“Knives. For God’s sake, leave me alone. This is a business visit. Rick and I have things to discuss after dinner.”

“Well, dear, you can’t discuss business in the Random because it’s against the house rules, as well you know. Seduction is on, drag, drugs, my dears, bottomry, barratry, the occasional gang bang—”

“Don’t be an oaf, Johnny.”

“—besides, ‘after dinner’ is hours away. Personally I’ve never known a time when drink didn’t expedite business—if, that is, it’s really business and not some euphemistical employment—oh of course, it should be the business that’s euphem—”

“Johnny, you’re high. Let’s dispose of these bottles at once. It’s very, very kind of you, Wilf.”

I felt tired and said so but it had no effect on them. Rick, I noted, began to do what I had never seen him do before. He was drinking, not as heavily as Gabriel but feverishly. At last we wandered up to dinner, Rick now talking a bit wildly. His speech had reverted to toneless Middle-West or wherever it came from originally. They all three got higher and higher. Some of the talk was good, particularly Gabriel’s. I was dull. It was odd to find myself the only sober one of the four! The turning point came when I explained to Rick that if he got any drunker he wouldn’t understand what I had to say to him. Well, Rick, with a touch of the whimpers rather than belligerence, gave us all to understand that he wasn’t interested in explanations. He just wanted the agreement. I said, to break things gently and as it were lead him towards the truth before revealing it, that the agreement had never been more than a gentleman’s agreement which made Johnny laugh and laugh. I got a bit angry. Gabriel, with his capacity for stirring things up suggested that he and Johnny should be witnesses to the signing. Before I had gathered my wits together, Rick was explaining the whole thing to them, Mary Lou and all.

So I had to break in brutally.

“There isn’t going to be an agreement.”

Rick’s mouth opened and shut without anything coming out of it but a dribble of the wine he had been drinking.

“I’m sorry, Rick, but that’s how it is.”

“You kay-ant—” He took a gulp of wine, shook himself and reverted to the mid-Atlantic ridge. “You can’t not. You, you promised me there in Weisswald after I’d. Not even you. You can’t.’

“Listen, Rick, old friend—”

“I say you can’t. You don’t know what it means. I put down every chip I got. You don’t mean it, sir, Wilf. I can take a joke—”

“I’m not joking.”

“I warn you, Wilf Barclay. I’ll write it whether— Look, sir. It means sheer beggary. I gave up everything. Mr St John John, Mr Clayton, you’re witnesses—”

“Tell us more, Rick, after all we’re his old chums.”

“I gave up my career like I said. I saved his neck—”

“You did not!”

“I did so! There, in the fog—”