"From the time Francis Walsingham started running his agents in Geneva and Amsterdam to find out about King Philip's invasion of England, your secret service has had its links with the scholars," he said quietly. The antique inflection to his speech, like its faint Castilian lisp, was barely discernible. "Scholarship, religion, philosophy-they were killing matters in those days, and at that time I was still close enough to my human habits of thought to be concerned about the outcome of the invasion. And too, it was still respectable among scholars to be a war-rior, and among warriors to be a scholar, which it is no longer, as I'm sure you know."

Asher's old colleague, the Warden of Brasenose, sprang to mind, tutting disapprovingly over some minor Balkan flare-up in the course of which Asher had nearly lost his life, while Asher, cozily consuming scones on the other side of the hearth, had nodded agreement that no,h'rm, England had no business meddling in European politics, damned ungen tl emanly,hrmph, mphf. He suppressed his smile, unwilling to give this slender young man anything, and kept silent. He leaned his shoul-ders against the sooty brick of the station wall, folded his arms, and waited.

After a moment Ysidro went on, "My solicitor-a young man, and agreeable to meet with his clients at late hours if they so desire-did mention that, when he worked in the Foreign Office, there was talk of at least one don at Oxford and several at Cambridge who 'did good work,' as the euphemism goes. This was years ago, but I remembered it, out of habit, and of interest in things secret. When I had need of an-agent-it was no great matter to track you down by the simple expedient of comparing the areas about which papers were published and their prob-able research dates with times and places of diplomatic unease. It still left the field rather wide, but the only Fellow younger than yourself who might possibly have fit the criteria of time and place would have diffi-culty passing himself off as anything other than an obese and myopic rabbit..."