Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,50

and Princess Casilia will go down there when he arrives. Also Prince Litsi and Danielle de Brescou will go down. All will sign the form which is in the notary’s briefcase. The notary will witness each signature, and carry the document away in his briefcase. Is this understood?’

‘It is understood,’ I said calmly, ‘but it’s not going to happen.’

‘It must happen.’

‘There’s no document in the briefcase.’

It stopped him barely a second. ‘My notary will bring a paper bearing the same form of words. Everyone will sign the notary’s document.’

‘No, they aren’t ready to,’ I said.

‘I have warned what will happen if the document is not signed.’

‘What will happen?’ I asked. ‘You can’t make people behave against their consciences.’

‘Every conscience has its price,’ he said furiously, and instantly disconnected. The telephone clicked a few times and came forth with the dialling tone, and I put the receiver back in its cradle to shut it off.

Litsi shook his head regretfully. ‘He’s being cautious. Nothing he said can be presented to the police as a threat requiring action on their part.’

‘You should all sign his document,’ Beatrice said aggrievedly, ‘and be done with all this obstruction to expanding his business.’

No one bothered to argue with her: the ground had already been covered too often. Litsi then asked the princess if she would mind if he and I went out for a little while. Sammy was still in the house to look after things until John Grundy came, and I would be back in good time to fetch Danielle.

The princess acquiesced with this arrangement while looking anything but ecstatic over further time alone with Beatrice, and it was with twinges of guilt that I happily followed Litsi out of the room.

‘We’ll go in a taxi,’ he said, ‘to the Marylebone Plaza hotel.’

‘That’s not your sort of place,’ I observed mildly.

‘We’re going to meet someone. It’s his sort of place.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone to tell you about the arms trade.’

‘Really?’ I said, interested. ‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t precisely know. We are to go to room eleven twelve and talk to a Mr Mohammed. That isn’t his real name, which he would prefer we didn’t know. He will be helpful, I’m told.’

‘How did you find him?’ I asked.

Litsi smiled. ‘I didn’t exactly. But I asked someone in France who would know … who could tell me what’s going on in the handguns world. Mr Mohammed is the result. Be satisfied with that.’

‘OK.’

‘Your name is Mr Smith,’ he said. ‘Mine is Mr Jones.’

‘Such stunning originality.’

The Marylebone Plaza hotel was about three miles distant from Eaton Square geographically and in a different world economically. The Marylebone Plaza was frankly a barebones overnight stopping place for impecunious travellers, huge, impersonal, a shelter for the anonymous. I’d passed it fairly often but never been through its doors before, and nor, it was clear, had Litsi. We made our way however across an expanse of hard grey mottled flooring, and took a lift to the eleventh floor.

Upstairs the passages were narrow, though carpeted; the lighting economical. We peered at door numbers, found eleven twelve, and knocked.

The door was opened to us by a swarthy-skinned man in a good suit with a white shirt, gold cufflinks, and an impassive expression.

‘Mr Jones and Mr Smith,’ Litsi said.

The man opened the door further and gestured to us to go in, and inside we found another man similarly dressed, except that he wore also a heavy gold ring inset with four diamonds arranged in a square.

‘Mohammed,’ he said, extending the hand with the ring to be shaken. He nodded over our shoulders to his friend, who silently went out of the door, closing it behind him.

Mohammed, somewhere between Litsi’s age and mine, I judged, had dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and a heavy dark moustache. The opulence of the ring was echoed in the leather suitcase lying on the bed and in his wristwatch, which looked like gold nuggets strung together round his wrist.

He was in good humour, and apologised for meeting us ‘where no one would know any of us’.

‘I am legitimately in the arms trade,’ he assured us. ‘I will tell you anything you want to know, as long as you do not say who told you.’

He apologised again for the fact that the room was furnished with a single chair, and offered it to Litsi. I perched against a table, Mohammed sat on the bed. There were reddish curtains across the window, a brown patterned carpet on the floor, a striped cotton bedspread; all