Val’s apartment was in one of the big, expensive, gold plated rabbit warrens which have recently sprung up on Fifth Avenue in the early seventies, opposite Central Park. Coöperative apartment houses, they are called. You pay enough money for a fair sized country estate for the privilege of occupying an apartment for which you have to pay, in addition, a monthly rental that sounds more like a telephone number than a rental amount.
In this apartment was to be found Chong Low, a wizard Chinese cook of bland features and wonderful powers—powers that Savarin himself would not have despised. Here also was to be found Eddie Hughes, Val’s man, who could handle a gun as well as a tailor’s iron, and was equally willing to handle either for his employer. He was a small chap with muscles of chilled steel and the lithe speed of a mountain lion. He smoked when he desired, and he drank, in moderation when he wished, indulging in the former through the simple expedient of taking what smoking material he wished out of the humidors of his employer—and in the latter, similarly, from out the bounty provided in the cellarettes of his employer. Of all of which Val was cognizant; he had given Eddie permission to do this, saying that he would rather have him take
