Coleman was at home. After a brief delay he appeared himself at the door. He was wearing pyjamas, and his face was covered with red-brown smears, the tips of his beard were clotted with the same dried pigment.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” asked Mrs. Viveash.
“Merely washing in the blood of the Lamb,” Coleman answered, smiling, and his eyes sparkling blue fire, like an electric machine.
The door on the opposite side of the little vestibule was open. Looking over Coleman’s shoulder, Gumbril could see through the opening a brightly lighted room and, in the middle of it, like a large rectangular island, a wide divan. Reclining on the divan an odalisque by Ingres—but slimmer, more serpentine, more like a lithe pink length of boa—presented her back. That big, brown mole on the righ
