‘Not in the least, sir.’ Gene was calm, and Gene’s smile was tender.

‘It will not be under the eventual control of the Party, or whatever you may call the organization that receives orders from Moscow?’

‘Oh no. The purpose of the “P. & P.”, Mr. Staybridge, will be to unite people of all political faiths who believe in scientific control of politics, whether they are Republicans or Reds — except that, I’m sure, the Reds will denounce us as wishy-washy.’

Mr. Staybridge arose quietly. He murmured, ‘In that case, I shall give Guy a cheque for one hundred dollars for your enterprise, on CONDITION that no copy of the blasted sheet shall ever be brought into this house!’

He went beautifully up to his bedroom and read the same detective story that Fred Cornplow was, just then, reading at home.

When his father was safely gone, Guy fretted:

‘But lookit, Gene, of course “P. & P.” WILL be pro-communist.’

‘Of course.’

‘But you told Father it wouldn’t be.’

‘Of course I did.’

‘But that’s a lie.’

‘Of course it is. Do you intend to go down to police headquarters and pin up posters announcing we’re going to take over the constabulary, soon as we get the strength?’

Howard intruded, while the thrushlike Annabel Staybridge admired his copper-shining nobleness:

‘Thunder, no, Guy, you certainly wouldn’t do that?’

‘No, maybe not,’ said Guy, rubbing his large Staybridge nose, wiping his spectacles, in a jittery manner. It was only of late that he had gone from poetry into the lusher fields of communism and Holy Russia.

Gene exulted, ‘With the seven-fifty the New York Coheeze has promised us, that makes eleven hundred and fifty dollars we’ve raised to start Protest & Progress. Think you can get a hundred out of your father, Howard — Sara?’

‘Well, the old man is pretty down on the Reds, but he’s a kindhearted old skate, if you’re patient and let him get his bellyaching over,’ rejoiced Howard.

‘Even without it, we’ll be able to get out one number, anyway — and what a terrible printing job THAT’S going to be!’ said Gene.

Eugene was a year or two younger than the Dianic Sara, a quarter of an inch shorter, and not having, like Sara, studied French at Vassar, he could not speak it. (Neither could Sara.) But so easy was he, so understandingly did those bright dark eyes look into her, that Sara was flattered to be called by her first name, was captivated by Gene’s power — the result of his excellent endocrine glands — and interpreted it as her conversion to communism. She had done a little communism, just as she had done a little tennis, Thomas Wolfe, golf, Bach diving, William Faulkner, biochemistry, Buddhism, vegetarianism, and Buchmanism. Now she plunged deep, and at one end of Putnam Staybridge’s chaste drawing-room Guy and Eugene and she happily agreed that within five years Putnam would be set by the American Soviets to digging canals.

But Annabel and Howard were at the other end of the apartment, and nothing like so revolutionary.