'But,' the sergeant objected, 'she may have a weapon in there.'
'I'm sure she has,' Smith said, smiling. 'And if we found it, we'd have to take her into custody. Then we'd have things in the newspapers, and a dreadful international uproar.'
'Oh,' the captain of deputies said, with sudden comprehension. He said to his officer, 'Just stand close to her and look friendly. Don't let her get outside.'
'Right,' the deputy said. 'It won't be bad duty.'
It wasn't. She was very pretty, even with the tears. But she had not said anything and she did not say anything now. Below them, on the apron, the first of the official cars had gone by. It was the advance car, carrying the baggage. It pulled up close to the premier's airplane and crewmen opened the baggage hatch. They moved very smartly. 'Confound it,' Smith said suddenly. 'Those people have my dispatch case. I put it down with the other bags at the auditorium.'
'Let's go down and retrieve it,' the police sergeant said. 'If we don't, those slobs will fly away with it.'
'Right,' the captain of deputies said.
The three of them went downstairs, walking on the down escalator. They didn't want to waste any time. Outside again, they walked rapidly toward the airplane and the crewmen reaching bags up from the car. Just as they reached the car a crewman took out the black dispatch case, looked at it, then reached up with it.
'Here, here,' Smith said. 'That's mine, you know.'
Two of the premier's security police materialized from the dark area underneath the plane. They stood with their arms folded, almost expressionless.
Smith said to one of them, 'Colonel, be good enough to have your boys hand back my bag.'
The man he spoke to almost grinned sardonically, but not quite.
'I did not see any identification,' he said. It was the first time any of the premier's security guards had spoken.
'Well, get it back,' Smith said, annoyed. 'I'll show you the identification.'
'I'm extremely sorry,' the premier's security colonel definitely was sneering now. 'The premier's party is on a very close timetable. We do not have time to correct mistakes made by other people at this time.'
'Don't be rude,' Smith said mildly. 'Just get me the case, like a good automaton.'
The colonel did not understand the word. Enjoying himself, he said, 'When we return to the capital and check out the baggage, if we find one that appears to have been the property of the so-great Department of State of your country, we will return it to your embassy.'
'After photographing everything, including the hinges,' Smith said.
The premier's security colonel stood with his arms folded, grinning. The captain of deputies whispered something in Smith's ear.
'No, mustn't do that,' Smith said. 'Not really important. If I hadn't made a point of it, I suppose these chaps would have hurled the thing out of their luggage in a rage.'
He shrugged away his annoyance and smiled suddenly at the captain.
'Actually, you know, it means mostly that I'll have to buy a new razor and shaving things.'
The captain and the police sergeant both grinned happily.
'Wait until they analyze my after-shave lotion,' Smith said. 'That'll give their biochemical boys a lovely time.'
They had walked away from the airplane now. Sirens rose faintly in the distance. It was the premier's party itself. The sirens grew louder and louder, and in a few minutes the big, black cars drove up fast onto the apron, their sirens sinking to a growl as they stopped. Smith moved still farther away from the airplane and stood with his back to it, with his back to the official party, watching the balconies and the windows. In one, the girl stood with the deputy close beside her. They did not appear to be talking. Behind him, the official party was boarding the aircraft. A flash bulb popped and the premier's security colonel shouted angrily. There were no more flashes. In a very few minutes, there were the final sounds of the hatches closing, and then the engines started.
Smith turned then, looking at his watch.
'Another minute,' he said to the captain of deputies and the police sergeant. 'Then you're through.'
'I'm glad to see them go,' the captain said with conviction. 'And I'm glad you got here.'
'You people had the whole thing beautifully organized,' Smith said. 'All I could do was walk around a bit. That's always the way, you know. We're spread so thin.'
'But we'd have missed the girl,' the sergeant said. 'Standing up there, she could have pulled out a heater and boom, maybe we're in a war or something.'
'Oh, not that bad,' Smith said. 'Range was much too long for her to do much good. But it would have been a nasty mess.'
'What shall we do with her?' the sergeant said. 'Take her in now?'
'No,' Smith said. 'Even if you took her in for something inconsequential like walking on the grass, she might talk to a reporter. If it's all right with both of you, I'll take her along with me and perhaps chat a bit.'
'Yes, sir, perfectly all right,' the captain of deputies said gratefully. 'That will leave everything in the clear, officially.'
The sergeant said, 'Would you like to take a prowl car back, sir?'
'No thanks,' Smith said. 'Have to go downtown and make a report and then scurry right back to central division. Probably have another job for me by this time. Now don't you forget my car, parked down there by the roadside. Driver's probably lonesome.'
'It's been a real pleasure,' the sergeant said. 'Come back when you have a few days. The fishing's pretty good around here.'
'That would be fine,' Smith said, smiling. The deputy was bringing the girl down now. They shook hands all around, the girl standing calmly at one side. Out in the darkness the engines of the premier's plane roared, the roar standing still for a moment, then moving, gathering speed and then quite suddenly going fast and fading, out and up over the city, over the miles of countryside dotted with other bright cities and then the ocean and another world, the premier's world.
Smith and the girl walked through the terminal lobby, his hand politely on her arm, then outside again and into a cab.
Once in it, she said in a soft, bitterly disappointed voice, 'Why didn't you let me do it? The world would really be better without him.'
'Possibly,' Smith said, soothingly. 'But you wouldn't have done a very good job. Emotional people rarely do, you know.'
'I can't help but be emotional,' she said. 'My father died in one of his labor camps.' Then she said, 'How could you tell about me, just by walking past me there?'
'It takes one to know one,' Smith said, sitting very much alone in a dark corner of the seat. 'I had seven years of their best, myself. Had the luck to live through it, though it didn't seem good luck at the time.'
'And now you're with the American State Department.' The girl did not want to believe in his hardship.
'Only for today,' Smith said. 'I made a very good appearance as an emergency chauffeur. The Secret Service chap, the real one, was quite impressed.'
She said, her tone suddenly different, 'Did you — '
'Of course not,' Smith said. 'That accommodating police fellow will find the car, with my erstwhile employer knocking about in the trunk. Hardly hurt a bit.'
They were back in the center of the city now. At a stoplight, Smith knocked on the glass and told the driver to stop. He got out and said, 'Take the young lady wherever she wishes to go.'
'Wait,' the girl said. 'If you did what you said, why did you stop me? Why did you let them go?'
'Mustn't embarrass our friends,' Smith said. 'No international incidents, no emotional assassinations, no uproar. No nothing. Forgive me for sounding critical, but one does not plan such a thing in a few days. Nor,' he said, 'a few years.'
'But — '
'The dispatch case they insisted on taking along,' Smith said. 'So characteristic of them, so brutally characteristic to seize even so trivial an opportunity for demonstrating their superiority.'
The girl looked at him, bewilderment still remaining on her face.
Smith said, 'So they had to demonstrate what they are, and take my case. And now, out over the middle of
