“You mean by displaying them behind locked doors in my own home?” asked the Swagman, arching an eyebrow. He paused. “Shall we change the subject? If we keep talking about my collection, we’re bound to have a serious disagreement.” He snapped his fingers. “Or better still, how about dinner? I had my staff start preparing it half an hour ago, when you identified yourself at the first security barrier.”

“Staff?” repeated Virtue. “I didn’t notice any staff.”

“They’re all mechanical,” explained the Swagman. “And very discreet.”

“You live alone here?” she asked, surprised.

“Is that so difficult to believe?” he replied.

“I would have thought you’d be surrounded by henchmen,” she admitted.

“One of the advantages about living with nothing but robots is that you never have to count the silverware or check the display cases when they’re through for the day,” he said. “Besides, what would I do with henchmen?”

“Well, you do have a reputation as a master criminal.”

“So I am told,” he replied dryly.

“You haven’t answered my question,” she persisted.

“I don’t know what you think a master criminal does,” said the Swagman, “but in point of fact I am a large-scale employer of criminal labor, nothing more.” A bell chimed twice, and he turned to Father William. “Dinner’s ready. I assume you brought along your appetite?”

“I’m never without it,” said the preacher heartily.

He led them into the dining hall, which was surrounded with still more displays of unique alien artifacts. The room was dominated by a table that could easily have accommodated forty people, but the three settings were all at one end of it. The chairs were all one-legged, considerably broader at the base than the top, and were much more secure than they looked.

“Won’t you please sit down?” asked the Swagman, pulling out a chair for Virtue.

“Thank you,” she said as Father William sat down opposite her.

“Ordinarily I’d serve such welcome guests on my Robelian dinner pieces,” said the Swagman apologetically as he joined them. “But I’m having them refinished. I hope the Atrian quartz will be acceptable. It’s really quite lovely in its way.”

“The only thing that matters is what’s being served on it,” replied Father William, leaning back to allow a robot to place an appetizer of mutated shellfish before him.

“That’s because you are concerned only with accumulating energy with which to fight your holy war,” said the Swagman. “Those of us who are fortunate enough to be spectators at the battle of Good and Evil, rather than participants, are doubly blessed in that we also have the opportunity to admire the containers in which the energy arrives.”

“Spectator, my eye!” snapped Father William, chewing and speaking at the same time. “You’ve got more killers working for you than Dimitri Sokol!”