Larry indicated the body on the floor. “There you are, Steve,” he said. “The head of the counterfeit ring. He was trying to escape. I had to shoot him.”
Behind Steve Hackett crowded Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. and behind him half a dozen others of various departments.
The Boss came pushing his way through.
He glared down at the Professor's body, then up at Larry Woolford.
“Good work, Lawrence,” he said. “How did you bring it off?”
Larry replaced the gun in his holster and shrugged modestly. “The Polk girl gave me the final tip-off, sir. I gave her some Scop-Serum in a drink and she talked. Evidently, she was a member of the Movement.”
The Boss was nodding wisely. “I've had my eye on her, Lawrence. An obvious weird. But we will have to suppress that Scop-Serum angle.” He slapped his favorite field man on the arm jovially. “Well, boy, this means promotion, of course.”
Larry grinned. “Thanks, sir. All in a day's work. I don't think we'll have much trouble with the remnants of this Movement thing. The pitch is to treat them as counterfeiters, not subversives. Try them for that. Their silly explanations of what they were going to do with the money will never be taken seriously.” He looked down at the small corpse. “Particularly now that their kingpin is gone.”
A new wave of agents, F.B.I. men and prisoners washed into the room and Steve Hackett and Larry were for a moment pushed back into a corner by themselves.
Steve looked at him strangely and said, “There's one thing I'd like to know: Did you really have to shoot him, Woolford?”