"Made me a surgeon," he said.
"Never!" Shari said hotly.
"Ask Tex," Wally suggested. "He felt me put a lift on his coronary artery. I'm a TK surgeon—I've got enough TK to put clamps on inaccessible arteries and feel out mechanical disorders of the body. Check it. I'm on the staff at Universal Hospital."
"And what are you doing here?" she argued.
"Meeting my obligation to the Lodge," he said. "This is where I got my training, right in this building."
"I thought that brownstone house was the Lodge," I said.
"No," he said. "That's just the Grand Master's residence. The Lodge provides quarters for its brass. This building is the real chapter house."
He heaved a long sigh and dug into his drawer again. "You can beat it, Milly," he said. "Thanks."
"I know," she told him from the door. She had started out long before he spoke. Impressive stuff, but it got a sniff from Shari.
What Wally got out of his desk had a refreshing shape and color. It was oblong. It was green. It was money. It was, for a fact, a stack of one thousand dollar bills.