“Yes, thank you.”
The old man took from the table an old-fashioned cigar cutter—something like a pair of scissors—walked to the fireplace, carefully clipped the cigar’s end, let the end drop into the ashes of the fire, and then walked to Clete and handed it to him.
“You will excuse my fingers,” he said.
“Certainly.”
“It was cold, the radio said it was going to rain, and you always like a fire, so I asked Jean-Jacques to have the houseman lay one.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” Clete said.
Jean-Jacques produced a flaming wooden match. Clete set his cigar alight while the old man repeated the end-clipping business over the fireplace with another cigar from the humidor. Jean-Jacques went to him and produced a fresh flaming match. When the old man’s cigar was satisfactorily ignited, he asked,
“What may I bring you gentlemen?”
“Ask Mr. Cletus, Jean-Jacques,” the old man replied. “He is the returning prodigal; we should indulge him.”
“Oh, I don’t see how you could call Mr. Cletus a prodigal, Mr. Howell,” Jean-Jacques said.
“You have not been in contact with a certain Colonel Graham, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said. “Prodigal is the word. You’re familiar with the Scripture, Jean-Jacques?”
“‘There is more joy in heaven…’?”
“Precisely,” the old man said. “Cletus?”
“What I really would like, J.J.—”
“I wish you would not call him that,” the old man interrupted. “It’s disrespectful. I’ve told you that.”
“Mister Howell, Mister Cletus can call me anything he wants to call me, unless it’s dirty.”
“Not under my roof he can’t,” the old man said.
“Jean-Jacques, could you fix me a Sazerac?”
“I certainly can, it will be my pleasure. And Mr. Howell, what for you?”
“I’ll have the same, please, Jean-Jacques.”
“And will you be taking dinner here, Mr. Howell?”
“That has not been decided, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said.
“Yes, Sir,” the butler said, nodded his head in what could have been a bow, turned, and walked out of the room.
The old man watched him go, then turned to Clete.
“One of your men is here,” he said. “The Jew. I understand there is a certain secrecy involved, and I didn’t want Jean-Jacques to hear me tell you.”
“His name is Ettinger, Grandfather. Staff Sergeant Ettinger. He lost most of his family to the Nazis.”
If Cletus Marcus Howell sensed reproof in Clete’s voice, he gave no sign.
“Then there should be no question in his mind, wouldn’t you agree, about the morality of going down there and doing whatever Colonel Graham wants you to do to the Argentines?”
“The Germans killed his family, Grandfather, not the Argentines.”