“‘Schutz’ is a type of prolonged training. They obey hundreds of voice commands. I want them to know you for obvious reasons. You’re always completely safe here until eleven o’clock at which point a buzzer goes off. Then no one is safe until seven in the morning when the buzzer goes off again.”

“How about you?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m their god. I could strangle them and they wouldn’t complain.”

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Warlock was swept away in dark religious conclusions.

“No. Not in the least. Dogs don’t make me think. Except about other dogs. The dogs of my life. That sort of thing.”

Lunch was one of the most splendid of his life, Warlock felt, a little dreamily. An entire bottle of a Bordeaux, a Beychevelle ’67, had soothed his frayed synapses. Diana had told Rabun of the joy Warlock had experienced in London and there was an array of English dishes including a steak and oyster pie, a mixed grill including a broiled kidney, a pork cutlet, lamb chop, bacon, a woodcock of all things, a broiled stuffed tomato and a side of fresh spinach. Warlock’s heart went out to the doctor who ate a bowl of stewed millet and ice water.

“The boobs at the Mayo Clinic tell me I have the worst gout they’ve ever seen. It’s been controlled by allopurinol but I’m only able to dine twice a week at most. Or I suffer terribly. I’ve become so cranky about it over the past decade my wife has taken to living in Florida.”

“I feel awful eating this in front of you.”

“Don’t be stupid. I ordered the meal. Ten years ago I weighed nearly three hundred and now I weight one fifty. I’m in my sixties but I fully recaptured my sex life. Gluttons are traditionally bad fucks. Balzac and Rasputin were exceptions.”

“It’s best to keep in shape for the sack,” Warlock agreed.

“Not very elegantly put, but true.” Rabun suddenly threw his porridge spoon at Warlock’s head.

“Jesus!” He snatched the spoon out of the air a foot in front of his face.

“Just testing your alertness. Very good.”

While Warlock had his blackberry torte, demitasse, and Hine cognac, Rabun studied the memo, his pen poised over it like a bird of prey. He scratched a few times, added his signature to both copies, and pushed them back to Warlock.

“Very good. I knocked the commission down to seventeen and a half to appear better at business than I am. I’ll start you at forty-five, your last inflated salary for putting the feeble, the lame, the dolts, on the dole.”

“Don’t start me there if you feel it’s inflated.” Warlock paused with dignity, a spoonful of torte on the verge of his lips.