Why had he refused to produce the evidence that he had? What had scared him? Questions were buzzing like gadflies in my mind. There was one particularly persistent gadfly. Fradin had said something of which I had almost caught the significance. Almost, but not quite. The significant thing he had said kept buzzing in the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite put a mental finger on it.... Then I remembered it. I went out of that room at a dead run. I went up over the speaker's platform and through the door Fradin had taken. How I did want to talk to that tortured man! What he had said, letting it slip accidentally, added up to one of the biggest stories that ever splashed across the front page of a newspaper. I had come down here looking for a human interest yarn. Instead I had run straight into a story that could easily set the world on fire, _if_ I could find Fradin and make him talk. I didn't doubt that I would find him. He couldn't have gotten far away. He hadn't had time. Not five minutes had passed after he had walked off the platform until I was following him. The door opened into a long hall, and in that hall I found Fradin. He was down at the far end, getting into an elevator. A tall, thin individual was with him. I sprinted down the hall to try to catch them before the elevator doors closed. The operator saw me coming and started to wait for me, but something changed his mind for him. The two men were already in the cage; I couldn't be positive of it, but I thought the tall man said something to the operator. Just as I got there, the operator slammed the door in my face. The cage started down. "All right, smart guy," I yelled at the operator. "I'll give you a smack in the snoot for this." Probably I could have gotten down faster by waiting for another elevator, but there was a stairway and I used that. I was in a hurry. * * * * * I got to the first floor just in time to see Fradin and his companion walk out of the front door. "Hey!" I yelled. "Wait--" I started to say, "Wait for me," but the words were choked off in my throat. I recognized Fradin's companion. The hawk-faced man who had sat two seats down from me and who had slipped unobtrusively out of the meeting. He had gone around to the back of the hall and joined Fradin. But the fact that he was with Fradin wasn't the thing that had choked off my call. It was the way the two men were walking. Fradin was a little ahead, and he wasn't looking to the right or the left. Just walking. There was a stiffness about him that made me think of a mechanical toy that has been wound up and is taking a walk for itself. Hawk-face was following right behind him. Hawk-face had his hand in his pocket. I didn't need to look twice to know that he had a gun in that pocket too, pointing straight at the little inventor's back.