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Lala was standing at a rosewood table beneath the central chandelier. Beside her, glass in hand, was a wide, bulky man who looked like Orson Welles on an off day. "Mr. Solo!" he exclaimed, moving forward with surprising grace. "One does so apologize for the—ah—unconventional form your invitation took. But it is nice to see you perpendicular at last."
"Let us praise while we can the vertical man," Solo quoted with a crooked smile, "so soon to become the horizontal out..."
"Ah, now—you mustn't feel like that. One admits a certain—ah—theatricality about the means one employed to get you here, about the machinery of seeing that you stay. But then, that's inseparable from having guests who may wish to leave before one is oneself tired of their company, don't you feel?" The voice was firm and yet mellifluous, the perfect complement to the lithe way in which the big man moved.
"The only thing I feel, Mr.... Carlsen?... is curiosity," Solo replied. "Curiosity about the real reason for my presence here. Curiosity about the great pains taken to achieve this—er—visit. Forgive my ignorance and boorishness, but, again... why?"
"We wanted to talk to you, Mr. Solo. That's all. It really is."
The girl was standing beside them. She was wearing a cocktail dress in vivid crimson velvet. From overhead, the light sculptured the soft flesh of her shoulders and hollowed with shadow the slopes of her bosom. "What will you take, Mr, Solo?" she asked. "A dry Martini? Whisky? A vermouth?"
"I'll take a Campari and soda, if you have one," the agent said.
Lala moved across to the wall, dark stockings on her legs gleaming, and tugged at an old fashioned bell-pull. A moment later, a saturnine manservant appeared in the doorway. Behind him, Solo saw the shape of one of the gunmen in the shadows below the staircase.
"Campari and soda for Mr. Solo," the girl said. "And two more whisky sours for Mr. Carlsen and me."
While they waited for di
Both Carlsen and the girl were well-read and well informed, and such was the quality of their argument and their charm that Solo had constantly to keep reminding himself of his predicament. Even so, he found himself drawn willy-nilly into a spirited defense of the Stanislavsky school of acting and was despite himself enjoying an urbane attempt to demolish Carlsen's theory in favor of Brecht, when the girl took his arm and led the way to the dining room.
Feeling self-conscious and slightly ridiculous, like a man who finds himself on stage during the second act of a drawing-room comedy, Solo moved with her.
The meal was excellent: avocado with a vinaigrette sauce, an exquisite truite aux feuilles vertes served with a delicate Tokay d'Alsace. Tournedos Rossini that melted in the mouth, and a Chambolle Musigny that turned out to be one of the noblest Burgundies that Solo had ever tasted.
He was poring over an unusually wide selection of cheeses offered on a board by the manservant when Carlsen said casually: "I suppose you find in your work, Mr. Solo, that more than half your assignments devolve upon thwarting some villainy or other perpetrated by this Thrush organization. Do you find this involutary—er—specialization makes you stale for any other work you do?"
The agent finished transferring a segment of Chalaro
In the event, he smiled, looked up at his host, and said mildly, "A trained officer of any kind of enforcement agency—whether it's police, army, intelligence or whatever—learns to regard every assignment as though it were his first. Each one is completely fresh. And I don't know where you get your figures from—but I could hardly confirm your fifty-percent-plus estimate, you know!"
Carlsen was smiling broadly. "Or deny?" he said mischievously.
Solo nodded. "Or deny," he agreed.
"Oh, come now, Mr. Solo! In my business," the other said—as an oil king might say to a movie tycoon—"in my business one is bound to run up against a lot of facts and figures concerning Thrush. Were it otherwise, it would be u
"And just what is your business, Mr.—er—Carlsen?"
"We are both adults, Mr. Solo. I see no point in elaborate fencing. It bores and disgusts me. And in any case it is obvious that I operate on the wrong side of the law. As to a precise description... what would you say, my dear?"
"I should say that you were in the transport business," Lala Eriksson replied.
Carlsen was delighted. "That's it! That's exactly it," he chuckled. "I am in the transport business... the transportation of items of value, shall we say, from one locality to another!"
"That could cover safe-breaking, bank robbery, kidnapping, espionage, smuggling, drugs or the white slave traffic," Solo said.
"So it could, Mr. Solo. So it could. Do you find that Thrush keep abreast of the remarkable advances in communications we see today? Would you say their telecommunications set-up, for instance, compares with yours, or with that of the United Nations or the MVD?"
The agent spread butter on a Bath Oliver biscuit. "A man of your intelligence can hardly expect a specific answer to that," he said.
Carlsen immediately cha
"Yes, but you talk of law and order and of evil," the girl interrupted, "as though they were finite qualities and not just subjective labels that people tie on as it suits them "
"I know what you're going to say, Lala," Carlsen in his turn cut in. "And it's perfectly true what Orwell said in that Horizon piece all those years ago Did you ever see it, Mr. Solo? It was called Raffles and Miss Blandish and Orwell pointed out that a thriller in which all the characters were evil was pointless: it lost its punch unless there were also good characters. To be used, you see, as a yardstick against which the bad were measured. Devil worshippers are religious men; they ca