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'Look, have a sleep before lunch. We can sort out precisely what you want later,' suggested Urquhart.
Without another word, O'Neill slumped in his chair and closed his eyes. Within seconds his breathing had slowed as he found sleep, but his fingers kept twitching with little spasms of energy as his eyes flickered beneath their lids in constant turmoil. Wherever O'Neill's mind was wandering, it had not found peace.
Urquhart sat looking at the shrunken figure. O'Neill was drooling, with mucus dripping from his nose. It was a sight which would have left some men feeling pity, but Urquhart felt a cliilling emptiness. As a youth he had wandered the moors and hills on his family's estates with a labrador which had earned his tolerance through years of faithful service as a gun dog and constant companion. Yet the dog had grown old and less capable, and one day the gillie had come and explained with great sorrow that the dog had suffered a stroke, and must be put down. Urquhart had visited the dog in the stable where it slept, and was greeted with the pitiful sight of an animal which had lost control of itself. The rear legs were paralysed, it had fouled itself and its nose and mouth, like O'Neill's, were dribbling uncontrollably. It was as much as it could do to raise a whimper of greeting as the tail swung laboriously back and forth. There was a tear in the old gillie's eye as he fondled its ear to bring it some comfort.
There'll be no more chasing o' rabbits for you, old fella,' he had whispered.
Urquhart had dispatched the animal with a single blow of his rifle butt, instructing the gillie to bury the body well away from the house. As he stared now at O'Neill, he remembered the dog, and wondered why some men deserved less pity than dumb animals.
He left O'Neill in the library, and made his way quietly towards the kitchen. Under the sink he found a pair of rubber kitchen gloves, and stuffed them along with a teaspoon into his pocket before proceeding through the back door towards the outhouses which served as garage, workshop and storage. The old wooden door groaned open on its rusty binges as he entered the potting shed, and the mustiness hit him immediately. He used this place rarely, but he knew precisely what he was looking for. High on the far wall stood an ancient, battered kitchen cupboard which had been thrown out of the old scullery many years before, and which now served as a home for half-used tins of paint, stray cans of oil and a vigorous army of woodworm. The door opened with a protesting creak, and he immediately found the tightly sealed can. He put on the rubber gloves before taking it from its shelf and walking back towards the house, holding the can well away from him as if he were carrying a flaming torch.
Once back in the house, he made his way quietly upstairs after checking that O'Neill was still soundly asleep. As soon as he had reached the guest room, he entered and turned the key in the door, securing it behind him. He was relieved to discover that O'Neill had not locked his overnight case, and taking great care not to leave any signs of interference he began methodically to search through its contents. He found what he was looking for in the toilet bag, crammed alongside the toothpaste and shaving gear. It was a tin of men's talcum powder, the head of which came away from the shoulders when he gave it a slight wrench. Inside there was no talcum powder but a small self-sealing polythene bag, with the equivalent of a tablespoon full of white powder nestling in one comer.
He took the bag over to the polished mahogany writing desk which stood by the window, and extracted three large sheets of blue writing paper from the drawer before slowly pouring the contents of the bag into a small mound oh top of one of the blue sheets. Gingerly he opened the tin he had brought from the potting shed and out of it spooned another similarly sized pile of white powder onto a second sheet. Using the flat end of the spoon as a spatula he proceeded with the greatest care to divide both mounds of white powder into two equal halves, scraping one half of each onto the third page of writing paper. With relief he could see that they were of an almost identical colour and consistency, the white grains standing out against the smooth blue background, and he mixed the two halves quickly together to hide the fact that they had ever been anything but one and the same. He made a single crease along the middle of the paper, and prepared to pour the mixture back into the polythene bag.
At that moment it hit him. The conviction which had filled his veins turned to burning acid, the certainty which had guided his hand suddenly deserted him, and the composure in which he took so much pride vanished. His will had become a battleground. The morality and restraint which the system had tried to beat into him from birth screamed at him to stop, to change his mind, even now to turn back, while his guts told him that morality was weakness. What mattered was reality. And the reality was that he was about to become the most powerful man in the country - so long as his nerve held.
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