He opened up and for the moment didn’t recognize the large, one might almost say hulking, figure standing there. But then he did. Impossibly, unbelievably, did.

But it was twenty, almost twenty-five… No, it was impossible. Absolutely impossible. He tried to say something. Took a step backward. The other followed him and large, blunt fingered hands began to come up.

Ronald Brett-Home’s mouth twitched silently. His face worked. He had never felt fear before in his life. Not real fear. Not this fear.

But it was almost twenty-five years, and the other had not been young, even then.

He stepped back again, almost tripped on the rug. All of a sudden his hand, shaking, fumbled for his trouser pocket. The Baretti came out, flaming, the first shot blasting into the rug, but the second and third, so close together as almost to be a single roaring, thudded into the bulk of the oncoming…

… the oncoming horror that was upon him, rending and tearing, muttering gutturally in its throat.

“… according to Ronald Brett-Home,” Martha Dempsey was saying, “all sorts of sparks will fly when Professor Ferencsik meets with some of the other guests. Ah, there the wretch is!”

The wretch was evidently her husband, Ferd, whose voice boomed out from the darkness of the terrace.

“And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel, “And robb’d me of my Robe of Honor—Well, “I wonder often what the Vintners buy “One half so precious as the stuff they sell.”

Quint’s hostess was off and he grunted amusement and looked about the room for further entertainment.

Someone said, “Avoiding me, Quentin?”

“Good grief, no. Didn’t expect you to be here. Doesn’t school start in a few days?”

It was Marylyn Worth, looking impossibly blue of eye, improbably blond of hair, and fantastically the nice American-girl type. She had an honest freshness about her that you didn’t find in the Madrid expatriate circle.