The provided text is an excerpt from a 1966 novel titled "The Wrong Venus" by Charles Williams, offering readers several chapters that introduce the protagonist, Lawrence Colby, a man with a remarkably varied and colorful past who views his life as uneventful until he meets Martine Randall. The narrative quickly moves to a suspenseful scenario aboard an airplane where Colby, who is smuggling three hundred Swiss watch movements in a special vest, is discovered by the intelligent and quick-witted Martine during a bout of extreme turbulence. The plot rapidly accelerates as Colby and Martine work together to stop the ticking watches with crème de menthe to avoid detection by Customs, leading to a complex and chaotic adventure in Paris involving a kidnapping, a scheme to deceive a reporter, the recovery of a ransom, and the eventual unmasking of the true motivations of a best-selling novelist's assistant and her boss. The latter part of the excerpt details their elaborate plan to smuggle the kidnapped woman out o

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.