vage something. Showing off. The one I was trying to impress was
Walt Boyd.

"You caught that? Careless of me," Bish chided himself. "What he gave
me was a report that they had finally located a man who had been a
staff surgeon at this hospital on Baldur at the time. He's now doing a
stretch for another piece of malpractice he was unlucky enough to get
caught at later. We will not admit making deals with any criminals, in
jail or out, but he is willing to testify, and is on his way to Terra
now. He can identify pictures of Anton Gerrit as those of the man he
operated on fourteen years ago, and his testimony and Ernestine
Coyon's fingerprints will identify Ravick as that man. With all the
Colonial Constabulary and Army Intelligence people got on Gerrit on
Loki, simple identification will be enough. Gerrit was proven guilty
long ago, and it won't be any trouble, now, to prove that Ravick is
Gerrit."

"Why didn't you arrest him as soon as you got the word from your
friend from Afghanistan?" I wanted to know.

"Good question; I've been asking myself that," Bish said, a trifle
wryly. "If I had, the _Javelin_ wouldn't have been bombed, that wax
wouldn't have been burned, and Tom Kivelson wouldn't have been
injured. What I did was send my friend, who is a Colonial Constabulary
detective, to Gimli, the next planet out. There's a Navy base there,
and always at least a couple of destroyers available. He's coming back
with one of them to pick Gerrit up and take him to Terra. They ought
to be in in about two hundred and fifty hours. I thought it would be
safer all around to let Gerrit run loose till then. There's no place
he could go.

"What I didn't realize, at the time, was what a human H-bomb this man
Murell would turn into. Then everything blew up at once. Finally, I
was left with the choice of helping Gerrit escape from Hunters' Hall
or having him lynched before I could arrest him." He turned to
Kivelson. "In the light of what you knew, I don't blame you for
calling me a dirty traitor."

"But how did I know..." Kivelson began.

"That's right. You weren't supposed to. That was before you found out.
You ought to have heard what Gerrit and Belsher--as far as I know,
that is his real name--called me after they found out, when they got
out of that jeep and Captain Courtland's men snapped the handcuffs on
them. It even shocked a hardened sinner like me."

There was a lot more of it. Bish had managed to get into Hunters' Hal