Sophia shook her head, afraid. Tears swam into her eyes.

“Here. Here,” he said. “Let me taste.”

He took her face in his two hands, drew her to him. Pressed his lips to hers and then slid his tongue into her mouth, over her tongue.

Sophia tasted the salt and the chicken he’d eaten and the warmth and the size of his tongue. She was confused, her thoughts hectic. And, as his tongue went on moving over hers, she realized—realized with a sinking weight of fear and depression—that she was going to do whatever he wanted. They were going to talk about it, on and on, into the night. And then she was going to go out with him to Belham Grange.

Storm drew back, drew his tongue out of her. But he went on holding her face, holding her close to him. His eyes, she saw, were swimming too.

“Salt,” he whispered hoarsely. “Live. Live, Sophia. It’s the only thing I’ll ever ask you to do for me.”

4

Bernard’s Morris Minor, meanwhile, was gunning wildly round the corners of Chelsea’s backstreets. The rain walloped the windscreen, covered it, spit, slippery, out from under the tires on either side. The night was now so dark, the streets so sparsely lit, that it was all but impossible for Bernard to see much ahead. Still, the car darted through the tempest like a minnow as he worked the stick and wheel in the same languid, offhanded way in which he noodled his computer. He checked the rearview mirror frequently. He was trying to make certain there was no one on his trail.

The automobile, like all machines, was a complete mystery to Harper Albright. But she was so used to her factotum’s mastery of such things that she was thoroughly unconcerned. Slicing dodges between other cars, rugby-player dives under amber traffic lights, explosions of speed over abbreviated straightaways rendered invisible by the rain: she took no notice of any of them. Her stick propped on the car’s damp floor, her hands crossed over the stick’s dragon head, her chin resting on the backs of her hands, she cogitated quietly.

“I think,” she murmured after a while, “that we had better discuss arithmetic.”

The Morris skidded out onto the embankment, sped along the river, spangled bridges whipping by.

“It was simple arithmetic,” Harper went on, “which, according to the Belham scribe, led to the death of his two partners in the enterprise of the stone, whereas he himself was saved by the complicity—that was his word—the complicity of one who remained nameless. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

“Would anyone?” Bernard asked, casting a glance in the rearview as he swept in and out of oncoming traffic to overtake a van.