Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,53

need a licence to own one, of course.’ He paused. ‘To be frank, gentlemen, I find it most profitable to deal with customers to whom personal licences are irrelevant.’

‘Is there anyone,’ I asked, ‘and please don’t take this as an insult, because it’s not meant that way, but is there anyone to whom you would refuse to sell guns?’

He took no offence. He said, ‘Only if I thought they couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. On moral grounds, no. I don’t ask what they want them for. If I cared, I’d be in the wrong trade. I sell the hardware, I don’t agonise over its use.’

Both Litsi and I seemed to have run out of questions. Mohammed put the pistol back into its box, where it sat neatly above its prim little rows of bullets. He replaced the lid on the box and returned the whole to the suitcase.

‘Never forget,’ he said, still smiling, ‘that attack and defence are as old as the human race. Once upon a time, I would have been selling nicely sharpened spearhead flints.’

‘Mr Mohammed,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’

He nodded affably. Litsi stood up and shook hands again with the diamond ring, as did I, and Mohammed said if we saw his friend loitering in the passage not to worry and not to speak to him, he would return to the room when we had gone.

We paid no attention to the friend waiting by the lifts and rode down without incident to the ground floor. It wasn’t until we were in a taxi on the way back to Eaton Square that either of us spoke.

‘He was justifying himself,’ Litsi said.

‘Everyone does. It’s healthy.’

He turned his head. ‘How do you mean?’

‘The alternative is guilty despair. Self-justification may be an illusion, but it keeps you from suicide.’

‘You could self-justify suicide.’

I smiled at him sideways. ‘So you could.’

‘Nanterre,’ he said, ‘has a powerful urge to sharpen flints.’

‘Mm. Lighter, cheaper, razor-like flints.’

‘Bearing the de Brescou cachet.’

‘I had a powerful vision,’ I said, ‘of Roland shaking hands on a deal with Mohammed.’

Litsi laughed. ‘We must save him from the justification.’

‘How did you get hold of Mohammed?’ I asked.

‘One of the useful things about being a prince,’ Litsi said, ‘is that if one seriously asks, one is seldom refused. Another is that one knows and has met a great many people in useful positions. I simply set a few wheels in motion, much as you did yesterday, incidentally, with Lord Vaughnley.’ He paused. Why is a man you defeated so anxious to please you?’

‘Well … in defeating him I also saved him. Maynard Allardeck was out to take over his newspaper by fair means and definitely foul, and I gave him the means of stopping him permanently, which was a copy of that film.’

‘I do see,’ Litsi said ironically, ‘that he owes you a favour or two.’

‘Also,’ I said, ‘the boy who gambled half his inheritance away under Maynard’s influence was Hugh Vaughnley, Lord Vaughnley’s son. By threatening to publish the film, Lord Vaughnley made Maynard give the inheritance back. The inheritance, actually, was shares in the Towncrier newspaper.’

‘A spot of poetic blackmail. Your idea?’

‘Well … sort of.’

He chuckled, ‘I suppose I should disapprove. It was surely against the law.’

‘The law doesn’t always deliver justice. The victim mostly loses. Too often the law can only punish, it can’t put things right.’

‘And you think righting the victims’ wrongs is more important than anything else?’

‘Where it’s possible, the highest priority.’

‘And you’d break the law to do it?’

‘It’s too late at night for being tied into knots,’ I said, ‘and we’re back at Eaton Square.’

We went upstairs to the sitting room and, the princess and Beatrice having gone to bed, drank a brandy nightcap in relaxation. I liked Litsi more and more as a person, and wished him permanently on the other side of the globe; and looking at him looking at me, I wondered if he were possibly thinking the same thing.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he said.

‘Racing at Bradbury.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Half way to Devon.’

‘I don’t know where you get the energy.’ He yawned. ‘I spent a gentle afternoon walking round Ascot racecourse, and I’m whacked.’

Large and polished, he drank his brandy, and in time we unplugged the recording telephone, carried it down to the basement, and replugged it in the hallway there. Then we went up to the ground floor and paused for a moment outside Litsi’s door.

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

‘Goodnight.’ He hesitated, and then held out his hand. I shook it. ‘Such a silly