except for the distant crows.
    "I can bear the night itself. It's not pleasant, but it's unambiguous. It's twilight 
I can't deal with. That's when the bad sweats come over me. When the light's going, and 
nothing's quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes . . ." 
It had been a winter of such evenings: colorless drizzles that eroded distance and killed 
sound; weeks on end of uncertain light, when troubled dawn became troubled dusk with no 
day intervening. There had been too few hard-frosted days like today; just one 
discouraging month upon another.
    "I sit here every evening now," the old man was saying. "It's a test I set myself. 
Just to sit and watch everything eroded. Defying it all." Toy could taste the profundity 
of Papa's despair. He hadn't been like this ever before; not even after Evangeline's 
death.
    It was almost completely dark outside and in; without the lawn lights on, the grounds 
were pitch. But Whitehead still sat, facing the black window, watching.
    "It's all there, of course," he said.
    "What is?" "The trees, the lawn. When dawn comes tomorrow they'll be waiting." "Yes, 
of course." "You know, as a child I thought somebody came and took the world away in the 
night and then came back and unrolled it all again the following morning." He stirred in 
his seat; his hand moved to his head. Impossible to see what he was doing.
    "The things we believe as children: they never leave us, do they? They're just 
waiting for time to roll around, and us to start believing in them all over again. It's 
the same old patch, Bill. You know? I mean, we think we move on, we get stronger, we get 
wiser, but all the time we're standing on the same patch." He sighed, and looked around 
at Toy. Light from the hallway fawned through the door, which Toy had left slightly ajar. 
By it, even across the room, Whitehead's eyes and cheeks glittered with tears.
    "You'd better put on the light, Bill," he said. Yes." "And bring up Strauss." There 
was no sign of his distress apparent in his voice. But then Joe was an expert at 
disguising his feelings; Toy knew that of old. He could close down the hoods of his eyes 
and seal up his mouth, and not even a mindreader could work out what he was thinking. It 
was a skill he'd used to devastating effect in the boardroom: nobody ever knew which way 
the old fox would jump. He'd learned the technique playing cards, presumably. That, and 
how to wait.
    
    11
    They had driven through the electric gates of Whitehead's estate and into another 
world. Lawns laid out immaculately on either side of the sepia-graveled driveway; a 
distant aspect of woodland off to the right, which disappeared behind a line of cypresses 
as they bore around toward the house itself. It was late afternoon by the time they 
arrived, but the mellowing light only enhanced the charm of the place, its formality 
offset by a rising mist that blurred the scalpel edge of grass and tree.
    The main building was less spectacular than Marty had anticipated; just a large, 
Georgian country house, solid but plain, with modern extensions sprawling away from the 
main structure. They drove past the front door, with its white pillared porch, to a side 
entrance, and Toy invited him through into the kitchen.
    "Put your bags down and help yourself to some coffee," he said. "I'm just going up to 
see the boss man. Make yourself comfortable." Alone for the first time since leaving 
Wandsworth Marty felt uncomfortable. The door was open at his back; there were no locks 
on the windows, no officers patrolling the corridors beyond the kitchen. It was 
paradoxical, but he felt unprotected, almost vulnerable. After a few minutes he got up 
from the table, switched on the fluorescent light (night was falling quickly, and there 
were no automatic switches here) and poured himself a mug of black coffee from the 
percolator. It was heavy and slightly bitter, brewed and rebrewed he guessed, not like 
the insipid stuff he was used to.
    It was twenty-five minutes before Toy came back in, apologized for the delay, and 
told him that Mr. Whitehead would see him now.
    "Leave your bags," he said. "Luther will see to them." Toy led the way from the 
kitchen, which was part of the extension, into the main house. The corridors were gloomy, 
but everywhere Marty's eye was amazed. The building was a museum. Paintings covered the 
walls from floor to ceiling; on the tables and shelves were vases and ceramic figurines 
whose enamels gleamed. There was no time to linger, however. They wove through the maze 
of halls, Marty's sense of direction more confounded with every turn, until they reached 
the study. Toy knocked, opened the door, and ushered Marty in.
    With little but a badly remembered photograph of Whitehead to build upon, Marty's 
portrait of his new employer had been chiefly invention-and totally wrong. Where he'd 
imagined frailty, he found robustness. Where he'd expected the eccentricity of a recluse 
he found a furrowed, subtle face that scanned him, even as he entered the study, with 
efficiency and humor.
    "Mr. Strauss," said Whitehead, "welcome." Behind Whitehead, the curtains were still 
open, and through the window the floodlights suddenly came on, illuminating the piercing 
green of the lawns for a good two hundred yards. It was like a conjurer's trick, the 
sudden appearance of this sward, but Whitehead ignored it. He walked toward Marty. Though 
he was a large man, and much of his bulk had turned to fat, the weight sat on his frame 
quite easily. There was no sense of awkwardness. The grace of his gait, the almost oiled 
smoothness of his arm as he extended it to Marty, the suppleness of the proffered 
fingers, all suggested a man at peace with his physique.
    They shook hands. Either Marty was hot, or the other man cold: Marty immediately took 
the error to be his. A man like Whitehead was surely never too hot or too cold; he 
controlled his temperature with the same ease he controlled his finances. Hadn't Toy 
dropped into their few exchanges in the car the fact that Whitehead had never been 
seriously ill in his life? Now Marty was face-to-face with the paragon he could believe 
it. Not a whisper of flatulence would dare this man's bowels.
    "I'm Joseph Whitehead," he said. "Welcome to the Sanctuary." "Thank you." "You'll 
have a drink? Celebrate." "Yes, please." "What will it be?" Marty's mind suddenly went 
blank, and he found himself gaping like a stranded fish. It was Toy, God save him, who 
suggested: "Scotch?" "That'd be fine." "The usual for me," said Whitehead. "Come and sit 
down, Mr. Strauss." They sat. The chairs were comfortable; not antiques, like the tables 
in the corridors, but functional, modern pieces. The entire room shared this style: it 
was a working environment, not a museum. The few pictures on the dark blue walls looked, 
to Marty's uneducated eye, as recent as the furniture they were large and slapdash. The 
most prominently placed, and the most representational, was signed Matisse, and pictured 
a bilious pink Woman sprawled on a bilious yellow chaise tongue.
    "Your whisky." Marty accepted the glass Toy was offering.
    "We had Luther buy you a selection of new clothes; they're up in your room," 
Whitehead was telling Marty. "Just a couple of suits, shirts and so on, to start with. 
Later on, we'll maybe send you out shopping for yourself." He drained his glass of neat 
vodka before continuing. "Do they still issue suits to prisoners, or did they discontinue 
that? Smacks of the poorhouse, I suppose. Wouldn't be too tactful in these enlightened 
times. People might begin to think you were criminals by necessity-" Marty wasn't at all 
sure about this line of chat: was Whitehead making fun of him? The monologue went on, its 
tenor quite friendly, while Marty tried to sort out irony from straightforward opinion.