and professionally-restrained instincts played a rotten trick on me. Instead of staring at her with a cool eye and calming her with a proper, chilling remark, I responded like a frog's leg to an electric shock.

My chin jerked out to follow the sweetest sensation I could remember. It didn't have far to go. She had retreated only three inches.

The tunnel curved right there, and the car lurched. I made a bad connection with only half her mouth, but a slight correction on her part squared us off to what is outrageously described in the texts as a basic, or primary, wooing gesture.

After the first, delirious second I knew it was a frame. After the second moment, I didn't care. But it wasn't until several minutes had elapsed that Doctor Calicoo's cool resolve collapsed, and I learned what a kiss could really mean from a woman who meant it, herself.

She tore out of my arms with a little cry. "Look out!" Then I became aware that the warning light had been flashing unnoticed. We were coming to the tunnel's exit where manual vehicle control became necessary. With trembling hands she gripped the controls until her knuckles were white knobs.

As we flashed past the patrol station and two alert faces checked the interior of our car, I said, "I think I know what you had in mind. You had me hooked on but good. Why didn't you go through with it?" I referred to the easy possibility of our shooting from the tube in each other's arms and thereby violating the safety code for tube passage. Such a simple frame would have put M.P. Investigator Klinghammer on the tabloid front page, if his feminine companion had chosen to file a complaint—with police witnesses to the act. Exit Klinghammer to a hobby of his own, probably less lucrative than building phantom symptom machines.

"I guess I overdid it," she said simply. She began to cry. Her white blouse quivered.

All I did was pat her gently on the shoulder, and the tears ran like mercury from a retort. "Let us not assume that we are enemies," I said, regaining a portion of my composure and all of my stuffiness. "So you are the frustrated Mata Hari; perhaps I'm on your side. Were you acting on orders? Was this a set up?"

She shook her head. "When we went into the tunnel I was in love with John Cunningham. I kissed you to frame you, all right, but it was my own idea. I'm impulsive, I guess." The only part I caught was the past tense of her first sentence.

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