Read Jade in Aries for Free Online Page B

not in my favor, that you may be disappointed.”
    He didn’t say anything. He just smiled at me and shook his head. All at once I disliked him so intensely that I couldn’t think of a word to say to him, none of the questions I wanted to ask, none of the suggestions I wanted to make. We just looked at one another, and his expression began to be uncertain, and the door behind me opened.
    I saw my own relief mirrored in Cornell’s eyes; the impasse interrupted. “Stew!” he called, and I got to my feet and turned around to take my first look at Stewart Remington, Cornell’s lawyer.
    Almost everything about him was a surprise. I’d expected someone more or less like Cornell, perhaps a bit brisker, more down-to-earth, but generally from the same mold. Stewart Remington, though, was from a different mold completely.
    In the first place, he was about my age, around forty. And he was huge, over six feet by an inch or two, and fat the way pictures show Henry the Eighth was fat; a lot of flesh padding a large broad frame. I would guess him to be no less than three hundred pounds, and possibly ten or fifteen pounds over.
    This huge body was draped in clothing which undoubtedly had come from Cornell’s boutique. It was similar in style to what Cornell had worn the first time I’d seen him, but was more flamboyant in color and line. Looking at him, one knew he was the kind of man who wore a cape, and who wore one whether capes were in vogue that particular year or not, and who surely had at least one cape with a red satin lining.
    What he was wearing now, however, was a black velvet topcoat with black fur collar, the coat worn open, flung over his shoulders without his arms in the sleeves, like photos of Italian movie directors.
    With all his size, and with all the flamboyance of his clothing, it was still his face which was his dominant feature. He had a large head, with masses of very curly thick black hair sweeping up and back and out above the fur collar. His forehead was broad and high and amazingly unlined, his eyebrows thick and black, his eyes piercing and deep-set and a very dark blue. He had a large lumpy formless nose, rather like W. C. Fields’, but on Remington the effect was of imperial carelessness rather than comedy. His cheeks were very full, almost Santa Claus-like, but saved from that by the permanently sardonic expression of his broad and full-lipped mouth.
    He had about him the look of the hedonist, the high-liver, the guzzler and the glutton and yet also the gourmet. He looked like the kind of man who would enjoy the best, but might enjoy it all too much. And when he took his hands from his jacket pockets I saw that he had rings on all his fingers, different styles and stones; they looked like the pudgy blunt-fingered hands of a silly rich widow, not like a man at all. The only sign of what he and Cornell had in common.
    Cornell introduced us, and we shook hands; the soft hand, beringed, had no strength. All the strength was in Remington’s eyes, as he studied me with a frankness much greater than the average.
    Cornell said, “With you two on my side, I do have a chance.”
    Remington gave me a sardonic smile: one professional to another. “What do you think, Tobin? Will we save his pretty round butt for him?”
    “Possibly,” I said.
    Remington laughed, a single boom, and said, “Confidence tempered with caution. The perfect note. Sit down, sit down, let’s work out our fallen brother’s salvation.” He had the right voice to go with that kind of speech, a round baritone, loud without harshness. I wondered if he did much trial work, and if so, what sort of reaction his appearance and manner and voice got from the average jury.
    We sat down, and Remington, overflowing the other tubular chair, said to me, “Have you met your opposite number yet?”
    “Opposite number?”
    “Manzoni, the scourge of the ungodly.”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    “What a treat you have coming! A man blighted in his