I'll have nothing to do with it. That's all."

Officially, Jason's hands were tied. But secretly he maneuvered the
transfer of a five-layers-down undercover man from Madras to Government
City. And, coincidentally, in the ordinary routine of operation, Raichi
Museum took on a new janitor; a little brown man who grinned constantly
and was fanatical about dust. He was a good, reliable man and when he
reported that neither the Diamond Throne nor any of the other missing
glories were anywhere in the Museum, Jason had to believe him.

As a matter of fact, it wouldn't have done Jason any good to have
installed the little brown man in Lonnie's mansion, either. The
lock--not the apparent one openly in the den door, but the real one--was
as unobtrusive and foolproof as twenty-first-century engineering could
make it. And Lonnie always made sure he was alone and unobserved in the
den before he locked it and sauntered across to bestow a peculiar,
multiple tweak to the nose of Genghis Khan.

He enjoyed the gesture. On Christmas Eve he grinned broadly while the
triptych pivoted in the wall, let him off in the Kruppmartite-walled,
pulsing radiance of his very secret, very, very personal throne room,
and swung back into place.

His grin changed to an expression of imperial dignity as he encased
himself in Catherine the Great's ermine Robe of State and grasped the
Mace of Alexander in his good left hand. But then the royal mien gave
way to a sullen scowl as he hesitated between Charlemagne's Crown and
Amenhotep's Uraeus.

Actually, neither one was worthy of him. Both purely regional coronets
belonged over in the farthest dusty corner behind the curtain, along
with Schicklehitler's shabby baton and that crummy Peacock Throne. What
he really needed was a crown worthily symbolic of the position he'd make
it possible to publicly assume in the not-too-distant future.

It was a damned imposition that he had to put up with. Well, he'd make
them do since they were the best to be had. Adjusting the Crown of
Charlemagne upon his brow, he stood on tiptoe to wriggle his way back
into the embrace of the titanic crystal that was the Diamond Throne.
There, he relaxed and gave himself over to the contemplation of the
glories of Lonnie.

Who but he had developed such an efficient philosophy to such an
unfailingly incisive point? Certainly not Old Boswell who, back in the
early days had thought to be teaching him.

"Rule One, my boy," he remember