— You'd better ask this nice lady right here, said a man who was fluttering a pamphlet titled Toilet Training and Democracy in one hand, leading a seven-year-old girl with the other.
— I'm the little girl from downstairs, the child said to Esther. — Mummy sent me up to ask you could you give me some sleeping pills. . Esther set off with her to the bathroom, where they interrupted someone who was looking through the medicine cabinet. — Oh, sorry… he said, — just wanted to see if there were any razor blades here. . He left with difficulty. Emerging a minute later, she was caught forcefully by the wrist. — Look, you've got a kitten, I've got to tell you the one about Pavlov and his kitten. You know Pavlov, he had dogs. Pavlov rang a bell and whfffft, they salivated, remember? The dogs I mean. Well this time Pavlov has a kitten. . Voice and man were swept away, and Don Bildow was not where she had seen him. But Ellery was coming toward her smiling. She raised her face, smiling; and he stopped short, at the couch between them, where sitting alone was a man whose profession was as immediately obvious as that of the rickshaw boys of Natal, who whitewash their legs. A bow tie of propeller proportions stood out over extra-length collar bills on a white-on-white shirt, protected by many folds of a cloth which somehow retained the gracious dignity of transatlantic origin in spite of the draped depravity in its cut. -Benny! I'm glad you got here.
— Business is business, said Benny, raising his glass.
— What do you think of the idea?
— Terrific.
— I've got the guy all lined up. We're going to pay his family when he goes through with it, half now, half on delivery. But it's got to look accidental.
— Listen to this, said Benny. — I thought of this last night.
— What? An angle?
— Well, I didn't know whether you wanted to gag it up or make it arty or what. You know. We could have built a nice artistic number around it. Some ballet, with a story line in the background. Sweet. Or I thought if you wanted to gag it up we could make a kind of musical out of it. You know? Girls. Exploding cigars.
— Yeah but look, that's not quite. .
— I know, we couldn't do that angle anyway, the cigars. We've got a couple of good cigar accounts that would yell. No. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, what you guys really want is stark human drama. The real thing. So listen to this. I thought of this last night.
— Yeh…
— From a church. He does it from a church steeple.
— Christ! Benny, you'll win the Nobel Prize for that. It's a natural.
— I figured how we can make it look accidental enough. There's this church up in the Bronx right across from a dancing school. We'll have the cameras up there doing a show on kids learning ballet dancing, see? Then when we get the word all we have to do is break in and dolly them around right out the window. Beautiful camera angle.
— But what about the priest? He might screw it up if he's around.
— He'll be around. He'll be busy inside, saying a Mass.
— It's terrific. That's all I can say. Ellery spoke with his eyes lowered, in thoughtful admiration. Then he raised them. — You deserve a drink. Where'd you think of it, alone or in a story conference?
— In church, said Benny.
— But Anna baby, came a voice from the end of the couch, filling the gap of Ellery's marveling silence, — they boiled Sir Thomas More's head for twenty minutes just so it would hold together, before they stuck it up on London Bridge. .
— Right there, said the tall woman, nearer Esther, — in front of God and everybody. That's the way those things always happen. Do you think I have on too much perfume? I have sinus trouble and I never know. Isn't it warm in here.
— Well, your furpiece. . Esther began, turning to face her.
— I know, my dear, but to tell you the truth I don't dare put it down anywhere. — I'm sure it would be safe in my bedroom.
— Oh, then you're Esther. My dear I'm sorry, I didn't mean. .
— It's all right, you're probably right. I don't know a lot of the people here myself.
— Tell me Esther, has he come yet?
— Who?
— Your guest of honor, of course. .
— Do you know him?
— Hardly. But I've seen his picture so many times. And I own his book. I heard him speak once, about families, I mean about having children and that sort of thing. I can't bear them myself. I mean bear them, literally you know, she laughed. — A tipped uterus, you know. There seem to be so many nowadays, you run into a tipped uterus wherever you turn. .
They both turned hopefully to look across the room, where the door opened. — My dear he is probably someone quite notable. You have to be, to go about with an alarm clock strung around your neck. .
— Mendelssohn Schmendelssohn, someone else said. — I'm talking about music.
— Wasn't that silly of me, said the tall woman, watching Esther cross the room toward the couch. — Telling her a thing like that when here I am two months gone. It just goes to show what habit will do.
— I think Sibelius' fourth is his best.
— Fourth, schmorth; it's his only.
— It just goes to show that you can't trust nature.
Across the room, Mr. Feddle already was engaged, inscribing a Copy of Moby Dick. He worked slowly and with care, unmindful of immediate traffic as though he were indeed sitting in that farmhouse in the Berkshires a century before.
Maude looked up and said, — Isn't it funny, how dark it seems over there, I mean where they are, do they make the corner dark or did they just gather there because it's dark there. . Then she saw that the heavy-set man was in uniform, and said, — Oh. What are you? — Army Public Relations, he said, looking up again at the group in the dark corner. — They look like something out of a Russian novel, he said. — Chavenet, said Maude, looking up at him with wide unblinking eyes. — Yeh, him, said the officer. — Just because I'm not an intellectual don't mean I don't read books. Together they stared across the room; and Maude, feeling his warm hand on the back of her neck, relaxed somewhat.
A few years before, someone who had once seen one rather unfortunate print of Mozart (it was in profile, the frontispiece in a bound score of the Jupiter Symphony printed in Vienna), and soon after looked once at the profile of the man now standing stoop-shouldered across the room in an open-collar green wool shirt, remarked that he looked (for all the world) like Mozart. Safe away by a century and a half, this was repeated often, most especially by those who persisted as his friends, wished to say something complimentary about him, and had never seen the frontispiece to the Vienna-bound Jupiter Symphony.
— I know him, the tall one, Maude said. — He's been around a long time.