* * * * * After a moment, in which the spinning universe settled down to a more reasonable pace, Marc prodded his head with a cautious finger and, finding it still where he'd remembered it, looked up. "What happened?" he asked. He waited for a reply that was not forthcoming. The agency employees, still rigid at their desks, merely stared back at him with what appeared to be only faintly disguised contempt. Then a door slammed somewhere at the far end of the office and Memphis McGuire, Marc's current secretary, big as the city for which she was named and twice as colorful, swung heavily into view. Just barely avoiding a collision with a desk, she started down the aisle. Angrily waving a sheaf of papers over her head, her multi-colored dress flapping loosely about her hammy legs, Memphis looked like nothing so much as a circus tent, flag unfurled, being blown along in a typhoon. Reaching Marc, she stopped in front of him, her weight settling itself around her with a sudden shake. She bent down and waved the papers accusingly under his nose. "You louse!" she bellowed. "You utter, ring-tailed louse!" Marc stared up into her scowling face like a bewildered child who had just been spanked for saying her prayers. It didn't make sense. None of it. Everyone ... the world, itself ... had chosen this day to turn on him. That Memphis, too, should enlist in the ranks of his demented attackers was just too much. He felt like crying. Always, from the very first day of her employment, Memphis had been his staunchest supporter. She had championed his every cause. It was inconceivable that, now, on this mad morning of meaningless outrage, she should turn against him. What had happened? Had she ... and everyone else in the world ... gone stark, raving mad? "Wha ... what's going on here?" Marc stammered. "Has everyone gone crazy?" "Crazy is the word!" Memphis thundered. "I must have been clear out of my mind to stay up half the night typing these reports! There's just one thing I want to know. When I sent Miss Hicks into your office with these papers, did you or did you not tell her to go hang them in the lavatory? Just answer me that! That's all!" She straightened up and glowered down at him, a trembling tower of fury. Marc only stared back at her in silent disbelief. "Well, did you!" Her voice pounded against the walls like the beat of a bass drum. "And did you leap at Miss Dugan when she went in with the mail? And chase her around the room! Deny it! I dare you! Just you try and I'll smash the ears right off your two-faced head!"