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smiling and invariably kind and courteous to his inferiors which, in his case, meant just about everybody in sight. With the passage of time, the carefully and painstakingly acquired geniality and urbanity had become second nature to him (although some of the original ruthlessness had had to remain to account for his untold millions). Only a specialist could have detected the extensive plastic surgery that had transformed Smith's face from what it once had been.

There was another man in his drawing-room, and a young woman. Jack Tracy was a young-middle-aged man, blond, with a pock-marked face and a general air of capable toughness about him. The toughness and capability were undoubtedly there — they had to be for any man to be the general manager of Smith's vast chain of newspapers and magazines.

Maria Schneider, with her slightly dusky skin and brown eyes, could have been South American, Southern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. Her hair was the colour of a raven. Whatever her nationality she was indisputably beautiful with a rather inscrutable face but invariably watchful penetrating eyes. She didn't look kind or sensitive but was both. She looked intelligent and had to be: when not doubling — as rumour had it - as Smith's mistress she was his private and confidential secretary and it was no rumour that she was remarkably skilled in her official capacity.

The phone rang. Maria answered, told the caller to hold and brought the phone on its extension cord across to Smith's armchair. He took the phone and listened briefly.

'Ah, Hiller!' Smith, unusually for him, leant forward in his armchair. There was anticipation in both his voice and posture. 'You have, I trust, some encouraging news for me. You have? Good, good, good. Proceed.'

Smith listened in silence to what Hiller had to say, the expression on his face gradually changing from pleasure to the near beatific. It was a measure of the man's self-control that, although apparently in a near transport of excitement, he refrained from either exclamations, questions or interruptions and heard Hiller through in silence to the end.

'Excellent!' Smith was positively jubilant. 'Truly excellent. Frederik, you have just made me the happiest man in Brazil.' Although Hiller claimed to be called Edward, his true given name would have appeared to be otherwise. 'Nor, I assure you, will you have cause to regret this day. My car will await you and your friends at the airport at eleven a.m.' He replaced the receiver. 'I said I could wait forever. Forever is today.'

Moments passed while he gized sightlessly into the flames. Tracy and Maria looked at each other without expression. Smith sighed, gradually bestirred himself, leaned back into his armchair, reached into his pocket, brought out a gold coin, and examined it intently.

'My talisman,' he said. He still didn't appear to be quite with them. 'Thirty long years I've had it and I've looked at it every day in those thirty years. Hiller has seen this very coin. He says the ones this man Hamilton has are identical in every way. Hiller is not a man to make mistakes so this can mean only one thing. Hamilton has found what can only be the foot of the rainbow.'

Tracy said: 'And at the far end of the rainbow lies a pot of gold?'

Smith looked at him without really seeing him. 'Who cares about the gold?'

There was a long and, for Tracy and Maria, rather uncomfortable silence. Smith sighed again and replaced the coin in his pocket.

'Another thing,' Smith went on. 'Hamilton appears to have stumbled across some sort of an El Dorado.'

'It seems less and less likely that Hamilton is the kind of man to stumble across anything,' Maria said. 'He's a hunter, a seeker - but never a stumbler. He has sources of information denied other so-called civilised people, especially among the tribes not yet classified as pacified. He starts off with some sort of clue that points him in the right direction then starts quartering the ground, narrowing the