CHAPTER 8


Pre-dinner cocktails in the library seemed to be a sort of household
rite--a self-imposed Truce of Bacchus before the resumption of
hostilities in the dining-room. It lasted from six forty-five to seven;
everybody sipped Manhattans and kept quiet and listened to the radio
newscast. The only new face, to Rand, was Fred Dunmore's.

It was a smooth, pinkly-shaven face, decorated with octagonal rimless
glasses; an entirely unremarkable face; the face of the type that used to
be labeled "Babbitt." The corner of Rand's mind that handled such data
subconsciously filed his description: forty-five to fifty, one-eighty,
five feet eight, hair brown and thinning, eyes blue. To this he added the
Rotarian button on the lapel, and the small gold globule on the watch
chain that testified that, when his age and weight had been considerably
less, Dunmore had played on somebody's basketball team. At that time he
had probably belonged to the Y.M.C.A., and had thought that Mussolini was
doing a splendid job in Italy, that H. L. Mencken ought to be deported to
Russia, and that Prohibition was here to stay. At company sales meetings,
he probably radiated an aura of synthetic good-fellowship.

As Rand followed Walters down the spiral from the gunroom, the radio
commercial was just starting, and Geraldine was asking Dunmore where
Anton was.

"Oh, you know," Dunmore told her, impatiently. "He had to go to
Louisburg, to that Medical Association meeting; he's reading a paper
about the new diabetic ration."