There were no bodies there, either, or on the landing stage above. I unhooked the radio again. "You can come in, now," I said. "The place is empty. Nobody here but us Vigilantes." "Huh?" Joe couldn't believe that. "How'd they get out?" "They got out on the Second Level Down." I told him about the sleep-gassed guard. "Did you bring him to? What did he say?" "Nothing; we didn't. We can't. You get sleep-gassed, you sleep till you wake up. That ought to be two to four hours for this fellow." "Well, hold everything; we're coming in." We were all in the social room; a couple of the men had poured drinks or drawn themselves beers at the bar and rung up no sale on the cash register. Somebody else had a box of cigars he'd picked up in Ravick's quarters on the fourth floor and was passing them around. Joe and about two or three hundred other hunters came crowding up the escalator, which they had turned on below. "You didn't find Bish Ware, either, I'll bet," Joe was saying. "I'm afraid they took him along for a hostage," Oscar said. "The guard was knocked out with Walt's gas gadget, that Bish was carrying." "Ha!" Joe cried. "Bet you it was the other way round; Bish took them out." That started an argument. While it was going on, I went to the communication screen and got the _Times_, and told Dad what had happened. "Yes," he said. "That was what I was afraid you'd find. Glenn Murell called in from the spaceport a few minutes ago. He says Mort Hallstock came in with his car, and he heard from some of the workmen that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher came in on the Main City Level in a jeep. They claimed protection from a mob, and Captain Courtland's police are protecting them." 19 MASKS OFF There was dead silence for two or three seconds. If a kitten had sneezed, everybody would have heard it. Then it started, first an inarticulate roar, and then a babel of unprintabilities. I thought I'd heard some bad language from these same men in this room when Leo Belsher's announcement of the price cut had been telecast, but that was prayer meeting to this. Dad was still talking. At least, I saw his lips move in the screen. "Say that again, Ralph," Oscar Fujisawa shouted. Dad must have heard him. At least, his lips moved again, but I wasn't a lip reader and neither was Oscar. Oscar turned to the mob--by now, it was that, pure and simple--and roared, in a voice like a foghorn, "_Shut up and listen!_" A few of those closest to him heard him. The rest kept on shouting curses. Oscar waited a second, and then pointed his submachine gun at the ceiling and hammered off the whole clip. "Shut up, a couple of hundred of you, and listen!" he commanded, on the heels of the blast. Then he turned to the screen again. "Now, Ralph; what was it you were saying?"