delicate-featured face, and a voice that seemed too soft and faint to carry as well as it did. She wore a red woolen dress that had no shape except that which her body gave it, and when she moved—to walk or raise a hand—it was as if it cost her no energy—as if someone else were moving her.
“I’d like to see him,” I said while I was accumulating this data.
“Later, certainly,” she promised, “but it’s impossible now.” She turned, with her peculiar effortless grace, back to the door, opening it so that the throbbing purr sounded in the room again. “Hear?” she said. “He’s taking his nap.”
She shut the door against His Excellency’s snoring and floated across the room to climb up in the immense leather chair at the desk.
“Do sit down,” she said, wriggling a tiny forefinger at a chair beside the desk. “It will save time if you will tell me your business, because, unless you speak our tongue, I’ll have to interpret your message to His Excellency.”
I told her about Lionel Grantham and my interest in him, in practically the same words I had used on Scanlan, winding up:
“You see, there’s nothing I can do except try to learn what the boy’s up to and give him a hand if he needs it. I can’t go to him—he’s too much Grantham, I’m afraid, to take kindly to what he’d think was nursemaid stuff. Mr. Scanlan advised me to come to the Minister of Police.”
“You were fortunate.” She looked as if she wanted to make a joke about my country’s representative but weren’t sure how I’d take it. “Your chargé d’affaires is not always easy to understand.”
“Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard,” I said. “You just throw out all his statements that have ‘no’s’ or ‘not’s’ or ‘nothing’s’ or ‘don’t’s’ in them.”