The senator spluttered in confusion.
"It's on a rental basis," said the clerk. "There's a register below. It counts the catch. You pay two cents per catch."
"Really a guaranteed job, hey?" smiled the senator. "How does it work?"
The clerk held up the trap. "This is where you put the bait," he said. "You impale it on this spike and then swivel it through the slit in the wire so the mice must enter the tunnel to get to it."
"Yeah, but there's nothing there to stop the mice from having a free lunch," objected the senator.
The clerk took a small bolt, set it on the floor of the tunnel, tilted the cage and let the bolt run down the floor slowly. It passed through the circlet and disappeared.
"Hey!"
The clerk grinned. "Convenient, isn't it? No muss, no fuss, no strain, no pain. And no corpse to clean away."
"A very definite advantage," said the senator. "But where do they go?"
"No one knows. They go—and we ask no questions."