was completed.

"Well," she said, finally, "I don't think it's an American. A bit too rich. It doesn't have the French quality, nor the Italian. More chesty, kind of ripe and fruity. Central European. Hungarian, Russian, or something of that order."

Wolf kissed her solemnly. "You win first prize, girl. That's the answer I wanted, and that's the answer that fits."

CHAPTER III

In the morning, the act of going to the hospital produced within him a sensation as of marching to the front line of battle.

Whitehead, the laboratory chief, was prowling about his office when he arrived.

"Morning," Wolf greeted him. "Got something for me?"

"I have a strangeness," Whitehead said. "A very great strangeness."

"We all do," Wolf replied. "What's yours?"

"This Britten of yours. How old is he?"

"By appearance, and according to the records, about twenty-one."

"Uh-huh. And by cellular structure and metabolism he is at least forty!"

"So."

Wolf sank down in his chair and cocked an eye at Alma Heller, who came into the room at that moment.

"Did you hear that, Alma? In more ways than one our boy isn't what he seems to be. By last night I was certain that he is not a native of Louisville, Kentucky. Now we are told that he is twice as old as we thought he was."

Alma stared for a moment.

"We do seem to get in deeper and deeper. Have any ideas?"

Wolf ran his hand worriedly through his hair. "One. But I'm afraid of it. At any rate, we're in too far to back out. This morning we're going to dig for more information, and we're not going to stop until we have Britten squeezed dry."

He reached onto his desk for his tobacco can and began filling a pipe, meanwhile organizing his thoughts.

"Somehow or other," he resumed, "Britten has received conditioning to resist 

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