"Oh, come, Jack," said Justin. "All sanity is relative."
"That's why it's so damned baffling when we find it." Fellowes lifted his glass. "Here's to the one and only sane man I ever met."
Marie, coldly magnificent in ermine, with bits of silver-leaf glittering in her blond hair, appeared in the doorway. She said, "Jack, I'm ready." She didn't seem to mind at all that Justin wasn't going.
II
Charles dined alone on a pickup meal and went to bed early. Undressed, in his third-floor bedroom, he scratched a naked stomach that, at forty-one, was beginning to show a faint bulge, noted a more marked bulge in a side pocket of the jacket he had just removed and hung up.
He dug out its source—an odd little gadget, nicknamed the "spider," which he had shown to Henri Dubois and Corinne Forrester that afternoon when they were in his office. It had happened to be on his desk. Supposed to spray a transparent waterproof film over any surface, its backers were seeking money to promote it as a substitute for raincoats and umbrellas.
There was a hitch, of course—it clung abominably to human hair and for this reason, since it was chiefly intended for women, its financing was still highly problematical. But it had certain other uses, according to the testing laboratories, which its inventor seemed to have missed. Justin must, he decided, have stuck it into his pocket instead of back on his desk. He wondered what it would be like to plaster himself with a form-fitting suit of invisible pajamas.
Then, regretfully, he laid it on the bedside table and got into orthodox nightwear. After settling himself with twin pillows, he reached for a well-worn copy of Esther Forbes' Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, began to browse through its vivid pages.
Again Old Boston came to life. Church bells pealed, small colored sweeps carried their brooms through the cobbled streets, fish vendors shouted the merits of their wares.