Henry lifted his eyebrows as he produced Mario's drink.
"Don't tell me you're bringing George Washington!" said Halsted.
"Roger! A pleasure to see you again… By the way, Jim Drake won't be here with us today. He sent back the card saying there was some family shindig he had to attend. The guest I'm bringing is a fellow named Sand- John Sand. I've known him on and off for years. Crazy guy. Horse-race buff who never tells a lie. I've heard him not telling lies. It's about the only virtue he has." And Gonzalo winked.
Avalon nodded portentously. "Good for those who can. As one grows older, however-"
"And I think it will be an interesting session," added Gonzalo hurriedly, visibly avoiding Avalon's non-libidinous confidences. "I was telling him about the club, and that for the last two times we had mysteries on our hands-"
"Mysteries?" said Halsted with sudden interest.
Gonzalo said, "You're a member of the club in good standing, so we can tell you. But get Henry to do it. He was a principal both times."
"Henry?" Halsted looked over his shoulder in mild surprise. "Are they getting you involved in our idiocies?"
"I assure you, Mr. Halsted, I tried not to be," said Henry.
"Tried not to be!" said Rubin hotly. "Listen, Henry was the Sherlock of the session last time. He-"
"The point is," said Avalon, "that you may have talked too much, Mario. What did you tell your friend about us?"
"What do you mean, talk too much? I'm not Manny. I carefully told Sand that there could be no details because we were priests at the confessional, one and all, as far as anything in this room is concerned, and he said he wished he were a member because he had a difficulty that was driving him wild, and I said he could come the next time because it was my turn to host and he could be my guest and-here he is!"
A slim man, his neck swathed in a thick scarf, was mounting the stairs. The slimness was accentuated when he took off his coat. Under the scarf, his tie gleamed bloody red and seemed to lend color to a thin and pallid face. He seemed thirtyish.
"John Sand," said Mario, introducing him all round in a pageant that was interrupted by Thomas Trumbull's
heavy tread on the steps and the loud cry of "Henry, a scotch and soda for a dying man."
Rubin said, "Tom, you can come early if you relax and stop trying so hard to be late."
"The later I come," said Trumbull, "the less I have to hear of your Goddamn stupid remarks. Ever think of that?" Then he was introduced, too, and all sat down.
Since the menu for that meeting had been so incautiously devised as to begin with artichokes, Rubin had launched into a dissertation on the preparation of the only proper sauce for it. Then, when Trumbull had said disgustedly that the only proper preparation for artichokes involved a large garbage can, Rubin said, "Sure, if you don't have the right sauce-"
Sand ate uneasily and left at least a third of an excellent steak untouched. Halsted, who had a tendency to plumpness, eyed the remains enviously. His own plate was the first one cleaned. Only a scraped bone and some fat were left.
Sand seemed to grow aware of Halsted's eyes and said to him, "Frankly, I'm too worried to have much appetite. Would you care for the rest of this?"
"Me? No, thank you," said Halsted glumly.
Sand smiled. "May I be frank?"
"Of course, If you've been listening to the conversation around the table, you'll realize frankness is the order of the evening."
"Good, because I would be anyway. It's my-fetish. You're lying, Mr. Halsted. Of course you want the rest of my steak, and you'd eat it, too, if you thought no one would notice. That's perfectly obvious. Social convention requires you to lie, however. You don't want to seem greedy and you don't want to seem to ignore the elements of hygiene by eating something contaminated by the saliva of a stranger."
Halsted frowned. "And what if the situation were reversed?"
"And I was hungry for more steak?"
"Yes."
"Well, I might not want to eat yours for hygienic rea-
sons, but I would admit I wanted it. Almost all lying is the result of a desire for self-protection or out of respect for social convention. To myself, though, it seems that a lie is rarely a useful defense and I am not at all interested in social convention."
Rubin said, "Actually, a lie is a useful defense if it is a thorough-going one. The trouble with most lies is that they don't go far enough."
"Been reading Mein Kampf lately?" said Gonzalo.
Rubin's eyebrows went up. "You think Hitler was the first to use the technique of the big lie? You can go back to Napoleon III; you can go back to Julius Caesar. Have you ever read his Commentaries?"
Henry was bringing the baba au rhum and pouring the coffee delicately, and Avalon said, "Let's get to our honored guest."
Gonzalo said, "As host and chairman of this session, I'm going to call off the grilling. Our guest has a problem and I direct him to favor us with it." He was drawing a quick caricature of Sand on the back of the menu card, with a thin, sad face accentuated into that of a distorted bloodhound.
Sand cleared his throat, "I understand everything said in this room is in confidence, but-"
Trumbull followed the glance, and growled, "Don't worry about Henry. Henry is the best of us all. If you want to doubt someone's discretion, doubt someone else."
"Thank you, sir," murmured Henry, setting up the brandy glasses on the sideboard.
Sand said, "The trouble, gentlemen, is that I am suspected of a crime."
"What kind of crime?" demanded Trumbull at once. It was his job, ordinarily, to grill the guests and the look in his eye was that of someone with no intention of missing the grillage.
"Theft," said Sand. "There is a sum of money and a wad of negotiable bonds missing from a safe in my company. I'm one of those who have the combination, and I had the opportunity to get to it unobserved. I also had a motive because I've had some bad luck at the races
and needed some cash badly. So it doesn't look good for me."
Gonzalo said eagerly, "But he didn't do it. That's the point. He didn't do it."
Avalon twirled the half-drink he was not going to finish and said, "I think in the interest of coherence we ought to allow Mr. Sand to tell his story."
"Yes," said Trumbull, "how do you know he didn't do it, Mario?"
"That's the whole point, damn it. He says he didn't do it," said Gonzalo, "and that's good enough. Not for a court maybe, but it's good enough for me and for anyone who knows him. I've heard him admit enough rotten things-"
"Suppose I ask him myself, okay?" said Trumbull. "Did you take the stuff, Mr. Sand?"
Sand paused. His blue eyes flicked from face to face, then he said, "Gentlemen, I am telling the truth. I did not take the cash or the bonds. That is only my unsupported word, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I can be relied on."
Halsted passed his hand over his forehead upward, as though trying to clear away doubts. "Mr. Sand," he said, 'you seem to have a position of some trust. You can get into a safe with assets in it. Yet you play the horses."
"Lots of people do."
"And lose."
"I didn't quite plan it that way."
"But don't you risk losing your job?"
"My advantage is, sir, that I am employed by my uncle, who is aware of my weakness, but who also knows I don't lie. He knew I had the means and opportunity, and he knew I had debts. He also knew I had recently paid off my gambling debts. I told him so. The circumstantial evidence looked bad. But then he asked me directly whether I was responsible for the loss and I told him exactly what I told you: I did not take the cash or the bonds. Since he knows me well, he believes me."
"How did you come to pay off your debts?" said Avalon.
"Because a long shot came through. That happens, too, sometimes. That happened shortly before the theft was discovered and I paid off the bookies. That's true, too, and I told this to my uncle."