Harpo stared at the card, then at Jeff. "You mean you drove him in here?"
"That's right. Because I'd have killed him if he didn't come." Jeff's face was dark as he turned to the girl. "Tell him, Blackie. Tell him why I'm here."
Blackie told them. They listened with widening eyes, and the room was still as a tomb.
"And you came in here to kill this man—nothing more?" Harpo's voice was incredulous. "But man, you're on thin ice, very thin ice. If they tested you last night, you'll be assigned. Why, you could be forced to sign a release any time."
"I know it, I know it. Can't you see why there isn't time to bicker now?" Jeff's voice cracked in the still room, sharp and urgent. "This is the man, the one I'm looking for and the one you're looking for, the one with ESP that's got Schiml and his men so excited! It's here on the card!"
Harpo's eyes were narrow. "Any other proof besides the card that Conroe is the man?"
Jeff's voice was low with hate. "Look. I've been hunting the man down for five years. A long time. I've hunted him wherever he's gone. I've had the best detective agency in North America working with me hand and foot, tracking him down. But they haven't caught him. We've almost caught him, we've haunted him, we've run him back and forth across the country and world until he's ragged. But we've never caught him. Isn't there some significance to that? Time and again we've come so close that we couldn't miss—and then we missed. We've come too close too many times for coincidence. There's another factor, a factor that's giving Conroe warning, time after time. It's allowed him to slip out of perfectly sealed traps—a factor like precognition, for instance."
There was a long silence. Then the Nasty Frenchman was on his feet, his lips stretched in a malicious grin. "If we move fast enough, we can stop it—cut it off at the bud. We're off the payroll now. But we can get back on it again, if their boy wonder dies."
Harpo's eyes flashed. "And how do you plan to do it?"
"Nothing simpler in the world. We just find the guy." The Nasty Frenchman's grin widened. "Then after we find him, we tell our friend Jeff about it. Nothing more. Jeff'll take it from there. Right, Jeff?"