him unreasonably. Appolonius was saying blandly:

"I think it is time for me to reveal my great good fortune! I offer a toast to the Neoplatonist Autonomous Republic-to-be! Some think it a lie, and some a swindle and me the would-be swindler. But drink to its reality!"

He drank. Then he beamed more widely still.

"I have secured financing for the bribes I need to pay," he explained. All his chins radiated cheer. "I may not reveal who has decided to enrich some scoundrelly politicians in order to aid my people, but I am very happy. For myself _and_ my people!"

"That's fine!" said Mannard.

"I shall no longer annoy you for a contribution," Appolonius assured him. "Is it not a relief?"

Mannard chuckled. Appolonius the Great was almost openly a fake; certainly he told about his "people" with the air of one who does not expect anybody to take him seriously. The story was that somewhere in Arabia there was a group of small, obscure villages in which the doctrines of Neoplatonism survived as a religion. They were maintained by a caste of philosopher-priests who kept the population bemused by magic, and Appolonius claimed to have been one of the hierarchy and to be astonishing all Europe with the trickery which was the mainstay of a cult. It sounded like the sort of publicity an over-imaginative press-agent might have contrived. A tradition of centuries of the development and worship of the art of hocus-pocus was not too credible. And now, it seemed, Appolonius was claiming that somebody had put up money to bribe some Arab government and secure safety for the villagers in revealing their existence and at-least-eccentric religion.

"I'd some visitors today," said Coghlan, "who may have been using some of your Neoplatonistic magic." He turned to Mannard. "By the way, sir, they told me that I am probably going to murder you."

Mannard looked up amusedly. He was a big man, deeply tanned, and looked capable of looking after himself. He said:

"Knife, bullet, or poison, Tommy? Or will you use a cyclotron? How was that?"

Coghlan explained. The story of his interview with the harassed Duval and the skeptical Ghalil sounded even more absurd than before, as he told it.

Mannard listened. The hors d'oeuvres came. The soup. Coghlan told the story very 

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