ures at the base
of the wall.

One of those figures began to climb the rope hand over hand. He reached
the motionless object. He swore in a shocked voice. He was shushed from
below. He let the figure drop. It made next to no sound when it landed.

Then there was a rushing, as the guards about the Embassy went furiously
back to their proper posts to keep anybody from slipping out Two men
remained swearing bitterly over a dummy made of old clothes and pillows.
But their profanity was in vain.

* * * * *

Hoddan was then some blocks away. He suffered painful doubt about the
note ostensibly from Nedda. The guards about the Embassy would have
tried to catch him in any case, but it did seem very plausible that the
note had been sent him to get him to try to get down the wall. On the
other hand, a false descent of a palpably dummylike dummy had been
plausible, too. He'd drawn all the guards to one spot by his seeming
doubt and by testing out their vigilance with a dummy. The only thing
improbable in his behavior had been that after testing their vigilance
with a dummy, he'd made use of it.

A fair distance away, he turned sedately into a narrow lane between
buildings. This paralleled another lane serving the home of a girl
friend of Nedda's. The note had named the garden behind that other
girl's home as a rendezvous. But Hoddan was not going to that garden. He
wanted to make sure. If the cops had forged the note--

He judged his position carefully. If he climbed this tree,--hm-m-m....
Kind of the city-planners of Walden to use trees so lavishly--if he
climbed this tree he could look into the garden where Nedda in theory
waited in tears. He climbed it. He sat astride a thick limb in scented
darkness and considered further. Presently he brought out his five-watt
projector. There was deepest darkness hereabouts. Trees and shrubbery
were merely blacker than their surroundings. But there was reason for
suspicion.

Neither in the house of Nedda's girl friend, nor in the nearer house
between, was there a single lighted window.

Hoddan adjusted the wave-guide and pressed the stud of his instrument.
He pointed it carefully into the nearer garden.

A man grunted in a surprised tone. There was a stirring. A man swore
startledly. The words seemed inappropriate to a citizen merely breathing
the evening air.

Hoddan frowned. The note from Nedda seemed to have been a forgery. To
make sure, he readj