My own siren was clearing my way, driving motorists to the shelter of the side streets and parking places, and causing my fellow policemen to take charge blocks ahead to clear the path for the vehicle that had the right to exceed the city speed limit. My worthy opponent drove at sixty miles per hour at his own risk, trying to race me to the Third National Bank.
Wood's extra-sensory driving was no better than mine. The traffic pattern was clear to both of us. But who should know better than a policeman what the average motorist will do in the face of an emergency?
He took the time now and then to hurl something at me, but this was not very effective. If you think not, figure how many things you can see and use as weapons while driving at sixty.
And, too, he was also fighting the unfavorable end of a missile-problem called "terminal control," which simply states that any guided missile approaching its target is subject to greater and greater interference by the enemy as it gets closer. Wood's near-misses I ignored with a disdain calculated to make him furious, and his near-hits I blocked with an ease that proved my ability to outguess and outmaneuver him.
I chuckled to myself, for Edward Hazlett Wood had been played off-balance. He'd committed the hysterical mistake of fighting me on my ground instead of his. He had thrust and I'd parried and advanced, forcing him to thrust again before he could recover. He'd been fighting in the very odd position of conducting a vigorous offensive while back-stepping in inexorable retreat. He should have run and run until he was clear enough to prepare a single telling blow.
And so ultimately I came to the front of the Third National Bank in a screeching halt. I stepped under a falling cornice, neatly avoided a revolving door that tried to slice me, and side-stepped the bronze bust of Salmon P. Chase that toppled from its niche of honor above the door. I evaded the erratic rolling of a pencil, and I trod with unerring step on a circular patch of invisible stuff that was as slippery as the proverbial frictionless lubricant. The slick flowed forward and down over the stairs as I hurried below; I held myself erect above it by sheer will power.
As I strode toward the safe-deposit vault, I thought exultantly: "You're outpointed, Psi-man!"
VI
Florence Wood looked up from her little desk and cried, "Why, Captain Schnell! How nice to see you!"