But McLeod was upon him, using the same judo-cut that had floored the captain of police. McLeod wrenched the parabeam from the man's fingers as he fell, then found his copter and was airborne by the time the vanguard of his pursuers appeared as tiny dots on the field below. Less than an hour later, McLeod landed on the roof of the _Star-Times_ building, where a slowly circling plow was scooping up the snow, digesting it and spitting out great jets of steam. McLeod doubled the speed of the escalator with his own flying feet and was soon striding across the City Room, nodding briefly to the sychophantic waves and smiles which greeted him as the _Star-Times'_ ace reporter. "Chief," he said, entering Overman's glass-walled office without bothering to knock, "the wolves are after your fair-haired boy--but good!" "Wainwright?" Overman guessed, drumming nervous fingers on his desk. "Wainwright. Something about attacking the female member of a combo tease. If his police ever had a chance to take me, I'd have been killed trying to get away." "So, what happened?" "What happened, the man says. They're probably on their way here right now. In order for me to get away, Cripp had to claim he attacked the girl too." "That's wonderful. Doesn't that take care of Mr. Crippens for us? Well, doesn't it? Incidentally, that was a stroke of genius on your part, telling Tracy Kent you had a change of heart _before_ anything happened. Paving the way, eh?" "Something like that," McLeod mumbled. Then Overman had monitored his call to Tracy's apartment, but had misinterpreted what he heard-- "Sit down, Darius. There. Are you armed?" "Yes, but you don't think they'd try to take me right here, do you? That would be an open declaration of war." McLeod took out the parabeam and placed it on the edge of Overman's desk. "It would be war--unless I surrendered you to them." Overman scooped up the parabeam and thumbled it to high intensity. "At first I thought that was a stroke of genius on your part, but I wasn't sure. So I had you followed. Your conversation with Crippens and Tracy Kent was ingenius, all right. But it puts us on opposite sides now, doesn't it?" McLeod had never seen Overman so calm. His fingers no longer drummed their incessant rhythm on the desk, his legs were still. He sat motionless, like a tri-di picture of himself. McLeod said, "Not at all. I only wanted to gain their confidence." "The one thing that bothers me is this: it looks like I'm going to give Weaver Wainwright his story after all, although there's a chance I can save something for the _Star-Times_. I suspect he'll take you off somewhere and have you killed, but the moment he leaves this office with you, you'll be denounced in the _Star-Times_. Wainwright won't be killing a top reporter. He'll be killing a member of the Anti-Newspaper League." "You're crazy," McLeod said. "It might have sounded bad, but it was all part of the same thing. I wanted to gain their confidence and--"