No. 999 had gone much farther than most of the others. Using human beings to do its legwork. But human beings were comparatively easy to handle. Hall stood in the middle of the dim room and gave it a last survey, knowing he would never see it again. _My room_, he thought. _My headquarters for five years_. It was a dingy mouldy three-floor walkup in a section of the city that had been condemned and would soon be destroyed and replaced by glass and chrome and neat little flower gardens. Just a gray room with a worn carpet, a single narrow bed, a flowered vase lampbase with a dusty shade. A room with nothing distinctive about it to identify it as belonging to Hall, either under that name or any of the other names he used at various times. No books, no magazines--nothing really individualistic. Except for the topcoat over the chair there weren’t even any clothes in the closet. Hall had only one suit and he was wearing it, as he had worn it continuously for five years. He stood there as though he were about to rent the room, or had only just moved in. Hall moved silently to the door. The vague sound came again and he evaluated the sound with the trained attunement of his unique training. To others it would have been a sound thoroughly non-suspect in its resemblance to a whisper of wind, or the rustling of torn wallpaper, or even a rat. Hall could picture the fool standing out there. Some cheap thug, no doubt, who had no idea who had hired him, or what he was really involved in. Some habitual criminal type whom no amount of arrests and treatment had been able to change. And now he wanted to die. Hall could even tell exactly where the fool was standing, hunched over slightly, listening with his every nerve alert. Hall stepped forward and jerked the door open. The man was still trying to drag a small revolver up. With an oath Hall grabbed his wrist and swung him around and pressed his fingers into a yielding throat. The miserable wretch made no sound. He struggled in nervous spasmodic movements like a fish. When he stopped struggling any way at all, Hall put him on the bed and then went out into the hallway. He didn’t know if the man were dead or not. By the time Hall reached the window and the fire escape he had forgotten all about him. Hall’s efficiency depended, among many things, on dismissing unimportant incidents from his mind. He had hunted down and destroyed but two less than a thousand of them, and there was only one left who could be thought of as dangerous. So far it was a perfect record, and Hall intended to finish the job before dawn. He was no longer tired. He didn’t feel that frightening loneliness any more either. He felt nothing now except the finely-tuned machinery of the hunter working, a kind of high but careful excitement.