“Would it help if we paid a call on those fellows to see exactly what it is they’re doing at El Caballejo?”
“Oh, sure.” Caulkins snorted. “I’ll come back next week, and we’ll drive out to see the production your scriptwriters have put together. No thanks.”
“We’ll go out right now, if you prefer.”
“Huh?” said Caulkins, his hand on the doorknob.
“Miss Barker,” Forte said over the intercom, “would you please bring in the medical files of those twenty-one veterans who have been coming out to El Caballejo lately?” He turned to Caulkins. “You’ll want to look these over before you talk to the men. Data for your story.”
“Yes, I guess I’d better have all the facts.” Caulkins’s tone was wary. He didn’t know what Forte was trying to pull, but so long as Forte wasn’t left alone to stage-manage his meeting with the veterans before it actually came off, he didn’t see any harm in playing along.
Forte glanced at his watch as the svelte Miss Barker brought in the files and put them before Hobart Caul-kins. It was twelve-fifteen.
By twelve-fifty Hobe Caulkins had leafed through fifteen of the files, occasionally jotting down notes in his book. Gwillam Forte continued his own paperwork, only occasionally glancing at his watch and noting with satisfaction that the minutes were slipping by. He calculated that preparations at El Caballejo could be completed within two hours at the most: the men could be mustered from the Texas inside of twenty minutes, and the other players in the drama he had ordered up for Hobe Caulkins summoned from various parts of Houston within an hour and a half. Already more than half an hour had passed. He went back to his company reports with the reassuring feeling that all was going well.
At precisely one o’clock a discreet knock on the door told him that the lunch he had ordered by speed key-he customarily ate nothing at noon at all-had arrived from the caterer.
“Come in!”
A uniformed waiter pushing a cart, followed by another with a table draped in crisp linen and a third with a straight-backed chair, entered in single file.
“Oh, I’m vairy sorry, sair,” said the maître. “I deed not know you had ze company zees lunchtime. Shall 1 eenstruct the cuisiniere to send anozair-”
“No, Gustave, that won’t be necessary. I had a bit of an upset stomach this morning, and I’m going to settle for a bottle of soda water.”
“C’est dommage! Because for lunch today we have brought you Courgettes à la Grecque, Salade Cauchoise, Petits Soufflés aux Frontage, Rede au Beurre Noir, Queue de Boeuf aux Olives Noires avec des Epinards à la Crème, and ferry special for you, zee-”
Gwillam Forte waved his hand.
“Take it away, Gustave,” he said, observing Hobe Caulkins’ trying not to drool. “Can’t bear the thought of food.”
“But, Monsieur-”
“Absolutely not.”
“Perhaps your guest . . .” Gustave ventured.
Gwillam Forte seemed to remember that he was not, after all, alone. “Oh, sorry, Hobe-I didn’t mean to-”
“Quite all right, Mr. Forte,” Caulkins said stiffly.
“Would you care to-that is, if you don’t mind taking potluck.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“You can snack while you’re reading the rest of those files, Hobe. Got to keep Gustave honest, you know. Besides, it’s a shame to waste food.”
“Well . . .” Caulkins tucked the napkin under his chin and pulled a chair up to the table. “My mother always did tell her boy Hobe that it was a sin and a shame to waste good food . . .”
At El Caballejo ranch an hour and a half later, Hobe Caulkins stepped out of the elevator on the basement level, and into a hash fiend’s vision of an Arabian Nights harem.
In the center of the room a fountain sprayed scented, multicolored water into the air, its mist mixing with the aroma of expensive cigars whose smoke floated languidly about the room in swirling layers. The floor was carpeted with a lush pile so thick that walking was like wading through water. At one side arose a convivial medley of tinkling glasses, the full-throated voice of a man telling an off-color story, the giggle of appreciative female laughter.
Caulkins could just make out, through the smoke and flashing lights interrupted by opaque slashes of absolute darkness, the figures of seven people. In a cluster at the long mahogany bar were two men-old men-and five women.
And what women! Unconsciously, Caulkins licked his lips. He had never seen five such lovely creatures all at once outside a chorus line. In fact, judging by their meager attire and abundant bosom, they may well have just stepped down from the stage. Everybody seemed to be having a wonderful time.
On low leather divans scattered around the room, a lot of interesting business seemed to be going on, but the lights were so faint that it was impossible to tell just what it was. Caulkins now appreciated the wisdom of the flashing lights, apparently directed toward new arrivals to distract their minds while they were getting into the spirit of things.
There was definitely no lack of spirits, as was evident when Gwillam Forte led him to the bar and invited him to name his poison. The glass shelves behind the bar were fully five meters long and contained every alcoholic beverage Caulkins had ever heard of, and a good many he hadn’t.
A young shapely woman wearing high heels and not much else appeared at his elbow with a large tray of coronas, diplomaticos, partagas, belvederes, pyramides, cheroots, Madrigals, Havanas, and other aromatic cigars. He chose an aristocratic Montecristo, accepted a light from the grave, white-waistcoated barman, and took a deep draught of the incredible smooth-textured Scotch the barman produced with the next flourish. He felt it might clear his head of the perplexing thoughts that were chasing one another through it.
He had been so sure. All the evidence, all his clever deductions, had pointed to the existence of some diabolical conspiracy in which these men-he had already identified several present from their pictures in the dossiers supplied by Forte-were involved. And yet the evidence was wrong.
For the men, supposedly engaged in dark doings, were here-engaged in dark doings, all right, but hardly of a sinister kind. As if to drive home the falsity of his inferences, a sudden lull in the music allowed to slip through a snatch of conversation, or rather proposal, followed by a quick assent as a couple rose from their cushions and went unobtrusively toward the door at the far end of the room.
“Where does that go?” he asked, although the answer was self-evident from the tenor of the whispered suggestion he had overheard.
Instead of Forte’s reply, another caressed his ears.
“Three guesses,” intoned a husky, sardonic voice behind him.
He turned-and nearly fell off the barstool. Tall, with flawless skin and a regal bearing that could only have been the fruit of ballet training, she was at once erect and as supple as a serpent. Her lustrous eyes studied him with smoky suggestion, while the rise and fall of her breasts, with the majesty of the tides in the Bay of Fundy, mesmerized him.
“Say!” she said with a sudden, excited look of recognition. “You’re Hobe Caulkins!”
He admitted it, shyly.
“Meet your greatest admirer in Texas-Lorry Vine,” she said, extending a slim-fingered, exquisitely modeled hand. He took it, and felt an electric tingle pulse through his body. No woman had done that to him since he had learned about sex behind the barn at eleven in the morning of his life. He didn’t hurry to release the hand.
“I just love your exposes,” she was saying.
“You do?”
“Sure. Professional respect, you might say. I’m in the expose business myself. Maybe you’ve heard of me-Lorry Vine?” Her lips parted in a suggestive curve, revealing almost too-perfect teeth.
Caulkins’s heart was hammering hard enough to fracture a rib. With effort, he wrenched his eyes from her heaving breasts, and instead reexamined his assumptions. Obviously, he had done Gwillam Forte a grave injustice. These men had been in the last stages of depression not too long ago, according to their medical records. They could look forward to nothing but a lonely, bitter end. Forte, well known for his concern for his shipmates, had presumably observed their declining condition, and resolved to do something about it, in his inimitable, flamboyant way. What else could explain all this?
Caulkins felt like a fool. But he was a fair man, and he owed Forte an apology. He turned.
Forte wasn’t there.
He turned back to Loretta Vine. She hadn’t disappeared, at least.
“Where’s Mr. Forte?” he asked.
Loretta Vine slid up on the barstool beside him. Her skirt parted to reveal a thigh-smooth, silky, swans-down soft-and one millimeter of bare hip. She didn’t seem to notice his eyes on it. She looked at him for a long moment before answering. “Does it matter?” she whispered.