Don did so. He hoped he was doing it affirmatively enough. He had no wish to be shot by one of the Senator's men, regardless of whether that man was authorized or unauthorized. * * * * * Senator Thebold sat at a desk in the manager's office of the Raleigh Country Club. He wore a leather trench coat and a fur hat. Wing commander's insignia glittered on his shoulders and a cartridge belt was buckled around his waist. A holster hung from it but Thebold had the heavy .45 on the desk in front of it. He motioned to Don to sit down. Two guards stood at the door. "Name?" Thebold snapped. Don decided to use his own name but pretend to be a local yokel. "Donald Cort." "What were you doing out there?" "I saw the lights." "Who were you talking to in the sand trap?" "Nobody. I sometimes talk to myself." "Oh, you do. Do you ever talk to yourself about a man named Osbert Garet or Hector Civek?" Thebold looked at a big map of Superior that had been pinned to the wall, thus giving Don the benefit of his strong profile. "Hector's the king now," Don said. "Things got pretty bad before that but we got enough to eat now." "Where did the food come from?" Don shrugged. Thebold drummed his fingers on the desk. "You're not exactly a fount of information, are you? What do you do for a living?" "I used to work in the gum factory but I got laid off." "Do you know Geneva Jervis?" "Who's he?" Don said innocently. Thebold stood up in irritation. "Take this man to O. & I.," he said to one of the guards. "We've got to make a start some place. Are there any others?" "Four or five," the guard said. "Send me the brightest-looking one. Give this one and the rest a meal and a lecture and turn them loose. It doesn't look as if Civek is going to give us any trouble right away and there isn't too much we can do before daylight." The guard led Don out of the room and pinned a button on his lapel. It said: _Bobby the Bold in Peace and War_. "What's O. & I.?" Don asked him. "Orientation and Integration. Nobody's going to hurt you. We're here to end partition, that's all." "End partition?" "Like in Ireland. Keep Superior in the U. S. A. They'll tell you all about it at O. & I. Then you tell your friends. Want some more buttons?" * * * * * Don was fed, lectured, and released, as promised. Early the next morning, after a cup of coffee with Alis Garet at Cavalier's cafeteria, he started back for the golf course. Alis, in a class-cutting mood, went with him. The glimpses of the Thebold Plan which Don had had from O. & I. were being put into practice. Reilly Street, which provided a boundary line between Raleigh Country Club and the gum-factory property, had been transformed into a midway.