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face, with furrows grooved deep into its surface, seemed sculpted in lead. How that head must have weighed on its bearer!
    "Ah! So it's you? Come on in. I want you to meet the Melancholy Ruffian."
    Crossing the dark, dank-smelling vestibule, they entered a study with faded greenish wallpaper twisting across the walls.
    It was, in all truth, a sinister room, its high ceiling furrowed with cobwebs and the narrow window fortified with a gnarled iron grille. When the bluish light fell on the lock of an antique chest, it fragmented into slivers of half-light. Sitting in an armchair covered in worn green velvet was a man in gray, with a jet black shock of wavy hair across his forehead and wearing light-colored spats. The Astrologer's yellow smock billowed out as he went up to the stranger.
    "Erdosain, this is Arturo Haffner." On another occasion, the embezzler would have said something to the man whom the Astrologer privately called the Melancholy Ruffian, who, after shaking Erdosain's hand, crossed his legs in the armchair and leaned one bluish cheek on three shiny-nailed fingers. And Erdosain looked again at that nearly round face, with its peaceful slackness, where nothing bespoke the man of action except a mocking, skittery spark in the depths of the eyes and a trick of raising one eyebrow higher than the other while listening to conversation. Erdosain made out on one side, between the jacket and the silk shirt the Ruffian had on, the black butt of a revolver. Undoubtedly, in life, faces mean very little.
    Then the Ruffian looked toward a map of the United States, which the Astrologer was facing with a pointer in hand. Standing with his yellow arm across the Caribbean's sea blue, he exclaimed:
    "The Ku Klux Klan had only one hundred fifty thousand followers in Chicago ... In Missouri, one hundred thousand followers. They say that in Arkansas there are over two hundred 'caverns.' In Little Rock, the Invisible Empire affirms that all the Protestant pastors are part of the Klan. In Texas it holds absolute sway over the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Beaumont. In Binghamton, home of Smith, who was Grand Dragon of the Order, there were seven thousand five hundred initiates, and in Oklahoma they got the legislature to remove Walton, the governor, for trying to stamp them out, so in fact the state was under Klan rule until lately."
    The Astrologer's yellow smock seemed to be the robe of some Buddhist monk. The Astrologer continued: "Do you know they burned several men alive?"
    "Yes," said the Ruffian. "I read the telegrams."
    Erdosain now began to take a good look at the Melancholy Ruffian. The Astrologer called him that because many years ago the pimp had tried to kill himself. That was a mysterious affair. Overnight, and after years of exploiting prostitutes, Haffner shot a bullet into his chest, right next to his heart. Only the contraction of the organ at the precise moment of the bullet's entry saved him. Later, he went on with his life just as always, only maybe with a little added glamor from this gesture which made no sense to any of his fellow vultures. The Astrologer went on:
    "The Ku Klux Klan collected millions—"
    In a fit of despair the Ruffian cut in:
    "Yes, and their Dragon—and a dragon is the right word for him!—gets hauled into court for theft." The Astrologer ignored this outburst. "What in Argentina prevents the formation of a secret sect that could grow just as strong as that one did there? And I'll speak frankly now. I don't know if our group will be Bolshevik or Fascist. Sometimes I think the best thing would be to invent some tutti-frutti that would leave everyone guessing. See, I'm being as open about all this as anybody could ask. What I mean to do is make a big something to be the ultimate focus of human yearnings. My plan is to appeal especially to young Bolsheviks, students, and intelligent proletarians. Besides them, we'll appeal to all the world reformers, clerks who fantasize being