Lomax laughed. "The name's Harry," he said. "And thanks, I'm free all right."

It was midafternoon six days later when an old man came into reception at the penthouse block and spoke haltingly to the porter. Eight floors above, Modesty Blaise was in her lapidary workroom, cutting en cabochon one of two large rough emeralds Willie Garvin had last year dug from the emeraldbearing shale of abandoned mines in Colombia, working among the guaqueros, treasureseekers who would have slit a dozen throats to lay hands on his find.

As she worked she recalled with a smile his falsely contrite air as she trounced him for taking such a risk. The fact was that Willie enjoyed bringing her unusual presents and would do so whenever an idea seized him. This afternoon Weng was offduty, playing bridge at a club where the stakes were high and where he invariably made several thousand a year. When the housephone rang she switched off the slitting saw, laid down the dopstick with the emerald cemented to its head, and moved from her chair to pick up the phone.

"Yes, George?"

The porter said, "I've got a foreign gentleman here who wants to see you, Miss Blaise. Says his name is Alex something, I couldn't quite get the surname."

She was taken aback. "Is he alone?"

"Yes, Miss."

"All right, George. Put him in the lift and point out where the upb.u.t.ton is, will you?"

"Certainly, Miss Blaise."

She moved to the foyer and waited by the lift gates, wondering, remembering. Alex was the key to all that had happened since the day he had found and saved her. It was he who had frustrated Salamander Four, thereby ensuring that she was alive later to deal with the thug who had savagely beaten Steve Collier, the man who unknown to her was a Salamander Four enforcer. Because she had shattered this enforcer's power they had set up another attempt to kill her. But Old Alex, unknown to himself, was the father of Sir Angus McBeal, one of the four Salamander directors, and McBeal had first destroyed his three colleagues, then warned her of the Skendi contract. And it had all begun and continued with Old Alex.

The doors opened and he stood gazing at her anxiously. He wore a beautifully cut suit with a silk shirt and tie, contrasting strangely with his weatherbeaten face and gnarled old hands.

"I do not inconvenience you, mam'selle?"

He spoke in French, and she answered in the same tongue. "Alex dear, you could never be an inconvenient visitor. Come in, come in and talk with me." She took his hands, drew him into the foyer and kissed him on each cheek. "But why are you calling me mam'selle? It was always Modesty, both on the farm and when we spoke on the telephone."

"I don't know. I think because I am afraid."

She led him down the three steps to the drawingroom and sat beside him on the chesterfield, holding his hand.

"What are you afraid of, Alex?"

He shook his head helplessly. "Of... of each day. They are kind, Modesty, very kind. And I have tried... tried hard to learn and remember and become as they would wish. But it does not march. They are unhappy because they think they fail in a duty. I am unhappy because... because I am alone always, even when we are all together. I think about the farm, the vines, the family eating together in the kitchen. I want to harness Napoleon and haul logs. I don't know what I once was, Modesty, but I know what I am now, and it is not the same. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l."

He turned his head to look at her, his old eyes desperate. "I cannot bring myself to ask them for what I truly want. It would be cruel, for they know I am of their blood and are doing all for me. But to me they are strangers. I cannot ask them, so I come to you. I have the address." He touched his breast pocket. "I have money. I walk to the station and take a train to London. I show the address to the taxi man and he brings me, and you are here, thank G.o.d. So I ask you... please take me home. Please."

She patted his hand, feeling a wave of pity and relief sweep through her. "Of course I will, Alex. You'll stay here tonight and I'll take you home tomorrow. n.o.body can stop you if you want to go, but I do have to telephone your brother at once, to let him know you're safe with me."

His eyes shone with tears of joy. "Tomorrow?"

"I promise, Alex. Tomorrow. Now just sit and rest while I phone."

A minute later, on the phone in her workroom, she was saying, "Lord Sayle? This is Modesty Blaise, and I'm calling to say that Alex is safe here with me."

Mark Sayle's voice said, "Oh, thank G.o.d for that. When he went for a walk and didn't return we feared his memory was playing tricks and that he might have met with an accident."

"No, he's quite all right. But I think he's been under much greater strain than anyone realised, and I'm afraid his mental capacity could well be impaired if it continues. The fact is, he wants to go home. He's desperate to go home, to the home where he belongs. He couldn't bring himself to ask you because he says you've all been so kind and he felt it would be cruel. So he came to me, I suppose because he feels closer to me than to anyone else in the country, and I've promised to take him home tomorrow."

There was a brief silence, then Mark Sayle said quietly, "Now that it's happened I'm not surprised. We've really tried hard, you know, and Alex is a lovely chap, but... try as I may, I haven't been able to see him as the brother I grew up with. I'm sorry if that seems heartless."

So there would be no opposition, and new relief touched her as she said, "That isn't heartless, it's honest, and Alex quite simply isn't the brother you grew up with. After fifty years I don't believe there's anything left of that young man except an occasional b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l or wizard prang. It's heartbreaking, but there it is."

"Well... I can only say I'm very grateful to you, Miss Blaise. Do you wish me to send his clothes or any possessions? My chauffeur could bring them this evening. It's probably better for Alex if I don't try to say goodbye."

"I think that's a kind decision. Please don't worry about clothes. I'll take him out and buy him the sort of clothes he'll feel comfortable to go back in, then he can stay with me tonight and we'll fly to Perpignan tomorrow."

Mark Sayle said, "Thank you. I'm sure he'll be very happy to have you take him home. Will it offend you if I offer to cover your costs?"

She laughed. "It won't offend me, but no thank you. I felt guilty about causing Alex to be brought here, and I'm relieved to be taking him home."

"You're very kind."

"I hold him in great affection, and not only because he saved my life."

"Yes, I understand. At an appropriate moment please ask if I might one day visit him and his family on the farm, when he's had plenty of time to settle in."

"I will. And I look forward to visiting them myself."

She said her goodbyes, put down the phone and returned to the drawingroom. Old Alex looked up anxiously. She gave him her best smile and said, "It's all settled. I'll phone now to book our flights for tomorrow, then we'll go and get you some proper clothes. You don't want to arrive home in that suit, do you?"

He rose and embraced her wordlessly, then stepped back, grinning in the cheerful Old-Alex way she remembered. "If I go back like this," he said, "perhaps Matilde will marry me after all!" He chuckled happily.

Modesty stared. "You mean she refused when you were young?"

"Refused? Ah, no. I was n.o.body from nowhere. With nothing. How could I ever ask?"

She exhaled a long breath and gazed at him wonderingly. "Oh Alex," she said, "this is a funny old life, isn't it?" She studied his worn, happy face and straightened the tie he had pulled loose at the neck. "I'm sure Matilde would have married a handsome man like you, if you'd asked."

"Handsome? Me?" He was genuinely amused.

"Of course." She took his arm and moved to the foyer, picking up her handbag from a sidetable. "If you were younger by fifty years or so I'd keep you myself for a toyboy. Come on, let's go and buy you some clothes."

She had used the English word toyboy, knowing of no French equivalent, and Old Alex echoed it, puzzled. "Toyboy? What is that?"

As they went down in the lift she explained. A few moments later the porter watched her crossing the reception area, arm-in-arm with an old man who looked like a peasant and was dressed like a lord. He was grinning broadly and kept saying, "Toyboy! b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!"

THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK BALLOON.

Poised sedately on his motorscooter, Simon Bird kept to a speed he thought suitable for a man of the cloth as he moved along the winding Cornish lane. From time to time he ran a finger round the new clerical collar he wore, and from time to time he reached under his jacket to feel the b.u.t.t of the Colt .357 in the Berns-Martin shoulder holster under his black jacket. He touched it not because he was in any way apprehensive, but because he was obsessed by it with all the pa.s.sion of an ardent lover.

It was years since the lane had known any repair, but neither had it suffered more than occasional use. After winding for half a mile through thin woodland it became a rising track that led up across open greensward to a granite headland towering above the Atlantic. Here stood Poldeacon, a folly built a century before by a quicktempered tin magnate who had later cut his wife's throat arid bludgeoned to death the man he believed to have cuckolded him. This proved to be a false belief for which the tin magnate expressed deep regret before being hanged.

The incident gave Poldeacon an unsavoury reputation. By chance, later residents met with a variety of misfortunes and rarely remained for more than a few years. Local people in the village of Mallowby, a mile away, believed that a curse lay upon the pile. Those less superst.i.tious attributed such misfortunes to the theory that anyone who wanted to live in an unimaginative heap of granite confronting the savage force of the Atlantic in winter must be less than fully sane and therefore p.r.o.ne to selfinflicted misfortune.

As he emerged from the woods into noonday sunshine Simon Bird gazed with affection at the dark towers rising beyond the new wall that surrounded the folly. He neither knew nor cared that the wall had been built by a government department ten years ago for a scheme abandoned eight years ago. His heart and mind were already with the companions he knew he would find within that bleak dwelling.

The heavy wooden gates in the outer wall stood open. He rode through into the courtyard and pulled up beside a short row of cars parked against the western wall. Dismounting, he took off his crashhelmet and replaced it with a lowcrowned black hat from one of the saddlebags. As he moved towards the main doors he saw that they were closed, and that at a window above stood a very large man in clerical garb with an impressive mane of white hair. Simon Bird halted. The man at the window made a regal gesture indicating that he should go round to the back of the mansion. Bird raised a hand in acknowledgement and moved off.

A back door stood open, and as he approached it Bird saw that against the wall to one side was the crude figure of a man, cut from plywood and backed by sandbags. A happy smile touched his round cherubic face. He halted six paces from the figure and with a courteous air took off the flat black hat with his right hand, holding it close to his chest.

For a moment he was still, eyes flicking up to a window above where now appeared the same large man with two companions also wearing dark suits and clerical collars. Simon Bird's eyes returned to the wooden figure. The hat slipped from his fingers, then the Colt was in that same hand, firing once, and he stooped only slightly to catch the hat by the brim with his left hand before it reached the ground. The bullet had ripped a hole through the middle of the target's face.

Bird looked up and inclined his head as he slipped the gun back into its holster. The figures at the window clapped politely, unheard. Bird made a slight bow, then moved towards the door. A minute later he was pa.s.sing through a large room on the ground floor, dreary in design, its decor sadly run down from long neglect. Four apparent vicars were playing poker at a cardtable. Three more sat watching a blue video, slumped in boredom.

Bird said, "Christ, do we wear these togs all the time?"

One of the poker players spoke without looking away from the game. "Mountjoy says we stay in character while we're here. Was that you shooting just now?"

"Who else? Where do I find him, Jacko?"

The man nodded towards a door at the far end of the room. "Through there, and second on the left. Paddy and Silver are bringing the patient up."

Bird nodded, went through into a wide pa.s.sage and took the second door on the left. It opened into a s.p.a.cious study. Mountjoy was seated behind a large old desk. He rose ponderously and moved round it to shake hands with Bird. "Simon, my dear fellow. Your arrival is most admirably timed." The white hair swayed as he nodded towards a pair of boltcutters lying across a corner of the desk. "As you see, our visitor has arrived." The face framed by the thick white hair was younger than might have been expected, but broad and unrevealing, an enigma of emptiness.

"Yes, Jacko told me." Bird took off his hat and threw it on a chair, then slipped a hand under his jacket to feel the b.u.t.t of the Colt for comfort. He could never understand what it was about Mountjoy that made him feel strange twinges of fear. "Are we all here now?" he said.

"You are the last, Simon. As you were attending to the business in London, Jonathan brought your luggage down as requested. You will find it in your room."

The door opened and two more vicars entered, both stronglooking men, both a little breathless, one pushing a trolley bearing a large and obviously heavy wooden crate bound with thick galvanised wire. Several holes were bored in two of the sides. The other man nodded to Bird and said, "You never came all the way from London on that scooter, did you, Birdie?"

Bird shook his head. "Only from Exeter. Got a sore a.r.s.e at that, Paddy me boy."

Mountjoy said to the man with the trolley, "If you please, Silver." The man tipped the trolley forward and the crate fell with a crash. Paddy and Silver heaved it over so that the hinges of the lid rested on the floor. Mountjoy looked at Bird and gestured with a graceful movement towards the desk. Bird moved across, picked up the boltcutters and snipped through the three bands of securing wires.

The lid fell open and a huddled man rolled out. He was in shirtsleeves and without shoes, his wrists manacled and attached by a short chain to shackles round his ankles. He was a ruggedlooking man with a strong face, but now he was in agony with cramp, his face bruised and b.l.o.o.d.y, his hands swollen and blue. He lay on his side panting, staring up at the men about him, trying to hold down his fear.

Very carefully Bird cut through the short chain. The man extended his tortured legs painfully. Bird smiled and crooked a finger, telling the man to stand. It took thirty seconds for him to struggle to his knees, but he could move no further. He knelt there sweating, chest heaving from the effort, glaring up at his captors.

Mountjoy said in his rich, solemn voice, "Your real name is unknown to us, but we do know for whom you work, and we feel it necessary to make an example of you."

Sir Gerald Tarrant sat in his Whitehall office on a fine sunny morning and made himself look at the photographs once again. Sick at heart, he put them aside and leaned back in his chair, gazing wearily across the desk at his a.s.sistant, Fraser, who stood blinking owlishly at him through unfashionable gla.s.ses. After a little silence Fraser cleared his throat and said diffidently, "I feel this is a very serious development, Sir Gerald."

"For G.o.d's sake, Jack, you don't have to tell me that!" There was anger and frustration in Tarrant's voice, and the use of Fraser's forename was a signal telling him to drop the pose of anxious timidity that was second nature to him. It had served Fraser well during his active years as an agent, and had been the death of several highly competent enemies, but there were times when Tarrant found it nerveracking, and this was just such a moment.

"So what are we b.l.o.o.d.y well going to do?" said Fraser. "If those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds murder Tor Hallenberg, n.o.bel Peace Prize winner no less, the press is going to demand the return of public hanging for the Home Secretary personally, which is fine by me except that it'll just about blow The Department to h.e.l.l and gone."

"We'll have to get another man inside," said Tarrant. "I don't know how, and I dread how long it may take, but it's the only option."

Fraser nodded towards the photographs. "After what they did to Nash, you'll have to make it a volunteer job anyway, and we're not going to get knocked over in the rush."

Tarrant looked at him balefully. "So suggest something better."

Fraser hesitated, then said warily, "We need a different approach. A way of getting to these people fast. We don't see any way, but we know somebody outside The Department with a knack for that kind of thing. She thinks differently from the way we do-"

"Forget it!" Tarrant said sharply. "Just forget it, Jack. She's left blood and skin and G.o.d knows what else all over the place for me, and it's enough. I can't even begin to think about getting her into this b.l.o.o.d.y mess."

Fraser chewed his lip. "She has this knack," he said carefully. "And she wouldn't be on her own, would she? Both she and Willie Garvin are in the country just now. I'm having lunch with them at The Treadmill on Sat.u.r.day. Honest to G.o.d, they're the only people I know, or even know of, who might get in fast and do the job. You wouldn't have to ask her. Just show her those pix you've been looking at."

"I've no right," Tarrant said quietly. "I've never had any right. We've sent people to their deaths over the years, G.o.d forgive us, but that was always on the cards in the job they were paid to do."

Fraser sighed. "The thing is, we have to operate The Department." He gestured towards the photographs. "I'm worried sick about the effect of this killing. We can keep it away from the press and public, but not from our own people. They already know what happened to Johnny Nash, and can you imagine what it will do to morale if we don't nail these b.u.g.g.e.rs fast?"

"I can imagine," said Tarrant. "But there are some things even I can't bring myself to do, and what you suggest is one of them. Let me have a list of available volunteers on Monday and we'll take it from there. That's all for now."

Fraser got slowly to his feet and peered over the top of his spectacles with an air of nervous apprehension, a mouse of a man. "Very well, Sir Gerald," he said meekly.

The Treadmill stood a long stone's throw from the Thames and a few miles from Maidenhead. Between the pub and the river was a long low building without windows and with a single door at one end. This was Willie Garvin's combat room. It contained a miniature gymnasium, a dojo, and a range with targets for pistol, knife, and shortrange archery. There were racks of weapons, ancient and modern, two shower cubicles, a dressingroom, and a separate workroom lavishly equipped for almost any task from microengineering to wroughtiron work.

Willie was under one of the showers. For the past two hours he and Modesty had been workingout in several combat disciplines. He glanced at her now as he turned off the shower and began to towel himself. She had taken off her combat slacks and tunic, and was standing in front of the long mirror beside the open cubicles. Her body still gleamed with sweat from the workout, her feet were bare and she wore plain black pants and bra with a shoulder holster rig that held a Colt .32 just below and forward of her left armpit. She was drawing the gun and returning it to the holster again and again, sometimes slowly, sometimes at speed, her face a mask of concentration.

Willie finished drying himself, pulled on shirt and slacks, and moved across to watch closely. She sighed and turned to him with an apologetic air. "I'm sorry, Willie. I know you've put hours of work into designing this rig, but I can't make it work. I'm losing a fifth of a second."

Willie nodded and checked the position of the holster carefully. "Do it in slowmotion a few times so I can see, Princess."

She moved her hand to the b.u.t.t slowly, and drew. After the third time Willie grimaced. "Your left knocker gets in the way," he said.

She laughed. "They're both part of the set, Willie love."

"So three cheers. I thought we might 'ave a problem there, but it was worth a try." He took the rig from her as she slipped it off. "Better stick to the old hipholster. You're only tooled up when we're on a caper, and the tunic hides it then."

"Yes. But thanks for trying." She moved to the other shower, took off bra and pants, put on a showercap and turned on the water. "We're respectable citizens now, so it's pretty well academic. Anyway, in all the years there were only three or four moments when I had to get a gun out fast." She began to soap herself, then paused and moved her head clear of the water to look at Willie. "But you never know, so let's take care not to forget first principles. If you do get into a gunfight there's no prize for coming second."

"Only a wooden overcoat," said Willie. He turned away and sat down to put on socks and shoes, grinning to himself. It never failed to amuse him that she genuinely regarded herself as being immensely cautious.

Five minutes later she was dressed and running a comb through her hair when the intercom on the wall buzzed and a woman's voice said, "Mr Fraser's here, Mr Garvin. Shall I tell him you'll be over soon?"

Willie pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton, said, " 'ang on, Mavis," and glanced at Modesty with a lifted eyebrow.

She said, "Have him come here for a few minutes, Willie. He loves browsing around your collection, and I want to put a bit of makeup on."

Willie spoke briefly into the intercom, then moved to the end of the combat room to unlock the door. Fraser arrived, growled a surly greeting, and mooched around the various weapon displays for a while, responding with little more than a grunt to any comment from Willie. At last he said abruptly, "Modesty's here, isn't she? I thought that was the arrangement."

Willie stared. "Yes, she's 'ere. Look, are you all right, Jack? You're looking a bit pasty."

Before Fraser could answer, Modesty appeared from the dressingroom section at the far end and came towards them, smiling. "Hallo, Jack, it's good to see you."

Shoulders hunched, mouth turned down, he watched as she approached and stood before him. "Christ, you look great, girl," he said dourly. "Since the day you went legitimate I've got twelve years older. You've just stood still. If you ever feel like taking care of a miserable old sod with no money in his declining years, just call me. I wouldn't mind marrying you."