About twenty seconds later, the car stopped and the doors opened. A little more time passed, and then a gun, closely followed by a man, edged around the door frame. "What the hell," the man said. "The car's empty!" Another voice said: "Let's cover the stairway." Two pairs of footsteps receded rapidly down the hall. Malone, gun in hand, teleported himself back to the previously memorized elevator, tiptoed to the door and looked out. The two men were standing at the far end of the hall, posted at either side of the stairwell and obviously waiting for him to come on up. Instead, he tiptoed out of the elevator hefting his gun, and came up silently behind the pair. When he was within ten feet he stopped and said, very politely: "Drop the guns, boys." The guns thudded to the floor and the two men turned round. "All right," Malone said, smiling into their astonished faces. "Now, let's go on and see Mr. Sand." [Illustration] He picked up the guns with his free hand and put them into his coat pockets. Together, the three men went down toward the lighted office at the far end of the hall. "Open it," Malone said as they came to the door. He followed them into the office. Behind a battered, worm-eaten desk in a dingy room sat a very surprised-looking Mike Sand. He was only about five feet six, but he looked as if weighed over two hundred pounds. He had huge shoulders and a thick neck, and his face was sleepy-looking. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights in his long career; Sand, Malone reflected, was nearing fifty now, and he was beginning to look his age. His short hair, once black, was turning to iron-gray. He didn't say anything. Malone smiled at him pleasantly. "These boys were carrying deadly weapons," he told Sand in a polite voice. "That's hardly the way to treat a brother." His precognitive warning system wasn't ringing any alarm bells, but he kept his gun trained on the pair of thugs as he walked over to Mike Sand's desk and took the two extra revolvers from his pocket. "You'd better keep these, Sand," he said. "Your boys don't know how to handle them." Sand grinned sourly, pulled open a desk drawer and swept the guns into it with one motion of his ham-like hand. He didn't look at Malone. "You guys better go downstairs and keep Jerry company," he said. "You can do crossword puzzles together." "Now, Mike, we--" one of them began. Mike Sand snorted. "Go on," he said. "Scram." "But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--" "Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out. "Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to hell." * * * * *