“How?” demanded the sallow, undersized Musketeer. “Tell me how.”

“I’ll tell you how,” retorted the Huguenot. “By using my American imagination, my American know-how, my American thinking straight to the point. That’s how.”

“Pardon me,” Alfred Smith broke in hurriedly as he saw the sallow, undersized Musketeer take a deep breath in preparation for a stinging rebuttal. “Do any of you gentlemen know of any prizes that will be given for the best costume, any door prizes, anything like that?”

There was a silence as they all chewed their cigars at him appraisingly. Then the Huguenot (Coligny, Alfred wondered? Conde? de Rohan?) leaned forward and tapped him on the chest. “When you got a question, sonny, the thing to do is find the right man to ask the question of. That’s half the battle. Now who’s the right man to ask questions about door prizes? The doorman. You go out to the doorman—he’s wearing a General Montcalm—and you tell him Larry sent you. You tell him Larry said he should tell you all about door prizes, and, sonny, he’ll tell you just what you want to know.” He turned back to his smoldering adversary. “Now before you say anything, I know just what you’re going to say. And I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.”

Alfred squeezed his way out of the mobful of rising tempers. At the outskirts, a Cardinal’s Guard who had just come up remarked broodingly to a black-hooded executioner: “That Larry. Big man. What I wouldn’t give to be around when he takes a pratfall.”

The executioner nodded and transferred his axe thoughtfully to the other shoulder. “One day there’ll be an anonymous phone call to the Board of Health about Larry, and they’ll send out an inspector who can’t be pieced off, and that’ll be that. Any guy who’ll buy up junk pipe and chromium-plate it and then sell it to his friends as new stuff that he’s overstocked in…” Over his shoulder, the rubbery blade of the axe began flapping like a flag in a breeze.