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his pleasing plumpness intercepted an invisible ray. The door in front of him opened widely so that if he had been balancing a tray, even the largest tray, there would have been no excuse for accident. André Maillaux was not, to be sure, balancing a tray; it had been upward of fifteen years since André had balanced a tray. Even the lightest tray, occupied by the most special cocktails, prepared under André’s own instruction for the most special of guests, was carried after André by another and lesser as André progressed, triumphantly, from service bar to honored table. The tray was held for him while André, with the deftest of fingers, conveyed the glasses; delicately one by one, from napkin-covered chromium to waiting service plates. But now M. Maillaux conveyed only his own pleasing plumpness from kitchen to dining-room.
    He walked lightly, slowly, his eyes everywhere. A busboy filling a saltcellar, his back to Maillaux, spilled a few grains on the tablecloth and brushed them away with his fingers. Maillaux spoke from half across the room. The busboy stiffened and shuddered, and dusted with a napkin where his naked fingers had profaned. Maillaux moved on.
    The busboys wore dinner jackets, black ties. The jackets did not fit so well as to encourage confusion between busboy and patron. The waiters wore red coats with yellow piping and white ties and were a vastly superior breed. Since they could be confused only with one another, their coats fitted very well indeed and their stiff collars held their chins high. The captains, again, wore dinner jackets, and were to be distinguished from dinner and supper patrons only by a kind of enhanced elegance, a certain air of being in costume. There were gradations in captains, and the two who were superior to the others were, by the narrowest of margins, easier in their elegance, wearing it more casually. Now the captains watched the waiters, who laid silver, folded napkins and watched the busboys. André passed among them, watching everybody. The most superior of the captains stiffened under André’s gaze, and watched the waiters with new, more worried, intensity. When André looked at a table, taking in its silver, its napkins, its place plates, the captain responsible looked at it with sudden, acute anxiety and, with a kind of desperation, counted the number of forks displayed, the alignment of the knives. The waiter who had placed the forks, aligned the knives, stiffened under the redoubled scrutiny and wished himself elsewhere, possibly in another trade.
    The lesser captains bowed slightly to André Maillaux, and the greater captains bowed also but permitted themselves a gently breathed “M’sieu,” one to each. To these, André nodded; he said, “Good morning, Henri” to one and, “Good morning, Armand” to the other. He spoke without accent to his staff, and usually in English. To the patrons, who naturally expected it, he spoke the easier words in French and the others in accented English. André, who was a man of intelligence, precision of mind and well-established instincts, had no difficulty in remembering, and reproducing, the accent he had brought to the United States twenty years before, from Paris. He gave attention to such details, and to others.
    William, who was greater than the greatest of the captains, who was only lesser than André could not have been distinguished from any other good-looking man in his early forties who happened to be wearing striped trousers in a deserted restaurant at eleven-thirty in the morning. He was sitting on a stool of the customers’ bar, off the foyer, conversing with Hermann, the head bartender, their conversation being partly professional and partly social. Hermann drew himself up slightly when André, near the end of his progression through the dining room, approached the bar. He said, “Good morning, Mr. Maillaux.”
    William slid from the bar stool,