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The Absurd was once more puzzling him. This man he was with was so obviously not screwed down tight, and half-finished: kept attacking him—yes, actually assaulting him—with nonsensical approbation! Then he would shoot off, as he now had done, into the néant, soon to reappear with a cheque for a thousand pounds. Was this faery gold? Was he an emissary of Nonsense in person? Yes, would these thousand pounds only be convertible into a thousand absurdities? For such a figure could not possibly deal in a rational currency.

But René poured down more brandy and squared his shoulders. It was his brother-in-law . . . after all, who slept with Mary every night. Mary, stable as a rock, she would not be closely associated with so unstable an entity were she not assured that his money came from a normal mint. No.

Although he had drilled himself into tolerance of the Absurd by the time Percy hustled in, the first impact of the bird's-nest coloured thatch, the rimless glasses (put on to write the cheque), produced a mild spasm of alarm, of the type always experienced when Mrs. Harradson emitted, 'Oo, sir, Professor Harding, sir!'