by Paul Preuss
She confronted a young man with chopped auburn hair, wearing a lapel button in his conservative suit that identified him as a member of the staff. “You were the one?”
“On behalf of a client, of course.” His accent was mid-Atlantic—American, cultured, East Coast. His face was handsome in an odd way, soft-eyed and freckled.
“Are you free to divulge…?”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Sylvester, I’m under strict instructions.”
“You know me.” She scrutinized him: very handsome, rather appealing. “Are you free to tell me your own name?”
He smiled. “My name’s Blake Redfield, ma’am.”
“That’s some progress. Perhaps you would like to join me for lunch, Mr. Redfield?”
He inclined his head in the merest sketch of a bow. “You are very gracious. Unhappily…”
She watched him a moment. He seemed in no hurry to leave; he was watching her as closely as she was watching him. She said, “Too bad. Another time?”
“That would be delightful.”
“Another time, then.” Sylvester walked briskly out of the room. At the entrance she paused, then asked the girl to call a taxi; while she waited she asked, “How long has Mr. Redfield been with the firm?”
“Let me see”—the red-cheeked girl twisted her little rosebud mouth charmingly as she made the effort to recall—“perhaps a year, Mrs. Sylvester. He’s not a regular employee, really.”
“No?”
“More like a consultant,” said the girl. “Books and manuscripts, 19th and 20th centuries.”
“So young?”
“He is rather, isn’t he? But quite the genius, to hear the assessors speak of him. Here’s your taxi now.”
“I’m sorry I troubled you.” Sylvester hardly glanced at the square black shape humming driverless at the curb. “I think, after all, that I’ll walk a bit.”
Her pace was determined, not meditative; she needed to let her angry blood circulate. She strode rapidly down the street toward Piccadilly, turning east through the maze of all the little Burlingtons and across the end of Saville Row, her destination a shop near Charing Cross Road, an ancient and, in the past, sometimes disreputable place presently wearing a veneer of renewed respectability.
She reached it in no time. Gold letters on a plate glass window announced “Hermione Scrutton, Bookseller.” While she was still half a block from the shop she saw Scrutton herself at the green-enameled door, twisting a decorative iron key in a decorative iron lock while putting her eye to the eye of a bronze lion head that served as a doorknocker, but which also contained the retina-reader that triggered the door’s real lock.
By the time Scrutton got the door open, Sylvester was close enough to hear the spring-mounted brass bell clamor as she entered.
Moments later the same bell announced Sylvester’s arrival; from an aisle of crumbling yellow volumes Scrutton emerged, having seen to the alarm system. She was a stocky, bushy-browed imp in brown tweeds, a gold ascot at her throat, a bald patch visible through her thin graying hair, the color high on her cheeks—which were incongruously tan to begin with—and a smile playing on her mobile red lips. “My dear Syl. Can’t say. Ah, really. Mm, simply devastated…”
“Oh, Hermione, you’re not bothered in the least. I couldn’t have afforded to spend a penny on you for the next five years.”
“Mm, I confess the thought had occurred to me. And certainly I would have missed your, ah, most elegant presence in my humble, ah establishment.” Scrutton smirked. “But then one has no difficulty placing the really rare items, does one? Mm?”
“Who outbid me? Do you know?”
She shook her head, once, her dewlaps flapping. “No one whose agent I recognized. I was seated behind you. ’Fraid I couldn’t see the bidder.”
“Anon was the bidder,” she informed her. “Represented by a young man named Blake Redfield.”
Scrutton’s eyebrows fluttered up and down rapidly. “Ahh, Redfield. Mm, I say.” She turned away to fuss with the nearest shelf of books. “Redfield, eh? Indeed. Oh, yes.”
“Hermione, you’re toying with me”—the words came out of the back of her throat, a panther’s warning growl—“and I’ll have your artificially tanned hide for it.”
“That so?” The bookseller half turned, cocking a cantilevered eyebrow. “What’s it worth to you?”
“Lunch.” Sylvester said immediately.
“Not your local pub fare,” she warned.
“Wherever you choose. The Ritz, for God’s sake.”
“Done,” said Scrutton, rubbing her palms. “Mm. Haven’t eaten since breakfast, at least.”
Somewhere between the butter lettuce and the prawns, encouraged by half a bottle of Moët et Chandon, Scrutton revealed her suspicion that Redfield was representing none other than Vincent Darlington—at which Sylvester dropped her fork.
Scrutton, her eyebrows oscillating with alarm, gaped at her. In all the years she had known Sylvester she had never seen her like this: her beautiful face was darkening quite alarmingly, and Scrutton was not at all certain that she had not suffered a stroke. She glanced around, but to her relief no one in the airy dining room seemed to have noticed anything amiss, with the possible exception of a poised and anxious waiter.
Sylvester’s color improved. “What a surprise,” she whispered.
“Syl, dearest, I had no idea…”
“This is vendetta, of course. Never mind the language, never mind the period, sweet Vincent has not the least interest in literature. I doubt he could distinguish The Seven Pillars of Wisdom from Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”
“Hm, yes”—Scrutton’s cheek quivered, but she could not resist—“they are rather close in date…”
“Hermione,” Sylvester warned, fixing a cool eye upon her; chastened, Scrutton subsided. “Hermione, Vincent Darlington does not read. He did not buy that book because he knows its worth; he bought it to shame me, because I shamed him—in quite another arena.” Sylvester leaned back in her chair, dabbing at her lips with a heavy linen napkin.
“Really, my dear girl,” Scrutton murmured. “Understand perfectly.”
“No, not really, Hermione.” Sylvester said sharply. “But you mean well, I think. Therefore I am about to put my life, or at least my reputation, into your hands. If you ever need to blackmail me, remember this moment—the moment I swore I would revenge myself upon that worm Darlington. If it costs me my fortune.”
“Mm, ah.” Scrutton sipped her champagne, then set it down carefully upon the linen. “Well, Syl, let us hope it doesn’t come to that.”
One ships an object worth a million and a half pounds discreetly, and with due regard for its physical well-being. Fortunately The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had been printed in those long gone days when it was assumed as a matter of course that printed pages ought to last. Blake Redfield had only to place the book into a padded gray Styrene briefcase and find a shipper who could provide temperature-and humidity-controlled storage.
Lloyd’s register listed two suitable ships that would arrive at Port Hesperus within twenty-four hours of each other. Neither would get to Venus in much less than two months, but no one else would arrive sooner, and no other ships were scheduled for several more weeks; that was the nature of interplanetary travel. One of the two was a freighter, Star Queen, due to depart Earth orbit in three weeks. The other ship was a liner, Helios, scheduled to leave later on a faster crossing. Prudence suggested that Blake reserve space on both; the asterisk beside Star Queen’s name warned that the ship was undergoing repairs and had yet to be cleared for commerce by the Board of Space Control.
Blake was sealing the magnetic lock on the Styrene case when the door of Sotheby’s back room exploded with a loud bang.
A young woman was silhouetted against the brick hallway. “Heavens, Blake, what have you been up to?” she inquired, waving a hand to dispel the acrid smoke.
“I’ve been up to a few grains of potassium chlorate and sulfur, actually. I
f you hadn’t been you, dear, this rather expensive object before me would have been whisked out of your sight and into the vault before you’d cleared the air in front of your cute nose.”
“Couldn’t you have used a little buzzer or something? Did you have to destroy the doorknob?”
“I didn’t destroy the doorknob. More noise than punch. Might have blistered the venerable paint. Regrets.”
The apple-cheeked young woman was modestly uniformed in a conservative metal skirt. She came to the desk and watched Blake lock the plastic case. “Didn’t you think it was too bad she lost the bidding? She had such good taste.”
“She?”
“She came up to you after the sale,” she said. “Very beautiful for someone her age. She asked you something that made you blush.”
“Blush? You have quite a vivid imagination.”
“You’re no good at pretending, Blake. Blame your Irish grandfather for your freckles.”
“Mrs. Sylvester is an attractive woman…”
“She asked about you afterwards. I told her you were a genius.”
“I doubt she has any personal interest in me. And I certainly have no interest in her.”
“Oh? Do you have an interest in Vincent Darlington?”
“Oh yes, pure lust.” He laughed. “For his money.”
She leaned a mesh-covered hip against the back of his chair; he could feel her heat on his cheek. “Darlington’s an illiterate pig,” she announced. “He doesn’t deserve that thing.”
“‘’Tis a thing, devised by the enemy,’” he murmured, and he rose abruptly, moving away from her, to put the locked case into the vault. “Right.” He turned to face her across the cluttered yellow office. “Did you bring me the pamphlet?”
She smiled, her rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes signaling her frank interest. “I found a shelf full, but they’re still at my flat. Come home with me and I will introduce you to the secrets of the prophetae.”
He eyed her, a bit askance, then shrugged. “Sure.” After all, it was a subject that had long intrigued him.
7
A discreet knocking at the door, repeated at intervals… Sondra Sylvester came striding out of the bathroom, her blue silk nightgown clinging heavily to her long body. She unchained the door.
“Your tea, mu’m.”
“By the window, that will be fine.”
The uniformed young man picked his way through feminine litter and laid the heavy silver tray of tea things on the table. The windows of the spacious suite had a fine view of Hyde Park, but this morning they were heavily curtained against the light. Sylvester searched the dim room and spotted her velvet clutch purse on the floor beside a clothes-draped armchair. She found paper money inside and dug out a bill in time to thrust it into the young man’s hand.
“Thank you, mu’m.”
“You’ve been very good,” she said, slightly flustered. She closed the door behind him. “God, how much did I give him?” she muttered. “I’m hardly awake.”
A rounded form stirred under the bedsheets. Nancybeth’s tousled dark hair and violet eyes peered from the sheets.
Sylvester watched as the rest of Nancybeth rose into view, graceful neck, slender shoulders, heavy breasts darkly nippled. “How becoming of you to wait until he left. And how novel.”
“What are you bitching about?” Nancybeth yawned, displaying perfect little teeth, a darting pink tongue.
Sylvester crossed to the videoplate on the wall and fiddled with the controls hidden in its carved and gilded frame. “You said you were awake. I asked you to turn on the news.”
“I went back to sleep.”
“You were into my purse again.”
Nancybeth glared at her with pale eyes that tended to cross when she was concentrating. “Syl, sometimes you act more like a mother…” She sprang from the bed and strode to the bathroom.
“Than like what?”
But Nancybeth ignored her, walking through the dressing room, leaving the door open, on into the shower stall.
Sylvester’s heart was thudding—God, that shelf, those majestic flanks, those vibrant calves. Part Italian, part Polynesian, she was a bronzed Galatea, sculpture made flesh. Irritably Sylvester punched the controls of the video picture until the plastic mask of a BBC announcer appeared.
She set the volume just loud enough to hear the announcer talk about rising tensions in south central Asia as she went about picking clothes off the floor and hurling them onto the bed. From the bathroom came the hiss and dribble of the shower and Nancybeth’s husky, off-tune voice singing something torchy and unintelligible. Sylvester looked at the heavy silver teapot and the china cups with distaste. She went into the dressing room and pulled a bottle of Moët et Chandon from the refrigerator under the counter. The videoplate mumbled words that caught her attention: “A secret unveiled: develops that the winning bid in yesterday’s spectacular auction at Sotheby’s…” Sylvester darted to the wall screen and boosted the volume. “…first-edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E Lawrence—the legendary Lawrence of Arabia—was placed by Mr. Vincent Darlington, director of the Hesperian Museum. Reached by radio-link, Mr. Darlington at first refused comment but later admitted that he had bought the extremely rare book on behalf of the Port Hesperus museum, an institution of which he is the proprietor—not, it might be said, an institution hitherto known for its collection of written works. In other news of the art world…”
Sylvester punched off the video. She ripped the foil off the bottle and untangled its wire cage. She began twisting the bulging champagne cork with a strong, steady grip.
Nancybeth emerged from the shower. Steam rose from her skin, backlit in the glow from the dressing room light. She was perfectly unconcerned about the water she was dripping onto the rug. “Was that something about Vince? On the news?”
“Seems he was the one who outbid me for the Lawrence.” The champagne cork came out with a satisfying thud.
“Vince? He doesn’t care about books.”
Sylvester watched her, a heavy dark Venus deliberately manifesting herself naked, deliberately letting her wet skin chill, letting her nipples rise. “He cared about you,” Sylvester said.
“Oh.” Nancybeth smiled complacently, her violet eyes half-lidded. “I guess it cost you.”
“On the contrary, you’ve saved me a great deal of money I might otherwise have thrown away on a mere book. Fetch some glasses, will you? In the refrigerator.”
Still naked, still wet, Nancybeth brought the tulip glasses to the table and settled herself on the plush chair. “Are we celebrating something?”
“Hardly,” Sylvester said, pouring out the cold, seething liquid. “I’m consoling myself.”
She handed a tulip to Nancybeth. They bent toward each other. The rims touched and chimed. “Still mad at me?” Nancybeth mewed.
Sylvester was fascinated, watching Nancybeth’s nostrils widen as she lowered her upturned nose into the mouth of the tulip. “For being who you are?”
The tip of the pink tongue tasted sharp carbonic acid from dissolving bubbles. “Well, you don’t have to console yourself, Syl.” The violet eyes under the long, wet lashes lifted to transfix her.
“I don’t?”
“Let me console you.”
The magneplane whirred through the genteel greenery of London’s southwestern suburbs, pausing now and again to drop off and take on passengers, depositing Nikos Pavlakis a mile from his Richmond destination. Pavlakis hired an autotaxi at the stand and as it drove away from the station he rolled down the windows to let the wet spring air invade the cab. Beyond the slate roofs of the passing semi-detached villas, pearly cloud puffs in the soft blue sky kept pace with the cab as it rolled past spruce lawns and hedges.
Lawrence Wycherly’s house was a trim brick Georgian. Pavlakis put his sliver in the port, paying the cab to wait, then walked to the door of the house, feeling heavy in a black plastic suit that, like all his suits, was too tight for his massive shoulders. Mrs. Wyc
herly opened the door before he could reach for the bell. “Good morning, Mr. Pavlakis. Larry’s in the sitting room.”
She did not seem overjoyed to see him. She was a pale, smooth-skinned woman with fine blond hair, pretty once, now on the verge of fading into invisibility, leaving only her regret.
Pavlakis found Wycherly sitting in his pajamas, his feet up on a hassock, a plaid lap robe tucked under his thighs and an arsenal of plastic-back space thrillers and patent medicines littering the lamp table beside him. Wycherly lifted a thin hand. “Sorry, Nick. Would get up, but I’ve been a bit wobbly for the past day or two.”
“I’m sorry to have to give you this trouble, Larry.”
“Nothing of it. Sit down, will you? Be comfortable. Get you anything? Tea?”
Mrs. Wycherly was still in the room, somewhat to Pavlakis’s surprise, temporarily reemerging from the shadows of the arch. “Mr. Pavlakis might prefer coffee.”
“That would be very nice,” he said gratefully. The English repeatedly amazed him with their sensitivity to such things.
“Right, then,” Wycherly said, staring at her until she dissolved again. He cocked a canny eyebrow at Pavlakis, who was perching his muscular bulk delicately on an Empire settee. “All right, Nick. Something too special for the phone?”
“Larry, my friend…” Pavlakis leaned forward, hands primly on his knees, “Falaron Shipyards is cheating us—my father and me. Dimitrios is encouraging the worker consortiums to bribe us, and then taking kickbacks from them. For all of which we must pay. If we are to meet the launch window for Star Queen.”
Wycherly said nothing, but a sour smile played over his lips. “Frankly, most of us who’ve worked with the firm over the years have accepted that that was always part of the arrangement between Dimitrios and your dad.” Wycherly paused, then coughed repeatedly, making a humming sound like a balky two-cycle engine deep in his chest. For a moment Pavlakis was afraid he was choking, but he was merely clearing his throat. He recovered himself. “Standard practice, so to say.”