Last Ditch

Начало книги

With all their easygoing behavior there was, nevertheless, something rarified about the Pharamonds. Or so, on his first encounter with them, it seemed to Ricky Alleyn.

Even before they came into their drawing room, he had begun to collect this impression of its owners. It was a large, eccentric, and attractive room with lemon-colored walls, polished floor, and exquisite, grubby Chinese rugs. The two dominant pictures, facing each other at opposite ends of the room, were of an irritable gentleman in uniform and a lavishly bosomed impatient lady, brandishing an implacable fan.

Elsewhere he saw, with surprise, several unframed sketches, drawing-pinned to the walls, one of them being of a free, if not lewd, character.

He had blinked his way around these incompatibles and had turned to the windows and the vastness of sky and sea beyond them when Jasper Pharamond came quickly in.

“Ricky Alleyn!” he stated. “How pleasant. We’re all delighted.”

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