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sandwich outside to the fountain and ate alone, or rather with Squanto, the two of them resting on the rim of the circular stone basin. There were goldfish in the pool, and at the center of it, atop a cone of granite, there was fixed the gnomon, or upright part of a sundial, a flat bronze object resembling a carpenter’s square. From a window in the Red Room, Mr. Jimmerson could look out on the scene, at the sparkling plumes of water, at the little shifting rainbows, at the simple bronze of his order, at a chastened Austin Popper. He found it pleasing. This was the proper state of things at the Temple, the right pitch, this drowsy afternoon air of not much going on, a state very close to that of sleep.
    But with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Popper was off and running again. Here was an opportunity. Once more he was alive with ideas. First came the Gnomon blood drive, with the brothers laid out in rows, rubber tubes coming out of their left arms and their right arms raised in military salutes for the news photographers. Then on to the army. The Society’s first duty in this crisis, Popper said, was to set an example, and how better to do it than for the entire male staff of the Temple—excluding the Master, who, in a manner of speaking, had already borne arms for his country—to enlist in the army as a body. It was their duty and it was just the kind of thing to catch the eye of President Roosevelt and the national press.
    The Council agreed and even the cynical Huggins acquiesced. They rallied to the colors en bloc . Popper arranged for full press coverage of the swearing-in ceremony at the Federal Building in Chicago. Bates, Mapes and Epps wore their robes. Maceo and Huggins stood slightly to one side with the rest of the staff in fuzzy 1941 business suits. All were solemn and held their right hands up in a rigid way, fingers tightly closed. Popper himself did not take the oath, explaining to the others that the Secretary of the Navy had placed him on “strategic standby.” Just what this was and how he came to be placed on it, he was not free to disclose, other than to say that he was working for the Secretary in an undercover capacity. From high official sources, he said, he had learned that he was number eight on Herr Hitler’s American execution list, to be shot on sight as a public nuisance.
    Whatever Popper’s naval duties may have been, they did not require him to range far from Burnette, Indiana. He stayed close to the Temple, where he alone now had the ear of the Master, and where he worked long hours developing new schemes for gaining the patriotic spotlight.
    Their next move, he advised Mr. Jimmerson, should be to go to Washington with a carefully prepared plan for winning the war through the use of compressed air and the military application of Gnomonic science. He had already worked out a schedule. First they would pay a courtesy call at the White House and then go to the War Department for a working session with General Marshall. There the full plan would be presented. Afterwards they would hold a press conference and give a report, a kind of broad outline of the plan, cleared of secret matter but including a few tantalizing details. For the newsreel photographers there would be a demonstration of boktos , or Pythagorean butting, the old Greek art of self-defense, which was to be incorporated into the army’s physical training program. That same night, having arranged for five minutes of radio time on the Blue Network, Mr. Jimmerson would sit before the microphone and again discuss the Gnomon victory plan in a general way, closing with some brief inspirational remarks for the nation.
    â€œAir?” said Mr. Jimmerson.
    â€œ Compressed air,” said Popper. “What you’re thinking of, sir, is ordinary air, the air we breathe, which is so soft and gentle we hardly notice it. Compressed air is something else again. It packs a real punch.”
    He