"No time, I suppose. You must work very hard."

"So people tell me. It's just that I prefer to spend the hours between six p.m. and midnight making fifty thousand dollars than watching actors pretend to kill each other on television."

Peters laughed. "The most imaginative brain in the City turns out to have no imagination."

"I don't follow that."

"You don't read novels or go to the cinema, either, do you?"

"No."

"You see? You've got a blind spot-you can't empathize with fiction. It's true of many of the most enterprising businessmen. The incapacity seems to go with heightened acumen, like a blind man's hypersensitive hearing."

Laski frowned. Being analyzed put him at a disadvantage. "Maybe," he said.

Peters seemed to sense his discomfort. "I'm fascinated by the careers of great entrepreneurs," he said.

"So am I," Laski said. "I'm all in favor of pinching other people's brain waves."

"What was your first coup, Felix?"

Laski relaxed. This was more familiar territory. "I suppose it was Woolwich Chemicals," he said. "That was a small pharmaceuticals manufacturer. After the war they set up a small chain of High Street chemists' shops, with the object of guaranteeing their markets. The trouble was, they knew all about chemistry and nothing about retailing, and the shops ate up most of the profits made by the factory.

"I was working for a stockbroker at the time, and I'd made a little money playing the market. I went to my boss and offered him a half-share in the profits if he would finance the deal. We bought the company, and immediately sold the factory to ICI for almost as much as we paid for the shares. Then we closed the shops and sold them one by one-they were all in prime sites."

"I'll never understand this sort of thing," Peters said. "If the factory and the shops were worth so much, why were the shares cheap?"

"Because the enterprise was losing money. They hadn't paid a dividend for years. The management didn't have the guts to cash in their chips, so to speak. We did. Everything in business is courage." He started to eat his sandwich.