"My dear fellow!" said Dillon. "We are the guests this whole villa was set up to receive! The last time I saw you was in Náousa, and the last time Helena saw you you stuck pins in her, and—"
Coburn stiffened. He went slowly pale.
"I—see! You're the foam-suit people, eh?" Then he looked with hot passion at the General. "You!" he said grimly. "You I didn't suspect. You've made fools of all of us, I think."
The General said something obscure which could have been a proverb. It was to the effect that nobody could tell a fat man was cross-eyed when he laughed.
"Yes," said Dillon beaming. "He is fat. So his eyes don't look like they're different. You have to see past his cheeks and eyebrows. That's how he passed muster. And he slept very soundly after the airport affair."
Coburn felt a sort of sick horror. The General had passed as a man, and he'd loaned this villa, and he knew all about the installation of the atomic bomb.... Then Coburn looked through a doorway and there was his Greek butler standing in readiness with a submachine-gun in his hands.
"I take it this is an official call," said Coburn steadily. "In that case you know we're overheard—or did the General cancel that?"
"Oh, yes!" said Dillon. "We know all about the trap we've walked into. But we'd decided that the time had come to appear in the open anyhow. You people are very much like us, incidentally. Apparently there's only one real way that a truly rational brain can work. And we and you Earth people both have it. May we sit down?"
Janice said: "By all means!"
Helena sat, with an absolutely human gesture of spreading her skirt beside her. The General plumped into a chair and chuckled. The slick-haired young man politely offered Janice a cigarette and lighted Helena's for her. Dillon leaned against the mantel above the fire.