They did not understand that Ralph Unterzuyder, alias Carruthers Straley, worked alone.
They would find it out. And so would Bigger Bailes.
He answered her direct question stiffly. "I shall continue to back off, Fayette. Love is an emotion which can be defined in various unflattering terms. I would not care to tumble your romantic castles! My mother—"
"Aha! Your mother!" She leaped upon the word with a knowing and very wide grin. Then she took advantage of his pinned position against the bulkhead to kiss him again, determinedly and hard. For a wild half of eternity, his senses were swept away on a skittering whirlwind. Then by main force he tore away and lunged down the corridor.
"Mr. Straley!" There was a bubble of repressed laughter. "I was going to ask if you'd take me to the dance!"
He did not answer. His flight was precipitous. It was not for several minutes that he realized the loss of his glasses had not impeded his vision. He leaned weakly against a bulkhead. Very early in life, his parents had insisted that the inherited weak eyes of the Unterzuyders be made normal with ocular aids. Indeed, powerful, dark eye-glasses had grown, over the generations, to be a symbol of Unterzuyder autocracy.
His parents had been wrong.
Perhaps they had been wrong in other things.
He shuddered. Without his eye-glasses, he hardly felt himself to be an Unterzuyder.