There was more. Much, much more. It was a flow of abuse that paralyzed me, less because of what he said than because of who was saying it. Suave, competent Defoe, ranting at me like a wounded Gogarty! I couldn't have been more astonished if the portrait of Millen Carmody had whispered a bawdy joke from the frontispiece of the Handbook.
I stood there, too amazed to be furious, listening to the tirade from the midget image in the viewplate. It must have lasted for three or four minutes; then, almost in mid-breath, Defoe glanced at something outside my range of vision, and stopped his stream of abuse. I started to cut in while I could, but he held up one hand quickly.
He smiled gently. Very calmly, as though he had not been damning me a moment before, he said: "I shall be very interested to hear what you have to say."
That floored me. It took me a second to shake the cobwebs out of my brain before I said waspishly, "If you hadn't gone through all that jabber, you would have heard it long ago."
The midget in the scanner shrugged urbanely. "True," he conceded. "But then, Thomas, I wouldn't have had you."
And he reached forward and clicked off the phone. Tricked! Tricked and trapped! I cursed myself for stupidity. While he kept me on the line, the call was being traced—there was no other explanation. And I had fallen for it!
I slapped the door of the booth open and leaped out.
