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Jeff’s loo, he looked a little like D. H. Lawrence, he thought. His mouth was surrounded by hair. It was a sensation Tom did not like. Below the mirror on a little shelf three snapshots of Derwatt were propped up—Derwatt reading a book in shirtsleeves in a deckchair, Derwatt standing with a man Tom did not know, facing the camera. Derwatt had glasses in all the pictures.
    “The specs,” Ed said, as if he read Tom’s thoughts.
    Tom took the round-rimmed glasses Ed handed him, and put them on. That was better. Tom smiled, gently so as not to spoil the drying beard. The specs were plain glass, apparently. Tom walked with a stoop back into the studio, and said in what he hoped was Derwatt’s voice, “Now tell me about this man Murchison—”
    “Deeper!” Bernard said, his skinny hands flailing wildly.
    “This man Murchison,” Tom repeated.
    Bernard said, “M-Murchison, according to Jeff, thinks—Derwatt has returned to an old technique. In his painting ‘The Clock,’ you see. I don’t know what he means—specifically—to tell you the truth.” Bernard shook his head quickly, pulled a handkerchief from somewhere and blew his nose. “I was just looking at one of Jeff’s shots of ‘The Clock.’ I haven’t seen it in three years, you see. Not the picture itself.” Bernard was talking softly, as if the walls might be listening.
    “Is Murchison an expert?” Tom asked, thinking, what was an expert?
    “No, he’s just an American businessman,” Ed said. “He collects. He’s got a bee in his bonnet.”
    It was more than that, Tom thought, or they wouldn’t all be so upset. “Am I supposed to be prepared for anything specific?”
    “No,” Ed said. “Is he, Bernard?”
    Bernard almost gasped, then tried to laugh, and for an instant he looked as he had looked years ago, younger, naïve. Tom realized that Bernard was thinner than when he had last seen him three or four years ago.
    “I wish I knew,” Bernard said. “You must only—stand by the fact that the picture, ‘The Clock,’ is Derwatt’s.”
    “Trust me,” Tom said. He was walking about, practicing the stoop, assuming a slowish rhythm which he hoped was correct.
    “But,” Bernard went on, “if Murchison wants to continue whatever he’s talking about, whatever it is—‘Man in Chair’ you’ve got, Tom—”
    A forgery. “He need never see that,” said Tom. “I love it, myself.”
    “‘The Tub,’” Bernard added. “It’s in the show.”
    “You’re worried about that?” Tom asked.
    “It’s in the same technique,” Bernard said. “Maybe.”
    “Then you know what technique Murchison is talking about? Why don’t you take ‘The Tub’ out of the show if you’re worried about it?”
    Ed said, “It was announced on the program. We were afraid if we removed it, Murchison might want to see it, want to know who bought it and all that.”
    The conversation got nowhere, because Tom could not get a clear statement of what they, or Murchison, meant by the technique in these particular pictures.
    “You’ll never meet Murchison, so stop worrying,” Ed said to Bernard.
    “Have you met him?” Tom asked Ed.
    “No, only Jeff has. This morning.”
    “And what’s he like?”
    “Jeff said about fifty or so, a big American type. Polite enough but stubborn. Wasn’t there a belt in those trousers?”
    Tom tightened the belt in his trousers. He sniffed at the sleeve of his jacket. There was a faint smell of mothballs, which probably wouldn’t be noticed in all the cigarette smoke. And anyway, Derwatt could have been wearing Mexican clothes for the past few years, and his European clothes might have been put away. Tom looked at himself in a long mirror, under one of Jeff’s very bright spotlights that Ed had put on, and suddenly doubled over with laughter. Tom turned around and said, “Sorry, I was just thinking that considering Derwatt’s fantastic earnings, he certainly hangs on to his old gear!”
    “That’s okay, he’s a