He walked between the two green lamps of the precinct station and dumped his bag on the sergeant's desk. Immediately the sergeant started a tale of woe: "Mr. Orsino, I don't like to bother you with the men's personal troubles, but I wonder if you could come through with a hundred dollar present for a very deserving young fellow here. It's Patrolman Gibney, seven years in the old 101st and not a black mark against him. One citation for shooting it out with a burglar and another for nabbing a past-post crook at Lefko's horse room. Gibney's been married for five years and has two of the cutest kids you ever saw, and you know that takes money. Now he wants to get married again, he's crazy in love with the girl and his first wife don't mind, she says she can use a helping hand around the house, and he wants to do it right with a big wedding. "If he can do it on a hundred, he's welcome to it," Charles said, grinning. "Give him my best wishes." He divided the pile of bills into two orderly stacks, transferred a hundred dollars to one and pocketed the other. He dropped it off at the Syndic Building, had an uninteresting dinner in one of its cafeterias and went to his furnished room downtown. He read a chapter in F. W. Taylor's--Uncle Frank's--latest book, _Organization, Symbolism and Morale_, couldn't understand a word he read, bathed and got out his evening clothes. * * * * * A thin and attractive girl entered a preposterously-furnished room in the Syndic Building, arguing bitterly with a white-bearded, hawk-nosed old man. "My dear ancestor," she began, with exaggerated patience. "God-damn it, Lee, don't call me an ancestor! Makes me feel as if I was dead already." "You might as well be for all the sense you're talking." "All right, Lee." He looked wounded and brave. "Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Edward--" She studied his face with suddenly-narrowed eyes and her tone changed. "Listen, you old devil, you're not fooling me for a minute. I couldn't hurt your feelings with the blunt edge of an axe. You're not talking me into anything. It'd just be sending somebody to his death. Besides, they were both accidents." She turned and began to fiddle with a semi-circular screen whose focus was a large and complicated chair. Three synchronized projectors bore on the screen. The old man said very softly: "And what if they weren't? Tom McGurn and Bob were good men. None better. If the damn Government's knocking us off one by one, something ought to be done. And you seem to be the only person in a position to do it." "Start a war," she said bitterly. "Sweep them from the seas. Wasn't Dick Reiner chanting that when I was in diapers?" "Yes," the old man brooded. "And he's still chanting it now that you're in--whatever young ladies wear nowadays. Promise me something, Lee. If there's another try, will you help us out?"