Hot Red Money

Hot Red Money Baynard Kendrick Munsey's ASIN: B0028AEA10

FOR Dr. John J. Hughes Dr. Crenshaw Briggs The characters, places, incidents and situations in this book are imaginary and have no relation to any person, place or actual happening.

CHAPTER 1 Maurice Morel, Staff Writer for the Globe-Star Syndicate, and better known in thirtyseven newspapers as Maury Morel, cringed as he slid into the tattered threadbare mackintosh. He had bought it Saturday, two days before, from a Bowery second-hand store. Price $.50. The dealer, slick as his greasy hair, had assured Maury with several appropriate oaths that the coat had been properly fumigated and deloused. Maury didn't believe him, but he needed the mackintosh to keep a date. The man he was meeting had advised him to look as much as possible like a bum. Back of Maury's deadpan expression, sleepy gray eyes, and fatuous grin that could light up his intelligent aquiline face at will, was one of the most complex and fastest working minds in the country. A four-track mind, with double lines running each way! Day and night to avoid a wreck he was alert to keep his signals clear. He had no illusions about that coat. Still, now that he had to put it on his skin began to crawl. He'd been stuck but good for a half dollar. He took a few short steps down the hall connecting the bedroom with the living-room. A bath and inadequate kitchen were the only two other rooms that made up the small apartment he had occupied for more than twenty-five years. The last eighteen with Anne, since their marriage. Not that he couldn't have afforded something better. He was ace man in the G-S Syndicate with a five figure salary. His stories exposing Soviet activities in the United States had appeared for more than twenty years as front page features in the New York Evening Globe-Star and won Pulitzer Prizes for both Maury and his paper a few years before. His long unusual tenure of the cramped unfashionable ground-floor apartment in Morton Court, at the corner of Morton and Hudson Streets on the edge of Greenwich Village, had been a matter of habit and convenience, not of saving money. It was true that the rent was far cheaper there. Since Morton Court was old, it had not kept pace with the steadily rising costs of the city. The saving gave Maury and Anne a chance to travel— Florida in the winter, and occasional trips to California to visit Anne's parents in San

Francisco where she was right now. Anne claimed the main reason she couldn't get Maury moved out of Morton Court was the fact that he could catch a bus downtown on Hudson Street and put him off within half a block of the Globe-Star's building on Barclay. He could reverse the process in the evening coming home, and Maury Morel was a man of tenaciousness and fixed habits. Those very traits had enabled him through the years to dig out and expose to the light of publicity some very well hidden and elusive Communist cover-ups. In addition to providing his paper with some really great stories, he had turned over many juicy morsels to the FBI One very well hidden and elusive Communist cover-up that Maury had never exposed was his own good standing for twenty-seven years in the Communist Party. Tonight he had turned himself into a tatterdemalion. The offensive mackintosh covered his oldest fishing clothes. His feet flopped around in dirty white sneakers. An ancient crumpled fedora topped his thinning gray hair. With the aid of these props, Maury hoped he was well on his way, after six months work, to wrap up the greatest story of them all. He stopped and turned on an overhead light in front of the one full-length mirror set in the door of a clothes closet in the hall. He was a mess, all right, if he ever saw one. He'd been up until four and drunk too much Bourbon while he was batting out some copy the night before. A five-day growth of whiskers scraped miserably against his finger tips as he stroked his chin. Good job Anne wasn't home! The meticulous Maury Morel. She wouldn't have let him go looking like that, story or no story. Cloak and dagger stuff! He hated it like hell. Never had believed in it. That's why he seldom read fiction, and couldn't write it. The get-up made him feel like Dick Tracy, with just about as much pretension to being alive and real. All his life he had lived by facts. He had never needed to smell out a Red by what the man did, or what he wrote, or the company he kept, or the fraudulent patriotic organizations he started or belonged to. That information was Maury's for the asking— when the comrades got ready to pass it on. Never a month went by that the party leaders didn't want some recalcitrant member expelled—deviationists, opportunists, left-wing sectarians—party jargon for nonconformed from Browder on down. Rather than have my party blamed, how easy to make them grist for the Morel mill. One interview of the jerk first-hand, a search of his background, and a survey of his earnest associates, with a few more interviews along the line, and the heat would be on full. A couple of stories would blow the lid off and the details would be quickly completed by the F.B.I. He opened the hall closet door and took down a carton from the top shelf. It was about

six inches long, three inches wide, and two inches thick. It contained a battery operated tape recorder that fitted inconspicuously into his left hand coat pocket. His resentment still growing, he poked a hole through the inside of the pocket and ran a wire from the recorder up to the second buttonhole from the top in front of the ancient coat. The wire ended in a tiny microphone with a button shaped top. Maury pushed it through the buttonhole where it fitted neatly. He had sewed on three buttons that matched the mike the day before. He wasn't anticipating any trouble, but neither was he taking chances. The Reds were playing footsie with capital imperialists again and had gotten cocky—but not so cocky that they weren't careful. Maury was the last to have any illusions about them. He'd been one of the inner circle far too long. When they thought the time was ripe they could be bad bad boys! For twenty years they had been threatening him by mail and phone and picketing papers were his stories had appeared. Too many comrades in the lower echelons understood those smoke-screen tactics not at all. No, Maury had no illusions about Soviet Russia! He had in his time, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently, made the very Kremlin squirm. Cold war, or hot, on Khrushchev's list of Free World annoyances that should be removed, Maury Morel must rank very close to Public Enemy No. 1— he hoped! The day his status changed to good, and the change was whispered to the Central Intelligence Agency, was the day that Maury's house of cards would fall. Meanwhile, be careful! Look at his hands right now! Much too clean. He went into the living room, crumpled up a sheet of carbon and fingered the ribbon of his portable. Between carbon and ribbon he finally got a rim of black beneath his nails and nicely blackened fingers. Back in the hall at the mirror he put a not too obvious smudge at the roots of the beard on one side of his face. “An artist!” he muttered. “Looks exactly like I've been changing a typewriter ribbon. Why the hell didn't I take up sports twenty years ago!” He counted the change in his pocket—a dollar thirty-five. Enough to pay for a beer or two and maybe a shot of whiskey. When he turned out the overhead light in the hall it left the apartment in darkness. In the living room the luminous hands of an electric clock showed 11:20. Maury opened the slats of the Venetian blind and looked out at the courtyard. Six connected houses of five stories each made up the square of Morton Court. They were walk-ups, all, with two two-room apartments to each floor. It was drizzling. That was a break! The mackintosh fitted right in. Lights from several apartment windows threw yellow patches on the flagstone walks that radiated spokelike

out from a scraggly fountain in the center of the court. Across the court from his living room window a high brick slit between two of the buildings led out under an iron grille to Morton Street. The courtyard was deserted, familiar, and depressing. Maury fingered the key to the apartment in his trouser pocket and decided not to take it along. He tossed it on the table, put the thumblatch on the door so he could get in again, and closed the hall door behind him. Upstairs a TV was blaring a commercial preparatory to the Late Show. Under the dim light of the foyer Maury took a quick automatic look at his mail box—a ritual of years even if he went in and out ten times a day. Just one of his habits that lit a slow burn in Anne. Well, she had a few that burned him, too! Out in the courtyard he found it was hotter than inside. He turned up his ragged collar against the driving rain and prepared to sweat it out. The raincoat gave about as much protection as a sheet of tissue paper. In a minute, Maury was soaked clear through. The coat was a steam bath, but necessary to take the recorder along. Leaving the entrance for Morton Street, he turned west and crossed Hudson. In the daytime it was a thundering welter of trucks. Tonight, like most nights, it was deserted except for one speeding yellow cab that flashed by with its flag down carrying some fare uptown. A block further west he turned south on Greenwich, crossed Leroy and Clarkson Streets and turned west again on Houston over to Washington. He remembered once, years before, asking a cabbie for Hueston Street and being told there was no such street in New York. It took a cop to set Maury straight that the New York pronunciation was Howston. It was a Syrian neighborhood. The short stretch of Washington Street was lined with importing warehouses. The air was redolent of strange and pungent eastern smells. Maury stood on the corner for a while, huddled against the wind and rain. A short block away below Charlton Street a red neon sign fuzzy through the moisture read: Beirut cafe. He had broken plenty of stories in his time, but never one with a grade B, TV build-up like this. He had an appointment with a Lebanese seaman named Beshara Shebab. Maury had never laid eyes on the man, or heard of him, until a tip-off was phoned into the office two weeks before that Beshara Shebab might have some interesting information about the ownership of certain large sums of money deposited under the anonymity of numbered accounts in several banks in Lebanon. This information was available—if Maury wanted to play the game under Beshara's rules and was willing to pay. It was the mention of a man named Pringle that had sucked Maury in.

It was Maury's guess that Beshara Shebab had jumped his ship and needed money as well as a certain amount of protection. Hence this bewhiskered midnight meeting in the Beirut Cafe. Somehow this defecting Lebanese seaman had gotten wind that his best bet was Maury Morel. Maury chewed at his bristly upper lip and stared some more at the Beirut Cafe sign. He wanted information badly on a couple of things, and the main one was the identity of a man called Pringle. The second, and probably just as important, was what Moscow was doing with a little matter of fifteen billion dollars of gold reserve that she had accumulated since World War II. It was a double play if he made it. From where he stood it looked like a fifteen billion to one chance that this character Beshara Shebab knew any part of the answers to either question. Except for one fact: part of that hot Red Soviet money was in numbered accounts in a bank in Beirut, Lebanon—the name of that bank was the “Banque du Shebab-Syrie.” The coincidence of the name Shebab was pretty thin. Shebab was probably as common in Lebanon and Syria as Smith is here. Still it was enough to make Maury decide to give Beshara at least one play. The miniature tape recorder in his pocket would run forty-five minutes. That was more than enough to get down in a single interview the leading questions and answers that would prove Beshara really knew something, or to show him up as a phony. Maury tested the on-off switch on the recorder. He could work it easily without being noticed. Or it might be better just to leave the machine on. He'd decide when he found his man. The rain increased in a sudden wild spurt, bouncing off the sidewalk and knocking against his old coat and fedora with audible thumps. He felt uneasy without any cause, touched with a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature and the downpour. Hunching himself down turtle-wise, he hastened south a block on Washington Street and went into the Beirut Cafe.

CHAPTER 2 Inside the restaurant the atmosphere was steamy. Fog seemed to rise from a hundred damp pea jackets, floating ceilingward to form puffballs of moisture around the unshaded electric bulbs. Trapped in the moisture were a thousand smells—shishke-bab that had blackened the skewers for innumerable meals, onions, garlic, herbs, cooking olive oil, and lamb prepared in fifty forms overlay the fumes of whisky, beer, and pungent raki. Exuding sailors crowded the tables, even at that late hour, stuffing food and scooping up

mouthfuls of chick peas, and a yogurt type cheese, in torn-off pieces of thin flat Syrian bread, folded to be used as an edible spoon. Maury stopped for an instant inside the door, checked by the odoriferous warmth, and dazzled by the shining clean white of tablecloths on every table, and the linen napkins, tucked bib-fashion into the sweatered necks of most of the eaters. The napery was a bizarre and unexpected touch in such a murky atmosphere. He didn't see any women, except two olive-skinned waitresses, who moved adroitly among the tables, apparently serving the entire room. Voices boomed against his ears in an indistinguishable clatter of twenty tongues: Russian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish. A Tower of Babel that made Maury feel like an idiot. Probably every man there spoke passable English, and one or two other languages as well. Yet Maury Morel, high-priced syndicated writer, like most of his countrymen had really mastered only English, graduated from college with some utterly inadequate French, and a smattering of German words, which he couldn't even decipher if they were shown to him in German script. No wonder the Russians were beginning to pick our brains out, he thought unhappily. While we were teaching courses in safe driving and rock-'n'-roll, Russia was training a new generation to master other languages. Forty thousand Soviet children were learning to read, write, and speak perfect English every year before they left high school. Maury Morel! Ace Commie fighter of the G-S Syndicate— and the only Russian word he knew was da—which meant yes, he hoped. If it did, it was a word taboo to every Russian diplomat on any state occasion. Nobody came near him. The recorder began to grow to the size of suitcase weighting down his left coat pocket. Back of the minuscule bar to his right, the bartender, a swarthy fat man with nice teeth and mean eyes was watching Maury with an expression that could soon turn into undesirable interest. Most of the customers were eating with their hats on—the visored sea caps of officers in a minority to the flat sailor hats, some with ribbons down the back, others with red pompons on the top, many with the unreadable names of ships done in faded gilt on the front of the hatbands. Maury kept his own hat on and pushed his way through the tables toward the shadowed rear of the restaurant. Too close to a door marked men for pleasant dining, a man in a long-sleeved turtle-neck jersey was sitting alone at a tiny table with a vacant chair across from him. He wore no hat, and a pea jacket lay across his knees half under the table. He wasn't eating, but a half-full tumbler of milky raki stood at his elbow. As Maury drew close, the man flicked a glance at the tattered raincoat and shifted sharp dark eyes to Maury's unshaven face.

“Sit down, Mr. Morel.” Under the table the man used his foot to push out the opposite chair. Maury sat down and looked him over. He was young, somewhere in his late twenties. His lean olive face was burned dark and reddened by wind and sun, but it was the face of a thoroughbred—breeding and refinement in the features. “You're Beshara Shebab?” The young man surveyed the other tables before he nodded. Maury slipped his left hand down toward his coat pocket. Shebab smiled with a touch of scorn. “It isn't really necessary to turn your tape recorder on. That is, unless you want to. I'm only going to give you a few highlights here. Just enough to prove that I do have some information which is valuable to you, your paper, and your country. If we can both be satisfied, perhaps we can go someplace where there is privacy. That will be time enough to turn your pocket recorder on. Meanwhile, could I buy you a raki?” “Make it a beer.” Maury slumped down in his seat feeling discomfited. He'd expected to find almost anything when he invested in the second-hand coat—anything but this poised young seaman with his incongruous flow of faultless English. “I understood you were Lebanese,” Maury said. “Your English is better than mine.” “Oxford. Forty-nine.” Beshara Shebab signaled one of the waitresses and ordered a beer and another raki. When she'd gone for the order, he continued: “However, I was born in the hills above Beirut among the tall cedars of Lebanon. Ever been there?” Maury shook his head. “Wait a while before you go. It used to be peaceful there. Lovely. But my country's a bloody mess today. My father is Director, and majority share-holder of the Banque du Shebab-Syrie. That's why I'm here—on behalf of my father.” Maury looked at the seaman's jersey, and the cracked and blistered palm of one of Shebab's hands on the table. “Oh, I see!” “I didn't make this voyage First Class, if that's what you're referring to. Given a little more dissension, and a few more millions of Soviet money spread around in the proper places to stir up riots, and Lebanon, as well as my father's bank, will cease to be.” “You think you stop that blow-out?” “Certainly not single handed, but there are men high up in your State Department, and in the United Nations, that I hope to be able to see.” The waitress came with the drinks and the check. Beshara Shebab took a crumpled dollar from his pocket and told her to keep the change. She nodded her thanks and went away.

Maury said, “It's a very interesting story for a true romance magazine, but I'm not a fiction writer. I handle facts that I have to prove. Was it necessary to bring me down here at this time of night in this hobo outfit to tell me something that's coming in over every wire service every minute of the day?” Beshara Shebab's young face darkened under the tan. He tossed down the raki that remained in the old tumbler, then picked up the fresh one and added some water from a carafe on the table. The clear liquor in the glass turned milky. “Cheers!” he said. “Since you're not interested, Mr. Morel, let's just drink to each other and we'll go. I can't buy another for that dollar you saw me give to the girl cleaned me.” Maury lifted his beer and took a swallow, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I wouldn't be here, young man, unless I was interested, but this coat and beard stuff strikes me as being a mixture of bird-seed and corn. If you're just a seaman who has jumped his ship, I'll be glad to stake you to a ten-spot tomorrow morning, if you'll come down to the Globe-Star office. But, sonny boy, you have to come up with a lot more detailed vital statistics about who, what, when, and where, if you hope to get a plugged dime out of the generous Globe-Star.” Beshara Shebab was watching three men who had left their table and started toward the front door. They went out. Shebab said, “I'm sure you won't believe me, but I've gotten you into a mess here, Mr. Morel. I'm the son of a rich and important man, but I couldn't have left Beirut alive without the help of friends, who smuggled me onto a freighter as a deckhand. These are the only clothes I have to my name, and I don't have a cent. I heard when I inquired about you that you had the reputation of being a pretty fancy dresser. That's why I suggested those clothes you have on to meet me here. I hope we've attracted no attention—but I'm afraid we're not so lucky. I know we would have if you had dressed in any other way.” “All this could be a build-up, you know,” Maury told him. “Yes, it could. Everything that we've come to regard as inevitable in Lebanon is a buildup for some racket, in the U.S.A. I can give you facts and startling ones, but I want enough money to get some clothes, and I want introductions to several men I have to see.” “What else?” “I want you to fix me up with the immigration authorities if it's possible to do so. I have no passport. If I was picked up, I'd be deported in a day.” “You're overrating the power of the press as well as my credulity,” Maury informed him soberly. “I can't promise anything, except if you want to start talking, to listen to what you have to say.” “Did you ever hear of the Claudius Office?” Again Maury shook his head in a silent negation. He groped in his pockets for a

cigarette and found he had none. He knew plenty about the Claudius Office, but he wasn't putting out right now. The more he could get Beshara Shebab to talk the quicker he would find out what the man really knew. “Hitler set the Claudius Office up in Berlin before World War II. Its object was to uncover every means, fair or foul, of economic penetration into other countries. Robbery on a large scale by securing a maximum profit on foreign exchange, and by acquiring stock to control cartels.” “So the war's over,” Maury said. “Really?” Beshara Shebab put both blistered hands palm up on the table and looked at them sadly. “You say that only because you and your countrymen are watching it now from grandstand seats. They're expensive seats, Mr. Morel —and far enough away from the players, you hope, so that you won't get hit with a foul ball.” He swished his raki around in the glass and took another swallow. “The Russians took over the Claudius Office when they moved into Berlin after World War II. I presume that's the number of the war that you claim is over. Anyhow, the Claudius Office was moved to Moscow, lock, stock, 'and barrel, including many of Germany's best financial brains who went along with it. The headquarters of the Office is housed in a sumptuous villa on the outskirts of Moscow, where it is operating right now—penetrating this country, as well as many others. If you're interested I'll go on.” “Go on.” Maury swallowed some beer. “I'll tell you how. This penetration is being carried out through the use of financial intermediaries—numbered accounts in Swiss banks, some in South America—and my father's bank in Beirut. Without the use of those numbered accounts there would have to be full disclosure of who controls those vast sums of money. If that was known, there could be no penetration.” “Vast sums?” “Russia has a gold reserve which the lowest estimate rates at over five billion dollars,” Beshara Shebab continued. “One of your top financial writers on The New York Times rated it at twelve billion not so long ago. My father rates it at fifteen billion, and he's in a good position to know.” “You were going to tell me what you know.” Shebab leaned closer across the table. “Several million dollars of that Russian gold is in a numbered account in the Banque du Shebab-Syrie. I know the name of the man who controls that account, as well as untold millions more in numbered accounts in Switzerland. That man is here in the United States. I know how he got in, the name he's using, and what he is trying to do.” A sailor got up from a nearby table and went into the men's room, brushing close to the back of Beshara's chair. Beshara leaned still closer to Maury, whitening under his tan.

“I've told you all I intend to, here. If you want more, where can we talk in privacy?” “My apartment,” Maury said uneasily. “It's just a few blocks from here. We can walk it. I assume you have proof to give me.” “It's all right here, sewed into this jacket. I'm getting out of here, Mr. Morel, but not with you. I'm—” Beshara Shebab bit his words off as the man came out of the men's room and returned to his table. “Sit here and wait a few minutes.” Shebab was talking in a barely audible whisper now. “I'm going in the washroom and out the window there. There's an alley in back of this place that runs up to Charlton Street. Meet me there in five minutes and I'll walk on home with you.” He got up and went into the men's room, with his jacket over his arm. Maury slowly finished his beer before he got up to make his way through the tables and out the front door. Quiet, darkness, and drizzle wrapped around him tightly, broken only by the blood-red glow drifting down from the Beirut neon sign. He quickened his steps up to Charlton Street, suddenly anxious for company. If Beshara Shebab really had proof, as he claimed he had, his information was worth money—plenty of money. Hal Gow, the city editor of the Globe-Star might not have the authority to pay it. If he hadn't, Maury would take it up to the Old Man, himself— Walter Jeffers owned twenty-one papers in the G-S Syndicate. He'd pay out a lot on Maury's say-so.-He'd done it before, and Maury had never let him down. At the dark narrow slot of the alley, he stopped and listened, gripped by an apprehension that for him was most unusual. He was off his regular beat, he decided—prowling a part of New York City that by night was as foreign as the byways of Casablanca or Cairo. He looked around at the rain drenched street, deserted and still. At his muted cry of: “Shebab, are you there?”— he was answered by a groan just inside the alley. Numbly, his fears swept away, he took a couple of steps toward the sound and knelt beside the man at his feet. Feeling him cautiously, Maury's hand touched warm blood and the haft of a knife that was jammed to the hilt under Shebab's left shoulder. “Beshara! Who got you, fellow? Was it Pringle? Tell me where I can find him.” He tried to turn the limp deadweight half over, and noticed that the jacket was gone. “Who got you, Beshara?” he asked again. “Tell me where I can find him!” “Try Turlock—Turlock,” Shebab's breath whistled out two more last words: “Amity... rest....” Then the world crashed down on Maury's skull and dropped him like a stone. CHAPTER 3 Mike MacGulley, a brawny longshoreman, knocked off work unloading a freighter docked in Pier 42, about midnight. He had developed a tremendous thirst for himself

after eight solid hours of wielding a bale hook. His first stop under the West Side Highway was in a saloon near LeRoy Street. There, a couple of shots of whisky washed down by half-a-dozen beers made him feel better, but not entirely full. It took three more stops plus an indeterminate number of boilermakers before Mike felt rested enough to navigate an unsteady passage westward to the room he lived in on lower Seventh Avenue. It was nearly one o'clock when he stopped at the corner of Washington and Charlton Streets and squinted owlishly through the rain at the red sign of the Beirut Cafe. He could stop in there and use the men's room, and have himself just one more drink, or maybe two, except experience had taught him that it wouldn't stop there. The two would grow into six and he wouldn't get home until all his money had gone down the drain. Maybe he'd even tangle with the cops again. Still, he was facing a physiological problem that had to be dealt with. He had enough beer inside of him to float that rusty old tub that he'd been unloading. Well, half a block from where he stood was a nice clean alley. No charge. No bar. It had served him before in emergencies such as this one. Tonight it could serve him again. Mike staggered along toward it, steadying himself with his right hand against the wall. A moment later he stumbled over something soft and fell flat on his face. Stunned with the unexpectedness, he lay still for seconds, his arm stretched out in a trickling stream of water that was cascading streetward down a narrow gutter in the center of the alley. Finally he pushed himself to his knees, cursing softly, and groped around in the inky black. His powerful fist closed hard on the heel of a shoe. “'Tis just as I thought—some filthy, lousy, guzzling sot, sleepin' here in me own little alley to make me fall and break me precious neck!” MacGulley wiped his wet hands on the seat of his work pants, found dry matches in the pocket of his windbreaker and struck one. It flared up bright, shielded from the drizzle by his cupped hand. Suddenly his stomach retched, tearing his insides into pieces. White and shaken, he got to his feet, cold sober. “Mither of God, 'tis dead they are, not drunk at all!” he kept telling himself. “Dead as a couple of fish in the harbor. Not one, but two!” It was ten minutes past one before Mike found a telephone booth outside of a nearby closed-up filling station. He dropped in a dime, and dialed Spring 7-3100. On the third ring a man's voice answered: “Headquarters, 82.” “I stumbled over a body,” Mike said. “In fact there's two—up an alley off Charlton Street, between Washington and Greenwich. One's got a knife sticking out of his back. I didn't wait to see more.”

“Your name, please.” “Charley MacCarthy.” MacGulley hung up in a hurry, and hurried back to his humble room. God be praised, he had nothing to do with murders like that. He might go after a man with a box hook, if the fight was fair, but sticking a knife in his back was a type of murder that he didn't hold with. Not a nice thing to do. Police Operator 82, on switchboard detail in the Trouble Turret, frowned as he heard the click of the phone. Some drunk, probably trying to get a vicarious thrill. On legitimate calls the phoner would usually give his name, say where he was calling from, and wait there for the police to arrive. Well, the calls kept pouring to Communications Bureau faster than your eyes could watch the lights flash on. Hoax or not, every one had to be followed through. Operator 82 notified a radio announcer behind the glass cage at the end of the room. Dispatcher 10 threw his practiced glance over the large detailed map of the streets spread out before him, where numbered toy cars were spotted all about the city. Car 26 was at Varick and VanDam, just two short blocks from the alley off of Charlton. Car 31 was at Hudson and Clarkson, almost equally close to the scene of the crime— if there'd been a crime. Speaking into the microphone, the Dispatcher said, “Calling Cars Twenty-six and Thirty-one. Proceed to alley on Charlton Street between Washington and Greenwich. Repeat: Proceed to alley on Charlton Street between Washington and Greenwich. Signal Thirty-two. Dispatcher Ten. That is all.” Reaching over he moved the two toy cars on the map to the new location. In less than a minute both of the radio cars were there, and the brilliant beams from their spotlights were lighting the alley. Looking incredibly long through the raindrops, the handle of the knife protruding from the back of Beshara Shebab cast its shadow against the nearby streaming wall. “The one in the overcoat is still alive,” Officer Ruark of Car 31 told his partner, Silenski. Silenski went back to the car to report to headquarters. Five minutes later the vast machinery of the New York Police Department had gone into action, spreading outward and upward to reach the brass, like the mushroom from an Hbomb. Detective Lornegan, catching squeals that night in the local precinct station, was notified. He and his partner, Detective Abe Greenbaum, rolled for the scene after calling the Precinct Squad Commander, Lieutenant Hutchinson, and routing him out of his home. Acting Captain Ben Knox, a lieutenant drawing captain's pay, was the head of Homicide Squad, Manhattan West. The phone call to him roused him from a very sound sleep at

half past one. He got the details from his assistant, Lieutenant Frank May. Captain Knox had developed some strange sixth sense through the years. This case of a seaman stabbed to death, and a bum knocked cold, could have been routine, but somehow it impressed the captain as being sticky. He decided to roll, when actually he didn't have to. It was well within his province to leave that night routine up to Lieutenant May. Charlton Street was a blaze of lights, and choked with cars, when Captain Knox got there. He was greeted by Lieutenant May, three detectives from Homicide West, and a detective stenographer—useless for the moment since there had been no one found to question. A photographer and a fingerprint expert from the Bureau of Criminal Identification had already been busy with their kits working up the alley under floodlights set up by a crew from the Emergency Service truck, who had also roped off the scene. Captain Knox pushed his way into the alley, accompanied by Lieutenant May. “What happened to the bum?” he asked one of the uniformed officers from Car 26. The man saluted. “The ambulance from St. Vincent's was the first thing here after we phoned in.” He pointed down to Beshara Shebab. “The intern pronounced him 'dead on arrival,' but the bum was still alive. They took him to St. Vincent's.” “Who's staked out with him?” “Ruark and Silenski went up with him in Car 31, Captain. They said they'd stick around until they got a patrolman to relieve them.” Lieutenant Hutchinson, the Precinct Squad Commander, came up behind Captain Knox and touched him on the arm. “It might be a good bet, Sir, if you and Lieutenant May, and the rest of Homicide came back with me to the Beirut Cafe. Lornegan is carrying this case. He and his partner, Greenbaum, are down there now.” “What makes in the cafe?” “We may be on to something,” Lieutenant Hutchinson said as the group walked down Washington Street. “There's a window out of the men's can into the alley. The men from the Tech. Lab. took a shot of some prints there a few minutes ago. Good ones they claim. The window frame was dusty. They got a footprint, too, off the sill. If they match with the corpse, he went out of the cafe by that window.” “How soon will we know?” “Any minute. They're bringing them up in the darkroom on the mobile lab truck right now.” Detective Lornegan met them inside the door, his sharp face glum. The cafe seated eighty, but not more than twenty were left around among the tables.

Detective Greenbaum came up from the rear. “There were twice as many customers here when we got here,” he told the Homicide men. “We did what we could and got nothing at all in seven languages. I've got what names and addresses they gave me. Ships, mostly. If we need to look them up again we'll find them in Japan.” “See what you can get out of the rest of them.” Lieutenant May turned loose his three Homicide men to question the remaining guests. He pointed to the two waitresses who were having coffee at a bar back table in the corner. “You're carrying this case, aren't you, Lornegan?” “Yes, sir.” “Did you talk to them?” “Yes, sir. The thin one thinks that a man who was sitting right by the men's room door might have gone in there and out the window, but he'd paid his check and she isn't sure.” “Anyone with him?” “A dirty-faced man with a three day growth. Old tan overcoat on. Looked to her like a bum.” “Sounds promising,” May said. “Take both of them and see if they can identify that corpse as the man who was there. Make sure. Who owns this joint?” Lornegan jerked his thumb toward the mean-eyed stout man who was resting his sleevegartered arms on the bar. Captain Knox said, “You take him, Lieutenant,” and took a chair at a nearby table. Lieutenant May beckoned the stenographer and went with him to the front of the bar. “Do you own this place?” “Yes.” The stout man's face grew sullen. “What's your name?” “Abul Khaled.” “Spell it, will you?” The proprietor spelled it. Lornegan passed them, herding the two unwilling waitresses out the front door. “Where do you live?” Lieutenant May went on. “Upstairs here.” “Married?” “No.” “What's your nationality?”

“I'm an American. A taxpayer.” “Naturalized?” “Yes.” “Where were you born?” “Palmyra, Syria.” Khaled looked at the stenographer. “Do you want I should spell that, too?” “I'll tell you what we want you to spell.” “I thought maybe Palmyra was a little place you wouldn't know.” “Maybe I wouldn't,” May said. “Have you ever been in trouble before?” “I'm not in any trouble now.” Abul Khaled pointed to Lieutenant Hutchison. “He says a man climbs out of my can and gets himself killed in the alley. So he climbs out, and another man with him walks out the door. Maybe they met and tried to kill each other. How do I know? There are eighty people in here and they all are sailors and look just alike to me. Let them come in again tomorrow, and I wouldn't know if I'd seen them before.” “You'd better come down and look at the dead man.” Abul Khaled shrugged. “Can you make me?” “Once we prove he was in here, we can make you. I think we're going to prove it right now.” Lornegan and the two waitresses came back in the front door. One of the girls was crying. Both had glistening plastic slickers on, and raindrops shone in their hair. “Both the girls identified him,” Lornegan said. “He was sitting at that table there. He had ordered a raki, and hadn't finished it when the other man came in—the bum.” “Did the Medical Examiner get there yet?” Captain Knox asked from his chair. “Yes, sir. Dr. Weissberg. It's murder all right. We can take him away.” “So now you can come down to the morgue tomorrow, Abul Abul-bul Amir,” Lieutenant May told Khaled. “You've helped us so much that we want to be nice to you. You'll find the atmosphere more pleasant there—cooler than in here.” Captain Knox stood up. “Get that man from the Bureau of Criminal Identification in here, Lornegan, and see if he can lift some prints from both the chairs at that table. I'll leave it with you, May; I'm going home.” He went outside and got in his car. At the entrance to Emergency, in St. Vincent's, on Seventh Avenue, he parked and went in. “Captain Knox. Homicide West,” he told the intern on duty. “You brought in a man a couple of hours ago, unidentified. Found in an alley on Charlton Street. Could I have a

look-see?” “Surest thing.” The intern looked through some papers and picked out one. “He's in detention. There's an officer with him, but he's out like a light.” “Serious?” “Concussion, but not too critical, I'd say. He's under sedation. If there's no post concussion syndrome, or subdural hematoma, by morning he should be okay.” The captain went in with the doctor and spoke to the patrolman who was sitting with the unconscious man back of a screen. He took a quick look at the bandaged head, then leaned closer and looked again. “Know him, Captain Knox?” the doctor asked. “No, I don't.” “I thought there for a minute you did.” “So did I, but I was mistaken. You'll have to keep him tabbed John Doe until he comes around in the morning.” The captain went out and got back in his car. He knew this case was going to be sticky— but not how sticky. He'd have to get to Maury quick in the morning. They were very old friends, but Maury would nail his hide to the mast if he let it leak to the other papers that that bum in detention was the G-S Syndicate writer, Maury Morel.

CHAPTER 4 Maury woke up early with a headache beating dully inside his skull, and a taste of black Mississippi mud permeating his mouth and tongue. He stared blearily at the white screen surrounding his bed, and enclosing him in intimate confinement with a uniformed policeman. The officer was dozing beside him, somehow managing to keep his balance 09 a rigid white metal chair. Gingerly, Maury explored his bandaged head, and quickly moved his hand away. His brains were a mess of scrambled eggs, functioning without coherence in a dozen different directions. He raised himself on one elbow and looked at the brown blanket covering him. It had letters on it—upside down: St. Vincent's Hospital. God knows, he'd been on a few good brawls in his lifetime. Blanked out on a few. There was that bad couple of nights with that Reuter's correspondent in Washington. Started out at the Press Club, and got them tossed out of a subcommittee meeting. Those Englishmen—what the hell was his name? Didn't matter—they were all alike, weaned on Scotch whisky at the age of two months. Drink you under the bleeding table. Hollow legs and all that sort of thing!

Maury had forgotten Anne, left her parked in the bedroom at the Statler Hotel. She hadn't forgotten him. He found that out when the District cops picked him up the following night, still going strong with his potted companion in some bar. At least he hadn't waked up in an alky ward with a gendarme nursing him and a beard as thick as the ghost of G.B.S. sticking all over his face and chin. A nurse came back of the screen. She was carrying a basin of water, soap, washcloth, and a towel, which she set on a stand beside the bed. “Well, how are we feeling this morning?” she asked brightly. She went to the foot, pulled out a crank, and wound up the bed to a sitting position. A neat little chick with real blonde hair visible under the severe cap. “We?” Maury moved his eyes to the patrolman. “Does that include him? He's not with me!” The patrolman sat up straight in the chair. “Is he awake?” The question pointedly ignored Maury. “Just sleep-talking.” Maury shut his eyes and rested his head back against the pillow to close out the world. When he opened his eyes again the patrolman was still there. Standing up, now. “He's awake, all right,” the nurse said with a smile. The patrolman said, “I've got to make a telephone call,” and vanished around the edge of the screen. “No sense of humor,” Maury declared gloomily. “No sense of humor at all. Imagine our lives and property being dependent on the likes of him.” “Well, how do we feel, now that your guardian has gone?” “I feel like....” He started to say: “Somebody sapped me with a blackjack,” but stopped. A thick dark curtain beclouding his mind had been drawn aside with a single sweep bringing past events into clear sharp focus. The hints he had picked up most accidentally a month before while working on another story. The very disgruntled wife of a man, whom Maury knew was an active Communist party member, had spilled her insides out over a bottle of sherry wine. She thought her husband was making contact with a man known to her only as “Pringle,” who was a clever, fanatical, hardworking Communist spy. Beshara Shebab. The recording machine. The Beirut Cafe the night before. Beshara Shebab with that knife in his back, lying in the rain in the alley. “Turlock—Amity Rest,” Shebab had gasped. Was the Lebanese alive or dead? Dead most likely. The chances were that the cop was here because the bum, who was really Maury Morel, had a lot to explain about Beshara's murder. The cute little nurse was talking again: “Come now. You're going to be okay. Wake up

and wash your face and hands and I'll get you some breakfast.” “I'd rather have my clothes, such as they are, if I'm free to go.” “You're not supposed to get out of bed until the doctor sees you. Do you want me to send the orderly?” “No,” Maury said. “If you'd fix me a couple of Bloody Mary's—two vodka to one tomato-juice, and plenty of Worcestershire, I'd be able to travel on my own.” “Sorry, but our alderman keeps this ward dry.” She looked at him closely and shook her head. “You may be a tramp, but you certainly don't talk that way.” “It's a long story, lady,” Maury said, “and a tear-jerker. Sometime when you have an evening free—” “I'll spend it home with my husband and children.” The nurse laughed and went away. Maury fell to thinking, rather ruefully, about Anne. She couldn't spend time home with her husband and children, since there were no children. Not even a husband, most of the time. Was she happy? That was a question that he couldn't answer, a question that had started plaguing him many years before. Anne knew his convictions and just how strong they were, but she could have no conception of the bind that he'd finally gotten himself in. The hell of it was he could never tell her. Once it leaked out that you weren't exactly what you seemed to be, your usefulness ended for everyone. Just let the Old Man, B. Franklin Jeffers, develop an inkling that Maury Morel might have any other purpose in life than dying for good old G.-S. Syndicate, and the Old Man would have a convenient lapse of memory. He'd forget that he hired Maury nearly a quarter of a century before because of Maury's fiery writing in the liberal papers. That writing, accepted in the depression, would be just plain Red and radical if published today. Breakfast came. Maury toyed listlessly with a piece of toast and a cup of coffee. He was trying to assure himself that a cigarette wasn't really an essential means of starting a day, when the silver-haired, crinkly-eyed, massive head of Captain Ben Knox appeared around the edge of the screen. It was followed instantly by the captain's tall muscular uniformed figure. “Oh, no, not you!” Maury groaned and put a hand to his forehead. “Not the four-star commander of Homicide West in person! Just tell me who I killed last night and I'll come quietly. In the meantime, give me a cigarette.” Captain Knox grinned, but his gray eyes stayed sober. He knocked out a smoke from his pack against his hand, and held his lighter for Maury, watching steadily as Maury drew in the first gratifying lungful. “That's all I want you to do, Maury—come quietly. You'll have to pass a couple of doctors to see if you should be committed to Matteawan, but they only know you as

John Doe. I dropped by last night and took a look at you. I've fixed it so you'll get out without any fuss, if they find you're okay. “I have a headache, that's all. I wonder if they found my stiletto in my clothes last night.” Knox snorted. “You've knifed a lot of the force in your time, but it's always been in print. I hope we've seen the last of that sniping.” “I have a squeamish sensation that I'm being threatened.” The cigarette was making Maury feel better. “Save the mark!” Knox said. “I'm keeping this quiet just because I love you, but any more snide remarks in the Globe-Star and every other paper in the country will have it. From this time forth your moniker down at headquarters is 'Killer Morel.' Now get up, and if you haven't got a brain clot, I'll drive you down to your apartment.” “I'm still suspicious of this coddling, Ben. What do you want from me?” “Information, naturally. I want your story, Killer, and you'd better make it a good one.” Maury swung his long bare legs over the side of the bed and said, “Oh, go to hell!” Sometime later, when he checked out his clothes, he found that the tape recorder was missing. He told Knox about it on the short ride down to Morton Street. “But I never had the thing turned on. The joke's on them.” “Is it?” Knox looked sideways at Maury's head. “Some fun. Ha-ha. The greatest help the department has are you cub jokers playing detective. Whoever conked you was after something more than that tape recorder.” “I'll make a note of that, Ben. That's clever as hell.” “They knew who you were, in spite of that TV ad beard that you've sprouted on your pan.” “How does that figure?” “Wait until you see your apartment.” “What do you mean? Have you been there?” “No, but I phoned Lornegan, who's carrying the case, after I recognized you last night. He's been there, and has a man on duty there now. Don't you ever lock your front door?” “I didn't last night.” “Why not?” “In case anything happened. I didn't want the key found on me.” “So you expected something to happen. Is that it?” “Quit riding me, Ben.”

“So something happened and they didn't find the key. Doesn't make any difference, I guess. They'd have gotten in anyhow. You just made it easier for them.” Knox drove half a block in silence, then asked: “Where's Anne?” “San Francisco, with her folks.” “Right now,” Knox said, “that's a good place for her to be. You should join her, if you're asking me.” “I didn't ask you anything, except to quit riding me. I'm a sick man. Can't you see?” “That sticking plaster showing under your hat looks better than the white turban, but I can still see.” Captain Knox parked his car on Morton Street. He and Maury walked across the courtyard together. The rain of the night before had quit. The day was sunny and cool. Knox rang Maury's bell. A patrolman let them in, and Knox told him he could go. Maury paused inside the door, muttering imprecations at sight of the chaotic jumble of the place Anne liked to keep so clean. Every book had been taken from the bookcases and tossed on the floor. The drawers of Maury's secretary-bookcase were pulled out and empty, their scattered contents adding to the litter. The hall closets had been emptied, and piled up clothes were blocking the passageway from living-room to bedroom. In the bedroom, Maury's steel filing cabinet had met the same fate as his secretarybookcase. Folders and papers blanketed the floor. Maury gazed awhile at the devastation, rubbing his chin. “Looks like hurricane Edna passed through. Thank God they didn't steal my cigarettes.” He took a fresh pack from a carton on the dresser and slowly tore the cellophane. “What did they steal?” “How the devil would I know? Most of my material that means anything is in my files at the office.” “You must have some idea, Maury.” “Too many ideas. Go in and make some coffee, Ben, while I phone the office. Then let me get a shower and a shave and I'll talk to you.” “Phone the office now,” Knox said. “I want to hear.” “Have it your way, Cossack.” Maury dialed, asked for the City Desk, and after a short wait got Hal Gow, the City Editor, on the phone. “Maury, Hal. That assignment you gave me a month ago on the hot Red money blew up in my face last night.... Yeah. It's turned into a homicide case.... Yeah, homicide.... I met that character, Beshara Shebab, in the Beirut as arranged.... Did Dykes pick up anything from headquarters about a knifing in an alley? Charlton Street, in back of the cafe?... He did. Good. Here's a beat: Beshara Shebab was more than a defecting seaman. He had to

slip out of Lebanon in a hurry, deckhanding on a freighter, to duck the Reds. His father is a Director, and principal shareholder in the Banque du Shebab-Syrie. Hot stuff, eh? Well, give it a play.” Maury lit another cigarette from the butt of the first and used his free hand to fan the smoke away. “Identification? Certainly there isn't any more than what he told me. Listen, Hal, just say identification was made through the intelligent efforts of Captain Ben Knox, Head of Homicide Squad, Manhattan West, who dug up a confidential informant. What about the bum that was found with Shebab? Say he's dead, or unconscious, or being held incommunicado as a material witness, or anything you and Dykes can cook up about him, so long as you keep him under wraps. Why? Because the bum was me. Sure, I'm okay. Safe as a church. Acting Captain Knox is here in person guarding me. “You might mention that this clever piece of detective work should get Knox a permanent captaincy. Just kill anything about the bum being me. I'm following this up personally, Hal, and any leak will ruin me. Don't start hollering until you hear from me. Okay? 'Bye!” Maury hung up. “That's all there is, Ben, there isn't any more.” Captain Knox took one of Maury's cigarettes, lit it, and said: “Confidential informant, huh? Fellow, aren't you nice to me with your permanent captaincy? Are you leveling with me?” “You heard me. How long would I have a job if I handed Hal Gow some phony story?” “Longer than I will, if you've steered me wrong. I have only your say-so that this DOA is Beshara Shebab, the noble son of some Beirut rich man.” “Send his prints to the Central Intelligence Agency. They'll tell you about his old man in Beirut.” “And then what do you want me to do, Maury? Come clean.” “Everything you possibly can to nail the guy who murdered Shebab, and conked me. Keep the District Attorney and his sleuths out of my hair. In other words, you never heard of me. “Also, pass the word to Lornegan, and his partner, and their precinct lieutenant that all of them might get a boost upstairs if they wanted to forget me.” “That isn't going to be any pushover, and you know it,” Captain Knox said doubtfully. “But if you could give me a little more information, just a lead, say—” “Okay. I'm after something called Pringle—” “Something?” “A Commie underground apparatus—a plan, maybe—a contact man. They have names

for all those things as well as people. That's all I know about it—but I think he's a man and a spy.” “That sounds like one for the Feds, Maury.” “And that's just where I'm going. But first I want a couple of days to make just one more try.” “You'd better make it fast, Maury, or I'll be head of the Homicide Squad on Welfare Island.” “They haven't got one there,” Maury said. “That's what I know, old pal,” Knox said. “Good-bye!” CHAPTER 5 Maury watched through the slatted blinds until Ben Knox's lithe figure had crossed the courtyard and vanished from his sight out on Morton Street. The key was still on the table where he had left it the night before. He made sure that the apartment door was locked—this time a little late, he thought. He wanted nothing more than to go to bed. His head still ached and his stomach was on edge, but the time for sleeping was certainly not now. He put coffee into the automatic coffee maker and plugged it in, then went into the bathroom where he took a couple of aspirin and showered and shaved. In clean pajamas and bedroom slippers, he started energetically to restore his books to their proper places, his folders to the files, and to replace the contents of his antique mahogany secretary that was Anne's pride and joy. Four cups of coffee kept him going until the distasteful job was finished. He had grown steadily more puzzled as the clean-up progressed. He'd told Ben Knox the truth when he said that he never kept anything of importance in the apartment. His files contained old letters, mostly from friends, with a sprinkling from very prominent men—news analysts, script writers, editors and teachers, half a dozen ministers, and three or four newspapermen, like himself, who were communist fronts. Maury made another check, concentrating on those names that were stamped in his mind in black indelible newsprint. There were some he'd protected, whitewashed clean; others that he had neatly lanced with innuendo; and some he had blatantly tossed to the wolves when the Communist Party found them no longer useful, by furnishing proof of their culpability and CP connections direct, first-hand, to the FBI. Hell, the Commies didn't need those names, and didn't have to search his place, nor any place else to get them. They knew them as well as they knew the name of Maury Morel. But they'd certainly ripped his place to pieces looking for something. Maury closed his files and sat down on the edge of his bed. He asked himself aloud:

“Then why?” The Commies in their entire history had never had a front like Maury Morel, and never could get another one half as good again. He wasn't any parlor pink or fellow-traveler. The CP Security Commission knew him as a hardened old-time comrade, and one with brains enough to win a Pulitzer Prize while apparently fighting them through the public press. They also knew that to be effective he had to get his stories on his own and write them by ear the way the chips fell. Like this Pringle thing, and Beshara Shebab. Some dumb comrade had sure played the fool the night before, and it wasn't Morel. The Security Commission stood for a lot of clandestine dirty work, but that didn't include murder. Sentencing an out-of-line man to death by knifing was far beyond the power of the Party Review and Control Commission in the U.S.A. That was a privilege reserved to countries under state control, such as Hungary, Russia and China. That was probably the only reason that he was alive today. Again he came back to the ever present question of what had they searched his apartment for. Had some jealous comrade dubbed him a spy? That was always a party weakness —jealousy—some cluck who thought he was smarter than you were because he understood nothing of what you were doing. That was silly! He'd been publicly denounced in the Daily Worker, and dubbed “Maury the Fink” for years—all a part of the grandstand play that kept him walking the fence to hold his job and protect his reputation. Stand on one foot and juggle three balls with one hand tied behind your back! There was every chance that he'd crack to pieces some fine day! Maury smacked a fist down in his palm. Sorenson! Erick Sorenson! He was posing as a defecting CP member and Maury had gotten Hal Gow to give him a job on the GlobeStar a year before to work under Maury's supervision. He'd gotten Maury some information, but he'd turned out to have a minus I.Q. Hal had had to let him go. Out of pique, there was an even chance that he'd denounced Maury not only to the Party Review and Control Commission, but probably to the FBI. The FBI was clever as hell! They could fine tooth comb a ten room house and not leave a burnt match out of place, but that wasn't the way they would search the apartment of Maury Morel. They'd wreck it, just like it had been wrecked the night before. Make it look like his Commie pals, who didn't care. Always presuming the FBI wanted it to have that appearance. Well, FBI or Security Commission, that search had been a warning and Maury didn't intend to let it go by. He looked at the clock. Twenty past noon. Nine twenty in San Francisco. He decided to call Anne. The sound of her voice, even that many miles away, would be comforting.

He could dial San Francisco direct by dialing 415 and then the exchange and number of her father's home. Andrew H. Malcolm, Nob Hill. The idea of that direct dialing fascinated him. No going through an operator. Just like calling someone next door. “This is Maury!” A real surprise for whoever answered the phone. He thought he had Andy's number memorized. That sock on the head must have penetrated through the bone. Market... 5... Market 6.... He reached out for the alphabetical telephone notebook that flipped up when you set it to the proper letter. It was missing. A quick glance around the possible spots in the bedroom where it might have been placed convinced him that it wasn't there. Starting with the A's and running through the Z's, he tried to review the names that he and Anne had put down in the small directory. There were far too many. Half-a-dozen long distance, maybe, like the Malcolms, with their name, address, and telephone number. A few unlisted New York numbers. A couple of big wheels in Albany. A Catholic Bishop in Ohio who had been with Maury on a TV interview. Most of them were in the regular phone book, if anyone cared to take the time. What kept bringing him back to Anne, and her parents, on Nob Hill? The big lever of the Communists was fear! They demanded unswerving loyalty, blind obedience, adherence to the party line without deviation, year by year. Wives were nothing. Children were nothing. Religion was nothing. Toss them away. Change your name. Move someplace else without any notice and leave them all flat as soon as they threatened to interfere. But Anne hadn't threatened to interfere. Or had she? By God, he was starting to get the treatment himself when he asked such a question. It was easier to think that Hal Gow was suspicious, or Old Man Jeffers, or anyone of the G-S brass. Ray Lindeman, the taciturn, unapproachable Editor, or the laughing, joking, hard as a rock, Managing editor, Everett Dupree. All of them had known that slimy creep, Erick Sorenson, better than Anne in the six months that he'd worked on the paper. Or had they? One of those doubting questions again. Questions that the Party counted on to fill a man with unsurety. Sorenson was a drip, with unkempt hair and wavering eyes, and a look of never having had a meal, or a bath, since the day he was born. His shoes were scuffed and his clothes were baggy. Sorenson's kind of battle against life's miseries was to rail at them with a perpetual whine. Yet that was the type that Anne wept over and wanted to mother, just as she wept

over cowering dogs and mewling kittens and any creature that lived and breathed so long as it didn't have a spine. She'd had the smelly Erick down many times for dinner, buying him steaks, opening him endless cans of beer, until Maury, driven by desperation, had pleaded business and fled to some nearby picture show leaving Anne to her masochistic enjoyment of Erick's whimpers. Now Maury was wondering just how much falsehood, and how much truth, Sorenson might have whimpered into Anne's receptive ear. Sorenson was a party member, but he couldn't have guessed at Maury's connection. He was too far down in the ranks to know anything about a member at the top of the scale. But Sorenson might have said anything. How much had Anne believed of it all? During the past six months a coldness had developed between Maury and Anne. She'd gotten polite, and Maury had never been fond of his wife's politeness. Normally, she had a stock of contemptuous epithets which conveyed to Maury by their very tone that all was well between them. When he'd kissed her good-bye a month before as she boarded the plane, she'd said quite curtly, “Good-bye, dear. Take care of yourself.” It might have been her words alone that made him feel that her kiss was most perfunctory. Maury thoughtfully dressed himself, then went back to the living room. He started rummaging slowly through the middle secretary drawer. He had picked tits contents off the floor without much attention when he was cleaning up. The papers were shoved without order into the drawer. It took him a moment of fumbling through the jumble of stationery, envelopes, Scotch Tape, postage stamps, and string before he found what he was looking for: A yellow envelope returned from the drugstore just before Anne left containing a dozen developed color snapshots, and the films. It had struck him when he'd picked it up that it should have been thicker, but that had been only a pin prick to his perceptions and he hadn't stopped to investigate. Now he found that the films were still in the envelope, but the twelve 4X4 snapshots were missing. They were pictures taken out at Jones Beach on a hot June Sunday, the month before. Anne and himself. Hal Gow, and his wife, Marge, and their two boys, three and four. There had also been the drippy Erick Sorenson, whom Anne had rung into the party. Ten minutes later, after placing a person-to-person call, he thrilled to the sound of Anne's warm voice on the telephone. She sounded really glad to hear him. When the preliminaries were over and Maury had found that the family was well, except for a sty on Andy Malcolm's eye, he plunged straight to the heart of what was bothering him. “Anne, you remember those pictures we took at Jones Beach last month? Hall Gow and

Marge, and the kids, and Sorenson were with us.” “They're in the middle desk drawer of your secretary, Maury. Why?” “They're not. That's why. I thought maybe you took them with you. Somebody ransacked the place here last night.” “Robbed us?” “Those pictures and the telephone index file, that's all.” “Where were you?” “In St. Vincent's. Somebody knocked me cold up an alley, but I'm okay now, except for a bump on the bean.” “Up an alley?” Maury could hear her sharp drawn breath. “Maury, are you in trouble?” “Honey, that depends entirely upon the point of view. I'll write you all the details tonight. Air mail. Right this minute, I'm a little worried about you.” “About me? For heaven's sake, why?” “Those snapshots, Anne, and the telephone file with your parents' address in San Francisco. There was a man killed last night and I was in the thick of it.” “In the thick of a murder? Maury, you are in trouble.” “No more than usual, believe me. But I have a hunch that those pictures may be mailed to San Francisco so that someone out there can put the finger on you.” “Aren't you talking a little wild? Why would anyone want to murder me? Why not Hal, or Marge, or their children, or Sorenson?” “I didn't say your life was in danger, honey. It's just that anyone can identify the rest of us in that group without pictures. They know where we are. We're here.” “And what would they want to do to me?” “Threaten you, to frighten me—put pressure on me. I happen to love you, believe it or not, and Commie tactics are scare the loved ones and you get them all.” “I don't scare easily.” “Listen, darling,” Maury's voice grew desperate. “I want you to get suspicious, and that goes for your Ma and Pa. If anyone approaches you in the next few days—” “I won't be here,” Anne said decisively. “I'm coming home as soon as I can get reservations on a plane.” “But Anne—” “I'll wire you when to meet me.” She hung up. Maury replaced the receiver slowly, then took up a classified telephone directory and began to thumb through the yellow pages. An hour later in a hired car he was speeding out the Boulevard toward Amityville, Long

Island. CHAPTER 6 The Amity Rest Home that Maury had located under Hospitals in the yellow pages of the telephone directory was one of eight or nine similar institutions in Amityville. Cloaked in respectable and secretive splendor, they bordered a tree-lined semicircular lane about two miles long on the edge of town. All of the Homes were private, and all expensive, shyly exhibiting their names on bronze plates so small that they had to be searched for. In the summer, shielded from the eyes of the curious by spacious shade trees, they might easily have been mistaken for the luxurious estates of the wealthy. Many of them had been, years before. But with a closer look, the vast spread of the grounds and the manorial houses, dotted about with cottages, couldn't deceive anyone. The windows, protected from top to bottom with heavy prison screening, and the hurricane fences, closing off the road and separating the estates, one from the other, screamed institutions. Alcoholics. Manic-depressives. Psychopathies. Schizophrenics. Paranoiacs. Congenital idiots. The places screamed another message to Maury Morel: The public's utter disregard, and the utter inadequacy of public funds provided to science to study, care for, and cure the hundreds confined in that long two miles. Yet billions were always forthcoming for scientists to do research on the most modern ways to kill. At least these inmates and their families had the money to pay. But what of the millions throughout the country who didn't? Millions who faced life hopelessly through dreary days and tortured nights, confined to the care of overworked and underpaid doctors and nurses, carrying out their dedicated work in state institutions and county asylums that were bursting their walls with overcrowding. What of them, and their families, too? Families who faced the plight of loved ones night by night and day by day. There was an angle there: Don't lose your mind unless you have money! It's dry suicide for you and your family to be mentally ill and not be able to pay. Maury would discuss that angle with Hal Gow. Arrange to do a five day signed series. The Old Man would like it. Maybe even Ray Lindeman, the Editor, who disliked everything. Best of all, the Party would simply lap it up. Their line was suspension of nuclear tests now, and they'd been getting a trifle tough with Maury during the past year. He needed to strengthen his position with some good crusading, and such a series would do the trick, even if the facts were true. The articles might even win a nod from the head-shrinkers' association—but his footwork would have to be very shifty or they'd

find dat ol' debbil socialized medicine hiding back of every syntax. A good place to feel the article idea out was the Amity Rest Home. Give the doctor in charge that line. Yes, that was it: The efficiency of their modern equipment—and how much it cost to put it in. The fine work they were doing—and losing money on every patient. Some anonymous case histories, and equally anonymous interviews with some of the patients. Have to be along with them, naturally. “And, by the way, Doctor. Do you happen to have a patient named Turlock in here? A friend of mine. I'd like to talk with him. Get a good interview. Show it to you, of course, before it hit the paper.” That ought to do it. He turned the car into a horseshoe drive and parked in a space with several others. The house was granite and very large. Maury guessed at seventy-five rooms, maybe more. Front steps led up to a porch with Colonial pillars. The hurricane fence ran down to the road from each end of the house, leaving the horseshoe drive in three sides of an open square. A fountain, turned into a flower bed, allowed an undraped nymph atop it to dominate the middle. The porch, which covered half the front of the house, was two stories high. Three windows on each side of the wide front door had drawn shades inside, but no bars or screens. As Maury walked up the steps he looked up to the second floor. The windows were screened there. In one, he caught a glimpse of someone watching. A woman. She vanished quickly when she saw him looking. He felt a twinge of embarrassment, as though he had been caught playing the part of a Peeping Tom. He shook it off and went inside to a long wide hall, floored in big squares of black and white tile. The walls and ceiling were sanitary white. Undecorated, except for a fresco of intertwined curlicues, done in gilt just below the ceiling the length of each wall. A partition had been built at the back end of the hall to form a white dead end. On it, in a wide gilt frame, and lighted by a picture light, hung a full length painting. The subject was a semibald man with a Vandyke beard. He wore a frock coat and a gray foulard tie with a diamond stickpin. His face was more arrogant than kindly. He was posed with his right hand outstretched stiffly, palm up. Maury, perhaps unjustly, interpreted the gesture to mean that you'd better put some cash in that hand if you hoped to get in. There were waiting rooms with comfortable chairs to the left and the right. Near the arch to the right hand one, a woman of about thirty in a neat business suit sat back of a desk with a small switchboard at one end. She gave a careful appraising look at Maury's expensive linen suit and two-toned summer shoes before doling him out a smile. According to a black sign with white letters that stood on her desk, it was perfectly safe to address her as Miss Flynn.

Maury decided that an answering smile, no matter how weak, would be politic, but it irked him to have to give it. He was beginning to dislike everything about Amity Rest intensely, and he could work up no sense of kinship with Miss Flynn. She, including her manners and surroundings, seemed designed to drive you off your rocker instead of putting the solid ground of sanity back under your addled brain. Rest Home was right! He felt he'd be there the rest of his life, going battier every day, providing anyone ever got him in. “I'd like to speak to the doctor in charge.” “Oh.” Miss Flynn awarded him a second scrutiny, searching to find some unpardonable sin. “If you've come to visit a relative, and will give me your name and the patient's name, I can arrange the necessary pass. That is, if the patient you wish to see has been here a week or more.” “No relative. I just want to talk to the doctor in charge.” “Oh.” Miss Flynn pulled a pad of ruled forms toward her and poised a ball point pen. “These are our regular admission forms. One has to be filled out before you can possibly talk to Dr. Rheinemann. May I have your name, please?” “Maurice Morel.” “Address?” “A-11, Morton Court, New York City.” “Relationship, doctor, and nature of the disorder of the patient you wish admitted.” Maury gave her his most fatuous grin. “Until I talk to Dr. Rheinemann, I'm not admitting anything. Now why don't you act like your own sweet self? Call him on the telephone and tell him a Mr. Morel is here, who wishes to speak to him on a highly confidential matter that may affect the entire future of the Amity Rest Home.” “Dr. Rheinemann is a woman. Dr. Marian Rheinemann.” Miss Flynn's highly lipsticked lips tightened in anger that Maury shouldn't know such a thing. “Good for her!” Maury said. “Now get her on the phone, will you? Just in case she's shy of men, tell her I was born on the cusp between Aries and Taurus, in 1910, and am far too gone physically to make any passes, if not mentally.” If that threw Miss Flynn off balance it wasn't visible. She was even more disapproving when she plugged in the phone. “Miss Carse? There's a Mr. Morel here. M-o-r-e-l. He wishes to speak to Dr. Rheinemann personally. He refuses to state his business, except that it is highly confidential. Is she free right now?” There was a wait long enough for Miss Carse and her boss to go into a huddle. Then Miss Flynn said, “Thank you, Miss Carse, I'll tell him.” She unplugged the phone. “Dr. Rheinemann will see you in a few minutes. Just have a seat in the waiting room.”

She gestured toward the arch and went back to studying Maury's uncompleted form. Maury went in and took one of the brocade chairs. He lit a cigarette. It was finished and five minutes had dragged out to ten when he heard muffled footsteps crossing the hall. There was a pause for a conference at Miss Flynn's desk, carried on in tones too low for Maury to hear. A tall angular woman, in a pink and white uniform, finally appeared in the waiting room door. “I'm Miss Carse, Dr. Rheinemann's secretary. The doctor can spare you a few minutes now. Kindly come with me.” She looked at the sticking plaster on Maury's hair, started to say something, but let it go. Maury trailed her in silence to a door far down at the left of the hall. Dr. Marian Rheinemann was seated back of a big flat-top desk that was almost bare. She stood up after Miss Carse had ushered Maury in and closed the door behind him. The standing up of Dr. Marian Rheinemann was a performance well worth watching and waiting for. She was a natural flaming redhead with a milky skin devoid of freckles. Her figure was sybaritic, full breasted, and lush. Set off to perfection by a high-necked black silk dress with a flashing diamond throat clip, the white knee-length hospital coat open down the front merely added to her sensual beauty. A work of art, Dr. Rheinemann, Maury thought as pinpricks touched his spine. A breathtaker and a band-stopper, made possible only by that rarest of combinations: Mother nature, money, modiste, and coiffeur. Maury tried to keep from staring rudely, but what the hell, she'd been stared at plenty before. No woman could be as gorgeous as that and be entirely real. She belonged on a beach in South Pacific—not in the ocean, but in the show. Even the lights in the airconditioned office were designed by a master electrician, smoothing out wrinkles, if there were any, making her skin more white and her hair more red by their gentle subdued rosy glow. Her expression told him his admiration had been noted and approved, but that it was time to get the show on the road. There was a limit to free-loading on that much beauty. Sooner or later the waiter would come and present the bill. “Mr. Morel, I'm Dr. Rheinemann. Sit down, won't you?” She flashed a smile exhibiting teeth so perfect they might have been china, but Maury didn't think so. She was much too fully developed an animal to have any vitamin count that was low. Maury shook her extended hand and found it just as warm as her smile and her cultured voice. He sat down with his sleepy gray eyes half closed, concupiscently thinking of four-poster beds and at the same time searching for flaws. Her nails were too long and polished to too high a sheen. That was quibbling, and he knew it. When she took her chair and the light struck her face at a different angle, he found the blemish.

Her eyes. They were well shaped, golden-lashed, and enticing, but if you looked at them critically you saw that the irises were pale, bordering between blue and green. They were caponized eyes that icily denied the allurement of her body, eyes that could estimate business factors as coolly as a calculating machine. “You spoke to Miss Flynn about a confidential matter that you wished to discuss with me. I presume it has to do with admitting a patient. You could have saved us both a lot of time if you had given the necessary information to Miss Flynn. She'll have to get all the details anyhow. But since you're in here, suppose you go on and give them to me.” She took a cigarette from a silver case and returned it to the pocket of her long white coat, making no move to offer a smoke to Maury. She used a gold lighter with a studied gesture and fluffed up the back of her auburn hair. “I'm Maury Morel, Staff Writer for the Globe-Star. I'm working on a series that will explain in some detail the operation and facilities of the principal private mental hospitals in the vicinity of New York City. I can give space only to four or five, and I'd like to include the Amity Rest Home.” She took a couple of placid puffs while the pale eyes vacillated between blue and green. Maury gave what he thought was a wolfish grin that might please her. “Particularly since I've had the pleasure of meeting you.” “Just a minute.” She pushed a lever down on an intercom that stood on a table beside her desk. “Miss Carse?” “Yes, Dr. Rheinemann.” “You and Miss Flynn have let another snooping reporter force his way into my office. This is the second one this year. The next time it happens, you can rest assured that I'll take delight in promptly replacing both of you. Spare me the excuses, please.” She swung back to Maury with a poisonous smile. “You were saying...” “You're a little rough on the girls, aren't you?” “Yes, and now I'm going to be rough on you, since this is the first time I've had the misfortune of meeting you. I don't like you, Mr. Morel—Maury the Fink. I don't like your pseudo-liberal scandal sheet, the Globe-Star. Mainly due to those muckraking lies published under your name. You're a Redbaiter of the very worst type. You're utterly lacking in principles, and without regard as to whether or not your allegations are true. Any liberal who speaks his mind is grist for your mill.” She swung around again to stab out her cigarette in an ashtray on top of the inter-com. When she turned back she found Maury leaning forward, studying the front cover of a white printed pamphlet lying on her desk. The title in conservative type was: Lycoming's Leads. A weekly newsletter for investors. Distributed to subscribers only by Henry Lycoming & Co., Investment Counselors.

Dr. Rheinemann angrily snatched it up, opened a drawer, and thrust it in. The desk quivered when she slammed the drawer. “Even a person's private affairs aren't safe from a snooper like you!” “I'm a connoisseur of facets, Doctor, and you have a great many.” Maury settled back in his chair. “In addition to psychiatry, I notice that you analyze the stock market, too. Maybe even take a little flyer now and then. If you'll keep that Sorrel-top temper in hand, I might even print a straight interview with you—slice of cheese cake with it, too.” “You just try it, Fink Morel. You'll find yourself and your rag so deep in a libel suit you'll have to clean your ears out.” “Oh, tut and double-tut!” Maury said. “Act your age, Glorious! There isn't any libel if the facts are true, and you have to prove damages, too.” “The facts are,” Dr. Rheinemann informed him coldly, “that I happen to have a few connections as well as you. My ex-husband, Max Rheinemann, is one of the wealthiest brokers in New York City, and our relationship is still most friendly. My father, Jason Philips, is Chairman of the Board of the Crescent Valve Corporation. He's also a very close friend of B. Franklin Jeffers, who happens to own the Globe-Star Syndicate, and I presume that means he owns you.” “Body and soul, Doctor. How right you are. Well, you've certainly done well for yourself in the way of connections. Good for you!” Maury stood up. “You wouldn't happen to have a patient in here named—” He shook his head. “No. You wouldn't. Give me a ring at the paper if you're in New York with an evening free. I'll buy you a dinner, if you promise not to threaten me. It will be worth it just to look at you. Toodle-oo!” He waved at Miss Carse on his way through her office, yelled “Beaver!” at the tycoon with the Vandyke beard, and blew a kiss to the unreceptive Miss Flynn. None of the three returned his salutations. In the parking place a pleasant-faced, well-muscled young man in hospital whites was getting into the car next to Maury's. “Tell me if I'm talking out of turn,” Maury said to him, “but do you work here in the Amity Rest Home?” “Sure do. Dave Alren. I'm an orderly in the men's division. Anything I can do for you?” “Ten bucks worth, to get to the point. I'm a reporter, Maury Morel, on the Globe-Star.” “Well, what d'you know. I've heard of you.” “Have you run across a patient in there named Turlock. I don't know his first name, but he's a foreigner at a guess.” “What breed?” “Russian. Polish. Yugoslavian. Arabic. Hungarian.”

Dave Alren pinched his upper lip. “There's fifty-six men patients in there and I know them all. Some of them come in under phony names on purpose. Are you sure this man you're talking about didn't?” “I'm not sure of anything,” Maury said. “You say this fellow might be Russian. Hungarian maybe?” “Might be.” “Speak with an accent then, wouldn't he?” “Probably, but I'm stabbing in the dark again.” “Would it still be worth that ten spot if I gave you the name of a patient who might fill the bill?” “Yes,” Maury said, “and if your guess turned out right and you watch the mails your ten spot might grow into two. One right now and the other later.” “Try out Igor Sandor for size,” Dave Alren said. “He was admitted just two weeks ago. Dr. Rheinemann is trying electric shocks, but she's wasting time, if you want my opinion. He has a persecution complex a mile wide. Paranoia. He can get pretty rough to handle any time. Still she hasn't got him upstairs in security and none of the hired hands, like me, can figure out why.” “Where is he?” “Downstairs on the men's side. Room 22. Are you thinking of visiting him?” “Not after your diagnosis.” Maury slipped him a folded up ten spot. “But he sounds promising.” Dave Alren said, “Thanks. I'm getting married next week. I hope this grows to two.” Maury waited until Dave had backed out his car, then followed it down the horseshoe driveway. On the way into town he ticked off facts as the miles went by: Pringle to Shebab to Turlock. Turlock to Rheinemann to Lycoming. Lycoming to Philips to Igor Sandor. Somewhere that circle would complete itself and he'd get back to Pringle and his story would be in the bag. If he wasn't in a box, himself, by then, he and the Commies would be forever finished with one another. He offered up a silent prayer that his relationship with Mrs. Anne Morel wouldn't be forever finished, too.

CHAPTER 7 It was said around the offices of the Globe-Star that Thomas Tremayne Sturtevant, who occupied a stained glass cubicle of his own in the southwest corner of the fifth floor, spoke to no one but the Old Man, B. Franklin Jeffers, and through some strange

attraction of opposites, to Maury Morel. Thomas Tremayne Sturtevant was affectionately known as “Ticker Tape”—usually shortened to T.T. He wore the title of financial editor, as he wore his clothes, with a great deal of dignity. The title was rather euphemistic since the Globe-Star was an evening paper and carried no full financial section, per se. T.T. had been acquired when Jeffers took over the assets and most of the staff of the respected and conservative Morning Star, and merged it with the Evening Globe many years before. T.T. had been through the mill. He was a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance, a Pennsylvania certified public accountant, and had worked up from a customers' man to owning a third interest in a brokerage company of his own. He had climbed five rungs of the millionaire ladder when his brokerage house fell out of bed, along with everything else, in the crash of 1929. Promptly hired as comptroller and promoter of one of the many ventures of a Detroit tycoon, T.T. spent two fruitless years trying to market stocks and bonds to customers who were patronizing soup kitchens and closely watching the price of apples. That unprofitable enterprise exploded in a shower of red figures in 1931. T.T. wasn't too unhappy about it, for the tycoon was allergic to the smell of tobacco and allowed no smoking in any of his offices. T.T. was addicted to a mixture of tobacco, made up for him by a tobacconist on Eighth Street, that consisted of approximately 10% Latakia, and 90% perique. He smoked this sulfurous concoction in a pipe as big as a chamber pot and insisted that the pipe was given to him by his father on the day he was born. The pipe, reminiscent of Yale's famous foot ball mascot, bulldog Handsome Dan, had by constant use become strong enough to throw Li'l Abner's mammy over a barn. He accepted an offer to go to work for the Star in 1932, and put his unusual knowledge of bulls and bears into print for two main reasons: First, the Editor told him he could bring his pipe along. Secondly, once every week a payday rolled around, albeit at the start the checks were small. Old Man Jeffers inherited the pipe, as well as T.T. from the Star and enclosed them both, with a stock ticker, in the cubicle in the corner. A stained-glass gas mask to protect the rest of the office, according to Hal Gow. The pipe was just as much a part of T.T. as the shoe-button eyes that sparkled back of rimless pince-nez, always clamped too tightly on the bridge of his short straight nose. It was just as familiar to the G-S staff as T.T.'s touched up black hair parted carefully in the middle, or T.T.'s too white and too perfect false teeth that so firmly tried to bite through the pipe stem, in his wide humorous mouth above the dimpled chin. It was just as black and polished as T.T.'s funereal broadcloth suit and patent leather shoes, or his black silk

four-in-hand tie with its tiny pearl pin. It was a quarter past five, and the clatter of the ticker tape, feeding out its daily diet of ups-and-downs, had been replaced by the clatter of T.T.'s antique typewriter, tortured beyond endurance with punches from T.T.'s two slender white forefingers, when Maury Morel knocked discreetly on the stained glass door of the sanctum. T.T. shouted above the keys, “Come in!” Maury filled his lungs with one last long breath of the comparatively fresh office air and went in. The door slammed behind him pulled by a spring that threatened to shatter the glass at each closing. “Hi, Tom.” Maury pulled a battered armchair, shedding stuffing, up toward the front of the desk and sat down. T.T.'s swivel chair creaked protest as he swung around. He shoved a pile of government pamphlets, and Wall Street Journals, away from in front of him, to add to the clutter at the left of his desk. “Hail Guest! We ask not what thou art: If Friend, we greet thee, hand and heart; If Stranger, such no longer be; If Foe, our love shall conquer thee!” He knocked out his pipe in a large metal ashtray, reached for his can of tobacco and started to load it again. “To become Love, Friendship needs what Morality needs to become Religion—the fire of emotion!” Maury quoted back at him. “Ah, but you don't know who said it.” T.T. performed some horrible operation with a pipe cleaner, regarded it disgustedly, and dropped it into the wastebasket. “Richard Garnett, from the Preface to De Flagello Myrteo. Your greeting is Arthur Guiterman.” Maury gave a grin. “So you slave here in the salt mines, like I do.” T.T. took a couple of big wooden matches from a box, struck them both at once, and built a fire over his tobacco. “Why haven't both of us taken half a million from some quiz show?” Maury laughed, coughed, and lit a cigarette that proved to be tasteless in the acrid atmosphere. “You might, Tom. You gave me the opening for that rabbit punch I delivered. It's one of the only five quotations I happen to know.” T.T. pursed his lips and shook his head dolefully. “Hippocrates said, '... at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.' What the hell do you want, Maury?” “Information.” “Free?” “Cocktails and dinner. I know your strange aversion to restaurants, so we'll make it at the house when Anne gets home. Any day now.”

“The laborer is worthy of his hire,” T.T. said. “And they are fools who roam. The world has nothing to bestow; from our own selves our joys must flow, and that dear hut, our home.” “It's an humble thing, I admit,” Maury said. “But it does belong to Morton Court, Incorporated. Of course, if you don't like the hut, you don't need to come. Answer me some questions, anyhow.” “Ask and learn,” T.T. said, “and nevertheless, I come.” “Did you ever hear of an investment counselor named Henry Lycoming?” T.T. emitted a cloud that would have done credit to a woodburning locomotive. He took off his pince-nez and wiped his beady eyes with a piece of Kleenex. He restored the glasses and stared at Maury like a teller confronted with a questionable $1000 bill. “Investment Counselor? It's a strange thing, Maury, anyone we pay for advice on how to lose our money becomes an investment counselor. He puts out this tip sheet, Lycoming's Leads. Here—” He shuffled among his stacked up papers and tossed Maury a couple of booklets similar to the one he had seen on Dr. Rheinemann's desk. “Race track touts,” T.T. continued. “Bird dogs for gambling houses. Solicitors who want to sell you stock by long distance phone in some Canadian uranium mine that will make you millions. They're investment counselors, all, dear boy. “Lycoming does it on a higher scale, that's all. Read what he says on the inside cover. 'The material in our weekly letter is developed from information which we consider reliable. It is sent to our subscribers for a regular fee, in the hope that it may assist them in their appraisal of the market. Our estimate of the underlying value of individual securities does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any particular shares or bonds.'” “How many of those things do you think he distributes, Tom?” “Somewhere around twenty-five thousand subscribers at a dollar a week a throw. Wasn't it Cesare Lombroso who said: 'The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities'?” “I wouldn't know.” “Well, twenty-five thousand bucks a week, in anybody's money, is a lot of dough. I thought of going into that racket once, myself, but I'm not the type. Too shy and retiring. Too upright, scrupulous, full of high principles, honesty, and integrity. Besides that, back at the time I thought of it, I didn't have the necessary capital, y'know. Costs a lot to get one of those wire service form sheets started, and to really clean up on one properly— well, you should have a million or so.” “What do you mean by cleaning up on one?” T.T. gave forth with a smoky sigh. “Thine

ignorance of thine ignorance is thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane.” Maury said, “I grasp the general idea, old boy, but please explain.” “Lycoming's Leads. That's more than just a tipster sheet, Maury. I've been watching it with my little spyglass for some time now, checking its cagey operations with my keen financial brain. With more than twenty-five thousand moneyed suckers hanging on his every printed word, and waiting breathlessly for his telegrams—he sends wires, too, for an extra fee—to make a fast buck, our laddie Lycoming has the power in many cases to make a stock go up and down.” “Like what?” “Like a yo-yo. A year ago it was Albatross Press, a dormant, over-the-counter item selling at nine. It was the week of the 18th of last November, as I recall. Albatross was moving four or five hundred shares a day, around nine and nine and three-eighths. Then Lycoming's wire service went out, predicting big earnings and great potential values, with recommendations to buy.” T.T.'s pipe began to gurgle and he operated on it again. “Albatross jumped to ten and seven-eighths, and moved 6300 shares in one day, and 7300 the next. Then the booklet hit the twenty-five thousand fish. Albatross jumped to 12 1/2 and sold thirty thousand shares the following day. On Friday, November 22nd, it was up to 14 1/2 and sold eighty-seven thousand nine hundred shares.” “That sounds like it was making money for all.” “Not quite all. Turned out that ten thousand shares had been bought through a Swiss bank in Zurich, and ten thousand more through a bank in Beirut. The margin required in Switzerland and Lebanon is 5%, against the 70% required here by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The dealers who handled those transactions here were Metzger, Montross & Stoane. Monday, November 25th, an official of the Albatross Press challenged Lycoming's statements and earning predictions, and said the true value of the company didn't warrant such strong recommendations. Metzger, Montross & Stoane had already unloaded for their lucky foreign clients, who had turned over a neat little profit of 5 1/2 points on 20,000 shares.” “And what then?” “The yo-yo went down. The stock took a nose dive back to normal, but forty-two thousand shares of it had been sold at 14 1/2 in one day.” “Who got the profit?” Maury asked. T.T. shrugged and lit his pipe again. “Khrushchev. Tito. Molotoff. Who am I to say. Who has the dough in those numbered accounts in Switzerland, South America, Lebanon? I can tell you who took the rap on the forty-five thousand shares that were left holding the

bag—the difference between 87,000 and 42,000, if you'd like to hear.” “I've already offered to wine and dine you.” “I've already accepted, dear boy. John Q. American Public took the rap, and the United States Department of Internal Revenue, who had to stand the income tax losses that were claimed.” “And you mean that nothing was done about this, Tom?” “Plenty was done. The New York Attorney General's office jumped Lycoming, but they couldn't make it stick. He hadn't bought or sold any stocks. He had some wrong information, that was all. Doesn't his booklet state that it doesn't constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy? “Then Metzger, Montross & Stoane got a going over from the Security Exchange Commission. So what? They were only doing the same as a thousand other brokers and dealers— handling accounts for U.S. banks, who were handling accounts for foreign banks, who were handling accounts for numbered accounts that the laws of their countries forbade them to reveal. Hell, Maury, the S.E.C. has to issue a subpoena to get an American bank to reveal the identity of a client.” “What do you know about Crescent Valves, Inc., T.T.? It's a manufacturing plant on Long Island.” “What do you?” T.T. asked him slowly. “It happens to be one of about a dozen plants that this lad, Lycoming, started messing around. His predictions about a top secret contract from the Navy going to Crescent started a proxy fight about six months ago. “When the smoke had cleared, old man Jason Philips, who started Crescent, found he had lost control. He still holds the tide of Chairman of the Board, but the truth is he has nothing much to say about the management in general.” “Don't they have an Industrial Security Clearance from the Department of Defense—I mean, aren't all officers and employees investigated when a plant starts making topsecret weapons?” “Surest thing you know.” T.T. was having ignition trouble again. He got it repaired, and said, “Crescent has been cleared. They're manufacturing parts for missiles. Of course, Los Alamos was cleared when Sergeant Greenglass worked there.” “I get the general idea,” said Maury. “Could foreign interests get control of a plant like Crescent by acquiring a large percentage of its stock through those numbered accounts abroad?” “Why not? That's one of the things that's been eating on the Senatorial subcommittee investigating the administration of the Internal Security Act. Haven't you heard of hot Red money?” “Hal Gow gave me an assignment about it a month ago, that's why I'm bothering you. So

far I've discovered that Russia has a fifteen billion dollar gold reserve. I thought they were poor. Where does all the gold come from?” “They mine it,” T.T. told him. “Cheaply, with slave labor, and they don't use it for money as we do. They use it for economic penetration of their satellite countries, and for getting control of British and American industries. That control is useful if you want to plant a few spies here and there— like in Crescent Valves, let's say.” “But surely a plant under foreign control couldn't get clearance to manufacture top secret stuff. What about the Federal Reserve, the Office of Personnel Security of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, and the S.E.C.?” T.T. searched his desk top and pulled out a booklet. “Let me read you something from the sworn testimony of the Director of the Office of Personnel Security: 'If a company seeks to be eligible for a facility clearance, the Department of Defense insists upon looking at its books, and corporate structure. If the books reveal that there is a block of stock held by undisclosed principals, or nominees, we insist upon the corporation telling us who owns that stock. If they either decline to tell, or are at all difficult about it, we simply stop the processing right there and will carry it no further. “'If they disclose that the stock in question is held by a foreign interest, we then probe further in the matter, as I've outlined in my statement.' Now hear this, Maury!” T.T. adjusted his pince-nez more firmly on his nose. “'It is fair to say, however, that not infrequently the corporate records will not disclose, nor will the corporation itself know necessarily, that a component of stock is held by foreign nationals.'“ T.T. slapped the booklet down on his desk. “If a corporation can't find out the ownership of its own stock, how is it going to give the Department of Defense the identity of all its stockholders? Hell, Maury, don't be silly!” “Okay,” Maury said, “I won't. Who do you think owns the biggest bite of Crescent Valves right now?” “If the Department of Defense can't find out, why ask me? Maybe I can make a guess as to who controls it, in trust, of course, or as a fiduciary.” “Who?” “A broker named Max Rheinemann—and I'll make another guess about something else he controls, Maury.” “What's that?” “The brokerage house of Metzger, Montross & Stoane, but I'll deny it vigorously if you quote me.” “Thanks, Tom. If Sunday evening suits you the drinks and the dinner at the hut are sure on me.”

CHAPTER 8 Special Agent Leonard Ducro, as agents went, was a comparative newcomer to the ranks of the FBI. Of the more than six thousand Special Agents working under the strictest discipline, constant supervision, and unending requirements of top performance, two thousand, or better, had been with the FBI for ten years or more. Smooth, polished, blond-haired Ed Waters, who as S.A.C. —initials denoting “Special Agent in Charge”—of the New York office was Lennie's boss, had been eighteen years with the Bureau. To Len Ducro, who was 33, eighteen years was a stretch of time too long to comprehend. Len had worked in the New York office for two years and liked to think of himself as an old-timer. He was born in Jamaica, Long Island, where his father, Julian Ducro, owned a sporting goods store. Len had graduated from the public schools, and from the time he could shoot a toy bow-and-arrow, or see over a counter, had helped his father in the store. It was full of adventure and excitement to the growing boy—tackle that spoke of mountain streams and sail-fish fighting and leaping high, rifles that could down a buck or a towering grizzly bear, shotguns that spoke mutely of fields, whirring pheasants, and coveys of quail. Yet Len Ducro's trips to field and stream were confined to shooting a .22 in the basement of the store, and always, as his aim grew better and better, he was mowing down some enemy of society—a Junior G-man, sturdily carrying out the secret orders of Jimmy Cagney, to Len the best known G-man of them all. Len learned much more than marksmanship in his father's store. Although Julian Ducro wasn't wealthy in money, he and his wife, Emma, were God-fearing people, rich in probity. Strict by most standards, they were fair and affectionate and determined not to spoil their only son. Julian despised game and fish hogs, as he detested any violators of his country's laws. He pounded those tenets into his son. He and his wife were normally moderate drinkers, with a rare judgment of fine wines inherited from Julian's French ancestors. Yet Leonard, born in 1925, during prohibition, could never remember the matter of liquor being discussed between his father and mother, nor was it tolerated in his home until after repeal. Bootleggers and their gangster fringe were lawbreakers and never heroes to the impressionable Leonard. Neither he nor his parents could realize that, even before the age of ten, Len Ducro was being moulded not only into a first class citizen, but into first class material to become a special agent of the FBI. He was an excellent student, but on his eighteenth birthday, in 1943, the Army tapped

him and delayed his entry into New York University until 1945. By then he had a Purple Heart from the Battle of the Bulge, and a lot of experience that he disliked discussing with anyone. In 1949, Len married Connie Bagley, a girl he had met in high school. That same year he graduated with an A.B. degree and entered the School of Law. He acquired a son, Buddy, along with an LL.B degree in 1951. For four years Lennie Ducro worked successfully, and most unhappily, in the offices of a large New York firm of corporation lawyers. He was thirty when Connie had her second baby, Cissy. Thirty! He was a success! His employers were interested, pushing him along. Salary $7500 a year. A nice apartment in Forest Hills. A wife whom he worshiped. Two of the world's finest youngsters. A two-toned Olds convertible. A membership in a conservative Long Island golf club. Parents and in-laws all in good health, reasonably well-to-do, and devoted to both him and Connie. His health was tops. His war wounds forgotten. His physical condition prime. So, he was as pleasant to his family as a sore-tailed polar bear! He hated the details of corporate law from mergers down to tax evasions. From nine to five, Monday through Friday, his life was buried in fine print clauses concerning the validation of contracts, charters, stocks and bonds, and fiduciaries. Never a murder. Not even a decent embezzlement. He could sum it all up in three horrible words: dull—dull— dull! A few days after Christmas, 1955, stimulated to action by an extra Martini and luncheon at the Lawyer's Club with a particularly obnoxious client who felt that Lennie's firm should be able, for a sufficient fee, to overthrow a ruling of the New York Attorney General's office against the client's company, Lennie returned to the office and personally typed a letter of resignation effective in thirty days. Happy in his ignorance of the fact that only seven out of every hundred applicants made the grade, he typed another letter applying for a position as a Special Agent in the FBI. Excitement! Intrigue! Danger! Service to his country! Efforts that were really worthwhile in an organization he could really be proud of! He was riding on air instead of the subway when he caught the train home to Forest Hills to break the glorious news to Connie. She took it big, too. He had been impossible for a year and was getting worse. She didn't want to be married to a stuffy millionaire. So there might be less money—and it might mean a smaller car. So what? Len would be a hero to Buddy and Cissy and happy doing work he really wanted to do. They hired a sitter and went out to dinner and a show. It was March before Len went up for his physical tests and preliminary examinations.

Then there were investigations concerning his background, character, loyalty, and personal integrity. Once past those hurdles he found the grueling work was really about to begin. If he hoped to be rid of paperwork, he couldn't have been more wrong. For three months at the training center at Quantico, Virginia, and at the FBI headquarters, in Washington, he was grilled in the details of crime investigation until he decided it would be featherbedding to go back in the army again. He ate, lived, and dreamed preservation of evidence, away from and at the scene of a crime, accuracy of observation, how to write reports—plus the necessity of turning them in, and a thousand other minute details considered essential for an agent of the FBI. He also mastered new techniques in handling weapons—rifle, pistol, shotgun, and submachine gun. Under the tutelage of the firearms instructor for the Bureau, Attorney Leonard Ducro mastered a draw that would have sent Wyatt Earp, and Paladin with him, to graves on Boot Hill. The inflexible FBI rule is: Never point a gun unless you're ready to kill. When you fire, fire to kill only, not to disable. Split-second timing—getting the bullet there first— rather than precision bull's-eye shooting, is the objective. After his training Lennie could draw and fire five rounds into a man's size target in about three seconds. After practice during his first year as an agent, he could do it under two. He'd been taught to practice the quick draw before a full-sized mirror. Perfection, the New York instructor had told him, was achieved only when he could outdraw his own reflection. On Wednesday morning—July 9th to be exact—two days after Maury Morel had been cracked on the head, Len Ducro walked into the familiar building that housed the New York FBI at 201 E. 69th Street, gave a good-morning to the two colored officers on duty and automatically checked his watch with the grandfather's clock that stood at the back of the lobby. It was ten minutes to eight. He had wondered much about that clock and how it got there—a beautiful antique nearly eight feet tall, yet somehow seeming to blend in strange harmony with the modernistic walls and white squared composition floor. He had inquired about its history, but apparently even Ed Waters, the Special Agent in Charge, didn't know. An elevator shot him up to the tenth floor. He got off in the reception room, done in light green with comfortable green leather chairs, and nodded to the receptionist on duty. Len had learned the hard way that you were always on duty when you worked for the FBI. In addition to his starting salary of $5915, he had been paid nearly $800 for overtime during the past year. Connie swore it was all he could make, because he'd put in twentyfour hours a day since leaving the law firm.

He went inside, signed the register, and noted the hour— a compulsory detail every time you left or entered the office, no matter what city that office was in. In addition while on duty he checked with the office every three hours by telephone, reporting where he was and where he was going. By checking any agent's card in the communications section at any time, the S.A.C. knew instantly where that agent was and what case he was working on. Len had cleaned up a violation of the bankruptcy laws the day before, uncovering in a month of persistent inquiry some hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars of fraudulently concealed assets. It had been exciting, involving a brush with a couple of goons in charge of a warehouse where part of an inventory had been concealed. This morning the deadly part had begun. His formal written report, covering everything in detail, had to be dictated and typed, then reviewed by his administrative superior, who would check and criticize, and finally sign the report and send it on to Washington. Len had notified the supervisor of the stenographic pool the day before that he would want to start dictation at nine in the morning on a report that would roughly take an hour. Since he and Connie had taken off the night before and neglected his home work, Len had come in at eight to organize his notes so when the girl arrived—as she would on the dot—he'd be ready to begin. At periodic intervals the stenographers were asked to report on various agents, regarding their organization of notes and whether their dictation was too fast or too slow. Len Durco was blessed with an orderly mind and so far as the steno pool was concerned, he had received more orchids than punches to the chin. His report was finished at 9:45. The girl had just left when his telephone rang with a summons from Ed Waters. Len started checking himself for misdemeanors on his way to the office of the S.A.C. Usually you were on the carpet when summoned by the S.A.C. His trepidation vanished, for Ed Waters was smiling. Albeit the smile struck Len as cryptic, Waters greeted him cordially when he came in. “Sit down, Len.” Two years had taught Leonard Ducro to judge the temperature and depth of the hot water you were in by estimating the warmth and informality of Waters' greetings. To be called just “Ducro” meant nothing worse than a delayed report—too many reports delayed from any one office and Washington started lighting a fire under the local S.A.C. The agents began to feel the burn immediately. “Mr. Ducro” was the worst. You'd made a blooper properly—lost your head, or let some important suspect shake you from a tail. Once you heard that opening, you didn't leave Ed Waters' office before the rug in front of his desk had been flaked with bits of your chewed-off skin. “Sit down, Len.” Special Agent Ducro took a chair and accepted a cigarette from Waters, feeling that for the moment the world was okay.

“Have you closed the file on that Unison bankruptcy?” “Yes, sir. I just finished the report a few minutes ago.” Ed Waters level eyes studied Len's broad shoulders, studious features, intelligent dark eyes that could glow with excitement, and nicely barbered black hair. “The police phoned me about you, Len.” “The police?” Lennie almost dropped his cigarette. He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Lieutenant Hutchins of the Safe and Loft Squad. Know him?” “No, sir, I'm afraid I don't. I hope I haven't unwittingly gotten in his hair.” “Do you know Detective Sergeant Lawson?” “Yes, sir. We got into a hassle with a couple of goons in a warehouse—” “And you just happened in while Lawson, who had handcuffed one, was pinned under a crate with the other about to knife him. According to Lawson, you didn't dare shoot for fear of wounding him, so you swarmed over the top of the crate, jumped this gorilla and took his knife away.” “I covered the incident in my report, Mr. Waters. I'm better than average at Judo. It really didn't amount to anything.” “Washington seems to disagree, Len. The Monday meeting of the Executives Conference thought it amounted to something. Five hundred dollars worth to be exact. Here's a check for you, and a personal note of commendation from the boss.” Waters pushed an envelope across his desk. “Don't bother to thank me, Len. You earned it, or you wouldn't have gotten it. We've already paid out over seventy-five thousand in those incentive awards this year. The Bureau rather likes that sort of thing. Now I have another assignment for you. This is ticklish and I don't think you nor your wife are going to like any part of it.” “My wife? Connie?” “I'm afraid we're going to have to ask her co-operation. I had a tip last night from a confidential source. There's a patient in an institution called the Amity Rest Home, at Amityville, Long Island. He's entered under the name of Igor Sandor. That may be an alias, or it may be real. If it's an alias, Aaron Turlock is his actual name. He's in Room 22 of the men's section—a manic-depressive, supposedly undergoing electric shock treatment. He may be faking or really ill.” Lennie wrinkled his brow. “Where do I come in?” “You go in.” The S.A.C. leaned back in his chair. “This is an Internal Security case. I got clearance last night from the Assistant Director in charge of Domestic Intelligence to enter you in the Amity Rest Home, tomorrow afternoon, as a patient. The doctor in charge of the home is a woman, Dr. Marian Rheinemann. She's the ex-wife of Max

Rheinemann, a stock broker. We don't trust her, or him, so this is a clandestine type of investigation as you can see. We want everything you can get out of Sandor-Turlock to add to a raw file in Washington—not for admissible evidence. We don't know how long it will take you, or what you can learn, but we want to give it a try.” Waters pushed two typewritten sheets across to Len. “Study these until you know them by heart. There's one for your wife there, too. Any questions?” Lennie glanced at the sheets and his face reflected worry. “Connie is to drive me out there and make the necessary deposit?” Waters nodded. “How do you know I'll be admitted? Suppose they're full?” “They're not,” the S.A.C. said briefly. “Dr. Harley H. Emerson, 720 Park Avenue, is your physician. He's had you under his care for a year. You're a reactive depressive. He's making the necessary arrangements with Dr. Rheinemann today. You'll pick up additional instructions from his office this afternoon—telling you exactly how to act and what to do.” “A reactive depressive! That's a new one on me. I hope I can put this over. The idea of a booby hatch is enough to depress me.” “Wait until you've survived eighteen years of this picnic, Len. Once I spent a night in a straitjacket in with another maniac in a padded cell.” Waters grinned. “A reactive depressive is apathetic—not much interest in anything. You eat poorly. You sleep badly —prowl around the house at night. You've been losing weight. You sit in corners looking blankly at those around you and picking at your skin. At least that's what Connie tells them when she enters you in. Dr. Emerson will undoubtedly have several more ideas for you.” “Such as a mild course of shock treatments?” He folded the instruction papers and creased them vigorously with his thumb nail. “My God, Mr. Waters, suppose they start me on those things—then what do I do?” “That's an excellent expression you have on your face!” Ed Waters said. “You really do look slightly crazy. Relax, Len. They're not giving shock treatments to you.” “Why not? In those places they often do.” “Unh-unh! Not to patients who have had shock treatments before and who suffered a fractured spine. They have no X-ray machine in Amity Rest Home to look at your spine. According to the X-ray pictures that Dr. Emerson is furnishing Connie to show Dr. Rheinemann, you have a fractured spine. You incurred it while you were taking shocks in an upstate sanitarium over a year ago.” Waters stood up in dismissal. “Skip your reports until you get out. I don't think you can get to a phone. One of the doctors or orderlies will call your wife, if you ask him to. Maybe you'd better arrange some

message to tell her when you're ready to go home.” “What the hell will they do to me?” Len asked suspiciously. “Maybe wrap you in a few wet sheets if you start to get wild.” The S.A.C. stretched out his hand. “This whole deal will fall flat on its face if anyone smells the fact that you're from the FBI. Good luck, Len!” “The only thing they'll smell about me is the odor of stark unadulterated fear,” Len said as he shook the S.A.C.'s firm hand. CHAPTER 9 It wasn't until he had been in Amity Rest Home for a couple of weeks and undergone the ordeal of four shock treatments that Igor Sandor began to think about his name. Perhaps he had made an error in letting Opel enter him under the name of Sandor when they had used the name of Turlock for so many years—Aaron Turlock. Opel was Mrs. Aaron Turlock, and Nikki had been born three years before under that name. Aaron had worked for Crescent Valves as Assistant Director of Production, and Mr. Philips knew him as Turlock. Bruno Vogl, the Production Manager, knew him as Turlock, as did everyone in the plant. Mr. Philips had told him and Opel about the Amity Rest Home after he—Aaron Turlock —had found that everyone was trying to kill him. There was nothing suspicious about that since the red-headed girl doctor was Mr. Philips' daughter. She went by the name of Rheinemann, but that was really her married name. But wasn't it ominous that she knew his real name was Igor Sandor, and advised him and Opel to use it when he entered the home? Very ominous! Fateful, even! Only the Russians could I have told her. They had found it out somehow as they found out everything. Tortured it out of some pitiful wretch in Budapest. His brother, Zoltan? Who could tell? “Drink this urine, Zoltan. It's warm and nice from your friends in the other cell. It's all you'll get until you tell us where Igor is and what name he uses in the U.S.A. See, it foams like beer.” You told anything and everything in the cellars of 60 Stalin Street— everything to the A.V.O. Someone had told. The letters had started coming to his house outside of Garden City. Igor Sandor, c/o Aaron Turlock. “Everything is wonderful here now. Did you hear Khrushchev on the T.V.? Here's a picture of me in my new suit. You are sure to get into trouble in the United States. They'll find out what you've been doing there. Why don't you and Opel bring Nikki back home and live with me? (Signed) Your brother, Zoltan Sandor.” Then the visits from the Embassy Under Secretary of the United Nations Delegations Headquarters on Park Avenue.

“We'll arrange for your transportation, Igor. You and your wife and little boy will be safe in our hands until you sail. We have full authority to aid all redefectors. Just leave it to me.” Everyone in the world against him. No home. No safety. No sanctuary letters: “They'll find out what you've been doing there.” Opel against him. Nikki against him. No word from Opel in eight days now. She couldn't tell what he'd been doing to save himself, and her and Nikki, and Zoltan. She didn't know. How could she go to the FBI? Did the red-headed doctor know? What had he told when they strapped him down and blanked him out with electric shocks? He'd have to be doubly crafty now. Calm and crafty. Make his plans in secret. All of them might have to die! He must watch everyone and everything, and all the time he must watch his name. Aaron. Or Turlock. Or Aaron Turlock. If someone spoke it, or sometimes when he thought it, it was just as though two wires had touched each other and exploded a white electric shock inside his brain. The wires created a hot-shot spark that made him want to reply, but there was obviously something wrong with the circuit, possibly in the magnetic field that controlled the reflex motors in his brain. The dynamos weren't running. Very tiring, that. Very wearying. Yet he knew about magnetic fields and dynamos and sparks and wires. It was much less effort and much more interesting just to concentrate on his name— Aaron Turlock—which wasn't his name. Nor Opel's name. Nor Nikki's name. “Do you, Aaron Turlock, take this woman to be—?” “I do!” That was a long time in the past and it didn't matter much anyhow. It was safer if he killed them both, except they had gone and he wouldn't see them again. Everything was a long time in the past: Nikki being born. Opel couldn't deceive him about Nikki. Nikki had been three years old on his last birthday. Not long enough ago to be long in the past, and forgotten. The pink frosted cake was still very vivid—a cake with three candles on it. Pouf! and all the candles were out and three wisps of smoke had combined into one and were trailing toward the ceiling with that smell, like when you dipped white hot metal into a barrel of oil to cool and temper. His errant thoughts had come back to machinery again. It was always machinery, the machinery of government, the machinery of ideology, the mechanics of thinking, breathing, and living. Machinery made you conscious of yourself and how superior you had grown to the others who wanted to crush and grind you. Machines that ran smooth and well oiled. Others that clanked, clattered, punched, and

tore. Noise. Noise. Noise. Others worked so stealthily. Very quiet. Tearing splinters of flesh away, tearing brains apart as easily as they shattered pieces of steel. He was afraid of machinery, but he had never let them know. Opel had guessed it. That was why she'd persuaded him to come into this prison they called a home. Was he afraid of life? No, just the machinery of living. Certainly he had no fear of dying. No fear of God. No fear of hell. They'd robbed him of all those pleasant fears long years ago. There were many, many, pleasant ways of dying. But the unpleasant ways of staying alive were more unpleasant. Men could be reduced to screaming animals, chattering apes, empty faceless creatures like those confined with him now, and still kept alive. He'd return to his room and sit on the bed and think about the knife. That would get him away from the jailer in white who always wanted to play at chess. Such very bad chess. Igor Sandor could have beaten him without a Queen when Igor was just a boy. Even Aaron Turlock could beat him. Unless the jailer wasn't trying. The jailers and the redheaded girl doctor were very sly. Aaron Turlock could see the jailer drawing closer now with that chess look in his eye. Now all the empty creatures around were watching how he'd get a cigarette from the jailer, let the jailer light it, and then escape to his room to think about the knife. What was he thinking about now? When you tried to remember what you wanted to remember you only remembered what you wanted to forget. Recsk! The prison at Recsk, outside of Budapest. They knew how to keep you alive at Recsk—alive while you stood on a single foot—alive while you stood against a wall holding a pencil between your forehead and the wall—alive while you squatted in excrement under the blinding lights that robbed all trace of night and day. Now when he tried to think of Aaron Turlock, and Opel, and Nikki, he could only think about Recsk. He could think about Zoltan, but not about Zoltan's mother and father. Not his mother and father. Aaron Turlock hadn't betrayed them to the A.V.O. It was Igor Sandor, the machine-made communist manufactured in Recsk, who had told the truth about them. Igor, who couldn't stand the tortures. Igor who had been made a jailer as a reward for betraying those two old enemies of the people—his mother and father—and allowed to watch them die. He would have to kill Nikki before he grew up and betrayed his parents. Better to kill Opel, too. Both of them had the name of Turlock, just as Turlock had had the name of Sandor when he was born. Forty years! Now he was thinking about being born. Yet he couldn't remember Nikki being born. He couldn't remember marrying Opel, nor why she'd betrayed him into this prison. A judgment! A Daniel come to judgment!

You couldn't kill yourself in Recsk and you couldn't kill yourself in Amity Rest. There were jailers here just as cruel as the ones at Recsk. A Chief Interrogator, Dr. Crill, and the Prison Warden, the red-headed Dr. Rheinemann. A jailer named Dave. A jailer named Steve, who played at chess. The other prisoners just sat around and listened as he did. Sometimes they made so bold as to actually talk, and he'd manufacture monstrous lies knowing they were informers, all, and Dr. Rheinemann's servile spies. There were still more prisoners kept in the security dungeons on the second floor. Women as well. He shut his ears to their tortured screams during the daytime, but at night he'd lie sleepless listening to their anguished howls—usually quickly stilled. Those released from security, women and men, ate together in one large basement dining hall. Some of the more daring ones even talked together—right under the eyes and nose of the woman guard, Miss Kirby, who pretended to be kind. Igor Sandor could have told them that women wardens were the worst of all, more nasty, more brutal, more fiendishly sadistic than the men. He had broken bones from the women at Recsk—and a broken spirit. Nightmares of unspeakable indignities when he was made their naked cringing victim haunted him still. The harder he tried to forget, the more he remembered. Never talk to other prisoners. Never talk to anyone. Women guards are the torturers! All women are the torturers! Why had he ever married one? Sooner or later it might be Dr. Rheinemann who would break him down. He'd stolen a knife from right under Miss Kirby's suspicious nose. It was taped with adhesive to the asbestos covering of the steam pipe in the corner of his room, wrapped round and round. You learned many things at Recsk—-just how quiet a knife could be was only one. The day might come if the pressure increased when he'd teach that trick to Dr. Rheinemann. Opel knew what he could do with a knife. Maybe that was why she didn't come. Dr. Rheinemann was always asking what he was afraid of—telling him there was nothing to fear. Then if he sat in stony silence thinking about his last night out with Opel, Dr. Grill, the Chief Interrogator, would appear. That meant a trip to the torture room. There while Dr. Rheinemann stroked his forehead, and rubbed his temples with soothing cream, while she muttered, “Just relax now, Mr. Sandor. There's nothing to be afraid of.” Dr. Crill and Miss Kirby would strap him down. How futile was resistance. He always relaxed as the red-haired warden told him. Inside he knew, that even with his broken bones, the day would come when he'd kill them all! Then he'd crawl back out of the darkness and start thinking again, just as he was doing now. The Crescent Valves plant. The blueprints. The machinery. The microfilms made so skillfully and passed on to him in hollowed out nickels and pencils, to be passed on to Kamilkoff on his next visit. Three nickels and a pencil he had now. And next week he

must get out again. Opel must come and get him out, and the nickels and pencil must be passed back to Pringle, since Kamilkoff hadn't come to call. Otherwise Pringle would come to him. Then they might be finished, and he would be finished, too. Re-defect, Sandor, or we'll turn you in! You've betrayed your own mother and father—betrayed the country you're living in. You've betrayed us once, until you saw the light. How do we know you won't do it again? So he'd go to his room and sit on the bed and outwait and outwit them all. He'd sit in this jail and nurse his fears and when the right moment came he'd kill them all. Steve, the jailer, playing chess now with another prisoner. Others watching. The smarter ones like Aaron Turlock sitting frozen in catatonic stupidity ranged in chairs along the wall. Comfortable chairs. Not like Recsk where they forced you to sit for hours on a pointed stool. Chairs like those in the lobby of the Grand Hungarian Hotel. See, they couldn't make him forget his fears. They were all his own, with him even when he bellhopped in the Grand Hungarian Hotel. Afraid of the manager. Afraid to lose his pittance in wages. Afraid to say no when the secret police in those days demanded he play the part of a spy. He'd become a spy, but it had proved a very bad day for him, and a bad day for the A.V.O. Once you learned to be a spy you spied on everyone. He could remember his family's hatred of communism, even though now he couldn't exactly remember their name. Unless it was Sandor, like his brother's, Zoltan. So many deeds you couldn't remember. What had landed him in Recsk prison? He didn't know. Didn't want to know. From that time on there was only the memory of fear. The beatings. The torture. The crawling for miles through filth and muck under charged barbwire. And the trail of blood he left behind from his knife-ripped belly. Then there was Opel. Then there was Nikki. And always there was Pringle to be met somewhere. Now he was here. The fear still with him. Facing torture of a different kind, but torture still. What difference between there and here? There were leafy trees outside of the prison windows. Summer surely. A fountain with an unclad woman, cold and unattainable, and cruel as all women were. By raising his head and staring with cunning he could see the driveway that led to freedom. It lay beyond the charged barbwire. But everyone out there was against him, aware of all his perfidy. He would have to kill them all out there if he hoped to be rid of the fear. Sooner or later they would try to get him. Send some of their assassins in. Send them in here. The Amity Rest Home. That was here.

A minor victory that he could keep to himself, and would keep to himself, never telling anyone that the Amity Rest Home was here. By careful thought that secret could be tied up to so many things. His fear of machinery and where it was acquired. When they'd tried to kill him they had used a machine. It was growing dusk and that was the time of day in front of his house in Garden City that they'd used the machine. Getting nearly time for dinner. He'd go down to the dining room later. Miss Kirby would try to talk to him. She'd cut his meat and carefully take the knife away, not knowing about the bigger and sharper one taped to the steam pipe in his room. Then she'd tell him he had nothing to fear. Steve finished his chess game and switched on lights. The prisoner Steve had lost to put the pieces away. Aaron slipped cautiously to the window as soon as Steve had left the room. There could be no rule against staring out at the darkening world through the mesh of the prison screen. The fountain-woman was almost lost in the deep enveloping gray. As Aaron watched, the beams from headlights lit the fountain, bathing the naked woman in yellow as a car turned in. Then the nymph was swallowed in darkness and a twotoned convertible had pulled up outside the prison door. The motor stopped. A car door slammed and Aaron flinched. It took the sound of a thousand doors that had slammed behind you forever to cause so sharp a pain. Another prisoner! Igor Sandor knew those dragging footsteps, that hopeless blank look of a beaten dog, that drawing back, as the woman took the man's arm, led him up the steps and in. Another prisoner? Or the assassin Aaron was waiting for? Which had come in? They were gone an unknown length of time while Aaron mulled the problem over. The man might be just another one he would have to kill. He stood at the window, his fingers tightly clutching the screen. At last the woman came out again, got in the car and closed the door softly. This time she didn't want to alarm him. Headlights flared on suddenly. A starter whirred. An engine caught. Gravel flew. The fear of machinery was back again. He was back once more in front of his house in Garden City—full in the glare of those headlights on the big black car that had tried so hard to run him down. He was no more use to the communists. No use to Pringle. No more use to anyone. The whole world was out to take his life and crush him to bits.

This time it was Aaron Turlock, not Igor Sandor, who filled his terror-struck lungs to bursting and began to scream! CHAPTER 10 For years Sunday afternoon had been open house at the Morels. Many times the open house was a carry-over—Anne called it a hangover—from the night before. She had learned through hard experience that Maury, who was a more or less moderate drinker during the week, was inclined to let the bars down on Saturday night. He never lacked company. In all the years of their marriage Anne had never ceased to be amazed at not only the number, but the wide variety of people her husband knew. Before midnight on hundreds of Saturdays, the living room of Apartment A-11 had been jammed with as many as two dozen visitors, often more. Labor leaders rubbed shoulders with industrialists. A worldwide columnist might be swapping yarns with a politician or a general he had openly pilloried the week before. Editors and associate editors of rival weekly news magazines mixed drinks with insults. Drama critics met actors they had panned. Literary critics received verbal doses of their own printed acid from unhappy best-seller authors. Officials of associations against racial prejudice were presented to representatives of southern states, and started quietly divesting the congressmen of their prejudiced fur. TV personalities. Radio personalities. Women fashion editors, home editors, cooking editors, givers of advice to the love-lorn. Rabbis. Priests. Ministers. Gamblers. Bishops. News photographers. Foreign correspondents. Policemen. Senators—United States and State. Governors, ex and in. Aldermen. Army Intelligence. Navy Intelligence. Brass fresh out of the Pentagon. Through the years Anne Morel had met them all. Usually they had departed by four in the morning, but she had ceased being startled at coming in to the living room at eleven or twelve on Sunday morning to find a couple of snoring men in the pulled-out daybed, and sometimes a third one bedded down on the floor. The party had been rough on the night of the Saturday that Anne got back from San Francisco. Maury had hired his usual car and met her at La Guardia in the afternoon. They'd had dinner at Luigi's before going home. Their meeting at the airport had been strained. Maury felt that the warmth he had sensed on his telephone call the previous Tuesday had chilled. By the time they had finished dinner, and Anne had failed to thaw under the stimulus of Martinis, Lasagna, and a bottle of Chianti, he knew that the barrier between them, that had worried him for a year, had been raised again. He tried to reassure himself by saying she was tired from the plane trip, but he knew he was whistling in the dark. Hal Gow was the first to phone after they reached the apartment. Marge and the kids

were in New Jersey for the weekend. He'd heard that Anne was home. Could he drop in and bring his own bottle along? Maury's voice was more than pleased when he said, Sure!” It was eager. He wanted time to think before he faced a showdown with Anne, and a showdown of some kind was certain if he had to spend this first evening with Anne alone. She looked up from her unpacking. “Who was that?” “Hal. Marge and the kids are New Jerseying. He's coming down with a bottle.” “And twenty other drunks, I presume.” She was standing in her slip, her black hair carefully waved, but showing thin lines of gray. Anne was slender, long legged, and attractive at forty; her pointed breasts still firm. Only her kindly face with its prominent nose gave a hint of how weary she was, and the corners of her large eyes showed crow'sfeet of strain. “Hal's not a drunk, Anne, any more than you and I.” “I could make something out of that if I wanted to, and that goes for your other so-called friends, too.” Anne took a pair of shoes from her bag and lined them up carefully under the edge of her bed. Still bent over she said, “Why did you have to blat it all over the office exactly when I was coming home?” “I told T.T. He was the only one. I asked him down for cocktails and dinner tomorrow evening. Maybe he told Hal. I don't know. Did you want to keep it a secret?” “I thought we might have one Saturday night and Sunday together. I've been doing a lot of thinking in California. I wanted to talk with you.” Anne came and sat on his bed beside him. “Really? I must have failed to notice it at dinner, and while we were driving in from La Guardia.” The phone rang. Anne answered it. “Oh, hello, Erick.—Just a few minutes ago.—Oh, by all means do.—No, you don't need to bring any beer, we have plenty in the ice box. You're not putting us out, at all. Hal Gow's coming. I expect there'll be plenty of others, too. Yes—sort of a homecoming brawl.” She hung up. “Just let me guess,” Maury said. “I hope he brings his deodorant and breath-sweetener along.” He got up and started for the living room. “You could use a deodorant on your disposition, Maury. It stinks!” “Do you think I told Sorenson you were coming home?” Maury turned in the doorway and stood leaning against the jamb. “No. I'm quite sure you didn't.” Anne got up to resume her unpacking. “Then you'll have to admit that there is such a thing as a Greenwich Village grapevine.” “Not in this particular case.” Anne shook out three dresses and fitted them on hangers.

“Erick called me long distance on Tuesday afternoon, a couple of hours after you phoned. I'd made reservations by then and told him what day I'd be home.” Maury felt an ache in the muscles along his jaw. “So it was that little pimp who ransacked this place, was it? Stole your pictures and our address book—God knows what else. And you stand there quite calmly and tell me he had the consummate gall to call you long distance. What the hell goes on?” “That's a question I hoped you would answer, Maury. I've been asking myself that very thing for a long time now: 'What the hell goes on?' As for Erick stealing the address book—you didn't have it, yet you managed to get me on the phone through San Francisco information.” Anne pushed by him with the three dresses, hung them in her hall closet, and being careful not to touch him, returned to the bedroom. “Cover for him all you want.” Maury massaged his aching jaw. “I think I'm entitled to know why he called you.” Anne sat on her bed, crossed her long bare legs and lit a cigarette. “He was worried about you.” “Worried that I hadn't been killed the night before?” “He's been working part time in a second-hand bookstore and free-lancing on true crime stories, Maury, since Hal let him go. He learned something from Dykes, your own man at headquarters. Apparently a lot of people don't hate Erick like you do—” “Including you.” “Now you know how idiotic you're being when you take that line. Erick heard that a man had been killed, and that you were in St. Vincent's.” “Dykes didn't know I was in St. Vincent's.” “Well, Erick got it from someone—from where, I don't know. He didn't know that you'd been discharged until I told him you'd called me two or three hours before.” “This damned solicitude is cutting me to the quick! What did this slimy Samaritan want you to do?” “Come home. Which I told him I was already planning to do. He thought you might be mixed up in something dangerous. Then I got your letter about that Lebanese being stabbed and I'm beginning to think so, too. Besides, Maury, you sounded frightened when I talked to you.” She put out her cigarette. Maury went over to the bed, lifted her up, then held her tightly and kissed her. She responded, coolly at first, and then with a touch of passion. The doorbell buzzed. “Damn,” he said. “That's Hal, I suppose.” He looked deep into her candid eyes before he slowly released her. “If I was frightened, Anne, it was because of you, but neither of us

is in danger—unless it's the danger, that because of something I can't explain, you might start to lose faith in me. If I ever think we're in physical danger, I'll be the first to tell you.” “No you won't, Maury.” She shook her head, and a shadow crossed her face. “I'd like to believe it, but I've learned in eighteen years of marriage that you live apart in your private world and actually never tell anyone the whole of anything. Now I have to get dressed. Go and let Hal in.” Two by two, like filling the Ark, they began to drift in. Once in awhile the telephone rang. More often it was just a knock on the door, a tap on the window, or the doorbell's strident ring. Men with somebody else's wives, or maybe even with their own. Couples who were owlishly drunk, or half a couple drunk, and half quite sober—a condition soon remedied when the Bourbon and Scotch began to flow. Only Hal Gow and Erick Sorenson had come alone. Hal for some reason was slugging his drinks, which was most unlike him. His blue eyes kept getting dimmer, his incisive speech thicker. By one o'clock his squat powerful figure had become nothing more than a blob of flesh collapsed in Maury's easy chair. Anne was talking easily and amusingly, mixing drinks, polite to everyone. Sorenson, unaware of rebuffs, gulped down his endless cans of beer, broke in on every conversation, told shaggy dog stories that no one heard, and vainly all evening tried to isolate Maury or Anne. It was after two when Maury, drunk enough to be provoked beyond endurance, decided to give him the air. “Come on Erick, let's break this up. Anne's dead on her feet and we've got to tuck Hal away on the couch. If you leave now it will start things moving. Maybe the rest will take the hint.” He pointed to a group, making incoherent talk, clustered around the door to the kitchen. “I'll walk down to Hudson with you and see if we can flag a taxi. I need some air.” Much to his surprise, Sorenson agreed without question, and got his coat from the closet in the hall. They walked in silence across the court. Maury, feeling unsteady, sucked in great gulps of the muggy July night air. On Morton Street instead of turning toward Hudson, Erick turned left and began to walk slowly the other way. “More chance of getting a cab on Seventh Avenue.” He took hold of Maury's elbow, as though to steady him. “Walk a ways with me. I've been trying all evening to talk with you.” Maury stopped short. He had no hat or coat on, but was wearing a long-sleeved yellow sports shirt. Even through the fabric the feel of Erick's fingers were about to give him a chill. He twisted away from the clinging grasp. “Keep your hands to yourself, Erick. I've got

to get back, so make it snappy —say what you have to say.” “You're in a hell of a mess, Morel. You're just about to be tossed from your job—and expelled from the Party at the same time. Maybe that interests you. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, that's all that I have to say.” “I don't know what you're talking about, Sorenson.” Maury made as though to move away. “Don't start pulling that crap on me.” Across the dark street a drunken couple laughed raucously. Sorenson leaned so close that Maury could smell the mingled fumes of bad breath and beer. “I've never been out of the Party, Comrade, any more than you have. You may be a few steps higher up—but they don't have any receipts from me showing I've been in their pay.” Maury's first inclination was to knock this sniveling creature, suddenly turned menacing, into the gutter of Morton Street. Wasn't that exactly what they wanted? Undoubtedly! Any comrade could bring charges against him, regardless of how trumped up or unfounded those charges might be. The technique was to keep you on the hot seat, always trembling in your boots, wondering just where and when the next blow might fall. One fact was not to be doubted—in the intricate mesh of twisted Party thinking, scheming, and mechanizations, Maury Morel had been signaled out as the instrument to carry out some vital plan. Sorenson was the tightener of the thumbscrews. The start would have been a specific charge—chauvinism, carrying the implication of considering oneself superior to others. It would have meant an instant summons into Party court, had Maury let his temper flare and socked his heckler on the jaw. As to those receipts that Sorenson had mentioned, Maury knew what they were. He had written three articles for a liberal magazine, New Lines, right after the war. It made no difference that he had used the pseudonym of Robert L. Skeene. The checks for a hundred dollars each had been made payable to Maurice Morel, and had been endorsed and gone through his bank. Then New Lines had been proved to be a Communist publication, and bombed in the press by Maury himself. The editor called before a Senatorial subcommittee had invoked the Fifth Amendment. So the Party had definite proof in their files that Maury Morel had taken money from them and was in their pay. But they didn't intend to use those checks—unless—! The Party knew, and Maury knew, how quickly he would be jobless and discredited if photostats of those damning checks ever reached the desk of B. Franklin Jeffers. And the more years that slipped by, the more futile any of Maury's explanations would become. No, they didn't intend to use those checks except as a very last resort. There was too

much value to the Party in maintaining Maury's status quo. Besides, there were other things the Party knew! He and Sorenson had reached Seventh Avenue, walking in silence. They stopped at the corner. Sorenson looked up and down the avenue for a cruising taxi, while Maury, beginning to perspire at every pore, stared morosely at the lights of Nick's a few blocks uptown. He wished he were in there, nursing a drink, listening to jam, waiting for a sizzling steak, lost among the crowded tables. “I suppose you've been detailed to give me some sort of a warning,” Maury said, shoving his clammy hands into his trouser pockets. “Did it ever occur to you that I might turn? Do a job of denouncing, myself. Frankly, Erick, you're not much of a hatchet man.” “I'm not acting as any hatchet man. I hear things, that's all.” The whine was back. Maury knew he had stuck him in some tender spot, aroused that ever-present terror that consumed them all. “What did you search our apartment for?” “Your apartment?” “Monday night. You know damn well you did it—tore it to pieces. Took those pictures we made at the beach last month, and our phone index so you could make that long distance call to Anne.” “Maury, so help me, I didn't. You have to believe me.” Sorenson had begun to shiver. “Why should I? I know the Party better than you do. All against all! If you lost your job on the paper blame yourself, or Hal Gow, not me. I can really twist things around if I want to. Make charges that you're guilty of destructive criticism against your superior— searching my place, calling my wife, trying to intimidate me. I'm damn sure going to bring such charges and see you tossed out of the Party on your ear—unless you come clean with me.” “My God, Maury, you've got me all wrong! I didn't search your place. I've been trying to warn you.” “Warn me? Why?” “Because Anne is the only one in the world who has ever been decent to me. Don't you —?” “Quit groveling. I want some details. What's the Party supposed to have on me that can lose me my job? Answer me.” “Checks endorsed by you from New Lines magazine.” “Who told you that?”

“I don't know, Maury. Someone called me on the phone.” “And said I was in a hell of a mess—about to be tossed from my job and out of the Party as well?” “Yes, believe me.” “But they didn't say why?” “No.” “And what were you supposed to do—-outside of searching my place and frightening Anne?” “I've sworn I didn't search your place. I was supposed to do just what I did—pass that information along to you, as I did tonight.” “And tell me about New Lines, too?” Maury had the contrite sensation of whipping a puppy, but a vicious mad one, whose hydrophobic bite was concealed by a wagging tail. “I wasn't supposed to tell you about that. It wasn't mentioned—” A cruising cab came along and Erick signaled it by stepping off the curb and waving his arm. “It wasn't mentioned to you over the telephone?” “No.” The cab pulled up. Erick opened the door and had one foot on the running board when Maury seized his arm, digging his fingers into the flabby biceps. “Who told you about those New Lines checks?” “I just heard about it somewhere, Maury. You'll have a chance to clear things up all around. They'll contact you.” He tried to pull loose but Maury tightened his powerful grip. “Who told you about those checks?” “I heard while I was working on the paper.” Sorenson whimpered as Maury dug his fingers deeper. “That's a lie—like everything else you've said tonight. If anyone on the paper knew about those checks I wouldn't be there. I'm going to get to the bottom of this, Erick, and really go to work on you, when I get the lowdown.” Maury let go and gave Erick a push inside the cab. “Ask him yourself if you don't believe me.” Erick sat rubbing his muscle. “He's still at your place. Ask him yourself—I heard about those checks from Hal Gow.” He slammed the cab door, gave the driver his destination, and the cab moved off. Maury walked back to Morton Court, stiff-legged like an old man. If Sorenson had told the truth, the only explanation that fitted was that Hal was a Party member, a front, or a fellow-traveler. Any of the three would complicate matters beyond endurance. Maury

hoped to Heaven for his own sake that Erick was lying and that none of his, Maury's, conjectures about Hal Gow would prove to be true. He had to find out fast. The Party had him ripened up properly now, ready for plucking. He'd learn pretty quickly what they wanted him to do.

CHAPTER 11 Anne was in bed and asleep when Maury got home. Somehow she had disposed of the crowd and gotten Hal stretched out on the living room divan where he lay breathing stertorously. Maury removed Hal's shoes, spread a blanket over him, and hung up Hal's coat that had been tossed on a chair. He collected glasses, took them into the kitchen, then started emptying ashtrays. That done, he mixed himself a nightcap, which he didn't need, sat down in his easy chair and stared at the sleeping city editor. Maury had been with the Globe-Star nine years longer than Hal, who came to the paper from a Denver newspaper in 1943, starting as a reporter. It was through Maury's efforts that Hal had been appointed city editor in 1948, when Everett Dupree had been promoted from the city desk to managing editor. Maury had flatly refused the city editor's job, offered to him for the second time since he'd been with the Globe-Star. He had strongly recommended Hal to Ray Lindeman, the editor, and the Old Man. Maury's refusal of an executive post merely confirmed everyone's opinion that he was utterly unpredictable, a, confirmed and brilliant free-lancer, and wanted no part of an office job that would tie him down. Now, if Sorenson's statements were true, it began to look as though Hal Gow was covering up for Maury. Gratefulness? Friendship? Or was Hal enmeshed with the Communists himself? Thinking about it coldly, over a drink before dawn, Maury found he might accept the first two reasons. Hal was grateful for Maury's push. His friendship for Maury and Anne was strong. But the idea that Hal was involved with the Party just didn't ring true. There was nothing devious about Hal Gow. His honesty was impeccable, his integrity unimpeachable. He was free with praise or criticism, and candid to a point of discomfiting even Ray Lindeman, who, at times, felt certain situations should be handled with gloves on. Hal went at things barehanded.

No. Hal Gow just wasn't the type. He'd fold up under a tenth of the double dealing that had marked the career of Maury Morel. Truth was Hal's watchword. Not truth watered down with an angle. When Maury had outlined the series about Rest Homes to him a couple of days before, it hadn't taken Hal more than five seconds to say, “Interesting! Go to it, Maury. Write anything you want to about them—so long as you know it's true.” Maury finished his drink and went to bed, to toss restlessly until nearly daybreak. He was up again at ten, had coffee made, and was skimming through the Sunday Times when Hal came to life and sat up with a groan. “Thanks for a lovely evening—and for giving me a decent burial.” “Anne tucked you in before I got back.” “Oh. I didn't know you'd gone. Where did you go?” “Seeing Erick home—as far as Seventh Avenue where he got a taxi. I stood him as long as I could.” “So did I—on the paper.” Hal stood up and stretched. “How's the bathroom?” “All clear. Anne's still asleep.” “I'm going to borrow your shower and electric razor. What's the time?” “Ten thirty.” “Good lord! This isn't Monday, is it? What got you up so early?” “Uneasy conscience. Want some coffee now? It's made.” “I'll wait. I'd appreciate a curry comb for my tongue.” “You'll find a fresh toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. When you travel stay at a Morel Hotel.” Maury went back to his paper. By the time Hal was back, looking considerably fresher in spite of slightly puffed and reddened eyes, Maury had decided that the best line of approach was to jump right in. They were dawdling over coffee, toast, and marmalade when Maury said, “Sorenson got a bit burned at my rushing him out last night. He said, without mincing many words, that you'd told him while he was on the paper that you'd heard I once took money direct from the CP.” Hal was looking at him intently and for a second Maury wondered exactly how much he knew, not only about the New Lines checks, but about everything. “He's not only a liar, he's a horse's ass.” Hal took a bite of toast and washed it down with coffee. “Then you didn't tell him any such thing?” “No,” Hal said. “Sorenson told me—about three hundred bucks you got from the editor of New Lines. Articles signed by Robert L. Skeene.”

“What if that happens to be true, Hal? Just how far out on a limb would that leave me?” “Is it true?” “Yes. It's true,” Maury said in a toneless voice. Hal finished his coffee and toast before he answered. Then he smiled and lit a cigarette. “I'm glad you've been honest with me. I had to take the trouble to check, Maury.” “To check with whom?” “With the FBI.” Hal was staring at him steadily. “Ray Lindeman and Ev Dupree were both riding me. Should they take this terrible scandal up with Jeffers, or would discovery that his fair-haired boy, Maury, had a poison pen, finish off the Old Man?” Maury shook his head. “If the Old Man gets it, I'm finished, Hal, not him—and probably with no severance pay. I thought that went for Lindeman, too. Possibly Ev Dupree — maybe even you.” “You've been the subject of several quiet three-handed conferences since Sorenson started his sabotage around the office, Maury. You can take that as the greatest understatement of the year. Lindeman started back through the morgue and read proof on every line you've written, with and without 'by-lines' since 1934. There were several stories that were anti-Communist. But when regarded through the wrong end of a spyglass and thrown back into time, Lindeman found it difficult to sort out the 'anti' from the 'pro.' Do you want to know what saved your neck?” Maury said, “It was a fellow named Hal Gow.” “Well, yes and no. There are certain facts about this mess that do not meet the nude, or naked, eye. Do you happen to remember mat you were quite instrumental in planting my rear in the City Editor's chair?” “I did nothing but pass it by.” “There was also a spot of office campaigning, as I recall, but we'll skip it. Sorenson was after my hide as well as yours—” “I don't get it.” “You hired him, and both of us fired him. That's why. He dug up that I'd been a Party member for a couple of years, in the thirties. But neglected to mention that I'd checked out, just like a lot of others. “So you'd taken dough from the Commies, and then put a comrade, me, into the City Editor's chair. It took some fast talking, Maury—pointing out what you'd done for the paper, how you'd even showed up New Lines as a Commie organ, how you had been blasted in the Daily Worker, and so had I. Lindeman got in a long-winded report from that gabby organization, the FBI. It informed Lindeman that the FBI didn't make reports of loyalty of employees to private corporations Period. So in spite of Mr. Sorenson, both

of us are still working for the old G-S today.” “There's more to it than that, Hal.” Maury took the coffee cups into the kitchen, came back and sat in his big chair. “What more?” “You. You didn't have to go to bat for me in such a big way.” Hal thought for a minute. “There's some quality about you, Maury, that makes people believe in you. I'll think you're on the level whatever you do.” “That's the pitch of every con man.” “Then let's just say I like you.” “It's a mutual admiration society, Hal—” The doorbell rang. CHAPTER 12 Two men were outside. A sharp-faced one, blue eyed, wearing cares that fitted him as well as his tan gabardine suit, and a stouter one, round faced, with deep swimming dark eyes that took in the living room, Hal, and Maury without seeming to move in their sockets. “Mr. Morel?” the sharp faced one asked. “Yes.” “Police officers. I'm Detective Lornegan. This is my partner, Detective Greenbaum.” “Come in.” Maury stepped aside and closed the door behind them. “This is Mr. Gow, City Editor of the Globe-Star.” Hal gave the pair a friendly but curious glance and said, “Hi! So you've finally tracked him down.” “Not the man we're looking for, Mr. Gow. We need some help. That's why we're bothering Mr. Morel.” “You might as well bother me while you're sitting down.” Maury gestured toward the divan. “My wife just got home from California yesterday. She's still asleep. There's coffee made if you care for some.” Lornegan shook his head. Greenbaum smiled and said, “No, thanks.” Both of the officers sat down. “Your head any better?” Lornegan asked. “I can still feel it, but at least the sticking plaster's gone. It gets in your hair.” Both officers nodded solemnly. “You haven't been down to identify that corpse as Beshara Shebab, have you, Mr. Morel?”

“I couldn't. I never saw the man before I met him in the Beirut Cafe.” “But you could identify him as the man who was with you in the cafe,” Greenbaum said. “I thought he'd already been identified,” Hal put in. “Two waitresses. Fingerprints off a window sash and off his chair. A footprint from the window sill. Seems like a clincher to me, and to Dykes who covers headquarters.” “If Mr. Morel doesn't make an identification it's going to leave a hole in my D.D.5's— the follow-up report—that you can drive a truck through.” Detective Greenbaum nodded agreement. “We're carrying this case, and in spite of the fact that Mr. Morel made a statement to Captain Knox, of Homicide, we'd like to get one, too—also an identification.” His brown eyes blinked solemnly at Maury. “The D.A.'s office will be much better satisfied if we follow out a thorough routine.” “Okay, boys,” Maury said quickly. “Let's keep the D.A. satisfied by all means. Where do you want to begin?” Lornegan took out a notebook. “While Captain Knox was here last Tuesday, the morning after you were assaulted, you talked to your city editor on the phone. Is that so?” “Yes,” Hal Gow said. “Maury talked to me.” “Good.” Lornegan shifted his attention to Hal. “On the phone, Mr. Morel mentioned an assignment you had given him. Something about 'hot Red money'—could you give us a few more details on that?” “I'll give you what I can—but finding out the details was the job I assigned to Maury. Briefly, Russia has a tremendous gold reserve—over ten billion dollars—that she's pumping into this country through Swiss, Lebanese, and South American banks, some in Canada, too.” “Can you prove that?” Detective Greenbaum asked. “When I started Maury out on this that's what I hoped to do. This money is carried in numbered accounts, principally in Switzerland and Beirut—” “Beirut?” Greenbaum had his notebook out. “That's in Lebanon?” “Yes.” “And this fellow who was murdered, Beshara Shebab, was a Lebanese. Isn't that true?” Maury said, “That's what he told me. I passed it on to Ben Knox. Shebab said his father was the director and principal shareholder of the Banque du Shebab-Syrie—” “We have all that, Abe,” Lornegan interrupted. “Hearsay, until we can tie it down. Now, tell me Mr. Morel, did Beshara Shebab slip you any information that might indicate someone was after him?”

Maury thought it over. “He said he was afraid he'd gotten me into a mess—and himself, too. But he wasn't putting out too much until I guaranteed him some money. We were coming up to my apartment, here. I thought his fears were a build-up to get more dough.” “He was afraid, then?” “He went out a window, didn't he? Refused to walk out with me. I was to meet him in that alley in back of the place in five minutes. When I found him he was dead, as I told Captain Knox, and his pea jacket was gone.” “How did you happen to notice that?” Greenbaum asked casually. Maury sighed. These precinct detectives knew their business. It wasn't going to be easy to hold back anything. “He was carrying the jacket over his arm when he left me— didn't have it on. He claimed to have proof of what he wanted to sell me sewed into the lining.” “Then he told you what he wanted to sell you,” Lornegan said. “Only generally,” Maury admitted. “He said he knew the name of the man who controlled millions in numbered accounts in his father's bank, and others. He said that man was in the United States, and that he knew how the man got in, the name he was using, and what the man was doing with the money.” “Now, let's see.” Lornegan turned back a page in his notebook. “You found this man, who was with you at the table, stabbed to death about six feet off of Charlton Street up this alley. You struck a light, saw the knife in his back, then looked around and saw that his jacket was gone. Then someone hit someone hit you and knocked you cold. Is that correct, Mr. Morel?” “Are you reading that from your official report,” Maurey asked, “or is it part of a story line you and Greenbaum hope to peddle to TV?” Lornegan had the grace to flush, and Greenbaum tried to suppress a smile. Lornegan said stiffly, “if any of the facts are wrong, I'd be glad to have you correct me.” “I'll be damn glad to correct you. In fact, I insist. I went up to the mouth of the alley. It was raining and pitch black. I didn't see anyone or anything. Then I thought I heard someone move in the alley. I called softly, 'Shebab, are you there?' No one answered, but I thought I heard a groan, so I went in to see. My foot touched clothing. I knelt down, felt around, touched something that felt sticky, and a knife hilt, with my fingertips, then was trying to turn the stabbed man over. I'd just thought that he had no jacket on when someone conked me. “Now. I lit no light at any time. I've told you why I went in the alley—I must have heard whoever conked me, and thought it was Shebab. I had gloves on. I had a tape recorder in my raincoat pocket. Shebab spotted it instantly in the restaurant, so I didn't turn it on. When I woke up in the hospital, the gloves and the tape recorder were gone.”

“We have the recorder along with the gloves,” Lornegan said. “I appreciate your straightening out your part of that incident in the alley. We were wondering why you went up in there. So if Shebab was dead when you found him, he couldn't have said anything that might point to his killer.” “No, he couldn't have—and didn't,” Maury said earnestly. After all he was only telling one tenth of a lie. Turlock and the Amity Rest Home he considered his personal property. “I'll be glad to make identification right now, if you want to run me over to the morgue and back. I have no car. Is there anything else?” “Just a couple.” Lornegan went to his notebook again. “Captain Knox said you mentioned a man named Pringle who might possibly be a Communist spy.” “That was one of the things I hoped I might get from Beshara Shebab—who, or what, this Pringle is—the name of a Commie underground apparatus, or a spy.” “Have you unearthed anything more since last Monday that might help us locate this Pringle?” Maury shook his head. “Nothing.” “Where did you first hear about this man?” “I got a tip. Someone asked me if I knew him.” “Did you report that tip to the FBI?” “No. I didn't think it necessary.” “Why?” “Because the man who gave me the tip about Pringle—who called and asked if I happened to know anything about him—is Ed Waters, S.A.C. of the New York office of the FBI.” That was a lie that Lornegan could chew on. “Well, that seems to be that,” Lornegan said. “Just one more thing—” “From the close-mouthed Captain Knox, I'll bet,” Maury said lightly. “You fellows certainly are clubby.” “Your apartment was searched. You haven't reported anything missing, according to the Burglary Detail.” “I'll report it now,” Maury said. “Twelve four-by-four color photos of my wife and myself, Mr. Gow and his wife, their two children, and an ex-reporter for the Globe-Star named Erick Sorenson. All taken on a Sunday at Jones Beach, last month. The thief left the films, but took the color pictures. Then there's our flip-up telephone-address file. I don't think it will do very much good to trace the pawnshops.” Both detectives were staring at him unbelievingly. “Most unusual pilfering,” Greenbaum said. “Could you figure an angle?”

“That wasn't hard, even though you fellows look like you think there's something queer.” Hal said, “It's a fact. Both of you look like you'd opened the wrong package. Go on, Maury, tell them your angle.” “Nothing queer,” Lornegan protested. “Please go on.” “It's merely that I've been in the Commies' hair for years —blasting them in the paper— digging up facts on my own, and turning information about Party fronts over to the FBI.” Greenbaum said, “We know about the work you've done. Your standing with the Department is ace high.” “Okay, thanks. My wife, Anne, was in San Francisco with her folks, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Malcolm. Their address was in the missing phone file. I thought someone had taken those snapshots to mail to San Francisco to some comrade.” “So she could be identified?” Greenbaum asked. “Exactly. Shebab had been murdered. I'd been conked. Maybe I'd stumbled on something hotter than that Red money, and didn't know it. I was afraid they might start putting pressure on Anne.” “What did you do about it?” Lornegan asked. “Phoned her long distance, immediately. She flew home yesterday. Now what made you think that pilfering was so unusual, Greenbaum?” “Did you check the films that were left in the envelope?” “No, why?” Lornegan said, “Let's just take a look at them, if you don't mind. Don't you think it would be darned unusual for someone to steal snapshots, for some reason, and leave the negatives behind so more prints could be made right away?” “It never occurred to me.” Maury got up and took the envelope from the secretary drawer. “I just thought about Anne—” He was holding the negatives up against the window pane, Hal standing beside him. “So you're detectives,” he said at last. “These are some old pictures taken in California three years ago. These negatives were loose in the drawer—just shoved in the envelope. I suppose to make me think—” “Just what you thought.” The officers stood up. “We'll run you over to the morgue. You want to come along, Mr. Gow?” “I appreciate your invitation,” Hal said, “but my stomach's not in the best of shape this morning. I'd better stay here. In case Mrs. Morel wakes up, I can tell her where Maury's gone. Do you mind if I ask a question, Lornegan?”

“Shoot.” “I'm more puzzled than ever. If those snapshots weren't taken to identify any of us at Jones Beach that day, what the hell were they stolen for.” “Was the beach very crowded?” Lornegan asked. “Jammed, as always, on a broiling Sunday.” “My guess is as good as yours,” Lornegan said. “I think if you ever see those snapshots again, which I'm sure you won't, that somewhere in the background, maybe on the next beach blanket, or close enough to eavesdrop, you'll see a picture of the man who knifed Beshara Shebab. Maybe a man called Pringle.” CHAPTER 13 For three days and three nights, after entering Amity Rest Home, Special Agent Leonard Ducro was obsessed with a debasing, corroding feeling of guilt. The more he tried to rationalize his unpleasant reactions, the more difficult they became to explain. There was an odor of unbalance surrounding him that was inescapable. He breathed it in with every breath, imagining that he could watch his arms and legs and actually see the gaseous effluvium of insanity coloring his skin, flowing through veins and arteries to penetrate, sooner or later, his heart and brain. A reactive depressive! He'd had three days of being quizzed by doctors, Rheinemann, and Crill, and of being observed by attendants and nurses—solicitously giving him cigarettes, just as casually lighting them for him, peering into his room at night, making certain that he took every pill. Tranquilizers. Barbiturates. Dr. Emerson had given him some stimulants to counteract the sedative effects, but it had proved just as difficult to hide them, and take them, as it had to pretend to swallow a pill. Maybe he was getting dopey! Or really ill! A reactive depressive! Apathetic. Sit in corners. Prowl around the place at night. Eat poorly. Sleep poorly. Lose weight. Hell, he'd lost his appetite entirely and could stay wide awake even after a second sleeping pill. He remembered talking to an agent who had spent a long time incarcerated in a penitentiary trying to get information from a murderer who occupied the same cell. The agent admitted that after a while he began to get stir crazy himself. Began to think he'd really committed a crime and been sentenced by a Federal Court to stay there. He'd find himself lying awake at night and planning clever methods of escape, then discussing them quite seriously with his cellmate.. So in three days tough Lennie Ducro had begun to have flashes that perhaps he wasn't playing a game. Was he in this place to investigate Igor Sandor? Or had his mind gone blank over some great mass murder he had committed? Connie and the children? Ed Waters, and a half dozen special agents? Was he trying to escape justice by faking that

he was hopelessly insane? The old lady in the dining room. White haired. Rosy cheeked. Had he goofed when he asked her if she'd enjoyed her dinner, and pulled out her chair to help her get up? Miss Kirby, the nurse or dietitian who watched every mouthful of every inmate, hadn't seemed to notice. But Len had turned white when the old lady cooed like a baby and offered him an exquisite little doll that she'd been holding in her lap beneath the table. Harmless! They were all harmless, at least individually. It was the mass effect that was getting Len—the day and night diet of disturbed personalities that was giving him claustrophobia. The doctors, nurses, and attendants could take it, regard it with professional detachment, but only because they were free to check out after finishing an eight hour day. Len had seen G.I.'s crack with battle fatigue, but that was different. They were tucked away in neuropsychiatric wards until they snapped out of it. He could understand the cause and effect. That was the army. That was war. There was nothing in the manual that gave rules of conduct about dealing with the unfortunate patients who were his companions now. How did you act? What did you say? If he'd had an idea that the place was going to be peopled with Napoleons, Julius Caesars and Teddy Roosevelts, it certainly hadn't worked out that way. There was Bruce, a writer, not much older than Len. Brilliant. Well informed. Meticulous in manners and grooming— and discussing at length a new book he had just completed every day—a different one every day! Confusing—until you found out that he had completed one best-seller fifteen years before, then retreated into alcohol and attempted suicide, and never put a line on paper since. Bruce wove wonderful, intricate belts of leather when he worked in physical therapy. Gasque—a musician. Or was he? Gasque discussed Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, von Weber, and Stravinsky with much interpolated technical detail, and an utter disregard for his listener's replies or reactions. He sat at the piano in the lounge, jotting down notes on any available piece of paper, now and then softly touching a key, entirely oblivious to the blaring TV. No one had ever heard him play. Elser—a financial wizard, without portfolio since before the crash of '29. Ackers—the artist, proud of his unintelligible crayon smears. More than a dozen others. Friendly. Suspicious. Antagonistic. Delightful and lighthearted one minute, surly and despondent the next without apparent cause. All of them prone, on occasion, to withdraw completely within their secret worlds where they cowered under the weight of private thoughts, sometimes for days, to escape the cares of reality. But Special Agent Leonard Ducro had no escape. Hour after hour, sitting stolidly in a

corner by day, wandering aimlessly about the dimly lit hall at night, or toying with his tasteless meals, he studied his subject, Igor Sandor. Sandor was a complex character, a fanatic and a zealot,' if Len had ever seen one. On first impression he might have been weak. His face and frame were emaciated. His arms were long. His shoulders stooped. Yet he wasn't very tall. His nose was a beak, set over a vulture's mouth, but his sunken dark eyes under drooping lids, while never still, were mystical rather than cruel. His coal black hair was thinning, and his age was anybody's guess. His hands were talons, with twisted broken fingers. Altogether, if such a combination were possible, he reminded Lennie of a kindly, battered, very dangerous bird of prey. Len had no illusions about Igor Sandor's feebleness. Sandor's well-cut but rumpled blue serge suit covered a whipcord body that was amazingly strong. Two nights before, Len had seen him bodily lift a patient who was planted a foot from the TV screen blocking everyone's view, and move the obstruction ten feet away, chair and all. It was entirely due to Len Ducro's knowledge of chess that he made contact with Sandor on the fourth day of Len's uncomfortable stay. Steve Weldon, one of the white-clad attendants, who was helping to pay his tuition through medical school by working in the Amity Rest Home five days a week from four o'clock until midnight, had a theory that chess, properly applied to certain types of mental illness, was a beneficial form of therapy. Bruce, the young writer with the psychoneurosis that had blocked his career, had seemed to respond with encouraging progress after Steve had taught him the absorbing game. Other patients had developed an interest, taken out for the most part, by watching silently from a distance, giving no indication whether or not they had any idea of chess, or knew one piece from another, except by occasional interruptions of what they might be engaged in for the moment. Once Gasque had abruptly left his composing at the piano, walked to the table where Steve and Bruce were playing, stared at the position of the men, and seemed on the point of speaking. Then, while Steve playing white, and Len Ducro playing reactive depressive in his corner chair, were holding their breaths in anticipation, Bruce had looked up with a smile and said: “I can't beat Steve. Why don't you try, Gasque?” “Beethoven was the only master!” Gasque turned on his heel and went back to the piano. “A master of music, perhaps, but not of chess!” Len scarcely avoided jumping. The statement had come from a chair beside him. Making every effort to avoid an appearance of interest, Len, who had heard no sound of the chair being occupied, kept his chin on his chest and moved his eyes to the left to find Igor Sandor sitting there. It was creepy! Len, with two hard years of training in caution, alertness, and observing behind him felt himself tricked and deluded. There weren't more than seven people in

the big square lounge room, including Steve, the orderly. Len had thought Igor Sandor was in his room—Room 22 —lying down and staring at the ceiling. Len's was Room 14, with just three other doors between Sandor and him, on the same side of the hall. He had seen his hawk-nosed subject on the bed less than an hour before. Now suddenly Sandor was sitting beside him, talking with unmoving prison lips, materialized like an apparition at Len's elbow. No doubt in the world, Len thought, this place was really getting him. It was high time he got started and jacked himself up, started red flashes of warning working in his brain. The casual, never-ending watchfulness and caution of nurses, attendants, and doctors that had irritated him so, became meaningful now. They weren't dealing with normal people, and they never let themselves forget it. Len had let himself forget it, or never fully realized it. Sandor didn't move with the stealth of a thief, or the furtiveness of a footpad. His was the built-in, covert, furtive-ness of the trained commando, a shadowy swiftness ingrained only by years of battle, and constantly dodging imminent death. Abnormal, to normal people and to Len, that quiet sure swiftness of motion had become as natural to Igor Sandor as the crawling through bushes and the lightning strike of death were to the tropical bushmaster. With quick foreboding, Len grasped the fact that once aroused, once made suspicious, Igor Sandor might prove even more cunning and deadlier than the bushmaster to anyone who stood in his way. One fact Len would never forget—all his training, both in the army and the FBI, hadn't enabled him to see Igor Sandor enter the one door to the lounge, cross or come around the room to Len's preempted corner, and seat himself in that chair. The question now was what line to take since his quarry was there. Len decided that he would have to leave the line to Igor—if there was a line. Let Igor talk if he would, offer nothing himself at first, not show too much interest, but be ready to try to fathom Igor's thinking, straight or warped, and eventually agree. “Neither of those men plays chess.” Igor turned his head on its scrawny neck. Len could feel his sunken eyes burning suspiciously against him. “If you play chess you'll know that it's bad to be always defeated. Sooner or later Steve will have to let Mr. Bruce win.” Sandor had a decided accent, but his English was surprisingly good. He could be Polish or Hungarian. Len favored the latter. He pronounced “chess” thickly, and his “p's” he gave a sound of “b.” It was probably the conglomerate accent of a man who spoke several Slavic tongues. Len stayed silent, chin on chest, his black eyes broodingly intent on the game. “I can teach you to play a master's game. Do you want to learn to play?”

Len shook his head. Still not looking at Igor, he said tonelessly, “I play, but it's bad to be always defeated. So I do not play anything. I do not want to play chess with you for you will defeat me. Then you will hate me. Everyone hates me, because they have always defeated me.” He raised his head and turned slowly toward Igor. “I do not want you to hate me. I'm afraid of those who hate me. Do you understand what I say?” He spoke more slowly, despondently, spacing his words as though they were dragged from inside with an effort. “I do not want you to hate me because I do not like to be afraid of everyone. Do you understand why I won't play?” “Yes,” Igor said, “you have no need to be afraid. No need to play. You have a woman. She held you tenderly by the arm. I saw you from the window there when you came in. She doesn't hate you.” “How do you know?” Len asked suspiciously. “How can I be sure she doesn't hate me. She left me here and hasn't returned. I am sure she hates me and has gone away.” Igor was silent a long time, figuring. “No,” he said finally. “You know nothing of hate or fear. This is Monday. It was Thursday when you came in here. I saw you from the window. Not until next Thursday will the jailers let her come to see you. Not until you have been parted for a week to the day.” “I'm afraid,” Len said. “She hates me and has gone away. I'll get my revenge some day —on everyone some day.” “I saw you when you came in,” Igor said. “It frightened me and I screamed because I thought you were a spy sent in to kill me. Are you a spy?” “You're frightening me now,” Len said dully. “You hate me.” He started to rise. “I'm going to my room and lie down. Somehow, I have to get away.” “My woman hates me. Not yours.” Igor gently but firmly Pushed Len back in his chair. “She hasn't been here since last Monday. She could come every day, but she's taken our child, Nikki, and gone away. For a week she came every day.” He placed his mouth close to Leonard's ear. “Come to my room tonight after ten when they put the halls in darkness. Room 22. Come and we can talk about fear—and I'll tell you how we can both get away. He was gone like a shadow before Len could answer—back to his room to untape the knife from the steampipe and place it beneath his mattress. The man wasn't very clever, and if he should prove himself a spy, Igor would kill him in the darkness. He'd have to kill them all some day! CHAPTER 14 The Amity Rest Home never rested at night. It waited. At ten the lights in the hall were dimmed, leaving the red bulbs of exit lights over a door

at either end. Not really exits, at least not exits to escape and freedom, for the reinforced doors were double locked and needed two keys used simultaneously to be opened. Each of the keys was in the possession of a different attendant, who waited, along with the Rest Home, in tiny cubicle offices at each end of the hall. The exits merely led to other parts of the building. By ten the nightly medications were given, and by half past ten the patients were bedded down. Some nights most of them were asleep by midnight—most of them. Never all. There was no fixed routine. Some of the patients closed their room doors, that couldn't be fastened. Others left them open. Some turned off their reading lights and ceiling lights. Others, beset by fears of darkness, slept or lay awake all night with one, or both lights on. Steve Weldon was relieved at midnight by a gentle, powerful Irishman, Michael Boyle, who did a twelve hour shift. Dave Alren, who came on at eight, also worked twelve hours. The attendants alternated every two weeks. The night shift was hard on the nerves, and not even the best trained male nurses could stand it continuously. After a while you began to imagine that menacing figures were peopling the darkened hall. There was a midnight inspection. Rather cursory. Any well-trained staff knew that rigid rules and discipline were impossible to enforce on human beings who had fled within themselves from the rules and discipline demanded by civilization. Better to ignore small breaches entirely, or if that was impossible, have none at all. Restless patients would visit from room to room at all hours, often helping each other more by mutual confiding than any psychiatric or shock therapy could have accomplished. Nearly always they left without protest if another patient made it clear he wanted to sleep, or be alone. That wasn't the case if an attendant broke up such a surreptitious visit. Both patients invariably turned against the heavy hand of authority. Force might even be necessary to get the visitor back to his room, struggling and screaming, with every chance that weeks of treatment had been totally undone. There were good nights and bad. No one knew why. Records had been compiled for years throughout the country. Still there was no acceptable data on what might cause a bad one. Often they just came out of the blue when nothing had happened. A day too peaceful and pleasant could just as well start one. A new arrival. An incident at dinner. A manic depressive, morose for days, starting to dance and sing in the lounge, suddenly become “high.” A cheerful patient starting to cry. A patient quietly playing cards tearing them up without warning and stamping the pieces into the carpet. Daily incidents. Generally accepted by the others without a change of demeanor. Then some night the spark would flash and no one knew why. But everyone, staff and

inmates, knew without speaking when a bad night had come. Lights out, and like a brush fire the awareness of trouble had spread down the hall and ignited unrest and latent phobias in every room. Condition red! Too many patients roaming the halls or too many smoking contraband cigarettes lit with equally contraband matches in the washroom. Nobody sleeping. Too many lights in the bedrooms out, or too many on. The wrong doors open, the wrong ones closed. Better phone Dr. Marchand, the night physician, and tell him to stand by with his hypo loaded. Bedlam would break before morning if all signs were correct and things didn't quiet down. Dr. Marchand would be needed. Then some nights, still without apparent cause, a warning of trouble would be in the air, and by midnight everything would be in hand again with nothing more serious having occurred than a couple of hours of tension that left both staff and patients jumpy, if not with the actual jitters.. Monday night was one of those false alarms. Len Duero managed with some neat prestidigitation to duck his yellow sleeping capsule of Nembutal under Steve's watchful eye. Thirty minutes later, lying in bed with his light out, he almost decided to take it, go to sleep and forget it all. Igor Sandor was expecting him, but it wouldn't do to appear too anxious. On the other hand, Igor's suspicions might be aroused if Len postponed the dreaded interview until too late. He tried to relax and think clearly. His legs kept twitching. His door was open and he found himself acutely conscious of figures passing up and down the hall. He wished he had Ed Waters to talk to. What, exactly, had the S.A.C. told him? To get everything he could out of Sandor-Turlock to add to a raw file in Washington. A matter of internal security. Everything about what? About Igor Sandor, the bird of prey that walked like a man! Len was supposed to have some common sense, wasn't he? Common sense was essential for special agents. Well, he'd like to tell Mr. Waters that he shouldn't stick his agents in places where they might quickly lose it all. Lose their uncommon senses, too. The damn hatch was too quiet tonight! Len had just reached a point where he felt quite friendly to an unseen woman upstairs who had started at ten, every night he'd been in, and howled like a dog for thirty minutes. Tonight she'd quit. Here he was with Igor Sandor on his mind, and she'd deliberately let him down. He wished he could tuck the children in, kiss them good night, and then have a quiet drink with Connie. Or wouldn't a noisy drink be better? He was stoned into a stupor with

quiet. Certainly Connie would be nicer than Ed Waters to talk to. More informative and sympathetic. She was prettier, too. Len began to wonder if you could be informative, sympathetic and pretty and ever reach the status of an S.A.C. in the FBI. He'd better get back to Sandor. He was paid for a week in advance at the Home, but he'd already arranged with Dave Alren to phone Connie for him as soon as he gave Dave the word. Connie could get him out tomorrow on Dr. Emerson's say-so—provided he got all he could from Sandor tonight, and could honestly report to Walters that this part of the case was completely in hand. Then Walters would probably assign him to something easy—getting information from a Bengal tiger who was plotting against the zoo! Now his feet were twitching! Len got out of bed, put his slippers on over bare feet, and took a cigarette from the pack he had taped to the back of the bureau. There were paper matches stuck on with the pack but he didn't take one. You could always get a light from the cigarette of some patient smoking in the washroom. Sort of an Eternal Fire—the Light That Never Fails. Save the matches for smoking in your room. Bruce and Ackers were leaning against wash basins, while three other patients listened with polite inattention as Bruce outlined the final chapter of the mythical book he'd completed that day. Bruce gave Len the use of his lighted cigarette without missing a word of his monotoned diatribe. Len shut himself in a booth and sat on the toilet to finish his smoke. He heard another patient come in the washroom and say: “Mackie tried to kill himself.” “He did kill himself,” Ackers corrected. “Been hiding out pills—or his wife brought him some in yesterday. Good way to go. I tried it once. I'll try again some day.” “I have a man in my book who went that way,” Bruce said with a little more animation. “He was crazy. The book I finished today—he was....” His voice rambled on. Len disposed of his cigarette butt in the toilet. Mackie was a friendly old man with watery blue eyes. He kept much to his room. Len hadn't seen him more than twice, except at meals. “Good way to go,” Ackers had said. Was it? Who knew how many years of mental agony had finally cracked old Mackie's brain! Suicide, the verdict would be. Suicide while temporarily insane. So that was the cause of tonight's depression. Of tonight's oppressive atmosphere. Just another lifer escaped. It might be better if the verdict read: Suicide while temporarily sane. Igor Sandor was waiting for Lennie in the hall outside the washroom door. “Later,” he whispered in his best conspiratorial tone. “Later, after the watch has changed. My room. Alone.” He drifted away. Again Len had to prod himself into a proper state of watchfulness and caution. Igor Sandor's air of theatrical intrigue was dangerously lulling. You wanted to laugh and take

him lightly. He reminded you of a hissing villain, twirling a gummed-on mustache in a Boucicault melodrama: “Curses, me beauty! Would you save your country—come to me room after midnight, when the watch has changed! Alone!” You daren't forget for an instant the cauldron of death that Igor had escaped from to be spewed up with a million others on America's shores. The torture back of those mutilated fingers. The fear and hate that probably, no, surely, lurked in his twisted mind from an overdraught of his own country's witches brew. Better remember it, Special Agent Ducro, if you value your life! Igor Sandor has escaped the net of the A.V.O. from the hands of men far more cruel, and a thousand times more ruthless than Ed Waters and you. There's nothing theatrical about him. The Igor Sandor's, like the heads of the Gestapo, the N.K.V.D., the A.V.O., and all the initials of horror that made him and his kind, are unfortunately all too true. Len lay in his bed, staring at pictures that came and went through the darkness, until Mike Boyle flashed a light in his room and passed quickly on. The watch had changed. Weldon to Boyle. Dave Alren still on until morning guarding the rooms on the opposite side. He waited ten minutes, then put his slippers and bathrobe on. The night had turned chilly. Two patches of yellow still showed from open doors where tired brains, asleep or awake, were fighting for rest. The exit lights glimmered warningly at each end of the hall. There was a fragrant smell of coffee from one of the cubicles where Boyle and Alren were busy with their midnight snack. No screams. No moans. No flitting figures. Just four lights, two yellow, two red, and the snippy silence of Amity Rest Home patiently waiting. Dreadful silence. That was all. The silence of old man Mackie, dead in the basement mortuary, filtering upstairs to penetrate every nook and cranny of rooms and hall. Room 22. Len paused an instant, debating whether or not to knock. Sandor was unpredictable, a tap on the door might upset him. He might just as well attack without warning if Len stepped into his room unannounced, or, worse, start to scream, ending any chance Len might have to get information. Len realized that his ankles were cold. Sandor must have his window wide open for a draft of night air was blowing out under the bedroom door. Len pulled his bathrobe tighter about him, opened the door and stepped inside. Against the darkness of the room the window formed a rectangular blob of paleness. The shade had been raised up clear to the top, and the bottom sash was pushed up full.

On the outside of the window the protective screen formed a grating of diamond-shaped wire openings, visible against the lightness of the summer sky. A piece of paper, caught by the draft, swirled from the table. Len checked the door just before it slammed behind him. “Igor—” He was answered by the syrupy silence he'd brought inside from the corridor. No movement. No breathing. Not even the rustle of leaves in the trees, black outside beyond the diamond grille. Len found the switch beside the door, flipped it, and the ceiling light turned on. His fears about Igor Sandor had been groundless, but Igor's fears had been quite real. Igor lay on his side, his hunched up body almost as grotesque in death as his gnarled broken fingers had been in life. Len knelt down beside him, touching nothing. A feather-less arrow had finally dropped the bird of prey. A slender shaft of steel, slightly tapered, no thicker than a pencil, and about twice as long. The larger end protruded three inches out through the jacket of Igor's white pajamas. Only a trickle of blood ran down. A commando's weapon, silent, deadly, and efficient. Obviously fired from some type of a spring gun at very close quarters while Igor spoke to someone outside through the wire screen. He got up and stood fiddling with the cord of his bathrobe. It was one of those spots you got in, inevitably, as an agent of the FBI. You were on your own. Just your own judgment to go by. Nobody to call. Anything he did would probably be wrong. But his orders had been clear: “This whole deal will fall flat on its face if anyone smells the fact that you're from the FBI.” When the S.A.C. said anyone that's just what he meant. Doctors. Orderlies. Patients. Police. The one unpardonable sin in Waters' category was doing nothing. Next in line was violating instructions that were clear. So, he was Leonard Ducro, a reactive depressive who had just found a body. He'd never heard of the FBI. He was a patient in a Rest Home and he'd damn well better get to work and act like one. He walked down the hall to the office where Boyle and Alren were having coffee and stood stolidly in the door until Dave Alren looked up and said. “What's the trouble, Mr. Ducro? Can't you sleep? Let's go back to your room now and I'll give you another pill.” “I wanted to talk to Sandor,” Len said lethargically. “He wouldn't answer me.” “Well, he's asleep, like you should be.” “No.” Len moved his head in a leaden denial. “He's dead. Like old man Mackie.” He raised his voice to a higher note. “He's dead, I tell you. On the floor. Like old man

Mackie. Dead—dead—dead—” Both the orderlies were quickly on their feet. “Now don't get excited, Mr. Ducro,” Mike Boyle admonished in his deep soothing voice. “Nothing to get excited about. Just take it easy. You go lie down, now. Dave and I will go and see.” One on each side, they expertly hustled Len to Room 14. Len lay on the bed and closed his eyes. Mike stayed with him. A few minutes later Dave Alren came back and beckoned Mike into the hall. Len was up instantly, and outside of Room 22 as soon as they closed the door, his ear pressed close to the panel. Their voices reached him, subdued but clear: “He's been murdered all right. Look at that thing, Mike. What's your guess?” “Must have been talking to someone outside. Shot through the screen.” “How could—” “I'll bet we'll find one of the park benches pulled up for someone to stand on. Unless it was moved. Say—” “That's not our problem, Mike. What do we do now? Phone the cops?” “The hell with that. Get Doc Marchand's fat behind out of his warm bed. This is his little red wagon.” “Wait a minute.'* “What—?” There was a sound of an opening drawer. Then Dave exclaimed: “Well, I'll be damned. You remember those three nickels and that pencil the old boy taped to the bottom of this drawer? Look here, Mike. They're gone—but the tapes still here, hanging down.” “What ever made you think of that?” “Sandor would have died before he parted with those. Good Lord, Mike, you know how they all are. Hoarding some trifling little thing.” “Let the cops look for them, Dave. We can tell them, but put back the drawer. We'd better call Marchand—” “There's another thing—this guy may be in here under a phony name. His real name may be Turlock.” “Who told you that?” “A reporter. He slipped me ten bucks last Tuesday to find out if I know of a patient named Turlock—Polish, Russian, or Hungarian. I asked if Sandor might do. He said if Sandor turned out to be Turlock, I'd get another ten.”

“You know this reporter?” “He's Maury Morel. Staff writer for the Globe-Star.” “Well, that's another you can tell the cops, Dave. Let's get on the ball.” Len was deeply feigning sleep when the police arrived an hour later in answer to Dr. Marchand's call. Next afternoon Connie took him out. He'd been too upset by questioning, she told Dr. Rheinemann. She was afraid her husband would have a relapse. He didn't like the atmosphere at all. CHAPTER 15 “Who is this character, Harry Catlett?” Maury demanded of Thomas Tremayne Sturtevant. “I believe I stated Sunday evening, while partaking of the frugal repast at your miserable edifice on Morton Street, that I would obtain additional information for you concerning Crescent Valves, Inc., as well as one Max Rheinemann, and the brokerage house of Metzger, Montross and Stoane.” T.T. clicked open the lid of a large gold hunting-case watch, squinted at the time through his pince-nez, and returned the watch to its nest in his vest pocket. “It is now three-fortyfive on Tuesday afternoon. Our appointment with Mr. Catlett is at four, in his office on the fifth floor of the United States Court House on Foley Square. As Nietzsche said, 'One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.' I have a good memory, dear boy. I also mentioned to you and your gracious lady that this extra effort on my part would entail a slight additional fee.” “We got it,” Maury said. “After you left, Anne suggested that she might move into the front room and you could come and live with me. Now, who is Harry Catlett? You still haven't told me.” “Ex-Naval Intelligence. Do you mind if I smoke, dear boy?” “Only to the point where if you take that pipe from your pocket we finish the trip in separate cabs. I didn't ask you what Catlett was. I asked you what he is.” T.T. sighed. “'Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases....'” “Except acute garrulity. What is he, T.T.?” “An investigator.” T.T. angrily clicked his plates. “Why consult me when your only desire is to insult me?” “What kind of an investigator? I know you go through these difficult periods, Tom, but

don't blame me.” “I don't think I'd better give you his title,” T.T. said stiffly. “I don't like to be accused of garrulity.” “I'm sorry. Go ahead, T.T.” “Harry Catlett is an investigator for the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fifth Congress, First Session on Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States.” T.T. drew a deep breath. “All one word?” Maury asked him. “In German it would be 'derBerwaltungforicherstaatsschulden.'” “Don't go on, please,” Maury begged. “Your pronunciation is so bad I can't understand it. That's low German and I speak only high.” The cab stopped in front of the United States Court House. Maury paid off, and they took an elevator to the fifth floor. Harry Catlett was a blue-jawed stocky little man sitting behind an enormous oak desk, liberally ridged along each edge with cigarette burns, and considerably cleaner of Utter than T.T.'s. He greeted them cordially. “Maury Morel, eh? I've read you a lot. You're good—although I don't agree with everything you say.” “I wouldn't have a job if you did.” “No, that's true. Of course—T.T.—I don't agree with anything he says. That's why I have a few dollars left to my name. Smoke?” He offered a pack to Maury, but not to T.T. Maury took one. So did Catlett, “Don't be shy, T.T. Crank up your Stanley Steamer. You can't talk without it and we'd better get under way. What's with the press that brings you here today?” T.T. fired his pipe with a triumphant glance at Maury. “Maury's on a story about Soviet hot money, Harry. I gave him all I could, but he wants more. Let him tell you.” “About what?” “Mainly about money being invested anonymously in United States' industries through foreign banks.” Maury took out some flimsy and a copy pencil. “Would you say that's a considerable sum?” Catlett put his cigarette down on the desk edge to make another burn. “I might say a hell of a lot of things off the top of my head, but you'd make an ass of yourself, and I'd lose my job, if you pulled direct quotes on me. How about it, T.T.?”

“I'll vouch for Maury's discretion. If he publishes any figures I'll let him say they came from me. We never saw you, Harry.” T.T.'s pipe was doing well. “Let me see.” Harry Catlett stared at the cigarette that was burning the desk top, then pushed it off gently and stomped it out on the floor. “You want to know if a considerable sum of money has been invested in the United States from Western Europe—” “Anonymously.” “You'll have to guess the anonymous part for yourself. The long term investments from Western Europe at the end of last year were about ten billion. Long term assets are corporation stocks, which you're asking about. That amounts to over half of all the foreign assets in this country. Do you call that a considerable sum?” “Ten billion! I certainly do. Okay. Would it be possible for money coming from the Soviet Union, or the satellite countries, or Red China, to buy up stocks of American corporations under such circumstances that the owners of the American corporations couldn't learn the identity of the people buying the shares?” “It's not only possible, we're certain it's being done. Your Russian or his satellite gets dollars in this country through a foreign bank, using a numbered account to conceal his identity. He buys shares in the XYZ corporation—” “What about Crescent Valves, Inc.?” Maury interrupted. “I never mentioned them, did I?” Catlett squinted at Maury through half closed lids. “No, but I'd like you to,” Maury told him. “Anything you like,” Catlett said. “One damn plant is as good as another. Your Russian, or satellite, buys shares in Crescent Valves, Inc. with his dollars obtained through—” “Maybe the Banque-du-Shebab Syrie?” Maury broke in again. “Maybe you're a better script writer than I, Morel. You seem to know enough about some matters to qualify for a job with the State Department or the Treasury. Why the hell is he pumping me, T.T.?” “He's a reporter, that's why.” T.T. bit hard on his pipe stem. “Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” “Yeah—yeah,” Catlett said. “Also you can drive an investigator to drink but you can't make him talk—unless he wants to. What's the pitch, Morel?” “Will you give me the same assurances I gave you? That you won't mention the GlobeStar or me?” “That's hard to give. I'm a sworn officer. I'm supposed to feed any facts I collect back to the chief counsel of a Senatorial subcommittee. Aside from being nobody's fool, my boss is hepped on the subject of perjury.” T.T. said, “Maury has a boss who is just as hepped on facts as yours, Harry. I have the

same boss. Still, the 'confidential source' line works for us as well as it does for the FBI, or any investigative agency.” “I'll take a chance.” Catlett lit another cigarette to decorate the desk edge. “You have my word that neither of you, nor your paper, will be mentioned to the subcommittee.... but that's not saying I won't start running down any leads you might slip to me.” Maury said: “Naturally.” He gave him the story of his own part in Beshara Shebab's murder; the last-word mention by the dying man of Turlock and the Amity Rest Home; his own interview with Dr. Marian Rheinemann; the copy of Lycoming's Leads on her desk; and the ten dollar tip to Dave Alren, that made him think Aaron Turlock and Igor Sandor might be one and the same. “They were,” he concluded unhappily. Catlett wet his lips, sent his cigarette the way of the rest, and critically examined the newest cauterization on the desk edge. “Brother,” he said, “that's a beaut!” It was impossible to decide whether Maury's revelations or the burned wood was the object of his exclamation. “I suppose you never read the papers, either of you, being on one— except your own bylines.” “I saw the story,” Maury stared glumly out of the window, intent on a window washer held on his perch with a safety belt against a building across the street. If that belt should break—! He felt much the same way. “What story?” T.T. inquired smokily, wagging one patent leather toe. Maury came back to the firing line. “Aaron Turlock was murdered last night in the Amity Rest Home—or Igor Sandor, whichever you like. He lived in Garden City under they Turlock name. He was entered in the home as Sandor. He had a wife, Opel, and a three year old son, Nikki. They haven't been found yet.” “Murdered!” T.T.'s pince-nez popped from his nose to hang on the safety ribbon. He replaced them arid asked, “By one of the other patients? Are they sure it was murder? Why not suicide if he was in a Rest Home?” “According to Dykes, our man who covered the story, Turlock was shot by a sharpened steel bolt while he was close to his open window, talking to someone through the screen. That's all so far.” “Have you been to the police?” Catlett asked. “No. I'll wait for them to come to me.” “You won't have a long wait, I'll bet.” “No, not long. That's why I'd like some fast information. They're already riding me about that Beshara Shebab affair. I'll get to the point: This Dr. Marian Rheinemann, who runs the Amity Rest Home, is the daughter of Jason Philips—” “Who did own and run Crescent Valves, Inc.,” Catlett supplied.

Maury nodded. “Dr. Rheinemann, in addition to being the most succulent dish of frozen red-tangerine these lecherous old eyes have ever feasted on, is the ex-wife of a broker named, Max Rheinemann. According to her, she and Max are still palsy-walsy, in spite of the fact the time limit's up on a valid decree nisi, and they're both free.” “I will now make the cheese more binding,” Catlett said. “Doc has a boy friend, as well as an apartment at 74th and Park Avenue. After her harrowing six hour day at the House of Horrors, on Long Island, she repairs to her own little five room attic, complete with bar, where she entertains the boy friend until the wee small hours, when he isn't feeding her at some de luxe nightspot or tooling her around in his Continental. Not infrequently, friend ex-husband visits her, too, and the three of them spend an evening together. The morality of all this has been questioned discreetly by some scandalmongers, but we'll skip it for fear of corrupting T.T.” “Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs,” T.T. remarked quite cryptically. “Who's the boy friend?” “A ponderous, money-stuffed joker called Henry Lycoming.” Maury turned slowly and surveyed Harry Catlett without surprise. “Father, daughter, exson-in-law and daughter's lover. How many more ingredients do you have to have to bake a pie?” “None,” Catlett said. “I'll bake one for you—but you won't like it and neither will T.T. The steak's spoiled and the kidneys are bitter, and the crust is tough. The recipe is solely mine, and I'm a lousy cook. I learned the art by listening for two years to the sworn testimony of representatives of the Federal Reserve Bank, the Stock Exchange, the United States Department of State, Department of Defense, and ten other bunches of governmental buckpassers known by their initials, including the S.E.C. Do you want to know what art I learned—the one great art that I found had been mastered by them all?” Maury nodded along with T.T. “Tell us the art.” “Ducking!” Catlett barked out. “It's your fault, my fault, T.T.'s fault, and the fault of your paper and all the others. It's the country's fault. We're a nation of criticizers, first, last, and all the time. We live by throwing brickbats, but never bouquets. We set men up in office to make a lot more unenforceable laws. “To obey them ourselves? Hell no! We want to see the laws broken so we can write to the papers, and blow the men down. The art of staying in public office is ducking, gentlemen, ducking responsibility—passing the buck. If anyone has guts enough to face his own job squarely and tell the truth in public service we'll tear him to pieces. That goes from the President of the United States on down.” “That's a bitter pronunciamento, Harry.” “You tell 'em, T.T.! I'm an investigator. One of the kidneys in the pie. Now, let's take a peek at the other side of the medal. The criticism comes from the bosses in Russia, and

the public employees they put in. The same in any Communist country. Throw a verbal brickbat at a Commissar, or at Khrushchev, or at your boss in the tractor factory, and you don't just lose your job—you die! “Americans don't get that, and the Soviets, who aren't as dumb as they look, trade on that fact—the fact that we criticize every law enforcement agency we have. An unfortunate majority of so-called loyal Americans consider that: Our police are flatfeets. Our sheriffs are jokes. Our Intelligence officers—Air, Army, Navy—are brown-nosers and thugs bent only on killing profitable defense contracts. Our Federal officers are Cossacks and publicity hounds—trampling on business and violating public rights—and that goes from tax collectors clear up through J. Edgar Hoover.” Catlett paused. The small office was very silent while T.T. elaborately filled his pipe and got it going again. “Don't think we haven't denounced and condemned the FBI,” Catlett went on, “and the Communists have helped us. In 1940 the whole organization of the FBI was saved from destruction only by Attorney General Jackson and F.D.R.” “And the pie?” Maury inquired. “What about the Crescent Valves pie?” “Everything I've been raving about is seasoning for the pie. Let's just call it the 'Hot Money Pie.' That's more applicable. Crescent is just an example of too many more exactly like it. I don't know and you don't know who the hell controls Crescent Valves today, and that takes in several agencies which have investigated that company. Naval Intelligence; they have a Commander there now, since they're on a Navy contract. Defense Department. Treasury Department. Security and Exchange Commission. Plus some jerks like me.” “What about the FBI?” “Ten to one the FBI, too—assuming they have jurisdiction. They can't just jump in because somebody's failed to register some stock in an unlisted corporation or refused to reveal the beneficial owners' names. Someone must point out that some violation of a Federal statute has occurred: espionage, Atomic Energy Act, internal security, failure of a foreign agent to register with the Attorney General, before the FBI can step in.” “Do you think any of those statutes are being violated in Crescent Valves?” T.T. asked curiously. “You said you'd done some investigation on that company, Harry.” “Both of you seem to think so. That's what brought you here. Frankly, I'm up a creek, as I've been trying to explain. Old Man Philips owned the plant originally. A closed corporation. Family affair. Then he reincorporated to get money for expansion. Five hundred thousand shares of stock at a par value of ten dollars a share.” “Five million dollars,” T.T. remarked. Catlett nodded and took a paper from his drawer. “Now, let's take a squint at Crescent Valves, Inc., today. I'm going to simplify it. Round hypothetical figures. Try to make it clear. The whole damn plant we'll say is apparently owned by seven people, all

Directors. Jason Philips, an upstanding, loyal American citizen and man of distinction, is Chairman of the Board, but he's old and has been very ill. He owns 249,000 of 500,000 shares—49 8/10%—and, brother, that isn't control. One of the other directors had to vote for him to put him in as Chairman. Point one that smells to me.” “I thought you said he was a grand old man.” “That's my point, T.T.! You don't get to be Chairman of a Board in our upright circles of industry just because you're a grand old anything. You get it because you own a controlling interest in the voting stock, period unquote exclamation point.” “A front, hunh?” “A front, exactly. Clean as a barrel of detergent, needed to wash the other Directors in, and nary a word to say about personnel or policy. Now let's switch channels and take a gander at the other six Directors who among them own control: President and Treasurer, Max Rheinemann, a broker; Dr. Marian Philips Rheinemann, his ex-wife; Bruno Vogl, an Electronics Engineer, and Production Manager; A. C. Metzger, H. L. Montross, and C. B. Stoane, brokers. All of those six own approximately 41,833 shares each, 8 4/10% each—or 50 2/10% of the total stock, giving them control. Maybe you can spot the gimmick in that, T.T.” “Eight and four-tenths per cent each? That's easy. The S.E.C. Act of 1934 requires the beneficial owner of 10% or more of the stock of any listed company, wherever he is, to disclose his identity. Those six directors you've named could be acting for anyone, anywhere—running a defense plant that leaks top secret information at the seams.” “And probably are,” Catlett declared vehemently. “One more blast and I'm through. The Director of the Pentagon's Office of Personnel Security Policy, recently told a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that the Defense Department has no way of knowing for sure the identity of all foreign investors in American defense concerns. Swiss and Canadian banks and United States brokers, in some cases, have refused to divulge the identity of foreign investors investing money in American corporations. No law or S.E.C. regulation forces them to do so.” “So they won't grant a clearance to a foreign controlled facility—but how do they know? They make sure that key employees, officers, and nominees to the board of a company on defense work are United States citizens. So were Dillinger and Al Capone. More than a score of subpoenas have been issued to American industrialists. Don't they trust them? They're good American industrialists—but there isn't a law in this country that can't be obviated by people who don't happen to be good. Those just conceal the facts and don't comply.” Catlett pounded the desk with his fist. “This is a matter of enforcement of laws on the books right now. All Congress wants to do is make new ones, and not grant a stinking cent in appropriations for investigators—creeps, like me. Cut down on the FBI, the Treasury Department, the S.E.C. So what happens? Narcotic peddlers, panderers,

racketeers, and Russkians can fly their dough from here into half a dozen countries abroad, dough that's made by turning boys and girls into addicts and prostitutes, dough that's made by milking, spying on, and sabotaging all types of American industry—and the next thing we know their stooges, posing as good Americans, are owning and running the very industries that have been milked—bought into with that hot money. And, brother, that hot money is not only hot—it's tax free!” “But there must be some way of ferreting out these stinkers,” Maury protested. “You mean even if they don't want to be?” Catlett snorted vigorously. “Try interviewing a few, Morel. Try interviewing Max Rheinemann. They have their answers and their backgrounds cemented in, believe me. Everyone does, if he has a brain or hopes to get away with anything. Suppose you'd been a Communist for twenty-five years, way up in the Party, and I asked you about it. Would you tell me?” “I'll invoke the Fifth Amendment,” Maury said. “So you'd better not ask me.” CHAPTER 16 Henry Lycoming had a way with women, and it was usually his own. Not that he couldn't get along with men, too. That was an essential part of his business. For an investment counselor, many more attributes were necessary than a simple evaluation of business trends, and a slightly better than normal prescience of stock fluctuations. Simple evaluation and guesswork were strictly for the birds, and fish—subscribers to Lycoming's Leads who weren't in the know. It was a very good tip sheet, or market letter, or business forecast, or whatever one chooses to call it. Ten well-paid statistical clerks—analysts, in Lycoming's jargon—four male and six female, worked assiduously five days a week in Lycoming's discreetly sumptuous offices of quiet decor on the tenth floor of the Midtown-Title Bank Bldg. at 46th Street and Madison Avenue. On the latest types of computing machines, they broke down the published figures of such unsuspecting companies as US Plywood, Otis Elevator, Crane, American Radiator — with occasional flyers at something as big as General Motors, or as insignificant as Albatross Press, or Crescent Values. Subscribers could make or lose on them all. They were no respecters of corporations big or small— those statistical sleuths of Henry Lycoming. Fingers flew. Keys were punched. Motors whirled. Page after page of copy, delectably typed on IBM Executive Typewriters, was conscientiously edited for accuracy by Miss Dolores Stacy, Lycoming's private secretary and office manager, and rushed to the printers every day. On Fridays all this concentrated effort hatched out Lycoming's Leads bristling with “per share; operating income; dividends; recent price; dividend rate; yield;” and tables of price range for the past ten years—vital matters that every third-rate stock trader knew

he could find daily in The New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal. But they couldn't get the double-talk as supplied by Miss Dolores Stacy. Even her boss, Henry Lycoming, whose air transportation bill was a stupendous tax deduction, and who considered himself a connoisseur of the flowers of many nations, admitted ungrudgingly that Dolores earned her money. Given a fan, a mantilla, and a pair of castanets, and landed in Madrid—Dolores would have snagged herself a millionaire toreador in a day. She had all the other equipment, and that could be proved by just taking a look. None of the four males in the office needed to compute her measurements on a calculating machine. In addition, which seemed to the lesser endowed female members of the staff as unnecessary as stacking Mount Pelion on the much abused Mount Ossa, Dolores was endowed with bundles of active brains. It was Dolores who added the cryptic information in Lycoming's Leads. Like the daily astrology information in the papers, except that they hit the true believers once a week, you couldn't go wrong. Dolores had a two-edged vocabulary, and a cover-up like Mariciano. The subscribers were free to win or lose either way. “Bazooka, Inc., with almost a score of years and experience, is the largest producer of frammis type self-leveling electronic anti-atomic four-stage interceptory and intercontinental experimental missiles and launching platforms. Not only does this company provide an additional source of investigative ballistics for the armed forces, but the great superiority of its products in performance and economy makes older models obsolete and should thus lead to a sustained replacement demand. “Finances are strong, with no funded debt or preferred ahead of the 2.2 million shares of common, and with current assets more than three times current liabilities at the last yearend. “The stock is of high quality and has good prospects of further increase in earnings and price since there is no apparent prospect of cancellations in the defense field. It might make a good switch for building stocks which have recently shown marked earnings declines. “However, it must be pointed out that the stock market has had a severe reaction and many of those who were optimistic only a short time ago are now equally pessimistic. The combination of narrowing profit margins caused by increased competition and concern over the advances of Russian science and unsettled conditions in the Near East are reflected in the price of stocks.” Every time Lycoming read one of those gems of tergiversation he wanted to boost Miss Stacey's pay. Of course, every time he looked at her he wanted to boost her pay—except that Dolores was difficult. He was paying her almost as much now for her literacy efforts as Edna Ferber made, and she wouldn't give him the time of day.

He came out of his inner office shortly before five on Tuesday afternoon (Sandor had been killed the night before), and always at his appearance there was a momentary lull as the staff looked up from their clattering machines. Even Dolores, from her private corner behind two mahogany tables set at right angles, flicked up her Castilian eyes and favored him with an impersonal smile. He was a big man, shaggy and expensively tweedy, remindful of steam rooms, cold showers, golf courses, Huckins Cruisers, and regular hours spent in the gym. Fortyish, he looked younger. His blue eyes were quiet, mild, reticent, and watchful. His voice was low, but incisive. His step was purposeful and firm, his gestures and handclasp the same. The office chorused a “Good-night, Mr. Lycoming!” as he went through the gate in the mahogany fence, separating work space from a four chair waiting area, and let the hall door sigh behind him. Then like a class in school, at teacher's signal for departure, they made immediate preparations to call it a day. Of all the staff only Dolores Stacy had sensed that Henry Lycoming was seething inside, and that his casual ordinary exit was skilfully covering cold, revengeful rage. Miss Stacy had read the papers. She knew a lot more about the private life of Henry Lycoming than she cared to say. Lycoming walked briskly up Madison to 52nd Street, then west across Fifth Avenue where he dropped into “21.” He checked his hat, then telephoned a nearby garage to deliver his car in fifteen minutes. That done, he went in the bar, already crowded, and shook hands with one of the bartenders, who mixed him his regular Martini on the rocks. Two men, whom he didn't know from Adam, pushed their way in beside him and greeted him cordially. They were frayed at the edges already. “Great coup (he pronounced it koop) you fed us last week, Hank, old boy. We cleaned up. Didn't we, Irv?” one of them said in a husky whisper. “Clean up is right, Hank, old boy.” Irv agreed, and turned to the bartender. “Mr. Lycoming's drinks are on Fawcett and me.” Irv gave Lycoming a ponderous wink. “Know better than to mention info as good as that at a bar. Right, Fawcett, old boy?” “Right you are, Irv. Mr. Lycoming, your drinks are on Irv and me.” “Somebody always has to win sometime. It's just like the slot machines,” Lycoming said steadily. “My drinks are already on my check and paid for. I have an appointment and have to blow. Sorry!” He signed his check, got his hat, and went out front where he waited five minutes more for his Continental. His anger and perturbation hadn't been cooled by Irv and Fawcett and his one Martini. The six o'clock traffic fanned them into full flame on the drive uptown. You just couldn't figure Americans, any more than you could figure Russians, unless you'd been born one! American men were nuts, and the women were still more crazy. The English were difficult—everything under the surface, but after a while you began to

realize how soft they seemed and how tough they were. The Germans were a pushover. All cast in the same mold. A bunch of sheep no matter what direction they were running in. Jump from a plane if the voice of authority shouted “Vaterland!” As Dr. Hans Lenz he'd fooled them all in the Claudius office, before they'd taken it to Moscow from Berlin. But after ten years of cramming on American ways of talking and living and history, forgetting that he was Russian born, and ten more years of living right in New York City, with all the money in the world to play with—here he was having the jitters because he couldn't figure Americans. They had no national pattern you could figure. That was the trouble. No standards of class. Take those two men in “21”—Irv and Fawcett. Were they both native born Americans, or was Fawcett Welsh, or were they Slavic, maybe Russian like himself? No answer. Take some of the city's best night clubs. Once they had been speaks, breaking the law— now they're the country's finest restaurants. You shake hands with the proprietor, if he happens to know and like you, but you have to be even better known and liked to shake hands with the man who is tending bar. You couldn't even trust the racketeers. He'd shown a couple of big shots how they could invest their money safely right here in the country by letting him take it abroad. Then the third one he'd talked to had called him a lousy Communist, and threatened either to have him killed or turn him in to the FBI as a foreign spy. Loot a million from a labor union, then call a man who wants to help you spy! Dangerous, these Americans! Henry Lycoming could speak like one, live like one, look like one, and be one with an air-tight built-in family background that had so far fooled the authorities when he'd made that slip on Albatross Press. That was bad. Rheinemann's fault. Lycoming didn't know where Rheinemann stood. Max was all for making profit, and Lycoming couldn't very well tell him that the few billion he, Lycoming, had to juggle only incidentally to be used for profit—and never if it put Lycoming in the public eye. It was to be used for deals like the one that had removed Dr. Wolfgang von Bessinger from Operation Orbiter. There he turned America's security measures right against them. Twenty-five thousand dollars profit was shown on the books of a couple of brokerage houses—profit made on facility stocks in Wolfgang von Bessinger's name, stocks of facilities the eminent Doctor was advising. Then information was leaked to the Head of the United States Advisory Board on the International Geophysical year. Result: Nobody believed the anguished howls of the man who had been Hitler's rocket scientist when he denied knowing anything about twenty-five thousand dollars credited to profits in his name. The louder von Bessinger protested, the worse the transaction looked. Where had the original investment money come from? From foreign numbered bank accounts remitted direct to legitimate brokers and invested in utmost confidence in

your name. Utmost confidence was right! Lycoming chuckled at the memory. The Pentagon promptly removed Operation Orbiter from the Army and von Bessinger's guidance, and placed it under control of the Navy alone. The Army was left with six unlaunched satellites in Alabama, and Russia's Sputnik went flaming up into outer space spreading Communist propaganda all over the sky. Lycoming liked that kind of a game. He didn't like the kind of game he was mixed up in now. Playing the part of an eager lover wasn't too hard to take even at his age, and he was older than he looked, with anyone possessing the architectural lines of Marian Rheinemann. But again he was faced with cryptic Americanism, and a woman to boot, this time. The fact that he had to cultivate her in order to influence her father, and Max Rheinemann, had right at the start detracted somewhat from good dishonorable fun. Still it had been necessary if he wished to get Aaron Turlock and Bruno Vogl in the key spots at Crescent Valves. Lycoming had full say, and it was most important that he maintain it by remote control. There was a salient fact that Henry Lycoming had learned in the school of Comintern Diplomacy years before—no matter how big you might think yourself, or how important your mission was, you were never on your own. Lycoming had an immediate superior whom he had seen only twice, and then at night, once in Philadelphia and the second time in Hartford. On both personal contacts he had talked to the man for not more than fifteen minutes while driving with him in a car. He knew the man only as Pringle. Later contacts were made by phone, Lycoming calling from a pay booth in a drugstore, sometimes on Broadway, sometimes on the upper West Side. The place made no difference so long as it was never twice the same. The number Lycoming called was always another Pringle chosen drugstore, where Lycoming left a prescription number to be called for in a name furnished by Pringle on their last telephone contact. Actually, the prescription number Lycoming gave was the dial number of a pay booth, and the hour when Lycoming would be there waiting for Pringle's call. Eight hours notice was required. Pringle had various means of contacting Lycoming, but it was all one way—circulars and printed ads—marked cryptically with an indication of the hour Lycoming was to phone the prearranged drugstore and leave his prescription. No name. Nothing. On receipt of one of those circulars at his hotel in the morning, Lycoming would phone at the specified hour. Then, promptly in the evening, he would be in some drugstore booth of his own choosing, hoping Pringle would call. There were times that he didn't,

but Lycoming had orders not to wait over fifteen minutes. He found it very nerveracking to have to go through it all the following day. It was a pain in the neck. Lycoming was certain that Pringle was a highly trained officer of the NKVD. Now he was beginning to think that Pringle was a killer as well as a spy. God, he hadn't even known Turlock was in Marian's Rest Home. Who the devil but Pringle would want Turlock out of the way? And Lycoming was going to bear the brunt for not reporting—not keeping that cold-blooded NKVD agent informed that Turlock was off the job at Crescent. For a moment he was so upset he thought of stopping the car and calling Bruno Vogl before he talked to Marian. He realized immediately that Vogl might not even be aware of his, Lycoming's, existence. Vogl was an American Communist —a different breed of cat from Pringle. He'd pass on classified information, but he was motivated by—what? Lycoming was beginning to wonder about that very thing. They were nuts, and rotten at the core. That's why the Kremlin had started planting Pringles to watch them at their ideological play. Karl Marx, babushka! If these meatheads didn't quit fighting to get the grand and glorious freedom of Russia they might wake up some fine morning and find they'd won it. He just couldn't understand Americans at all! He turned his car over to the doorman of the Salford Arms at 74th Street and Park Avenue and took a red and gold elevator operated by a scarlet-uniformed girl up to the sixth floor. His appearance didn't excite her enough to stop her chewing gum. He rang the door chime at apartment A, which wasn't necessary since he had a key. A neat colored maid in a gray uniform and white apron let him in. Lycoming gave her his guest smile along with his hat, and said, “Hello, Carry. How's tricks?” “Pretty good, Mr. Lycoming, pretty good considering—” “Is the doctor in?” “In the shower, Mr. Lycoming. She's had her a bad day. Murder at her sanitarium last night. Didn't you hear?” “I saw the papers, Carry. Tell her I'll mix myself a Martini, will you? I'll wait in the bar.” He found ice ready in the oversize silver container and went to work with the French vermouth and Beefeaters gin, making just one on the rocks. Marian would want her's fresh when she came to join him. The apartment always jarred on him. It was lavishly furnished in black, white, and gold in a strict adherence to modernistic style. The rugs were white and thick as platters of hominy grits. The chairs were parts of sectional sofas that divided into three. They were upholstered, like the bar stools, in some type of white kid and had no arms.

Lycoming always had a sensation of sliding when he sat on one. The cocktail table was black onyx, like the top of the bar. The baby grand Chickering was white and gold. So was the built-in combination record player and TV. Only the varicolored spines of books in the recessed cases surrounding the TV added any brightness to the monotony, which Lycoming had decided long since had just one purpose —to set off the blaze of Marian's red hair. He took his drink to the bookcase and looked over the titles. Book club, mostly, bestsellers with a sprinkling of mysteries. A shelf of medical textbooks, leaning toward psychiatry. On the bottom shelf, built to hold books larger than the normal size, were twenty volumes of a medical encyclopedia. Lycoming through years of training had an eye that could detect an error in figures almost at a glance. The books were numbered from 1 to 20, but the last two volumes next to the wall had been transposed. One to eighteen were in sequence—then came 20 and 19. He set his drink down, knelt on the floor, and removed the two heavy volumes to change them about, then sucked in his breath. A thin white wire had been run along the back edge of the bookcase behind the encyclopedia. Back of the volumes Lycoming was holding it vanished through a hole drilled in the wall. He put the volumes back in correctly, walked to the radiator, concealed by a built-in box below the window, and raised the lid. It took just an instant for him to detect the hidden microphone. Bugged! The apartment was bugged! “But who the devil is being checked?” he asked himself. “Marian, Max, or me, or all three? And who's doing the checking—the FBI, the New York Police, or the Communist party?” Then he had another thought he liked less than any. “Could it be that bastard Pringle checking for the NKVD!” He gulped his drink and was mixing another when Marian came in. CHAPTER 17 The exotic Dr. Marian Rheinemann was wearing velvet lounging pajamas of Lincoln green. Most unprofessional polished toenails peeped from under the straps of gold sandals. “Hi, Henry!” She gave him a casual kiss, but her mind wasn't on her work. “Fix me a drink, like a dear.” She pulled two of the heavy white pieces together to form two-thirds of a divan, and flung herself down, arms outstretched along the back, long legs extended

in front of her. “On the rocks?” “A double. You're already a couple up on me. I'm on the rocks, myself. What a day!” “You shock me, darling.” Lycoming busied himself with the drinks. “You're the great advocate of shedding all anxieties. Don't tell me any events could be serious enough to bring the Goddess of Reason down from Parnassus and toss her into our human ulcer ring.” He took the two drinks over and sat down facing her. “Just a suicide.” She took a greedy swallow, and put the oversize glass on the black onyx table. “And a murder. Isn't that enough to upset me?” “It's in the papers, Marian. Nothing about the suicide. Were they connected in any way?” “Certainly not.” “Too bad you couldn't keep it quiet.” “How could I? The police have been swarming all over the place. Last night and today. It's not my fault.” She emptied her glass and held it out, then lit a cigarette from the big silver Ronson. Lycoming took her glass to the bar. With the gin bottle in his hand, he said, “Whose fault was it?” “What do you mean by that crack, Henry?” For a moment as he poured and stirred his mild eyes narrowed and the real Lycoming answered her. “My opinion is that it's a damn careless way to run an institution—” “To have a murder committed that I couldn't possibly help or foresee?” “Yes. A little foresight, just a slight check on character references, and you might have avoided all this unfavorable publicity.” The real Lycoming was frightening. Frosty as the drink he was mixing. Boring straight at her. Pitiless, and hard as the onyx top of the bar. Then suddenly the mask was back on and he was amiableness itself—the sweettempered, kind-hearted, good naturedly complaisant publisher of Lycoming's Leads once more. He took her drink back and handed it to her with a smile which she didn't return. “Character references,” she repeated thoughtfully. “It's a new conception, Henry. Onehundred-per cent American—almost. Don't treat any juveniles if they're mentally ill— they may be delinquents. So many are. And they might be murdered by members of a rival gang. All foreigners are absolutely taboo, until you check with the police of the country they came from and verify their political leanings.” Over her glass her pale blue eyes were unreadable. 'What do you happen to know about Igor Sandor, Henry? His murder seems to have you upset unduly.” “Nonsense, darling. You know perfectly well why I'm worried. You may be a doctor, but

I know better than anyone else how high strung you are. It's the effect it may have on you. I was just trying to point out—” “That the murdered man was a Hungarian. A refugee. In the United States legally perhaps, but using an assumed name—Aaron Turlock. His real name is Igor Sandor. Also he was an ex-employee of father's precious Crescent Valves, Inc. I know what you were trying to point out. Nothing is so sensitive as stock, and nothing is so important. Well, it was damn careless of me to admit him into Amity Rest Home, and very thoughtless of him to get himself killed. Crescent Valves stocks may come down.” The front door bell chimed in the kitchen. “You expecting anyone?” Lycoming made a gesture of rising. “Max.” “Oh. That's nice. I'll mix him a drink. Old-fashioned, isn't it?” “Don't try to sound so surprised, Henry. You knew he'd be here.” “Did I?” He found a lump of sugar and unstoppered the small bottle of Angostura bitters. Carry came through to answer the door. “He's just as concerned as you are about the frightful mess I've made and my delicate nervous condition. He phoned as soon as he read the papers.” There were voices in the foyer. Two men. A moment later Max Rheinemann came in briskly, his ferret features set in a bland smile. Marian Rheinemann forced herself to her feet and stared incredulously. Following on the heels of her dapper gray-flanneled husband came the last person on earth she expected or wanted to see. Max pecked at her cheek. “This is Maury Morel, Marian. Staff writer for the GlobeStar.” He seemed unaware of the sparks of distaste in Dr. Rheinemann's eyes. “Mr. Morel caught me at my office just as I was leaving. We had a nice chat, but short. He said that you two had met before and that, er—” “She knew me better as Fink Morel, the Party traitor.” Maury gave his irritating grin. “I tried to date her and got thrown out on my ear.” “Nevertheless,” Max said, “I persuaded Mr. Morel to drive up here with me.” Max turned. “That's our very good friend, Henry Lycoming, tending bar. Perhaps you'd care for a cocktail, Mr. Morel. I see he's already mixed an Old-fashioned for me.” Maury gave Lycoming a friendly nod, got one in return, and said, “I could go for a Martini.” “Fine.” Lycoming caught a half-gesture from Marian. He said, “I'm joining the press. Shall I make the two Martinis three?”

“Make it four, Henry.” Marian sat down stiffly. “Another double for me.” She looked up at Maury. “What phony series of stories did you tell Max you were working on now in order to get him to bring you up here? As I recall, you were writing up 'Rest Homes, Their Care and Feeding' when you tricked Miss Flynn and Miss Carse, and got into my office to annoy me.” “I was, and am writing about Rest Homes. It takes a lot of leg work to get up such a series, doctor, and a lot of night work to write it. Meantime, I'm on a payroll and have other assignments to cover. This happens to be one.” Lycoming brought the drinks. The three men sat down. “What tide did you tell Max you had for this story?” she asked him with cloying sweetness. “This new piece of Morel fantasy?” “I might have called it 'Murder in a Madhouse'—except the title was used by Jack Latimer years ago.” Maury took a generous sip of his cocktail and held the glass on his knee. “Also I might print that the murder was preventable—” “Now see here, Morel,” Lycoming broke in. “That's a pretty highhanded statement. Dr. Rheinemann uses every caution to protect her patients. You'd be—” “Every caution except getting character references,” Marian Rheinemann interrupted coolly. “Just before you came, Max, Henry went to some length to point that out to me. Suppose we let Mr. Morel hang himself. How could this murder last night have been prevented? What could possibly have stopped it?” Maury looked at his drink with his sleepy gray eyes, then downed it all approvingly. “Courtesy might have prevented it, doctor. Just a little less chip on the beautiful shoulder. A touch of sympathy for the hard working leg man. A very slight knowledge of public relations with the press, plus a dash of natural cordiality.” “Are you talking about that interview I had with you a week ago?” “Very definitely. Except it wasn't an interview. You acted like you had a baby's mutilated body in the bottom desk drawer. So you finished up with a dead body on your hands — Igor Sandor in Room 22.” “It seems to me if you held anything back from Marian,” Max said with some acerbity, “the blame must lie with you.” “You didn't happen to be there, Mr. Rheinemann. This is strictly between the doctor and me, and it's short and simple. I went out to the Amity Rest Home for one purpose only —to talk to a man named Aaron Turlock. He was the key figure in a story I'm working on for my paper. What the story is, and how I heard of Turlock is irrelevant. The point —” “I think I'm entitled to know who told you he was in my Rest Home.” “I don't, doctor. The point is that it wasn't you who told me, that's for sure, and it should

have been.” “You didn't ask me.” Maury gave a cynical laugh. “May I have another Martini?” He went to the bar to mix it, not waiting for anyone's assent. “I started to ask you about Turlock, and quit before the question came out. Be honest; you wouldn't have told me if I'd asked if you had a patient named Turlock in the home. Now, would you?” She thought while he mixed his drink and sat down on a bar stool. “No, I wouldn't have. I was irritated. You had—” “Yet you knew.” “He was entered as Igor Sandor.” “Who entered him? He didn't come alone.” “His wife. Opel.” She hesitated, looking first at Max and then at Lycoming, seeking quick advice from either. “Opel Turlock,” Maury said, not unkindly, leaning back against the bar. “You knew all the details before he got in— name, address, everything. I went through the wringer with your Miss Flynn.” “I've suggested many times that you get a competent public relations man to advise you, Marian. You're brash—high tempered. In the brokerage business—” “I'm not a broker or an investment counselor, Max, nor do I make suggestions to you or Henry about running your business.” “Just to your father,” Lycoming said. “I have an interest, personal and monetary, in Crescent Valves.” She turned to Maury. “What good would it have done if I'd told you that Aaron Turlock was one of my patients? Was Igor Sandor?” “Put the police on guard at any rate,” Maury said. “I'd have gone to them.” “Why?” “Turlock knew some facts about a murder. Too many facts, obviously.” “What could the police have done?” “Protected him. Searched his background. Put him in some place where he'd have been safer than he was there.” “In a jail, I suppose,” she said bitterly. “He was a very sick man.” “They'd have seen that he had medical attention—also security. Look, doctor,” Maury gestured with his glass, “don't misunderstand me. I'm not sore at you, not even irritated. I'm a newspaper reporter. As I told Mr. Rheinemann, I get worst receptions than you

gave me every day. It was mostly my fault for coming in with a beard on and not asking about Turlock right away. Miss Flynn got my back up, so let's skip it. Okay?” He took a swallow. “I'll tell you what I want right now, if you're interested.” “Didn't the papers do enough to me today?” “They haven't done anything yet, compared to what's coming,” Maury said earnestly. “Dykes, our headquarters man, was out at Amityville today. The police have a muzzle on. They're just not putting out before they get ready. I want some facts on Turlock and I want them right away. I can print a story that will be fair to you and that won't hurt your business. We'll get the jump on the other papers. Keep every thing you've told the police to yourself and when the truth comes out—well, you'll be crucified if the news stories are slanted the wrong way.” “Are you threatening me, Mr. Morel? It certainly sounds like it.” “There you go again!” Maury tossed off his drink and put the empty glass on the bar. “You'd be suspicious if a reporter pulled you from in front of a truck. I went to Mr. Rheinemann, didn't I? Got him to bring me here, knowing just how happy I'd be. Suppose when Dykes went out on that story, I'd told him what I told you just now—that there was a chance Turlock could have been saved if you hadn't acted up with me last Tuesday. The Globe-Star could have fixed your wagon today.” “What has the Globe-Star got against me?” “Your unkind remarks, maybe.” Maury gave her a sinister leer. “Or a mutual hatred that you started. 'Pseudo-liberal scandal-sheet. Muckraking lies by Morel. Red baiters lacking in principles.' Remember? Those are dirty words you threw at me, doctor. Start a fight anywhere. Also they might, in lots of papers, get you tabbed as a loyal member of the Communist Party. Now, do you want to fight, or answer some questions for Papa Morel?” “I think he's perfectly right, Marian,” Lycoming said sincerely. “You must have given him a rough time. He's entitled to a break for even talking with you again. What about it, Max?” “It's up to Marian, of course. But I certainly agree.” “Go ahead. Ask your questions,” Marian said resignedly. “What name was Igor Sandor using according to his wife?” Maury put flimsy on the bar to make his notes. “Aaron Turlock. Her name was Opel—O-p-e-l. They have a three-year-old son named Nikki.” She spelled it. “They're Hungarian refugees in this country legally. Their real name is Sandor.” “What address did they give you?” “I think it's 34-69 37th Road, Deer Lawn Park. That's a subdivision on the edge of

Garden City, Long Island.” “Did they have a phone?” “I don't think so. If they have it's unlisted. I looked in the telephone directory to see.” Maury nodded. He'd looked there, too, a week before. “Who was his personal physician? I mean, who sent him to your home?” “My father's personal physician, Dr. Howard Lancaster. You see, Turlock was Assistant Production Manager of my father's company, Crescent Valves, Inc.” “I believe you told me your father is Jason Philips. Great pal of the Old Man—Franklin Jeffers, who owns the Globe-Star,” Maury said dryly. “I thought we'd quit fighting.” The tip of her red tongue darted out for an instant as she studied Maury speculatively. “Yes, Jason Philips is my father.” “Did he employ Turlock?” “No, but he employed Bruno Vogl, the production manager. Vogl hired Turlock.” “Was Turlock a competent workman?” “Brilliant. For over a year, until he had a breakdown.” “When was that?” “Four or five weeks ago. He'd been in Amity three weeks when—last night.” “Continuously?” “What do you mean by continuously?” “Just that. Was he out at any time during that three weeks? Off the grounds, with anyone, or alone?” “I don't see that it makes any difference.” “It might make a lot of difference if he was out and you keep it quiet. What do you think the authorities and the papers will say if you don't come clean? 'Loose Nut Roams at Will from Amity Rest Home!'” “I think you'd better tell him, Marian,” Max said pleadingly. “All right. He was out. Home with his wife and child over the weekend last week. It's not irregular, and I consulted with Dr. Lancaster about it before I consented. He'd had four shock treatments. It's almost impossible to judge the results in the environment of an institution. So his wife agreed to take him home from Saturday afternoon to Monday.” “And he came back Monday morning okay?” “No, he didn't!” She was angrily defiant. “He disappeared Monday morning driving

their car. Opel was frightened to death. She called me, but merely said that Aaron was all right and wanted to stay home one more night. She told me the truth when she brought him back Tuesday. That's why I was so upset when you came in that day.” “What was the truth?” “He got home at five a.m. Monday morning. Another man was following him in an old car, but he didn't stop, just drove away. Aaron was soaked with rain and there was blood on his clothes. Opel thought he was injured, but he wasn't. Just dazed and wouldn't talk.” “And what did you think, Doctor?” “That he'd been in a fight.” “And maybe killed someone—and that it wouldn't do the home any good if the fact leaked out.” “I didn't think he'd killed anyone.” She was suddenly crumpled and hopeless. “I thought he'd bloodied somebody's nose. That was all. You have to believe me. He was abnormally strong and quick to take offense. He'd been through hell and back again. Then a month ago someone tried to kill him in front of his house, tried to run him down with a car. Or that's what Opel said. Anyhow, he had a nervous collapse, and she put him in the Home. He had delusions of persecution that might have ended in paranoia—” “Only last night they weren't delusions,” Maury said. “Where's Opel and the boy now?” “I have no idea.” She brushed back her wealth of hair with a tired stroke. “I haven't seen or heard of her since last Tuesday when she brought Aaron back to the Home. I've driven out to their house twice since then. It's closed up tight. I don't know what to think, now. The police found a knife concealed in Aaron's room. The patients are always snitching things from the dining room and hiding them, just to get away with it. It's part of the pattern.” Maury slid to his feet from the bar stool. “How much of this have you told the police?” “Everything—with the exception of Aaron's running away from home. I said he'd been out from Saturday to Tuesday, though.” “Not Monday? You're sure you told them Tuesday?” “Positive.” “Fine. I'll give you a break. I'll run the story just as you gave it, pointing up that it's the regular procedure of the Home and that Dr. Lancaster was consulted. Let them get the rest of the details about Aaron's side trip from Opel when they find her. Now, of course —” “What?” She stood up anxiously. “My private advice would be to call the police and spill it all.” “I thought you just said I didn't need to.”

“You may want to when I tell you you're in one hell of a jam, Red.” “How can I be in a jam?” “I don't know what your private life is,” Maury said, “but for a week there's been an FBI agent posing as a patient in Amity Rest. Now, if you'll give me my hat and coat, I tank I go home!”

CHAPTER 18 The FBI laboratory, started in 1932 under supervision of Special Agent Charles A. Appel, Jr., with some ultraviolet light equipment, a borrowed microscope, and a few ballistic gadgets, had grown into a million dollar institution offering its services in scientific crime detection free to all law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. The Metallurgical Unit was only one of many units under Physics and Chemistry. Daily the highly specialized scientists —who in spite of their many degrees had all passed through the rigorous boot training and become qualified special agents before entering the laboratory, were called upon to answer multiple questions: Is an invisible blood stain present? Is a visible stain blood—and is it human or animal? If it's animal, what species? If it's human, to what group does the blood belong? Ballistics was asked: What caliber is this shapeless bullet? What type of a weapon was it fired from—revolver? Automatic? Rifle? Machine gun? Can you name the manufacturer of the weapon? Foreign or American? Daily endless questions to the Document Section: What make of typewriter was this written on? Were these two letters written on the same machine? Are these two inks the same? Can you determine the watermark on this charred piece of paper? What kind of powder? What kind of hair? Human? What was his, or her, race, age, sex, and is the wave natural? Was it pulled out, cut off, or singed off? Is it bleached or dyed? Did these two hairs come from the same person? Everything applicable in the modern scientific world of the atomic age was pressed into use to answer the never ending queries. Catalytic tests for blood employed luminol and oxidants, benzidine and phenolphthalein. The Teichmann test, and the Takayama test reduced the blood specimen to crystals visible on a slide under a powerful microscope. Paints scraped from a fender were identified by densities, pigments, microchemical testing, and spectrographic analysis. One old-time safecracker had been said to remark after his conviction of cracking a post office safe: “Once you could wear gloves and not leave fingerprints and be okay. Now they tell you where and when you bought the gloves and identify you by dust you left

from the sole of your shoes, the fumes of the soup you used to blow the crib, the marks of your drill, the pattern of the seat of your pants where you sat on the floor, and a hair you scratched out of your eye. “It's getting so a man can work hard all his life learning his job and still not be able to make a dishonest living!” On Tuesday morning, Homicide Queens was notified of the Federal interest in the death of Igor Sandor, alias Aaron Turlock. On Wednesday morning the sharpened eight-inch piece of flexible metal extracted from Igor Sandor's heart arrived in the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C. It was routed to the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Physics and Chemistry Section, and turned over to Special Agent Richard A. McDonald, Ph.D. A superficial examination disclosed the fact that the lethal piece of metal was steel, probably cold-rolled, and that the larger end had been sawed from a longer piece with a hacksaw. The smaller end had been sharpened to a needle point with a file. Using a microscope illuminator, photomicrographic pictures were made of the tool marks left by hacksaw blade and file. Now from those pictures either tool could be possibly identified if found. For a short time McDonald stared at the deadly eight inches lying on the table in an effort to figure out what it might have been cut from. Inside of his mind it had almost rung a distant bell. It was irritating, because he felt he knew the original source exactly —something very familiar—but for the moment it was a blank, just as he sometimes lost the name of a very old friend whom he hadn't seen for years. He started a silent game of twenty questions: A curtain rod? Brass, and no taper. A towel rack, dimestore variety? No. Usually alloy and again no taper. A fishing—” McDonald called one of his assistants, an ardent outdoors-man. “Does that look like it might have been cut from a steel casting rod, Joe? Those are bloodstains on it so handle it carefully. It's in from the New York office.” Joe looked it over without touching. “Steel rods are usually hollow for lightness.” “Don't they make solid ones?” “Yes, but they're heavy and often square.” “What would your guess be, Joe?” Joe squinted at it some more. “What about an aerial off a car?” “They're hollow, brass, copper alloy, nickled or chromed.” “I mean a whip aerial.” “Wait a minute!” McDonald was excited. “I think I've nailed it down.” He called Special

Agent Murtrie in Electronics, who was in charge of designing new field equipment to enable agents to communicate with each other while on foot, or talk back and forth to their office or a car. “Murt? McDonald in Metallurgy. Do you remember that Russian short-wave transmitter we seized in that spy roundup last year? Didn't it have a solid cold-rolled steel aerial on it about fourteen inches long? Good. I think I've got part of another one—another aerial. Eight inches sawed off of one. Only this one wasn't used for transmitting; it was used to kill a man. Is that machine still in your department? Good. I'd like to borrow it to make a comparison. It will be a bulls-eye if I can prove this is a piece of a similar machine.” An hour later, a small segment of the aerial from the spy transmitter and the eight-inch weapon had been mounted in a block of Bakelite, and the block cut away until the metal was barely exposed. Then came the arduous task of grinding down block and metal with a series of abrasive papers each finer than the last, and each effectively removing the scratches of the one before. At last the metal shone like a mirror to McDonald's eye, but under the microscope the last abrasions from the finest paper were still distinct and clear. Then the metals were put on a wheel and polished with levigated alumina, the finest abrasive known, until even under the microscope not a scratch on the mirrorlike surface could be seen. Now a final step was necessary to reveal what McDonald wanted to know: Were those two pieces of metal both manufactured from the same source by the same steel mill in Russia. An etching solution was poured over both of the polished surfaces, and instantly began to attack and eat into the metal at the boundaries of each grain. Slowly under the metallo-graphic microscope the crystal structure of the metal began to appear. Donald almost shouted. The crystal structure, the etching pattern, the visible phases of the different components, and the inclusions of those infinitesimal foreign bodies found in all metals were identical in both pieces of steel. A spectrographic analysis, using the piece of the aerial and the eight-inch one as electrodes and photographing the spectrum of each of the samples, offered further confirmation. If two samples yield identical spectra there is no longer any doubt that their composition is identical—no matter what that composition may be. McDonald hurried to get Ed Waters, S.A.C. of the New York office on the intercom telephone. Waters might want to move fast. The official report wouldn't be in his hands until the following day. 2

There was a conference in Ed Waters' office at four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. Present, in addition to the S.A.C, were Special Agents Len Ducro, Monty Wells, and Octavus Ball. Monty Wells had fourteen years of service all over the country. He was a tall, lean angular man with a bony face and an aristocratic look in his eye. Capable, quiet, decisive and experienced, Waters thought him one of the best. Octavus Ball had heavy shoulders, sandy hair, an executive face, and a pair of prizefighter's fists that should have been registered with the police as deadly weapons. Luckily for many high school kids. Octavus had learned at the early age of twelve to control a temper that was constantly blowing out a cylinder head when some first year Latin student discovered, as they all did, that Octavus Ball's careless parents had wished on their eighth child the natural moniker of “Eight Ball.” Now at the age of forty, after ten years with the FBI, Octavus didn't even clench his fingers when addressed by the odious term. He merely smiled phlegmatically, and added the offender's fatuous features to the long line of faces that he had mentally placed in the life-sized silhouette target on the pistol range to be gunned down with glee. Why get upset by the nickname “Eight Ball” when it had made you one of the fastest and deadliest shots in the FBI? “I got a report in from the lab.” Ed Waters turned his attention from a file he'd been studying to the three agents. Len's told you about the assignment he was on in the Amity Rest Home, hasn't he?” Monty and Octavus nodded. “It was a toughie,” Waters said. “And Len did as well as he could. A nice job. It wasn't his fault that we didn't get as much as we hoped for. The subject, Igor Sandor, alias Aaron Turlock, was murdered night before last between midnight and one a.m. We've learned a lot of facts from the missile used to kill him.” Waters looked down at the papers on his desk, his strong face grave. “I'll brief you three on what we know. The boss wants the man who killed Igor Sandor apprehended, if it takes every agent and every resource of the FBI—and we want every Communist underground comrade who's been feeding him information for the past ten years. When we're ready we'll hit them all from coast to coast in a single day. That's the only answer left to give to the question 'Why did Igor Sandor have to die?'“ He stopped abruptly and sat staring out of the window at a patch of leaden sky over Second Avenue. “What do you know about this spy, Ed?” Monty Wells asked after a moment, with the privilege of long service. “Anything you don't want to tell, right now? You seem almighty sure he's pure Russian, and not an American Communist pressed into service.” Waters swung back from his window gazing. “We're working with the police on this, Monty. Lieutenant Jagowski of Homicide in Queens, gave me an interesting report here!

The killer got into the grounds of Amity Rest Home by using a pair of wire clippers—a smooth professional job. Evidently Sandor was expecting him or wasn't surprised to see him, or they had some prearranged signal that caused Sandor to open his window—” Octavus Ball asked: “Have you any description of this spy-killer at all?” “None,” Waters said quickly. “Or you'd have had it by now. There's a chance that he has a contact name—'Pringle.' You remember our last spy, Golikov?” “Who could forget him?” Ball asked. “He used the name 'Lamb' as I recall. I thought when he went up for thirty years last November, the NKVD might lay off for a while. So this is another?” “Bigger and better, I'm afraid, Octavus,” Waters said. “Special emulsified films that can be crammed into hollowed out nickels and lead pencils, coded short-wave radio messages and all. Sandor had passed out three nickels and a pencil to the man who killed him. The report I got from the lab in Washington a couple of hours ago proves definitely that the eight-inch piece of sharpened steel shot into Sandor's heart at close quarters was cut from the fourteen-inch aerial of a Russian manufactured short-wave sending set similar to the one found in Golikov's artists, supply shop. Lieutenant Jagowski believes it was fired from a hollowed out tube with a powerful spring.” “Why not use a dart from an air pistol?” Monty asked. “Didn't this Pringle go a long way around to get over the hill?” “I think I can answer that one,” Len Ducro said. “Take it from me, this Sandor had kept himself alive through a lot of tough going. He was a paranoiac in my opinion, and crafty and suspicious as hell. Now, he had to be killed without noise, by shooting through an inch by an inch-and-a-half opening in a diamond mesh screen. “Sandor gave Pringle the nickels and the pencil—at least, they haven't been found.” Len told how many of the patients concealed trinkets in their rooms. “After Pringle got the nickels and the pencil, the next step was to get Sandor. That entailed getting him close to the screen again without arousing his suspicion. He'd have flushed at the sight of an air pistol, or any kind of a gun, or a crossbow—dropped to the floor out of range close under the window sill, and started to scream.” Ball said: “Also it would take some fancy shooting to pot anyone accurately through a wire mesh screen. You'd be handicapped even if you shoved a pistol barrel in. No leeway to move it around and aim.” “That's exactly my point, and the one Lieutenant Jagowski made,” Len continued. “The police think that Pringle told Sandor he had a message for him—instructions, maybe, or a letter from his wife. It doesn't make any difference. He said he'd roll it up and push it through the screen. So he shoves in a slender metal tube that he's wrapped in a sheet of white paper. Sandor reaches for it and—click!—it's all over.” “For Sandor,” the SAC said. “This is where we begin. You've worked on espionage

cases before, Monty. But I want to warn all three of you that this isn't the same thing. The Soviets are learning new techniques every day—building up a deadly, efficient machine. “Colonel Alexandrovitch Golikov, of which we were speaking, spoke excellent English —good enough to run a nationwide Russian spy ring for eleven years from his artists' supplies shop in Brooklyn. But he still had an accent.” Waters paused to let that sink in. “I don't think Pringle has an accent. I don't think an accent will pass muster with the Comintern today. My belief is that Pringle has stepped into Golikov's shoes, and that his disguise is complete self-effacement.” “Do you think he's an American?” Len inquired. Waters shook his head. “The Soviets learned to keep clear of the American Communists as much as possible after the Smith Act trials in 1948 when they found out how many informants we had planted in the ranks of the Communist Party, U.S.A. It's not easy for the United States Party member to become an espionage agent today. Russia wants to know: What's his background? Can he be disciplined? And mainly, does he have access to confidential data? Also, it may take years to check him and break him in. “What they're concentrating on now is building illegal networks and planting their own sleeper agents like Golikov. Of course they demand assistance from the Party here— that's priority number one—servicing this foreign spy. Supplying false passports, fake birth certificates and identification papers, technicians, if he needs one, feeding and clothing him until he's on his feet. Maybe setting him up in a business for a cover.” “Do you think that Pringle is in some business like Golikov was?” Waters pursed his lips and stroked his chin. “I'm inclined to question that, Monty. Golikov didn't get away with it. We turned him up as a concealed agent, and businesses have tax returns to make, and licenses to buy. Less attention might be drawn to a workman with a smaller income.” “Just what do these illegal networks concentrate on, Mr. Waters?” Octavus Ball inquired. “Literally everything. The Boss says in his book Masters of Deceit —a book that every one in this country should read —that we're strategic spy target number one for the Soviets. Not only do they want certain blueprints or military operational plans; they're interested in an army manual, the political views of a clerk in an industrial firm, the security regulations of sensitive facilities and government buildings, or incidents in the life of a prominent person that might be used for blackmail.” “And Pringle?” “The nickels and the pencil passed out of that window to him, by Sandor, contained films with details of rocket valves being manufactured by Crescent Valves, Inc. for the Navy, so far as we can judge. Sandor worked there as Assistant Production Manager under the name of Aaron Turlock. The plant is owned by Jason Philips, whose daughter

Dr. Marian Rheinemann owns and operates the Amity Rest Home. We've had the plant under surveillance now for some time, but we've been concentrating on the management since Naval Intelligence and the Department of Defense had given Turlock, and Bruno Vogl, the production manager, clearance. As a matter of fact, Turlock had tipped us information about employees in other plants he'd worked in, which helped to put him in the clear.” “Do you mean he double-crossed you, Mr. Waters?” The S.A.C. reflected on that. “Not exactly. It's a chance we have to take with any informant, but we certainly can't be restricted on the sort of information we can accept. It would hamstring us, just as it would military intelligence or the C.I.A. Somewhere along the line Sandor turned against this country. As I said before, well never know the cause.” “Where do you want us to take this up, Ed?” Monty Wells asked. “A young man, a Lebanese, was stabbed to death in an alley off Charlton Street in Greenwich Village last Monday night—a week ago. His name was Beshara Shebab. He was the son of the Director of the Banque du Shebab-Syrie, in Lebanon, according to information received from the C.I.A. “Shebab was trying to sell information to a reporter on the Globe-Star, Maury Morel— information about a Russian agent in this country now, with unlimited Soviet money at his disposal in numbered accounts in banks in Switzerland and Lebanon. Morel was with Shebab in the Beirut Cafe of Washington Street. They left separately—Shebab climbed out of the washroom window. A few minutes later Morel, who was to meet him outside, found his body in the alley. Morel was cracked over the head and spent the night in St. Vincent's.” “Isn't Maury Morel that expert on Communists? The writer who won the Pulitzer Prize?” “Yes, he is.” Ed Waters quieted Lennie with a wintry look. “He's even more than appears on the surface. I expect him eventually to lead us to Pringle, and I don't want him questioned, contacted, or tipped off in any way. Is that perfectly clear.” “Yes, sir.” “Now, you three can divide this up among you in any manner you think best. I'm putting Monty in charge of the detail. First: I want Mrs. Aaron Turlock found, her son, Nikki, and her car. Through her and possible bloodstains in the car, I want proof that Aaron Turlock was out of Amity Rest Home the night that Beshara Shebab was murdered, and that Turlock killed Shebab himself, or was there at the time and knew who did. You can probably match Turlock's prints with some the police lifted from the cafe. The police will be glad to cooperate, and you'll need them. “Second: I want the dope on Abul Khaled, the owner of the Beirut Cafe. I think he's

running a Party drop for messages. Maybe a deep freeze—where underground comrades can hide away. He's running something out of line, that's for sure. Maybe narcotics. Find out. Put enough heat on him and you may unearth Pringle. That's all boys. Good hunting. On your way!” They stood up. Monty said, “Have you considered this investment counselor, Henry Lycoming, Ed? Is it possible—?” “Did I say anything about Henry Lycoming, Monty?” “No, sir. I was thinking about this Russian agent with all the hot money—” “I've been thinking about him, too, Monty. But don't go near Lycoming any more than Morel. One of the smartest girls in the financial field mails reports to me on Lycoming every day. I'd tell you three wolves her name except I can scarcely trust myself around her. She not only writes beautiful tip sheets, but she is beautiful. Better if you just know her by code: N.Y. 33.” CHAPTER 19 On Wednesday morning, Henry Lycoming received a circular in his morning's mail at the Hotel Beauchamps, 54th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he lived alone in a very plush suite. It was an advertisement of a sale in a chain of drugstores on Long Island. A throwaway. Henry Lycoming went over it very carefully before he threw it away. The particular chain of drugstores meant nothing. The ad could have come from Macy's, Gimbel's, or a furniture store just as well. There was a blot of ink beside one of the items—a well-known brand of safety razor that was being offered, with a trade-in of your old one, for $10.49. Hidden in that innocent ad was a double meaning. Safety razors were an alert (not real danger, which was covered by electric clocks)—a call for quick action. Pringle was waiving his regular requirement of eight hours notice. Ten forty-nine in the morning was the hour Lycoming was to phone. If the ink blot had been green it would have meant a p.m. call. Pringle would call back at any time during the day that Lycoming asked him to. Lycoming went out of his office for a coffee break at half-past ten. At eleven minutes to eleven he was in the booth of the coffee shop, next to the bank downstairs, making his call. It was a Long Island number Pringle had given him a month before: Illinois 2-9786. That was Jackson Heights, he thought, but he wasn't sure. Another pay phone. He had selected a drugstore at 56th and Madison, taken the number from one of the three booths—Plaza 6-9102. He wanted Pringle to call him there at six sharp. The time

came first on the prescription number he'd leave at the Jackson Heights drugstore—6. Next came the telephone number: PL 6-9102. Substituting figures from the telephone dial for the exchange letters, PL was 75. There was a scratch pad on the shelf by the phone in the sit-down booth in the coffee shop. Lycoming idly took out his gold ball-point pen and jotted down: Rx # 67569102 Mr. T. Schumacher. A guttural voice, thick with accent, answered after the tenth ring. Obviously just one phone in the drugstore and that a pay phone. “Pfleuger's,” the voice said. “Vat iss idt you shouldt vant now?” “I want a refill on a prescription for Mr. T. Schumacher.” “Spell idt, blease. Misder T. ——?” Lycoming spelled it. “Vot's der number, blease? Uff der perscribtion, blease?” “Number 67569102.” He called the figures slowly one at a time, giving a chance for the man to write them down. “Und der address, blease?” “You have the address; Mr. Schumacher will pick it up this afternoon.” He cradled the phone, then automatically tore off the sheet of paper from the pad, crumpled it and put it in his side coat pocket to be flushed down a toilet later in the day. When he left the booth he found himself face to face with Dolores Stacy. From her left shoulder hung a large patent-leather handbag. In her right hand was a dime. Lycoming managed a smile of pleasure that was so forced it made his face muscles cramp. “Well, since we're both playing hooky, how about a cup of coffee?” “You're a sweetie-pie of a boss, Mr. Lycoming, in more ways than one!” Her dark eyes swam with magnetic admiration. “Just as soon as I phone my mother. I have to catch her before she goes shopping. I don't allow any of the other girls to make personal calls on the company's phone—and I won't do it myself.” “Maybe I could get you what you want, Dolores. You should try going shopping with me,” he said meaningly. “I'll take you up on that, perhaps, some other time.” Her laugh was sufficiently challenging. “Right now you can order me a doughnut and coffee.” She went in the booth and closed the door. Lycoming's trained sense of caution urged him to stay near the booth to find out if he could overhear anything. He realized instantly that he was too much on edge. It was always that way when he had to contact Pringle. Little things were exaggerated all out of

proportion. The trouble was it was getting worse. He had to get himself in hand, even though Turlock's murder and that bug that was planted in Marian's apartment weren't things that could be brushed off with a feather duster. He'd find out about that bug as soon as he talked to Pringle. That is, if he didn't muff it. These damn little Caesars—Comintern Rep's—thought they were second Lenins. And this pig, Pringle! Ask him something he thought was out of line and he'd personally purge you. Lycoming could be tough enough, but he believed in handling tight situations in a different fashion. A little torture or brain washing, and the man still lived to be used another day. He took a stool at the counter and ordered two coffees and doughnuts. His eyes kept drifting back to the booth, enraptured with the voluptuous thrills that could be obtained just from watching Dolores' head and shoulders, and imagining a couple of other things. Her conversation he would have found very boring. Dolores was saying: “Look, Mary, if we're going to get those presents there on time, I simply have to see you for lunch today. Jimmy called and I want to tell you about it. What about La Vandange at 61st Street and Madison Avenue? It's quiet and the food's good. One o'clock? That's fine. If you have your new handbag with you at the office, bring it. I'm simply dying to see it.” She tore off the blank top sheet of the scratch pad and put it in her handbag. She couldn't see anything on it, but the FBI would have any impression on it visible after a few minutes in the Document Laboratory. It might add something to the tape recording she had in her bag, made by and induction mike which she stood outside of the booth during Lycoming's call. Mary Nestor, the gray-haired woman Dolores was lunching with, would take the piece of paper and the tape recorder back to her boss before two. Mary was one of the most efficient secretaries working in the office of Ed Waters, S.A.C. of the New York FBI. 2 Pfleuger's Pharmacy hadn't had a Pfleuger connected with it in more than twenty years since young Amos Pfleuger gave it up as a bad job and sold out to Manny Epstein in 1937. Manny, a registered pharmacist of some ability, cleaned the old patent medicine bottles out of the grimy show window, washed the glass, and put in a display of vitamins, a new type of high-priced capsules that sold well in spite of their 400% mark-up because the off-color advertising that slyly touted them as aphrodisiacs, which they weren't. The vitamin pitch lasted for a couple of years during which Manny lost only eighteen hundred dollars. He was glad to sell out to Benny Vanazzia in 1941 for half what the inventory and bad will had cost him, and move his wife and five children to Florida where you didn't have oil bills that could break you down.

Benny Vanazzia, whose real name was unpronounceable and had sunk to oblivion in a sea of aliases, had lost a lucrative job with Al Capone as chemist in one of Al's Chicago distilleries with the advent of repeal. Benny had managed to struggle along through the thirties doing strong-arm work for some well-known figures who offered their protection to various purveyors of foodstuffs. Benny was adept with stinkbombs, explosive fruits called “pineapples,” and could in a pinch do a passable job of selling over the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. He was far more popular with his employers than with his clients and should have been able to retire comfortably on an old age pension, except that a rival organization, called the FBI, kept bumping off his big-hearted bosses one by one. At the ripe old age of forty-five he decided to enter the pharmaceutical field and be of some real use to suffering humanity. Even that long ago he had bloodshot eyes sunk in overlying folds of flesh that made him resemble a bloodhound with the mumps, and a startling pallor in his face that was best described as jaundiced gray. In addition to diabetes, and over a hundred thousand dollars invested in profitable real estate, Benny also had a wife named Fern. She was four years younger than her husband, and weighed six pounds less, but was considerably meaner and more grasping, assuming that were possible. At fifty-eight, Fern tipped the scales at 232. Somehow, unlike its former owners, Benny and Fern Vanazzia over a period of seventeen years had managed to make Pfleuger's Pharmacy eke them out a living. It might have been because Benny was a really good pharmacist, and that he and Fern worked hard and employed no other help. In addition, their living quarters were over the store; they owned the place, and had no rent to pay. Some cynics claimed that it was Benny's good heart, and his acquaintance with a large roster of equally good-hearted physicians whose kindliness was frowned on by the American Medical Association. Certainly Benny would never question a doctor's prescription for morphine or barbiturates. Who could stand to see a patient shake and suffer, or waste away for lack of sleep? What was the difference if the doctor in the rush of business issued three prescriptions to the same patient under three different names in one day? Benny and Fern had dedicated their lives to keep humanity from suffering. They had a great understanding of teenagers, too. A child who needed a shot of “H” to quiet his or her nerves affected them more than any hardened adult. In fact, if anyone, old or young, had an urgent need for anything, and could prove their good faith and produce the dough, why should they be turned away? Special Agent Calvin Lynch, one of the older agents dating back to the Lindbergh kidnapping days, dropped in to Pfleuger's Pharmacy, in Jackson Heights, at three-thirty

on Wednesday afternoon. The place had an ancient smell of patent medicines, licorice, and horehound drops. The small antique soda fountain, unused for years, was covered with card displays of corn plasters, safety razor blades, cheap lipsticks, and bubble gum. A magazine rack showed some 25 £ titles of pocket-sized books, a few nude art and sex magazines, some lurid detective tales, and stacks of comics that were being read at the moment by a ten-yearold boy who was squatting in front of them. A small tired looking woman in slacks and a green blouse was waiting at a counter in the rear under a faded sign that said: “prescriptions.” Cal Lynch waited until Benny waddled out through a curtain at the back that concealed his mortar-and-pestle rites from public view. Benny gave the woman a small package in exchange for a dollar-seventy-five, and rang it up on a register that recorded the sale with a tinny clang. The woman departed, separating the boy from his free literary pursuits of the comics on the third try. From behind the prescription counter, Benny said, “Maybe I shouldt gif him some uff der bubble gum. You vant some bubbly gum, leddle boy?” “Ah, shove it, grease ball!” the lad advised as he and his mother left the store. Agent Cal Lynch walked to the rear and stood for a few seconds facing Benny over the counter, enjoying the stiffness that set in the folds of Benny's fat face and the deepening pallor of unhealthy gray. “Vat iss idt you shouldt vant, blease?” “I'm Mr. T. Schumacher,” Lynch said, his frosty eyes concealing Benny. “I want the prescription I phoned in this morning. A refill. Number 67569102. Is it ready?” “Ve haff no shoemakers. Dere iss a mistake, no?” “No mistake, Benny. T. Schumacher. You even had the name spelled out for you. Shall I repeat the number for you? 67569102.” “You ain't diss—” “Schumacher? Oh, there is one then!” “No. Nodt you. You're dat—” “Go on, Benny. It's nice to know you remember me. I certainly haven't forgotten Fern and you.” “You're dat—de Fed, Cal Lynch. You gunned down Skeets, and put Buster Liebling avay in Sald Lake City. I knew it soon as I laid mein eyes—dat silver hair.” “And you turned state's evidence, Benny, and got off scot free. The State of Utah was

too kind to you. But 'Buster' Leibling won't be, when he finally locates you and Fern.” “Buster's in der pen, G-man.” “Time flies, Benny. Twenty-two years since last we met Buster was released on parole two months ago. I was surprised to find you still alive—even under another name. Of course, we're careful to protect our friends, but we don't like Commies—even when they're pushing horse from a drug store.” “Might Gott strike me dead mit thunder, Misdur Lynch. You can esk the State Narcotics Bureau, dey vill tell you yet how clean I am, und Fern—” “That's up to them, Benny. Maybe you and Fern are useful. We're not interested in how many big wheel pushers and quack doctors you're turning in. But when you start putting the entire country in peril by tying yourself up with a spy ring.... Frankly, if we can't get both of you, we know plenty of Benny Benutto's—it was Benutto then, wasn't it? Or maybe Calezzo? Anyhow, we know plenty of your old time pals who would consider it a patriotic duty to rid this country of a couple of traitors.” “Tradors! Mein Gott Misdur Lynch. Now idt's tradors— und vy?” “You're running a Communist Party drop, Benny. You and Fern are passing on their messages. You know it just as well as I.” “Messages? I know nudding uff messages, nudding of drops, nudding—” “What about T. Schumacher and that prescription? Has it been picked up yet?” “No prescribtion, Misdur Lynch. Might Gott strike—” “You're keeping God awfully busy, Benny. What if we turn the job over to Buster Leibling? Won't it save time?” “Der prescribtion a message iss. Some man vot two-times his wife, iss all.” “What man? What's his name? Where does he live? What's his description? You can come clean here, Benny, or you and Fern can take a ride with me in town. By the time you get back the Narcotic's boys will have gotten impatient and carted every fake package in this phony dump away. Then just to make sure you keep your nose clean, as soon as you open for business again they'll start raiding you every day. Now take your choice. You can have it either way.” Beads of sweat popped out on Benny's pallid brow and his sunken eyes grew redder with sincerity. “Tvice only,” he said. “Ve got a letter. Chust a message. No name. No man. A tventy dollar bill. Some day Mr. T. Schumacher vill phone undt say he vill call for his perscribtion. Take der number of der perscribtion and giff idt to der leedle boy who comes und esks for 'Poppa's red pills.' Should ve throw der tventy dollars avay? Ve do idt. Vat iss wrong? Half an hour before you come—comes der leedle boy for Poppa's red pills. Ve giff him der numbers you giff me on a piece of paber. Vot iss wrong? Tradors ve iss nott! Dot iss all.”

“Do you have those messages that came with the money?” “Dey say burn. Ve burn.” “You say this has happened twice. When was the first time?” “Three months ago. April. Three veeks later comes der call und der leddle boy. Der last vun comes a month ago. Leedle boy today.” “Same boy each time?” “Different boy. Nefer saw eider before nor since. Do not know dem, Misdur Lynch. Might Gott—” “Skip the death by thunder, Benny. You're hot enough now. Do you happen to have kept a copy of that first prescription number?” “Ve figgered idt oudt, Mistur Lynch. Fern and I. Dot's vy ve figger der man iss twotiming his vife.” Benny's face folds sagged into a crafty look. “I tell you vot ve figger oudt iff—” He paused, waiting for Lynch's sign of interest. Special Agent Calvin Lynch gave a smile that made Benny shiver. “There's no if, Benny. You're spilling the works right here and now to stay alive. The FBI doesn't guarantee anything and it never makes a deal.” “Der first figger in der perscribtion iss der time to make a telephone call,” Benny said hastily. “Der first perscribtion vas 84729041.” He turned and pointed. “I pudt it down here on der vail. Fern and I figger der man shouldt call GR 2-9041—dot's Gramercy, at eight o'clock. Ve try at vun minute past eight undt der line iss busy. Der vun today—” “Go on.” “Der vun today—” Benny turned back to his penciled figures on the wall. “Call PL 69102 at six o'clock. You dun't think tradors vould tell you that, Misdur Lynch. Blease, now do you?” “It depends on what they're trading in, Benny. If another one of those notes comes in you'd better call us fast and tell us. If you stick it in the fire, like you did the others, it may not get burned as badly as you.” Lynch turned to the door on his way out. “We're really quite clever, Benny. We had that telephone business all figured out ourselves. Still it's always a pleasure to have ourselves checked, and proven right, by a couple of lousy schlemiels like Fern and you.”

CHAPTER 20 Henry Lycoming left his office fifteen minutes earlier than usual on Wednesday evening, and headed directly for his suite in the Hotel Beauchamps, not even pausing for his usual quick one in the bar.

The weather had grown hotter and more oppressive with a feeling of dampness presaging a midsummer storm. It was a type of weather, unlike what they thought in the western world, that reminded him of Moscow—the hottest and coldest city in the world. Doubts had been creeping into his mind during the last few years that he ever wanted to return to Moscow. He had tried very hard to eliminate those doubts. Not only did he consider them traitorous to his country, but they were persistently widening chinks in an armor that for a lifetime had protected him against false attacks on a great ideal. Since his birth he had been steeped in the philosophies and reasonings of Marx and Lenin and Stalin, and then, without warning, a third of his lifetime intellectual pattern, based on those three figures which had governed his thinking, had been ripped away. One day Stalin was infallible and the next day infamous. Not only did the great leader have feet of clay, but his heart was stone and his head was bone, and his teachings were heresy, a miracle performed with the mirrors of a political decree. Well, they couldn't control Henry Lycoming's secret thoughts. He wasn't any Ukranian peasant, depending on just a bushel of wheat from each acre he had sown and cultivated with his own backbreaking toil. He had ideas and mastery of finance that powerful figures in the Comintern considered second to none. It was just too bad that some of best ideas were sprouting full fledged into poisonous flowers and turning what were doubts at first into firm convictions—that if a system was inherently false in itself, its managers had to be endowed from the top on down with feet of clay, and hearts of stone and heads of bone. His own situation was a case in point. He was a product of fallacious thinking. He had seen gold mined at the price of all else and had been told it was worthless, and then taught in the same breath that it was the only substance on earth of use to spread the Soviet doctrine by penetrating another nation's economy. He had been teethed on the creed that capitalism was his country's arch foe, and then turned into the greatest capitalist of them all to rout the enemy. Who in the world had the command of a tenth of the money that he had? Not even Onassis living on his yacht with the solid gold plumbing in Monaco. Then, after making him into an effigy of a capitalist who didn't like capital, they steeped him in Americanism, isolated him for years in a closely guarded replica of a portion, of New York City where he'd studied slang—Americanism, amateur and pro baseball and football, banking, economics, geography, history, city, county, state and country politics, restaurants and streets and the principal American cities, and transportation—until they considered him as he was supposed to consider himself a New Yorker to the manner born. So they'd made themselves a straw American who could pass with members of the N.A.M. or at a bankers' convention, or talk with knowledge in home or bar about Perry Como, Althea Gibson, Stan Musial, the mid-East crisis, Satchmo, or Benny Goodman.

Lycoming almost laughed out loud—they'd even taught him to think like one. But the biggest question these skillful trainers had blankly overlooked was: “What kind of a one?” The answer to that was the big black flaw in the perfect scheme: They'd taught him to think like an American Communist and the longer Lycoming stayed in the United States followed its ways, the more he had learned to hate and despise the American Commie. They indeed to Henry Lycoming had exalted the cult of cravenness. They indeed were the men of straw. Not one could conceive the history of Russia that was part of Lycoming's heritage. Not one in all his generations of ancestors had fought to grow some tiny blade of sustenance from the frozen stones of the Russian steppes. Not one had ever lain awake and heard the voice of a hundred babies wailing out their lives in hunger in some isolated hamlet. Not one had ever heard of wives and daughters seized as serfs and hustled off to the city brothels. Nor had their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents ever writhed under a Cossack's knout or been crushed like a roach beneath the heel of some tyrannical Czar. Parents of horror had fathered the system that held Russia in its hands today. Its father had been drunk on blood and its mother weak with rape and terror. But the monster had grown. No one but the Russian people themselves would ever be able to tell the world whether their lives were better or worse. The outcome had been inevitable. Only time could show if anything saved from a bubbling bog of putrefying ignorance and suffering was worth the savings, or if a rescuer's methods had been right or wrong. Whatever the answer, the Russian leaders at least were trying to save themselves and the system created by their country's tragic history. Not so the American Communist. They were a brainless bunch of doodlebugs trying to delude the world and themselves by spouting all the patriotic cliches. They'd followed false gods and become so twisted that their meaningless manufactured jargon had finally assumed to them the sanctity of a prayer. Lycoming had some small sympathy for the Communists of Italy and France and Korea and Red China for they had suffered and known war and privation, and the bulwarks of their political systems were weak and shaky. For the American Communist Party he had built up only hatred. They had befouled their own nest and had no pride left, except pride in their deception, fraud, subterfuge, chicanery and double-dealing. They were lower than rats and more brainless. Rats didn't gnaw holes through the hull of a sturdy ship and sink their own home. Lycoming spat to get the taste out of his mouth as he entered the hotel. In his suite he showered and poured himself a drink of Bourbon and downed it straight. He put on a less conspicuous suit, glanced out the window and grimaced. The sky was darker, the storm growing closer. He was going to have a lot of driving and walking, too—he could feel it in his bones. He lit a cigarette and eased himself down into the chair and turned

his thoughts to Pringle. Pringle was his superior—that had been made very clear. Pringle had more contact with the men high up. Nevertheless, Pringle distrusted them—of that Lycoming was sure. Maybe they disgusted him as much as they did Lycoming— Pringle wouldn't be the man to say—he'd work them and use them and play on their every weakness to further his own ends, then remorselessly discard them once they'd served their purpose. He'd do the same to Lycoming if pushed too far or threatened with danger. He'd proved already that he'd kill. Even in America Pringle couldn't shunt the trappings of the typical NKVD. Pringle was either better trained than he was or just naturally more wary. Maybe he knew more than Lycoming did about the machinations of American guardians of the country's security—particularly the FBI. Certainly Pringle trusted no one—not even himself, Lycoming thought. It was a major operation of intrigue and subterfuge to contact him by phone. When it came right down to meeting Pringle in person, it was akin to dating a female werewolf in a witches' glen. It was twenty to six. Lycoming went out without his raincoat, intending to return. He couldn't tell what he might need right now. He walked uptown two blocks and then west over to Madison. There were two doors to the drugstore—a main entrance on Madison and a rear door on 56th Street. Lycoming went in the rear one which was close to the three telephone booths. Two of them were occupied—the one he wanted was vacant—the one with the number PL 69102. It was five minutes to six. He went into the booth, found a dime, and dialed the Hotel Beauchamps. When he got it, changing his voice slightly, he asked the operator to ring his suite. By the time she had reported that Mr. Lycoming wasn't in and asked if there was any message, please, it was a few seconds off the appointed hour. He sweated it out until four minutes past six, getting more and more apprehensive when no call came. He was about to leave the booth and stand outside when he noticed that a girl was partially blocking the door, deeply intent on a copy of Look magazine with the cover turned toward Lycoming. Covering the movements of his left hand by holding his hat in his right hand, Lycoming reached in under the shelf and found an envelope fastened there with a thumbtack. He detached it, took a glance that showed him the thumbtack was red, and slipped both tack and envelope into his coat pocket, put his hat back on, opened the door, stepped out, beckoning gently to the girl. “I'm sorry,” he said, “I didn't notice you.” He had noticed her very definitely. She had on a transparent hood-slicker. Her hat and dress and shoes were flaming red. “It's all my fault,” the girl said quickly. “I'm waiting here for my boy friend. All I do is stand around every evening and wait and read magazines, and by the time he gets here

I'm so darn mad I don't know what I've read.” “Well, then everything's okay with us both,” Lycoming said. In the adjoining booth Special Agent Calvin Lynch was talking now into the telephone through communications—to agents Henderson and Lewis parked in a baby-blue Ford halfway up the block on Madison. “He's all yours, Henderson. He just went out the front door. No telephone call.... No I don't believe Vanazzia blabbed—he was too scared and he's a real good loyal American. If I thought he'd blabbed I'd go out there personally and punch him one on the head.”

CHAPTER 21 A mid-July thunderstorm hit before Lycoming got back to the hotel, dashing down raindrops the size of half dollars. He had to run for it, the last half block on 54th Street, and shake himself like a shaggy dog, once he was under the canopy. Even at that he got a drenching. Lightning was flashing and thunder reverberating over the city when he got up to his suite. It was only twenty past six, but the violent storm had cheated daylight saving time and it was already dark outside. Lycoming stripped off his dampened suit, put it on a hanger and fixed himself another straight drink. He pulled down the window shades, turned on the reading light and, in shorts and shirt, sat down in the easy chair and ripped open the envelope that had been thumbtacked under the shelf in the telephone booth. His hands were steady but he was trembling inside as he read the note typed on a cheap piece of paper. “You're being watched—your hotel rooms and your office are probably bugged, and the phone's tapped—you're using phone booths too close to your hotel and office, and some of your booth calls are being picked up by induction mikes. Pick booths that are farther away and as close as you can find them to a neon sign in the window of a store or bar— the interference from the sign will make it impossible to record what you're saying, or what's being said to you. Choose places with only a single booth—never two or three. Don't do anything to remedy this or show that you're suspicious. Just be doubly careful. “Now: Take a taxi down Lexington to Grand Central terminal. Go in the Lexington Avenue entrance, walk through to the station, and buy a ticket for Pawling. Go in the drugstore and make a purchase. Come out on 42nd Street. Walk to the corner of Vanderbilt and go back into the station again. From the station go into the subway and catch a shuttle train to Times Square. Change to the BMT, get off at 34th Street, and walk through the Gimbel tunnel to the Long Island station. Buy a ticket for Jamaica. Take the next train and get off at Forest Hills. Walk to the nearest subway station and take the subway back in town to the Pennsylvania station. If you think you've been thoroughly dry-cleaned, buy a ticket to Philadelphia and take the nine o'clock (daylight saving time) train. Buy some magazines, be reading, and get off suddenly at Trenton.

Take a cab to the Delaware Hotel. Ask for Whit Seymor in Room 317. He'll say, 'Hank— wonderful! I'll be right down,' when you get him on the house phone. He'll take ten minutes while you're waiting in the lobby. He has a front room and will check out of the window to see that no cars have stopped anywhere, and that everything looks clean. You watch for cabs that might pull up. Keep an eye on anyone who comes in. When Seymor gets off the elevator he'll be carrying a copy of Redbook magazine. You say: 'I'm sorry I'm late, Whit.' He'll say: 'Well, I was wondering where you'd been.' He'll take you where you want to go—just leave it to him.” Lycoming read through the note a second time, then tore it up with the envelope and flushed it down the toilet, sending the red thumbtack with it. Typical security tactics of the American Communist underground, he thought morosely as he hurried into another suit. Maybe with just a few added touches from the fine hand of the NKVD. He shuddered at the thought of spending an hour, maybe longer, riding trains and the hot, smelly subway. He had to admit that somewhere along the line he'd slipped—gotten himself as dirty as a pair of grease-monkey's overalls. Bugs in his room and his office! No wonder Pringle was sending him to the dry-cleaners before their meeting. The FBI must have been close enough to snap pieces out of his tail. Yet all the fault couldn't be laid on him—he was a business man fighting an international economic war, a penetrator of industries, a manipulator of the stock market, a financial saboteur. But take a look at any of the big international tycoons—weren't they all? He hadn't been trained in that back-alley doubling stuff as Pringle had, and heaven knows he didn't want to be. The farthest desire from his heart was to become a master spy. But he'd have to obey his orders now, no matter how distasteful. Pringle was the boss. He was also bad news. He'd have no tolerance for what he'd be sure to term Lycoming's carelessness. There'd be swift retribution if Lycoming turned up at the Delaware Hotel in Trenton accompanied, a couple of blocks in the rear, by some inconspicuous member of the FBI. He didn't intend to. He slipped into an expensive, dark-blue, belted raincoat, went downstairs and five minutes later had caught a taxi headed down Lexington. In the cab he considered cutting a few corners, but immediately decided against it. Pringle's instructions had been too specific. There'd undoubtedly be some rear guard comrades spot-checking at various points along the circuitous journey to make sure that Lycoming was free of his tail. He might not be as well trained as Pringle, but he knew quite a few tricks of his own and, since he'd been warned, he decided tonight to use them all. He paid off the cab, started in the entrance to the station, then stopped and turned right and stood in the rain, staring into the window of a book store, watching cars whiz by in back of him. One disturbed him—a baby-blue Ford that was moving too slowly—it could have made the light at 42nd Street with half a try. As it was, it stopped. Lycoming stayed watching until the red light turned green and the Ford turned right

around the corner onto 42nd Street. Then he dashed around the corner after it to watch. It kept on going and so did Lycoming—Pringle wasn't the only one who'd had a course in trailing tactics of the FBI. He had a sneaking idea that a car parked between 42nd and 43rd, that his taxi had passed, also contained a couple of agents. If that was true, he'd been sandwiched—one car in front and one car in back, talking back and forth to each other. One thing they didn't lack for was men in automobiles in the New York FBI—it was most discouraging. A man had come around the corner after him. Lycoming stopped and looked in another window until he saw the reflection of the man go by. He figured quickly—one man had been left around on Lexington to stake out the station door, the other had followed him around the corner. The baby-blue Ford, still running too slowly to suit Lycoming, had just passed Vanderbilt Avenue. Lycoming turned away from the window and started walking at a normal pace after the man he'd marked down as one of the enemy. Then, without any altering of his pace, he stepped through the street door into the crowded air-conditioned Hotel Commodore bar. The door at the back led into Grand Central Station—another door to his left led up steps into the lobby of the big hotel. Lycoming took the left-hand door, scuttled up the steps, crossed the lobby and went up another flight. There a door led out on to the Park Avenue ramp far above the street. There was a cab stand there, but no cabs on it—not at that time of the evening and in a rain. Then Lycoming got a break—a cab swooped in and discharged a fare. Lycoming hopped in before the driver's flag was up, said, “House of Chan restaurant, 52nd Street and 7th Avenue,” and huddled back in a corner. The driver lifted the meter flag to clear the old fare and pushed it down again. They moved down the ramp to Park Avenue, and for a few minutes Henry Lycoming breathed freely again. Still he was taking no chances—at the House of Chan, without going inside, he waited until his cab moved off, and finally flagged another one. He left it at 42nd Street and went down into the BMT and began to follow instructions to the letter—leaving the subway train at the very last minute, holding the door open and jumping off, stooping over to tie his shoe in the Gimbel tunnel, then straightening up suddenly and looking in back to see if anyone was following. Worn out, soaked through, and miserable from his journey to Forest Hills on the train and back on the subway, he caught the nine o'clock train to Philadelphia from the Pennsylvania station and dashed off of it at the very last minute at Trenton. There, to his disgust, he found it hadn't been raining—it was just insufferably warm. Feeling that his raincoat would attract attention, as well as broil him alive, he put it in a locker in the station. He was hoping against hope, as he doubtfully pocketed the key, that Seymor wouldn't drive him to Newark airport to catch a plane to Chicago where he could contact Pringle in the morning.

It was twenty minutes to eleven when he contacted Whit Seymor at the Delaware Hotel. The Delaware was a quiet residential hotel on the outskirts of Trenton, not far from the river. Nobody came or went in the lobby during Lycoming's ten-minute wait, and not more than half a dozen cars had passed on the isolated road. Apparently, for the moment, Henry Lycoming's strenuous efforts had been worthwhile. He had sharp-elbowed the omniscient sleuthhounds of the FBI out of his hair, and was clean as a—he had to search his mind for the simile. He didn't like either “hound's tooth” or “whistle”—they were far too reminiscent of the hot breath of blood-hounds and the whistles of pursuing minions of the law. Whit Seymor appeared promptly from the elevator at ten minutes to eleven, carrying his Redbook. The proper exchange of recognition, just as they had on the house telephone, passed between him and Lycoming without a flaw. They went out together and walked around the hotel to a parking lot where a sign on a thin pole, with an unshaded electric bulb at the top, read: For Guests Only. By the light of the bulb Lycoming studied Seymor as he unlocked the doors of a '53 green Chewy that needed cleaning. Seymor wore horn-rimmed glasses with lenses for myopia. His ears were lobeless and set close to his head, but his features were good and his oval face intelligent under the flat-top cut of his hair. He had on slacks and a greenand-black short-sleeved sport shirt that revealed a pair of powerful arms. They got in the car and drove off in silence toward Trenton. They'd gone about a half a mile when Seymor said: “It was thought much better that we meet. Mr. Vogl hired me a week ago to take Aaron Turlock's place as assistant production manager at Crescent Valves. I hope I'll fill the bill.” “If Vogl hired you,” Lycoming said, “I'm sure you will.” They drove on into Trenton in silence. Seymor wound and twisted about and finally pulled in beside a tavern where several other cars were parked. The street sign said: Gus's Bar & Grill. Seymor said, “I hope you don't mind waiting. I'll only be a minute or so. Please don't cut the motor—it's hard to start.” He got out quickly and headed for the bar. He'd scarcely vanished through the front door, letting out a blast of jukebox music, when a man got out of a nearby car, walked swiftly to the Chevvy and got in, taking Seymor's place behind the wheel. Lycoming started to raise his voice in protest, then cut it off short. He had finally made his contact with the elusive Pringle. CHAPTER 22 They drove several blocks and were out on practically deserted road again, doing a steady forty miles an hour before Pringle spoke. Then his words surprised Lycoming

“Nurias Said has been murdered in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is in revolt. Syria has been swallowed and Jordan is in a death struggle.” “I not only see the papers,” Lycoming said dryly, “but I happen to have control of some very important interests in Lebanon, and Beirut, as well as other places.” “Exactly.” Pringle swung the car adroitly up a dark side road and stopped it. Headlights passed in back on the road they had just left. He waited half a minute, then backed out and headed in the opposite direction. “You're nervous,” Lycoming said. “Extra cautious, rather, comrade. I have reason to be and so should you. The events in the Near East might not have occurred as planned if an agent named Beshara Shebab had not been removed from the picture quickly. Do you follow me?” “Yes, I follow you.” “He was killed by an insane man, Aaron Turlock, and there was nothing about it to involve me in any way. I merely pointed out to Turlock, who was out of the institution spending a weekend at home, that this Shebab had been sent here to destroy. He reacted exactly as I had expected when I furnished him with a knife. I saw him safely home, following his car.” “Is there need for you to tell me this?” “I don't tell things where there isn't any need, comrade.” “What about Turlock's wife and child?” “They're out of the country. Kamilkoff, Russia's undersecretary, has legal authority to aid all redefectors. Opel Turlock and her child have been redefected—they sailed last Wednesday on the 'Azerbaijan.' That is not my point. My point is this. Turlock had in his possession information which I had to have, turned over to him by me on a visit to the hospital. It was necessary not only to get that information back but, at the same time, to get Turlock out of the way. The man was a homicidal maniac—not only dangerous to all those around him, but there was no telling what he would say. So, on orders from Kamilkoff, I removed him. Nevertheless, I feel that my usefulness here has been eroded. “You're leaving?” Lycoming tried to keep eagerness out of his voice. He stole a sidelong glance at the man beside him—short jacket and slacks, both of an inconspicuous tan. White shirt open at the collar and no tie. The regular features—the small tight mouth and the good chin. Stamped from a mold that had turned out millions like him. Picked and trained for that very reason—see him once or twenty times and you couldn't describe him. Anywhere he went or no matter with what class he mingled, he could fit himself in as comfortably as an old shoe. Yet he had an efficiency which was chilling, as Lycoming knew. His veins were full of ammonia, and he lacked any device that could be used for defrosting. Pringle would

consider reactions a weakness. He gave the impression of never having loved or laughed. It was doubtful he had ever known fear or exultation. He had been born a robot, but certainly not a moron. He was the true fanatic. His God was the State and he'd carried out its orders with religious fervor and no regrets, even if those orders were to destroy humanity, and cheat and lie and kill. “I'm being transferred,” Pringle said after a time, “but not right away. There're loose ends to be gathered together quickly, and a mission I have to fulfill. It's unfortunate that you've been so indiscreet and attracted the attention of the FBI.” “I seem to have attracted their attention all right, but I slipped them tonight, I'm sure, through the Hotel Commodore.” “It doesn't matter how, so long as you are certain when you met me you were clean.” “Well, I'm clean enough for the moment, but what about those bugs in my hotel rooms and office?” “I don't know that they're there, but just so long as you suspect they're there, you're safer. I do know that our contact today was discovered somehow. An agent sent out to Jackson Heights was spotted by a rear guard comrade—a woman and her ten-year-old boy whom we had watching the drug store.” Lycoming said, “I can tell you some others who aren't so clean. There was a bug in Dr. Rheinemann's apartment. I noticed two volumes of her medical encyclopedia, 19 and 20, were inverted. They ran 18, 20, 19. When I took them out to straighten them I saw the wire that led to a bug in the radiator.” “Really?” Pringle gave a deprecatory chuckle. “Did you tell her?” “No, I wanted to talk to you first.” “That was very foolish. I had that apartment bugged—not the FBI. I don't trust Dr. Rheinemann. She gives lip service, on your account and on account of her husband. Those encyclopedias were inverted purposely so that the wire behind them would be discovered. You seem to underrate not only our methods, comrade, but the cleverness of the FBI. That's very dangerous. We wanted that wire discovered because it's a false one, attached to a steampipe farther down in the wall—a red herring, so to speak. If you had told the doctor, or left the books so that she might discover them, she would have had the wire and the microphone removed, and thought perhaps that her apartment was clean. It's not our habit to put in bugs where they're quite so obvious. Neither, I presume, is it the habit of the FBI. The real bugs in Dr. Rheinemann's apartment are between the walls where they certainly won't meet the eye.” “I had no idea—” “Of course not,” Pringle said impatiently. “You have your field of operations and I have mine. Enough of that for now. They want you back in New York in the morning and we are limited for time. You have a part to play in the next two weeks' plans and it must be

carried out quickly.” “A part?” “A major part.” Pringle drove on for a block in silence, considering his statements. Again Lycoming felt conscious of the inhuman coldness which emanated from him, cutting through the heavy, humid night and, like a mechanical air conditioner, chilling the inside of the moving car. “Last night you met Maurice Morel. He came up to Dr. Rheinemann's apartment with Max, her ex-husband, while you were there.” “You seem to know everything.” “It's necessary for me to know everything if our plans are to go through. It's also necessary, without interruption, for you to make a mental note of exactly what I say. You can contact Morel at any time without suspicion, even though you're being checked by the FBI.” “Well, I should hope so,” Lycoming said. “He's made his living for twenty-five years exposing American Communists and running the party down.” “The very fact that you think that, and that the rest of the country believes it, helps to confirm my personal knowledge and belief that Morel is probably the most useful and clever American Communist alive today. Not only has he been a party member for nearly thirty years, but he is one of the five anonymous members of the National Committee. Does that surprise you, Lycoming?” “Surprise me? I'd be doubtful if it came from anyone but you.” “So much the better. That he's been able to walk the fence for this many years and dupe the imperialist press is just that much more tribute to his skill. Right now he's is the only man in the United States who can do what we want done. Now here are your instructions. I want them repeated back to me for you dare not write them down. “Tomorrow afternoon Morel will finish the last of five auricles he is doing on rest homes and turn them in. You will call him at the Globe-Star office at half past two and ask him to have dinner with you at seven tomorrow night at Cotti's, an Italian restaurant on Thompson Street. You will take with you two thousand dollars in cash and give it to him at dinner.” “That's a lot of money.” “Morel has a lot of traveling to do—six different cities, including one in California, and he has only seven days to do it in, and nobody must know where he's going or why, except we two.” “What's he going to tell the paper?” “You can leave that strictly up to him. This is an undercover operation and he's made

these trips before, he'll catch a train tomorrow night for Washington. There on Friday morning at ten o'clock he will walk into a book store on northwest 9th Street and ask for a copy of Joyce's Ulysses. The answer will be: 'I'm sorry, we don't have it but we have a lot of first editions. Why don't you look around.' Morel will say: 'I think I will, if you don't mind.' He will walk; to the back of the store and wait until the man comes back with a copy of The Enemy Camp and asks: 'Have you read this? It's very good.' He will buy the book and find further instructions in there taped on page 123. Now repeat that, please.” Lycoming repeated it verbatim. “Now there's one thing more. Morel will return with six vital pieces of information coded on paper in various forms. He will put them all together in that copy of The Enemy Camp and take them over immediately, and that should be next Friday week, to a second-hand book store at 9th Street and 4th Avenue. He will sell the book to Comrade Erick Sorenson, whom he knows. Sorenson will have the information properly processed and will pass it on to me to make contact with Kamilkoff. Now repeat that, please.” Lycoming did so. “Now I have a couple of questions. This Morel doesn't sound like a man to be dictated to. Suppose he balks—says he doesn't want to get mixed up in espionage, and refuses to go?” “You will remind him of 'New Lines' magazine and Robert Skeene,” Pringle said threateningly. “If that fails to move him, you will remind him that the Party has in its files proof of five separate contacts he made during the past ten years, and top secret information he obtained under the guise of getting news stories. It was passed on by him to Colonel Alexandrovitch Golikov. There is other information in the Party's files that might prove just as interesting if it were leaked to the enemy.” “I guess he'll go,” Lycoming said. “I know he'll go,” Pringle said. “It won't be the first time Maury Morel has played the spy.” CHAPTER 23 Maury left Cotti's restaurant on Thompson Street at a quarter past eight on Thursday evening. He had two thousand dollars in an envelope in his inside jacket pocket and a ticket for Washington, with a reservation for a drawing room, on the sleeper that would leave New York at twelve-ten. They were very thorough. Lycoming hadn't overlooked anything. The train would get him into Washington at five in the morning, but he would stay on board until seven and wouldn't need to check into a hotel. The night, for July, was pleasantly cool, but inside Maury was boiling. He walked up to Washington Square, crossed it under the arch to 5th Avenue, envying happy couples and bums who dotted the benches.

Well, maybe they had troubles but at least their lives were comparatively free from deceptions, and they had some lives they could call their own, even if they were headed for jail. Maury felt he had none. Merely a pocket full of money and tickets, and an empty head with a brain so tangled it refused to produce on order the slightest semblance of any plausible explanation for his imminent absence. He walked up to 8th Street and turned west, passing all the familiar places he knew: T.T.'s tobacconist, the Village Barn, the movie theatre. Sheer depression. That was the party. No warning. Leave your home, quit your wife, lose your job, get lost, drop dead, implicitly, of we'll do them for you. God, he couldn't even become a defector and go spill his guts to the FBI—it wasn't only later that he thought, it was far too late for anything. He crossed the street and went into the drugstore at the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue, feeling as though the phone booth was the electric chair, and he'd just walked the last mile. He was sweating, and the money had bulked larger by the time he got Hal Gow on the phone. “Hal—Maury. What about the rest home series? Were they okay?” “Fine, Maury, with a little trimming. We start them Monday. But how come you left out the Amity Rest Home-that killing out there has gotten a big play.” “That's why I left it out, Hal. There're political implications, too. Rheinemann may prove a bigger story than her Rest Home. She has connections that I'm digging into. How about shelving it for the moment?” “What's the angle?” “Hot money.” “God, Maury, you've been on that thing long enough now.” “Well, put somebody else on it.” “Oh, don't start acting up, Maury. What's eating you?” Maury hesitated. “I'm not acting up, Hal, I'm cracking up. Look—I've got to get away.” “Well, I'll see if I can't arrange it,” Hal said doubtfully. “You've been out of the office an awful lot, Maury, but I'll try to fast-talk Lindeman and Dupree. Ten days in September. Okay?” “No, it's not okay. I'm leaving tonight.” “Tonight, Maury—you're crazy. We need every man we've got—particularly you. There's summit talks—Aid to Amman —coming up—someone's apt to push the button any day. Now you say you're going away.” “Tonight, Hal.” “For how long?”

“A week. Maybe two.” “Where?” “I'm not telling. I don't want to be bombarded with telegrams and phone calls. I'm not feeling well.” There was a long silence while Maury fidgeted and finally asked: “Are you still there?” “Yes, I'm still here, but I'm wondering if you're still gonna be on the payroll when you get back, Maury, if you dash off this way. You've gotten away with an awful lot—we talked about some of it Sunday. You know how the old man and Lindeman and Dupree feel about these mysterious take-offs of yours—” “What's mysterious about them? I'm getting older and I've given half my life, day and night, to the damned paper. What's mysterious about my wanting to get away?” “You were doing it when you were younger, Maury, from what I can hear. The double zero will come up some day. I think you'd better skip it.” “You can tell them anything you want to, Hal. I'm leaving tonight.” “No length of time you'll be gone and nowhere we can reach you?” “That's it, Hal. Do what you can.” “I'm afraid that's going to be nothing.” Hal's voice was desperate. “I've done everything I could already, Maury, but this looks like curtains.” “Then you can tell the old man and Ray and Ev, my trusting bosses, thanks for a lovely twenty-five years. I've found my association with them both elevating and stimulating. You might add that there're lots of things you can do with a newspaper besides reading it —but don't deliver my message until you all get together and finally decide to ring the curtain down. Goodby Hal.” Maury went out and the heat struck him full as he left the air-conditioned drugstore. He walked through Christopher to 7th Avenue, then down to Barrow. Walking through the narrow confines of Barrow Street he let his hand trail over the top of half a dozen ash cans, partially blocking the sidewalk. They fitted in with his mood. They were symbols of what he had tried to do, or maybe it was their contents that was emblematical. He'd mixed with bad apples for too many years, until he'd rotted like all the rest of them. He'd served himself a plateful that was too much for any one man to eat—bitten off more than one man could chew. So he'd take his trip and end up in the garbage can and then he was through. Anne was sitting in the big chair with her feet up on a stool. She had on a white print dress that made her look extraordinarily young. She was working on a highball and Maury judged that she'd had a few. A half-finished dish of salad was still on the table. Anne made no move to rise or greet him. She merely glanced accusingly at the electric-

clock that read twenty to nine and said: “Hello, lover boy—I certainly enjoyed our dinner at Luigi's.” “I forgot it, Anne, honest injun—something came up.” He went in the kitchen and mixed himself a stiff one and then came back in the living room and sat on the divan. Everything about her had warned him to keep his distance. He couldn't blame her for being furious. “So something came up. Was its name by any chance Marian Rheinemann?” “No, it wasn't.” Maury swallowed half his drink and was suddenly furious, too—but not at Anne. There was only one source that could have mentioned Dr. Rheinemann to her, and that was Sorenson. Party orders, no doubt. Use jealousy as a camouflage—make her think he was chasing around with another woman—make her think anything except what was true. “I suppose you ate alone, poor boy.” She was watching him over the edge of her glass. “No, I didn't eat alone. I ate with Ray Lindeman, upstairs in the old man's dining-room.” He had to keep Lycoming out of this. He plunged on wildly. “I happen to have a job, Anne, and we're damn near in the middle of a war. Hal Gow gave me an assignment.” “He usually does,” Anne said. “I suppose they've made you foreign correspondent in Beirut.” “It might as well have been,” Maury told her morosely. “That's why I talked it over with Lindeman. It means my being away for a week—maybe ten days. You can believe me or not—it's something I didn't want to do.” “Oh, you marvelous hard-working man.” Anne's laugh was as false as a Halloween mask. “How I've watched you suffer for eighteen years, disappearing out of my life and leaving me here to sit on my rumpus while you did all those horrible things you didn't want to do.” “Anne, I've never looked at another woman.” “No, you just let their big cow eyes feast on you.” Maury stood up suddenly. “Now listen, Anne, I'm not going to fight with you. I don't know what sort of lies and poison that skunk, Erick Sorenson, has been feeding you. He's the only one who could know anything about Dr. Marian Rheinemann. She's nothing more than another character in a story I'm trying very hard to break.” “You're breaking my heart.” “There's no use getting sarcastic. It's getting more obvious every day that you'll take anybody's word against mine— even a jerk like Sorenson. Now I have to catch a midnight train for Washington. I already have my reservations and I've got my packing to do. You can come up to the station with me if you want to and see that I leave alone.”

I wouldn't want to embarrass you.” Anne finished her drink and stood up. She came closer to him and put her hands on his shoulders, not to draw him near but to hold him away while she studied him. “Eighteen years,” she said, “and this is as close as I've ever gotten to you—arms' length —Maury, Maury, why can't we live like other people?” “Anne, we live exactly like other people. They have their trials and troubles, too.” “Yes, I guess they do.” She let her hands fall helplessly. “Where are you going after Washington?” “I can't tell you,” Maury said truthfully enough. “I'm checking into the Syndicate office there for further instructions.” “Maybe you can tell me what you're supposed to do.” “I don't know that either. It depends on how things break in the Mid-East, Anne. Hal's given me an assignment to cover half a dozen or more of our principal defense installations and tie them up into a bundle in a story on exactly how we stand.” “I'd find that very interesting,” Anne said, “to know exactly how we stand—the world, the country, me and you. Get your shaving things out of the bathroom. I'll go start your packing.” She turned and walked into the bedroom. Maury went in the bath and immediately remembered that he was on his last blade, and only that morning he'd noticed that his pressure can of instant lather was nearly empty. He'd never become inured to an electric razor. It was only a block up Hudson street to the drugstore where he could get a new supply of blades and shaving cream. Anne already had his suitcase open on the bed. He told her where he was going, and was back in ten minutes. He stopped in surprise at the bedroom door. Anne had two suitcases of her own open on the bed, and was methodically packing her own belongings. “Anne, as much as I'd love to, I can't take you with me.” She straightened up, white-faced and hard-eyed. “I didn't ask you to, Maury. I'm going back to California. I'm stopping off at Reno en route, to get a divorce. As you've pounded into me so many times, there's no use fighting. I've taken all I can possibly stand, and you've lied to me for the very last time. Now you go your way and I'll go mine. I just telephoned Hal Gow.”

CHAPTER 24 Washington was a bake oven. Maury came out of the bookstore onto 9th Street, N.W. carrying the volume of The Enemy Camp tucked under his arm. He stepped into a pool of visible heat waves that scorched his legs and ankles. He

walked down slowly toward Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped at the corner to wait for a light. Glancing, inadvertently, across the broad street, he began to wonder. Were the Soviets fearless or reckless? Were they smart or careless? That was hard to answer. Right across the street, towering above him, granite and impregnable, stood the building that housed the controls of the nation's security. Was it some sort of deliberate insult to America's intelligence that the communists had picked a site for their underground drop in the shadow of the headquarters of the FBI? Maury hailed a cab and drove back to the Union Station where he had checked his bag. On the way he opened the book to page 123. The instructions were lucid and short: “There are reservations for Cyrus Adam at the airport office of American Airlines, on the 2:22 flight for Knoxville, Tenn. Please pick them up as close to noon as possible.” So his contact name was “Adam.” They didn't give you time to think. Perhaps that was right. The really smart thing to do. So he didn't want to think. The hell with Old Man Jeffers and Lindeman and Hal Gow! Maury still had a few thousand in war bonds salted away. It was Anne's white face and accusing eyes that would haunt him for years, if he took time to think. He loved her. You couldn't run eighteen years of marriage on the rocks, watch it sink, and forget it in a lifetime, let alone in a day. He tore out the single small sheet of paper stuck in the book with a tiny strip of Scotch Tape, shredded it and let the pieces flutter out of the window. At the station he, retrieved his bag, then caught another taxi and drove to the International Airport in Virginia. He was standing in line in front of the American Airlines counter at five minutes to twelve. When he got to the clerk, Maury said: “I want to pick up the reservations for Mr. Cyrus Adam on the two-twenty-two flight to Knoxville, Tennessee.” The clerk consulted a sheet and did some phoning, then started to fill out a ticket book. “How much is that?” “Thirty-three ninety-four, including tax, one way.” Maury reached in his pants pocket and took out some bills to pay. In back of him, a gray-haired woman exquisitely dressed bent over and straightened up again. “I think you dropped this Mr. Adam.” She handed Maury a two-dollar bill and smiled. Maury took the bill (He had not seen one for a long time.) and said, “Thank you ever so much. Have we met before? I couldn't help wondering how you knew my name.” “Oh, I happened to overhear it when you asked for your ticket.”

“Well, thanks again.” He waited until the woman took his place and made some trivial inquiry about an incoming plane. He had two hours to kill. He found a porter to put his bag in the checkroom, then went upstairs to the restaurant to get some lunch. He wasn't hungry, but he ordered a sandwich and a bottle of beer. He put the two-dollar bill in a separate compartment in his wallet. Invisible ink? Intricate dottings in the design? Minute writing that would reveal itself, or that could be photographed under some special kind of light? He didn't know. He did know that when properly processed that innocent two dollars would reveal topsecret details of some rocket, missile, ship, or jet plane. They'd put out two thousand bucks for what he was about to collect! Still, they weren't cheap. They just knew all the answers: that you started in trying to alleviate human suffering, and by the time you'd found out you were on the wrong train, you were doing exactly what you were told to do because they'd milked out every corpuscle of your brain. At 2:22 he took off for Knoxville, but he couldn't read and he couldn't sleep. Pictures of Anne kept rushing in to fill the vacuum in his skull. Brother, they sure did rob you of your brain! Knoxville, 3:40. Twice as hot as Washington. The loudspeaker blaring: “Will passenger C. Adam please come to the reservation desk.” It took three calls before Maury snapped himself alive enough to recognize his contact name. “Mr. Cyrus Adam?” “That's right.” “We have your reservation to Los Angeles on Capital night flight, leaving here tonight at eleven. There'll be some changes en route. You arrive in Los Angeles, tomorrow, Saturday, at eleven-thirty-five, Pacific daylight saving time. Your friend, Mr. Yates, asked us to tell you that he would meet you in the lobby of the President Johnson Hotel. Since you're leaving tonight, perhaps you would rather check your luggage here.” “I'll check it here, and I might as well pick up my tickets now. An interminable drive through the Tennessee heat with The Enemy Camp clutched under his arm. Yates, who looked like a banker on a holiday in his cool palm-beach suit, rushing up in the lobby at the sight of the book. He gave a delighted sigh: “Cy Adam!” He pumped Maury's arm. “We've got to hurry if we make it on time!”

An Olds convertible with the top down, picked up in the parking lot in back of the hotel. A drive through rolling farm lands of beautiful green to Sevierville. A law office on the second floor of a wooden walk-up building that smelled pre-Civil War, where Maury was given a small calendar of a local lumber company with the months torn off up to July. He added it in his wallet to the two-dollar bill. Yates was replaced by a man named Bates, whose name didn't appear on the law office door. Bates, who might have been a lawyer from Sevierville, Tennessee, and probably wasn't, drove Maury off in a '57 Ford sedan. More mountain roads by a rushing stream. The Great Smoky mountains beckoning in the distance crowned with their usual haze. Dinner with Bates, on Tennessee ham, which Maury found too salty, at a tourist inn. Bates could talk at length on anything, but when he finished you had accumulated a lot of nothing about local scenery and the TV A. More mountain roads. A night ride back to the airport by a different route. At eleven, Maury enplaned, per schedule, for the West. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. Always rushing. Always twisting and turning and going seemingly endless and useless miles out of his way. Tuesday: Miami, after a day long flight from Los Angeles. Heat. Sun. A business card. A page from a notebook with some meaningless address on it. A folder of matches from a Miami Beach hotel. All being added in Maury's wallet to the two-dollar bill. Jacksonville. Atlanta. Cyrus Adam had collected two more mementos: A receipt from a dry cleaning establishment in Atlantic Beach, and a blank registration card from an Atlanta hotel, where Cyrus Adam hadn't been. Keep them busy and on the run! Keep them confused! Not a moment to pause. Suppose somebody should sit down quietly and start to use his brain? Every reservation made. Every move and contact planned out ahead. Every foot of the roadway paved—the roadway to destruction. Final destination—some flaming mental hell! He was back in New York on Friday morning, groggy on his feet after covering six thousand miles in as many days. At ten o'clock, with just one fixed idea—to be rid of that book, The Enemy Camp, and

the motley collection in it, transferred from his wallet, he walked into the bookstore on Fourth Avenue. The volume had become a part of his life, hung around his neck like an albatross. Every nerve in him was screaming to be rid of it even though it meant a meeting with the odious Sorenson. There was no other way. Maury's tired eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom of the store, small relief from the sun that was battering Fourth Avenue. The place had an odor of damp musty leather, but Maury welcomed its shadows after the week of unrelenting heat he'd been subjected to. He finally spotted an old man with cavernous cheeks and yellowish white hair that was unkempt and tangled, bent over a book at a desk in the corner. Otherwise the store was vacant. Maury walked over and stood by the desk, but the old man neither looked up nor moved. “I have a book that Erick Sorenson wanted to buy.” “He'll be up in a minute.” The old man's voice was a croak. “Wait.” His hooked nose that almost touched his chin moved closer to the printed page. Maury looked around. There was a narrow staircase at the side of the store. Without saying anything more, Maury took the stairs and went down. The basement was in still greater gloom. Three inadequate forty-watt bulbs, thick with dust, hung unshaded from the ceiling. Two long tables were stacked with old books in disarray. More book filled shelves, from ceiling to floor, that lined the four walls of the room. There was no sign of Sorenson, or anyone. Maury tried to spot a door that might lead to a toilet, but the four solid walls of volumes were unbroken, staring back at him mutely. He was about to go upstairs again when dizziness overcame him. At least he thought it was dizziness, or perhaps some type of hallucination, the aftermath of too little sleep and too much travel. Whatever it was, he had a sensation of falling. He supported himself with a hand on one of the tables and stared, hypnotized, at the back of the room. There was no mistake. Bookshelves and all the back wall were slowly beginning to turn. When a crack at one end had widened to about three feet, Erick Sorenson slipped through with his back to Maury. Erick leaned on the books and the aperture closed. He turned around slowly, and for the first time became conscious of Maury. Before Maury had a chance to move or speak, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a Beretta automatic aimed unwaveringly at his middle. “For Christ's sake, Erick,” Maury said unsteadily, “I came down here to sell you a book.

On orders. Now quit playing cowboy and put up the gun.” Sorenson slowly and rather reluctantly lowered the pistol. “You had no orders to come down here, Morel. You were to contact me on the main floor.” “So you weren't on the main floor, and 'Eagle Beak' said you were down here. I wasn't going to hang around up there. I came down looking for you.” The book racks began to move again, opening cautiously. Without taking his eyes from Maury, Sorenson said, “Stay where you are until I call—and close up again!” Books and wall moved quickly back into place. Maury grinned. “What have you got in back of the books —a playroom? I'm sorry if I caught you boys with your panties down.” Sorenson's mouth twisted with anger. “Maybe you'll learn some day, Morel, that we're not playing games. You'll probably be dead by the time you do.” The anger spread from Erick Sorenson's mouth to distort his entire face. An expression of cold-blooded murder if Maury had ever seen one.

CHAPTER 25 S.A.C. Ed Waters was mulling over a stack of reports in his office at ten o'clock on the Friday night that Maury got back from his hectic trip. Special Agent Monty Wells looked in: “You left word that you wanted to talk to me, Ed.” Waters looked at him with blue eyes that were tired. “Yes, I do, Monty. Come in.” Wells took a chair and threw one long leg over the arm. For a minute there was only the air-conditioner's gentle hum. “I've been going over these reports on the Pringle spy case.” “Oh?” Monty lit a cigarette and said, “What's the beef?” Waters gave that a little thought. “Outside of Henry Lycoming making six of our best men look like a bunch of ninnies, last Wednesday week, and the fact that we still don't know who or what this Pringle is, I can't think of one.” Wells reached out, got an ashtray from the desk and put it on his knee. “You look like you're pooped, Ed, and your voice lacks the old Waters' lilt of gayety. You know, just as well as I do, that every now and then some fish will slip through the tightest mesh—and that we always manage to get them in the end.” Waters grunted. “But not the same day. We'd have had that Pringle pegged down tight,

I'm certain, Monty, if Lycoming hadn't made a getaway.” “I thought you had it all figured who Pringle is.” “Well, you're off the beam. I told you that, assuming he's a man, I had a hunch who he was.” “A reliable hunch?” “Some dope that came in from the C.I.A. There was another NKVD Officer, Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff, who vanished off the Soviet scene about the same time as Golikov. This Ilyanoff had the edge on Golikov in one thing—he was born here in America. A Russian father and an English mother. His mother died and the kid went back to Russia with his father when he was thirteen. That was about 1928. Does that make sense?” “I'll buy it. So, if Colonel Ilyanoff is our man, and is using Pringle as a contact name— Pringle is forty-three. With additional training in Moscow, he probably speaks better English than I do, and knows New York like a book. I'll bet he can even find his train in the mazes of the Canal Street Station.” “I think he lives there,” Waters said. “Can you come up with an idea?” “What's the chance of tricking something out of Golikov? Planting one of our Russian speaking men with him in the Federal penitentiary?” Ed Waters snorted. “That old buzzard wouldn't give his Russian-speaking grandmother the time of day—even if he thought he could get his thirty year sentence cut in half. There's no time, anyhow, Monty.” Waters turned back to his papers. “Let me tell you what we have. Len Ducro finally ran down Igor Sandor's wife and kid, Nikki. The house they occupied at Garden City, where they lived under the name of Aaron Turlock, has been deeded over to the Russian Embassy and is up for sale. With the friendly aid of Kamilkoff, one of our most obnoxious Soviet Under Secretaries, Opel Turlock and Nikki sailed for parts unknown last week on the S.S. 'Azerbaijan.' “Octavus Ball traced down her car and his feet are still sore. Anyhow, we got blood stains from it. They're not Turlock's blood, but they may be from Beshara Shebab. Also the police lifted some prints from the Beirut Cafe that prove without a doubt that Turlock was there the night that Shebab was knifed. He sat at a table close to Shebab and Maury Morel. In addition, there were a couple of smudge prints on the knife— enough, according to the police, to hang Shebab's murder directly on Aaron Turlock.” “He wore no gloves, then?” “Monty, Turlock was a paranoiac. He had no idea what he was doing. He'd have killed anyone if he was put up to it He's dead anyhow. We want the man who put him up to it. The man who killed him.” “Ilyanoff—Pringle?”

“He'll do.” Waters shoved half-a-dozen typed report sheets across the desk to Wells. “Now look at these.” Monty read them through slowly, his forehead wrinkling deeper as he went along. He went through them all a second time, and gave a long low whistle. “Washington. Knoxville. San Diego. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Miami, Jacksonville, and Atlanta,” he said half aloud. He looked up at the S.A.C, his face pale and sallow. “Good lord, Ed, they're pulling out our eyeteeth in a single week. What's their rush? Is somebody getting ready to kick the ball?” “That's it exactly,” Waters said grimly. “If that bunch of information about our defenses ever gets into Kamilkoff's hands, or gets short-waved out of this country—well—” He shrugged. “It just can't happen, that's all!” “What's to stop it, Ed?” “We know where the short-wave is, and have a monitor on it—and a jammer, too. Their processing is being done in the same place—in the basement of that bookstore on Fourth Avenue.” “Are you going to hit it now?” Waters shook his head. “Not until we're ready. It looks like Pringle is getting ready to take a powder. Maybe he's already picked a successor. All this info is being processed into films to be tucked into nickels, cuff links, pencils and what have you, by a Communist Party technician, Erick Sorenson.” “What then?” “He'll turn it over to Pringle, and Pringle will shove it into the horse's mouth—slip it to Kamilkoff. I'm giving them five days to process this stuff.” “Five days?” “Until next Wednesday night.” “I know you're not taking chances like that, Ed, without some definite information.” “There's a summit meeting of Commie brass taking place next Wednesday night at a house in Larchmont. Pringle's sure to be there, and the man who is to take his place, along with five or six others that I badly want to see out of circulation. Sorenson will bring all that processed info to pass on to Pringle, or his successor.” “All in one bunch. I don't get it. They've always spread anything they collected out over a long time. Taken every care.” “Monty, I tell you they haven't got time to take days and weeks of trailing around with thumbtack signals and covered-up telephone calls. We're going to hit that house next Wednesday night. In addition we're making a simultaneous raid from coast to coast to round up a list of twenty-one comrades in this spy ring.”

“You've got them all?” “Names, addresses, duties, and the information obtained from the plants they work in— every one except Pringle. That includes a fellow named Whit Seymor, in whose house the meeting will be held. Also Bruno Vogl, Seymor's boss at Crescent Valves, Inc., right here in town.” Ed Waters leaned across his desk, the weariness wiped from his face. “I not only want Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff to put in the coop along with Golikov, I want to see Kamilkoff bounced out of this country.” “And suppose by any long chance this Erick Sorenson slips through our fingers and takes all this info with him?” “There will be a lot of new faces around the New York Office of the FBI,” Waters said. “I have a round the clock stake-out of twenty men on Sorenson. Monty, this time we're going to get them all.” “You appear to have collected quite a lot of information yourself, Ed, and in a very short time.” Ed Waters grinned. “I didn't get it. It was accumulated due to the efficiency of the agents in the cities you just read on that list. For a week they've been passing on Maury Morel from one to another—and they've nailed down every contact he's made and followed them all through. No fish slipped through their nets as a big fish named Henry Lycoming did here.” Monty Wells stood up and stretched. “It's lucky for us that no Russian was ever born with a one-track mind like yours, Ed. But it's lucky for the Bureau that you have it. As I recall it, you made the statement about a week ago that sooner or later Maury Morel would lead us to Pringle— and when we got Pringle, we'd have them all.” Monty paused at the door. “You saw my report on Abul Khaled, didn't you?” Waters nodded. “I wasn't interested. Khaled is just robbing drunken sailors and shanghaiing a few. That's police business. We have enough headaches without messing around with some Syrian punk who's only running a deadfall.” 2 Whit Seymor and Maggie, his wife, lived in a modest two-story house on a tree-shaded street in Larchmont. They had lived there nearly fourteen years, and the neighbors considered them friendly, although somewhat standoffish. They had no children and both of them worked. Whit had studied engineering and was a skilled mechanic. He had had steady employment, so far as the neighbors knew, with several commercial airlines—work which entailed a lot of overtime. Recently, Whit had been employed by Crescent Valves, Inc., on long Island, and the Seymors had mentioned casually that if the job worked out, they might consider selling their home. The drive from Larchmont to the plant on Long Island and back every day was wearing Whit down.

Maggie was a top secretary, with a knowledge of bookkeeping, and had worked for a long time for a brokerage house in New York City—Metzger, Montross and Stoane. Maggie commuted back and forth every day, and also put in a lot of overtime. It seemed quite in order to the neighbors that the Seymors were both generally late in getting home. They wanted to be friendly and take a part in things but they just never had the time. Nearly every week end, when the Seymors had a chance, they took off in Whit's green Chewy on a fishing trip, or to visit some relatives in Hartford, Connecticut. On Wednesday night, July 23rd, Maggie wasn't at the house, but Whit was home. A friend, who had seen his car drive in, called up and asked if Whit wanted to sit in a poker game. Whit begged off, saying he was bushed and was going to watch a show on TV and hit the hay. At nine o'clock, with the Venetian blinds lowered, one electric bulb burning in a corner, and the room air-conditioner working, Whit sat down alone in the living room and tuned in a mystery play on NBC. At ten past nine the front doorbell buzzed—two longs and two shorts. Whit left his comfortable chair, slightly lowered the volume on the TV, and went to answer the door. The comrades were coming! For the next hour and a half they would start drifting in, ten to fifteen minutes apart and one at a time. By train, by bus, and by automobile. Twisting and turning. Backing and filling. But always reaching the house on foot, with their cars parked several blocks away. Anything and everything to avoid being followed and to keep themselves clean. The first to arrive was Maury Morel. This was his meeting, called on his authority. As a member of the sacrosanct National Committee, his word was law. He'd lost his wife, and most likely his job with the Globe-Star. He hadn't even been in touch with the office since he returned to New York. But he'd lost them with just one purpose in view, to hold his authority and maintain his place with the Communist National Committee. Lycoming and Pringle were made in Moscow, Comintern representatives. They'd find out tonight, as would Pringle's successor, that they couldn't dictate to a member of the National Committee—certainly not while they were operating on the American scene. The hell with what their authority might have been when they were in the USSR at home! Maury went into the living room and left Whit Seymor standing at the door to await the next arrival. His attention was caught by the TV show because it concerned the murder of a star reporter.

Among the suspects were the reporter's wife and a photographer. It didn't sit well with Maury. Unless he was wrong, Sorenson was a photographer, with a darkroom in the basement of the bookstore on Fourth Avenue. The memory of the look on Sorenson's face, and the unwavering muzzle of that Beretta automatic were still too vivid for comfort. “Maybe you'll learn some day, Morel, that we're not playing games. You'll probably be dead by the time you do!” Sorenson might be a punk, but he wasn't any punk with a pistol. Maury could tell. The dirty little gunsel would have dropped him in his tracks if he'd batted an eye. Maury went over and fiddled with the TV until he'd tuned in a baseball game. By half-past ten all the comrades were there, ranged into a semicircle around Maury, who had moved a chair into the shadow of a corner. He sat facing them like a teacher, to make the seniority of his service and the superiority of his position perfectly clear. He counted noses. Lycoming, dressed with a banker's perfection in an imported suit of Italian silk. Sorenson, who had acquired a certain repulsive dignity tonight that Maury had never noticed before. His clothes were better than those he usually wore. His hair was trimmed. He looked as if he might even have had a bath. Bruno Vogl, tall, with the impassive face of an Indian and straight black hair. Whit Seymor, their host, powerful and capable looking, with a flat-top cut. Maury's guess was that Seymor had greater depths than appeared on the surface, and might be chosen to replace the departing Comintern representative—who had become too hot to handle. In the end chair on the right was the dapper ferret-faced Max Rheinemann with the shifty eyes, clad as always in his charcoal flannel suit. In a conversational tone, just loud enough to be heard above the TV, Maury said: “Comrades, I called this meeting tonight by virtue of my position with the National Committee. I spent all of last week completing an exacting mission—collecting information for a Russian representative who has been working in this country for some years now.” His sleepy eyes opened wide and he glanced around the semicircle, weighing and judging. “I gave orders that he was to be here tonight—orders that were to be passed on by the one person whom I believe to know this man—comrade Lycoming, since the Russian representative has insisted on working lonehanded without seeing fit to contact me. I know him only as Pringle, and that is by hearsay. Did you tell him, comrade Lycoming?” The TV emitted the sound of cheers as a player stole second. Lycoming nodded. “He got your orders, comrade.” “Then why isn't he here?”

“I can tell you why,” Sorenson said. “He has deliberately avoided contacting you, Morel. Pringle is the contact name of Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff, an officer of the NKVD. For some time he has been suspicious of you. Consequently, he has refused to recognize your authority.” “That's most unfortunate.” Maury lowered his tone so they were forced to lean forward to hear. “I wanted to warn him.” “Warn him of what?” Bruno Vogl asked. “The comrade Colonel has let himself get careless. So careless that the FBI is tracking him down relentlessly. I understand that he is about to leave this country—but he won't get out, without the help of every comrade in the American Communist Party. By failing to come here tonight, he has placed us all in jeopardy.” “That's a lie,” Sorenson said. He jumped to his feet, and so did Maury. Sorenson's mouth was working strangely. “I take my orders from the Comintern. I am Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff. I'll leave this country when I choose—without your help, or the help of any stupid American Party. If I'm under any suspicion, I know who informed on me.” Somewhere in the back of the house a window crashed, and there was a noise of breaking glass from the locked front door. “I was afraid of this,” Erick Sorenson said. “But before I go, Comrade Maury the Fink, I'm purging the party of its most dangerous informer!” The Beretta snaked out of Sorenson's pocket, but the bullet intended for Maury Morel went into the floor. Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff may have been well trained in the Russian technique, but Maury had been trained to shoot in a tougher and faster school. With his left leg forward, in a shortstop's crouch, he had snapped out a .38 revolver and squeezed off five shots into Colonel Ilyanoff's middle without sighting or aiming. Ed Waters' annoying insistence that Maury subject himself to endless years of that rigorous training had finally paid off. Waters had been telling him for fifteen years that everybody's luck ran out some day—particularly the luck of a man who had pushed it hard enough to spend nearly thirty years as a double-agent of the FBI. 3 “So that's another one cleared up,” Ed Waters said wearily. “But one thing we can always count on—there'll be more.” “More spies like Pringle?” Maury looked around the S.A.C.'s office where Waters and five special agents were still discussing details at half-past-one. “What's the answer, Ed?” “Same answer. Look's like it always will be as the world is set-up today—eternal vigilance. Russia has plenty of men, plenty of money, plenty of time, and very few

scruples. We close one chink and immediately they start prying open another—like this financial penetration of our industries.” “Well, that's closed up, too, isn't it—with Lycoming in the bag?” Waters shrugged. “It's closed up with the plants we know about, Maury: Crescent Valves and the plants you fingered on your grand tour of the west and south. It's up to Congress, now. “To do what?” “Pass more laws, maybe. Perhaps deprive stockholders of voting powers unless proper disclosures of ownership are made. But, that's tricky—the old familiar two edged sword —and Russia knows it. It might result in a refusal of a large number of foreign investors to vote their stock because of a desire to avoid full disclosure. That might very well give them a negative control and hamper some of our best defense facilities.” “You mean some top plant fallen under foreign control might not be able to get approval from its stockholders to accept defense contracts—say for manufacturing missiles?” “That's it exactly,” Waters told him. “And Congress, of course, has no control over what banks do anywhere outside of this country. All of which brings us right back to tightening up our internal security with what laws we have on the books right now.” Ed Waters leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his neck. “There are a few things in this picture, Maury, that aren't too clear. How did you ever get put in that job of courier—collecting all that information in a lump? Normally, the Party would have had ten different comrades, all unknown to one another, collecting that dope and bringing it to Sorenson one at a time.” “You just don't recognize genius, Ed.” Maury gave his slow grin. “You have to keep in mind that you're talking to one of the five anonymous members of the American Communist National Committee—and one who gave lots of orders in the Party, but seldom took orders from anyone else. “Sorenson-Pringle, claiming to be a Commie defector, had been sucking around me for some time when I got him the job on the Globe-Star. Neither of us knew then exactly where the other stood—that's for sure—but I did know that he was still in good standing with the Party. I discussed it with Hal Gow, and we agreed that Sorenson might feed me with some good leads from lower party levels. “He did feed me some, but they were all tests on his part—trying to find out exactly where I stood, a question that has caused even me to lose a lot of sleep as time went by. I'll have to hand him one thing—he was far more clever and cautious than most of my phrenetic comrades in the Communist Party.” Maury paused and looked around. “What the hell am I telling you this for, Ed? You know all of it, already.” “We asked for it,” Waters said. “Let's just call it a psychiatric purge so that Morel can sleep. Go ahead.”

“Okay,” Maury continued. “Colonel Ilyanoff-Sorenson found it difficult to swallow the hammering I'd given his beloved Kremlin in the Globe-Star. Or maybe he was sore over being bounced and losing his nice soft front. I don't know. Comrade, or not, he decided to make trouble for me. He went to Hal Gow with the news that I'd done some articles for the New Lines. You remember them, Ed.” Waters nodded. “Hal Gow covered for me,” Maury went on, “but it weakened my position with the paper. At the same time, it strengthened me with Sorenson and the Communist Party brass. Apparently I had more standing with the G-S than they figured. Anyhow, while I wasn't wise to Sorenson as being the big wheel, Pringle, I began to think the Party was fining me up for some big deal.” Maury stopped to light a cigarette. “They were!” He grinned through the smoke. “You fellows were getting uncomfortably hot on Lycoming and on Pringle's tail. They began to get the jitters.” “And just how did Lycoming and Pringle find out we were so hot on their respective tails?” Waters asked suspiciously. “I told them.” Maury blew a smoke ring and watched it dissipate. “Inside information from the infallible Morel. I started by breaking the news to Dr. Rheinemann, her exhubby, and Lycoming, that you'd had a man planted in Amity Rest Home.” “And who let that leak?” Ed Waters face was a study. “Nobody. You're getting touchy, Ed. After all, I'm the one who tipped you off to Turlock being in Amity Rest. It was a fair bet you'd put a man in there, but it made no difference if you had or hadn't. The very fact that Max Rheinemann and Lycoming thought you had was enough to get them panicky—just as I figured. “Then I began to follow up at Commie headquarters: 'We must move fast boys! Get the information from Lycoming's controlled plants quick as we can. Round it all up with one trusted courier. Turn it over in a single package to Pringle, who will pass it on to Kamilkoff.'” Maury gave a quiet chuckle. “The natural question was: 'Whom can we trust, comrade Morel?' I gave them the natural answer, Ed. 'I'll do it myself, comrades! The only person Committee Member Morel trusts for such a task is Comrade Morel!' Now, will you admit that I'm a genius?” Maury disposed of his cigarette and leaned back smugly. “Are you telling me that you ordered yourself on this trip through Communist headquarters?” “I arranged every detail of it, Ed. Also, I stampeded Pringle and Lycoming into thinking it was vitally necessary. It worked, didn't it?” “Yes, after your fashion,” Waters admitted reluctantly. “But you're alive only because of

the training with a six-gun that I forced you to take.” “I'm sorry I had to kill him.” Maury's dark eyes were grave. “I guess I was a little trigger-happy, but I told you that in the bookstore basement he pulled a gun on me.” “You just executed him, Maury. In addition to his spying, we could have nailed him for killing Turlock. He was a dead duck anyway you put it.” “Well, it's a nice happy ending,” Maury said. “I spend over half my life working for four mistresses—when all the proverbs tell you that no man can serve two. But no—I'm such a mental philanderer I have to take on four—my country, my paper, my wife, and the FBI. Now I've lost them all, except my country. Once I appear as a surprise witness in this last clean-up, I'll be of no more use to you than yesterday's newspaper.” “Talk from me won't help you much, Maury. But, by way of thanks—you name it and we'll give it a try.” “Two things,” Maury said, “and all you can do with them, Ed, is give them a try. Contact Anne in Reno, tomorrow, and try to make it clear to her why, for so many years, I've had to lie and act like a first class heel. Once she knows—” “She'll come back, Maury. What's the second thing?” “Try to square me with the Globe-Star. Jeffers, Lindeman, Dupree and Hal Gow. Though, God knows what you can tell them!” “Just the truth,” Ed Waters said, “that if half the people in the world had your type of thinking, and your unselfish love of your fellow men, there would be no need for armaments. There'd be no mess like we're in today. Maybe even no need for the FBI. “There's something I'll add, Maury: The Commies have always had one great dream that has never come true— they've always wanted to plant one of their men in the ranks of the FBI. I doubt if it will please them to know that they have finally succeeded—but not in the way they think. But I'd certainly like to tell the world that you're the first man in history who was ever a member of the Communist National Committee, and who at the same time had succeeded in furrowing deeper and deeper, not into the ranks, but into the hearts of every man in the FBI.” “And so, to the strains of 'Hearts and Flowers,' Maury Morel, the Man of Forty Faces, slinks slowly down to the lower West Side and goes back to his empty hut.” Maury stood up. “Not so fast,” Ed Waters said. “We're not nearly through with you. We have to keep you under wraps as a material witness, Maury. We've arranged a palatial suite right here in the building for you—room service, exotic meals, reading material, workouts on the pistol range and in the gym.” “So now I'm being arrested!” Maury groaned. “Honestly, Ed, I've got a belly full of yours and you. How long is this for?”

“I can't possibly tell. Maybe a month. Maybe just a few days. Maybe a week or two.” “Can't you put me up somewhere else instead of this bastille?” Waters covered his mouth with his hand. “We might commit you.” “Commit me? Where?” Waters thought a moment. “What about the Amity Rest Home?” “Say—” A new light came into Maury's eyes. “You know there is nothing red about that gal Doc Rheinemann except her boy friend, her ex-husband, and her hair. What a dish! Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night, feeling a soft hand on your brow, and seeing that clad in Lincoln green pajamas standing by your bed? Now that I've removed ex-hubby and boy friend, I'll bet she's as lonely as I am with Anne away. Maybe, Ed—” Suddenly one of the special agents gave a loud disrespectful horselaugh, then choking and coughing, got up and hurriedly fled the room. “Now who the hell was that?” Maury demanded. “Oh, pay no attention to him, Maury,” Waters said seriously. “He's just one of our younger agents who hasn't learned self-control. His name is Leonard Ducro.”