He was paging me. I had told him about twenty times that my name was Judd. When I gave up, I’d even thought of changing my name to Bud. But I had a bothersome notion that if I did, he’d call me something else.

He sat at the chess table in his cell, wrapped in his bathrobe. All that protruded above the upturned collar was his sworl of sauerkraut hair, while below the hem his legs like asparagus stalks took root in the frayed vegetation of the carpet. Trousers were invented by the Scythians of Carpathia back in the Bronze Age, but Chatterton apparently had never heard of them.

“How are you?” he asked with unexpected civility.

“Cold.”

Civility vanished. His face—what was visible of it—twitched, like gruel coming to a boil. “Don’t be cheeky with me,” he cautioned. “If you’re so cold, why are you sweating?”

What could I tell him? That from the time I scrambled down the steps in answer to his call I was taken in a fit of free-floating, corrosive anxiety? That I found no joy in being confined with him and his hair and his bathrobe in that bleak black hole of a study? That I wasn’t prepared for the inevitable inquisition on the progress my sousaphone had made on the little steel domino?

Thomas Henry Huxley, up there with the brainiest, once noted that there was “the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.” Something like that.

Not for me. The domino’s refusal to dance to my tuba I found of no benefit whatsoever. Although once, just once, I thought I saw the damn thing shudder. More likely it was my imagination, exhaustively impatient for progress.

“Perhaps you’re working too hard?” he asked with a smirky, derisive smile. “Perhaps the work is too stimulating? But never mind,” he said magnanimously. “How well do you know Abdul Whatsisname?”

“Not very.”

“You are of course aware of his background?”

“Somewhat.”

“Thing is, our revenues have become increasingly idiosyncratic, and now the cupboard is just about bare. You think he might be interested in funding us for a while?”

“Possibly,” I said. I didn’t think Abdul could be pitchforked into funding Chatterton and his project, whatever it turned out to be. Moreover, I knew he was on a Georgetown scholarship with the U.S. government picking up the tab, which did nothing to allocate him among the philanthropic rich. But then it occurred to me that the old man had handed me a wedge. If I played along with him for another five minutes I might learn the significance of Gorelik’s assault on the fipple flute, and find some meaning for the assorted disharmonies that rampaged through the house.

“Possibly,” I repeated, “but he’d want to know what you’d be using the money for.”

“Yes. I suppose he would.” He tugged thoughtfully at his pursy lip.