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know just how ill this weather is making people.”
        “Ah! Our Otto himself is fit?"
        "Reasonably.”
        “One can't have everything.”
        “Conrad tells me that your roommate Antonio may require a visit.”
        “What Antonio requires is a gag, a strait jacket, and a nursemaid, in that order. Rolling around, sick all over the floor, groaning like some miscreant stretched out on the rack." The Count wrinkled a fastidious nose. "Most upsetting, most."
        “I can well imagine it.”
        “For a man of delicate sensibilities, you understand.”
        “Of course."
        “I simply had to leave!”
        “Yes. I'll have a look at him." I'd just pushed my chair back to the limit of its securing chain when Michael Stryker sat down in a chair beside me. Stryker, a full partner in Olympus Productions, combined the two jobs, normally separate, of production designer and construction manager Gerran never lost the opportunity to economise. He was a tall, dark, and undeniably handsome man with a clipped moustache and could readily have been mistaken for a matinee idol of the mid- "30s were it not for the fashionably long and untidy hair that obscured about ninety percent of the polo-necked silk sweater which he habitually affected. He looked tough, was unquestionably cynical and, from what little I had heard of him, totally amoral. He was also possessed of the dubious distinction of being Gerran's son-in-law.
        "Seldom we see you abroad at this late hour, Doctor," he said. He screwed a long black Russian cigarette into an onyx holder with all the care of a precision engineer fitting the tappets on a Rolls-Royce engine, then held it up to the light to inspect the results. "Kind of you to join the masses, esprit de corps and what have you." He lit his cigarette, blew a cloud of noxious smoke across the table and looked at me consideringly. "On second thoughts, no. You're not the esprit de corps type. We more or less have to be. You don't. I don't think you could. Too cool, too detached, too clinical, too observant-and a loner. Right?”
        “It's a pretty fair description of a doctor!'
        “Here in an official capacity, eh?" I suppose so.”
        “I'll wager that old goat sent you.”
        “Mr. Gerran sent me!" It was becoming increasingly apparent to me that Otto Gerran's senior associates were unlikely ever to clamour for the privilege of voting him into the Hall of Fame.
        "That's the old goat I mean." Stryker looked thoughtfully at the Count. "A strange and unwonted solicitude on the part of our Otto, wouldn't you say, Tadeusz? I wonder what lies behind it?"
        The Count produced a chased silver flask, poured himself another generous measure of cognac, smiled and said nothing. I said nothing either because I'd already decided that I knew the answer to that one: even later on, in retrospect, I could not and did not blame myself for I had arrived at a conclusion on the basis of the only facts then available to me. I said to Stryker: "Miss Haynes is not here. Is she all right?”
        “No, I'm afraid she's no sailor. She's pretty much under the weather
        but what's a man to do? She's pleading for sedatives or sleeping drugs and asking that I send for you, but of course I had to say no.”
        “Why?”
        “My dear chap, she's been living on drugs ever since we came aboard this damned hell ship." It was as well for his health, I thought, that Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes weren't sitting at the same table. "Her own seasick tablets one moment, the ones you doled out the next, pep pills in between and barbiturates for dessert. Well, you know what would happen if she took sedatives or more drugs on top of that lot.”
        “No, I don't. Tell me.”
        “Eh?”
        “Does she drink? Heavily, I mean”
        "Drink? No. I mean, she never touches the stuff." I sighed.
        "Why don't cobblers stick to their own