“Just a moment,” Ignatius said cautiously. “What is that awful noise? It sounds as if someone’s being sacrificed.”

They stood in the pastel light of the carriageway listening. Somewhere in the patio a human was crying in distress.

“Oh, dear, what are they doing now?” Dorian’s voice was impatient. “Those little fools. They never can behave themselves.”

“I would suggest that we investigate,” Ignatius said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Some obsessed military officer may have slipped into the meeting incognito and may be trying to extricate our secrets from some faithful party member by means of torture. The dedicated military will stoop to anything. It could even be some foreign agent.”

“Oh, what fun!” Dorian shrieked.

He and Ignatius tripped and waddled to the patio. There someone was crying for help in the slave quarters. The door of the slave quarters was slightly ajar, but Ignatius threw himself against it anyway, shattering several panes of glass.

“Oh, my God!” he screamed when he saw what was before him. “They’ve struck!”

He looked at the little sailor shackled and chained to the wall. It was Timmy.

“Do you see what you’ve done to my door?” Dorian was asking behind Ignatius.

“The enemy is among us,” Ignatius said wildly. “Who tattled? Tell me. Someone is on to us.”

“Oh, get me out of here,” the little sailor pleaded. “It’s awfully dark.”

“You little fool,” Dorian spat at the sailor. “Who chained you in here?”

“It was that terrible Billy and Raoul. They’re so awful, those two. They brought me out here to show me how you’re redecorating the slave quarters, and the next thing I knew they locked me in these dirty chains and ran back into the party.”

The little sailor rattled his chains.

“I’ve just had this place redone,” Dorian said to Ignatius. “Oh, my door.”

“Where are those agents?” Ignatius demanded, unpinning his cutlass and waving it about. “We must apprehend them before they leave this building.”

“Please get me out. I can’t stand the dark.”

“It’s your fault that this door is broken,” Dorian hissed at the deranged mariner. “Playing games with those two tramps from upstairs.”

“He broke the door.”

“What can you expect from him? Just look at him.”

“Are you two deviates talking about me?” Ignatius asked angrily. “If you’re going to get this excited about a door, I seriously doubt whether you’ll survive for long in the vicious arena of politics.”

“Oh, get me out of here. I’m going to scream if I stay in these tacky chains much longer.”

“Oh, shut up, Nellie,” Dorian snapped, slapping Timmy across his pink cheeks. “Get out of my house and go back on the streets where you belong.”

“Oh!” the sailor cried. “What a terrible thing to say.”

“Please,” Ignatius cautioned. “The movement must not be sabotaged by internal strife.”

“I did think that I had at least one friend left,” the sailor said to Dorian. “I see I was wrong. Go ahead. Slap me again if it gives you so much pleasure.”

“I wouldn’t even touch you, you little tramp.”

“I doubt whether any hack, under pressure, could pen such atrocious melodrama,” Ignatius observed. “Now stop all of this, you two degenerates. Exercise at least a little taste and decency.”

“Slap me!” the sailor shrieked. “I know you’re dying to do it. You’d love to hurt me, wouldn’t you?”

“Apparently he won’t settle down until you’ve agreed to inflict at least a little physical injury upon him,” Ignatius told Dorian.

“I wouldn’t put a finger on his stupid slut body.”

“Well, we must do something to silence him. My valve can take only so much of this deranged mariner’s neuroses. We shall have to politely drop him from the movement. He simply does not measure up. Anyone can smell that heavy musk of masochism which he exudes. It’s stinking up the slave quarters at this very moment. In addition, he appears rather drunk.”

“You hate me, too, you big monster,” the sailor screamed at Ignatius.

Ignatius tapped Timmy soundly on the head with his cutlass, and the seafarer emitted a little moan.

“Goodness knows what debased fantasy he’s having,” Ignatius commented.

“Oh, hit him again,” Dorian chirped happily. “What fun!”

“Please let me out of these awful chains,” the sailor pleaded. “My sailor suit’s getting all rusty.”

While Dorian was unlocking the shackles with a key he took from over the door, Ignatius said, “You know, manacles and chains have functions in modern life which their fevered inventors must never have considered in an earlier and simpler age. If I were a suburban developer, I would attach at least one set to the walls of every new yellow brick ranch style and Cape Cod split level. When the suburbanites grew tired of television and Ping-Pong or whatever they do in their little homes, they could chain one another up for a while. Everyone would love it. Wives would say, ‘My husband put me in chains last night. It was wonderful. Has your husband done that to you lately?’ And children would hurry eagerly home from school to their mothers who would be waiting to chain them. It would help the children to cultivate the imagination denied them by television and would appreciably cut down on the incidence of juvenile delinquency. When father came in from work, the whole family could grab him and chain him for being stupid enough to be working all day long to support them. Troublesome old relatives would be chained in the carport. Their hands would be released only once a month so they could sign over their Social Security checks. Manacles and chains could build a better life for all. I must give this some space in my notes and jottings.”

“Oh, my dear,” Dorian sighed. “Don’t you ever shut up?”

“My arms are all rusty,” Timmy said. “Just wait till I get my hands on that Billy and Raoul.”

“Our little convention seems to be getting rather unwieldy,” Ignatius said of the mad noises issuing from Dorian’s apartment. “Apparently feeling about the issues is striking more than one nerve center.”

“Oh, heavens, I’d rather not look,” Dorian said, pushing the glass-paneled wisp of a French provincial door open.

Inside Ignatius saw a seething mass of people. Cigarettes and cocktail glasses held like batons flew in the air directing the symphony of chatter, shrieking, singing, and laughing. From the bowels of a huge stereophonic phonograph the voice of Judy Garland was fighting its way through the din. A small band of young men, the only stationary ones in the room, stood before the phonograph as if it were an altar. “Divine!” “Fantastic!” “So human!” they were saying of the voice from their electric tabernacle.

His blue and yellow eyes traveled from this rite to the rest of the room, where the other guests were attacking one another with conversation. Herringbones and madras and lamb’s wool and cashmere flashed past in a blur as hands and arms rent the air in a variety of graceful gestures. Fingernails, cuff links, pinky rings, teeth, eyes—all glittered. In the center of one knot of elegant guests a cowboy with a little riding crop flicked the crop at one of his fans, producing a response of exaggerated screaming and pleased giggling. In the center of another knot stood a lout in a black leather jacket who was teaching judo holds, to the great delight of his epicene students. “Oh, do teach me that,” someone near the wrestler screamed after an elegant guest had been twisted into an obscene position and then thrown to the floor to land with a crash of cuff links and other, assorted jewelry.

“I only invited the better people,” Dorian said to Ignatius.

“Good gracious,” Ignatius spluttered. “I can see that we’re going to have a great deal of trouble capturing the conservative rural red-neck Calvinist vote. We are going to have to rebuild our image along lines other than those I see here.”