JERRY BUMPUS
377
pied with their own matters, were oblivious to this display. But I
recognized in Tina's outcry a word which Venolio himself no doubt
could distinguish, but which the ladies mistook for "Noes, " that is,
Tina's naive disapproval of the ladies' confronting me in this way,
expressed in term of not just one "No," but many of them!
And as that hriek pierced the afternoon, the figure spun about as
if suddenly remembering something he left among the trees, or as if he
hoped
to
undo this, to turn back and, reentering, slip under the skin of
the moment: miraculously remaining unnoticed, he would again come
up the lawn, perhaps this time walking sideways, it might help, cross
the terrace, and sit at the table. He would even light one of my cigars.
Then, leaning forward, he would say in the suavest tone imaginable,
"Venolio at your service."
Of course all was forgiven when I confessed not to being Venolio
and apologized for the confusion I had inadvertently created by
seeming to be what I wasn 't, and I moreover was asked to dinner when
I let it slip that I had once heard a certain Venolio mentioned, though I
was regrettably foggy as to when, where, and the circumstances. I was,
however, positive that those circumstances were special, if not indeed
peculiar. Needless to say, these circumstances were of colossal signifi–
cance to Mrs. Sheehan and Ursula Dolmon who immediately set forth
the premise that while sojourning in foreign lands I had actually
encountered Venolio face to face, quite without knowing it was he–
"Stranger thing have happened," Mrs. Sheehan was quick to point
out-and, furthermore, perhaps the right remark or odd nuance would
wisk the fog from my memory. I conceded this wasn ' t an altogether
ironclad impossibility, and I thrilled the ladies by agreeing I just might
even recognize this Venolio were I to lay eyes on him again...
At that, Mrs. Sheehan sent a servant galloping from the room. He
returned with a folder of material Mrs. Sheehan had collected in her
correspondence with Venolio 's agent, one Cooper Goggins. "Perhaps
you know him...
?"
Mrs. Sheehan ventured, but Ursula Dolmon cut
her off-"Ridiculousl That's too much
to
hope for. " Mrs. Sheehan
opened the folder and carefully laid before me a snapshot.
Hugh Venolio in safari costume kneels beside an elephant. One
looks first into the eyes of the beast, vapid in death, then at the rifle
across the hunter's knee and pointed by cruel coincidence at one of
those eyes. Then one looks at the hunter himself. But his face is turned
away as he lean toward the beast as if he is about to touch one of its
vast ears. But one hardly minds not seeing the man's face; one's eyes are
