He pulled out an ebony cane with a standard curved handle. Apart from some copper-wire inlay, it was undecorated. Hud had to pull fairly hard to get the handle to separate, which he did with an overhead flourish, and suddenly there was a length of gleaming steel waving under Betsy’s nose.

“Cute,” said Betsy, taking a step back. “I’m glad it was the sword or I’d be covered with whiskey.”

Hud laughed and put the cane back together, and they went out of his office. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Dana,” he said to his secretary as they swept by.

They took the freight elevator, a big, padded box so old-fashioned it had a human operator—a retarded man from a local group home, who loved this vehicle like Hud loved his Rolls. As it slowly clanked its way down, Hud said to Betsy, “How do you like our Guthrie Theatre?”

“Very impressive. How did you know I went?”

“You’re a new face in a small town. Everyone’s paying attention.”

“I didn’t know you lived in Excelsior.”

“I don’t, I live next door in Greenwood. But I eat breakfast every so often at the Waterfront Café.”

Betsy chuckled.

They went up a broad hall lined with huge eighteenth-century religious paintings to an unmarked wooden door that opened with a key.

The door let into a long narrow hall, at the end of which was another door, which opened into an enormous room full of stacked wooden crates, a big stone statue of Shiva, and glass cases containing golden Buddhas, Chinese watercolors, Japanese robes, and enigmatic stone heads. “Wow,” breathed Betsy, “it’s like Christmas at Neiman Marcus.”

Hud laughed. “Here, this way.” He led her through a labyrinth formed by the rough wooden cases. At last he led her around an immense crate and pointed. “There it is.”

The blue horse was inside a glass case with a brown horse and two human figures. Hud said, “As you can see, it’s part of a set. They are funerary figures from a tomb in China built early in the eighth century.”

He watched as Betsy slowly approached the case. The figures were on a stepped base, the male figure on the highest point in the center. But Betsy only glanced at him and focused in on the blue horse. This was so typical, thought Hud, that he was going to suggest at the next board meeting that they discontinue the postcard showing all the figures and make one of just the horse.