"If it isn't nonsense, Tommy, then--I could not be at all, and you could not be at all ... we'd never meet each other, and you wouldn't have that research to do--and--and--"

There was silence. Coghlan looked around on the floor. He picked up the reed pen. He said, unnecessarily:

"I still don't believe this."

But he dipped the pen in the thawing ink of the ink-pot. Laurie steadied the book for him to write. He wrote:

_See Thomas Coghlan, 750 Fatima, Istanbul._

He looked at her and hesitated. Then he said:

"There was something I'd say to myself ... written down here, it was what made me believe in it enough to trail along." He wrote:

_Professor, president, so what?_

Ghalil said mildly: "I am sure you remember this address."

"Yes," said Coghlan seriously. He wrote:

_Gadget at 80 Hosain, second floor, back room._

Mannard said grimly:

"It's still nonsense!"

Coghlan wrote:

_Make sure of Mannard. To be killed._

"That's a slight exaggeration," he observed slowly, "but it's necessary, to make us act as we did."

He was smudging ink on his fingers when Ghalil said politely:

"May I help? The professional touch--"

Coghlan let him smear the smudgy black ink on his fingertips. Ghalil painstakingly rolled the four-finger-prints, the thumbprint below. He said calmly:

"This is unique--to make a fingerprint record I will see again when it is seven centuries old! Now what?"

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