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The man had sallow skin; the look of a consumptive. He sat in a chair beside Crane's desk and dropped the ash from his cigar on Crane's wall-to-wall carpeting. Crane scowled, but let it pass. "All right. Dorfman, what have you got to show for the money I've paid you?" Dorfman, an old hand at confidential snooping, refused to quail before the much-publicized senatorial scowl.
Now he sat on the desk in the office, moving uneasily back and forth as Pete looked up at Mario's dark face, and then across at John Tegan and Mel Dorfman. John's face was dark with anger as he ran his fingers through the heavy gray beard that fell to his chest. Mel sat stunned, shaking his head helplessly. Mario was unable to restrain himself.
Tegan was sitting, too, blinking at Pete as if he were a stranger, and Dorfman was trembling like a leaf. Pete stared about him through the dim light, and then looked where Tegan was pointing at the end of the room. He couldn't see it clearly, at first. Finally, he made out a raised platform with four steps leading up.
It did not occur to Crane to compliment Dorfman on his skill as an operative, for getting the book so completely and swiftly on a casual visitor to Taber's office. He said, "You've got this doctor's address?" Dorfman put a folded slip of paper on the desk. "Another little item I'll throw in as a bonus. Taber had another tail here in Washington." This disturbed Crane.
There's nothing they can bring us from Earth that we can't do without." "We couldn't get away with it!" Mel Dorfman shook his head bitterly. "You're asking us to cut ourselves off from Earth completely. But they'd never let us. They'd send ships to bomb us out." "We could hide, and rebuild after they had finished." Pete Farnam sighed. "They'd never leave us alone, Jack.
Dorfman got up from his chair, stepping on the ashes as he did so and ground them into the rug. "Okay, I'll report tomorrow." After Dorfman left, Crane pondered the situation. Were the Russians behind this? Somehow, he was beginning to doubt it. And this dismayed him somewhat.
Be so good as to examine them." Pete glanced around the room. John Tegan and Hank Mario were watching him uneasily. Mary Turner was following the proceedings with her sharp little eyes, missing nothing, and Mel Dorfman stood like a rock, his heavy face curiously expressionless as he watched the visitors.
They'd been pulled off Taber's staff without notice. No doubt they'd made their last report to Taber and had headed back to Washington for reassignment. Dorfman would not know this, of course. Or so Crane thought. Dorfman smiled as though he'd read Crane's mind and said, "I think Taber's losing his staff. They were government men four of them reporting in or out. My guess was out."
If he did, you're no longer of any value to me." "He didn't spot me," Dorfman said. "I followed him to New York and kept tabs on a Manhattan office, one he uses as his headquarters there." "A directory check would tell me that." "Take it easy. I staked out the place all day yesterday. Five men entered and left. Four were his own men." Crane made a notation on a pad. He knew about those men.
He peered keenly at Crane for a moment. "Who's slicing away at Taber behind his back?" "That's none of your look here, Dorfman, I can get a better man than you at half the price!" "No, you can't," Dorfman said easily. "Like I told you, there were five. The other one turned out to be a Doctor Frank Corson, an intern at Park Hill Hospital in Manhattan." Crane made another quick notation.
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