‘MR MINCT AND me came aboard at Carthage,’ said Carly O’Dowd. She referred to the masked man, still playing. ‘Nice to see you, Sam.’
‘And you, Carly. How’s the game?’
‘Worth your time, if you’re interested.’ She was taking a break and joined Captain Ornate and Mr Oakenhurst at their table. ‘Some rough edges you could smooth out.’ She reached for his long right hand and drew it to her mouth. ‘Lucky, Sam?’ She kissed the tip of his index finger.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
Roy Ornate had grown expansive on his big pipe of ope. His cheeks glowed, his eyes bulged with bonhomie. ‘I can think of no better pleasure than swinging your feet over the edge of the Abyss and contemplating the damnation of the entire universe,’ he confided. ‘Ha, ha, Mr Oakenhurst. You’ll do!’ His confidences became increasingly mysterious. ‘What a thrill, eh? To take the whole damned vessel to the edge - cargo, crew and passengers - and hang upon the lip of some hellish niagara - every day gambling the same stake against a thousand new disasters - all the devil’s winning hands - and every day carry back from the brink - what? Playing dice with God and not a damned thing any of you fellows can do about it. I know the only man good enough to stop this planet going the way of the rest and that’s Paul Minct, and he won’t do it. I would, but I can’t. And that, sir, should permit me a few privileges…’
Neither Mr Oakenhurst nor Mrs O’Dowd could follow his reasoning.
‘You have a great admiration for this Mr Minct,’ said Sam Oakenhurst.
‘He’s my hero,’ admitted Captain Ornate with a confiding gesture.
Now the Indian Carly O’Dowd had identified as Rodrigo Heat divorced himself from the game and moved heavily over the floor to stand beside an empty chair next to Captain Ornate.
Sam Oakenhurst received the impression that the masked man had sent Heat to him. The Indian’s massive head inclined towards the seat but his eyes were on Carly O’Dowd. ‘You have a high price, lady, but that don’t scare me.’
Sam Oakenhurst knew only one way of responding to such boorishness and his words were out before he had properly calculated the situation. He said evenly that if Mr Heat pursued that thread of conversation he would be obliged to invite the Indian outside to the place familiarly known as - and here he looked to Captain Ornate to tell him the name again ...
‘Bloody Glade,’ said Roy Ornate, still benign. ‘But we discourage its use. This M&E is better than my own.’ He was trying a mixture, he said, recommended by Paul Minct. He displayed a garish package: Meng & Ecker’s Brandy Flake.
‘Bloody Glade,’ said Mr Oakenhurst, ‘and settle the matter alia gentilhombres.’
Whereupon Mr Heat laughed open-mouthed and asked what was wrong with his conversation.
Understanding, now, that he was being provoked, Sam Oakenhurst could only continue. His honour gave him no choice. ‘It demeans a lady,’ he explained.
Mr Heat continued to laugh and asked where the lady in question happened to be, which led to a silence falling in the room, since Mr Oakenhurst’s principles, if not his courage, were shared by the majority of the floor’s diamentes brutos.
‘Very well,’ said Mr Oakenhurst after a moment. ‘I will meet you in the usual circumstances,’ and as if he had settled some minor matter he turned back to signal the surly whitey for more drinks and enquire of Carly O’Dowd how her brother was doing in the Border Army. ‘Ain’t they romantic, Carly? I heard they’re winning big new tracts of restabilized up above Kansas.’
‘You’re a man after my own heart, sir,’ suddenly says Captain Ornate, puffing on his churchwarden’s. ‘Would you care for a dip from my special mixture?’ He reached into his coat.
‘Give him my Meng & Ecker’s, Captain Ornate.’
Paul Minct’s cruel voice chilled the house into irredeemable silence.
‘Give Mr Oakenhurst a dip of my own ope and ask him if, at his convenience, he would come to join me later for a chat. It’s rare to meet an equal, these days. One grows so starved of intellectual cut and thrust.’