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place.”
    “For Monsieur Bernardel, it must be said he had requested Sullivan’s presence before he knew the Girards were involved. When he was told, he refused to alter his request. He felt it would appear he was withdrawing his support from Sullivan.”
    “And the Girards? Surely they’d prefer not to be at the table.”
    “Monsieur Girard, like our young friend the social secretary, believes that men in public life must be governed by rigid discipline. He would like not to be at the table, but to request a change would be to confess to some sort of weakness. An absurd point of view, but there it is.”
    “So nobody has any fun,” I said.
    “Precisely. A ghastly evening for everyone at the head table.”
    “Well, if nobody will give …”
    “Then,” said Murray Caŗdew, “we must override them.”
    “How?”
    “Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Haskell. The procedure of the evening is as follows. To start with, there are place cards on all the tables.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “When the guests arrive, there is a reception in the Colonnade’s anteroom. When the guests are ready to move into the ballroom and to take their places at the tables surrounding the dance floor, they are handed a printed seating list at the door; they examine it to discover which table is theirs and go on in. Am I right?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “The place cards and these printed lists are being handled by the hotel, are they not?”
    “Yes, sir. Part of my job.”
    Murray Cardew nodded, smiling. “On the seating lists, Mr. Haskell, we will place the Girards at Table Number Six instead of Table Number One. We will place Geoffrey Saville, the British racing driver, and his wife at Table Number One in their place.”
    “But this fellow LaCoste, the social secretary, will spot that the minute he sees the lists.”
    “Ah, that is where you come in, Haskell. He will not see the lists. You are going to fall down on the job, sir.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You are going to—to ‘fumble the ball,’ to use a slang expression, Haskell. Those printed lists will not arrive until the very last moment—some mix-up you will tell LaCoste when he demands to see them. He will have no choice but to check the tables themselves. There he will find the place cards exactly as he wants them. But the moment he has checked, Haskell, you—or someone you delegate for the job—will switch the place cards so that they match the lists which will now, magically, appear. The Saville’s at Table One, the Girards at Table Six. By the time everyone is seated and Monsieur LaCoste discovers what has happened, he will not make a scene. It would be impolite to the guest of honor. He will undoubtedly demand that you be discharged.”
    “That’s just great,” I said.
    Murray Cardew’s smile widened. “I think you can consider your position secure, Haskell, since it was Pierre Chambrun, your immediate superior, who suggested this device to me.”
    So much for Mr. Murray Cardew.
    And so much for that Machiavellian gent who countersigns my weekly paycheck.

THREE
    O FFICIALLY THE BUSINESS DAY was over for me. Before I inherited my present job I would have left the office promptly and involved myself in pleasures dissociated from the world of Pierre Chambrun. Somehow, by his own personal magic, Chambrun had changed my way of life without asking me to do any such thing. I had given up my apartment and moved into the hotel. I found myself having a drink or two at the end of the work day, going to my room to change into a dinner jacket, and spending the evening moving about the hotel, from the various bars to the Blue Room night club, to the private banquet rooms where special events were in progress. A little like an old time western marshal checking out the town at night.
    It was my town, with its own mayor, its own police force, its own public services, its co-operatively owned apartments, its facilities for transients, its night clubs, its cafés, its restaurants,