e door that separated the sitting room from
the bedroom. Through it, he could see the suitcases sitting temptingly
on the bed.

Again he took his detector out of his pocket. After a full minute, he
was satisfied that there was no sign of any complex gadgetry that
could warn the occupant that anyone had entered the room. Certainly
there was nothing deadly around.

Then a half-grin came over the man's cunning face. There was always
the chance that the occupant of the suite had rigged up a really
old-fashioned trap.

He looked carefully at the hinges of the door. Nothing. There were no
tiny bits of paper that would fall if he pushed the door open any
further, no little threads that would be broken.

It hadn't really seemed likely, after all. The door was open wide
enough for a man to walk through without moving it.

Still grinning, the man reached out toward the door.

He was quite astonished when his hand didn't reach the door itself.

There was a sharp feeling of pain when his hand fell to the floor,
severed at the wrist.

The man stared at his twitching hand on the floor. He blinked stupidly
while his wrist gushed blood. Then, almost automatically, he stepped
forward to pick up his hand.

As he shuffled forward, he felt a _snick! snick!_ of pain in his
ankles while all sensation from his feet went dead.

It was not until he began toppling forward that he realized that his
feet were still sitting calmly on the floor in their shoes and that he
was no longer connected to them.

It was too late. He was already falling.

He felt a stinging sensation in his throat and then nothing more as
the drop in blood pressure rendered him unconscious.

His hand lay, where it had fallen. His feet remained standing. His
body fell to the floor with a resounding _thud!_ His head bounced once
and then rolled under the bed.

When his heart quit pumping, the blood quit spurting.

A tiny device on the doorjamb, down near the floor, went _zzzt!_ and
then there was silence.

V

When Representative Edway Tarnhorst cut off the call that had come
from Harry Morgan, he turned around and faced the other man in the
room. "Satisfactory?" he said.

"Yes. Yes, of course," said the other. He was a tall, hearty-looking
man with a reddish face and a friendly smile. "You said just the right
thing, Edway. Just the right thing. You're pretty smart, you know
that? You got what it takes." He chuckled. "They'll never figure
anything out