She gives legal advice to companies that do business in the UK.’

A pause followed, and Robert sensed small talk was over. Balthazar said at last, ‘I had an interesting meeting yesterday with a colleague of yours.’

‘Really?’ Mentally, Robert surveyed the list of candidates. Dorothy seemed the only possibility, but what would Balthazar be doing talking with her? Did he want to take her off his hands? A happy thought.

‘Well, maybe not a colleague. It was Bud Carlson.’

‘Our football coach?’ It seemed preposterous, the socially ambitious New York agent breaking bread with a man who ran gladiators – that was how Robert viewed American football, with its padded behemoths knocking each other around. His mind whirred as he considered new possibilities. ‘Where was this?’ he said, trying to sound casual.

‘Here in my office,’ said Balthazar. Robert could picture the agent in his midtown room, leaning back in his padded leather chair, his handmade shoes propped on his desk, looking out at his splendid view of the Chrysler Building.

‘What was he doing in New York?’

‘He’s almost finished his memoirs.’

‘Good. We can schedule them then. You must know they’re contracted to us.’ It was the one big trade book they had in the forward list.

Balthazar said nothing, and Robert emitted a small groan. ‘Don’t tell me. He wants you to represent him – and renegotiate his contract.’

Balthazar coughed politely. Robert supposed there was no point being an agent if you embarrassed easily.

‘Well . . .’ said Balthazar.

‘Spare me the palaver. How much?’

Balthazar hesitated, as if pained by Robert’s bluntness. ‘I’m not sure money is the problem.’

Any uncertainty about this call was gone. Suddenly irritated, Robert said, ‘You’re telling me he doesn’t want to renegotiate? What does he want then? Another publisher?’

There, it was out in the open now; he had done Balthazar’s work for him.

‘Look, Robert, nothing’s set in stone. Why don’t we set a time now to talk in a couple of weeks? Then I’ll know how Carlson wants to proceed. I don’t want you to think I went looking for this.’

No, thought Robert, but you didn’t send him away either. Not that he could really blame Balthazar. As he waited while Balthazar consulted his busy diary, Robert thought wryly, Some sinecure.

He was disconcerted by the call. Balthazar was precisely the prosperous face of the trade publishing Robert no longer had a role in – indeed he’d been delighted to escape. But he didn’t like being patronised by a big shot from New York and he bristled in time-honoured fashion at the designation of Chicago as the Second City. He had thought that New York’s own sense of self-importance had diminished; not in the book business, it seemed.

Robert had only met Carlson once, at a reception given in the president of the university’s house. A tall, loose-limbed man with a floppy kind of handshake. Affable, perhaps a little shy, quite unlike the stereotypical crew-cut bully, half drill-sergeant, half Nazi, who paraded through American popular culture with a policeman’s whistle around his neck. They’d talked briefly and innocuously, and then President Crullowitch, a former ambassador to Mexico, had intervened to move the coach onto a rich alumnus. There had seemed no point following up this brief encounter, since Dorothy Taylor had secured the book to begin with and said she knew the coach well. Hands off, had been her unspoken message, so Robert had gladly left her to it. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

For here was Balthazar the Beast, as he was known in his press profiles, poaching the one big trade book he had – about of all things an American football coach. Robert had known baseball books could do well, but then it was in Robert’s view a subtler, more graceful game, which appealed as much to intellectuals and statisticians as it did to jocks. Football seemed leaden by comparison.