He gave a sound half-way between a cough and a laugh, turned his head, and began talking down the table to Charles about the collection of quartz.
‘So sensible of you, my dear chap, to keep them all behind glass, though most tantalising to me from here. Is that a geode, on the middle shelf? The reflection, you know… I can’t quite see.’
‘Er…’ said Charles, not knowing any more than I did what a geode was. ‘I’m looking forward to showing them to you. After dinner, perhaps? Or tomorrow?’
‘Oh, tonight, I’d hate to postpone such a treat. Did you say that you had any felspar in your collection?’
‘No,’ said Charles uncertainly.
‘No, well, I can see it is a small specialised collection. Perhaps you are wise in sticking to silicon dioxide.’
Charles glibly launched into the cousinly-bequest alibi for ignorance, which Kraye accepted with courtesy and disappointment.
‘A fascinating subject, though, my dear Roland. It repays study. The earth beneath our feet, the fundamental sediment from the Triassic and Jurassic epochs, is our priceless inheritance, the source of all our life and power… There is nothing which interests me so much as land.’
Doria on my right gave the tiniest of snorts, which her husband didn’t hear. He was busy constructing another long, polysyllabic and largely unintelligible chat on the nature of the universe.
I sat unoccupied through the steaks, the meringue pudding, the cheese and the fruit. Conversations went on on either side of me and occasionally past me, but a deaf mute could have taken as much part as I did. Mrs van Dysart commented on the difficulties of feeding poor relations with delicate stomachs and choosey appetites. Charles neglected to tell her that I had been shot and wasn’t poor, but agreed that a weak digestion in dependants was a moral fault. Mrs van Dysart loved it. Doria occasionally looked at me as if I were an interesting specimen of low life. Rex van Dysart again offered me the bread; and that was that. Finally Viola shepherded Doria and Mrs van Dysart out to have coffee in the drawing-room and Charles offered his guests port and brandy. He passed me the brandy bottle with an air of irritation and compressed his lips in disapproval when I took some. It wasn’t lost on his guests.
After a while he rose, opened the glass bookcase doors, and showed the quartz to Kraye. Piece by piece the two discussed their way along the rows, with van Dysart standing beside them exhibiting polite interest and hiding his yawns of boredom. I stayed sitting down. I also helped myself to some more brandy.
Charles kept his end up very well and went through the whole lot without a mistake. He then transferred to the drawing-room, where his gem cabinet proved a great success. I tagged along, sat in an unobtrusive chair and listened to them all talking, but I came to no conclusions except that if I didn’t soon go upstairs I wouldn’t get there under my own steam. It was eleven o’clock and I had had a long day. Charles didn’t look round when I left the room.
Half an hour later, when his guests had come murmuring up to their rooms, he came quietly through my door and over to the bed. I was still lying on top in my shirt and trousers, trying to summon some energy to finish undressing.
He stood looking down at me, smiling.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘It is you,’ I said, ‘who is the dyed-in-the-wool, twenty-four carat, unmitigated bastard.’
He laughed. ‘I thought you were going to spoil the whole thing when you saw your picture had gone.’ He began taking off my shoes and socks. ‘You looked as bleak as the Bering Strait in December. Pyjamas?’
‘Under the pillow.’
He helped me undress in his quick neat naval fashion.
‘Why did you do it?’ I said.
He waited until I was lying between the sheets, then he perched on the edge of the bed.
‘Did you mind?’
‘Hell, Charles… of course. At first anyway.’
‘I’m afraid it came out beastlier than I expected, but I’ll tell you why I did it. Do you remember that first game of chess we had? When you beat me out of sight? You know why you won so easily?’
‘You weren’t paying enough attention.’
‘Exactly. I wasn’t paying enough attention, because I didn’t think you were an opponent worth bothering about. A bad tactical error.’ He grinned. ‘An admiral should know better. If you underrate a strong opponent you are at a disadvantage. If you grossly underrate him, if you are convinced he is of absolutely no account, you prepare no defence and are certain to be defeated.’ He paused for a moment, and went on. ‘It is therefore good strategy to delude the enemy into believing you are too weak to be considered. And that is what I was doing tonight on your behalf.’
He looked at me gravely. After some seconds I said, ‘At what game, exactly, do you expect me to play Howard Kraye?’
He sighed contentedly, and smiled. ‘Do you remember what he said interested him most?’
I thought back. ‘Land.’
Charles nodded. ‘Land. That’s right. He collects it. Chunks of it, yards of it, acres of it…’ He hesitated.
‘Well?’
‘You can play him,’ he said slowly, ‘for Seabury Racecourse.’
The enormity of it took my breath away.
‘What?’ I said incredulously. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m only…’
‘Shut up,’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t want to hear what you think you are only. You’re intelligent, aren’t you? You work for a detective agency? You wouldn’t want Seabury to close down? Why shouldn’t you do something about it?’
‘But I imagine he’s after some sort of take-over bid, from what you say. You want some powerful city chap or other to oppose him, not… me.’
‘He is very much on his guard against powerful chaps in the city, but wide open to you.’
I stopped arguing because the implications were pushing into the background my inadequacy for such a task.
‘Are you sure he is after Seabury?’ I asked.
‘Someone is,’ said Charles. ‘There has been a lot of buying and selling of the shares lately, and the price per share is up although they haven’t paid a dividend this year. The Clerk of the Course told me about it. He said that the directors are very worried. On paper, there is no great concentration of shares in any one name, but there wasn’t at Dunstable either. There, when it came to a vote on selling out to a land developer, they found that about twenty various nominees were in fact all agents for Kraye. He carried enough of the other shareholders with him, and the racecourse was lost to housing.’
‘It was all legal, though?’
‘A wangle; but legal, yes. And it looks like happening again.’
‘But what’s to stop him, if it’s legal?’
‘You might try.’
I stared at him in silence. He stood up and straightened the bedcover neatly. ‘It would be a pity if Seabury went the way of Dunstable.’ He went towards the door.
‘Where does van Dysart fit in?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ he said, turning, ‘nowhere. I met them only a week or two ago. They’re on a visit from South Africa, and I was sure they wouldn’t know you. And it was Mrs van Dysart I wanted. She has a tongue like a rattlesnake. I knew she would help me tear you to pieces.’ He grinned. ‘She’ll give you a terrible week-end, I’m glad to say.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said sarcastically.
‘I was a bit worried that Kraye would know you by sight,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But he obviously doesn’t, so that’s all right. And I didn’t mention your name tonight, as you probably noticed. I am being careful not to.’ He smiled. ‘And he doesn’t know my daughter married Sid Halley… I’ve given him several opportunities of mentioning it, because of course none of this would have been possible if he’d known, but he hasn’t responded at all. As far as Kraye is concerned,’ he finished with satisfaction, ‘you are a pathetic cypher.’