little drama he'd watched. He'd heard about this side of Mickey Hatchet's life, but this was the first time he'd seen it in action.

"Yeah. Like I said, I was barrelling after this guy when suddenly that dame appeared. With nothing on, just as you saw. Really stacked, too, if you know what I mean, but I was busy. I told her to get lost. Then she came over and sat right down on my lap. I was trying to figure out what her game was, and wondering if I should just sap her, and while that was going on I lost that guy. He dodged behind one of those asteroids and by the time I could get the dame off my lap and get straightened out, he was gone."

"All right," Manning said with a sigh. He knew there was no point in saying what he thought. "That's the way it goes sometimes. Stick around, Mickey, and I'll let you know the score."

"You want me to go down and smoke them out?"

"No, you stay here. Just circle around until you hear from me." Manning went back to his own ship. His last glimpse of Mickey Hatchet, the private eye was shaking his head. "Dames," he was saying.

When he got back to the spaceport, he had his program all mapped out. With Angus McBlla guiding him, he made the rounds. Starting with space customs, then the local banks, and a number of business houses. When he'd finished, he had collected some interesting facts.

Jaba Woo was the only Algolian who had officially entered Canopus. He was also the only one of the three who had a bank account. Both Nottyl Nadyl and Encycla Grave had paid cash for everything they bought. What was even more interesting was that he could find no resident address for either Nadyl or Grave. Jaba Woo had made large deposits coinciding with each one of the deaths in the insurance cases. He had also made large withdrawals, but he still had a very comfortable balance. He hadn't been to the bank to close the account, but he had made a visicall, asking the bank to transfer his account to the First Galactic Bank on Pictor. Manning arrived at the bank just in time. As Chief Investigator for Greater Solarian he also had police powers, so the transfer was stopped.

The spaceport officials were certain that no one—especially an Algolian—had left the planet. Yet the three Algolians had managed to vanish completely, unless the police had managed to find them. Quite obviously they had been ready to vanish the minute anything went wrong with their racket. And the minute Nadyl had realized that "Mrs. Draco" was an indestructible, he had flashed the 

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