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.
“They seem very ... earnest,” I said, wondering not only what I was
supposed to think but, more to the point, what I _did_ think of the
whole business.
“I’ll say they are! I tell you, Gene, I’ve never seen anything like it.
The thing’s bigger even than that damned crooner I handled ... you may
remember the one. Everyone has been calling up and, look!” He pointed
to several bushel baskets containing telegrams and letters. “This is
only a fraction of the response since the telecast. From all over the
world. I tell you, Gene, we’re in.”
“What about Cave? Where is he?”
“He’s out on Long Island. The press is on my tail trying to interview
him but I say no, no go, fellows, not yet; and does that excite them!
We’ve had to hire guards at the place on Long Island just to keep them
away.”
“How is Cave taking it all?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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