Shibumi

Hel frowned and said, “How odd. I’ll have to talk to him about that.”

At this point, Hana and Miss Stern joined the men, the young woman looking refined and desirable in a summer tea dress she had chosen from those Hana had bought for her. Hel watched Ha

There was a gruff laugh from the hall and Le Cagot reentered, his arm around Starr’s shoulders. The Texan looked a bit shaken and his hair was tousled, but Le Cagot’s mission was accomplished; the shoulder holster under Starr’s left armpit was now empty.

“I don’t know about you, my friends,” Le Cagot said in his accented English with the overgrowled r of the Francophone who has finally conquered that difficult consonant, “but I am ravenous! Bouffons! I could eat for four!”

The di

“You don’t drink, Mr. Hel?” he asked.

“But I do, as you see. It is only that I don’t find two sips of wine more delicious than one.”

Padding with wines and waxing pseudopoetic in their failure to describe tastes lucidly is an affectation of socially mobile Americans, and Diamond fancied himself something of an authority. He sipped, swilled and examined the pink that accompanied the roebuck, then said, “Ah, there are Tavels, and there are Tavels.”

Hel frowned slightly. “Ah… that’s true, I suppose.”

“But this is a Tavel, isn’t it?”

When Hel shrugged and changed the subject diplomatically, the nape of Diamond’s neck horripilated with embarrassment. He had been so sure it was Tavel.

Throughout di

At first Le Cagot attended to the task of filling himself with food. Soon the ends of his wrapped cravat were dangling, and the long swallowtailed coat was cast aside, so by the time he was ready to dominate the party and hold forth at his usual length with vigorous and sometimes bawdy tales, he was down to his spectacular waistcoat with its rhinestone buttons. He was seated next to Ha

“Oh, no doubt of it,” Diamond said. He was begi

“But of course once people saw the clear truth shining in my eyes, and hear the music of my thoughts, the game would be up! They would know I was not an American.”

Hel concealed a slight smile behind a finger.

“You’re hard on Americans,” Diamond said.

“Maybe so,” Le Cagot admitted. “And maybe I am being unjust. We get to see only the dregs of them here: merchants on vacation with their brassy wives, military men with their papier-mâché, gum-chewing women, young people seeking to ‘find themselves,’ and worst of all, academic drudges who manage to convince granting agencies that the world would be improved if they were beshat upon Europe. I sometimes think that America’s major export product is bewildered professors on sabbaticals. Is it true that everyone in the United States over twenty-five years of age has a Ph.D?” Le Cagot had the bit well between his teeth, and he began one of his tales of adventure, based as usual on a real event, but decorated with such improvements upon dull truth as occurred to him as he went along. Secure in the knowledge that Le Cagot would dominate things for many minutes, Hel let his face freeze in a politely amused expression while his mind sorted out and organized the moves that would begin after di

Le Cagot had turned to Diamond. “I am going to shed some light upon history for you, American guest of my friend. Everyone knows that the Basque and the Fascists have been enemies since before the birth of history. But few know the real source of this ancient antipathy. It was our fault, really. I confess it at last. Many years ago, the Basque people gave up the practice of shitting by the roadside, and in doing this we deprived the Falange of its principal source of nourishment. And that is the truth, I swear it by Methuselah’s Wrinkled B—”

“Beñat?” Hana interrupted, indicating the young girl with a nod of her head.

“—by Methuselah’s Wrinkled Brow. What’s wrong with you?” he asked Hana, his eyes moist with hurt “Do you think I have forgotten my ma

Hel pushed back his chair and rose. “Mr. Diamond and I have a bit of business to attend to, I suggest you take your cognac on the terrace. You might just have time before the rain comes.”

As they stepped down from the principal hall to the Japanese garden, Hel took Diamond by the arm. “Allow me to guide you; I didn’t think to bring a lantern.”

“Oh? I know about your mystic proximity sense, but I didn’t know you could see in the dark as well.”

“I can’t. But we are on my ground. Perhaps you would be well advised to remember that.”

Hel lighted two spirit lamps in the gun room and gestured Diamond toward a low table on which there was a bottle and glasses. “Serve yourself. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He carried one of the lamps to a bookcase filled with pull drawers of file cards, some two hundred thousand cards in all. “May I assume that Diamond is your real name?”

“It is.”

Hel searched for the proper key card containing all cross references to Diamond. “And your initials are?”

“Jack O.” Diamond smiled to himself as he compared Hel’s crude card file with his own sophisticated information system, Fat Boy. “I didn’t see any reason to use an alias, assuming that you would see a family resemblance between me and my brother.”