r--" Martin began, absently pushing the desk-lamp
toward the robot. And then the golden tongue that had swayed empires was
loosed....

"You're not going to like this," the robot said dazedly, sometime later.
"Ivan won't do at ... oh, you've got me all confused. You'll have to
eyeprint a--" He began to pull out of his sack the helmet and the
quarter-mile of red ribbon.

"To tie up my bonny grey brain," Martin said, drunk with his own
rhetoric. "Put it on my head. That's right. Ivan the Terrible, remember.
I'll fix St. Cyr's Mixo-Lydian wagon."

"Differential depends on environment as much as on heredity," the robot
muttered, clapping the helmet on Martin's head. "Though naturally Ivan
wouldn't have had the Tsardom environment without his particular
heredity, involving Helena Glinska--there!" He removed the helmet.

"But nothing's happening," Martin said. "I don't feel any different."

"It'll take a few moments. This isn't your basic character-pattern,
remember, as Disraeli's was. Enjoy yourself while you can. You'll get
the Ivan-effect soon enough." He shouldered the sack and headed
uncertainly for the door.

"Wait," Martin said uneasily. "Are you sure--"

"Be quiet. I forgot something--some formality--now I'm all confused.
Well, I'll think of it later, or earlier, as the case may be. I'll see
you in twelve hours--I hope."

The robot departed. Martin shook his head tentatively from side to side.
Then he got up and followed ENIAC to the door. But there was no sign of
the robot, except for a diminishing whirlwind of dust in the middle of
the corridor.

_Something began to happen in Martin's brain...._

Behind him, the telephone rang.

Martin heard himself gasp with pure terror. With a sudden, impossible,
terrifying, absolute certainty he _knew_ who was telephoning.

_Assassins!_

* * * * *

"Yes, Mr. Martin," said Tolliver Watt's butler to the telephone. "Miss
Ashby is here. She is with Mr. Watt and Mr. St. Cyr at the moment, but I
will give her your message. You are detained. And she is to call for
you--where?"

"The broom-closet on the second floor of the Writers' Building," Martin
said in a quavering voice. "It's the only one near a telephone with a
long enough cord so I could take the phone in here with me. But I'm not
at all certain that I'm safe. I don't like the looks of that broom on my
left."

"Sir?"

"Are you _sure_ you're Tolliver Watt's butler?" Martin d