stud to end the interview. "Others have made the same offer before you and there'll be others again. But I won't use my ability unfairly."

Jaffers smiled, unamused. "You do go straight to the point, which saves argument. But you'll work for me, Alcorn. Those others made the mistake of talking to you personally. I know that you can be reached as easily as any other man if my agents keep more than fifty feet away from you." His eyes moved past Alcorn to the window. "Look at the window across the street."

Alcorn, turning, felt his neck prickle. Across the narrow canyon of street, without pretense at concealing himself, a man in gray clothing watched him from an open office window.

"I've had you under surveillance for days," Jeffers' voice said behind him. "I've located two others of your sort since my statisticians brought their existence to my attention, but somehow they slipped through my fingers this week. I'm taking no chances on you."

Alcorn whirled back incredulously. "You've found others? Where and—"

"I'll tell you that when you're on my payroll."

"It's a trick," Alcorn said angrily. "I searched for years before I settled down with Consolidated and I didn't find a trace of anybody like myself. I don't believe there are any."

"Most of them covered themselves better." Jaffers added, with cold finality, "I don't haggle, Alcorn. You'll work for me or for no one."

"The trouble is," Alcorn said, "that I'm different from other people and I have to know why. I know how I'm different, but if I knew why, I'd never have come to a psychiatrist."

Dr. Hagen rattled the data sheet in his hands and blinked behind his pince-nez like a friendly beagle. He was a very puzzled man, being accustomed to analyzing his own reactions as well as those of his patients. Alcorn could see him struggling to account for the sudden serenity that had come over him the instant Alcorn entered the office—certainly it was not the doctor's usual frame of mind, from the first sour look of him—and failing.

"Different in what way, Mr. Alcorn?"

"I soothe people," Alcorn said. "There's something about me that inspires trust and an eagerness to please. Everyone roughly within a radius of fifty feet—I've checked the limit a thousand times—immediately feels a sort of 

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