"Yes, well, Jim McCarthy said-er-suggested… "

Powell smiled. "He said, 'Those culture vultures are crosseyed, close-minded sonofabitches,' " he drawled in fair imitation. "Well, I suppose he's right.

Tell you what, soon as I polish off Ingemar here, I'll make a couple calls."

Powell was an excellent tennis player and he ended the game with a fierce flurry. With a towel around his neck and his racket under one arm, he led Stratton into the main building of the club.

Stratton waited in the lobby while Powell used the phone in an adjoining booth.

"They're checking on your friend," he reported when he came out. "Have you read Too Late, the King?"

"Yes, of course." Stratton was impressed. It was not David Wang's best-known book, but it was his best work.

"I admired it very much," Powell said. "Clear, sharp, almost lyrical. We've got a copy in the library here."

"He's a special man. Very talented," Stratton said.

"Tell me more." Powell spread out the towel and sat down on an old leather chair.

"God, by the time I met David in the early seventies he'd already been around forever. He was born here in China, of course, but came to the U.S. to study just before World War II broke out. He never went back. By the time I entered graduate school he was famous in academia for his scholarship. I was"-Stratton hesitated-"just getting interested in Asian art. So it was natural to gravitate to Dr. Wang."

"He was originally from Shanghai, right?"

Stratton nodded. "An entrepreneurial family of the old sort. It had been making money, from salt or silk, opium or tea, from time immemorial. Toward the end of the nineteenth century both of David's grandparents, who were business rivals, I guess, got modern. David's father went to Columbia. His mother, who had studied at the Philadelphia Conservatory, was about fifteen years younger. When David's time came to go off to school in the States, he was still a teenager. In the normal course of events, he would have gone home and, as the eldest son, taken over the business."