In New York City, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the row of handsome brownstones on 9th Street east of Fifth drowsed in the sun, until 12:01 precisely when Number 9 blew up. It was to solve the horrifying, entangled story behind the blast that our old friend Barney Gantt returned after all these years, with his wife, Muriel, the Globe's 'Dorothy darling,' and their friend Magruder, in a story perhaps too typical of our times. As Muriel said to Barney, 'We have a box seat at a new play, and what it's all about we don't know. But you'll find out. You always do.'

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