"Well?" he asked.

"It isn't, very," growled the man.

The driver turned, swore in a strange tongue and then turned the car back. The driver's companion picked up a small phone and spoke rapidly into it. The car rounded the block, re-passed the corner long enough to pick up a man dressed as Carroll was.

Halfway down the next block the man got out and took the box of reports. Then the car drove away and, as it pulled away, Carroll felt the jab of a needle in his thigh.

CHAPTER IV

Face to Face

Slowly, the initial thought that filtered through the velvety, comfortable blackness was that he was James Forrest Carroll. That established, the rest came with a swift flow of fact and acceptance in chronological order that brought him to the present date.

It seemed almost instantaneous, this return to reality. Yet in his drugged state, or rather the state of fighting off the last dregs of the potion, Carroll did not recognize the long interim periods of slumber. Actually it took him six hours to return to a full state of wakefulness. He was unaware of the slumber periods and they subtracted from his time-consciousness.

When finally he did come fully awake, it was to look into the faces of the two men who had abducted him.

"Wh—?" he grunted, believing that he uttered a complete sentence asking what the score was.

"You know too much," said the man on the left.

The implication did not filter in at first. It came very slowly that one who knew too much was often prevented from telling it to the right people.

Then he said, "What are you going to do to me?"

"Eliminate you," came the cold answer.

The other man shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "Not at once."

The first one turned abruptly. "Look, Kingallis," he snapped, "This one is a definite threat."

"And there may be others," smiled Kingallis. "We could easily eliminate him. And we will but only after we locate exactly what there is about him that permits him to be a threat to us. There may be others. We must stop them."

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