“You’re sure you got the right guy?”

“As sure as you can be under such circumstances. His trail went back to Caine. He had fresh blood on his garments.”

“Might have been his own.”

“Look again. No wounds. I broke his neck. Of course I remembered where I had seen his like before, so I brought him right to you. Before you tell me about it, though, there was one more thing — just for a clincher.”

I withdrew the second note, passed it over.

“The creature had this on its person. I presume it had removed it from Caine.”

Random read it, nodded, and handed it back.

“From you, to Caine, asking to be met there. Yes, I see. Needless to say…”

“Needless to say,” I finished. “And it does look a bit like my writing — at first glance, anyway.”

“I wonder what would have happened if you had gotten there first?”

“Probably nothing,” I said. “Alive and looking bad — that seems how they wanted me. The trick was to get us there in the proper order, and I didn’t hurry quite enough to miss what was bound to follow.”

He nodded.

“Granting the tight scheduling,” he said, “it had to be someone on the scene, here in the palace. Any ideas?”

I chuckled and reached for a cigarette. I lit it and chuckled again.

“I’m just back. You have been here all along,” I said. “Which one hates me the most these days?”

“That is an embarrassing question, Corwin,” he stated. “Everyone’s down on you for something. Ordinarily, I would nominate Julian. Only it doesn’t seem to hold up here.”

“Why not?”

“He and Caine got along very well. For years now. They had been looking out for each other, hanging around together. Pretty thick. Julian is cold and petty and just as nasty as you remember. But if he liked anybody, he liked Caine. I don’t think he’d do it to him, not even to get at you. After all, he probably could have found plenty of other ways if that was all he wanted.”