"Fill out this form, drop it in slot 9," she rapped out. "Next?"
"A drunk and robbery suspect," the cop said. "Here's the evidence."
Brightening, Hatchet-Face snatched up the fountain pen and whisked out a blue card. "Misdemeanor and felony," she breathed sharply. "I'll take the details."
Engel clung to the edge of the window counter as the interrogation began.
Yes, he told them, he actually believed something invisible had knocked him down after swallowing up the stranger. No, he hadn't robbed the stranger, he wasn't confessing anything. Yes, he was an honest citizen with no previous criminal offenses. After more probing questions and vicious jabs at the form, she handed it to the cop who dropped it in a nearby wall slot. They waited for a verdict.
In a moment the cop turned to Hatchet-Face who whispered with him excitedly. Flushed and triumphant, he steered Engel out into the hall. "Alien Detection wants you," he growled with uneasy respect.
They got into an elevator and shot swiftly upward. As they stepped into a lavish reception room filled with sickeningly sweet perfume, a scrawny, over-rouged girl shut a magazine and jumped to a switchboard. Then a door opened, and a short, puffy man with cold fish-eyes bounced up to them. Waving the cop away, he gripped Engel's hand.
"Ah, Mr. Engel!" he said smiling. "I'm Commissioner Marston. Sorry about the mix-up, but we didn't realize you were after C. G. Come in, please."
Bewildered, Engel followed him into an office and looked through spacious windows down at the spires of a city he had never known. Beside a desk sat a wizened old man whose yellowed skin drawn taut over his broad skull gave him a shriveled, cadaverous aspect. He tapped a blue card on a thumbnail as his luminous eyes followed Engel suspiciously.