The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

Peter Straub Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff

I never intended to go astray, nor did I know what that meant. My journey began in an isolated hamlet notable for the piety of its inhabitants, and when I vowed to escape New Covenant I assumed that the values instilled within me there would forever be my guide. And so, with a depth of paradox I still only begin to comprehend, they have been. My journey, so triumphant, also so excruciating, is both from my native village and of it. For all its splendor, my life has been that of a child of New Covenant.

When in my limousine I scanned the Wall Street Journal, when in the private elevator I ascended to the rosewood-paneled office with harbor views, when in the partners’ dining room I ordered squab on a mesclun bed from a prison-rescued waiter known to me alone as Charlie-Charlie, also when I navigated for my clients the complex waters of financial planning, above all when before her seduction by my enemy Graham Leeson I returned homeward to luxuriate in the attentions of my stunning Marguerite, when transported within the embraces of my wife, even then I carried within the frame houses dropped like afterthoughts down the streets of New Covenant, the stiff faces and suspicious eyes, the stony cordialities before and after services in the grim great Temple — the blank storefronts along Harmony Street — tattooed within me was the ugly, enigmatic beauty of my birthplace. Therefore I believe that when I strayed, and stray I did, make no mistake, it was but to come home, for I claim that the two strange gentlemen who beckoned me into error were the night of its night, the dust of its dust. In the period of my life’s greatest turmoil — the month of my exposure to Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, “Private Detectives Extraordinaire,” as their business card described them — in the midst of the uproar I felt that I saw the contradictory dimensions of..

of…

I felt I saw. had seen, had at least glimpsed. what a wiser man might call… try to imagine the sheer difficulty of actually writing these words… the Meaning of Tragedy. You smirk, I don’t blame you, in your place I’d do the same, but I assure you I sawsomething.

I must sketch in the few details necessary to understand my story. A day’s walk from New York state’s Canadian border, New Covenant was (and still is, still is) a town of just under a thousand inhabitants united by the puritanical Protestantism of the Church of the New Covenant, whose founders had broken away from the even more puritanical Saints of the Covenant. (The Saints had proscribed sexual congress in the hope of hastening The Second Coming.) The village flourished during the end of the nineteenth century, and settled into its permanent form around 1920.

To wit: Temple Square, where the Temple of the New Covenant and its bell tower, flanked left and right by the Youth Bible Study Center and the Combined Boys and Girls Elementary and Middle School, dominate a modest greensward. Southerly stand the shop fronts of Harmony Street, the bank, also the modest placards indicating the locations of New Covenant’s doctor, lawyer, and dentist; south of Harmony Street lie the two streets of frame houses sheltering the town’s clerks and artisans, beyond these the farms of the rural faithful, beyond the farmland deep forest. North of Temple Square is Scripture Street, two blocks lined with the residences of the Reverend and his Board of Brethren, the aforementioned doctor, dentist, and lawyer, the President and Vice-President of the bank, also the families of some few wealthy converts devoted to Temple affairs. North of Scripture Street are more farms, then the resumption of the great forest in which our village described a sort of clearing.

My father was New Covenant’s lawyer, and to Scripture Street was I born. Sundays I spent in the Youth Bible Study Center, weekdays in the Combined Boys and Girls Elementary and Middle School. New Covenant was my world, its people all I knew of the world. Three-fourths of all mankind consisted of gaunt, bony, blond-haired individuals with chiseled features and blazing blue eyes, the men six feet or taller in height, the women some inches shorter — the remaining fourth being the Racketts, Mudges, and Blunts, our farm families, who after generations of intermarriage had coalesced into a tribe of squat, black-haired, gap-toothed, moon-faced males and females seldom taller than five feet, four or five inches. Until I went to college I thought that all people were divided into the races of town and barn, fair and dark, the spotless and the mud-spattered, the reverential and the sly.

Though Racketts, Mudges and Blunts attended our school and worshipped in our Temple, though they were at least as prosperous as we in town save the converts in their mansions, we knew them tainted with an essential inferiority. Rather than intelligent they seemedcrafty, rather than spiritual, animal. Both in classrooms and Temple, they sat together, watchful as dogs compelled for the nonce to be “good,” now and again tilting their heads to pass a whispered comment. Despite Sunday baths and Sunday clothes, they bore an uneraseable odor redolent of the barnyard. Their public self-effacement seemed to mask a peasant amusement, and when they separated into their wagons and other vehicles, they could be heard to share a peasant laughter.

I found this mysterious race unsettling, in fact profoundly annoying. At some level they frightened me — I found them compelling. Oppressed from my earliest days by life in New Covenant, I felt an inadmissible fascination for this secretive brood. Despite their inferiority, I wished to know what they knew. Locked deep within their shabbiness and shame I sensed the presence of a freedom I did not understand but found thrilling.

Because town never socialized with barn, our contacts were restricted to places of education, worship, and commerce. It would have been as unthinkable for me to take a seat beside Delbert Mudge or Charlie-Charlie Rackett in our fourth-grade classroom as for Delbert or Charlie-Charlie to invite me for an overnight in their farmhouse bedrooms. Did Delbert and Charlie-Charlie actually have bedrooms, where they slept alone in their own beds? I recall mornings when the atmosphere about Delbert and Charlie-Charlie suggested nights spent in close proximity to the pig pen, others when their worn dungarees exuded a freshness redolent of sunshine, wildflowers and raspberries.

During recess an inviolable border separated the townies at the northern end of our play area from the barnies at the southern. Our play, superficially similar, demonstrated our essential differences, for we could not cast off the unconscious stiffness resulting from constant adult measurement of our spiritual worthiness. In contrast, the barnies did not play at playing but actually played, plunging back and forth across the grass, chortling over victories, grinning as they muttered what must have been jokes. (We were not adept at jokes.) When school closed at end of day, I tracked the homebound progress of Delbert, Charlie-Charlie and clan with envious eyes and a divided heart.

Why should they have seemed in possession of a liberty I desired? After graduation from Middle School, we townies progressed to Shady Glen’s Consolidated High, there to monitor ourselves and our fellows while encountering the temptations of the wider world, in some cases then advancing into colleges and universities. Having concluded their educations with the seventh grade’s long division and “Hiawatha” recitations, the barnies one and all returned to their barns. Some few, some very few, of us, among whom I had determined early on to be numbered, left for good, thereafter to be celebrated, denounced, or mourned. One of us, Caleb Thurlow, violated every standard of caste and morality by marrying Munna Blunt and vanishing into barnie-world. A disgraced, disinherited pariah during my childhood, Thurlow’s increasingly pronounced stoop and decreasing teeth terrifyingly mutated him into a blond, wasted barnie-parody on his furtive annual Christmas appearances at Temple. One of them, one only, my old classmate Charlie-Charlie Rackett, escaped his ordained destiny in our twentieth year by liberating a plow horse and Webley-Vickers pistol from the family farm to commit serial armed robbery upon Shady Glen’s George Washington Inn, Town Square Feed & Grain, and Allsorts Emporium. Every witness to his crimes recognized what, if not who, he was, and Charlie-Charlie was apprehended while boarding the Albany train in the next village west. During the course of my own journey from and of New Covenant, I tracked Charlie-Charlie’s gloomy progress through the way stations of the penal system until at last I could secure his release at a parole hearing with the offer of a respectable job in the financial planning industry.

I had by then established myself as absolute monarch of three floors in a Wall Street monolith. With my two junior partners, I enjoyed the services of a fleet of paralegals, interns, analysts, investigators, and secretaries. I had chosen these partners carefully, for as well as the usual expertise, skill and dedication, I required other, less conventional qualities.

I had sniffed out intelligent but unimaginative men of some slight moral laziness; capable of cutting corners when they thought no one would notice; controlled drinkers and secret drug-takers: juniors with reason to be grateful for their positions. I wanted no zealousness. My employees were to be steadfastly incurious and able enough to handle their clients satisfactorily, at least with my paternal assistance.

My growing prominence had attracted the famous, the established, the notorious. Film stars and athletes, civic leaders, corporate pashas, and heirs to longstanding family fortunes regularly visited our offices, as did a number of conspicuously well-tailored gentlemen who had accumulated their wealth in a more colorful fashion. To these clients I suggested financial stratagems responsive to their labyrinthine needs. I had not schemed for their business. It simply came to me, willy-nilly, as our Temple held that salvation came to the elect. One May morning, a cryptic fellow in a pin-striped suit appeared in my office to pose a series of delicate questions. As soon as he opened his mouth, the cryptic fellow summoned irresistibly from memory a dour, squinting member of the Board of Brethren of New Covenant’s Temple. I knew this man, and instantly I found the tone most acceptable to him. Tone is all to such people. After our interview he directed others of his kind to my office, and by December my business had tripled. Individually and universally these gentlemen pungently reminded me of the village I had long ago escaped, and I cherished my suspicious buccaneers even as I celebrated the distance between my moral life and theirs. While sheltering these self-justifying figures within elaborate trusts, while legitimizing subterranean floods of cash, I immersed myself within a familiar atmosphere of pious denial. Rebuking home, I was home.

Life had not yet taught me that revenge inexorably exacts its own revenge.

My researches eventually resulted in the hiring of the two junior partners known privately to me as Gilligan and Captain. The first, a short, trim fellow with a comedian’s rubber face and dishevelled hair, brilliant with mutual funds but an ignoramus at estate planning, each morning worked so quietly as to become invisible. To Gilligan I had referred many of our actors and musicians, and those whose schedules permitted them to attend meetings before the lunch hour met their soft-spoken advisor in a dimly lighted office with curtained windows. After lunch, Gilligan tended toward the vibrant, the effusive, the extrovert. Red-faced and sweating, he loosened his tie, turned on a powerful sound system and ushered emaciated musicians with haystack hair into the atmosphere of a backstage party. Morning Gilligan spoke in whispers; Afternoon Gilligan batted our secretaries’ shoulders as he bounced office-ward down the corridors. I snapped him up as soon as one of my competitors let him go, and he proved a perfect complement to the Captain. Tall, plump, silver-haired, this gentleman had come to me from a specialist in estates and trusts discomfited by his tendency to become pugnacious when outraged by a client’s foul language, improper dress, or other offenses against good taste. Our tycoons and inheritors of family fortunes were in no danger of arousing the Captain’s ire, and I myself handled the unshaven film stars’ and heavy metallists’ estate planning. Neither Gilligan nor the Captain had any contact with the cryptic gentlemen. Our office was an organism balanced in all its parts. Should any mutinous notions occur to my partners, my spy the devoted Charlie-Charlie Rackett, to them as Charles the Perfect Waiter, every noon silently monitored their every utterance while replenishing Gilligan’s wine glass. My marriage of two years seemed blissfully happy, my reputation and bank account flourished alike, and I anticipated perhaps another decade of labor followed by luxurious retirement. I could not have been less prepared for the disaster to come.

Mine, as disasters do, began at home. I admit my contribution to the difficulties. While immersed in the demands of my profession, I had married a beautiful woman twenty years my junior. It was my understanding that Marguerite had knowingly entered into a contract under which she enjoyed the fruits of income and social position while postponing a deeper marital communication until I cashed in and quit the game, at which point she and I could travel at will, occupying grand hotel suites and staterooms while acquiring every adornment which struck her eye. How could an arrangement so harmonious have failed to satisfy her? Even now I feel the old rancor. Marguerite had come into our office as a faded singer who wished to invest the remaining proceeds from a five- or six-year-old “hit,” and after an initial consultation Morning Gilligan whispered her down the corridor for my customary lecture on estate tax, trusts, so forth and so on, in her case due to the modesty of the funds in question mere show. (Since during their preliminary discussion she had casually employed the Anglo-Saxon monosyllable for excrement, Gilligan dared not subject her to the Captain.) He escorted her into my chambers, and I glanced up with the customary show of interest. You may imagine a thick bolt of lightning slicing through a double-glazed office window, sizzling across the width of a polished teak desk, and striking me in the heart.

Already I was lost. Thirty minutes later I violated my most sacred edict by inviting a female client to a dinner date. She accepted, damn her. Six months later, Marguerite and I were married, damn us both. I had attained everything for which I had abandoned New Covenant, and for twenty-three months I inhabited the paradise of fools.

I need say only that the usual dreary signals, matters like unexplained absences, mysterious telephone calls abruptly terminated upon my appearance, and visitations of a melancholic, distracted daemon, forced me to set one of our investigators on Marguerite’s trail, resulting in the discovery that my wife had been two-backed-beasting it with my sole professional equal, the slick, the smooth Graham Leeson, to whom I, swollen with uxorious pride a year after our wedding day, had introduced her during a function at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. I know what happened. I don’t need a map. Exactly as I had decided to win her at our first meeting, Graham Leeson vowed to steal Marguerite from me the instant he set his handsome blue eyes on her between the fifty-thousand-dollar tables on the Starlight Roof.

My enemy enjoyed a number of natural advantages. Older than she by but ten years to my twenty, at six-four three inches taller than I, this reptile had been blessed with a misleadingly winning Irish countenance and a full head of crinkly red-blond hair. (In contrast, my white tonsure accentuated the severity of the ail-too Cromwellian townie face.) I assumed her immune to such obvious charms, and I was wrong. I thought Marguerite could not fail to see the meagerness of Leeson’s inner life, and I was wrong again. I suppose he exploited the inevitable temporary isolation of any spouse to a man in my position. He must have played upon her grudges, spoken to her secret vanities. Cynically, I am sure, he encouraged the illusion that she was an “artist.” He flattered, he very likely wheedled. By every shabby means at his disposal he had overwhelmed her, most crucially by screwing her brains out three times a week in a corporate suite at a Park Avenue hotel.

After I had examined the photographs and other records arrayed before me by the investigator, an attack of nausea brought my dizzied head to the edge of my desk; then rage stiffened my backbone and induced a moment of hysterical blindness. My marriage was dead, my wife a repulsive stranger. Vision returned a second or two later. The checkbook floated from the desk drawer, the Waterman pen glided into position between thumb and forefinger, and while a shadow’s efficient hand inscribed a check for ten thousand dollars, a disembodied voice informed the hapless investigator that the only service required of him henceforth would be eternal silence.

For perhaps an hour I sat alone in my office, postponing appointments and refusing telephone calls. In the moments when I had tried to envision my rival, what came to mind was some surly drummer or guitarist from her past, easily intimidated and readily bought off. In such a case, I should have inclined toward mercy. Had Marguerite offered a sufficiently self-abasing apology, I would have slashed her clothing allowance in half, restricted her public appearances to the two or three most crucial charity events of the year and perhaps as many dinners at my side in the restaurants where one is “seen”, and insured that the resultant mood of sackcloth and ashes prohibited any reversion to bad behavior by intermittent use of another investigator.

No question of mercy, now. Staring at the photographs of my life’s former partner entangled with the man I detested most in the world, I shuddered with a combination of horror, despair, loathing, and — appallingly — an urgent spasm of sexual arousal. I unbuttoned my trousers, groaned in ecstatic torment, and helplessly ejaculated over the images on my desk. When I had recovered, weak-kneed and trembling I wiped away the evidence, fell into my chair, and picked up the telephone to request Charlie-Charlie Rackett’s immediate presence in my office.

The cryptic gentlemen, experts in the nuances of retribution, might seem more obvious sources of assistance, but I could not afford obligations in that direction. Nor did I wish to expose my humiliation to clients for whom the issue of respect was all-important. Devoted Charlie-Charlie’s years in the jug had given him an extensive acquaintanceship among the dubious and irregular, and I had from time to time commandeered the services of one or another of his fellow yardbirds. My old companion sidled around my door and posted himself before me, all dignity on the outside, all curiosity within.

“I have been dealt a horrendous blow, Charlie-Charlie,” I said, “and as soon as possible I wish to see one or two of the best.”

Charlie-Charlie glanced at the folders. “You want serious people,” he said, speaking in code. “Right?”

“I must have men who can be serious when seriousness is necessary,” I said, replying in the same code.

While my lone surviving link to New Covenant struggled to understand this directive, it came to me that Charlie-Charlie had now become my only true confidant, and I bit down on an upwelling of fury. I realized that I had clamped shut my eyes, and opened them upon an uneasy Charlie-Charlie.

“You’re sure,” he said.

“Find them,” I said, and to restore some semblance of our conventional atmosphere asked, “The boys still okay?”

Telling me that the juniors remained content, he said, “Fat and happy. I’ll find what you want, but it’ll take a couple of days.”

I nodded, and he was gone.

For the remainder of the day I turned in an inadequate impersonation of the executive who usually sat behind my desk and, after putting off the moment as long as reasonably possible, buried the awful files in a bottom drawer and returned to the townhouse I had purchased for my bride-to-be and which, I remembered with an unhappy pang, she had once in an uncharacteristic moment of cuteness called “our townhome.”

Since I had been too preoccupied to telephone wife, cook, or butler with the information that I would be late at the office, when I walked into our dining room the table had been laid with our china and silver, flowers arranged in the centerpiece, and in what I took to be a new dress, Marguerite glanced mildly up from her end of the table and murmured a greeting. Scarcely able to meet her eyes, I bent to bestow the usual homecoming kiss with a mixture of feelings more painful than I previously would have imagined myself capable. Some despicable portion of my being responded to her beauty with the old husbandly appreciation even as I went cold with the loathing I could not permit myself to show. I hated Marguerite for her treachery, her beauty for its falsity, myself for my susceptibility to what I knew was treacherous and false. Clumsily, my lips brushed the edge of an azure eye, and it came to me that she may well have been with Leeson while the investigator was displaying the images of her degradation. Through me coursed an involuntary tremor of revulsion with, strange to say, at its center a molten erotic core. Part of my extraordinary pain was the sense that I too had been contaminated: a layer of illusion had been peeled away, revealing monstrous blind groping slugs and maggots.

Having heard voices, Mr Moncrieff, the butler I had employed upon the abrupt decision of the Duke of Denbigh to cast off worldly ways and enter an order of Anglican monks, came through from the kitchen and awaited orders. His bland, courteous manner suggested as usual that he was making the best of having been shipwrecked on an island populated by illiterate savages. Marguerite said that she had been worried when I had not returned home at the customary time.

“I’m fine,” I said. “No, I’m not fine. I feel unwell. Distinctly unwell. Grave difficulties at the office.” With that I managed to make my way up the table to my chair, along the way signalling to Mr Moncrieff that the Lord of the Savages wished him to bring in the pre-dinner martini and then immediately begin serving whatever the cook had prepared. I took my seat at the head of the table, and Mr Moncrieff removed the floral centerpiece to the sideboard. Marguerite regarded me with the appearance of probing concern. This was false, false, false. Unable to meet her eyes, I raised mine to the row of Canalettos along the wall, then the intricacies of the plaster molding above the paintings, at last to the chandelier depending from the central rosette on the ceiling. More had changed than my relationship with my wife. The molding, the blossoming chandelier, even Canaletto’s Venice resounded with a cold, selfish lovelessness.

Marguerite remarked that I seemed agitated.

“No, I am not,” I said. The butler placed the ice-cold drink before me, and I snatched up the glass and drained half its contents. “Yes, I am agitated, terribly,” I said. “The difficulties at the office are more far-reaching than I intimated.” I polished off the martini and tasted only glycerine. “It is a matter of betrayal and treachery made all the more wounding by the closeness of my relationship with the traitor.”

I lowered my eyes to measure the effect of this thrust to the vitals on the traitor in question. She was looking back at me with a flawless imitation of wifely concern. For a moment I doubted her unfaithfulness. Then the memory of the photographs in my bottom drawer once again brought crawling into view the slugs and maggots. “I am sickened unto rage,” I said, “and my rage demands vengeance. Can you understand this?”

Mr Moncrieff carried into the dining room the tureens or serving dishes containing whatever it was we were to eat that night, and my wife and I honored the silence which had become conventional during the presentation of our evening meal. When we were alone again, she nodded in affirmation.

I said, “I am grateful, for I value your opinions. I should like you to help me reach a difficult decision.”

She thanked me in the simplest of terms.

“Consider this puzzle,” I said. “Famously, vengeance is the Lord’s, and therefore it is often imagined that vengeance exacted by anyone other is immoral. Yet if vengeance is the Lord’s, then a mortal being who seeks it on his own behalf has engaged in a form of worship, even an alternate version of prayer. Many good Christians regularly pray for the establishment of justice, and what lies behind an act of vengeance but a desire for justice? God tells us that eternal torment awaits the wicked. He also demonstrates a pronounced affection for those who prove unwilling to let Him do all the work.”

Marguerite expressed the opinion that justice was a fine thing indeed, and that a man such as myself would always labor in its behalf. She fell silent and regarded me with what on any night previous I would have seen as tender concern. Though I had not yet so informed her, she declared, the Benedict Arnold must have been one of my juniors, for no other employee could injure me so greatly. Which was the traitor?

“As yet I do not know,” I said. “But once again I must be grateful for your grasp of my concerns. Soon I will put into position the bear-traps which will result in the fiend’s exposure. Unfortunately, my dear, this task will demand all of my energy over at least the next several days. Until the task is accomplished, it will be necessary for me to camp out in the — Hotel.” I named the site of her assignations with Graham Leeson.

A subtle, momentary darkening of the eyes, her first genuine response of the evening, froze my heart as I set the bear-trap into place. “I know, the —’s vulgarity deepens with every passing week, but Gilligan’s apartment is but a few doors north, the Captain’s one block south. Once my investigators have installed their electronic devices, I shall be privy to every secret they possess. Might you not enjoy spending several days at Green Chimneys? The servants have the month off, but you might enjoy the solitude there more than you would being alone in town.”

Green Chimneys, our country estate on a bluff above the Hudson River, lay two hours away. Marguerite’s delight in the house had inspired me to construct on the grounds a fully-equipped recording studio, where she typically spent days on end, trying out new “songs”.

Charmingly, she thanked me for my consideration and said that she would enjoy a few days in seclusion at Green Chimneys. After I had exposed the traitor, I was to telephone her with the summons home. Accommodating on the surface, vile beneath, these words brought an anticipatory tinge of pleasure to her face, a delicate heightening of her beauty I would have, very likely had, misconstrued on earlier occasions. Any appetite I might have had disappeared before a visitation of nausea, and I announced myself exhausted. Marguerite intensified my discomfort by calling me her poor darling. I staggered to my bedroom, locked the door, threw off my clothes, and dropped into bed to endure a sleepless night. I would never see my wife again.

Sometime after first light I had attained an uneasy slumber; finding it impossible to will myself out of bed on awakening, I relapsed into the same restless sleep. By the time I appeared within the dining room, Mr Moncrieff, as well-chilled as a good Chardonnay, informed me that Madame had departed for the country some twenty minutes before. Despite the hour, did Sir wish to breakfast? I consulted, trepidatiously, my wristwatch. It was ten-thirty: my unvarying practice was to arise at six, breakfast soon after, and arrive in my office well before seven. I rushed downstairs, and as soon as I slid into the back seat of the limousine forbade awkward queries by pressing the button to raise the window between the driver and myself.

No such mechanism could shield me from Mrs Rampage, my secretary, who thrust her head around the door a moment after I had expressed my desire for a hearty breakfast of poached eggs, bacon, and whole-wheat toast from the executive dining room. All calls and appointments were to be postponed or otherwise put off until the completion of my repast. Mrs Rampage had informed me that two men without appointments had been awaiting my arrival since eight a.m. and asked if I would consent to see them immediately. I told her not to be absurd. The door to the outer world swung to admit her beseeching head. “Please,” she said. “I don’t know who they are, but they’re frightening everybody.”

This remark clarified all. Earlier than anticipated, Charlie-Charlie Rackett had deputized two men capable of seriousness when seriousness was called for. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “Send them in.”

Mrs Rampage withdrew to lead into my sanctum two stout, stocky, short, dark-haired men. My spirits had taken wing the moment I beheld these fellows shouldering through the door, and I rose smiling to my feet. My secretary muttered an introduction baffled as much by my cordiality as by her ignorance of my visitors’ names.

“It is quite all right,” I said. “All is in order, all is in train.” New Covenant had just walked in.

Barnie-slyness, barnie-freedom, shone from their great round gap-toothed faces: in precisely the manner I remembered, these two suggested mocking peasant violence scantily disguised by an equally mocking impersonation of convention. Small wonder that they had intimidated Mrs Rampage and her underlings, for their nearest exposure to a like phenomenon had been with our musicians, and when offstage they were pale, emaciated fellows of little physical vitality. Clothed in black suits, white shirts and black neckties, holding their black derbies by their brims and turning their gappy smiles back and forth between Mrs Rampage and myself, these barnies had evidently been loose in the world for some time. They were perfect for my task. You will be irritated by their country manners, you will be annoyed by their native insubordination, I told myself, but you will never find men more suitable, so grant them what latitude they need. I directed Mrs Rampage to cancel all telephone calls and appointments for the next hour.

The door closed, and we were alone. Each of the black-suited darlings snapped a business card from his right jacket pocket and extended it to me with a twirl of the fingers. One card read:

MR CLUBB AND MR CUFF

Private Detectives Extraordinaire

Mr Clubb

and the other:

MR CLUBB AND MR CUFF

Private Detectives Extraordinaire

Mr Cuff

I inserted the cards into a pocket and expressed my delight at making their acquaintance.

“Becoming aware of your situation,” said Mr Clubb, “we preferred to report as quickly as we could.”

“Entirely commendable,” I said. “Will you gentlemen please sit down?”

“We prefer to stand,” said Mr Clubb.

“I trust you will not object if I again take my chair,” I said, and did so. “To be honest, I am reluctant to describe the whole of my problem. It is a personal matter, therefore painful.”

“It is a domestic matter,” said Mr Cuff.

I stared at him. He stared back with the sly imperturbability of his kind.

“Mr Cuff,” I said, “you have made a reasonable, and as it happens, an accurate supposition, but in the future you will please refrain from speculation.”

“Pardon my plain way of speaking, sir, but I was not speculating,” he said. “Marital disturbances are domestic by nature.”

“All too domestic, one might say,” put in Mr Clubb. “In the sense of pertaining to the home. As we have so often observed, you find your greatest pain right smack-dab in the living room, as it were.”

“Which is a somewhat politer fashion of naming another room altogether.” Mr Cuff appeared to suppress a surge of barnie-glee.

Alarmingly, Charlie-Charlie had passed along altogether too much information, especially since the information in question should not have been in his possession. For an awful moment I imagined that the dismissed investigator had spoken to Charlie-Charlie. The man may have broadcast my disgrace to every person encountered on his final journey out of my office, inside the public elevator, thereafter even to the shoeshine “boys” and cup-rattling vermin lining the streets. It occurred to me that I might be forced to have the man silenced. Symmetry would then demand the silencing of valuable Charlie-Charlie. The inevitable next step would resemble a full-scale massacre.

My faith in Charlie-Charlie banished these fantasies by suggesting an alternate scenario and enabled me to endure the next utterance.

Mr Clubb said, “Which in plainer terms would be to say the bedroom.”

After speaking to my faithful spy, the Private Detectives Extraordinaire had taken the initiative by acting as if already employed and following Marguerite to her afternoon assignation at the — Hotel. Here, already, was the insubordination I had forseen, but instead of the expected annoyance I felt a thoroughgoing gratitude for the two men leaning slightly toward me, their animal senses alert to every nuance of my response. That they had come to my office armed with the essential secret absolved me from embarrassing explanations; blessedly, the hideous photographs would remain concealed in the bottom drawer.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “I applaud your initiative.”

They stood at ease. “Then we have an understanding,” said Mr Clubb. “At various times, various matters come to our attention. At these times we prefer to conduct ourselves according to the wishes of our employer, regardless of difficulty.”

“Agreed,” I said. “However, from this point forward I must insist — ”

A rap at the door cut short my admonition. Mrs Rampage brought in a coffee pot and cup, a plate beneath a silver cover, a rack with four slices of toast, two jam-pots, silverware, a linen napkin, and a glass of water, and came to a halt some five or six feet short of the barnies. A sinfully arousing smell of butter and bacon emanated from the tray. Mrs Rampage deliberated between placing my breakfast on the table to her left or venturing into proximity to my guests by bringing the tray to my desk. I gestured her forward, and she tacked wide to port and homed in on the desk. “All is in order, all is in train,” I said. She nodded and backed out — literally walked backwards until she reached the door, groped for the knob, and vanished.

I removed the cover from the plate containing two poached eggs in a cup-sized bowl, four crisp rashers of bacon, and a mound of home fried potatoes all the more welcome for being a surprise gift from our chef.

“And now, fellows, with your leave I shall — ”

For the second time my sentence was cut off in mid-flow. A thick barnie-hand closed upon the handle of the coffee pot and proceeded to fill the cup. Mr Clubb transported my coffee to his lips, smacked appreciatively at the taste, then took up a toast slice and plunged it like a dagger into my egg-cup, releasing a thick yellow suppuration. He crunched the dripping toast between his teeth.

At that moment, when mere annoyance passed into dumbfounded ire, I might have sent them packing despite my earlier resolution, for Mr Clubb’s violation of my breakfast was as good as an announcement that he and his partner respected none of the conventional boundaries and would indulge in boorish, even disgusting behavior. I very nearly did send them packing, and both of them knew it. They awaited my reaction, whatever it should be. Then I understood that I was being tested, and half of my insight was that ordering them off would be a failure of imagination. I had asked Charlie-Charlie to send me serious men, not Boy Scouts, and in the rape of my breakfast were depths and dimensions of seriousness I had never suspected. In that instant of comprehension, I believe, I virtually knew all that was to come, down to the last detail, and gave a silent assent. My next insight was that the moment when I might have dismissed these fellows with a conviction of perfect rectitude had just passed, and with the sense of opening myself to unpredictable adventures I turned to Mr Cuff. He lifted a rasher from my plate, folded it within a slice of toast, and displayed the result.

“Here are our methods in action,” he said. “We prefer not to go hungry while you gorge yourself, speaking freely, for the one reason that all of this stuff represents what you ate every morning when you were a kid.” Leaving me to digest this shapeless utterance, he bit into his impromptu sandwich and sent golden-brown crumbs showering to the carpet.

“For as the important, abstemious man you are now,” said Mr Clubb, “what do you eat in the mornings?”

“Toast and coffee,” I said. “That’s about it.”

“But in childhood?”

“Eggs,” I said. “Scrambled or fried, mainly. And bacon. Home-fries, too.” Every fatty, cholesterol-crammed ounce of which, I forbore to add, had been delivered by barnie-hands directly from barnie-farms. I looked at the rigid bacon, the glistening potatoes, the mess in the egg-cup. My stomach lurched.

“We prefer,” Mr Clubb said, “that you follow your true preferences instead of muddying mind and stomach by gobbling this crap in search of a inner peace which never existed in the first place, if you can be honest with yourself.” He leaned over the desk and picked up the plate. His partner snatched a second piece of bacon and wrapped it within a second slice of toast. Mr Clubb began working on the eggs, and Mr Cuff grabbed a handful of home-fried potatoes. Mr Clubb dropped the empty egg cup, finished his coffee, refilled the cup, and handed it to Mr Cuff, who had just finished licking the residue of fried potato from his free hand.

I removed the third slice of toast from the rack. Forking home fries into his mouth, Mr Clubb winked at me. I bit into the toast and considered the two little pots of jam, greengage, I think, and rosehip. Mr Clubb waggled a finger. I contented myself with the last of the toast. After a while I drank from the glass of water. All in all I felt reasonably satisfied, and, but for the deprivation of my customary cup of coffee, content with my decision. I glanced in some irritation at Mr Cuff. He drained his cup, then tilted into it the third and final measure from the pot and offered it to me. “Thank you,” I said. Mr Cuff picked up the pot of greengage jam and sucked out its contents, loudly. Mr Clubb did the same with the rosehip. They sent their tongues into the corners of the jampots and cleaned out whatever adhered to the sides. Mr Cuff burped. Overlappingly, Mr Clubb burped.

“Now, that is what I call by the name of breakfast, Mr Clubb,” said Mr Cuff. “Are we in agreement?”

“Deeply,” said Mr Clubb. “That is what I call by the name of breakfast now, what I have called by the name of breakfast in the past, and what I shall continue to call by that sweet name on every morning in the future.” He turned to me and took his time, sucking first one tooth, then another. “Our morning meal, sir, consists of that simple fare with which we begin the day, except when in all good faith we wind up sitting in a waiting room with our stomachs growling because our future client has chosen to skulk in late for work.” He inhaled. “Which was for the same exact reason which brought him to our attention in the first place and for which we went without in order to offer him our assistance. Which is, begging your pardon, sir, the other reason for which you ordered a breakfast you would ordinarily rather starve than eat, and all I ask before we get down to the business at hand is that you might begin to entertain the possibility that simple men like ourselves might possibly understand a thing or two.”

“I see that you are faithful fellows,” I began.

“Faithful as dogs,” broke in Mr Clubb.

“And that you understand my position,” I continued.

“Down to its smallest particulars,” he interrupted again. “We are on a long journey.”

“And so it follows,” I pressed on, “that you must also understand that no further initiatives may be taken without my express consent.”

These last words seemed to raise a disturbing echo, of what I could not say but an echo nonetheless, and my ultimatum failed to achieve the desired effect. Mr Clubb smiled and said, “We intend to follow your inmost desires with the faithfulness, as I have said, of trusted dogs, for one of our sacred duties is that of bringing these to fulfillment, as evidenced, begging your pardon, sir, in the matter of the breakfast our actions spared you from gobbling up and sickening yourself with. Before you protest, sir, please let me put to you the question of you how you think you would be feeling right now if you had eaten that greasy stuff all by yourself?”

The straightforward truth announced itself and demanded utterance. “Poisoned,” I said. After a second’s pause, I added, “Disgusted.”

“Yes, for you are a better man than you know. Imagine the situation. Allow yourself to picture what would have transpired had Mr Cuff and myself not acted on your behalf. As your heart throbbed and your veins groaned, you would have taken in that while you were stuffing yourself the two of us stood hungry before you. You would have remembered that good woman informing you that we had patiently awaited your arrival since eight this morning, and at that point, sir, you would have experienced a self-disgust which would forever have tainted our relationship. From that point forth, sir, you would have been incapable of receiving the full benefits of our services.”

I stared at the twinkling barnie. “Are you saying that if I had eaten my breakfast you would have refused to work for me?”

“You did eat your breakfast. The rest was ours.”

This statement was so literally true that I burst into laughter and said, “Then I must thank you for saving me from myself. Now that you may accept employment, please inform me of the rates for your services.”

“We have no rates,” said Mr Clubb.

“We prefer to leave compensation to the client,” said Mr Cuff.

This was crafty even by barnie-standards, but I knew a counter-move. “What is the greatest sum you have ever been awarded for a single job?”

“Six hundred thousand dollars,” said Mr Clubb.

“And the smallest?”

“Nothing, zero, nada, zilch,” said the same gentleman.

“And your feelings as to the disparity?”

“None,” said Mr Clubb. “What we are given is the correct amount. When the time comes, you shall know the sum to the penny.”

To myself I said, So I shall, and it shall be nothing; to them, “We must devise a method by which I may pass along suggestions as I monitor your ongoing progress. Our future consultations should take place in anonymous public places on the order of street corners, public parks, diners, and the like. I must never be seen in your office.”

“You must not, you could not,” said Mr Clubb. “We would prefer to install ourselves here within the privacy and seclusion of your own beautiful office.”

“Here?” He had once again succeeded in dumbfounding me.

“Our installation within the client’s work space proves so advantageous as to overcome all initial objections,” said Mr Cuff. “And in this case, sir, we would occupy but the single corner behind me where the table stands against the window. We would come and go by means of your private elevator, exercise our natural functions in your private bathroom, and have our simple meals sent in from your kitchen. You would suffer no interference or awkwardness in the course of your business. So we prefer to do our job here, where we can do it best.”

“You prefer to move in with me,” I said, giving equal weight to every word.

“Prefer it to declining the offer of our help, thereby forcing you, sir, to seek the aid of less reliable individuals.”

Several factors, first among them being the combination of delay, difficulty, and risk involved in finding replacements for the pair before me, led me to give further thought to this absurdity. Charlie-Charlie, a fellow of wide acquaintance among society’s shadow-side, had sent me his best. Any others would be inferior. It was true that Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff could enter and leave my office unseen, granting us a greater degree of security possible in diners and public parks. There remained an insuperable problem.

“All you say may be true, but my partners and clients alike enter this office daily. How do I explain the presence of two strangers?”

“That is easily done, Mr Cuff, is it not?” said Mr Clubb.

“Indeed it is,” said his partner. “Our experience has given us two infallible and complementary methods. The first of these is the installation of a screen to shield us from the view of those who visit this office.”

I said, “You intend to hide behind a screen.”

“During those periods when it is necessary for us to be on site.”

“Are you and Mr Clubb capable of perfect silence? Do you never shuffle your feet, do you never cough?”

“You could justify our presence within these sacrosanct confines by the single manner most calculated to draw over Mr Clubb and myself a blanket of respectable, anonymous impersonality.”

“You wish to be introduced as my lawyers?” I asked.

“I invite you to consider a word,” said Mr Cuff. “Hold it steadily in your mind. Remark the inviolability which distinguishes those it identifies, measure its effect upon those who hear it. The word of which I speak, sir, is this: consultant.”

I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.

Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts — consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments — consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.

Eyes a-gleam with approval, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff stepped forward to shake my hand.

“We are in business,” said Mr Clubb.

“Which is by way of saying,” said Mr Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”

Mrs Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff clasped their hands before them and looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black and red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochres, teals, and taupes.”

My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”

“Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”

The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.

“We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every cooperation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”

She disappeared, no doubt on a beeline for her telephone.

Mr Clubb stretched his arms above his head. “The preliminaries are out of the way, and we can move to the job at hand. You, sir, have been most exceedingly, most grievously wronged. Do I overstate?”

“You do not,” I said.

“Would I overstate to assert that you have been injured, that you have suffered a devastating wound?”

“No, you would not,” I responded, with some heat.

Mr Clubb settled a broad haunch upon the surface of my desk. His face had taken on a grave, sweet serenity. “You seek redress. Redress, sir, is a correction, but it is nothing more. You imagine that it restores a lost balance, but it does nothing of the kind. A crack has appeared on the earth’s surface, causing widespread loss of life. From all sides are heard the cries of the wounded and dying. It is as though the earth itself has suffered an injury akin to yours, is it not?”

He had expressed a feeling I had not known to be mine until that moment, and my voice trembled as I said, “It is exactly.”

“Exactly,” he said. “For that reason I said correction rather than restoration. Restoration is never possible. Change is the first law of life.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to get down to brass tacks.

Mr Clubb hitched his buttock more comprehensively onto the desk. “What will happen will indeed happen, but we prefer our clients to acknowledge from the first that, apart from human desires being a deep and messy business, outcomes are full of surprises. If you choose to repay one disaster with an equal and opposite disaster, we would reply, in our country fashion, there’s a calf that won’t suck milk.”

I said, “I know I can’t pay my wife back in kind, how could I?”

“Once we begin,” he said, “we cannot undo our actions.”

“Why should I want them undone?” I asked.

Mr Clubb drew up his legs and sat cross-legged before me. Mr Cuff placed a meaty hand on my shoulder. “I suppose there is no dispute,” said Mr Clubb, “that the injury you seek to redress is the adulterous behavior of your spouse.”

Mr Cuff’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

“You wish that my partner and myself punish your spouse.”

“I didn’t hire you to read her bedtime stories,” I said.

Mr Cuff twice smacked my shoulder, painfully, in what I took to be approval.

“Are we assuming that her punishment is to be of a physical nature?” asked Mr Clubb. His partner gave my shoulder another all-too hearty squeeze.

“What other kind is there?” I asked, pulling away from Mr Cuff’s hand.

The hand closed on me again, and Mr Clubb said, “Punishment of a mental or psychological nature. We could, for example, torment her with mysterious telephone calls and anonymous letters. We could use any of a hundred devices to make it impossible for her to sleep. Threatening incidents could be staged so often as to put her in a permanent state of terror.”

“I want physical punishment,” I said.

“That is our constant preference,” he said. “Results are swifter and more conclusive when physical punishment is used. But again, we have a wide spectrum from which to choose. Are we looking for mild physical pain, real suffering, or something in between, on the order of, say, broken arms or legs?”

I thought of the change in Marguerite’s eyes when I named the — Hotel. “Real suffering.”

Another bone-crunching blow to my shoulder from Mr Cuff and a wide, gappy smile from Mr Clubb greeted this remark. “You, sir, are our favorite type of client,” said Mr Clubb. “A fellow who knows what he wants and is unafraid to put it into words. This suffering, now, did you wish it in brief or extended form?”

“Extended,” I said. “I must say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in consulting with me like this. I was not quite sure what I wanted of you when first I requested your services, but you have helped me become perfectly clear about it.”

“That is our function,” he said. “Now, sir. The extended form of real suffering permits two different conclusions, gradual cessation or termination. Which is your preference?”

I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again and stared at the ceiling. Did I want these men to murder my wife? No. Yes. No. Yes, but only after making sure that the unfaithful trollop understood exactly why she had to die. No, surely an extended term of excruciating torture would restore the world to proper balance. Yet I wanted the witch dead. But then I would be ordering these barnies to kill her. “At the moment I cannot make that decision,” I said. Irresistibly, my eyes found the bottom drawer containing the file of obscene photographs. “I’ll let you know my decision after we have begun.”

Mr Cuff dropped his hand, and Mr Clubb nodded with exaggerated, perhaps ironic slowness. “And what of your rival, the seducer, sir? Do we have any wishes in regard to that gentleman, sir?”

The way these fellows could sharpen one’s thinking was truly remarkable. “I most certainly do,” I said. “What she gets, he gets. Fair is fair.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “and, if you will permit me, sir, only fair is fair. And fairness demands that before we go any deeper into the particulars of the case we must examine the evidence as presented to yourself, and when I speak of fairness, sir, I refer to fairness particularly to yourself, for only the evidence seen by your own eyes can permit us to view this matter through them.”

Again, I looked helplessly down at the bottom drawer. “That will not be necessary. You will find my wife at our country estate, Green. ”

My voice trailed off as Mr Cuff’s hand ground into my shoulder while he bent down and opened the drawer.

“Begging to differ,” said Mr Clubb, “but we are now and again in a better position than the client to determine what is necessary. Remember, sir, that while shame unshared is toxic to the soul, shame shared is the beginning of health. Besides, it only hurts for a little while.”

Mr Cuff drew the file from the drawer.

“My partner will concur that your inmost wish is that we examine the evidence,” said Mr Clubb. “Else you would not have signalled its location. We would prefer to have your explicit command to do so, but in the absence of explicit, implicit serves just about as well.”

I gave an impatient, ambiguous wave of the hand, a gesture they cheerfully misunderstood.

“Then all is. how do you put it, sir? ‘All is. ’ “

“All is in order, all is in train,” I muttered.

“Just so. We have ever found it beneficial to establish a common language with our clients, in order to conduct ourselves within terms enhanced by their constant usage in the dialogue between us.” He took the file from Mr Cuff’s hands. “We shall examine the contents of this folder at the table across the room. After the examination has been completed, my partner and I shall deliberate. And then, sir, we shall return for further instructions.”

They strolled across the office and took adjoining chairs on the near side of the table, presenting me with two identical, wide, black-clothed backs. Their hats went to either side, the file between them. Attempting unsuccessfully to look away, I lifted my receiver and asked my secretary who if anyone had called in the interim and what appointments had been made for the morning.

Mr Clubb opened the folder and leaned forward to inspect the topmost photograph.

My secretary informed me that Marguerite had telephoned from the road with an inquiry concerning my health. Mr Clubb’s back and shoulders trembled with what I assumed was the shock of disgust. One of the scions was due at two p.m., and at four a cryptic gentleman would arrive. By their works shall ye know them, and Mrs Rampage proved herself a diligent soul by asking if I wished her to place a call to Green Chimneys at three o’clock. Mr Clubb thrust a photograph in front of Mr Cuff. “I think not,” I said. “Anything else?” She told me that Gilligan had expressed a desire to see me privately — meaning, without the Captain — sometime during the morning. A murmur came from the table. “Gilligan can wait,” I said, and the murmur, expressive I had thought of dismay and sympathy, rose in volume and revealed itself as amusement.

They were chuckling — even chortling!

I replaced the telephone and said, “Gentlemen, please, your laughter is insupportable.” The potential effect of this remark was undone by its being lost within a surge of coarse laughter. I believe that something else was at that moment lost. some dimension of my soul… an element akin to pride. akin to dignity. but whether the loss was for good or ill, then I could not say. For some time, in fact an impossibly lengthy time, they found cause for laughter in the wretched photographs. My occasional attempts to silence them went unheard as they passed the dread photographs back and forth, discarding some instantly and to others returning for a second, even a third, even a fourth and fifth, perusal.

And then at last the barnies reared back, uttered a few nostalgic chirrups of laughter, and returned the photographs to the folder. They were still twitching with remembered laughter, still flicking happy tears from their eyes, as they sauntered grinning back across the office and tossed the file onto my desk. “Ah me, sir, a delightful experience,” said Mr Clubb. “Nature in all her lusty romantic splendor, one might say. Remarkably stimulating, I could add. Correct, sir?”

“I hadn’t expected you fellows to be stimulated to mirth,” I grumbled, ramming the foul thing into the drawer and out of view.

“Laughter is merely a portion of the stimulation to which I refer,” he said. “Unless my sense of smell has led me astray, a thing I fancy it has yet to do, you could not but feel another sort of arousal altogether before these pictures, am I right?”

I refused to respond to this sally but feared that I felt the blood rising to my cheeks. Here they were again, the slugs and maggots.

“We are all brothers under the skin,” said Mr Clubb. “Remember my words. Shame unshared poisons the soul. And besides, it only hurts for a little while.”

Now I could not respond. What was the “it” which hurts only for a little while — the pain of cuckoldry, the mystery of my shameful response to the photographs, or the horror of the barnies knowing what I had done?

“You will find it helpful, sir, to repeat after me: It only hurts for a little while.”

“It only hurts for a little while,” I said, and the naive phrase reminded me that they were only barnies after all.

“Spoken like a child,” Mr Clubb most annoyingly said, “in as it were the tones and accents of purest innocence,” and then righted matters by asking where Marguerite might be found. Had I not mentioned a country place named Green.?

“Green Chimneys,” I said, shaking off the unpleasant impression which the preceding few seconds had made upon me. “You will find it at the end of— Lane, turning right off— Street just north of the town of —. The four green chimneys easily visible above the hedge along — Lane are your landmark, though as it is the only building in sight you can hardly mistake it for another. My wife left our place in the city just after ten this morning, so she should be getting there…” I looked at my watch.”. in thirty to forty-five minutes. She will unlock the front gate, but she will not relock it once she has passed through, for she never does. The woman does not have the self-preservation of a sparrow. Once she has entered the estate, she will travel up the drive and open the door of the garage with an electronic device. This door, I assure you, will remain open, and the door she will take into the house will not be locked.”

“But there are maids and cooks and laundresses and bootboys and suchlike to consider,” said Mr Cuff. “Plus a major-domo to conduct the entire orchestra and go around rattling the doors to make sure they’re locked. Unless all of these parties are to be absent on account of the annual holiday.”

“The servants have the month off,” I said.

“A most suggestive consideration,” said Mr Clubb. “You possess a devilish clever mind, sir.”

“Perhaps,” I said, grateful for the restoration of the proper balance. “Marguerite will have stopped along the way for groceries and other essentials, so she will first carry the bags into the kitchen, which is the first room to the right off the corridor from the garage. Then I suppose she will take the staircase up to her bedroom and air it out.” I took pen and paper from my topmost drawer and sketched the layout of the house as I spoke. “She may go around to the library, the morning room, and the drawing room, opening the shutters and a few windows. Somewhere during this process, she is likely to use the telephone. After that, she will leave the house by the rear entrance and take the path along the top of the bluff to a long, low building which looks like this.”

I drew in the well-known outlines of the studio in its nest of trees on the bluff above the Hudson. “It is a recording studio I had built for her convenience. She may well plan to spend the entire afternoon inside it, and you will know if she is there by the lights.” Then I could see Marguerite smiling to herself as she fit her key into the lock on the studio door, see her let herself in and reach automatically for the light switch, and a wave of emotion rendered me speechless.

Mr Clubb rescued me by asking, “It is your feeling, sir, that when the lady stops to use the telephone she will be placing a call to that energetic gentleman?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, only barely refraining from adding you dolt. “She will seize the earliest opportunity to inform him of their good fortune.”

He nodded with the extravagant caution I was startled to recognize from my own dealings with backward clients. “Let us pause to see all ‘round the matter, sir. Will the lady wish to leave a suspicious entry in your telephone records? Isn’t it more likely that the person she telephones will be you, sir? The call to the athletic gentleman will already have been placed, according to my way of seeing things, either from the roadside or the telephone in the grocery where you have her stop to pick up her essentials.”

Though disliking these references to Leeson’s physical condition, I admitted that he might have a point.

“So, in that case, sir, and I know that a mind as quick as yours has already overtaken mine, you would want to express yourself with the utmost cordiality when the missus calls again, so as not to tip your hand in even the slightest way. But that I’m sure goes without saying, after all you have been through, sir.”

Without bothering to acknowledge this, I said, “Shouldn’t you fellows really be leaving? No sense in wasting time, after all.”

“Precisely why we shall wait here until the end of the day,” said Mr Clubb. “In cases of this unhappy sort, we find it more effective to deal with both parties at once, acting in concert when they are in prime condition to be taken by surprise. The gentleman is liable to leave his place of work at the end of the day, which implies to me that he is unlikely to appear at your lovely country place at any time before seven this evening, or, which is more likely, eight. At this time of the year, there is still enough light at nine o’clock to enable us to conceal our vehicle on the grounds, enter the house, and begin our business. At eleven o’clock, sir, we shall call with our initial report and request additional instructions.”

I asked the fellow if he meant to idle away the entire afternoon in my office while I conducted my business.

“Mr Cuff and I are never idle, sir. While you conduct your business, we will be doing the same, laying out our plans, refining our strategies, choosing our methods and the order of their use.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, “but I trust you’ll be quiet about it.”

At that moment, Mrs Rampage buzzed to say that Gilligan was before her, requesting to see me immediately, proof that bush telegraph is a more efficient means of spreading information than any newspaper. I told her to send him in, and a second later the morning Gilligan, pale of face, dark hair tousled but not as yet completely wild, came treading softly toward my desk. He pretended to be surprised that I had visitors and pantomimed an apology which incorporated the suggestion that he depart and return later. “No, no,” I said, “I am delighted to see you, for this gives me the opportunity to introduce you to our new consultants, who will be working closely with me for a time.”

Gilligan swallowed, glanced at me with the deepest suspicion, and extended his hand as I made the introductions. “I regret that I am unfamiliar with your work, gentlemen,” he said. “Might I ask the name of your firm? Is it Locust, Bleaney, Burns or Charter, Carter, Maxton, and Coltrane?”

By naming the two most prominent consultancies in our industry, Gilligan was assessing the thinness of the ice beneath his feet: LBB specialized in investments, CCM&C in estates and trusts. If my visitors worked for the former, he would suspect that a guillotine hung above his neck; if the latter, the Captain was liable for the chop. “Neither,” I said. “Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff are the directors of their own concern, which covers every aspect of the trade with such tactful professionalism that it is known to but the few for whom they will consent to work.”

“Excellent,” Gilligan whispered, gazing in some puzzlement at the map and floor plan atop my desk. “Tip-top.”

“When their findings are given to me, they shall be given to all. In the meantime. I would prefer that you say as little as possible about the matter. Though change is a law of life, we wish to avoid unnecessary alarm.”

“You know that you can depend on my silence,” said Morning Gilligan, and it was true, I did know that. I also knew that his alter ego, Afternoon Gilligan, would babble the news to everyone who had not already heard it from Mrs Rampage. By six p.m., our entire industry would be pondering the information that I had called in a consultancy team of such rarified accomplishments that they chose to remain unknown but to the very few. None of my colleagues could dare admit to an ignorance of Clubb & Cuff, and my reputation, already great, would increase exponentially.

To distract him from the floor plan of Green Chimneys and the rough map of my estate, I said, “I assume some business brought you here, Gilligan.”

“Oh! Yes — yes — of course,” he said, and with a trace of embarrassment brought to my attention the pretext for his being there, the ominous plunge in value of an overseas fund in which we had advised one of his musicians to invest. Should we recommend selling the fund before more money was lost, or was it wisest to hold on? Only a minute was required to decide that the musician should retain his share of the fund until next quarter, when we anticipated a general improvement, but both Gilligan and I were aware that this recommendation call could easily have been handled by telephone, and soon he was moving toward the door, smiling at the barnies in a pathetic display of false confidence.

The telephone rang a moment after the detectives had returned to the table. Mr Clubb said, “Your wife, sir. Remember: the utmost cordiality.” Here was false confidence, I thought, of an entirely different sort. I picked up the receiver to hear Mrs Rampage tell me that my wife was on the line.

What followed was a banal conversation of the utmost duplicity. Marguerite pretended that my sudden departure from the dinner table and my late arrival at the office had caused her to fear for my health. I pretended that all was well, apart from a slight indigestion. Had the drive up been peaceful? Yes, the highways had been surprisingly empty. How was the house? A little musty, but otherwise fine. She had never quite realized, she said, how very large Green Chimneys was until she walked around in it, knowing she was going to be there alone. Had she been out to the studio? No, but she was looking forward to getting a lot of work done over the next three or four days and thought she would be working every night, as well. (Implicit in this remark was the information that I should be unable to reach her, the studio being without a telephone.) After a moment of awkward silence, she said, “I suppose it is too early for you to have identified your traitor.” It was, I said, but the process would begin that evening. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” she said. “I know how painful the discovery was for you, and I can only begin to imagine how angry you must be, but I hope you will be merciful. No amount of punishment can undo the damage, and if you try to exact retribution you will only injure yourself. The man is going to lose his job and his reputation. Isn’t that punishment enough?” After a few meaningless pleasantries the conversation had clearly come to an end, although we still had yet to say good-bye. Then an odd thing happened to me. I nearly said, Lock all the doors and windows tonight and let no one in. I nearly said, You are in grave danger and must come home. With these words rising in my throat, I looked across the room at Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, and Mr Clubb winked at me. I heard myself bidding Marguerite farewell, and then heard her hang up her telephone.

“Well done, sir,” said Mr Clubb. “To aid Mr Cuff and myself in the preparation of our inventory, can you tell us if you keep certain staples at Green Chimneys?”

“Staples?” I said, thinking he was referring to foodstuffs.

“Rope?” he asked. “Tools, especially pliers, hammers, and screwdrivers? A good saw? A variety of knives? Are there by any chance firearms?”

“No firearms,” I said. “I believe all the other items you mention can be found in the house.”

“Rope and tool chest in the basement, knives in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” I said, “precisely.” I had not ordered these barnies to murder my wife, I reminded myself; I had drawn back from that precipice. By the time I went into the executive dining room for my luncheon, I felt sufficiently restored to give Charlie-Charlie that ancient symbol of approval, the thumbs-up sign.

When I returned to my office the screen had been set in place, shielding from view the detectives in their preparations but in no way muffling the rumble of comments and laughter they brought to the task. “Gentlemen,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard behind the screen — a most unsuitable affair decorated with a pattern of alternating ocean liners, martini glasses, champagne bottles and cigarettes — “you must modulate your voices, as I have business to conduct here as well as you.” There came a somewhat softer rumble of acquiescence. I took my seat to discover my bottom desk drawer pulled out, the folder absent. Another roar of laughter jerked me once again to my feet.

I came around the side of the screen and stopped short. The table lay concealed beneath drifts and mounds of yellow legal paper covered with lists of words and drawings of stick figures in varying stages of dismemberment. Strewn through the yellow pages were the photographs, loosely divided into those in which either Marguerite or Graham Leeson provided the principal focus. Crude genitalia had been drawn, without reference to either party’s actual gender, over and atop both of them. Aghast, I leaned over and began gathering up the defaced photographs. “I must insist…” I said. “I really must insist, you know. ”

Mr Clubb immobilized my wrist with one hand and extracted the photographs with the other. “We prefer to work in our time-honored fashion,” he said. “Our methods may be unusual, but they are ours. But before you take up the afternoon’s occupations, sir, can you tell us if items on the handcuff order might be found in the house?”

“No,” I said. Mr Cuff pulled a yellow page before him and wrote handcuffs.

“Chains?” asked Mr Clubb.

“No chains,” I said, and Mr Cuff added chains to his list.

“That is all for the moment,” said Mr Clubb, and released me.

I took a step backwards and massaged my wrist, which stung as if from rope-burn. “You speak of your methods,” I said, “and I understand that you have them. But what can be the purpose of defacing my photographs in this grotesque fashion?”

“Sir,” said Mr Clubb in a stern, teacherly voice, “where you speak of defacing, we use the term enhancement. Enhancement is a tool we find vital to the method known by the name of Visualization.”

I retired defeated to my desk. At five minutes before two, Mrs Rampage informed that the Captain and his scion, a thirty-year-old inheritor of a great family fortune named Mr Chester Montfort d’M—, awaited my pleasure. Putting Mrs Rampage on hold, I called out, “Please do give me absolute quiet, now. A client is on his way in.”

First to appear was the Captain, his tall, rotund form as alert as a pointer’s in a grouse field as he led in the taller, inexpressibly languid figure of Mr Chester Montfort d’M—, a person marked in every inch of his being by great ease, humor, and stupidity. The Captain froze to gape horrified at the screen, but Montfort d’M— continued round him to shake my hand and say, “Have to tell you, I like that thingamabob over there immensely. Reminds me of a similar thingamabob at the Beeswax Club a few years ago, whole flocks of girls used to come tumbling out. Don’t suppose we’re in for any unicycles and trumpets today, eh?”

The combination of the raffish screen and our client’s unbridled memories brought a dangerous flush to the Captain’s face, and I hastened to explain the presence of top-level consultants who preferred to pitch tent on-site, as it were, hence the installation of a screen, all the above in the service of, well, service, an all-important quality we.

“By Kitchener’s mustache,” said the Captain. “I remember the Beeswax Club. Don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the night Little Billy Pegleg jumped up and. ” The color darkened on his cheeks, and he closed his mouth.

From behind the screen, I heard Mr Clubb say, “Visualize this.” Mr Cuff chuckled.

The Captain recovered himself and turned his sternest glare upon me. “Superb idea, consultants. A white-glove inspection tightens up any ship.” His veiled glance toward the screen indicated that he had known of the presence of our “consultants” but, unlike Gilligan, had restrained himself from thrusting into my office until given legitimate reason. “That being the case, is it still quite proper that these people remain while we discuss Mr Montfort d’M—’s confidential affairs?”

“Quite proper, I assure you,” I said. “The consultants and I prefer to work in an atmosphere of complete cooperation. Indeed, this arrangement is a condition of their accepting our firm as their client.”

“Indeed,” said the Captain.

“Top of the tree, are they?” said Mr Montfort d’M—. “Expect no less of you fellows. Fearful competence.Terrifying competence.”

Mr Cuff’s voice could be heard saying, “Okay, visualize this.” Mr Clubb uttered a high-pitched giggle.

“Enjoy their work,” said Mr Montfort d’M—.

“Shall we?” I gestured to their chairs. As a young man whose assets equalled fifteen to twenty billion dollars (depending on the condition of the stock market, the value of real estate in half a dozen cities around the world, global warming, forest fires and the like) our client was as catnip to the ladies, three of whom he had previously married and divorced after siring a child upon each, resulting in a great interlocking complexity of trusts, agreements, and contracts, all of which had to be re-examined on the occasion of his forthcoming wedding to a fourth young woman, named like her predecessors after a semi-precious stone. Due to the perspicacity of the Captain and myself, each new nuptial altered the terms of those previous so as to maintain our client’s liability at an unvarying level. Our computers had enabled us to generate the documents well before his arrival, and all Mr Montfort d’M— had to do was listen to the revised terms and sign the papers, a task which generally induced a slumberous state except for those moments when a prized asset was in transition.

“Hold on, boys,” he said ten minutes into our explanations, “you mean Opal has to give the race horses to Garnet, and in return she gets the teak plantation from Turquoise, who turns around and gives Opal the ski resort in Aspen? Opal is crazy about those horses, and Turquoise just built a house.”

I explained that his second wife could easily afford the purchase of a new stable with the income from the plantation and his third would keep her new house. He bent to the task of scratching his signature on the form. A roar of laughter erupted behind the screen. The Captain glanced sideways in displeasure, and our client looked at me blinking. “Now to the secondary trusts,” I said. “As you will recall, three years ago. ”

My words were cut short by the appearance of a chuckling Mr Clubb clamping an unlighted cigar in his mouth, a legal pad in his hand, as he came toward us. The Captain and Mr Montfort d’M— goggled at him, and Mr Clubb nodded. “Begging your pardon, sir, but some queries cannot wait. Pickaxe, sir? Dental floss? Awl?”

“No, yes, no,” I said, and then introduced him to the other two men. The Captain appeared stunned, Mr Montfort d’M— cheerfully puzzled.

“We would prefer the existence of an attic,” said Mr Clubb.

“An attic exists,” I said.

“I must admit my confusion,” said the Captain. “Why is a consultant asking about awls and attics? What is dental floss to a consultant?”

“For the nonce, Captain,” I said, “these gentlemen and I must communicate in a form of cipher or code, of which these are examples, but soon. ”

“Plug your blow-hole, Captain,” broke in Mr Clubb. “At the moment you are as useful as wind in an outhouse, always hoping you will excuse my simple way of expressing myself.”

Sputtering, the Captain rose to his feet, his face rosier by far than during his involuntary reminiscence of what Little Billy Pegleg had done one night at the Beeswax Club.

“Steady on,” I said, fearful of the heights of choler to which indignation could bring my portly, white-haired, but still powerful junior.

“Not on your life,” bellowed the Captain. “I cannot brook. cannot tolerate… If this ill-mannered dwarf imagines excuse is possible after. ” He raised a fist. Mr Clubb said, “Pish tosh,” and placed a hand on the nape of the Captain’s neck. Instantly, the Captain’s eyes rolled up, the color drained from his face, and he dropped like a sack into his chair.

“Hole in one,” marvelled Mr Montfort d’M—. “World class. Old boy isn’t dead, is he?”

The Captain exhaled uncertainly and licked his lips.

“With my apologies for the unpleasantness,” said Mr Clubb, “I have only two more queries at this juncture. Might we locate bedding in the aforesaid attic, and have you an implement such a match or a lighter?”

“There are several old mattresses and bedframes in the attic,” I said, “but as to matches, surely you do not. ”

Understanding the request better than I, Mr Montfort d’M— extended a golden lighter and applied an inch of flame to the tip of Mr Clubb’s cigar. “Didn’t think that part was code,” he said. “Rules have changed? Smoking allowed?”

“From time to time during the workday my colleague and I prefer to smoke,” said Mr Clubb, expelling a reeking miasma across the desk. I had always found tobacco nauseating in its every form, and in all parts of our building smoking had of course long been prohibited.

“Three cheers, my man, plus three more after that,” said Mr Montfort d’M—, extracting a ridged case from an inside pocket, an absurdly phallic cigar from the case. “I prefer to smoke, too, you know, especially during these deadly conferences about who gets the pincushions and who gets the snuffboxes. Believe I’ll join you in a corona.” He submitted the object to a circumcision, snick-snick, and to my horror set it alight. “Ashtray?” I dumped paper clips from a crystal oyster shell and slid it toward him. “Mr Clubb, is it? Mr Clubb, you are a fellow of wonderful accomplishments, still can’t get over that marvelous whopbopaloobop on the Captain, and I’d like to ask if we could get together some evening, cigars and cognac kind of thing.”

“We prefer to undertake one matter at a time,” said Mr Clubb. Mr Cuff appeared beside the screen. He, too, was lighting up eight or nine inches of brown rope. “However, we welcome your appreciation and would be delighted to swap tales of derring-do at a later date.”

“Very, very cool,” said Mr Montfort d’M—, “especially if you could teach me how to do the whopbopaloobop.”

“This is a world full of hidden knowledge,” Mr Clubb said. “My partner and I have chosen as our sacred task the transmission of that knowledge.”

“Amen,” said Mr Cuff.

Mr Clubb bowed to my awed client and sauntered off. The Captain shook himself, rubbed his eyes, and took in the client’s cigar. “My goodness,” he said. “I believe… I can’t imagine. heavens, is smoking permitted again? What a blessing.” With that, he fumbled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, accepted a light from Mr Montfort d’M—, and sucked in the fumes. Until that moment I had not known that the Captain was an addict of nicotine.

For the remainder of the hour a coiling layer of smoke like a low-lying cloud established itself beneath the ceiling and increased in density as it grew toward the floor while we extracted Mr Montfort d’M—’s careless signature on the transfers and assignments. Now and again the Captain displaced one of a perpetual chain of cigarettes from his mouth to remark upon the peculiar pain in his neck. Finally I was able to send client and junior partner on their way with those words of final benediction, “All is in order, all is in train,” freeing me at last to stride about my office flapping a copy of Institutional Investor at the cloud, a remedy our fixed windows made more symbolic than actual. The barnies further defeated the effort by wafting ceaseless billows of cigar effluvia over the screen, but as they seemed to be conducting their business in a conventionally businesslike manner I made no objection and retired in defeat to my desk for the preparations necessitated by the arrival in an hour of my next client, Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C—, the most cryptic of all the cryptic gentlemen.

So deeply was I immersed in these preparations that only a polite cough and the supplication of “Begging your pardon, sir” brought to my awareness the presence of Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff before my desk. “What is it now?” I asked.

“We are, sir, in need of creature comforts,” said Mr Clubb. “Long hours of work have left us exceeding dry in the region of the mouth and throat, and the pressing sensation of thirst has made it impossible for us to maintain the concentration required to do our best.”

“Meaning a drink would be greatly appreciated, sir,” said Mr Cuff.

“Of course, of course,” I said. “You should have spoken earlier. I’ll have Mrs Rampage bring in a couple of bottles of water. We have San Pellegrino and Evian. Which would you prefer?”

With a smile almost menacing in its intensity, Mr Cuff said, “We prefer drinks when we drink. Drink drinks, if you take my meaning.”

“For the sake of the refreshment found in them,” said Mr Clubb, ignoring my obvious dismay. “I speak of refreshment in its every aspect, from relief to the parched tongue, taste to the ready palate, warmth to the inner man, and to the highest of refreshments, that of the mind and soul. We prefer bottles of gin and bourbon, and while any decent gargle would be gratefully received, we have like all men who partake of grape and grain our favorite tipples. Mr Cuff is partial to JW Dant bourbon, and I enjoy a glass of Bombay gin. A bucket of ice would not go amiss, and I could say the same for a case of ice-cold Old Bohemia beer. As a chaser.”

“You consider it a good idea to consume alcohol before embarking on…” I sought for the correct phrase. “A mission so delicate?”

“We consider it an essential prelude. Alcohol inspires the mind and awakens the imagination. A fool dulls both by over-indulgence, but up to that point, which is a highly individual matter, there is only enhancement. Through history, alcohol has been known for its sacred properties, and the both of us know during the sacrament of Holy Communion, priests and reverends happily serve as bartenders, passing out free drinks to all comers, children included.”

“Besides that,” I said after a pause, “I suppose you would prefer not to be compelled to quit my employment after we have made such strides together.”

“We are on a great journey,” he said.

I placed the order with Mrs Rampage, and fifteen minutes later into my domain entered two ill-dressed youths laden with the requested liquors and a metal bucket in which the necks of beer bottles protruded from a bed of ice. I tipped the louts a dollar apiece, which they accepted with boorish lack of grace. Mrs Rampage took in this activity with none of the revulsion for the polluted air and spirituous liquids I had anticipated.

The louts slouched away through the door she held open for them; the chuckling barnies disappeared from view with their refreshments; and, after fixing me for a moment of silence, her eyes alight with an expression I had never before observed in them, Mrs Rampage ventured the amazing opinion that the recent relaxation of formalities should prove beneficial to the firm as a whole and added that, were Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff responsible for the reformation, they had already justified their reputation and would assuredly enhance my own.

“You believe so,” I said, noting with momentarily delayed satisfaction that the effects of Afternoon Gilligan’s indiscretions had already begun to declare themselves.

Employing the tactful verbal formula for I wish to speak exactly half my mind and no more, Mrs Rampage said, “May I be frank, sir?”

“I depend on you to do no less,” I said.

Her carriage and face at that moment became what I can only describe as girlish — years seemed to drop away from her. “I don’t want to say too much, sir, and I hope you know how much everyone understands what a privilege it is to be a part of this firm.” Like the Captain but more attractively, she blushed. “Honest, I really mean that. Everybody knows that we’re one of the two or three companies best at what we do.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“That’s why I feel I can talk like this,” said my ever-less-recognizable Mrs Rampage. “Until today, everybody thought if they acted like themselves, the way they really were, you’d fire them right away. Because, and maybe I shouldn’t say this, maybe I’m way out of line, sir, but it’s because you always seem, well, so proper you could never forgive a person for not being as dignified as you are. Like the Captain is a heavy smoker and everybody knows it’s not supposed to be permitted in this building, but a lot of companies here let their top people smoke in their offices as long as they’re discreet because it shows they appreciate those people, and that’s nice because it shows if you get to the top you can be appreciated, too, but here the Captain has to go all the way to the elevator and stand outside with the file clerks if he wants a cigarette. And in every other company I know the partners and important clients sometimes have a drink together and nobody thinks they’re committing a terrible sin. You’re a religious man, sir, we look up to you so much, but I think you’re going to find that people will respect you even more once it gets out that you loosened the rules a little bit.” She gave me a look in which I read that she feared having spoken too freely. “I just wanted to say that I think you’re doing the right thing, sir.”

What she was saying, of course, was that I was widely regarded as pompous, remote, and out of touch. “I had not known that my employees regarded me as a religious man,” I said.

“Oh, we all do,” she said with almost touching earnestness. “Because of the hymns.”

“The hymns?”

“The ones you hum to yourself when you’re working.”

“Do I, indeed? Which ones?”

“Jesus Loves Me, The Old Rugged Cross, Abide With Me,and Amazing Grace, mostly. Sometimes Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Here, with a vengeance, were Temple Square and Scripture Street! Here was the Youth Bible Study Center, where the child-me had hours on end sung these same hymns during our Sunday School sessions! I did not to know what to make of the new knowledge that I hummed them to myself at my desk, but it was some consolation that this unconscious habit had at least partially humanized me to my staff.

“You didn’t know you did that? Oh, sir, that’s so cute!”

Sounds of merriment from the far side of the office rescued Mrs Rampage from the fear that this time she had truly overstepped the bounds, and she made a rapid exit. I stared after her for a moment, at first unsure how deeply I ought regret a situation in which my secretary found it possible to describe myself and my habits as cute, then resolving that it probably was, or eventually would be, all for the best. “All is in order, all is in train,” I said to myself. “It only hurts for a little while.” With that, I took my seat once more to continue delving into the elaborations of Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C—’s financial life.

Another clink of bottle against glass and ripple of laughter brought with them the long-delayed recognition that this particular client would never consent to the presence of unknown “consultants”. Unless the barnies could be removed for at least an hour, I should face the immediate loss of a substantial portion of my business.

“Fellows,” I cried, “come up here now. We must address a most serious problem.”

Glasses in hand, cigars nestled into the corners of their mouths, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff sauntered into view. Once I had explained the issue in the most general terms, the detectives readily agreed to absent themselves for the required period. Where might they install themselves? “My bathroom,” I said. “It has a small library attached, with a desk, a work table, leather chairs and sofa, a billiard table, a large-screen cable television set and a bar. Since you have not yet had your luncheon, you may wish to order whatever you like from the kitchen.”

Five minutes later, bottles, glasses, hats, and mounds of paper arranged on the bathroom table, the bucket of beer beside it, I exited through the concealed door to the right of my desk as Mr Clubb ordered up from my doubtless astounded chef a meal of chicken wings, french fries, onion rings and T-bone steaks, medium well. With plenty of time to spare, I immersed myself again in details only to be brought up short by the recognition that I was humming, none too quietly, that most innocent of hymns, Jesus Loves Me. And then, precisely at the appointed hour, Mrs Rampage informed me of the arrival of my client and his associates, and I bade her bring them through.

A sly, slow-moving whale encased in an exquisite double-breasted black pinstripe, Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— advanced into my office with his customary hauteur and offered me the customary nod of the head while his three “associates” formed a human breakwater in the center of the room. Regal to the core, he affected not to notice Mrs Rampage sliding a black leather chair out of the middle distance and around the side of the desk until it was in position, at which point he sat himself in it without looking down. Then he inclined his slablike head and raised a small, pallid hand. One of the “associates” promptly moved to open the door for Mrs Rampage’s departure. At this signal, I sat down, and the two remaining henchmen separated themselves by a distance of perhaps eight feet. The third closed the door and stationed himself by his general’s right shoulder. These formalities completed, my client shifted his close-set obsidian eyes to mine and said, “You well?”

“Very well, thank you,” I replied according to ancient formula. “And you?”

“Good,” he said. “But things could still be better.” This, too, followed long-established formula, but his next words were a startling deviation. He took in the stationary cloud and the corpse of Montfort d’M—’s cigar rising like a monolith from the reef of cigarette butts in the crystal shell, and, with the first genuine smile I had ever seen on his pockmarked, small-featured face, said, “I can’t believe it, but one thing just got better already. You eased up on the stupid no-smoking rule which is poisoning this city, good for you.”

“It seemed,” I said, “a concrete way in which to demonstrate our appreciation for the smokers among those clients we most respect.” When dealing with the cryptic gentlemen, one must not fail to offer intervallic allusions to the spontaneous respect in which they are held.

“Deacon,” he said, employing the sobriquet he had given me on our first meeting, “you being one of a kind at your job, the respect you speak of is mutual, and besides that, all surprises should be as pleasant as this.” With that, he snapped his fingers at the laden shell, and as he produced a ridged case similar to but more capacious than Mr Montfort d’M—’s, the man at his shoulder whisked the impromptu ashtray from the desk, deposited its contents in the poubelle, and repositioned it at a point on the desk precisely equidistant from us. My client opened the case to expose the six cylinders contained within, removed one, and proffered the remaining five to me. “Be my guest, Deacon,” he said. “Money can’t buy better Havanas.”

“Your gesture is much appreciated,” I said. “However, with all due respect, at the moment I shall choose not to partake.”

Distinct as a scar, a vertical crease of displeasure appeared on my client’s forehead, and the ridged case and its five inhabitants advanced an inch toward my nose. “Deacon, you want me to smoke alone?” asked Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C—. “This here, if you were ever lucky enough to find it at your local cigar store, which that lucky believe me you wouldn’t be, is absolutely the best of the best, straight from me to you as what you could term a symbol of the cooperation and respect between us, and at the commencement of our business today it would please me greatly if you would do me the honor of joining me in a smoke.”

As they say, or, more accurately, as they used to say, needs must when the devil drives, or words to that effect. “Forgive me,” I said, and drew one of the fecal things from the case. “I assure you, the honor is all mine.”

Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— snipped the rounded end from his cigar, plugged the remainder in the center of his mouth, then subjected mine to the same operation. His henchman proffered a lighter, Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— bent forward and surrounded himself with clouds of smoke, in the manner of Bela Lugosi materializing before the brides of Dracula. The henchmen moved the flame toward me, and for the first time in my life I inserted into my mouth an object which seemed as large around as the handle of a baseball bat, brought it to the dancing flame, and drew in that burning smoke from which so many other men before me had derived pleasure.

Legend and common sense alike dictated that I should sputter and cough in an attempt to rid myself of the noxious substance. Nausea was in the cards, also dizziness. It is true that I suffered a degree of initial discomfort, as if my tongue had been lightly singed or seared, and the sheer unfamiliarity of the experience — the thickness of the tobacco-tube, the texture of the smoke, as dense as chocolate — led me to fear for my well-being. Yet, despite the not altogether unpleasant tingling on the upper surface of my tongue, I expelled my first mouthful of cigar smoke with the sense of having sampled a taste every bit as delightful as the first sip of a properly made martini. The thug whisked away the flame, and I drew in another mouthful, leaned back, and released a wondrous quantity of smoke. Of a surprising smoothness, in some sense almost cool rather than hot, the delightful taste defined itself as heather, loam, morel mushrooms, venison, and some distinctive spice akin to coriander. I repeated the process, with results even more pleasurable — this time I tasted a hint of black butter sauce. “I can truthfully say,” I told my client, “that never have I met a cigar as fine as this one.”

“You bet you haven’t,” said Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C—, and on the spot presented me with three more of the precious objects. With that, we turned to the tidal waves of cash and the interlocking corporate shells, each protecting another series of interconnected shells which concealed yet another, like Chinese boxes.

The cryptic gentlemen one and all appreciated certain ceremonies, such as the appearance of espresso coffee in thimble-sized porcelain cups and an accompanying assortment of biscotti at the halfway point of our meditations. Matters of business being forbidden while coffee and cookies were dispatched, the conversation generally turned to the conundrums posed by family life. Since I had no family to speak of, and, like most of his kind, Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— was richly endowed with grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, these remarks on the genealogical tapestry tended to be monologic in nature, my role in them limited to nods and grunts. Required as they were more often by the business of the cryptic gentlemen than was the case in other trades or professions, funerals were another ongoing topic. Taking tiny sips of his espresso and equally maidenish nibbles from his favorite sweet-meats (Hydrox and Milano), my client favored me with the expected praises of his son, Arthur Jr (Harvard graduate school, English Lit.), lamentations over his daughter, Fidelia (thrice-married, never wisely), hymns to his grandchildren (Cyrus, Thor, and Hermione, respectively, the genius, the dreamer, and the despot), and then proceeded to link his two unfailing themes by recalling the unhappy behavior of Arthur Jr at the funeral of my client’s uncle and a principal figure in his family’s rise to an imperial eminence, Mr Vincente “Waffles” C—.

The anecdote called for the beheading and ignition of another magnificent stogie, and I greedily followed suit.

“Arthur Jr.’s got his head screwed on right, and he’s got the right kinda family values,” said my client. “Straight As all through school, married a standup dame with money of her own, three great kids, makes a man proud. Hard worker. Got his head in a book morning to night, human encyclopedia type guy, up there at Harvard, those professors, they love him. Kid knows how you’re supposed to act, right?”

I nodded and filled my mouth with another fragrant draught.

“So he comes to my uncle Vincente’s funeral all by himself, which troubles me. On top of it doesn’t show the proper respect to old Waffles, who was one hell of a man, there’s guys still pissing blood on account of they looked at him wrong forty years ago, on top a that, I don’t have the good feeling I get from taking his family around to my friends and associates and saying, so look here, this here is Arthur Jr, my Harvard guy, plus his wife Hunter whose ancestors I think got here even before that rabble on the Mayflower, plus his three kids — Cyrus, little bastard’s even smarter than his dad, Thor, the one’s got his head in the clouds, which is okay because we need people like that, too, and Hermione, who you can tell just by looking at her she’s mean as a snake and is gonna wind up running the world some day. So I say, Arthur Jr, what the hell happened, everybody else get killed in a train wreck or something? He says, No, Dad, they just didn’t wanna come, these big family funerals, they make ‘em feel funny, they don’t like having their pictures taken so they show up on the six o’clock news. Didn’t wanna come, I say back, what kinda shit is that, you shoulda made ‘em come, and if anyone took their pictures when they didn’t want, we can take care of that, no trouble at all. I go on like this, I even say, what good is Harvard and all those books if they don’t make you any smarter than this, and finally Arthur Jr’s mother tells me, put a cork in it, you’re not exactly helping the situation here.

“So what happens then? Insteada being smart like I should, I go nuts on account of I’m the guy who pays the bills, that Harvard up there pulls in the money better than any casino I ever saw, and you want to find a real good criminal, get some Boston WASP in a bow tie, and all of a sudden nobody listens to me! I’m seeing red in a big way here, Deacon, this is my uncle Vincente’s funeral, and insteada backing me up his mother is telling me I’m not helping. I yell, You want to help? Then go up there and bring back his wife and kids, or I’ll send Carlo and Tommy to do it. All of a sudden I’m so mad I’m thinking these people are insulting me, how can they think they can get away with that, people who insult me don’t do it twice — and then I hear what I’m thinking, and I do what she said and put a cork in it, but it’s too late, I went way over the top and we all know it.

“Arthur Jr takes off, and his mother won’t talk to me for the whole rest of the day. Only thing I’m happy about is I didn’t blow up where anyone else could see it. Deacon, I know you’re the type guy wouldn’t dream of threatening his family, but if the time ever comes, do yourself a favor and light up a Havana instead.”

“I’m sure that is excellent advice,” I said.

“Don’t let the thought cross your mind. Anyhow, you know what they say, it only hurts for a little while, which is true as far as it goes, and I calmed down. Uncle Vincente’s funeral was beautiful. You woulda thought the Pope died. When the people are going out to the limousines, Arthur Jr is sitting in a chair at the back of the church reading a book. Put that in your pocket, I say, wanta do homework, do it in the car. He tells me it isn’t homework, but he puts it in his pocket and we go out to the cemetery. His mother looks out the window the whole time we’re driving to the cemetery, and the kid starts reading again. So I ask what the hell is it, this book he can’t put down? He tells me but it’s like he’s speaking some foreign language, only word I understand is ‘the,’ which happens a lot when your kid reads a lot of fancy books, half the titles make no sense to an ordinary person. Okay, we’re out there in Queens, goddam graveyard the size of Newark, FBI and reporters all over the place, and I’m thinking maybe Arthur Jr wasn’t wrong after all, Hunter probably hates having the FBI take her picture, and besides that little Hermione probably would a mugged one of ‘em and stole his wallet. So I tell Arthur Jr I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t really think you were going to put me in the same grave as Uncle Waffles, he says, the Harvard smart-ass. When it’s all over, we get back in the car, and out comes the book again. We get home, and he disappears. We have a lot of people over, food, wine, politicians, old-timers from Brownsville, Chicago people, Detroit people, LA people, movie directors, cops, actors I never heard of, priests, bishops, the guy from the Cardinal. Everybody’s asking me, Where’s Arthur, Jr? I go upstairs to find out. He’s in his old room, and he’s still reading that book. I say, Arthur Jr, people are asking about you, I think it would be nice if you mingled with our guests. I’ll be right down, he says, I just finished what I was reading. Here, take a look, you might enjoy it. He gives me the book and goes out of the room. So I’m wondering — what the hell is this, anyhow? I take it into the bedroom, toss it on the table. About ten-thirty, eleven that night, everybody’s gone, kid’s on the shuttle back to Boston, house is cleaned up, enough food in the refrigerator to feed the whole bunch all over again, I go up to bed. Arthur Jr’s mother still isn’t talking to me, so I get in and pick up the book. Herman Melville is the name of the guy, and I see that the story the kid was reading is called ‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’ So I decide I’ll try it. What the hell, right? You’re an educated guy, you ever read that story?”

“A long time ago,” I said. “A bit. odd, isn’t it?”

“Odd? That’s the most terrible story I ever read in my whole life! This dud gets a job in a law office and decides he doesn’t want to work. Does he get fired? He does not. This is a story? You hire a guy who won’t do the job, what do you do, pamper the asshole? At the end, the dud ups and disappears and you find out he used to work in the dead letter office. Is there a point here? The next day I call up Arthur Jr, say, could he explain to me please what the hell that story is supposed to mean? Dad, he says, it means what it says. Deacon, I just about pulled the plug on Harvard right then and there. I never went to any college, but I do know that nothing means what it says, not on this planet.”

This reflection was accurate when applied to the documents on my desk, for each had been encoded in a systematic fashion which rendered their literal contents deliberately misleading. Another code had informed both of my recent conversations with Marguerite. “Fiction is best left to real life,” I said.

“Someone shoulda told that to Herman Melville,” said Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C—.

Mrs Rampage buzzed me to advise that I was running behind schedule and enquire about removing the coffee things. I invited her to gather up the debris. A door behind me opened, and I assumed that my secretary had responded to my request with an alacrity remarkable even in her. The first sign of my error was the behavior of the three other men in the room, until this moment no more animated than marble statues. The thug at my client’s side stepped forward to stand behind me, and his fellows moved to the front of my desk. “What the hell is this shit?” said the client, because of the man in front of him unable to see Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff. Holding a pad bearing one of his many lists, Mr Clubb gazed in mild surprise at the giants flanking my desk and said, “I apologize for the intrusion, sir, but our understanding was that your appointment would be over in an hour, and by my simple way of reckoning you should be free to answer a query as to steam irons.”

“What the hell is this shit?” said my client, repeating his original question with a slight tonal variation expressive of gathering dismay.

I attempted to salvage matters by saying, “Please allow me to explain the interruption. I have employed these men as consultants, and as they prefer to work in my office, a condition I of course could not permit during our business meeting, I temporarily relocated them in my washroom, outfitted with a library adequate to their needs.”

“Fit for a king, in my opinion,” said Mr Clubb.

At that moment the other door into my office, to the left of my desk, opened to admit Mrs Rampage, and my client’s guardians inserted their hands into their suit jackets and separated with the speed and precision of a dance team.

“Oh, my,” said Mrs Rampage. “Excuse me. Should I come back later?”

“Not on your life, my darling,” said Mr Clubb. “Temporary misunderstanding of the false alarm sort. Please allow us to enjoy the delightful spectacle of your feminine charms.”

Before my wondering eyes, Mrs Rampage curtseyed and hastened to my desk to gather up the wreckage.

I looked toward my client and observed a detail of striking peculiarity, that although his half-consumed cigar remained between his lips, four inches of cylindrical ash had deposited a grey smear on his necktie before coming to rest on the shelf of his belly. He was staring straight ahead with eyes grown to the size of quarters. His face had become the color of raw pie crust.

Mr Clubb said, “Respectful greetings, sir.”

The client gargled and turned upon me a look of unvarnished horror.

Mr Clubb said, “Apologies to all.” Mrs Rampage had already bolted. From unseen regions came the sound of a closing door.

Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— blinked twice, bringing his eyes to something like their normal dimensions. With an uncertain hand but gently, as if it were a tiny but much-loved baby, he placed his cigar in the crystal shell. He cleared his throat; he looked at the ceiling. “Deacon,” he said, gazing upward. “Gotta run. My next appointment musta slipped my mind. What happens when you start to gab. I’ll be in touch about this stuff.” He stood, dislodging the ashen cylinder to the carpet, and motioned his gangsters to the outer office.

Of course at the earliest opportunity I interrogated both of my detectives about this turn of events, and while they moved their mountains of paper, bottles, buckets, glasses, hand-drawn maps, and other impedimenta back behind the screen, I continued the questioning. No, they averred, the gentlemen at my desk was not a gentleman whom previously they had been privileged to look upon, acquaint themselves with, or encounter in any way whatsoever. They had never been employed in any capacity by the gentleman. Mr Clubb observed that the unknown gentleman had been wearing a conspicuously handsome and well-tailored suit.

“That is his custom,” I said.

“And I believe he smokes, sir, a noble high order of cigar,” said Mr Clubb with a glance at my breast pocket. “Which would be the sort of item unfairly beyond the dreams of honest laborers such as ourselves.”

“I trust that you will permit me,” I said with a sigh, “to offer you the pleasure of two of the same.” No sooner had the offer been accepted, the barnies back behind their screen, than I buzzed Mrs Rampage with the request to summon by instant delivery from the most distinguished cigar merchant in the city a box of his finest. “Good for you, boss!” whooped the new Mrs Rampage.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon brooding upon the reaction of Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C— to my “consultants.” I could not but imagine that his hasty departure boded ill for our relationship. I had seen terror on his face, and he knew that I knew what I had seen. An understanding of this sort is fatal to that nuance-play critical alike to high-level churchmen and their outlaw counterparts, and I had to confront the possibility that my client’s departure had been of a permanent nature. Where Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— went, his colleagues of lesser rank, Mr Tommy “I Believe in Rainbows” B—, Mr Anthony “Moonlight Becomes You” M—, Mr Bobby “Total Eclipse” G—, and their fellow Archbishops, Cardinals, and Papal Nuncios would assuredly follow. Before the close of the day, I would send a comforting fax informing Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— that the consultants had been summarily released from employment. I would be telling only a “white” or provisional untruth, for Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff’s task would surely be completed long before my client’s return. All was in order, all was in train, and as if to put the seal upon the matter, Mrs Rampage buzzed to enquire if she might come through with the box of cigars. Speaking in a breathy timbre I had never before heard from anyone save Marguerite in the earliest, most blissful days of our marriage, Mrs Rampage added that she had some surprises for me, too. “By this point,” I said, “I expect no less.” Mrs Rampagegiggled.

The surprises, in the event, were of a satisfying practicality. The good woman had wisely sought the advice of Mr Montfort d’M—, who, after recommending a suitably aristocratic cigar emporium and a favorite cigar, had purchased for me a rosewood humidor, a double-bladed cigar cutter, and a lighter of antique design. As soon Mrs Rampage had been instructed to compose a note of gratitude embellished in whatever fashion she saw fit, I arrayed all but one of the cigars in the humidor, decapitated that one, and set it alight. Beneath a faint touch of fruitiness like the aroma of a blossoming pear tree, I met in successive layers the tastes of black olives, aged Gouda cheese, pine needles, new leather, miso soup, either sorghum or brown sugar, burning peat, library paste and myrtle leaves. The long finish intriguingly combined Bible paper and sunflower seeds. Mr Montfort d’M— had chosen well, though I regretted the absence of black butter sauce.

Feeling comradely, I strolled across my office towards the merriment emanating from the far side of the screen. A superior cigar, even if devoid of black butter sauce, should be complemented by a worthy liquor, and in the light what was to transpire during the evening I considered a snifter of Mr Clubb’s Bombay gin not inappropriate. “Fellows,” I said, tactfully announcing my presence, “are preparations nearly completed?”

“That, sir, they are,” said one or another of the pair.

“Welcome news,” I said, and stepped around the screen. “But I must be assured — ”

I had expected disorder, but nothing approaching the chaos before me. It was as if the detritus of New York City’s half-dozen filthiest living quarters had been scooped up, shaken and dumped into my office. Heaps of ash, bottles, shoals of papers, books with stained covers and broken spines, battered furniture, broken glass, refuse I could not identify, refuse I could not even see, undulated from the base of the screen, around and over the table, heaping itself into landfill-like piles here and there, and washed against the plate-glass windows. A jagged, five-foot opening gaped in a smashed pane. Their derbies perched on their heads, islanded in their chairs, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff leaned back, feet up on what must have been the table.

“You’ll join us in a drink, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “by way of wishing us success and adding to the pleasure of that handsome smoke.” He extended a stout leg and kicked rubble from a chair. I sat down. Mr Clubb plucked an unclean glass from the morass and filled it with Dutch gin or genever from one of the minaret-shaped stone flagons I had observed upon my infrequent layovers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Mrs Rampage had been variously employed during the barnies’ sequestration. Then I wondered if Mrs Rampage might not have shown signs of intoxication during our last encounter.

“I thought you drank Bombay,” I said.

“Variety is, as they say, life’s condiment,” said Mr Clubb, and handed me the glass.

I said, “You have made yourselves quite at home.”

“I thank you for your restraint,” said Mr Clubb. “In which sentiment my partner agrees, am I correct, Mr Cuff?”

“Entirely,” said Mr Cuff. “But I wager you a C-note to a see-gar that a word or two of reassurance is in order.”

“How right that man is,” said Mr Clubb. “He has a genius for the truth I have never known to fail him. Sir, you enter our workspace to come upon the slovenly, the careless, the unseemly, and your response, which we comprehend in every particular, is to recoil. My wish is that you take a moment to remember these two essentials: one, we have, as aforesaid, our methods which are ours alone, and two, having appeared fresh on the scene, you see it worse than it is. By morning tomorrow, the cleaning staff shall have done its work.”

“I suppose you have been Visualizing,” I said, and quaffed genever.

“Mr Cuff and I,” he said, “prefer to minimize the risk of accidents, surprises, and such by the method of rehearsing our as you might say performances. These poor sticks, sir, are easily replaced, but our work once under way demands completion and cannot be duplicated, redone, or undone.”

I recalled the all-important guarantee. “I remember your words,” I said, “and I must be assured that you remember mine. I did not request termination. During the course of the day my feelings on the matter have intensified. Termination, if by that term you meant. ”

“Termination is termination,” said Mr Clubb.

“Extermination,” I said. “Cessation of life due to external forces. It is not my wish, it is unacceptable, and I have even been thinking that I overstated the degree of physical punishment appropriate in this matter.”

“Appropriate?” said Mr Clubb. “When it comes to desire, ‘appropriate’ is a concept without meaning. In the sacred realm of desire, ‘appropriate,’ being meaningless, does not exist. We speak of your inmost wishes, sir, and desire is an extremely thingy sort of thing.”

I looked at the hole in the window, the broken bits of furniture and ruined books. “I think,” I said, “that permanent injury is all I wish. Something on the order of blindness or the loss of a hand.”

Mr Clubb favored me with a glance of humorous irony. “It goes, sir, as it goes, which brings to mind that we have but an hour more, a period of time to be splendidly improved by a superior Double Corona such as the fine example in your hand.”

“Forgive me,” I said. “And might I then request…?” I extended the nearly empty glass, and Mr Clubb refilled it. Each received a cigar, and I lingered at my desk for the required term, sipping genever and pretending to work until I heard sounds of movement. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff approached. “So you are off,” I said.

“It is, sir, to be a long and busy night,” said Mr Clubb. “If you take my meaning.”

With a sigh I opened the humidor. They reached in, snatched a handful of cigars apiece, and deployed them into various pockets. “Details at eleven,” said Mr Clubb.

A few seconds after their departure, Mrs Rampage informed that she would be bringing through a fax communication just received.

The fax had been sent me by Chartwell, Munster and Stout, a legal firm with but a single client, Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C—. Chartwell, Munster and Stout regretted the necessity to inform me that their client wished to seek advice other than my own in his financial affairs. A sheaf of documents binding me to silence as to all matters concerning the client would arrive for my signature the following day. All records, papers, computer discs, and other data were to be referred post haste to their offices. I had forgotten to send my intended note of client-saving reassurance.

What an abyss of shame I must now describe, at every turn what humiliation. It was at most five minutes past six p.m. when I learned of the desertion of my most valuable client, a turn of events certain to lead to the loss of his cryptic fellows and some forty per cent of our annual business. Gloomily I consumed my glass of Dutch gin without noticing that I had already far exceeded my tolerance. I ventured behind the screen and succeeded in unearthing another stone flagon, poured another measure and gulped it down while attempting to demonstrate numerically that (a) the anticipated drop in annual profit could not be as severe as feared, and (b) if it were, the business could continue as before, without reductions in salary, staff and benefits. Despite ingenious feats of juggling, the numbers denied (a) and mocked (b), suggesting that I should be fortunate to retain, not lose, forty per cent of present business. I lowered my head to the desk and tried to regulate my breathing. When I heard myself rendering an off-key version of “Abide With Me,” I acknowledged that it was time to go home, got to my feet and made the unfortunate decision to exit through the general offices on the theory that a survey of my presumably empty realm might suggest the sites of pending amputations.

I tucked the flagon under my elbow, pocketed the five or six cigars remaining in the humidor, and passed through Mrs Rampage’s chamber. Hearing the abrasive music of the cleaners’ radios, I moved with exaggerated care down the corridor, darkened but for the light spilling from an open door thirty feet before me. Now and again, finding myself unable to avoid striking my shoulder against the wall, I took a medicinal swallow of genever. I drew up to the open door and realized that I had come to Gilligan’s quarters. The abrasive music emanated from his sound system. We’ll get rid of that, for starters, I said to myself, and straightened up for a dignified navigation past his doorway. At the crucial moment I glanced within to observe my jacketless junior partner sprawled, tie undone, on his sofa beside a scrawny ruffian with a quiff of lime-green hair and attired for some reason in a skin-tight costume involving zebra stripes and many chains and zippers. Disreputable creatures male and female occupied themselves in the background. Gilligan shifted his head, began to smile, and at the sight of me turned to stone.

“Calm down, Gilligan,” I said, striving for an impression of sober paternal authority. I had recalled that my junior had scheduled a late appointment with his most successful musician, a singer whose band sold millions of records year in and year out despite the absurdity of their name, the Dog Turds or the Rectal Valves, something of that sort. My calculations had indicated that Gilligan’s client, whose name I recalled as Cyril Futch, would soon become crucial to the maintenance of my firm, and as the beaky little rooster coldly took me in I thought to impress upon him the regard in which he was held by his chosen financial planning institution. “There is, I assure you, no need for alarm, no, certainly not, and in fact, Gilligan, you know, I should be honored to seize this opportunity of making the acquaintance of your guest, whom it is our pleasure to assist and advise and whatever.”

Gilligan reverted to flesh and blood during the course of this utterance, which I delivered gravely, taking care to enunciate each syllable clearly in spite of the difficulty I was having with my tongue. He noted the bottle nestled into my elbow and the lighted cigar in the fingers of my right hand, a matter of which until that moment I had been imperfectly aware. “Hey, I guess the smoking lamp is lit,” I said. “Stupid rule anyhow. How about a little drink on the boss?”

Gilligan lurched to his feet and came reeling toward me.

All that followed is a montage of discontinuous imagery. I recall Cyril Futch propping me up as I communicated our devotion to the safeguarding of his wealth, also his dogged insistence that his name was actually Simon Gulch or Sidney Much or something similar before he sent me toppling onto the sofa; I see an odd little fellow with a tattooed head and a name like Pus (there was a person named Pus in attendance, though he may not have been the one) accepting one of my cigars and eating it; I remember inhaling from smirking Gilligan’s cigarette and drinking from a bottle with a small white worm lying dead at its bottom and snuffling up a white powder recommended by a female Turd or Valve; I remember singing “The Old Rugged Cross” in a state of partial undress. I told a face brilliantly lacquered with make-up that I was “getting a feel” for “this music.” A female Turd or Valve, not the one who had recommended the powder but one in a permanent state of hilarity I found endearing, assisted me into my limousine and on the homeward journey experimented with its many buttons and controls. Atop the townhouse steps, she removed the key from my fumbling hand gleefully to insert it into the lock. The rest is welcome darkness.

A form of consciousness returned with a slap to my face, the muffled screams of the woman beside me, a bowler-hatted head thrusting into view and growling, “The shower for you, you damned idiot.” As a second assailant whisked her away, the woman, whom I thought to be Marguerite, wailed. I struggled against the man gripping my shoulders, and he squeezed the nape of my neck.

When next I opened my eyes, I was naked and quivering beneath an onslaught of cold water within the marble confines of my shower cabinet. Charlie-Charlie Rackett leaned against the open door of the cabinet and regarded me with ill-disguised impatience. “I’m freezing, Charlie-Charlie,” I said. “Turn off the water.”

Charlie-Charlie thrust an arm into the cabinet and became Mr Clubb. “I’ll warm it up, but I want you sober,” he said. I drew myself up into a ball.

Then I was on my feet and moaning while I massaged my forehead. “Bath time all done now,” called Mr Clubb. “Turn off the wa-wa.” I did as instructed. The door opened, and a bath towel unfurled over my left shoulder.

Side by side on the bedroom sofa and dimly illuminated by the lamp, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff observed my progress toward the bed. A black leather satchel stood on the floor between them. “Gentlemen,” I said, “although I cannot presently find words to account for the condition in which you found me, I trust that your good nature will enable you to overlook… or ignore. whatever it was that I must have done… I cannot quite recall the circumstances.”

“The young woman has been sent away,” said Mr Clubb, “and you need never fear any trouble from that direction, sir.”

“The young woman?” I asked, and remembered a hyperactive figure playing with the controls in the back of the limousine. This opened up a fragmentary memory of the scene in Gilligan’s office, and I moaned aloud.

“None too clean, but pretty enough in a ragamuffin way,” said Mr Clubb. “The type denied a proper education in social graces. Rough about the edges. Intemperate in language. A stranger to discipline.”

I groaned — to have introduced such a creature to my house!

“A stranger to honesty, too, sir, if you’ll permit me,” said Mr Cuff. “It’s addiction turns them into thieves. Give them half a chance, they’ll steal the brass handles off their mothers’ coffins.”

“Addiction?” I said. “Addiction to what?”

“Everything, from the look of the bint,” said Mr Cuff. “Before Mr Clubb and I sent her on her way, we retrieved these items doubtless belonging to you, sir.” While walking toward me he removed from his pockets the following articles: my wristwatch, gold cufflinks, wallet, the lighter of antique design given my by Mr Montfort d’M—, likewise the cigar cutter, and the last of the cigars I had purchased that day. “I thank you most gratefully,” I said, slipping the watch on my wrist and all else save the cigar into the pockets of my robe. It was, I noted, just past four o’clock in the morning. The cigar I handed back to him with the words, “Please accept this as a token of my gratitude.”

“Gratefully accepted,” he said. Mr Cuff bit off the end, spat it onto the carpet, and set the cigar alight, producing a nauseating quantity of fumes.

“Perhaps,” I said, “we might postpone our discussion until I have had time to recover from my ill-advised behavior. Let us reconvene at…” A short period was spent pressing my hands to my eyes while rocking back and forth. “Four this afternoon?”

“Everything in its own time is a principle we hold dear,” said Mr Clubb. “And this is the time for you to down aspirin and alka-seltzer, and for your loyal assistants to relish the hearty breakfasts the thought of which sets our stomachs to growling. A man of stature and accomplishment like yourself ought to be able to overcome the effects of too much booze and attend to business, on top of the simple matter of getting his flunkies out of bed so they can whip up the bacon and eggs.”

“Because a man such as that, sir, keeps ever in mind that business faces the task at hand, no matter how lousy it may be,” said Mr Cuff.

“The old world is in flames,” said Mr Clubb, “and the new one is just being born. Pick up the phone.”

“All right,” I said, “but Mr Moncrieff is going to hate this. He worked for the Duke of Denbigh, and he’s a terrible snob.”

“All butlers are snobs,” said Mr Clubb. “Three fried eggs apiece, likewise six rashers of bacon, home-fries, toast, hot coffee, and for the sake of digestion a bottle of your best cognac.”

Mr Moncrieff picked up his telephone, listened to my orders and informed me in a small, cold voice that he would speak to the cook. “Would this repast be for the young lady and yourself, sir?” he asked.

With a wave of guilty shame which intensified my nausea, I realized that Mr Moncrieff had observed my unsuitable young companion accompanying me upstairs to the bedroom. “No, it would not,” I said. “The young lady, a client of mine, was kind enough to assist me when I was taken ill. The meal is for two male guests.” Unwelcome memory returned the spectacle of a scrawny girl pulling my ears and screeching that a useless old fart like me didn’t deserve her band’s business.

“The phone,” said Mr Clubb. Dazedly I extended the receiver.

“Moncrieff, old man,” he said, “amazing good luck, running into you again. Do you remember that trouble the Duke had with Colonel Fletcher and the diary?. Yes, this is Mr Clubb, and it’s delightful to hear your voice again. He’s here, too, couldn’t do anything without him. I’ll tell him. Much the way things went with the Duke, yes, and we’ll need the usual supplies. Glad to hear it. The dining room in half an hour.” He handed the telephone back to me and said to Mr Cuff, “He’s looking forward to the pinochle, and there’s a first-rate Petrus in the cellar he knows you’re going to enjoy.”

I had purchased six cases of 1928 Chateau Petrus at an auction some years before and was holding it while its already immense value doubled, then tripled, until perhaps a decade hence, when I would sell it for ten times its original cost.

“A good drop of wine sets a man right up,” said Mr Cuff. “Stuff was meant to be drunk, wasn’t it?”

“You know Mr Moncrieff?” I asked. “You worked for the Duke?”

“We ply our humble trade irrespective of nationality and borders,” said Mr Clubb. “Go where we are needed, is our motto. We have fond memories of the good old Duke, who showed himself to be quite a fun-loving, spirited fellow, sir, once you got past the crust, as it were. Generous, too.”

“He gave until it hurt,” said Mr Cuff. “The old gentleman cried like a baby when we left.”

“Cried a good deal before that, too,” said Mr Clubb. “In our experience, high-spirited fellows spend a deal more tears than your gloomy customers.”

“I do not suppose you shall see any tears from me,” I said. The brief look which passed between them reminded me of the complicitous glance I had once seen fly like a live spark between two of their New Covenant forbears, one gripping the hind legs of a pig, the other its front legs and a knife, in the moment before the knife opened the pig’s throat and an arc of blood threw itself high into the air. “I shall heed your advice,” I said, “and locate my analgesics.” I got on my feet and moved slowly to the bathroom. “As a matter of curiosity,” I said, “might I ask if you have classified me into the high-spirited category, or into the other?”

“You are a man of middling spirit,” said Mr Clubb. I opened my mouth to protest, and he went on, “But something may be made of you yet.”

I disappeared into the bathroom.I have endured these moonfaced yokels long enough, I told myself, hear their story, feed the bastards, then kick them out.

In a condition more nearly approaching my usual self, I brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face before returning to the bedroom. I placed myself with a reasonable degree of executive command in a wing chair, folded my pinstriped robe about me, inserted my feet into velvet slippers, and said, “Things got a bit out of hand, and I thank you for dealing with my young client, a person with whom in spite of appearances I have a professional relationship only. Now we may turn to our real business. I trust you found my wife and Leeson at Green Chimneys. Please give me an account of what followed. I await your report.”

“Things got a bit out of hand,” said Mr Clubb. “Which is a way of describing something that can happen to us all, and for which no one can be blamed. Especially Mr Cuff and myself, who are always careful to say right smack at the beginning, as we did with you, sir, what ought to be so obvious as not need saying at all, that our work brings about permanent changes which can never be undone. Especially in the cases when we specify a time to make our initial report and the client disappoints us at the said time. When we are let down by our client, we must go forward and complete the job to our highest standards with no rancor or ill-will, knowing that there are many reasonable explanations of a man’s inability to get to a telephone.”

“I don’t know what you mean by this self-serving doubletalk,” I said. “We had no arrangement of that sort, and your effrontery forces me to conclude that you failed in your task.”

Mr Clubb gave me the grimmest possible suggestion of a smile. “One of the reasons for a man’s failure to get to a telephone is a lapse of memory. You have forgotten my informing you that I would give you my initial report at eleven. At precisely eleven o’clock I called, to no avail. I waited through twenty rings, sir, before I abandoned the effort. If I had waited through a hundred, sir, the result would have been the same, on account of your decision to put yourself into a state where you would have had trouble remembering your own name.”

“That is a blatant lie,” I said, then remembered. The fellow had in fact mentioned in passing something about reporting to me at that hour, which must have been approximately the time when I was regaling the Turds or Valves with “The Old Rugged Cross.” My face grew pink. “Forgive me,” I said. “I am in error, it is just as you say.”

“A manly admission, sir, but as for forgiveness, we extended that quantity from the git-go,” said Mr Clubb. “We are your servants, and your wishes are our sacred charge.”

“That’s the whole ball of wax in a nutshell,” said Mr Cuff, giving a fond glance to the final inch of his cigar. He dropped the stub onto my carpet and ground it beneath his shoe. “Food and drink to the fibers, sir,” he said.

“Speaking of which,” said Mr Clubb. “We will continue our report in the dining room, so as to dig into the feast ordered up by that wondrous villain, Reggie Moncrieff.”

Until that moment I believe that it had never quite occurred to me that my butler possessed, like other men, a Christian name.

“A great design directs us,” said Mr Clubb, expelling morsels of his cud. “We poor wanderers, you and me and Mr Cuff and the milkman too, only see the little portion right in front of us. Half the time we don’t even see that in the right way. For sure we don’t have a Chinaman’s chance of understanding it. But the design is ever-present, sir, a truth I bring to your attention for the sake of the comfort in it. Toast, Mr Cuff.”

“Comfort is a matter cherished by all parts of a man,” said Mr Cuff, handing his partner the rack of toasted bread. “Most particularly that part known as his soul, which feeds upon the nutrient adversity.”

I was seated at the head of the table and flanked by Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff. The salvers and tureens before us overflowed, for Mr Moncrieff, who after embracing each barnie in turn and then entering into a kind of conference or huddle, had summoned from the kitchen a meal far surpassing their requests. Besides several dozen eggs and perhaps two packages of bacon, he had arranged a mixed grill of kidneys, lamb’s livers and lamb chops, and strip steaks, as well as vats of oatmeal and a pasty concoction he described as “kedgeree — as the old Duke fancied it.”

Sickened by the odors of the food, also by the mush visible in my companions’ mouths, I tried once more to extract their report. “I don’t believe in the grand design,” I said, “and I already face more adversity than my soul could find useful. Tell me what happened at the house.”

“No mere house, sir,” said Mr Clubb. “Even as we approached along — Lane, Mr Cuff and I could not fail to respond to its magnificence.”

“Were my drawings of use?” I asked.

“They were invaluable.” Mr Cuff speared a lamb chop and raised it to his mouth. “We proceeded through the rear door into your spacious kitchen or scullery. Wherein we observed evidence of two persons having enjoyed a dinner enhanced by a fine wine and finished with a noble champagne.”

“Aha,” I said.

“By means of your guidance, Mr Cuff and I located the lovely staircase and made our way to the lady’s chamber. We effected an entry of the most praiseworthy silence, if I may say so.”

“That entry was worth a medal,” said Mr Cuff.

“Two figures lay slumbering upon the bed. In a blamelessly professional manner we approached, Mr Cuff on one side, I on the other. In the fashion your client of this morning called the whopbopaloobop, we rendered the parties in question even more unconscious than previous, thereby giving ourselves a good fifteen minutes for the disposition of instruments. We take pride in being careful workers, sir, and like all honest craftsmen we respect our tools. We bound and gagged both parties in timely fashion. Is the male party distinguished by an athletic past?” Suddenly alight with barnieish glee, Mr Clubb raised his eyebrows and washed down the last of his chop with a mouthful of cognac.

“Not to my knowledge,” I said. “I believe he plays a little racquetball and squash, that kind of thing.”

He and Mr Cuff experienced a moment of mirth. “More like weightlifting or football, is my guess,” he said. “Strength and stamina. To a remarkable degree.”

“Not to mention considerable speed,” said Mr Cuff with the air of one indulging a tender reminisence.

“Are you telling me that he got away?” I asked.

“No one gets away,” said Mr Clubb. “That, sir, is Gospel. But you may imagine our surprise when for the first time in the history of our consultancy,” and here he chuckled, “a gentleman of the civilian persuasion managed to break his bonds and free himself of his ropes whilst Mr Cuff and I were engaged in the preliminaries.”

“Naked as jaybirds,” said Mr Cuff, wiping with a greasy hand a tear of amusement from one eye. “Bare as newborn lambie-pies. There I was, heating up the steam-iron I’d just fetched from the kitchen, sir, along with a selection of knives I came across in exactly the spot you described, most grateful I was, too, squatting on my haunches without a care in the world and feeling the first merry tingle of excitement in my little soldier — ”

“What?” I said. “You were naked? And what’s this about your little soldier?”

“Hush,” said Mr Clubb, his eyes glittering. “You refuse, I refuse, it’s all the same. Nakedness is a precaution against fouling our clothing with blood and other bodily products, and men like Mr Cuff and myself take pleasure in the exercise of our skills. In us, the inner and the outer man are one and the same.”

“Are they, now?” I said, marvelling at the irrelevance of this last remark. It then occurred to me that the remark might have been relevant after all — most unhappily so.

“At all times,” said Mr Cuff, amused by my having missed the point. “If you wish to hear our report, sir, reticence will be helpful.”

I gestured for him to go on with the story.

“As said before, I was squatting in my birthday suit by the knives and the steam iron, not a care in the world, when I heard from behind me the patter of little feet. Hello, I say to myself, what’s this? and when I look over my shoulder here is your man, bearing down on me like a steam engine. Being as he is one of your big, strapping fellows, sir, it was a sight to behold, not to mention the unexpected circumstances. I took a moment to glance in the direction of Mr Clubb, who was busily occupied in another quarter, which was, to put it plain and simple, the bed.”

Mr Clubb chortled and said, “By way of being in the line of duty.”

“So in a way of speaking I was in the position of having to settle this fellow before he became a trial to us in the performance of our duties. He was getting ready to tackle me, sir, which was what put us in mind of football being in his previous life, tackle the life out of me before he rescued the lady, and I got hold of one of the knives. Then, you see, when he came flying at me that way all I had to do was give him a good jab in at the bottom of the throat, a matter which puts the fear of God into the bravest fellow. It concentrates all their attention, and after that they might as well be little puppies for all the harm they’re likely to do. Well, this boy was one for the books, because for the first time in I don’t know how many similar efforts, a hundred — ”

“I’d say double at least, to be accurate,” said Mr Clubb.

“- in at least a hundred, anyhow, avoiding immodesty, I underestimated the speed and agility of the lad, and instead of planting my weapon at the base of his neck stuck him in the side, a manner of wound which in the case of your really aggressive attacker, who you come across in about one out of twenty, is about as effective as a slap with a powder puff. Still, I put him off his stride, a welcome sign to me that he had gone a bit loosey-goosey over the years. Then, sir, the advantage was mine, and I seized it with a grateful heart. I spun him over, dumped him on the floor, and straddled his chest. At which point I thought to settle him down for the evening by taking hold of a cleaver and cutting off his right hand with one good blow.

“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, sir, chopping off a hand will take the starch right out of a man. He settled down pretty well. It’s the shock, you see, shock takes the mind that way, and because the stump was bleeding like a bastard, excuse the language, I did him the favor of cauterizing the wound with the steam iron because it was good and hot, and if you sear a wound there’s no way that bugger can bleed any more. I mean, the problem is solved, and that’s a fact.”

“It has been proved a thousand times over,” said Mr Clubb.

“Shock being a healer,” said Mr Cuff. “Shock being a balm like salt water to the human body, yet if you have too much of either, the body gives up the ghost. After I seared the wound, it looked to me like he and his body got together and voted to take the next bus to what is generally considered a better world.” He held up an index finger and stared into my eyes while forking kidneys into his mouth. “This, sir, is aprocess. A process can’t happen all at once, and every reasonable precaution was taken. Mr Clubb and I do not have, nor ever have had, the reputation for carelessness in our undertakings.”

“And never shall,” said Mr Clubb. He washed down whatever was in his mouth with half a glass of cognac.

“Despite the process underway,” said Mr Cuff, “the gentleman’s left wrist was bound tightly to the stump. Rope was again attached to the areas of the chest and legs, a gag went back into his mouth, and besides all that I had the pleasure of whapping my hammer once and once only on the region of his temple, for the purpose of keeping him out of action until we were ready for him in case he was not boarding the bus. I took a moment to turn him over and gratify my little soldier, which I trust was in no way exceeding our agreement, sir.” He granted me a look of the purest innocence.

“Continue,” I said, “although you must grant that your tale is utterly without verification.”

“Sir,” said Mr Clubb, “we know one another better than that.” He bent over so far that his head disappeared beneath the table, and I heard the undoing of a clasp. Resurfacing, he placed between us on the table an object wrapped in one of the towels Marguerite had purchased for Green Chimneys. “If verification is your desire, and I intend no reflection, sir, for a man in your line of business has grown out of the habit of taking a fellow at his word, here you have wrapped up like a birthday present the finest verification of this portion of our tale to be found in all the world.”

“And yours to keep, if you’re taken that way,” said Mr Cuff.

I had no doubts whatsoever concerning the nature of the trophy set before me, and therefore I deliberately composed myself before pulling away the folds of toweling. Yet for all my preparations the spectacle of the actual trophy itself affected me more greatly than I would have thought possible, and at the very center of the nausea rising within me I experienced the first faint stirrings of my enlightenment. Poor man, I thought, poor mankind.

I refolded the material over the crab-like thing and said, “Thank you. I meant to imply no reservations concerning your veracity.”

“Beautifully said, sir, and much appreciated. Men like ourselves, honest at every point, have found that persons in the habit of duplicity often cannot understand the truth. Liars are the bane of our existence. And yet, such is the nature of this funny old world, we’d be out of business without them.”

Mr Cuff smiled up at the chandelier in rueful appreciation of the world’s contradictions. “When I replaced him on the bed, Mr Clubb went hither and yon, collecting the remainder of the tools for the job at hand.”

“When you say you replaced him on the bed,” I broke in, “is it your meaning — ”

“Your meaning might differ from mine, sir, and mine, being that of a fellow raised without the benefits of a literary education, may be simpler than yours. But bear in mind that every guild has its legacy of customs and traditions which no serious practitioner can ignore without thumbing his nose at all he holds dear. For those brought up into our trade, physical punishment of a female subject invariably begins with the act most associated in the feminine mind with humiliation of the most rigorous sort. With males the same is generally true. Neglect this step, and you lose an advantage which can never be regained. It is the foundation without which the structure cannot stand, and the foundation must be set in place even when conditions make the job distasteful, which is no picnic, take my word for it.” He shook his head and fell silent.

“We could tell you stories to curl your hair,” said Mr Clubb. “Matter for another day. It was on the order of nine-thirty when our materials had been assembled, the preliminaries taken care of, and business could begin in earnest. This is a moment, sir, ever cherished by professionals such as ourselves. It is of an eternal freshness. You are on the brink of testing yourself against your past achievements and those of masters gone before. Your skill, your imagination, your timing and resolve will be called upon to work together with your hard-earned knowledge of the human body, because it is a question of being able to sense when to press on and when to hold back, of I can say having that instinct for the right technique at the right time you can build up only through experience. During this moment you hope that the subject, your partner in the most intimate relationship which can exist between two people, owns the spiritual resolve and physical capacity to inspire your best work. The subject is our instrument, and the nature of the instrument is vital. Faced with an out-of-tune, broken-down piano, even the greatest virtuoso is up shit creek without a paddle. Sometimes, sir, our work has left us tasting ashes for weeks on end, and when you’re tasting ashes in your mouth you have trouble remembering the grand design and your wee part in that majestical pattern.”

As if to supplant the taste in question and without benefit of knife and fork, Mr Clubb bit off a generous portion of steak and moistened it with a gulp of cognac. Chewing with loud smacks of the lips and tongue, he thrust a spoon into the kedgeree and began moodily slapping it onto his plate while seeming for the first time to notice the Canalettos on the walls.

“We started off, sir, as well as we ever have,” said Mr Cuff, “and better than most times. The fingernails was a thing of rare beauty, sir, the fingernails was prime. And the hair was on the same transcendant level.”

“The fingernails?” I asked. “The hair?”

“Prime,” said Mr Clubb with a melancholy spray of food. “If they could be done better, which they could not, I should like to be there as to applaud with my own hands.”

I looked at Mr Cuff, and he said, “The fingernails and the hair might appear to be your traditional steps two and three, but they are in actual fact steps one and two, the first procedure being more like basic groundwork than part of the performance-work itself. Doing the fingernails and the hair tells you an immense quantity about the subject’s pain level, style of resistance, and aggression/passivity balance, and that information, sir, is your virtual Bible once you go past step four or five.”

“How many steps are there?” I asked.

“A novice would tell you fifteen,” said Mr Cuff. “A competent journeyman would say twenty. Men such as us know there to be at least a hundred, but in their various combinations and refinements they come out into the thousands. At the basic or kindergarten level, they are, after the first two: foot-soles; teeth; fingers and toes; tongue; nipples; rectum; genital area; electrification; general piercing; specific piercing; small amputation; damage to inner organs; eyes, minor; eyes, major; large amputation; local flaying; and so forth.”

At mention of “tongue”, Mr Clubb had shoved a spoonful of kedgeree into his mouth and scowled at the two paintings directly across from him. At “electrification”, he had thrust himself out of his chair and crossed behind me to scrutinize them more closely. While Mr Cuff continued my education, he twisted in his chair to observe his partner’s actions, and I did the same.

After “and so forth”, Mr Cuff fell silent. The two of us watched Mr Clubb moving back and forth in evident agitation between the two large paintings. He settled at last before a depiction of a regatta on the Grand Canal and took two deep breaths. Then he raised his spoon like a dagger and drove it into the painting to slice beneath a handsome ship, come up at its bow, and continue cutting until he had deleted the ship from the painting. “Now that, sir, is local flaying,” he said. He moved to the next picture, which gave a view of the Piazetta. In seconds he had sliced all the canvas from the frame. “And that, sir, is what is meant by general flaying.” He crumpled the canvas in his hands, threw it to the ground, and stamped on it.

“He is not quite himself,” said Mr Cuff.

“Oh, but I am, I am myself to an alarming degree, I am,” said Mr Clubb. He tromped back to the table and bent beneath it. Instead of the second folded towel I had anticipated, he produced his satchel and used it to sweep away the plates and serving dishes in front of him. He reached within and slapped down beside me the towel I had expected. “Open it,” he said. I unfolded the towel. “Are these not, to the last particular, what you requested, sir?”

It was, to the last particular, what I had requested. Marguerite had not thought to remove her wedding band before her assignation, and her… I cannot describe the other but to say that it lay like the egg perhaps of some small sandbird in the familiar palm. Another portion of my eventual enlightenment moved into place within me, and I thought: here we are, this is all of us, this crab and this egg. I bent over and vomited beside my chair. When I had finished, I grabbed the cognac bottle and swallowed greedily, twice. The liquor burned down my throat, struck my stomach like a branding iron, and rebounded. I leaned sideways and, with a dizzied spasm of throat and guts, expelled another reeking contribution to the mess on the carpet.

“It is a Roman conclusion to a meal, sir,” said Mr Cuff.

Mr Moncrieff opened the kitchen door and peeked in. He observed the mutilated paintings and the two objects nested in the striped towel and watched me wipe a string of vomit from my mouth. He withdrew for a moment and reappeared holding a tall can of ground coffee, wordlessly sprinkled its contents over the evidence of my distress, and vanished back into the kitchen. From even the depths of my wretchedness I marvelled at the perfection of this display of butler decorum.

I draped the toweling over the crab and the egg. “You are conscientious fellows,” I said.

“Conscientious to a fault, sir,” said Mr Cuff, not without a touch of kindness. “For a person in the normal way of living cannot begin to comprehend the actual meaning of that term, nor is he liable to understand the fierce requirements it puts on a man’s head. And so it comes about that persons in the normal way of living try to back out long after backing out is possible, even though we explain exactly what is going to happen at the very beginning. They listen, but they do not hear, and it’s the rare civilian who has the common sense to know that if you stand in a fire you must be burned. And if you turn the world upside-down, you’re standing on your head with everybody else.”

“Or,” said Mr Clubb, calming his own fires with another deep draught of cognac, “as the Golden Rule has it, what you do is sooner or later done back to you.”

Although I was still one who listened but could not hear, a tingle of premonition went up my spine. “Please go on with your report,” I said.

“The responses of the subject were all one could wish,” said Mr Clubb. “I could go so far as to say that her responses were a thing of beauty. A subject who can render you one magnificent scream after another while maintaining a basic self-possession and not breaking down is a subject highly attuned to her own pain, sir, and one to be cherished. You see, there comes a moment when they understand that they are changed for good, they have passed over the border into another realm from which there is no return, and some of them can’t handle it and turn, you might say, sir, to mush. With some it happens right at the foundation stage, a sad disappointment because thereafter all the rest of the work could be done by the crudest apprentice. It takes some at the nipples stage, and at the genital stage quite a few more. Most of them comprehend irreversibility during the piercings, and by the stage of small amputation ninety per cent have shown you what they are made of. The lady did not come to the point until we had begun the eye-work, and she passed with flying colors, sir. But it was then the male upped and put his foot in it.”

“And eye-work is delicate going,” said Mr Cuff. “Requiring two men, if you want it done even close to right. But I couldn’t have turned my back on the fellow for more than a minute and a half.”

“Less,” said Mr Clubb, “And him lying there in the corner meek as a baby. No fight left in him at all, you would have said. You would have said, that fellow there is not going to risk so much as opening his eyes until he’s made to do it.”

“But up he gets, without a rope on him, sir,” said Mr Cuff, “which you would have said was far beyond the powers of a fellow who had recently lost a hand.”

“Up he gets and on he comes,” said Mr Clubb. “In defiance of all of Nature’s mighty laws. Before I know what’s what, he has his good arm around Mr Cuff’s neck and is earnestly trying to snap that neck while beating Mr Cuff about the head with his stump, a situation which compels me to set aside the task at hand and take up a knife and ram it into his back and sides a fair old number of times. The next thing I know, he’s on me, and it’s up to Mr Cuff to peel him off and set him on the floor.”

“And then, you see, your concentration is gone,” said Mr Cuff. “After something like that, you might as well be starting all over again at the beginning. Imagine if you are playing a piano about as well as ever you did in your life, and along comes another piano with blood in its eye and jumps on your back. It was pitiful, that’s all I can say about it. But I got the fellow down and jabbed him here and there until he was still, and then I got the one item we count on as a sure-fire last resort for incapacitation.”

“What is that item?” I asked.

“Dental floss,” said Mr Clubb. “Dental floss cannot be overestimated as a particular in our line of work. It is the razor-wire of everyday life, and fishing-line cannot hold a candle to it, for fishing-line is dull, but dental floss is both dull and sharp. It has a hundred uses, and a book should be written on the subject.”

“What do you do with it?” I asked.

“It is applied to a male subject,” he said. “Applied artfully and in a manner perfected only over years of experience. The application is of a lovely subtlety. During the process, the subject must be in a helpless, preferably an unconscious, position. When the subject regains the first fuzzy inklings of consciousness, he is aware of no more than a vague discomfort like unto a form of numb tingling, similar to when a foot has gone asleep. In a wonderfully short period of time, that discomfort builds up itself, ascending to mild pain, real pain, severe pain, and then outright agony. And then it goes past agony. The final stage is a mystical condition I don’t think there is a word for which, but it close resembles ecstasy. Hallucinations are common. Out-of-body experiences are common. We have seen men speak in tongues, even when tongues were strictly speaking organs they no longer possessed. We have seen wonders, Mr Cuff and I.”

“That we have,” said Mr Cuff. “The ordinary civilian sort of fellow can be a miracle, sir.”

“Of which the person in question was one, to be sure,” said Mr Clubb. “But he has to be said to be in a category all by himself, a man in a million you could put it, which is the cause of my mentioning the grand design ever a mystery to us who glimpse but a part of the whole. You see, the fellow refused to play by the time-honored rules. He was in an awesome degree of suffering and torment, sir, but he would not do us the favor to lie down and quit.”

“The mind was not right,” said Mr Cuff. “Where the proper mind goes to the spiritual, sir, as just described, this was that one mind in ten million, I’d estimate, which moves to the animal at the reptile level. If you cut off the head of a venomous reptile and detach it from the body, that head will still attempt to strike. So it was with our boy. Bleeding from a dozen wounds. Minus one hand. Seriously concussed. The dental floss murdering all possibility of thought. Every nerve in his body howling like a banshee. Yet up he comes with his eyes red and the foam dripping from his mouth. We put him down again, and I did what I hate, because it takes all feeling away from the body along with the motor capacity, and cracked his spine right at the base of the head. Or would have, if his spine had been a normal thing instead of solid steel in a thick india-rubber case. Which is what put us in mind of weight-lifting, sir, an activity resulting in such development about the top of the spine you need a hacksaw to get even close to it.”

“We were already behind schedule,” said Mr Clubb, “and with the time required to get back into the proper frame of mind, we had at least seven or eight hours of work ahead of us. And you had to double that, because while we could knock the fellow out, he wouldn’t have the decency to stay out more than a few minutes at a time. The natural thing, him being only the secondary subject, would have been to kill him outright so we could get on with the real job, but improving our working conditions by that fashion would require an amendment to our contract. Which comes under the heading of Instructions from the Client.”

“And it was eleven o’clock,” said Mr Cuff.

“The exact time scheduled for our conference,” said Mr Clubb. “My partner was forced to clobber the fellow into senselessness, how many times was it, Mr Cuff, while I prayed for our client to do us the grace of answering his phone during twenty rings?”

“Three times, Mr Clubb, three times exactly,” said Mr Cuff. “The blow each time more powerful than the last, which combining with his having a skull made of granite led to a painful swelling of my hand.”

“The dilemma stared us in the face,” said Mr Clubb. “Client unreachable. Impeded in the performance of our duties. State of mind, very foul. In such a pickle, we could do naught but obey the instructions given us by our hearts. Remove the gentleman’s head, I told my partner, and take care not be bitten once it’s off. Mr Cuff took up an axe. Some haste was called for, the fellow just beginning to stir again. Mr Cuff moved into position. Then from the bed, where all had been lovely silence but for soft moans and whimpers, we hear a god-awful yowling ruckus of the most desperate and importunate protest. It was of a sort to melt the heart, sir. Were we not experienced professionals who enjoy pride in our work, I believe we might have been persuaded almost to grant the fellow mercy, despite his being a pest of the first water. But now those heart-melting screeches reach the ears of the pest and rouse him into movement just at the moment Mr Cuff lowers the boom, so to speak.”

“Which was an unfortunate bit of business,” said Mr Cuff. “Causing me to catch him in the shoulder, causing him to rear up, causing me to lose my footing what with all the blood on the floor, then causing a tussle for possession of the axe and myself suffering several kicks to the breadbasket. I’ll tell you, sir, we did a good piece of work when we took off his hand, for without the nuisance of a stump really being useful only for leverage, there’s no telling what that fellow might have done. As it was, I had the devil’s own time getting the axe free and clear, and once I had done, any chance of making a neat, clean job of it was long gone. It was a slaughter and an act of butchery with not a bit of finesse or sophistication to it, and I have to tell you, such a thing is both an embarrassment and an outrage to men like ourselves. Turning a subject into hamburger by means of an axe is a violation of all our training, and it is not why we went into this business.”

“No, of course not, you are more like artists than I had imagined,” I said. “But in spite of your embarrassment, I suppose you went back to work on… on the female subject.”

“We are not like artists,” said Mr Clubb, “we are artists, and we know how to set our feelings aside and address our chosen medium of expression with a pure and patient attention. In spite of which we discovered the final and insurmountable frustration of the evening, and that discovery put paid to all our hopes.”

“If you discovered that Marguerite had escaped,” I said, “I believe I might almost, after all you have said, be — ”

Glowering, Mr Clubb held up his hand. “I beg you not to insult us, sir, as we have endured enough misery for one day. The subject had escaped, all right, but not in the simple sense of your meaning. She had escaped for all eternity, in the sense that her soul had taken leave of her body and flown to those realms at whose nature we can only make our poor, ignorant guesses.”

“She died?” I asked. “In other words, in direct contradiction of my instructions, you two fools killed her. You love to talk about your expertise, but you went too far, and she died at your hands. I want you incompetents to leave my house immediately. Begone. Depart. This minute.”

Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff looked into each other’s eyes, and in that moment of private communication I saw an encompassing and universal sorrow which utterly turned the tables on me: before I was made to understand how it was possible, I saw that the only fool present was myself. And yet the sorrow included all three of us, and more besides.

“The subject died, but we did not kill her,” said Mr Clubb. “We did not go, nor have we ever gone, too far. The subject chose to die. The subject’s death was an act of suicidal will. Can you hear me? While you are listening, sir, is it possible, sir, for you to open your ears and hear what I am saying? She who might have been in all of our long experience the noblest, most courageous subject we ever will have the good fortune to be given witnessed the clumsy murder of her lover and decided to surrender her life.”

“Quick as a shot,” said Mr Cuff. “The simple truth, sir, is that otherwise we could have kept her alive for about a year.”

“And it would have been a rare privilege to do so,” said Mr Clubb. “It is time for you to face facts, sir.”

“I am facing them about as well as one could,” I said. “Please tell me where you disposed of the bodies.”

“Within the house,” said Mr Clubb. Before I could protest, he said, “Under the wretched circumstances, sir, including the continuing unavailability of the client and the enormity of the personal and professional let-down felt by my partner and myself, we saw no choice but to dispose of the house along with the telltale remains.”

“Dispose of Green Chimneys?” I said, aghast. “How could you dispose of Green Chimneys?”

“Reluctantly, sir,” said Mr Clubb “With heavy hearts and an equal anger. With also the same degree of professional unhappiness experienced previous. In workaday terms, by means of combustion. Fire, sir, is a substance like shock and salt water, a healer and a cleanser, though more drastic.”

“But Green Chimneys has not been healed,” I said. “Nor has my wife.”

“You are a man of wit, sir, and have provided Mr Cuff and myself many moments of precious amusement. True, Green Chimneys has not been healed, but cleansed it has been, root and branch. And you hired us to punish your wife, not heal her, and punish her we did, as well as possible under very trying circumstances indeed.”

“Which circumstances include our feeling that the job ended before its time,” said Mr Cuff. “Which circumstance is one we cannot bear.”

“I regret your disappointment,” I said, “but I cannot accept that it was necessary to burn down my magnificent house.”

“Twenty, even fifteen years ago, it would not have been,” said Mr Clubb. “Nowadays, however, that contemptible alchemy known as Police Science has fattened itself up into such a gross and distorted breed of sorcery that a single drop of blood can be detected even after you scrub and scour until your arms hurt. It has reached the hideous point that if a constable without a thing in his head but the desire to imprison honest fellows employed in an ancient trade finds two hairs at what is supposed to be a crime scene, he waddles along to the laboratory and instantly a loathsome sort of wizard is popping out to tell him that those same two hairs are from the heads of Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, and I exaggerate, I know, sir, but not by much.”

“And if they do not have our names, sir,” said Mr Cuff, “which they do not and I pray never will, they ever after have our particulars, to be placed in a great universal file against the day when they might have our names, so as to look back into that cruel file and commit the monstrosity of unfairly increasing the charges against us. It is a malignant business, and all sensible precautions must be taken.”

“A thousand times I have expressed the conviction,” said Mr Clubb, “that an ancient art ought not be against the law, nor its practitioners described as criminals. Is there even a name for our so-called crime? There is not. GBH they call it, sir, for Grievous Bodily Harm, or, even worse, Assault. We do not Assault. We induce, we instruct, we instill. Properly speaking, these cannot be crimes, and those who do them cannot be criminals. Now I have said it a thousand times and one.”

“All right,” I said, attempting to speed this appalling conference to its end, “you have described the evening’s unhappy events. I appreciate your reasons for burning down my splendid property. You have enjoyed a lavish meal. All remaining is the matter of your remuneration, which demands considerable thought. This night has left me exhausted, and after all your efforts, you, too, must be in need of rest. Communicate with me, please, in a day or two, gentlemen, by whatever means you choose. I wish to be alone with my thoughts. Mr Moncrieff will show you out.”

The maddening barnies met this plea with impassive stares and stoic silence, and I renewed my silent vow to give them nothing — not a penny. For all their pretensions, they had accomplished naught but the death of my wife and the destruction of my country house. Rising to my feet with more difficulty than anticipated, I said, “Thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”

Once again, the glance which passed between them implied that I had failed to grasp the essentials of our situation.

“Your thanks are gratefully accepted,” said Mr Cuff, “though, dispute it as you may, they are premature, as you know in your soul. This morning we embarked upon a journey of which we have yet more miles to go. In consequence, we prefer not to leave. Also, setting aside the question of your continuing education, which if we do not address will haunt us all forever, residing here with you for a sensible period out of sight is the best protection from law enforcement we three could ask for.”

“No,” I said, “I have had enough of your education, and I need no protection from officers of the law. Please, gentlemen, allow me to return to my bed. You may take the rest of the cognac with you as a token of my regard.”

“Give it a moment’s reflection, sir,” said Mr Clubb. “You have announced the presence of high-grade consultants and introduced these same to staff and clients both. Hours later, your spouse meets her tragic end in a conflagration destroying your upstate manor. On the very same night also occurs the disappearance of your greatest competitor, a person certain to be identified before long by a hotel employee as a fellow not unknown to the late spouse. Can you think it wise to have the high-grade consultants vanish right away?”

I did reflect, then said, “You have a point. It will be best if you continue to make an appearance in the office for a time. However, the proposal that you stay here is ridiculous.” A wild hope, utterly irrational in the face of the grisly evidence, came to me in the guise of doubt. “If Green Chimneys has been destroyed by fire, I should have been informed long ago. I am a respected figure in the town of —, personally acquainted with its Chief of Police, Wendall Nash. Why has he not called me?”

“Oh, sir, my goodness,” said Mr Clubb, shaking his head and smiling inwardly at my folly, “for many reasons. A small town is a beast slow to move. The available men have been struggling throughout the night to rescue even a jot or tittle portion of your house. They will fail, they have failed already, but the effort will keep them busy past dawn. Wendall Nash will not wish to ruin your night’s sleep until he can make a full report.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, if I am not mistaken. ” He tilted his head, closed his eyes, and raised an index finger. The telephone in the kitchen began to trill.

“He has done it a thousand times, sir,” said Mr Cuff, “and I have yet to see him strike out.”

Mr Moncrieff brought the instrument through from the kitchen, said, “For you, sir,” and placed the receiver in my waiting hand. I uttered the conventional greeting, longing to hear the voice of anyone but.

“Wendall Nash, sir,” came the Chief’s raspy, high-pitched drawl. “Calling from up here in —. I hate to tell you this, but I have some awful bad news. Your place Green Chimneys started burning sometime around midnight last night, and every man-jack we had got put on the job and the boys worked like dogs to save what they could, but sometimes you can’t win no matter what you do. Me personally, I feel terrible about this, but, tell you the truth, I never saw a fire like it. We nearly lost two men, but it looks like they’re going to come out of it okay. The rest of our boys are still out there trying to save the few trees you got left.”

“Dreadful,” I said. “Please permit me to speak to my wife.”

A speaking silence followed. “The missus is not with you, sir? You’re saying she was inside there?”

“My wife left for Green Chimneys this morning. I spoke to her there in the afternoon. She intended to work in her studio, a separate building at some distance from the house, and it is her custom to sleep in the studio when working late.” Saying these things to Wendall Nash, I felt almost as though I were creating an alternative world, another town of — and another Green Chimneys, where another Marguerite had busied herself in the studio, and there gone to bed to sleep through the commotion. “Have you checked the studio? You are certain to find her there.”

“Well, I have to say we didn’t, sir,” he said. “The fire took that little building pretty good, too, but the walls are still standing and you can tell what used to be what, furnishing-wise and equipment-wise. If she was inside it, we’d of found her.”

“Then she got out in time,” I said, and instantly it was the truth: the other Marguerite had escaped the blaze and now stood, numb with shock and wrapped in a blanket, unrecognized amidst the voyeuristic crowd always drawn to disasters.

“It’s possible, but she hasn’t turned up yet, and we’ve been talking to everybody at the site. Could she have left with one of the staff?”

“All the help is on vacation,” I said. “She was alone.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “Can you think of anyone with a serious grudge against you? Any enemies? Because this was not a natural-type fire, sir. Someone set it, and he knew what he was doing. Anyone come to mind?”

“No,” I said. “I have rivals, but no enemies. Check the hospitals and anything else you can think of, Wendall, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You can take your time, sir,” he said. “I sure hope we find her, and by late this afternoon we’ll be able to go through the ashes.” He said he would give me a call if anything turned up in the meantime.

“Please, Wendall,” I said, and began to cry. Muttering a consolation I did not quite catch, Mr Moncrieff vanished with the telephone in another matchless display of butlerpolitesse.

“The practise of hoping for what you know you cannot have is a worthy spiritual exercise,” said Mr Clubb. “It brings home the vanity of vanity.”

“I beg you, leave me,” I said, still crying. “In all decency.”

“Decency lays heavy obligations on us all,” said Mr Clubb. “And no job is decently done until it is done completely. Would you care for help in getting back to the bedroom? We are ready to proceed.”

I extended a shaky arm, and he assisted me through the corridors. Two cots had been set up in my room, and a neat array of instruments — “staples” — formed two rows across the bottom of the bed. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff positioned my head on the pillows and began to disrobe.

Ten hours later, the silent chauffeur aided me in my exit from the limousine and clasped my left arm as I limped toward the uniformed men and official vehicles on the far side of the open gate. Blackened sticks which had been trees protruded from the blasted earth, and the stench of wet ash saturated the air. Wendall Nash separated from the other men, approached, and noted without comment my garb of grey Homburg hat, pearl-grey cashmere topcoat, heavy gloves, woolen charcoal-grey pinstriped suit, sunglasses, and Malacca walking stick. It was the afternoon of a midsummer day in the upper eighties. Then he looked more closely at my face. “Are you, uh, are you sure you’re all right, sir?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said, and saw him blink at the oozing gap left in the wake of an incisor. “I slipped at the top of a marble staircase and tumbled down all forty-six steps, resulting in massive bangs and bruises, considerable physical weakness, and the persistent sensation of being uncomfortably cold. No broken bones, at least nothing major.” Over his shoulder I stared at four isolated brick towers rising from an immense black hole in the ground, all that remained of Green Chimneys. “Is there news of my wife?”

“I’m afraid, sir, that — ” Nash placed a hand on my shoulder, causing me to stifle a sharp outcry. “I’m sorry, sir. Shouldn’t you be in the hospital? Did your doctors say you could come all this way?”

“Knowing my feelings in this matter, the doctors insisted I make the journey.” Deep within the black cavity, men in bulky orange space-suits and space-helmets were sifting through the sodden ashes, now and then dropping unrecognizable nuggets into heavy bags of the same color. “I gather that you have news for me, Wendall,” I said.

“Unhappy news, sir,” he said. “The garage went up with the rest of the house, but we found some bits and pieces of your wife’s little car. This here was one incredible hot fire, sir, and by hot I mean hot, and whoever set it was no garden-variety firebug.”

“You found evidence of the automobile,” I said. “I assume you also found evidence of the woman who owned it.”

“They came across some bone fragments, plus a small portion of a skeleton,” he said. “This whole big house came down on her, sir. These boys are experts at their job, and they don’t hold out hope for coming across a whole lot more. So if your wife was the only person inside. ”

“I see, yes, I understand,” I said, staying on my feet only with the support of the Malacca cane. “How horrid, how hideous that it should all be true, that our lives should prove such a littleness…”

“I’m sure that’s true, sir, and that wife of yours was a, was what I have to call a special kind of person who gave pleasure to us all, and I hope you know that we all wish things could of turned out different, the same as you.”

For a moment I imagined that he was talking about her recordings. And then, immediately, I understood that he was laboring to express the pleasure he and the others had taken in what they, no less than Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff but much, much more than I, had perceived as her essential character.

“Oh, Wendall,” I said into the teeth of my sorrow, “it is not possible, not ever, for things to turn out different.”

He refrained from patting my shoulder and sent me back to the rigors of my education.

A month — four weeks — thirty days — seven hundred and twenty hours — forty-three thousand, two hundred minutes — two million, five hundred and ninety-two thousand seconds — did I spend under the care of Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, and I believe I proved in the end to be a modestly, moderately, middlingly satisfying subject, a matter in which I take an immodest and immoderate pride. “You are little in comparison to the lady, sir,” Mr Clubb once told me while deep in his ministrations, “but no one could say that you are nothing.” I, who had countless times put the lie to the declaration that they should never see me cry, wept tears of gratitude. We ascended through the fifteen stages known to the novice, the journeyman’s further five, and passed, with the frequent repetitions and backward glances appropriate for the slower pupil, into the artist’s upper eighty, infinitely expandable by grace of the refinements of his art. We had the little soldiers. We had dental floss. During each of those forty-three thousand, two hundred minutes, throughout all two million and nearly six hundred thousand seconds, it was always deepest night. We made our way through perpetual darkness, and the utmost darkness of the utmost night yielded an infinity of textural variation, cold, slick dampness to velvety softness to leaping flame, for it was true that no one could say I was nothing.

Because I was not nothing, I glimpsed the Meaning of Tragedy.

Each Tuesday and Friday of these four sunless weeks, my consultants and guides lovingly bathed and dressed my wounds, arrayed me in my warmest clothes (for I never after ceased to feel the blast of arctic wind against my flesh), and escorted me to my office, where I was presumed much reduced by grief as well as certain household accidents attributed to grief.

On the first of these Tuesdays, a flushed-looking Mrs Rampage offered her consolations and presented me with the morning newspapers, an inch-thick pile of faxes, two inches of legal documents, and a tray filled with official-looking letters. The newspapers described the fire and eulogized Marguerite; the increasingly threatening faxes declared Chartwell, Munster and Stout’s intention to ruin me professionally and personally in the face of my continuing refusal to return the accompanying documents along with all records having reference to their client; the documents were those in question; the letters, produced by the various legal firms representing all my other cryptic gentlemen, deplored the (unspecified) circumstances necessitating their clients’ universal desire for change in re financial management. These lawyers also desired all relevant records, discs, etc., etc., urgently. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff roistered behind their screen. I signed the documents in a shaky hand and requested Mrs Rampage to have these delivered with the desired records to Chartwell, Munster and Stout. “And dispatch all these other records, too,” I said, handing her the letters. “I am now going in for my lunch.”

Tottering toward the executive dining room, now and then I glanced into smoke-filled offices to observe my much-altered underlings. Some of them appeared, after a fashion, to be working. Several were reading paperback novels, which might be construed as work of a kind. One of the Captain’s assistants was unsuccessfully lofting paper airplanes toward his waste-paper basket. Gilligan’s secretary lay asleep on her office couch, and a Records clerk lay sleeping on the file-room floor. In the dining room, Charlie-Charlie Rackett hurried forward to assist me to my accustomed chair. Gilligan and the Captain gave me sullen looks from their usual lunchtime station, an unaccustomed bottle of Scotch whiskey between them. Charlie-Charlie lowered me into my seat and said, “Terrible news about your wife, sir.”

“More terrible than you know,” I said.

Gilligan took a gulp of whiskey and displayed his middle finger, I gathered to me rather than Charlie-Charlie.

“Afternoonish,” I said.

“Very much so, sir,” said Charlie-Charlie, and bent closer to the brim of the Homburg and my ear. “About that little request you made the other day. The right men aren’t nearly so easy to find as they used to be, sir, but I’m still on the job.”

My laughter startled him. “No squab today, Charlie-Charlie. Just bring me a bowl of tomato soup.”

I had partaken of no more than two or three delicious mouthfuls when Gilligan lurched up beside me. “Look here,” he said, “it’s too bad about your wife and everything, I really mean it, honest, but that drunken act you put on in my office cost me my biggest client, not to forget that you took his girl friend home with you.”

“In that case,” I said, “I have no further need of your services. Pack your things and be out of here by three o’clock.”

He listed to one side and straightened himself up. “You can’t mean that.”

“I can and do,” I said. “Your part in the grand design at work in the universe no longer has any connection with my own.”

“You must be as crazy as you look,” he said, and unsteadily departed.

I returned to my office and gently lowered myself into my seat. After I had removed my gloves and accomplished some minor repair work to the tips of my fingers with the tape and gauze pads thoughtfully inserted by the detectives into the pockets of my coat, I slowly drew the left glove over my fingers and became aware of feminine giggles amidst the coarser sounds of male amusement behind the screen. I coughed into the glove and heard a tiny shriek. Soon, though not immediately, a blushing Mrs Rampage emerged from cover, patting her hair and adjusting her skirt. “Sir, I’m so sorry, I didn’t expect. ” She was staring at my right hand, which had not as yet been inserted into its glove.

“Lawnmower accident,” I said. “Mr Gilligan has been released, and I should like you to prepare the necessary papers. Also, I want to see all of our operating figures for the past year, as significant changes have been dictated by the grand design at work in the universe.”

Mrs Rampage flew from the room, and for the next several hours, as for nearly every remaining hour I spent at my desk on the Tuesdays and Thursdays thereafter, I addressed with a carefree spirit the details involved in shrinking the staff to the smallest number possible and turning the entire business over to the Captain. Graham Leeson’s abrupt disappearance greatly occupied the newspapers, and when not occupied as described I read that my arch-rival and competitor had been a notorious Don Juan, i.e. a compulsive womanizer, a flaw in his otherwise immaculate character held by some to have played a substantive role in his sudden absence. As Mr Clubb had predicted, a clerk at the — Hotel revealed Leeson’s sessions with my late wife, and for a time professional and amateur gossip-mongers alike speculated that he had caused the disastrous fire. This came to nothing. Before the month had ended, Leeson-sightings were reported in Monaco, the Swiss Alps and Argentina, locations accommodating to sportsmen — after four years of varsity football at the University of Southern California, Leeson had won a Olympic silver medal in weightlifting while earning his MBA at Wharton.

In the limousine at the end of each day, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff braced me in happy anticipation of the lessons to come as we sped back through illusory sunlight toward the real darkness.

Everything, from the designs of the laughing gods down to the lowliest cells in the human digestive tract, is changing all the time, every particle of being large and small is eternally in motion, but this simple truism, so transparent on its surface, evokes immediate headache and stupefaction when applied to itself, not unlike the sentence, “Every word that comes out of my mouth is a bald-faced lie.” The gods are ever laughing while we are always clutching our heads and looking for a soft place to lie down, and what I glimpsed in my momentary glimpses of the meaning of tragedy preceding, during, and after the experience of dental floss was so composed of paradox that I can state it only in cloud- or vapor form, as:

The meaning of tragedy is: all is in order, all is in train.

The meaning of tragedy is: it only hurts for a little while.

The meaning of tragedy is: change is the first law of life.

So it took place that one day their task was done, their lives and mine were to move forward into separate areas of the grand design, and all that was left before preparing my own departure was to stand, bundled-up against the nonexistent arctic wind, on the bottom step and wave farewell with my remaining hand while shedding buckets and bathtubs of tears with my remaining eye. Chaplinesque in their black suits and bowlers, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff ambled cheerily toward the glittering avenue and my bank, where arrangements had been made for the transfer into their hands of all but a small portion of my private fortune by my private banker, virtually his final act in that capacity. At the distant corner, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, by then only tiny figures blurred by my tears, turned, ostensibly to bid farewell, actually, as I knew, to watch as I mounted my steps and went back within the house, and with a salute I honored this last painful agreement between us.

A more pronounced version of the office’s metamorphosis had taken place inside my townhouse, but with the relative ease practice gives even to one whose step is halting, whose progress is interrupted by frequent pauses for breath and the passing of certain shooting pains, I skirted the mounds of rubble, the dangerous loose tiles and more dangerous open holes in the floor, the regions submerged underwater, and toiled up the resilient staircase, moved with infinite care across the boards bridging the former landing, and made my way into the former kitchen, where broken pipes and limp wires protruding from the lathe marked the sites of those appliances rendered pointless by the gradual disappearance of the household staff. (In a voice choked with feeling, Mr Moncrieff, Reggie Moncrieff, Reggie, the last to go, had informed me that his last month in my service had been “As fine as my days with the Duke, sir, every bit as noble as ever it was with that excellent old gentleman.”) The remaining cupboard yielded a flagon of genever, a tumbler, and a Montecristo torpedo, and with the tumbler filled and the cigar alight I hobbled through the devastated corridors toward my bed, there to gather my strength for the ardors of the coming day.

In good time, I arose to observe the final appointments of the life soon to be abandoned. It is possible to do up one’s shoelaces and knot one’s necktie as neatly with a single hand as with two, and shirt buttons eventually become a breeze. Into my travelling bag I folded a few modest essentials atop the flagon and the cigar box, and into a pad of shirts nestled the black lucite cube prepared at my request by my instructor-guides and containing, mingled with the ashes of the satchel and its contents, the few bony nuggets rescued from Green Chimneys. The travelling bag accompanied me first to my lawyer’s office, where I signed papers making over the wreckage of the townhouse to the European gentleman who had purchased it sight unseen as a “fixer-upper” for a fraction of its (considerably reduced) value. Next I visited the melancholy banker and withdrew the pittance remaining in my accounts. And then, glad of heart and free of all unnecessary encumbrance, I took my place in the sidewalk queue to await transportation by means of a kindly kneeling bus to the great terminus where I should employ the ticket reassuringly lodged within my breast pocket.

Long before the arrival of the bus, a handsome limousine crawled past in the traffic, and glancing idly within, I observed Mr Chester Montfort d’M— smoothing the air with a languid gesture while in conversation with the two stout, bowler-hatted men on his either side. Soon, doubtless, he would begin his instructions in the whopbopaloobop.

What is a pittance in a great city may be a modest fortune in a hamlet, and a returned prodigal might be welcomed far in excess of his true deserts. I entered New Covenant quietly, unobtrusively, with the humility of a new convert uncertain of his station, inwardly rejoicing to see all unchanged from the days of my youth. When I purchased a dignified but unshowy house on Scripture Street, I announced only that I had known the village in my childhood, had travelled far, and now in my retirement wished no more than to immerse myself in the life of the community, exercising my skills only inasmuch as they might be requested of an elderly invalid. How well the aged invalid had known the village, how far and to what end had he travelled, and the nature of his skills remained unspecified. Had I not attended daily services at the Temple, the rest of my days might have passed in pleasant anonymity and frequent perusals of a little book I had obtained at the terminus, for while my surname was so deeply of New Covenant that it could be read on a dozen headstones in the Temple graveyard, I had fled so early in life and so long ago that my individual identity had been entirely forgotten. New Covenant is curious — intensely curious — but it does not wish to pry. One fact and one only led to the metaphoric slaughter of the fatted calf and the prodigal’s elevation. On the day when, some five or six months after his installation on Scripture Street, the afflicted newcomer’s faithful Temple attendance was rewarded with an invitation to read the Lesson for the Day, Matthew 5: 43–48, seated amidst numerous offspring and offspring’s offspring in the barnie-pews for the first time since an unhappy tumble from a hayloft was Delbert Mudge.

My old classmate had weathered into a white-haired, sturdy replica of his own grandfather, and although his hips still gave him considerable difficulty his mind had suffered no comparable stiffening. Delbert knew my name as well as his own, and though he could not connect it to the wizened old party counseling him from the lectern to embrace his enemies, the old party’s face and voice so clearly evoked the deceased lawyer who had been my father that he recognized me before I had spoken the whole of the initial verse. The grand design at work in the universe once again could be seen at its mysterious work: unknown to me, my entirely selfish efforts on behalf of Charlie-Charlie Rackett, my representation to his parole board and his subsequent hiring as my spy, had been noted by all of barnie-world. I, a child of Scripture Street, had become a hero to generations of barnies! After hugging me at the conclusion of the fateful service, Delbert Mudge implored my assistance in the resolution of a fiscal imbroglio which threatened his family’s cohesion. I of course assented, with the condition that my services should be free of charge. The Mudge imbroglio proved elementary, and soon I was performing similar services for other barnie clans. After listening to a half-dozen accounts of my miracles while setting broken barnie-bones, New Covenant’s physician visited my Scripture Street habitation under cover of night, was prescribed the solution to his uncomplicated problem, and sang my praises to his fellow townies. Within a year, by which time all New Covenant had become aware of my “tragedy” and consequent “reawakening”, I was managing the Temple’s funds as well as those of barn and town. Three years later, our Reverend having in his ninety-first year, as the Racketts and Mudges put it, “woke up dead”, I submitted by popular acclaim to appointment in his place.

Daily, I assume the honored place assigned me. Ceremonious vestments assure that my patchwork scars remain unseen. The lucite box and its relics are interred deep within the sacred ground beneath the Temple where I must one day join my predecessors — some bony fragments of Graham Leeson reside there, too, mingled with Marguerite’s more numerous specks and nuggets. Eyepatch elegantly in place, I lean forward upon the Malacca cane and, while flourishing the stump of my right hand as if in demonstration, with my ruined tongue whisper what I know none shall understand, the homily beginning, It only… To this I append in silent exhalation the two words concluding that little book brought to my attention by an agreeable murderer and purchased at the great grand station long ago, these: Ah, humanity!