The Thief of Thoth

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HAUTLEY QUICKSILVER, who was among the most celebrated and certainly the most distinguished of all the Licensed Legal Criminals and Confidential Agents in the Near Stars, lived with all the luxurious refinements and civilized comforts available to those who have achieved the ultimate peak of their profession.

He had a castle of organic pink quartz on the planetoid Carvel in that asteroid belt known as The Chain of Astarte. It had been designed to his specifications by none other than Smingoth Whibberley, the most noted, controversial, and widely imitated architectural philosopher of the 36th century A.C. There Hautley lived alone with his quaint hobbies, his curious pets, and his truly extraordinary collection of hand weapons culled from 1,376 different planetary cultures. No less than sixteen hundred varieties of weapon were represented in his arsenal—among them devices designed to stab, slice, puncture, detonate, envenom, stun, paralyze, render immobile, implode, decapitate, unlimb, eviscerate or otherwise render hors de combat an unwary opponent With each of these, Quicksilver had made certain he acquired a thorough professional competency upon which depended (and not infrequently) the adroit performance of his occupational duties, if not indeed continuance of life itself.

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