIER'S WAS a little harder to find than they expected. The outside neon was faint, the doorway discreetly hidden away in a side alley, the unremarkable door yielding to a stairway that went down into red half light and mirrors. A massive doorman asked their names, then let them through a swinging mirror into muted bedlam compounded of shrill voices, jarring music and swirling rainbow lights. The head waiter, a thick necked Italian, would have fitted better into a decorous hotel background.

"The food is good," he told them, as he showed them to a table for four on the edge of the miniature dance floor. "For the rest—!" he gave a despairing shrug. Solo smiled;

"We'll take your advice," he said. "What do you recommend?"

With that pleasant chore attended to Kuryakin leaned back. "This place could hold any number of surprises. The pseudo-psychedelic lighting is as good as camouflage."

"Can't tell friend from foe. Not that we have any friends here. I still don't see why it had to be Miss Thompson, Illya. Why would anybody want to get rough with us?"

"Never mind why. Somebody did. Thing is, which side?"

"Come to that, which side are we on? Certainly not the Green and Co. crowd, but from what I've seen of the others I'd hate to run with them either, if Barnett is a fair sample."

"That's exactly what we're here to find out, Napoleon. Meanwhile, this is excellent chicken soup. We might as well enjoy it before the little man with the dark glasses and the beard comes to spoil it."

Solo chuckled. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think it's going to be a bit like that. My guess would be one of those pinstripe-pants city types with a rolled umbrella and a Bertie Wooster accent."

Although both men appeared casual, and relaxed enough to pay admiring attention to the colorful scene around them, they were razor alert for the least sign of odd activity. So it was that they both tensed as a minor drama began to unfold before them. The eye twisting light effects had been momentarily abandoned in favor of daylight tinted fluorescence from the high ceiling, and in this clear glow there came a tall and haughty blonde, creamy locks piled high on her head to give her added inches, a silver cape draping her to elbows and the rest only half obscured in openwork silver mesh to midthigh. The rest was long and shapely legs sculptured in glitter sheerness. She strode boldly across the tiny dance floor with the headwaiter trotting after her in passionate attempt to reason and argue.

"Don't be silly, Mario!" she chided, in a thickly husky affected tone. "It's my table. It always is. You can't put me off!"

"Miss Perrell, please!" Mario scuttled around, lifting his clasped hands in pleading. "I ask you a favor. Your table is reserved. Take another one. Look, I go on my knees to you!"

"Silly man! Don't you dare do that. What will people think?"

Miss Perrell stepped around him, apparently unaware that every eye in the place was fixed on her, pointed herself again toward the reserved-table, smiled, put slim fingers to the cord of her cape, swirled out of it and draped it over her left arm. There was an instant hush thick enough to feel, then a burst of noise like that which comes as the lights go up after a dramatic first act curtain. Solo cleared his throat.

"Like it or not," he said, "this table is reserved."

"Let her come, Napoleon. Nobody puts on a show like that by accident."

"You mean—?"

"Can't do any harm to find out."

Solo sat again, then rose politely as the blonde stranger reached the table and stood smiling down. Before either could speak the headwaiter came running, clutching his brow.

"What can I say, gentlemen? You saw? I tried!" He clapped palms to cheeks and cast his gaze aloft to some personal deity. Solo stood, seized the nearest chair, waited until the lady had draped her cape over its back, then settled her in.

"All the same," he said, as he regained his own seat, "this table is reserved. For us!"

"Pooh! Who cares about things like that? Bring soup, Mario. The chicken, please." She shared her bright blue gaze equally between the two men. "This is my favorite table. I always sit here." She conjured up a brilliant smile, waited a moment, then, "Nothing to say? Oh dear, you're embarrassed!"

It could have been true. The openwork silver mesh came up only as far as her ribcage, where it gathered itself into a pair of jutting platforms to support the generous hemisphere above. But there it ceased, leaving the rest of her to manage unhampered. There was quite a lot of her to see, but at this moment Solo's mind was otherwise occupied.

"Hardly embarrassed," he said. "But curious. My name is Solo. This is Mr. Kuryakin. You are-

"Nanette Perrell, and please, no funnies about my name. I've heard them all before. Now, what else shall we talk about?"

"We could discuss the unpleasant things that happen to ladies who interfere, or what happens to Barnett's girl friends," Kuryakin suggested quietly.

Solo saw the surprise come and go on her face, and he became very wary indeed. This girl was, in her way, every bit as breathtaking as the gorgeous Miss Thompson, yet as different as a tea rose from a tulip. He had judged one to be beautiful but empty. He was not about to make that mistake again. He looked closely, past the overdone makeup, the lacquered hair, the outthrust arrogance of her flesh, and he realized that this time they were facing a masquerade, a sham!

"You're quick," she said to Kuryakin. "And you," she swung her gaze at Solo, hesitated a moment, then added, "Don't stare like that!"

"Why not? When you put the wares in the window you expect people to stop and admire, don't you?"

"Admire? That steely glare?"

"Perhaps not. Appraisal, then. Is that the idea? Make the poor man so embarrassed he won't know where to look, and thus won't notice that you are a fraud?"

That got home. He saw the red tide burn her cheeks and spread fascinatingly downwards. She put her hands to her face all at once.

"Don't say anything," she muttered. "I haven't made a fool of myself like this in years."

A waiter came and went. In a while the scorching red tide receded and she achieved calm.

"Let's start over," Kuryakin suggested. "You were sent here to meet us, right?"

"What did you expect?" She answered his tone rather than his words. "A little man with a beard and a middle-European accent?"

"Let's just say we anticipated something a bit more subdued."

"Hide in a corner and people will come to see why you're hiding. But who's going to take any notice of us like this? They will stare, yes, but they won't look. Not with the brain. Now, you have a message to pass on?"

"Not to you." Solo was prompt and firm. "You're just another stooge, like Barnett."

"Don't you believe it." Her voice was hard now. "You bulldozed your way past him, but you won't get by me that easily."

"Save the dramatics." Solo grew impatient all at once. "Did you know Mary Chantry?"

"Yes. I knew her. Not well, but well enough."

"The way she was taken care of? I don't think so. Look, we know how she died, and where, and when. And why. And who did it. You can play your own stupid little games whichever way you like and it's none of our business. All we want of you is the chance to meet the man, whoever he is, who put her where she was, so that she bought it. We have a message for him, from her, and we have a few choice words of our own for him. And that's all. We'll handle the rest of it ourselves."

"Just you two!" Her scorn crackled.

"Just us!" Kuryakin put in. "One fool on our side is more dangerous than ten enemies. If you don't like the terms, you go back to your boss and tell him we have work to do, and we'll contact him later."

She didn't like it, but she had her feelings under icy control, and Solo realized more and more that this female was ten times as potentially dangerous as Miss Thompson. All at once she shed her intensity.

"That's a tune to dance to," she declared. "Can you?"

It was obviously a challenge, and a good one. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she moves in response to music. Solo got to his feet at once. "I'm no exotic," he disclaimed, "but I can manage a few basic movements, nothing fancy."

She came into his arms tense but within three steps all was changed. She could move, and did, like a well oiled dream. When the music died she sighed.

"You're very good. That's something, anyway."

"You're not exactly lame," he retorted. "Professional?"

"I was once. You two have me baffled." She led the way back to the table "I was told you were troublemakers. My job was to pick you up, to dazzle you, analyze you, make you talk, take what you had, and then drop you. But," she seated herself neatly, "you don't pick, you don't dazzle, and I get the awful feeling that if I don't take care of you, you will go ahead and mix into this thing on your own."

"Don't lose any sleep over us," Kuryakin advised.

"I don't give a damn about your skin!" she snapped at him. "It's just that this operation is too damned important to be messed up by a couple of well meaning amateurs."

"Whereas you're a professional!" Solo gibed, and she shut her mouth tight for a moment.

"I've talked enough," she said, at last. "I think I will take you to the boss and let him sort you out. Come on. Try and look as if you've been picked up for the night."

"Wouldn't know how," Kuryakin murmured. "It's a new experience for us!" She rewarded him with a glare that was pure blue vitriol. Outside and just around the corner she led them to a sleek and massive automobile, made them get in the back seat, then did something with a switch which opened the windows. Kuryakin frowned.

"Polarized screens," he estimated. "Curiouser and curiouser."

"And a topless dress," Solo murmured. "Somehow I always felt that was a fashion that had to come back. I mean, look at San Francisco!"

"And just listen to that engine." He raised his voice a trifle. "Is this the Vanden Plas Princess I've heard about?"

"Near enough," she called back over her shoulder. "The only car that isn't a Rolls, but has a Rolls engine. Nice, isn't it?"

"Since you're such a smart Russian," Solo murmured, "maybe you already know who we're going to meet?"

"I'm not that smart, Napoleon. In any case I forget just who is the top man at MI6 these days."

"Oh yeah? One will get you ten it isn't him, or anybody like him!"

Within twenty minutes the car was murmuring down quiet lanes between venerable old buildings in a part of the city Solo couldn't identify only as somewhere near the law courts. It sighed to a halt outside an unlit arch. She conducted them across a cobbled yard, up a flight of stone steps into a small hallway, then into a room that was as black as night. There was heavy carpet underfoot and the pungent scent of a cigar. They touched the edge of a table, then seats. She murmured to them to sit. They heard her feet shush away over the carpet, and then a door sighed and clicked shut. After a second or two Solo managed to distinguish the faint cinder red of a cigar.

"Isn't this overdoing the cloak and dagger stuff a bit?" he asked.

"Theatrical, isn't it?" The voice was that of an old man, careful and precise, but far from senile. "Absolutely necessary, however."

"Why? For dramatic effect, from fear, or just shame?"

"A cheap gibe, Mr. Solo. Any one of a thousand people would pay you well to be told who I am. Or would try to get the information from you by other means, not pleasant ones. I can't risk that."

"You prefer to risk other people, like Mary Chantry?"

"Let me squash that error at once!" The old voice grew acid. "I did not send Mary into hazard. Specifically I forbade it. Her task was to observe and report, and nothing else. I do not know how she became involved to the point of death. Do you know?"

"I do." Solo matched his tone for iciness. "She was observing. She made a mess of it. The man lured her on to his yacht, stole her clothes so she couldn't run off, had fun with her for a while then had her beaten to death and tossed into the water. All right?"

"That attitude will get you exactly nowhere, Solo!"

"It must be nice," Kuryakin murmured, "to be able to afford the luxury of hurt feelings. Of course, to do it properly you need an armchair, a secure room, a cigar, and somebody else to do the dying for you."

"That will do, Mr. Kuryakin!"

"Forget the parade ground bellow, it doesn't impress." Kuryakin kept his voice even. "So far as I'm concerned you're just an old man cowering in the dark, an old man who doesn't care for the plain truth. If that's your best you can let us out of here right now."

"You leave when I say, and not before. And to do what?"

"To find three men," Solo said promptly. "Possibly a fourth. And we know what to do with them when we find them."

"You do? You would break the law, Mr. Solo? I doubt the United Network Command would approve of that."

"You've been doing your homework," Solo approved. "Just by the way, though, we're on vacation. This is a personal chore. The people who rubbed out Mary Chantry also tried to do the same to a friend of ours."

"I see. The giant killers!"

"All David had was a sling and a stone," Kuryakin observed.

"Oh no," the old voice disagreed. "He was young, divinely inspired, and he had an army at his back, never for get that part. Virtue is an admirable thing, but it cannot stand alone."

"If you insist on quoting Confucius," Kuryakin murmured, "you really must try to get him right." A silence grew, drew out thin, then ended in a dry chuckle. The cigar end brightened a couple of times.

"Shall we try again?" the old voice suggested. "I'm in sympathy with your aims, but I cannot allow you to jeopardize my operations."

"I've heard that before." Solo grew impatient. "Your operational style leaves me cold. We'll play this hand our own way. And if you value Captain Barnett at all, you'd better leave him where he is. If he collides with us he is likely to get damaged."

"As for that overblown trollop you sent out to bring us in," Kuryakin declared, and grinned to himself in the dark as he heard a stifled gasp, "you can leave her at home too."

"That overblown trollop, as you called her," the old man said, "is sitting not three feet away from you at this moment, Mr. Kuryakin."

"I know. I can smell her. And hear her. Right now, for instance, she has just taken a weapon into her hand, most probably a gun of some kind, presumably aiming it at where she thinks I am. Would you care to bet I can't take it away from her before she can pull the trigger?"

This time the silence was so tight it rang. Then the old man sighed.

"Very well. Put it away, Nan, we'll have to try a different tack with this pair. Let me have a moment to think. Believe me, gentlemen, Mary was a mistake that must not be repeated. And my Operation isn't quite what you seem to think. Perhaps I had better explain that side of it."

"Is that wise, Charles?" Miss Perrell spoke for the first time.

"I think so, my dear. I don't think you've realized, yet, just who we are entertaining. You've heard of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement—"

"Oh my God!" she gasped. "U.N.C.L.E. agents. And I called them well meaning amateurs!"

"At any rate we can count on their discretion. You won't find us in any index, phone book or list, Mr. Solo. We have no name, no official existence, and, in a way, no authority, hut I'll come to that in a moment. We are outside the law, a position that has as many drawbacks as it has privileges. You see, those who uphold the law are equally tied by it, have to respect it. And that is why something like seventy percent of all crime in this country goes unpunished. Undetected even. Of course, most of it is petty stuff, but not all. I could recite you a list, a long list, of people who are literally above the law, who can buy and sell anyone who works for wages, who can buy justice, even invisibility. Most of them are known to the forces of law, but they can't be touched. And that is the situation my group strives to correct. As I've said, we have no official standing, nor do we have bosses, levels of authority, rules, a code—nor any system of payment, honors, rewards, nothing like that. You might say we are just an extraordinary assembly of highly individual people trying to do good."

"Noblesse oblige?" Kuryakin murmured.

"That's about it. That's what has brought you into it, the belief that you've run into something that ought to be stopped, right? I have that kind of thing reported to me several times a week! My function is to coordinate, to pass the information along to those who can deal with it."

"Like Captain Barnett?"

"Not at all. Roger is just one of thousands. He happens to be in the services. Many are. Many others are not. All are hand picked to be loyal, reliable, observant. They report. That's all. Anything odd and unusual, out of line, suspicious, it comes back to me. That is all they do. Mary was one such. Her reports went to Roger; his reports to me. Of himself he knows nothing else, so can't give anything away. But I have other people, rather special people, who deal with things. That's why I am upset about Mary. It should not have happened. There will be other people to deal with that side of it."

"Permission to kill?" Solo queried, and the old man snorted gently.

"I deal in information. Sometimes, when necessary, I help. I can pull some very long strings. As a rule we operate to whittle the opposition down to the point where the law can step in. Sometimes we are—more drastic than that."

"So what are you offering?"

"Cooperation. Tell me what you know. Pass the message you had from Mary. Give me time to get some positive lines on the people concerned. Keep in touch with Nan here, and as soon as I have it I will pass it on. Well?"

"I'll make a deal," Solo said carefully. "We want the people who pulled this particular job. That's all. It's personal, nothing to do with the Command this time. You can have the message, and all the data we've got." He took the cassette from his pocket and slid it across the table, went on to explain how it had been garnered. He filled in details of events since, particularly the fracas outside their hotel. "Barnett's beautiful gopher girl could do with a little probing. And that technique for rounding up juvenile delinquents to order!"

"Yes!" The old man sounded thoughtful. "Damnably easy to do, too. In any shiftless mob it only needs one or two persuasive voices to sway the whole thing. I must say Absalom Green is new to me. Mary was especially interested in the drug business, these infernal psychotoxics and hallucinogens. The yacht will be easy enough to watch, but they'll be too smart to use it openly."

"A question," Kuryakin spoke up. "Your special people– do I take it Miss Perrell is a sample?"

"You may take it so, why?"

"She's female. So was Mary Chantry."

"Hah! A dove and a hawk are both birds, but there's a world of difference between them, you must admit. Very well, gentlemen. Nan will take you away again, and I will be in touch with you as soon as there's anything to pass on."

As they followed her out there was something about her footfall that betrayed the mood she was in. In the car she said nothing at all until they were well clear of the rendezvous. Then, pulling into the roadside and canceling the blacked out windows, she half-turned to glare.

"Overblown trollop, eh? Smell, do I?"

"You should be flattered," Kuryakin said innocently. "You were acting a part. You fooled us completely."

"I am not acting any part right now," she said, through very white teeth. "Understand this much. Charles put you in my charge, so you will do as I say. Or you can get out and walk, right now!"

"That's fair," Solo approved. "We'll get out, and you'll have to go back to Charles and tell him exactly how you lost us. Ready, Illya?"

For one moment he thought she was going to scream; then she drew a deep breath and swiveled forward.

"All right!" she muttered. "Yours today. Where do I drop you?"

Smothering a grin, Solo gave her the address and the car stormed away. In a while Kuryakin sighed and leaned forward.

"What are the terms for a truce, Miss Perrell?"

"Overblown trollop!" she repeated savagely. "Talk about pearls before swine! Overblown!"

"I too was acting a part," he said placatingly. "That was merely corroborative detail, intended to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative!"

"Good grief!" The car did an involuntary swerve as she twisted her head to stare back at him. "Where did that come from?"

"The words are W. S. Gilbert, but the sentiment is mine. The pearls were appreciated, but it wasn't the proper time to say so. Not called for."

"Oh!" Her head went forward again but there was uncertainty in the tone and a slight easing of the stiffness of her neck and chin. "I see!"

"We were thinking of other things," Solo endorsed. "Not really the right moment to appreciate the finer things of life."

"Hmmm!" she muttered. "Smart, aren't you. You made Charles lose his temper, which is something I've never seen before, and now you're trying to con me into making an exhibition of myself."

"We admire pearls."

"I'll bet you do. Look, we're almost there. You'd better give me a phone number in case I need to reach you."

Solo gave her the number, noting with appreciation that she made no move to write it down. She gave him one she said was hers, a residence the other side of Norwood.