ever heard. I had to listen to it. It had me flipped."

A gleaming white shirt-front moved into view. A beaming smile caressed him. The short broad person who called himself Appolonius the Great--he came almost up to Coghlan's shoulder and outweighed him by forty pounds--cordially extended a short and pudgy arm and a round fat hand. Coghlan noticed that Appolonius' expensive wrist-watch noticeably made a dent in the fatness of his wrist.

"Surely," said Appolonius reproachfully, "you found no one stranger than myself!"

Coghlan shook hands as briefly as possible. Appolonius the Great was an illusionist--a theatrical magician--who was taking leave from a season he described as remarkable in the European capitals west of the Iron Curtain. His specialty, Coghlan understood, was sawing a woman in half before his various audiences, and then producing her unharmed afterward. He said proudly that when he had bisected the woman, the two halves of her body were carried off at opposite sides of the stage. This, he allowed it to be understood, was something nobody else could do with any hope of reintegrating her afterward.

"You know Appolonius," grunted Mannard. "Let's go to dinner."

He led the way toward the dining-room. Laurie took Coghlan's arm. She looked up at him and smiled.

"I was afraid you'd turned against me, Tommy," she said. "I was practising a look of pretty despair to use if you didn't turn up."

Coghlan looked down at her and hardened his heart. On two previous occasions he'd resolutely broken appointments when he'd have seen Laurie, because he liked her too much and didn't want her to find it out. But he was afraid she'd guessed it anyway."Good thing I had this date," he told her. "My visitors had me dizzy. Come to think of it, I'm going to ask Appolonius how they did their stunt. It's in his line, more or less."

The head-waiter bowed the party to a table. There were only the four of them at dinner, and there was the gleam of silver and glass and the sound of voices, with a string orchestra valiantly trying to make a strictly Near-Eastern version of the _Rhapsody in Blue_ sound like American swing. They didn't make it, but at least it wasn't loud.

Coghlan waited for the hors d'oeuvres, his face unconsciously growing gloomy. Appolonius the Great was lifting his wine-glass. The deeply-indented wrist-watch annoyed Coghlan. Its sweep-second-hand irritated 

 Prev. P 10/60 next