Instead he said, "I've already offered Norbert a private accommodation but he spurned that.

I'm damned if I'll crawl in public.

Listen, while you're here, what about Colt Armaments? I hear Cooper-Tillman have a block of shares they want to sell. I'd like to buy."

"Eh? How d'you know about them?" Dmitri glanced at McFay who was equally astonished but had managed to hide it. "Where'd you hear about that?"

"A dickybird told me." Malcolm hid his glee. Edward Gornt had given him the tip, amongst other inside tips about Brock's and Cooper-Tillman, to prove his sincerity about the major information he would pass over about the Brocks. "Why wait to tell me, Mr.Gornt," he had said. "If the information is as good as you say it will need dealing with at once."

"It will, yes, at once, Tai-pan. But let's leave it as we agreed: Wednesday's the day. Meanwhile, as we're going to have a long and happy relationship, why not let's drop the "Mister," you call me just Gornt, I'll stay with "Tai-pan" until we meet in Shanghai or Hong Kong--after Sir Morgan's ruined.

Then, maybe, we could be on a first-name basis, eh?"' He watched Dmitri, his excitement increased. So much good happening now. "What do you say, old chap? Is Jeff Cooper prepared to sell, and you have the necessary authority to deal?"

"Yes I have his authority but."

"But nothing. The authority's in writing?"

"In writing and he might sell half but.

At the right price--16.50 a share."

"Balls, that's nowhere near right--that's your Medicine Man approach coming out. 13.20 not a cent more. We can draw up a letter of intent, dated today. Forty thousand shares."

Dmitri gaped at him but quickly recovered-- forty thousand was exactly the right number. 13.20 was low. He had offered the shares to Morgan Brock who had tendered 12.80, a fire-sale price, with a year payout which made the offer unpalatable, though to find a buyer for such a large block of shares was almost impossible.

Where the hell did Malc get the information?

"13.20's no where near good enough."

"13.20 today. Tomorrow it'll be 13.10, Wednesday I withdraw the bid." Gornt had told him Cooper needed to sell quickly to invest in a new U.s. venture-making Ironclads--for either navy. "I've plenty of time, but old Jeff hasn't."

"What you mean by that?"

"Just that I have time and Jeff hasn't. Nor has the Union or even Confederate... navy," he added pleasantly, "with the war going badly for both sides."

"Crap on your spies," Dmitri said.

"No deal. 15.20."

"Dreamer. 13.20, payment in gold from a sight draft on our bank as soon as it arrives in Boston."

Dmitri opened his mouth but Jamie McFay butted in hastily, "Tai-pan, it might be a good idea to conside--"

""... getting HK'S approval,"

Malcolm finished the sentence for him. "Come on, Jamie, we've had that out and that nonsense is finished once and for all." His voice was level, and brooked no argument. "Right?"

"Yes, sorry, you're right."

Calmly Malcolm said, "Well, Dmitri, yes or no?"

Dmitri stared at him with renewed respect.

The immediate payout had already clinched it for him.

"It's a deal." He offered his hand. Malcolm shook it.

McFay said, "I'll draw up the paper this afternoon and have it for your signatures at 5:00 P.m. all right?"

"Good. Thanks for coming to see me, Dmitri, you're always welcome. Dinner's at 8:30."

After Dmitri left McFay could not stay quiet. "That's a lot of money."

"dis528,000 to be precise. But Colt's got a new order for a hundred thousand rifles of a radical new design. By the time our letter of credit clears their shares will have doubled so we've just made half a million dollars."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You'll sign the promissory note?"

"Yes. If you tell me I can't because I've no authority because of what my mother has or has not said, I will take no notice whatsoever and sign it anyway." Malcolm lit a cheroot, continuing, "If it's not honored that will backfire and ruin Struan's like nothing in our history. I'm tai-pan, like it or not, until I resign or until I'm dead, whatever she says."

They both watched a smoke ring rise and vanish and then McFay nodded, slowly, his misgivings overcome by Malcolm's strange surety and authority that he had never experienced before. "You know what you're doing, don't you?"

Malcolm's eyes lit up. "I know many things I didn't when I first came here. For example, if you insist on leaving... Come on, Jamie, I'm sure in your heart you've decided, and why shouldn't you? You've been treated shabbily--I know I haven't helped but that's all over, if I were you I'd do the same.

You've decided, haven't you?"

McFay swallowed, disarmed. "Yes, I'm going to leave, but not until Struan's business here is optimum, six months or so, unless she fires me first. Christ, I don't want to leave but I must."

Malcolm laughed. "You've taken a moral position."

McFay laughed too. "Hardly. It's crazy."

"No, I'd do the same. And I'm sure you'll be a huge success, so much so a hundred thousand of the dollars I've just made--I have, Jamie, no one else--will be an investment in McFay Trading. For a..." He was going to say forty-nine percent share but changed that, to give McFay face, and thought, You deserve it, my friend, I'll never forget the mail you could have hanged for--Sir William would have caught us, I'm sure of that too. "... a sixty percent share?"

McFay said, "Twenty-five," without even thinking.

"Fifty-five?"

"Thirty-five."

"Forty-nine percent."

"Done, if!"

They both laughed and Malcolm said what McFay had been thinking, "If the shares double."

Then he added seriously, "And if they don't I'll find it another way."

McFay looked at him for what seemed a long time, his mind in a thought pattern of questions but no answers. Why has Malcolm changed?

Heavenly? The business over the mails? The duel? Surely not. Why does he want to see the Admiral? Why does he like Gornt who's a crafty if I ever saw one?

And why did I blurt out, Yes I'm going to leave, before I knew it, making the decision I'd been thinking about for months: to take a chance before I die. He saw Malcolm watching him, weak in body, but tranquil and strong. He smiled back, glad to be alive. "You know, I'm sure you will."

Angelique was taking her pre-dinner siesta, a coal fire merry in the grate. Curtains were drawn against the wind and she was curled under down covers and silk sheets, half asleep half awake, one hand comfortably between her legs as Colette had taught her in the convent when they would sneak into bed with one another after the nuns had left the dormitory and were snoring behind their curtained cubicles. Fondling and kissing and whispering and chuckling under the covers, the two young girls sharing secrets and dreams and wants, pretending to be grown-up lovers--as described in the romantic but forbidden street pamphlets that were smuggled in by the chambermaids and circulated from hand to hand amongst the students--all make-believe and healthy and amusing and harmless.

Her mind was on Paris and the wonderful future ahead, Malcolm softly content beside her, or already out in the Struan countinghouse, now headquartered in Paris, rich and tall, all his bad health a memory, her bad not even a memory, a baby son in the nursery along the corridor of this their chateau, his own nanny and maids watching him, her body again strong and as well shaped as now, his birth easy. Then there would be visits with Colette to Struan's fabulously successful silk factory that she had persuaded Struan's to build after learning so much about the harvesting and growing of the silkworms: "Oh Colette," she had just written, these little worms are extra-ordinary, eating mulberry leaves for food, and then you cure the cocoons and unravel the silk....