treated just as any visitor from Scotland Yard would be
treated.

He was shown directly to my office, and I gave him a quick once-over
as he came in the door. Tall, about six feet even; weight about 175,
none of it surplus fat; light brown hair smoothed neatly back, almost
no gray; eyes, blue-gray, with finely-etched lines around them that
indicated they'd been formed by both smiles and frowns: face, rather
long and bony, with thin, firm lips and a longish, thin, slightly
curved nose. He wore good clothes, and he wore them well. His age, I
knew; it was the same as mine. It was the first time I had ever seen
a man who looked like a real aristocrat and a good cop rolled into
one.

He had an easy smile on his face, and his eyes were taking me in, too.
I stand an inch under six feet, but I'm a little broader across the
shoulders than he, so the ten more pounds I carry doesn't make me look
fat. My face is definitely not aristocratic--wide and square, with a
nose that shows a slight bend where it was broken when I was a rookie,
heavy, dark eyebrows, and hair that is receding a little on top and
graying perceptibly at the sides. The eyes are a dark gray, and I'm
well aware that the men under me call me "Old Flint-eye" when I put
the pressure on them.

"I'm Chief Inspector Acrington," he said pleasantly, giving me a firm
handshake.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace," I said. "I'm Inspector
Royall. Sit down, won't you?" I gestured toward one of the upholstered
guest chairs, and sat down in the other one myself, so we wouldn't
have the desk between us. "Have a good trip across?" I asked.

"Fine. Except, of course, for the noise."

"Noise?" I knew he'd come over in one of the Transatlantic Airways'
new inertia-drive ships, and they're supposed to be fairly quiet.

His smile broadened a trifle. "Exactly. There wasn't any. I'm rather
used to the vibration of jets, and these new jobs float along at a
hundred thousand feet in the deadest silence you ever heard--if
you'll pardon the oxymoron. Everybody chattered like a flight of
starlings, just to keep the air full of sound."

I chuckled. "Maybe they'll put vibrators on them, just to make the
people feel comfortable. I read that the men in the moon ships
complain about the same thing."

"So I've heard. But, actually, the silence is a minor thing when one
realizes the time one saves. When one is looking forward to something
interesting, traveling can be deadly dull."