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else. He didn t look at his watch or the door, and he was drinking gin with enough abandon to
convince me that he was definitely off the clock. I finished my own drink and sidled over to
his table.
 Don t tell me. She s your niece and she s only doing this so she can get her Equity Card
and join the Royal Shakespeare Company. O Neal turned and stared at me as I pulled out a
chair and sat down.  Hello, I said.
 What are you doing here? he said, crossly. I rather think he may have been a little
embarrassed.
 Hang on, I said.  That s the wrong way round surely. You re supposed to say "hello" and
I say "what are you doing here?"
 Where the hell have you been, Lang?
 Oh, hither and yon, I said.  As you know, I am a petal borne aloft on the autumn winds.
It should say that in my file.
 You followed me here.
 Tut. Followed is such an ugly word. I prefer "blackmail".
 What?
 But, of course, it means something completely different. So all right, let s say I followed
you here.
He d started looking round the room, trying to see if I had any large friends with me. Or
maybe he was looking for large friends of his own. He leant forward and hissed at me.  You
are in very, very serious trouble, Lang. It is only fair that I should warn you of that.
 Yes, I think you re probably right, I said.  Very serious trouble is certainly one of the
things I m in. A strip club is another one. With a senior civil servant who shall remain
nameless for at least an hour.
He leaned back in his chair, a peculiar leer spreading across his face. The eyebrows raised,
the mouth curled upwards. I realised it was the beginning of a smile. In kit form.
 Oh dear, he said.  You really are trying to blackmail me. That is terribly pathetic.
 Is it? Well we can t have that.
 I am meeting someone here. The choice of rendezvous was not mine. He drained his
third gin.  Now I should be greatly obliged if you would take yourself off somewhere, so I
don t have to call the doorman and have you ejected.
The sound-track had moved seamfully into a loud but bland cover of  War, What Is It
Good For? and O Neal s niece moved down to the front of the stage and started shaking her
vagina at us, almost in time to the music.
 Oh, I don t know, I said.  I think I like it here just fine.
 Lang, I am warning you. You have at this moment very little credit in the bank. I have an
important meeting here, and if you disrupt it, or inconvenience me in any way, I shall
foreclose on you. Do I make myself plain?
 Captain Mainwaring, I said.  That s who you remind me of.:
 Lang, for the last time . . .
He stopped when he saw Sarah s Walther. I think I probably would have done the same, in
his place.
 I thought you said you didn t carry firearms, he said, after a while. Nervous, but trying
not to show it.
 I m a victim of fashion, I said.  Someone told me they re in this year, and I just had to
have one. I started to take off my jacket. The niece was only a few feet away, but she was still
staring at the back wall.
 You are not going to fire a gun in here, Lang. I don t believe you are entirely insane.
I bundled the jacket into a tight ball and slipped the gun into one of the folds.
 Oh, I am, I said.  Entirely. Thomas "Mad Dog" Lang they used to call me.
 I am beginning . . .
O Neal s empty glass exploded. Shards scattered across the table and on to the floor. He
went very pale.
 My God . . . he stammered.
Rhythm s the thing. You ve either got it or you haven t. I d fired on one of the big
crashing chords of  War and made no more noise than if I d been licking an envelope. If the
niece had been doing it, she would have fired on the upbeat and ruined everything.
 Another drink? I said, and lit a cigarette to cover the smell of burnt powder.  On me.
 War ended before Christmas and the three girls ambled off the stage, to be replaced by a
couple whose act relied heavily on whips. They were pretty obviously brother and sister and
couldn t have had less than a hundred years between them. The man s whip was only three
feet long because of the low ceiling, but he wielded it as if it was thirty, lashing his sister to
the tune of  We Are The Champions . O Neal sipped chastely at a new gin and tonic.
 Now then, I said, adjusting the position of the jacket on the table,  I need one thing from
you and one thing only.
 Go to hell.
 I certainly will, and I ll make sure your room is ready. But I need to know what you ve
done with Sarah Woolf.
He stopped his glass amid sips, and turned to me, genuinely puzzled.
 What I ve done with her? What on earth makes you think I ve done anything with her?
 She s disappeared, I said.
 Disappeared. Yes. That s a melodramatic way of saying you can t find her, I assume?
 Her father is dead, I said.  Did you know that?
He looked at me for a long time.
 Yes, I did, he said.  What interests me is how you knew it.
 You first.
But O Neal was starting to get bold, and when I moved the jacket closer to him he didn t
flinch.
 You killed him, he said, part angry, part pleased.  That s it, isn t it? Thomas Lang, brave
soldier of fortune, actually went through with it and shot a man. Well, my dear friend, you are
going to have one hell of a job getting out of this one, I hope you realise that.
 What are Graduate Studies?
The anger, and the pleasure, gradually slipped out of his face. He didn t look as if he was
going to answer, so I decided to press on.
 I ll tell you what I think Graduate Studies are, I said,  and you can give me points out of
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