Halfway down a corridor, between lawyers and exporters, Cavite, Inc. was discreetly identified in black upon a frosted-glass door. I went inside.
It appeared to me the way I’d always thought a newspaper office during a crisis might look. Four rooms opening in a row off one another, all with doors open, all crowded with harassed secretaries and clean-looking young men in blue serge suits carrying papers, talking in loud voices which together made the room sound like a hive at swarming time.
Though none of them knew me, no one made any attempt to ask my business or to stop me as I moved from room to room in search of Paul. Everywhere there were placards with Cave’s picture on them, calm and gloomy-looking, dressed in what was to be his official costume: a dark suit, an unfigured tie, a white shirt. I tried to overhear conversations as I passed the busy desks and groups of excited debaters, but their noise was too loud. Only one word was identifiable, sounding regularly, richly emphatic like a cello note: Cave, Cave, Cave.
In each room I saw piles of my Introduction which pleased me even though I had come already to dislike it.
The last room contained Paul, seated behind a desk with a dictaphone in one hand, three telephones on his desk (none fortunately ringing at this moment) and four male and female attendants with notebooks and pencils eagerly poised. Paul sprang from his chair when he saw me. The attendants fell back. “Here he is!” He grabbed my hand and clung to it vise-like: I could almost feel the energy pulsing in his fingertips, vibrating through his body ... his heartbeat was obviously two to my every one.
“Team, this is Eugene Luther.”
The team was properly impressed and one of the girls, slovenly but intelligent-looking, said: “It was you who brought me here. First you I mean ... and then of course Cave.”
I murmured vaguely and the others told me how clear I had made all philosophy in the light of Cavesword. (I believe it was that day, certainly that week, Cavesword was coined by Paul to denote the entire message of John Cave to the world).
Paul then shooed the team out with instructions he was not to be bothered. The door, however, was left open.
“Well, what do you think of them?” He leaned back, beaming at me from his chair.