ld you what I wanted. I wanted you to watch for any New York
contacts Brent Taber might be using at the present time. That's simple
enough, isn't it?"

"Taber contacts a lot of people. And he's a dangerous man to tail. He
knows all the tricks."

"Are you telling me he caught you following him? If he did, you're no
longer of any value to me."

"He didn't spot me," Dorfman said. "I followed him to New York and kept
tabs on a Manhattan office, one he uses as his headquarters there."

"A directory check would tell me that."

"Take it easy. I staked out the place all day yesterday. Five men
entered and left. Four were his own men."

Crane made a notation on a pad. He knew about those men. They'd been
pulled off Taber's staff without notice. No doubt they'd made their last
report to Taber and had headed back to Washington for reassignment.
Dorfman would not know this, of course.

Or so Crane thought. Dorfman smiled as though he'd read Crane's mind and
said, "I think Taber's losing his staff. They were government men--four
of them--reporting in or out. My guess was _out_." He peered keenly at
Crane for a moment. "Who's slicing away at Taber behind his back?"

"That's none of your--look here, Dorfman, I can get a better man than
you at half the price!"

"No, you can't," Dorfman said easily. "Like I told you, there were five.
The other one turned out to be a Doctor Frank Corson, an intern at Park
Hill Hospital in Manhattan."

Crane made another quick notation. A Manhattan doctor. One of the
androids had been found in the East River with its throat slit and a
broken leg. Now a doctor had contacted Taber. Was there a connection?
Somehow, Crane had to get on the track of the tenth android Taber was
hunting. Cutting the ground out from under Taber had been a satisfying
victory but it wasn't enough. To be of service to his electorate,
Senator Crane realized, he had to have something tangible in the way of
evidence. The only way to get this was to ferret out Taber's contacts
and locate the tenth android himself, or at least be there when Taber
located the creature.

A man of supreme confidence in his destiny, Crane had been working on
the speech he would make when he was ready for the _I accuse_ scene from
the Senate floor. He had even gone so far as to alert a fashionable
Washington hotel to be ready with a suite at a moment's notice. Crane
felt his office would be far too small to handle the traffic that would
result f