ould be ordering your people to pack up without any conference. You're
in charge here, aren't you?"

Halloran raised his eyebrows. "In charge? Why, yes ... in the sense that
I shape the final decisions. But all of my assistants contribute to such
decisions. Further, we have an inmate's council that voices its opinion
on certain of our problems here. And we--my associates and I--listen to
them. Always."

Knox scowled and angrily shifted his big body. Lansing picked up his
cigar, relit it, using the action to unobtrusively study the warden.
Hardly a presence to cow hardened criminals, Lansing thought. Halloran
was just below middle height, with gray hair getting a bit thin, eyes
that twinkled warmly behind rimless glasses. Yet Lansing had read
somewhere that a critic of Halloran's policies had said the penologist's
thinking was far ahead of his time--too far, the critic had added.

* * * * *

As Joe Mario closed the warden's door behind him, two inmates slowed
their typing but did not look up as he neared their desks. A guard left
his post at the outer door and walked toward Mario. The two of them
stopped beside the desks.

"What's the word, Joe?" the guard asked.

Mario held out his pass.

"Gotta round up the captain, Doc Slade and the Jew preacher," he said.

"All right. Get going."

"What do those guys want?" asked a typist as he pulled the paper from
his machine.

Mario looked quickly at the guard and as quickly away from him.

"Dunno," he shrugged.

"Somethin' about the war, I bet," grunted the typist.

"War's over, dope," said the other. "Nothin' behind the curtain now but
a nice assortment of bomb craters. All sizes."

"Go on, Joe," ordered the guard. "You heard something. Give."

"Well ... I heard that fat general say something about wanting the
warden outa here in a hour."

The typewriters stopped their clacking for a bare instant, then started
up again, more slowly. The guard frowned, then said, "On your way, Joe."
He hesitated, then, "No use to tell you to button your lip, I guess."

"I'm not causing any trouble," Mario said, as the guard opened the door
and stood aside for him to pass into the corridor.

O.K.'d for entrance into the hospital wing, Joe Mario stood outside the
railing that cut Dr. Slade's reception area off from the corridor that
led to the wards. An inmate orderly sat behind the railing, writing a
prescription for a slight, intelligent-lookin