ggle, until he
was about to gag her. Then she drew her head aside. "There's money in
my bag, if you're going out."

* * * * *

He swore, hotly and sickly. If she'd only act just once as a normal
female should! Maybe Irma had been a hysterical, cold-blooded fool,
but she couldn't have been that much different from other women--even
the books indicated Ellen should be anything but so damned
cooperative!

"If you'll tell me what's going on, I'll still let you go," he
suggested, drawing her hands tighter together.

"I can't, Will. I don't know."

He had to believe her--he knew she was telling the truth, at least to
some extent. And that made it just so much worse. He bound the gag
over her mouth as gently as he could, and closed the door behind him.
Her big eyes haunted him as he turned to the telephone.

The information girl at CCNY could only tell him that Wilbur Hawkes
had resigned abruptly seven months before, and no one knew where he
was--they had heard he was doing government research. He snorted at
that--it was always the excuse, when nobody knew anything.

He tried a few other numbers, and gave up. Nobody knew--and nobody
seemed to react to his name any differently from what they would have
done had he remained a quiet, professorish man, minding his own
business, instead of being chased by....

He couldn't complete that. The idea was still too fantastic. Even if
there were alien life-forms that were subtly invading Earth, why
should they pick on him? What good could a little, unimportant
mathematician do them--particularly if they had the powers he already
knew they possessed? It was a poor answer, though no harder to believe
than that any group on Earth could so suddenly come up with miracles.

Anyhow, men knew enough already to be pretty sure that Mars and Venus
wouldn't have creatures that could invade Earth--and the other planets
were hopeless. Perhaps from another star--but that would mean
violating the theories of mass-increase with the speed of light, and
he was not ready to accept that, yet.

This time, he went out of the building without looking first. It could
do no good--they could hide from him, he knew, and he would only call
attention to himself by looking around. With the change in appearance,
he might get by. He moved rapidly up to Broadway, where he found a
little clothing store and a ready-made suit that nearly fitted him.
The tailor there seemed unconcer