“How’d I do?”
Glimm glanced at his fat gold wristwatch. “Not bad. You lasted twelve minutes. That means you’re hungry all right, but not exactly starving.”
Although Durant made no response, Glimm didn’t really seem to expect one and went on talking with the glib confidence of a veteran salesman who’s decided it’s time to close the deal.
“Here’s how it works: whenever I negotiate anything, I always mispronounce either the name of the guy I’m negotiating with or the name of his company.”
“Or both,” Durant said.
“Yeah. Right. In this case, both.”
“Why?”
“Because if the guy corrects me right off, I know he’s not hungry. If it takes him ten or fifteen minutes, he’s just medium hungry. But if he never does correct me, I know he’s practically starving to death and I can negotiate my own deal.”
“We’re not negotiating anything,” Durant said.
“The hell we’re not,” said Enno Glimm.
Four
Artie Wu sat in front of the headmaster’s desk in the massive armless 121-year-old wooden punishment chair where countless small boys had perched, awaiting their fates with tears and dangling feet.
At a little less than six-foot-three, and with his weight back down to just under 250 pounds, Wu was much too large to perch anywhere. But he did manage to relax, if not quite loll, in the big chair — even tipping its front legs up a few inches as he leaned back and listened to Perkin Ramsay, the headmaster, deliver a bill of indictment against the Wu twins, Arthur and Angus.
The charges were made in a tenor drone that Wu feared might never end. As it went on and on, he looked up to admire the enormous room’s vaulted stone ceiling, then over to his left at the tireless fireplace that was so vast you could walk right into it, providing you were no more than five-foot-two or — three.
The public school that had undertaken the education of the twin Wu males was seventeen miles north of Edinburgh. Much of the school was contained within a small castle, thought to have been completed around 1179 and still in remarkably good repair. It was here that the Reverend Robert Cameron had founded his school in 1821 after persuading the prosperous parents of his first pupils that he could indeed transform their wee monsters into wee gentlemen scholars. Since then, all Goriach males had attended Cameron and Agnes Goriach Wu saw no reason why her twin sons shouldn’t carry on the tradition.
His indictment delivered, the headmaster drew a large handkerchief from a pocket and delicately blew his nose, one nostril at a time. It was a bright pink nose, thin and sharply pointed, that went nicely with his gaunt cheeks and the deep sockets that sheltered eyes of a startling blue. A high forehead soared up and back from the blue eyes until it finally caught up with the retreating thicket of coarse red hair.
After Perkin Ramsay put away his handkerchief, Wu spoke for the first time in nearly fifteen minutes. “You say the twins sent five of them to your infirmary?”
Ramsay’s answering sigh was melancholy. “Please listen carefully this time, Mr. Wu. Five boys went to hospital in Edinburgh — not to our infirmary. Angus and Arthur were attacked by eight boys of their own approximate age and size. Three of these eight boys escaped to tell the tale. It was not a fair fight.”
“Eight against two? I think not.”
“I mean your sons did not fight fairly.”
Artie Wu looked relieved. “Used whatever was lying around, did they? A rock or two? A bit of stick? A nice length of pipe?”
“They used their hands, feet, knees and elbows.”
“How long did it last?”
“Three or four minutes. Not more.”
Wu took a long fat cigar from an inside coat pocket, studied it with evident longing, then put it away again. “You say the name-calling started it?”
“Yes.”
Wu nodded thoughtfully as if all at last had been revealed. “So this gang of eight called the twins names, then jumped them and got knocked about a bit for their trouble. Still, the gang did have the satisfaction of using all those grand old names such as chink and wog and slope and dink and—”
Ramsay’s right hand shot up, palm out. A traffic cop’s warning. Wu stopped talking and the headmaster said, “Do I have your full attention, Mr. Wu?”
Wu nodded.
“Splendid,” Ramsay said. “I’ve been trying to gain it by telephone and post without success these past two months.”
Wu’s expression shifted into one of mild polite interest. His tone grew bland. “Oh. That.”
“Yes, Mr. Wu. That. Or more precisely, those. The fees. They still haven’t been paid.”
Artie Wu took the cigar from his pocket again, stuck it in his mouth, clamped down hard, then eased the clamp just enough to growl, “Was there a fight?”
“Exactly as described,” Ramsay said. “The twins, by all accounts, were formidable.”
Wu beamed around the cigar, removed it and said, “I seem to recall Mrs. Wu taking care of the fees with a check some time ago.”
The dam containing Ramsay’s exasperation broke. He almost sprang from his chair, but caught himself, rose more slowly and, with palms planted flat on the desktop, leaned toward Artie Wu. “The reason I wanted you here in this very room, seated in that very chair, was to inform you, sir — no, guarantee you — that unless the fees are paid today, not tomorrow, but today, the twins will accompany you back to London this after—”
The telephone rang. Ramsay snatched it up, snapped out an irritated hello, listened, frowned, said, “One moment,” and offered the instrument to Wu.
After Wu rose, accepted the phone and said hello, he heard Durant’s voice: “I hold here in my hand a certified check drawn on Barclays for twenty-five thousand pounds from our new client, Herr Enno Glimm. The check will be deposited in approximately six minutes and you’ll again be solvent.”
“And what exactly is required of us?”
“We have to find a pair of hypnotists, a brother-and-sister act, who’ve gone missing.”
“Where?”
“Who cares?”
“A most sensible attitude,” Wu said. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“We meet Glimm here at two.”
“I’ll be there,” Wu said, turned and handed back the telephone.
“Good news?” Ramsay asked.
“So-so,” said Wu as he took a checkbook from a suit pocket, placed it on the desk, absently patted his other pockets for something, then smiled at Perkin Ramsay and said, “Do you have a pen?”
In Carriages Bar of the Caledonian Hotel in Princes Street in Edinburgh, the sons of Artie Wu sat in a booth across from their father and watched him sign his name to a check for the second time that day. Arthur and Angus had half-pints of lager in front of them. In front of their father was a large and yet-to-be tasted whisky.
Wu tore out the check and handed it to Arthur, the older son by nine minutes. He glanced at the amount, raised an eyebrow and passed the check to his brother.
Angus studied it and said, “Four hundred quid,” letting a dubious inflection raise the specter of insufficient funds.
“It won’t bounce,” Wu said. “And it should get you through to the end of next month when I’ll send more. Now all you guys have to do is finish the term, bum around the Continent this summer and head for Princeton in August.”
Angus gave the check back to his brother and carefully examined his father before asking, “Have you really thought about what it’ll cost to send us through four years at Princeton?”