usted the wave-guide to project a thin but fan-shaped
beam. He aimed again. Painstakingly, he traversed the area in which men
would have been posted to jump him, in the event that the note was
forged. If Nedda were there, she would feel no effect. If police lay in
wait, they would notice. At once.

They did. A man howled. Two men yelled together. Somebody bellowed.
Somebody squealed. Someone, in charge of the flares made ready to give
light for the police, was so startled by a strange sensation that he
jerked the cord. An immense, cold-white brilliance appeared. The garden
where Nedda definitely was not present became bathed in incandescence.
Light spilled over the wall of one garden into the next and disclosed a
squirming mass of police in the nearer garden also. Some of them leaped
wildly and ungracefully while clawing behind them. Some stood still and
struggled desperately to accomplish something to their rear, while
others gazed blankly at them until Hoddan swung his instrument their
way, also.

A man tore off his pants and swarmed over the wall to get away from
something intolerable. Others imitated him, save in the direction of
their flight. Some removed their trousers before they fled, but others
tried to get them off while fleeing. Those last did not fare too well.
Mostly they stumbled and other men fell over them, when both fallen and
fallen-upon uttered hoarse and profane lamentations--they howled to the
high heavens.

Hoddan let the confusion mount past any unscrambling, and then slid down
the tree and joined in the rush. With the glare in the air behind him,
he only feigned to stumble over one figure after another. Once he
grunted as he scorched his own fingers. But he came out of the lane with
a dozen stun-pistols, mostly uncomfortably warm, as trophies of the
ambush.

As they cooled off he stowed them away in his belt and pockets,
strolling away down the tree-lined street. Behind him, cops realized
their trouserless condition and appealed plaintively to householders to
notify headquarters of their state.

Hoddan did not feel particularly disillusioned, somehow. It occurred to
him, even, that this particular event was likely to help him get off of
Walden. If he was to leave against the cops' will, he needed to have
them at less than top efficiency. And men who have had their pants
scorched off them are not apt to think too clearly. Hoddan felt a
certain confidence increase in his mind. He'd worked the