It was nearly dusk by the time they reached the edge of the city, early evening when they arrived at their final destination. The house stood in a wooded vale off the main road. Oaks lined the half-paved lane, willows grew along the grassy slopes above a stream. Leaves were still ticking after an earlier rain. The driver stopped in a circular motor court between the tangled garden and the entrance. There were one or two lights in upper windows. "We call it the Bentley House," Hooper said in reverent tones.

Inside were vast shadowy rooms, smelling of mildew and wet stone. An oar hung above the mantle, a dark pastoral landscape above the staircase. Beyond double glass doors was a conservatory with the silhouette of an enormous fern, an empty bird cage, wastes of black furniture: the place from which he would start the road back to Zelle.

It was near-midnight when Southerland showed up. Gray had been resting in a bedroom at the top of the stair, a long narrow room with stylized daffodils on the walls. There were four more rooms waiting for guests, but Southerland was the first. Gray heard him on the staircase with the driver, then questioning Hooper in the corridor:

"Did you discuss anything in particular with him?" Southerland asked.

"No, sir," Hooper replied, "nothing at all." "Did he mention anyone of interest?"

"No, sir."

"Then what the hell did you talk about?"

"Very little. He was uncommonly rude."

"Rude? You're lucky he didn't take your head off."

The dialogue began in the morning. Gray had gotten up early, and after a breakfast of coffee and cigarettes found Southerland waiting for him in the garden, a haphazard place, a remnant of someone's earlier enthusiasm; weeds had begun to invade the neglected lawn, the hedgerows had lost definition. An ornamental fountain was caked with moss, which lay so thick on the flagstones that one might have been walking on flesh.

Southerland was sitting on a white wrought-iron bench underneath a stunted oak. There was a newspaper on his knee, the remains of a biscuit at his feet. He stood up as Gray approached but kept his hands in his pockets.

"Hello, Nicky. How are you?" Receiving no reply, he inquired if Gray had slept well. "Because frankly I've always found this place unbearably damp, must have something to do with the vegetation or perhaps it's in the fabric of the walls . . . Incidentally you must inform us if there's anything special you'd like in the way of meals, our cook isn't the best but if there's something you'd particularly like—"

"Tell them to bring me rat meat," Gray snapped, "and stop flirting around. I'm through with your kind. I've had it with the whole circus."

Southerland sank back to the bench with a deep sigh. "And how about the dancer, Nicky? Are you through with her as well?"

"Piss off."