That was standard. When the General arrived; when the occasional
delivery of telephoned-for supplies came; on the one occasion when a
peddler on foot had entered the ground. It lacked something of being the
perfect atmosphere for a honeymoon, but it was the way things were.
Presently there were headlights outside. The Greek butler went to greet
the guests. Coburn and Janice heard voices. The General was in
uproarious good humor. He came in babbling completely uncomprehensible
English.
There was Helena. She smiled warmly at Coburn. She went at once to
Janice. "How do you do?" she said in her prettily accented English. "I
have missed not working for your husband, but this is my fiance!"
And Janice shook hands with a slick-haired young Greek who looked
pleasant enough, but did not seem to her as remarkable as Coburn.
Then Dillon stared at Coburn.
"The devil!" he said, with every evidence of indignation. "This is the
chap--"
The General roared, and Coburn said awkwardly: "I owe you an apology,
and the privilege of a poke in the nose besides. But it was a
situation--I was in a state--"
Then the General howled with laughter. Helena laughed. Her fiance
laughed. And Dillon grinned amusedly at Coburn.
* * * * *
"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 Naousa, 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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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