'Stop it.' The sharp voice arrested him mid-kick. 'Just put him in that chair.'

American rubber-face picked up the chair in question and placed it six feet from the armchair, facing it. Mid-Victorian, I assessed automatically. Mahogany. Probably once had a caned seat, but was upholstered now in pink flowered glazed chintz. The two rubber-faces lifted me up bodily and draped me around so that my tied wrists were behind the back of the chair. When they had done that they stepped away, just as far as one pace behind each of my shoulders.

From that elevation I had a better view of their master, if not of the total situation.

'Griffon's assistant,' he repeated. But this time the anger was secondary: he'd accepted the mistake and was working out what to do about it.

It didn't take him long.

'Gun,' he said, and Rubber Face gave it to him.

He was plump and bald, and I guessed he would take no pleasure from looking at old photographs of himself. Under the rounded cheeks, the heavy chin, the folds of eyelids, there lay an elegant bone structure. It still showed in the strong clear beak of the nose and in the arch above the eye sockets. He had the basic equipment of a handsome man, but he looked, I thought fancifully, like a Caesar gone self-indulgently to seed: and one might have taken the fat as a sign of mellowness had it not been for the ill will that looked unmistakably out of his narrowed eyes.

'Silencer,' he said acidly. He was contemptuous, irritated, and not suffering his rubber-faced fools gladly.

One rubber-face produced a silencer from his trouser pocket and Caesar began screwing it on. Silencers meant business where naked barrels might not. He was about to bury his employees' mistake.

My future looked decidedly dim. Time for a few well-chosen words, especially if they might prove to be my last.