"You know," she murmured, "you could be right. Just after lunch she told me there was to be company tonight. Four distinguished guests. Of course I asked if there was any special kind of dish she had in mind, and I mentioned you by name, saying that you were American and would be no trouble. Her guests, as a rule, are foreign, you see. But when I mentioned you, she laughed. 'Mr. Summers,' she said, 'is hardly a guest. I doubt if I could sell him anything. But we must feed him, of course. So you must count five, not four.' And then, later, when I asked if she wanted me to take the car and pick you up, she added the bit about packing your bag. You can make what you like out of that."
He made quite a lot of it and liked none of it, but knew that it was much too late to turn back now. As his mind raced to compute the possible permutations of peril he asked:
"Sell? What would she be trying to sell me?"
"Oh!" Miss Winter laughed cynically. "You'll see. I've heard her a few times, She has a thing about being beautiful. Thinks it's everyone's duty to be as attractive as possible. It can get quite embarrassing at times, the way she will pick out somebody's faults and analyze them, and then go on to explain how easy it would be to correct them. Surgery, of course."
"Not there and then, in the palace, surely?"
"I don't think so. I believe she could, though. She has some very elaborate equipment on the spot. I haven't seen it, mind you. But I do know she gets things, chemicals and stuff, and gadgetry. I'm always picking up packages for her, whenever I come into town for groceries."
"She keeps you pretty busy," he said, speaking automatically while he stared at the horrid fact that he was being transported straight into a Thrush gathering. 'Four distinguished guests' could hardly be anything else; and if any one of them recognized him, his fat was in for a burning time. "Cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, and you do your own grocery shopping. Doesn't she have any other staff?"
"Oh yes." Miss Winter's tone was definitely cool now. "She has a local man in from time to time to do the grounds and so on. And there's Adam, of course."
"Who's he?"
"You'll see." There was a chill silence for a while, then she said, reverting to her former theme: "Just don't laugh when she starts on about the body beautiful. She takes that kind of thing very seriously."
Despite the desperate situation, Solo had to grin. "I can't wait to see her sale's pitch. I'll bet it's something terrific, with the assets she has. She might even sell me on a nose retread."
Miss Winter sniffed. "I'd always thought French women were—well––subtle. You know? But she is downright crude at times. She doesn't hint at all. She comes right out with it."
"I had noticed."
"You know, she once said to me, 'Marie Antoinette achieved her fame because she was a beautiful woman and was not ashamed of it. She had a bigger bust than Jayne Mansfield. And mine is bigger still!' Imagine anyone bothering to point out a thing like that. As if it mattered!"
Solo grinned again, but without much mirth. The picture he saw for himself was bleak in the extreme. She halted the car for the gate, got out and inserted her long arm through the bars to operate the button, and then they drove in and up to the courtyard of the palace, under a low-pitched arch way that faced a short flight of marble steps up to the main door. As they climbed the steps yellow light spilled out into the dusk from the open doors. Once inside, a mosaic floor repeated his footsteps loudly. The distant walls on either side were painted and pillared, the pillars set at intervals of one yard. Between each pillar was a pedestal, and each pedestal was occupied by a white stone statue. Solo tried to take it all in with one comprehensive glance, but then he had to halt and look again. He lifted his brows.
"You'll get used to it," Miss Winter told him. "They shook me at first, but after a while you have to admit they are extremely good."
She was quite right. He cast his eye again over the array of nudes, and nodded. Seen all at once, they were overpowering, but when he devoted time to studying each one, he had to admit that the sculptor had created something very close to perfection. The idealized human form in either sex and in many different attitudes, could hardly be bettered as inspiration for someone so fanatically devoted to making people beautiful. And there she was herself, standing in the far doorway, awaiting him.
Solo strode boldly forward with a smile. For the occasion, she had put on a billowing froth of white stuff that began low on her bosom and drifted to the floor in delicate folds. As she moved towards him the garment swirled like white mist. She gave him her hand, with a dazzling smile.
"You are welcome, M. Summers. How do you like my figures? Do you think they have better ones in the Achilleion?"
"I doubt," he said, "that anyone can improve on perfection. Miss Winter tells me your work is to improve the appearance, but if this is the standard you're aiming at you must be pretty frustrated. Ordinary humans can't hope to look like that."
"Perhaps not. They are ideal. I had them specially made for me. I have others, as you shall see. But now you must come and meet my guests."
She led him through the door into a room that would have made him breathless by itself, but he had very little time to waste on it. One fast glance was all he could spare for the precious carpet on the floor, the magnificent tapes tries that clothed the walls, the carved and brocaded furnishings, and the glowingly painted ceiling. In the next breath he was staring at the company and realizing his worst fears.
"Senor Salvador Morales," she said. "M. Summers." And Solo met the dark eyes of the grey-haired and leonine old conquistador, watching for a glimmer of recognition.
But none came, to his relief, for Solo knew him well enough as the controlling brain behind Thrush-Madrid. He bowed, moved on, and confronted a thick-set, almost bald man with a bristle moustache and glass-cold grey eyes. The Countess told him, although he hardly needed telling, that this was "Herr Doktor Heinrich Klasser." Solo knew his nickname as 'Killer Klasser', and that he had his own unspeakable ways with experimental surgery, on subjects who were never asked to volunteer.
Next was a hulking, black-browed, black-haired bull of a man whom she introduced as Ricco Vassi, known to Solo as covering vast areas of Italy, his job being to superintend and expedite any operations commanded by his Thrush seniors. Fourth and last was a lean and patrician elder, who rested one gracious elbow on a carved mantelpiece and wore his dignity like a cloak. When his hostess called this man Dr. Andre Cabari, of Uruguay, Solo had to think hard for a moment. Then he had it. Social scientist, crowd manipulator, revolutionary, the man who made things happen in quiet but devastating ways, merely by talking carefully to the right people at the right time.
What a bunch! Solo carefully drew a deep breath and realized he was perspiring. He used his handkerchief.
"It's a warm night," he pointed out, and the Countess shook a finger at him in criticism.
"You are out of condition. You Americans! All the time you worry about plumbing, but you never seem to realize that there are other ways of keeping the body clean. You neglect the largest organ of the body."