Birrel suddenly decided that the man was crazy. New York was full of nuts these days, people flipping their lids and doing daffy things. This was one of them—and there was only one thing to do.

"All right, but you'll regret this," he said. He started to turn his back on the gray man. "When you find out you're wrong—"

Birrel, turning, whirled with sudden speed, his arm snaking out to catch the gray man's neck with the edge of his hand, the old trick they'd taught him in the OSS in war-time.

It didn't work.

The gray man ducked and chopped expertly with his left hand. A numbing pain hit Birrel's extended arm.

For the first time, the gray man smiled. "Sorry. But I was in the OSS too, you see."

Birrel, holding his aching arm, stared. This wasn't a nut after all. But what—?

"Look, Mr. Birrel. I have no sinister designs against you, in any way. We merely have a proposition to put to you. You can accept or refuse it. But unfortunately, I have to do this secretly. That's why I couldn't phone or write or approach you in public."

Birrel thought rapidly. Not a nut, no. But what kind of official business would have to be done this secretly? He didn't like it, not at all.

"Shall we go?"

Birrel looked at the hand in the coat pocket. He went.

He came out into the cool dark wetness of 71st Street, the summer shower over and the red and white neon signs toward Broadway reflected cheerily on wet asphalt. A sedan, with a man at its wheel, was waiting.

He heard the mild voice close behind his ear. "Get right in, Mr. Birrel."

The car swept them up the West Side Highway, with the electric glow of Manhattan behind them. Ahead, the strung-out lights of George Washington Bridge arched the black gulf of the river.

Birrel sat in the back seat, with the gray man keeping well away from him at the other end of the seat. He could see nothing of the driver but a thick neck under a crusher hat.

They crossed the Hudson and went on westward, skirting cities and running quietly and fast through a region of small factories and junk-heaps and power-plants.

Birrel felt a mounting panic. 

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