Wasp

CHAPTER VI

A flood of superfast thoughts raced through his startled brain as he stood with arms extended above his head. Thank heavens he’d got rid of that money; they’d have been unpleasantly inquisitive about so large a sum being carried in one lump. If they were looking for Shir Agavan they were dead out of luck. In any case, he wasn’t going to let them take him in, even for questioning. Not if he could help it. Most people who survived a Kaitempi interrogation did so as physical wrecks. It would be better at the last resort to break this searcher’s neck and run like blazes.

“If the cops shoot me down it’ll be a quicker and easier end. When Terra gets no more signals from me, Wolf will choose my successor and feed the poor sap the same—”

“Hi?” The Kaitempi agent broke his train of thought by holding Mowry’s wallet open and gazing with surprise at Pigface’s card reposing therein. The tough expression faded from his heavy features as if wiped away with a cloth. “One of us? An officer?” He took a closer look at the other. “But I do not recognise you.”

“You wouldn’t,” informed Mowry, showing just the right degree of arrogance. “I arrived only today from H.Q. on Diracta.” He pulled a face. “And this is the reception I get.”

“It cannot be helped,” apologised the agent. “The revolutionary movement must be suppressed at all costs and it’s as big a menace here as on any other planet. You know how things are on Directa well, they’re not one whit better on Jaimec.”

“It won’t last,” Mowry responded, speaking with authority. “On Diracta we expect to make a complete clean-up in the near future. After that you won’t have much trouble here. The movement will collapse from sheer lack of leadership. When you cut off the head, the body dies.”

“I hope you’re right. The Spakum war is enough without an army of traitors sniping in the rear.” He closed the wallet, gave it back. His other hand held the Krag Wulkin documents at which he had not yet looked. Waiting for Mowry to pocket the wallet, he returned the remaining material and. said jocularly, “Here are your false papers.”

“Nothing is false that has been officially issued,” said Mowry, frowning disapproval.

“No, I suppose not. I hadn’t thought of it in that light” The agent backed off, anxious to end the talk. “Sorry to have troubled you. I suggest you call at local headquarters as soon as possible and have them circulate your photo so that you’ll be known to us. Otherwise you may be stopped and searched repeatedly.”

“I’ll do that,” promised Mowry, unable to imagine anything he’d less intention of doing.

“You’ll excuse me—I must tend to these others.” So saying, the agent attracted the attention of the nearest police, pointed to Mowry. Then he made for a sour-faced civilian wha was standing nearby waiting to be searched. Reluctantly the civilian lifted his arms and permitted the agent to dip into his pockets.

Mowry walked toward the line of police which opened and let him pass through. At such moments, he thought, one is supposed to be cool, calm and collected, radiating supreme self-confidence in all directions. He wasn’t like that at all. On the contrary he was weak in the knees and had a vague feeling of sickness in the stomach. He had to force himself to continue steadily onward with what appeared to be absolute nonchalance.

He made six hundred yards, reached the next corner before some warning instinct made him look back. Police were still blocking the road but beyond them four of the Kaitempi had clustered together in conversation. One of them, the agent who had released him, pointed his way. The other three shot a glance in the same direction, resumed talking with vehement gestures. There followed what appeared to be ten seconds of heated argument before they reached a decision.

“Stop him!”

The nearest police turned round startled, their eyes seeking a fleeing quarry. Mowry’s legs became filled with an almost irresistible urge to get going twenty to the dozen. He forced them by an effort of will to maintain their steady pace.

There were a lot of people in the street, some merely hanging around and gaping at the trap, others walking the same way as himself. Most of the latter wanted no part of what was going on higher up the road and considered it expedient to amble someplace else. Mowry kept with them, showing no great hurry. That baffled the police; for a few valuable seconds they stayed put, hands on weapons, while they sought in vain for visible evidence of guilt.

It provided sufficient delay to enable him to get round the corner and out of sight. At that point the shouting Kaitempi realised that the police were stalled. They lost patience, broke into a furious sprint. Half a dozen clumping cops immediately raced with them, still without knowing who was being chased or why.

Overtaking a youth who was sauntering dozily along, Mowry gave him an urgent shove in the back. “Quick!—they’re after you! The Kaitempi!”

“I’ve done nothing. I—”

“How long will it take to convince them of that? Run, you fool!”

The other used up a few moments gaping sceptically before he heard the oncoming rush of heavy feet, the raucous shouts of pursuers nearing the corner. He lost colour, tore down the road at velocity that paid tribute to his innocence. He’d have overtaken and passed a bolting jackrabbit with no trouble at all.

Unhurriedly entering an adjacent shop, Mowry—threw a swift look around to e what it sold, said casually, “I wish ten of those small cakes with the toasted-nut tops and—”

The arm of the law thundered round the corner fifty strong. The hunt roared past the shop, its leaders baying with triumph as they spotted the distant figure of him who had done nothing. Mowry stared at the window in dumb amazement. The corpulent Sirian behind the counter eyed the window with sad resignation.

“Whatever is happening?” asked Mowry.

“They’re after someone,” diagnosed Fatty. He sighed, rubbed his protruding belly. “Always they are after someone. What a world! What a war!”

“Makes you tired, hi?”

“Aie, yar! Every day, every minute there is something. Last night, according to the news-channels, they destroyed the main Spakum space-fleet for the tenth time. Today they are pursuing the remnants of what is said to have been destroyed. For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralised enemy who is advancing in utter disorder.” He made a sweeping motion with a podgy hand. It indicated disgust. “I am fat, as you can see. That makes me an idiot. You wish-?”

“Ten of those small cakes with the toasted-nut—”

A belated cop pounded past the window. He was two hundred yards behind the pack and breathless but plain stubborn. As he thudded along he let go a couple of shots into the air just for the heck of it.

“See what I mean?” said Fatso. “You wish-?”

“Ten of those small cakes with the toasted-nut tops. I also wish to order a special celebration-cake to be supplied five days hence. Perhaps you can show me some examples or help me with suggestions, hi?”

He managed to waste twenty minutes within the shop and the time was well worth the few guilders it cost. If he’d wanted he could have stayed longer. Twenty minutes, he estimated, would be just enough to permit local excitement to die down while the pursuit continued elsewhere. But the longer he extended the time the greater the risk of falling into the hands of frustrated huntsmen who’d returned to comb out the area.

Halfway home he was tempted to donate the cakes to a mournful looking cop, but refrained. The time for having fun had gone by and some restraint was called for. The more he had to dodge authority’s frantic fly-swattings the harder it was to play like a wasp and get a laugh out of it.

Within his room he flopped fully dressed on the bed and summarised the day’s doings. He had escaped a trap but only by the skin of his teeth. It proved that such traps were escap-able—but not for ever. What had caused them to take after him he did not know, could only guess at. Probably the intervention of an officious character who had noticed him walking through the cordon.

“Who’s that you’ve let go?”

“An officer, Captain.”

“What d’you mean, an officer?”

“A Kaitempi officer, Captain. I do not know him but he had a correct card. He said that he had just been drafted from Diracta.”

“A card, hi? Did you notice its serial number?”

“I had no particular reason to try remember it, Captain. It was obviously genuine. But let me see… yar… it was SXB80313. Or perhaps SXB80131. I am not sure which.”

“Major Sallana’s card was SXB80131. You half-witted soko, you may have had his killer in your hands!”

“STOP HIM!”

Now, by virtue of the fact that he had evaded capture, plus the fact that he had failed to turn up at headquarters to gain photographic identification, they’d assume that Sallana’s slayer really had been in the net. Previously they had not known where to start looking other than within the ranks of the mysteriously elusive D.A.G. But they had gained three welcome advantages. They knew the killer was in Pertane. They had a description of him. One Kaitempi agent could be relied upon to recognise him on sight.

In other words, the heat was on with every likelihood of getting hotter. Numberless eyes would be keeping watch for anyone bearing close resemblance to himself. The snap-search technique would be intensified, the net spread wider and with greater frequency. In these conditions he’d have to go around daytimes carrying stuff guaranteed to make the Kaitempi lick their chops like hungry tigers. Some evenings he’d have to go to the Cafe Susun bearing a load of money that no searcher in his right mind would regard as a beggar’s alms.

Henceforth, in Pertane at least, the going would be tougher with the pressure-cell and the strangling-post looming ever nearer. He groaned to himself as he thought of it. He had. never asked much of life and would have been quite satisfied merely to sprawl on a golden throne and be fawned upon by sycophants. To be dropped down a Sirian-dug hole, dead cold and dyed purple, was to take things too much to the opposite extreme.

But to counterbalance this dismal prospect there was something heartening—a snatch of conversation.

“The revolutionary movement… as big a menace here as on any other planet. You know how things are on Diracta—well, they’re not one whit better on Jaimec.”

That told him plenty; it revealed that Dirac Angestun Gesept was not merely a Wolf-concocted nightmare designed to disturb the sleep of Jaimecan politicos. It was empire-wide, covering more than a hundred planets, its strength or rather its pseudo-strength greatest on the home-world of Diracta, the nerve-centre and beating heart of the entire Sirian species. It was more than a hundred times greater than had appeared to him in his purely localised endeavours.

To the Sirian powers-that-be it was a major peril hacking down the back door while the Terrans were busily bashing in the front one.

Cheers! Blow the bugle, beat the drum! Other wasps were at work, separated in space but united in purpose. And in this sense he was not alone.

Somebody in the Sirian High Command—a psychologist or a cynic—worked it out that the more one chivvied the civilian population the lower sank its morale. The constant stream of new emergency orders, regulations, restrictions, the constant police and Kaitempi activity, stoppings, searchings, questionings all tended to create that dull, pessimistic resignation demonstrated by Fatty. in the cake shop. An antidote was needed. The citizens had bread. They lacked the circus.

Accordingly a show was put on. The radio, video and newspapers combined to strike up the band and draw the crowds.

And so the story went on for minutes of time and columns of print, complete with pictures of the battleship Hashim, the heavy cruizer Jaimec, some members of their crews when home on leave a year ago, Rear-Admiral Pent-Gurhana saluting a prosperous navy contractor, the Statue of Jaime casting its shadow across a carefully positioned Terran banner and—loveliest touch of all—a five centuries old photograph of a scowling, bedraggled bunch of Mongolian bandits authoritatively described as “Terran space-troops whom we snatched from death as their stricken ship plunged sunward.”

One columnist, graciously admitting lack of facts and substituting so-called expert knowledge, devoted half a page to a lurid description of how heroic space-marines had performed the snatch-from-death in vacuo. How fortunate were the lousy Terrans, he proclaimed, in finding themselves opposed by so daring and gallant a foe.

Mowry absorbed all this guff, found himself unable to decide whether casualty figures had been reversed or whether a fight had taken place at all. Dismissing it with a sniff of disdain, he sought through the rest of the paper without really expecting to find anything worthy of note. But there was a small item on the back page.

So the Gurd-Skriva combination worked mighty fast; they’d done the job within a few hours of taking it on. Yar, money was a wonderful thing especially when Terran engravers and presses could produce it in unlimited supply with little trouble and at small cost. Money was a formidable weapon in its own right, a paper totem that could cause losses in the enemy’s ranks millions of miles behind the fighting front.

This unexpected promptitude set him a new problem. To get more such action he’d have to pay up and thereby risk falling into another trap while on the way to the rendezvous. Right now he dare not show Pigface’s card in Pertane though it might prove useful elsewhere. His documents for Krag Wulkin, special correspondent, might possibly get him out of a jam provided the trappers didn’t search further, find him loaded with guilders and ask difficult questions about so suspiciously large a wad.

Within an hour the High Command solved the problem for him. They put on the circus in the form of a victory parade. To the beat and blare of a dozen bands a great column of troops, tanks, guns, mobile radar units, flame-throwers, rocket-batteries and gas-projectors, tracked recovery vehicles and other paraphenalia crawled into Pertane from the west, tramped and rumbled toward the east.

Helicopters and jetplanes swooped at low level, a small number of nimble space-scouts thundered at great altitude. Citizens assembled in their thousands, lined the streets and cheered more from habit than from genuine enthusiasm.

This, Mowry realised, was his heaven-sent opportunity. Snap-searches might continue down the side streets and in the city’s tough quarters but they’d be wellnigh impossible on the east-west artery with all that military traffic passing through. lf he could reach the crosstown route he could head clean out of Pertane with safety. After that he could dance around elsewhere until the time was ripe to return attention to the capital.

He paid his miserly landlord two months rent in advance without creating more than joyful surprise. Then he checked his false identity papers. Hurriedly he packed his bag with guilders, a fresh supply of stickers, a couple of small packages and got out.

No sudden traps opened out between there and the city centre; even if they ran around like mad the police could not be everywhere at once. On the east-west road he carried his bag unnoticed, being of less significance than a grain of sand amid the great mob of spectators that had assembled. By the same token progress was difficult and slow. The route was crowded almost to the walls. Time and again he had to shove his way past the backs of an audience which had its full attention on the road.

Many of the shops he passed had boarded-up windows as evidence that they had been favoured by his propaganda. Others displayed new glass and on twenty-seven of these he slapped more stickers while a horde of potential witnesses stood on tiptoe, stared over their fellows at the military procession. One sticker he plastered on a policeman’s back, the broad, inviting stretch of black cloth proving irresistible. The cop gaped forward along with the crowd, ignored pressure behind him and got decorated from shoulder to shoulder.

After three hours of edging, pushing and some surreptitious sticker-planting he arrived at the city’s outskirts. Here the tail-end of the parade was still trundling noisily along. Standing spectators had thinned out but a straggling group of goon-fanciers were walking in pace with the troops.

Around stood houses of a suburb too snooty to deserve the attentions of the police and Kaitempi. Ahead stretched the open country and the road to Radine. He carried straight on, following the rearmost troops until the procession turned leftward and headed for the great military stronghold of Khamasta. Here the accompanying civilians halted and watched them go before mooching back to Pertane. Bag in hand, Mowry continued along the Radine road.

Moodiness afflicted him as he walked. He became obsessed with the notion that he had been chased out of the city even if only temporarily and he didn’t like it. Every step he took seemed like another triumph for the foe, another defeat for himself. Given the free choice he’d have stayed put, accepting increasing risks as they came, glorying in meeting and beating them. He didn’t have a free choice, not really.

At the training college they had lectured him again and again to the same effect. “Maybe you like having a mulish character. Well, in some circumstances it’s called courage, in others it’s downright stupidity. You’ve got to resist the temptation to indulge unprofitable heroics. Never abandon caution merely because you think it looks like cowardice. It requires guts to sacrifice one’s ego for the sake of the job. Those are the sort of guts we want and must have. A dead hero is of no earthly use to us.”

Humph! easy for them to talk, hard for those who have to listen and obey. He was still aggrieved when he reached a permasteel plaque standing by the roadside. It said: Radine—33 den. He looked in both directions, found nobody in sight. Opening his bag he took out a package and buried it at the base of the plaque.

That evening he checked in at Radine’s best and most expensive hotel. If the Jaimecan authorities succeeded in following his tortuous trail around Pertane they’d notice his penchant for hiding out in overcrowded, slummy areas and tend to seek him in the planet’s rat-holes. With luck a high-priced hotel would be the last place in which they’d look for him if the search spread wider afield. All the same he’d have to be wary of the routine check of hotel registers which the Kaitempi made every now and again regardless.

Dumping his bag he left the room at once. Time was pressing. He hurried along the road, unworried about snap-searches which for unknown reasons were confined to the capital, and had not yet been applied to other cities. Reaching a bank of public phone booths a mile from the hotel, he made a call to Pertane. A sour voice answered while the booth’s tiny screen remained blank.

“Cafe Susun.”

“Skriva there?”

“Who wants him?”

“Me.”

“That tells me a lot. Why’ve you got that scanner switched off?”

“Listen who’s talking,” growled Mowry, eyeing his faceless screen. “You fetch Skriva and let him cope with his own troubles. You aren’t his paid secretary, are you?”

There came a loud snort, a long silence, then Skriva’s voice sounded. “Who’s this?”

“Give me your pic and I’ll give you mine.”

“I know who it is-I recognise the tones” said Skriva. He switched his scanner, his unpleasing features gradually bloomed into the screen. Mowry switched likewise. Skriva frowned at him with dark suspicion. “Thought you were going to meet us here. Why are you phoning?”

“I’ve been called out of town and can’t get back for a piece.”

“Is thar so?”

“Yar, that is so!” snapped Mowry. “And don’t get hard with me because I won’t stand for it, see?” He paused to let it sink in, went on, “You got a dyno?”

“Maybe,” said Skriva, evasively.

“Can you leave right away?”

“Maybe.”

“If you want the goods you can cut out the maybes and move fast.” Mowry held his phone before the scanner, tapped it suggestively, pointed to his ears to indicate that one never knew who was listening-in these days and might perhaps have to be beaten to it. “Get onto the Radine road and look under marker 33-den. Don’t take Arhava with you.”

“Hey, when will you—”

He slammed down the phone, cutting off the other’s irate query. Next he sought the local Kaitempi H.Q. the address of which had been revealed in Pigface’s secret correspondence. In short time he passed the buildings, keeping as far from it as possible on the other side of the street. He did not give close attention to the building itself, his gaze being concentrated above it. For the next hour he wandered around Radine with seeming aimlessness, still studying the areas above the rooftops.

Eventually satisfied he looked for the city hall, found it, repeated the process. More erratic mooching from street to street while apparently admiring the stars. Finally He returned to the hotel.

Next morning he took a small package from his bag, pocketed it, made straight for a large business block noted the previous evening. With a convincing air of self-assurance he entered the building, took the automatic elevator to the top floor. Here he found a dusty, seldom-used passage with a drop-ladder at one end.

There was nobody around. Even if somebody had come along they might not have been unduly curious. Anyway, he had all his answers ready. Pulling down the ladder he climbed it swiftly, got through the trap-door at top and onto the roof. From his package he took a tiny inductance-coil fitted with clips and attached to a long, hair-thin cable with plug-in terminals at its other end.

Climbing a short trellis mast, he counted the wires on the telephone junction at its top, checked the direction in which the seventh one ran. To this he carefully fastened the coil. Then he descended, led the cable to the roof’s edge, gently paid it out until it was.dangling full length into the road below. Its plug-in terminals were now swinging in the air at a point about four feet above the pavement.

Even as he looked down from the roof half a dozen pedestrians passed the hanging cable and showed no interest in it. A couple of them glanced idly upward, saw somebody above and wandered onward without remark. Nobody questions the activities of a man who clambers over roofs or disappears down grids in the street providing he does it openly and with quiet confidence.

He got down and out without mishap. Within an hour he had performed the same feat atop another building and again got away unchallenged. His next move was to purchase another typewriter, paper, envelopes, a small hand-printing set. It was still only mid-day when he returned to his room and set to work as fast as he could go. The task continued without abate all that day and most of the next day. When he had finished the hand-printer and typewriter slid silently into the lake.

The result was the placing in his case of two hundred and twenty letters for future use and the immediate mailing of another two hundred and twenty to those who had received his first warning. The recipients, he hoped, would be far from charmed by the arrival of a second letter with a third yet to come.

After lunch he consulted yesterday’s and today’s newspapers at which he’d been too busy to look before now. The item he sought was not there: not a word about the late lamented Butin Arhava. Momentarily he wondered whether anything had gone wrong, whether the Gurd-Skriva brothers had jibbed at his choice of a victim or whether they were merely being slow on the uptake.

The general news was much as usual. Victory still loomed nearer and nearer. Casualties in the real or mythical A. Centauri battle were now officially confirmed at eleven Sirian warships, ninety-four Terran ones. That data was given a front-page spread and a double column of editorial hallelujahs.

On an inner page, in an inconspicuous corner, it was announced that Sirian forces had abandoned the twin worlds of Fedira and Fedora, the forty-seventh and forty-eighth planets of the empire, “for strategic reasons.” It was also hinted that Gooma, the sixty-second planet, might soon be given up also, “in order to enable us to strengthen our positions elsewhere.”

So they were admitting something that could no longer be denied, namely, that two planets had gone down the drain with a third soon to follow. Although they had not said so it was pretty certain that what they had given up the Terrans had grabbed. Mowry grinned to himself as words uttered in the cake-shop came back to his mind.

“For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralised enemy advancing in utter disorder.” He went along the road, called the Cafe Susun. “Did you collect?”

“We did,” said Skriva, “and the next consignment is overdue.”

“I’ve read nothing about it”

“You wouldn’t nothing having been written”

“Well, I told you before that I pay when I’ve had proof. Until I get it, nothing doing. No proof, no dough.”

“We’ve got the evidence. It’s up to you to take a look at it.”

Mowry thought swiftly. “Still got the dyno handy?”

“Yar.”

“Maybe you’d better meet me. Make it the ten-time hour. same road, Marker den-8”

The car arrived dead on time. Mowry stood by the marker, a dim figure in the darkness of night with only fields and trees around. The car rolled up, headlights glaring. Skriva got out, took a small sack from the trunk, opened its top and exhibited its contents in the blaze of the lights.

“God in heaven!” said Mowry, his stomach jumping.

“It’s a ragged job,” admitted Skriva. “He had a tough neck, the knife was blunt and Gurd was in a hurry. What’s the matter? You squeamish or something?”

“I’d have liked it less messy. A bullet would have been neater.”

“You’re not paying for neatness. If you want it done sweet and clean and tidy say so and jack up the offer.”

“I’m not complaining”

“You bet you’re not. Butin’s the boy who’s entitled to gripe.” He kicked the sack. “Aren’t you, Butin?”

“Get rid of it,” ordered Mowry. “It’s spoiling my appetite.”

Letting go a grim chuckle, Skriva tossed the sack into an adjacent ditch, put out a hand. “The money.”

Giving him the package, Mowry waited in silence while the other checked the contents inside the car with the help of Gurd. They thumbed the neat stack of notes lovingly, with much licking of lips and mutual congratulations.

When they had finished Skriva chuckled again. “That was twenty thousand for nothing. We couldn’t have got it easier.”

“What d’you mean, for nothing?” Mowry asked.

“We’d have done it anyway, whether you’d named him or not. Butin was making ready to talk. You could see it in the slimy soko’s eyes. What d’you say, Gurd?”

Gurd contented himself with a neck-wringing gesture.

Leaning on the car’s door, Mowry said, “I’ve got another and different kind of job for you. Feel like taking it on?”

Without waiting for response he exhibited another package.

“In here are ten small gadgets. They’re fitted with clips and have thin lengths of cable attached. I want these contraptions fastening, to telephone lines in or near the centre of Pertane. They’ve got to be set in place to that they aren’t visible from the street but the cables can be seen hanging down.”

“But,” objected Skriva, “if the cables can be seen it’s only a matter of time before somebody traces them up to the gadgets. Where’s the sense of hiding what is sure to be found?’”

“Where’s the sense of me giving you good money to do it?” Mowry riposted.

“How much?”

“Five thousand guilders apiece. That’s fifty thousand for the lot”

Skriva pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

“I can check whether you’ve actually fixed them,” Mowry went on, “so don’t try kidding me, see? We’re in business together. Better not kiss the partnership goodbye.”

Grabbing the package, Skriva rasped, “I think you’re crazy but who am I to complain?”

Headlights brightened, the car set up a shrill whine and rocked away. Mowry watched until it had gone from sight, then he tramped back into Radine, made for the public booths and phoned Kaitempi H.Q. He was careful to keep his scanner switched off and try give his voice the singsong tones of a native Jaimecan.

“Somebody’s been decapitated.”

“Hi?”

“There’s a head in a sack near Marker 8-den on the road to Pertane.”

“Whos’ that talking? Who—”

He cut off, leaving the voice to gargle futilely. They’d follow up the tip, no doubt of that. It was essential to his plans that authority should find the head and identify it. In this respect he was persuading the Kaitempi to help play his game and he got quite a bit of malicious satisfaction out of it. He went to his hotel, came out, mailed two hundred and twenty letters.

That done, he enjoyed an hour’s stroll before bedtime, pacing the streets and as usual pondering the day’s work. It would not be long, he thought, before someone became curious about hanging cables and an electrician or telephone engineer was called in to investigate. The inevitable result would be a hurried examination of Jaimec’s entire telephone system and the discovery of several more taps.

Authority would then find itself confronted with three unanswerable questions, all of them ominous: who’s been listening, for how long, and how much have they learned?

He did not envy those in precarious power who were being subjected to this mock build-up of treachery while elsewhere the allegedly defeated Terrans were gaining sanctuary by taking over Sirian planets one after another. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown—but infinitely more so when a wasp crawls into bed with it.

A little before the twelve-time hour he turned into the road where his high-class hideout was located, came to an abrupt halt. Outside the hotel stood a line of official cars, a fire-pump and an ambulance. A number of uniformed cops were meandering around the vehicles. Tough looking characters in plain clothes were all over the scene.

Two of the latter appeared out of nowhere and confronted him hard-eyed.

“What’s happened?” asked Mowry, behaving like a Sunday school superintendent.

“Never mind what’s happened. Show us your documents. Come on, what are you waiting for?”