Maybe the word was college, meaning the one where he had his laboratory. But actually it wasn't a college at all; it was a university. Not much difference to the man in the street, but to the Professor.... Wait a minute! Not colleges! Colleagues! It was his colleagues Gilmore had promised to warn. And the word meant men and women in the same line of work as the Professor—nuclear physics. Things, Kirk told himself with elation, were looking up!

The business about "three in the past five months" was next, but he felt sure of what that had meant. But the last of the quotations went nowhere at all.

"Something about taking in washing—" Under less tragic circumstances, a nonsense line. But Cordell hadn't actually heard the words clearly enough to quote them with authority. That could mean he had heard words that sounded like "taking in washing."

Taking, baking, making, slaking, raking—the list seemed endless. "Washing" could have been the first two syllables of Washington—and Washington would be the place where the Atomic Energy Commission hung out.

Still too hazy. He leaned back and put his feet up and attacked the three mysterious words from every conceivable angle. No dice.

Sight of the ambling figure of Patrolman Chenowich passing the office door caught his eye, reminding him that two heads were often better than one. "Hey, Frank."

Chenowich came in. "Yeah, Lieutenant. Somethin' doin'?"

"I'm trying to figure out a little problem," Kirk explained carelessly. "Let's say you hear a guy talking in the next room. You can't really make out the words he's saying, but right in the middle of his mumbling you hear what sounds like 'taking in washing.' Now you know that can't be right, so you try to think out what he actually did say...."

It was obvious Chenowich had fallen off on the first curve, so completely off that Kirk didn't bother finishing what was much too involved to begin with. The patrolman was staring at him in monstrous perplexity.

"Jeez, Lieutenant. I don't get it. 'Less the guy's goin' to open up one of these here laundries. That way he'd be takin' in washin'. But I don't know what else—"

Kirk's feet hit the floor with a solid thump and he grabbed Chenowich's wrist with fingers that bit in like steel. "Say that again!" he shouted. "Say it just that way!"

The patrolman 

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