But I'm not licked yet! Not after a full lifetime of conniving and swindling! I've been over and over the angles and there's one thing you can always count on--a trickster will always outsmart himself if you give him the chance. I did it with Higgins. Now he's done it with me. He'll be back here in half an hour to find out whether he gets his partnership or not. Well, he'll get his answer. I'm going to affirm, as per the escape clause in the standard exhibit contract he signed, that he is no longer of scientific value, and the Feds will pick him up and deport him to his home world. That leaves him two equally nasty choices. Those fake documents of his were good enough to get him admitted to Earth as a legitimate alien. How the World Police get him back there is their headache--and his. If he admits the papers were phony, the only way he'll get out of prison will be when it collapses of old age. So I'll give him a third choice: He can sign an undated confession, which I will keep in my safe, as guarantee against future finagling. I don't expect to be around forever, you see, though, with that little secret I picked up on Rimbaud II, it'll be a good long time, not even barring accidents, and I've been wondering whom to leave the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science to. Higgins will make a fine successor. Oh, one more thing he will have to sign. It remains the Corrigan Institute as long as the place is in business. Try to outcon me, will he? End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds of a Feather, by Robert Silverberg