For minutes that seemed like hours, MacLeod and the Greek waited on the main floor, where they could watch both the elevators and the stairway. Bertie Wooster had gone up to alert Kato Sugihara and Karen. Then the door of one of the elevators opened and Adam Lowiewski emerged, with Kato behind him, apparently lost in a bulky scientific journal he was reading. The Greek moved in from one side, and MacLeod stepped in front of the Pole.
“Hi, Adam,” he greeted. “Have you looked into that batch of data yet?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.” Lowiewski seemed barely able to keep his impatience within the bounds of politeness. “Of course, it’s out of my line, but the mathematics seems sound.” He started to move away.
“You’re not going anywhere,” MacLeod told him. “The chess game is over. The red pawns are taken—the one at Oppenheimer Village, and the one here.”
There was a split second in which Lowiewski struggled—almost successfully—to erase the consternation from his face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he began. His right hand started to slide under his left coat lapel.
MacLeod’s Colt was covering him before he could complete the movement. At the same time, Kato Sugihara dropped the paper-bound periodical, revealing the thin-bladed knife he had concealed under it. He stepped forward, pressing the point of the weapon against the Pole’s side. With the other hand, he reached across Lowiewski’s chest and jerked the pistol from his shoulder-holster. It was one of the elegant little .32 Beretta 1954 Model automatics.
“Into the elevator,” MacLeod ordered. An increasing pressure of Kato’s knife emphasized the order. “And watch him; don’t let him get rid of anything,” he added to the Greek.
“If you would explain this outrage—” Lowiewski began. “I assume it is your idea of a joke—”
Without even replying, MacLeod slammed the doors and started the elevator upward, letting it rise six floors to the living quarters. Karen Hilquist and the aristocratic black-sheep who called himself Bertie Wooster were waiting when he opened the door. The Englishman took one of Lowiewski’s arms; MacLeod took the other. The rest fell in behind as they hustled the captive down the hall and into the big soundproofed dining room. They kept Lowiewski standing, well away from any movable object in the room; Alex Unpronounceable took his left arm as MacLeod released it and went to the communicator and punched the all-outlets button.
“Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville Lawton; Dr. ben-Hillel; Dr. von Heldenfeld; Mlle. Khouroglu,” he called. “Dr. MacLeod speaking. Come at once, repeat at once, to the round table—Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville Lawton—”
Karen said something to the Japanese and went outside. For a while, nobody spoke. Kato came over and lit a cigarette in the bowl of MacLeod’s pipe. Then the other Team members entered in a body. Evidently Karen had intercepted them in the hallway and warned them that they would find some unusual situation inside; even so, there was a burst of surprised exclamations when they found Adam Lowiewski under detention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” MacLeod said, “I regret to tell you that I have placed our colleague, Dr. Lowiewski, under arrest. He is suspected of betraying confidential data to agents of the Fourth Komintern. Yesterday, I learned that data on all our work here, including Team-secret data on the Sugihara Effect, had got into the hands of the Komintern and was being used in research at the Smolensk laboratories. I also learned that General Nayland blames this Team as a whole with double-dealing and selling this data to the Komintern. I don’t need to go into any lengthy exposition of General Nayland’s attitude toward this Team, or toward Free Scientists as a class, or toward the research-contract system. Nor do I need to point out that if he pressed these charges against us, some of us could easily suffer death or imprisonment.”
“So he had to have a victim in a hurry, and pulled my name out of the hat,” Lowiewski sneered.
“I appreciate the gravity of the situation,” Sir Neville Lawton said. “And if the Sugihara Effect was among the data betrayed, I can understand that nobody but one of us could have betrayed it. But why, necessarily, should it be Adam? We all have unlimited access to all records and theoretical data.”
“Exactly. But collecting information is the smallest and easiest part of espionage. Almost anybody can collect information. Where the spy really earns his pay is in transmitting of information. Now, think of the almost fantastic security measures in force here, and consider how you would get such information, including masses of mathematical data beyond any human power of memorization, out of this reservation.”
“Ha, nobody can take anything out,” Suzanne Maillard said. “Not even one’s breakfast. Is Adam accused of sorcery, too?”
“The only material things that are allowed to leave this reservation are sealed cases of models and data shipped to the different development plants. And the Sugihara Effect never was reported, and wouldn’t go out that way,” Heym ben-Hillel objected.
“But the data on the Sugihara Effect reached Smolensk,” MacLeod replied. “And don’t talk about Darwin and Wallace: it wasn’t a coincidence. This stuff was taken out of the Tonto Basin Reservation by the only person who could have done so, in the only way that anything could leave the reservation without search. So I had that person shadowed, and at the same time I had our telephone lines tapped, and eavesdropped on all calls entering or leaving this center. And the person who had to be the spy-courier called Adam Lowiewski, and Lowiewski made an appointment to meet him at the Oppenheimer Village Recreation House to play chess.”
“Very suspicious, very suspicious,” Lowiewski derided. “I receive a call from a friend at the same time that some anonymous suspect is using the phone. There are only five hundred telephone conversations a minute on this reservation.”
“Immediately, Dr. Lowiewski attempted to leave this building,” MacLeod went on. “When I intercepted him, he tried to
