“At least.”

“Guy on the label looks happy, don’t he? Like he’s about to do one of those dances where they fold their arms and it looks like they’re sitting down, but there’s no chair under ’em. You or I tried something like that, we’d fall on our ass.”

“I might anyway,” I said.

“It’s cheap shit,” he said, “but all the time I been pouring it, you’re the first person who didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” I said. “All I said was it must have been diluted with nail polish remover.”

“You said formaldehyde.”

“I did?” I thought for a moment. “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you give me another?”

“You sure, buddy?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” I said, “but give me another all the same.”

The second drink was a little easier to take, and a third might have been easier still, but I had the sense not to find out. I walked out of the Wexford Castle feeling better than I had when I’d walked in, and what more can anybody ask from a bottle of vodka?

I pressed on to Hugo Candlemas’s brownstone, and in the vestibule I found his doorbell and tried to decide whether I would have had to switch my attaché case from one hand to the other in order to ring it. After some reflection I decided that it would depend on which hand I was holding the case in to begin with. If I had it in my left hand, it would have been child’s play to reach out and poke the button with my right forefinger. But if I’d been holding the case in my right hand, it would have been awkward in the extreme to reach all the way across my body and push the button with my left forefinger. Therefore-

Therefore nothing. The case was either upstairs or it wasn’t, and I’d know in a minute. I had both hands free at the moment-no attaché case, alas, and no tan leather portfolio with gold stamping, either. I picked out one of my ten fingers and rang the bell.