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Westerbrook’s sitting-room. Subdued colours, flowers, a choice in couch and chairs, enough space and interior decoration to justify the excessive expense of this hotel. The pictures on the wall were nondescript; not one bookcase was provided. The windows were shaded, framed in satin, and possibly overlooked Park Avenue. One door, connecting with another room, was ajar.
    Lois Westerbrook noticed it too, and moved swiftly over to shut it. She waited there for a moment (listening for the sound of closing from the bedroom’s outer door) and then turned back to Grant. Really, she was thinking, didn’t Gene trust me to handle this interview? Then why hadn’t he stayed here and played overseer? He must think that we’ve got Grant firmly hooked. That was Gene’s word. She didn’t like it, but it went with the bait: a free trip to Vienna and a five-thousand-dollar fee. Who could resist it? Gene had asked her, especially a man who had taken a big cut in salary when he left Washington. And was available. (The Schofeld Gallery was closing for the summer in mid-July. Gene’s dossier on Grant was complete, if succinct.) “Do sit down, Mr. Grant. Any trouble on your way up here?”
    He chose one of the firmer chairs, and assured her that there had been no difficulty at all in reaching her room without being noticed. In the lobby there had been a small group of new arrivals, straight off the plane, with an amazing hodgepodge of luggage for a place like the Albany—Vuitton combined with cardboard boxes tied by string: ostentatious I-couldn’t-care-less, the new fad of the unaccustomed rich, like blue jeans costing eighty dollars a pair.
    “And in the elevator?” she asked as she crossed to a tray of drinks. “Some brandy?”
    “Scotch, please.” She had been a little flustered, he thought, but she was coming back to normal even if she was paying too much attention to pouring his drink. He himself hadn’t been exactly calm. He had hidden his embarrassment, he hoped, by seeming to take more interest in the room than in her. That black and white outfit suited her, reminded him of the girl in frontier pants and shirt, with an Arizona tan and a Beacon Hill accent. “I rode up with three of the new arrivals—Hollywood characters—dressed as if they had been hauled off the beach at Santa Monica, and a woman they called ‘Countess’, and a couple of Venezuelans. At least, they spoke Spanish and talked of Caracas. They got off at this floor and I slipped out with them, trying to look like an oil promoter.” He still felt ill at ease. He hadn’t liked that approach to her room. It wasn’t the Albany that impressed him, with all its expensive restraint and its super-wealthy or titled guests, but this feeling of unreality.
    “You were really discreet,” she said. “Soda or plain water?”
    “On the rocks.”
    She poured herself a glass of white wine and brought the drinks over, with a folder under one arm, to the table beside him. She sat down opposite, placing the folder on her lap, and raised her glass. “To you, Mr. Grant.”
    The formality amused him: he was being briefed on the tone of this meeting. He raised the over-generous glass of Scotch in reply, laid it back on the table untouched—safer to let the ice thin out that triple dosage. There was a marked silence. In another moment, he was thinking. I’ll be reduced to looking around and making some trite remarks about imitation Louis XV chairs. There was always the weather, of course. And he laughed.
    That broke the tension. Lois Westerbrook relaxed visibly. He wouldn’t be so difficult after all. “I agree,” she said.
    “With what?” Now where was she leading him?
    “Your opinion about the change in me. This afternoon—at Schofeld’s—you found me slightly comic, didn’t you?”
    “Not that. Decorative. Highly fashionable.”
    “But comic,” she insisted.
    “You merged right into the scene.”
    “Yet, I was serious. I meant every word I said. And