Chapter 2

Lord Worth was tall, lean and erect. His complexion was the mahogany hue of the playboy millionaire who spends his life in the sun: Lord Worth seldom worked less than sixteen hours a day. His abundant hair and mustache were snow-white. According to his mood and expression and to the eye of the beholder, he could have been a biblical patriarch, a better-class Roman senator, or a gentlemanly seventeenth-century pirate – except for the fact, of course, that none of those ever, far less habitually, wore lightweight Alpaca suits of the same color as Lord Worth's hair.

He looked and was every inch an aristocrat. Unlike the many Americans who bore the Christian names of Duke or Earl, Lord Worth really was a lord, the fifteenth in succession of a highly distinguished family of Scottish peers of the realm. The fact that their distinction had lain mainly in the fields of assassination, endless clan warfare, the stealing of women and cattle, and the selling of their fellow peers down the river was beside the point: the earlier Scottish peers didn't go in too much for the more cultural activities. The blue blood that had run in their veins ran in Lord Worth's. As ruthless, predatory, acquisitive and courageous as any of his ancestors, Lord Worth simply went about his business with a degree of refinement and sophistication that would have lain several light-years beyond their understanding.

He had reversed the trend of Canadians coming to Britain, making their fortunes and eventually being elevated to the peerage: he had already been a peer, and an extremely wealthy one, before emigrating to Canada. His emigration, which had been discreet and precipitous, had not been entirely voluntary. He had made a fortune hi real estate in London before the Internal Revenue had become embarrassingly interested in his activities. Fortunately for him, whatever charges might have been laid at his door were not extraditable.

He had spent several years in Canada, investing his millions in the North Hudson Oil Company and proving himself to be even more able-in the oil business than he had been in real estate. His tankers and refineries spanned the globe before he had decided that the climate was too cold for him and moved south to Florida. His splendid mansion was the envy of the many millionaires – of a lesser financial breed, admittedly – who almost literally jostled for elbow-room in the Fort Lauderdale area.

The dining room in that mansion was something to behold. Monks, by the very nature of their calling, are supposed to be devoid of all earthly lusts, but no monk, past or present, could ever have gazed on the gleaming magnificence of that splendid oaken refectory table without turning pale chartreuse with envy. The chairs, inevitably, were Louis XIV. The splendidly embroidered silken carpet, with a pile deep enough for a fair-sized mouse to take cover in, would have been judged by an expert to come from Damascus and to have cost a fortune: the expert would have been right on both counts. The heavy drapes and embroidered silken walls were of the same pale gray, the latter being enhanced by a series of original impressionist paintings, no less than three by Matisse and the same number by Renoir. Lord Worth was no dilettante and was clearly trying to make amends for his ancestors* shortcomings in cultural fields.

It was in those suitably princely surroundings that Lord Worth was at the moment taking -his ease, reveling in his second brandy and the two beings whom – after money – he loved most in the world: his two daughters, Marina and Me-linda, who had been so named by their now divorced Spanish mother. Both were young, both were beautiful, and could have been mistaken for twins, which they weren't: they were easily distinguishable by the fact that while Marina's hair was black as a raven's, Melinda's was pure titian.

There were two other guests at the table. Many a local millionaire would have given a fair slice of his ill-gotten gains for the privilege and honor of sitting at Lord Worth's table. Few were invited, and then but seldom. Those two young men, comparatively as poor as church mice, had the unique privilege, without invitation, of coming and going as they pleased, which was pretty often.

They were Mitchell and Roomer, two pleasant men in their early thirties for whom Lord Worth had a strong, if concealed, admiration and whom he held in something close to awe – inasmuch as they were the only two completely honest men he had ever met. Not that Lord Worth had ever stepped on the wrong side of the law, although he frequently had a clear view of what happened on the other side: it was simply that he was not hi the habit of dealing with honest men. They had both been two highly efficient police sergeants, only they had been too efficient, much given to arresting the wrong people, such as crooked politicians and equally crooked wealthy businessmen who had previously labored under the misapprehension that they were above the law. They were fired, not to put too fine a point on it, for their total incorruptibility.

Of the two, Michael Mitchell was the taller, the broader and the less good-looking. With slightly craggy face, ruffled dark hair and blue chin, he could never have made it as a matinee idol. John Roomer, with his brown hair and trimmed brown mustache, was altogether better-looking. Both were shrewd, intelligent and highly experienced. Roomer was the intuitive one, Mitchell the one long on action. Apart from being charming, both men were astute and highly resourceful. And they were possessed of one other not inconsiderable quality: both were deadly marksmen.

Two years previously they had set up their own private investigative practice, and in that brief space of time had established such a reputation that people in real trouble now made a practice of going to them instead of to the police, a fact that hardly endeared them to the local law. They lived near Lord Worth's estate, where they were frequent and welcome visitors. That they did not come for the exclusive pleasure of his company Lord Worth was well aware. Nor, he knew, were they even in the slightest way interested in his money, a fact that Lord Worth

found astonishing, as he had never previously encountered anyone who wasn't thus interested. What they were interested in, and deeply so, were Marina and Melinda.

The door opened and Lord Worth's butler, Jenkins – English, of course, as were the two footmen – made his usual soundless entrance, approached the head of the table and murmured discreetly hi Lord Worth's ear. Lord Worth nodded and rose.

"Excuse me, girls, gentlemen. Visitors. Fra sure you can get along together quite well without me." He made his way to his study, entered and closed the door behind him – a very special padded door that, when shut, rendered the room completely soundproof.

The study, in its own way – Lord Worth was no sybarite but he liked his creature comforts as well as the next man – was as sumptuous as the dining room: oak, leather, a wholly unnecessary log fire burning in one corner, all straight from the best English baronial mansions. The walls were lined with thousands of books, many of which Lord Worth had actually read, a fact that must have caused great distress to his illiterate ancestors, who had despised degeneracy above all else.

A tall bronzed man with aquiline features and gray hair rose to his feet. Both men smiled and shook hands warmly.

Lord Worth said; "Corral, my dear chap! How very nice to see you again. It's been quite some time."

"My pleasure, Lord Worth.' Nothing recently that would have interested you."

"But now?"

"Now is something else again."

The Corral who stood before Lord Worth was indeed the Corral who, in his capacity as representative of the Florida offshore leases, had been present at the meeting of ten at Lake Tahoe. Some years had passed since he and Lord Worth had arrived at an amicable and mutually satisfactory agreement. Corral, widely regarded as Lord Worth's most avowedly determined enemy and certainly the most vociferous of his critics, reported regularly to Lord Worth on the current activities and, more importantly, the projected plans of the major companies, which didn't hurt Lord Worth at all. Corral, in return, received an annual tax-free retainer of $200,000, which didn't hurt him very much either.