"I'd better see what they're doing up front," he said. "I think Mr. Smith was talking about it being quicker to raid our own food locker. I'll be back in a minute." Lydman raised his gray-blue eyes and stared through him curiously. "No hurry," he said mildly. Westervelt thought that the man was still watching him as he walked through the door, but he did not like to look back. It might have been so. When he reached the main office, he found both girls replacing folders in the bay of current files opposite Simonetta's desk. "How about letting me at the buried treasure?" he asked. "The thought of food is infiltrating insidiously." "Willie," said Simonetta, "you'll go far here. None of the other brains had such a good idea. I'll phone for something if you'll see what people want." "I think Mr. Smith wants to use stuff we have in the locker," said Westervelt, blocking the way to her desk. "Hold it a second while I check." He rapped on Smith's door as he opened it. He found the chief with most of the papers on his desk shoved to one side so that a built-in tape viewer could be brought up from its concealed position. Smith was scowling as if obtaining little useful information from whatever he was watching. "They're getting hungry," Westervelt whispered. "Is it all right to raid our guest locker?" Smith shut off his machine, and scrubbed one hand across his long face. "Right, Willie," he agreed. "The sooner the better. Take out whatever you think best and pass it around. Meanwhile, I'd better check on the situation downstairs--come to think of it, when you called, did you get an outside line and punch the numbers yourself?" "No, but I have an understanding with Pauline," said Westervelt. He was thinking that Smith had put him in charge of the food, which was perhaps a little better than being sent around to take personal orders as the girls had assumed he would do, but which was still a long way beneath the conference status he had appeared to have an hour earlier. "Good boy!" Smith approved. "Then she'll know who I want to talk to and that she shouldn't listen in." Westervelt was far from sanguine about the last condition, but left without trying to cause his chief any unhappiness. _Well, so it goes, he reflected. One minute a project man, the next an office boy! If I pick out what everybody likes, I'll be a project man again. But if they like it too much, I'll turn out to be the official chef around here whenever someone important stays to lunch._ The picture of sitting in on a talk with some potent official of the D.I.R. and expounding his brilliant solution to a problem, only to be requested to slap together a short order meal, made him pause outside the door, frowning. "Now what, Willie?" asked Simonetta. He roused himself. "Leave it to me, Si," he answered, working up a grin. "I have everything under control."